In this paper we question the assumption that online teaching is merely making course material available on the World Wide Web. We report on our study of what is involved in the act of teaching online and on the research that led to the development of the 'mobile teaching facility' to enable a focus on teaching in the online environment. We reflect on how a group of academic staff are responding to online teaching. Details of professional development workshops, hardware and software solutions and working with the complexities of pedagogy will also be discussed. This paper is about our findings, recommendations and plans for future explorations.

The data for this paper was drawn from interviews with eight academic staff from the Faculty of Education. The interviews were tape-recorded and hand written field notes were taken. The interview subjects were academic staff willing and available who met the following criteria: gender (five male and three female), involvement in teaching the undergraduate education major program (from tutor to unit chair), level of interest in information and communication technologies (from early adopter, to interested but sceptical), age (ranging from early forties to retirement age) and seniority (from lecture to senior lecturer). Staff interviewed also had a range of exposure to the faculty's information and communication technologies (ICT) environment from a beginners understanding of the concepts to teaching wholly online. Computer generated records were also consulted that showed the number of staff using online communication facilities and the frequency of use.

We work in a teacher education environment with undergraduate primary and secondary teacher education students and post graduate students. Online learning environments have been developed to support academic programs at all levels. We also have what is considered standard in all Australian universities: desktop computers for all staff, computer laboratories for teaching/student use and lecture theatres equipped with the necessary hardware and software to enable presentations. The computer equipment is to ensure that our graduates 'have the ability to identify, gather, retrieve and operate on textual, graphical and numerical information (appropriate to the discipline area of teacher education) and personal skills in information technological literacy' (Deakin, 2000b). We have moved beyond questioning whether the new learning technologies can contribute to an improvement over traditional methods. We are now focussed on how to integrate ICT into effective practice (Laurillard 1993).

To this end, we have a problem! Our surveys and interviews with academic staff revealed that the majority of academic staff are not using the technology in their teaching. Most academic staff are using computers in their professional practice to write (word processing) and send/receive messages (email) but apart from that, there is a relatively small group of staff who use the technology for 'advanced applications' that are expected of students when they enter the workforce. We share the enthusiasm in the literature about the use of the Internet and online technologies as a teaching and learning tool. We also recognise and continue to grapple with ways in which we can give attention to the role of the teacher in our particular workplace (Levin, 1995; Owen, Owston & Dickie, 1995). We believe that teachers tend to teach as they have been taught and therefore the use of computers needs to be introduced into teacher education courses early and the use of learning technologies modeled throughout (Maddaux, Johnson & Harlow, 1994; Hunter, Fryatt & Brown, 1996). Our challenge is to provide the opportunity for academic staff to model the integrate use of ICT in pedagogy.

The intensification of academic work is well documented (Blackmore, 2000) and within that context, it is difficult to see academics learning the 'advanced computer applications' in their own time and integrating those skills into their teaching. We would argue that learning to use a computer application is one skill set and integrating that application into teaching is another. However, it has been recognised that academic staff need regular computer skills sessions where they have the opportunity to learn to use relevant applications.

Our data showed that professional development skills sessions offered by the university helped to some extent, but the challenge was to integrate the use of a range of information and communication technologies into teaching practice. The Faculty of Education responded to the demand for support staff within the Faculty. The Faculty IT Manager coordinates the IT support staff and works directly to help staff with regard to their IT needs one-on-one when the need arises. The work of the IT support staff was appreciated and acclaimed in the survey responses. However, there were other dimensions of professional development that were identified as needing attention. Many of the existing models seem to fail because they separate technology from application and integration into teaching practice (Beacham & Kester, 1994). One of the ICT platforms that the Faculty has developed to enable the integration of ICT with teaching practice is the Education Studies Online website.

The Education Studies Online (ESO) is an initiative aimed at supporting the Education Studies Major in the Faculty of Education. The ESO website is an environment that has a range of highly integrated and interactive features. These include context sensitive navigation, searching, comment and discussion areas, private journal, private portfolio, public website, multiple media resource repository, guided learning areas, activity areas with integrated resources, and various forms of feedback.

Students benefit from the experience of working in the ESO environment through their exposure to online teaching technologies which is likely to assist them as they begin their work as teachers. Education Studies Online also provides significant opportunities for lecturers to develop their pedagogy in a way that incorporates a level of online interactivity that has an impact on the curriculum. 'The existence of the ESO as a unified, flexible, interactive learning environment, precipitates new approaches to teaching by staff and students. Naturally, it also places pressure on staff to re-engineer their curriculum, because the subject of study (teaching and learning) in the Education Studies Major is placed in the spotlight through the cultural tools and practices enabled by ESO.' (Segrave & Warren, 2000) The ESO development team won the Deakin University Vice-Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2002 in the category of 'Outstanding Teaching'.

However, our interview data shows that even after a few years of having the ESO facility available to academics, we still have significant numbers of staff who are not using it. They say that it is interesting and that they would like to but just don't get around to it. They say that the two hour tutorial time is taken up with activities such as discussion of academic readings, workshop activities and presentations - 'booking a computer laboratory and taking the whole group there is often a waste of a lot of time. It is a break in the flow of the tutorial and often students get distracted on the way to the lab and are lured away by a coffee break and don't quite make it back to the tutorial'. The staff interview data points to a tension between the familiar face-to-face teaching and the new and unknown online environment.

The 'face-to-face versus online' binary represents a theme that was consistently evident in our discussions with academics.

The online facility offers student more control over what they do when accessing course materials. In ESO, academics have the opportunity to present students with a range of activities supported by resources and reflective discussion spaces. Our data suggests that to create a new unit of work online can be threatening to academics who have developed their teaching style over a number of years and have been influenced in their practice by the model of those lecturers who taught them. In the interviews it was evident that the integrated use of ICT in teaching represented the giving up of some (traditional) control of the learning process. One interviewee suggested: 'Everybody's threatened by the fact that, I'm a seriously good academic I don't want to be incompetent and as soon as you throw in a whole area, another knowledge base of teaching they don't have, they're all threatened enormously.'

One of the interviewees pointed out another source of pressure to use ICT in teaching: 'there's also the self-esteem problem, that we don't like to admit that some how or other we don't know something, that everybody seems to know but we don't. We're fantastic at covering up. We're great at covering up incompetence. And it's because we're able to think quickly, and critically and we've got good use of language we can cover up things wonderfully well'.

The interview data represented a general acknowledgment of the possible advantages of online learning. Student and teacher responses presented when teaching face to face are immediate and often emotional when compared to a considered written response that might be generated online. The ICT environment allows a degree of autonomy and self-management for students, and offers a degree of choice and flexibility in content and delivery that can support student centred learning (Australian Council for Computers in Education, 1999). There was strong support for teaching in an environment where the learner and teacher had options for online and face-to-face pedagogies. There was a preference expressed for the two domains (online and face-to-face) to converge, as shown in Figure 1 below, rather than being kept separate and mutually exclusive. The overlap enables those who may be wary of, or unfamiliar with online technologies to see that text, dialogue and resources are able to exist in both models. Appropriate induction and support is required to help develop the skills of online communication and interaction so that the online environment might be as meaningful as the face-to-face classroom.

Through our discussions with staff we sensed a reluctance to go to the computer laboratory which was perceived as somewhat regimented with computers in rows and in fixed positions. The environment did not encourage discussion and collaboration, they said. That got us thinking about the advantages of the portability of notebook computers and 'wireless technology' and the benefit of taking the computers to the tutorial rooms. We came up with the idea of a Mobile Teaching Facility.

We developed a set of three Mobile Teaching Facilities (MTF) which consisted of notebook computers (in a trolley) that used wireless networking to access the Deakin intranet and the internet. The Faculty received University Major Equipment funding for 2001 to set up three sets of 10 notebooks.

In our view, the Mobile Teaching Facility (MTF) project of wireless notebooks in trolleys, has proven to be an outstanding and highly innovative addition to the teaching program in the Faculty of Education. The MTF project has provided a highly flexible yet integrated environment for teaching, learning and program delivery using information and communication technologies. The purpose of the facility is to create a tutorial-based flexible environment that enables academic staff to model the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in pedagogies that are integrated into the curriculum. This project has been innovative in that it is the first implementation in the university to take advantage of wireless networking for teaching. The MTF provides a teaching and learning environment that removes the constraints of regular computer laboratories and allows for innovative pedagogy in a variety of contexts.

Finally, in response to Faculty and University strategic priorities for staff and students, the MTF has made a relevant contribution to increasing competencies in ICTs through 'access to the highest quality learning resources and contemporary technologies, and to opportunities to develop skill in the use of these resources' (Deakin 2000a).

The MTF has provided significant staff professional development opportunities as academic staff have the opportunity to see just what is possible in a classroom using ICTs. Through using an 'in-house' resource, staff also feel more comfortable acknowledging lack of expertise in particular areas and are more willing to use an accessible, purpose-configured facility rather than go to a 'computing laboratory'. The MTF allows the Faculty to integrate a range of technologies into its teaching to ensure that students are provided with opportunities to use, examine and discuss exemplars that they in turn will be expected to offer their students as professional educators. The Faculty now has a better opportunity to match the development in the level of equipment and use of ICTs in schools and is able to provide in situ demonstrations and model innovative forms of pedagogy using information technology in a variety of classroom settings.

In conclusion, the following are a summary of features of the MTF project worth noting:

• Specification and purchase of hardware components and peripherals
• Design and construction of mobile trolleys
• Networking infrastructure needed to be completed in the buildings
• Customised software image completed (15 applications and suite of utilities)
• Over 45 staff attended the MTF in-service workshops
• 22 academic staff are regularly using the MTF in their teaching
• The MTF is being used in 19 units in the Faculty at both under-graduate and post-graduate levels
• The MTF has been used in 8 different classrooms across the Faculty
• The MTF is currently booked for every day of the week
• Over 300 students across the faculty were able to use the MTF in the first semester of its use.

The MTF is a tool for teaching and learning not just a set of computers. The project has gone a long way towards integrating ICT into teaching and learning in ways that are not possible in general purpose computing laboratories and brought about change in staff understanding of ICTs. The Mobile Teaching Facility is not the complete answer to all our problems with regard to using computer based technologies in our teaching but it has made a significant difference to some academics in enabling the accessibility of the technology to academics in the tutorial room environment. Issues and problems encountered as we adjust to using this facility in our tutorial rooms so far include the bandwidth of the wireless connections and some difficulty in manoeuvring the trolleys around the buildings and through doorways.

Responses from academics confirm this. One academic listed a range of activities she is able to do through the use of the Mobile Teaching Facility and then went on to say that 'it is important to note that these activities were conducted in a science laboratory where the use of desktop computers is not feasible due to the lack of provision of power and network points, allowing the students to fully integrate the MTF computers into their workspace and learning activities. In particular, it allowed students to model the kinds of classroom environments that they would be expected to be able to create and manage in their teaching'.

From our study we can conclude that trainee teacher education students have adapted very positively: 'It was interesting to observe that at first, students were treating the wireless laptop computers as if they were desktop computers - they would for example, call a colleague over to show them something from a website. They gradually got used to the mobility of the tool and would carry the computer, as if it were a book and share what they had found with someone in a different location. A significant number of students have said, 'this is how I would like to use computers in my classroom when I am a teacher'. Student responses highlighted their appreciation that the 'vibe of the tutorial' was maintained using the MTF in the same room rather than going to a computer laboratory. Another student announced that she was 'no longer afraid of laptop computers' as they were easy to use.

The following response sums up what a significant number of academic staff said: 'The flexible nature of the MTF was the catalyst for renewal and change in my teaching practice. I have had a professional development network created through using the program. I have been supported through the use of introductory workshops with the MTF and have had the opportunity to view how others have planned to use the facility. I am thus more aware of the role of ICT in learning'. As academics began to consider the opportunities of using pedagogical models suited to online teaching and learning (such as student led enquiry, collaborative learning and problem based learning) they are more able to understand how ICTs could enhance face to face teaching while encouraging the development of competencies for both staff and students.

Our interview data shows that the majority of academic staff believe that teacher education courses are best conducted face-to-face while taking full advantage of information and communication technologies. While we study teaching online in several projects (Johnson, 2001), we focus our attention on ways of maintaining an interactive relationship between the learner and teacher in the process of teaching. We have found that ESO and the MTF are able to support the six conceptual frameworks to consider for online technology based learning suggested by Campbell (1999):

• Multiple representations of reality,
• Authentic tasks,
• Real-world, case-based contexts,
• Fostering reflective practice,
• Knowledge construction,
• Collaborative learning

We need to be mindful of not making the mistake of thinking that what we teach is contained in the materials. We should avoid the assumption that the study guide, reader and other unit materials (now including web pages, and other digital resources) encapsulate what students learn. The wake-up call of 'Is anybody there?' should be taken heed of as Walker (1997) cautions 'I take this voice to be (more often than not) a plea for the embodiment of the curriculum, a need on the part of the student to feel that they have some point of contact with their teacher. That they are somebody and so are we. They desire, I believe, an expression of their identity as a student that can only be realised through some form of relationship with us as a teacher. They can only learn if they know somebody is there.' If this is accepted then the challenge of online teaching is less a curriculum challenge than a need to reconstruct ourselves as teachers. The Deakin University Central Research Grants Scheme recently funded a research project in this area (Prof. Jill Blackmore & Dr Richard Johnson).

The Mobile Teaching Facility is giving academic teachers the opportunity to explore online and face-to-face pedagogies and make the transition to the new teaching environment where 'artefacts used to reproduce collective understandings among specific social groups are changing profoundly: print discourses, face-to-face classes, paper documents are being displaced by digital discourses, on-line classes, electronic documents. The former will not entirely disappear, but so too can they not be counted upon to reign hegemonic' (Luke, 1998, p.2). We see the Education Studies Online and the Mobile Teaching Facility working together to enable tertiary teacher educators and their students to move beyond the bounded environment of books which have a certain physical shape, printed text on paper, pages with edges, borders, margins, encouraging a certain kind of interaction and rationality (Tuman, 1992; Green, 1997) to an environment where 'the digital environment is a defining technology - requiring a new social imperative and form of life' (Bolter, 1991; Bolter & Grusin 1998; Bigum et al 1997).

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