Martin Bean’s talk at Alt C 2009 October 8, 2009

I finally got round to watching this talk recorded on Elluminate at ALt C 2009 that I attended 1 month ago but could not attend this session. Here are some notes. Martin Bean OU VC Designate (at the time, now in post) talked about the links between technology and learning and recognising how powerful that relationship is. You can watch the keynote and get more details on the ALT C 2009 website.

The macroeconomics principles that are impacting on HE are

• Globalisation – competition in HE is now global, more students studying outside their home country. Education is no longer a once in a lifetime experience but people keep coming back to education to top up and change their skills and knowledge. Lifetime employment is replaced by lifetime employability.
• Massification – the world cannot supply enough HE places for the demand if we stick with the bricks and mortar environment. We need to keep pace with demand and retool and rethink the ways that we provide HE.
• Privatisation – private sector HE is growing fast and their motivation is share holder returns, therefore they have a lot of investment in service quality.

Collective challenges to HE

• UK and US overshadowed by India and China’s investment in R&D in education. In the top ranking research institutions we’ll see a shift in that direction in the next 20 years. Students used to come from there to the USA for their education and then stay there to work, now they go home again.
• We need to educate people for new types of work, skills agenda making sure students are equipped wit the right skills for out economy.
• STEM (Science, technology, engineering and maths) is key for a competitive workforce. STEM is critical because it fuels innovation and the future of economies depends on innovation.
• Increasing the importance of sustainability.
• Transforming information into meaningful knowledge. The days of memorising rote are over. Students should be learning 21^st century skills and be tested in 21^st century ways.

Student expectations

• Changing values – autonomy, authenticity, connecting, sharing, individuality, constant stimulation. Priorities – realtime interaction, self presentation.
• Our challenge is to be more relevant, blend digital lifestyles and digital work styles. Aging student body. Learning in the workplace becoming integral.  Can’t stop your lives to top up education. Bring education to where they are. HE must remove artificial barriers (informal/formal learning).  HE needs to revolve around the learner. Pushing globs of information at learners is not an education. Content and pedagogy, services, support revolves around the students.

The opportunities for technology are

• Extending the reach of high quality education to all.
• Nurturing powerful communities of learning – formally and informally, move from sage of the stage. Allowing communities to spring up and figure out how we can assess that.
• enabling relevant, personalised, engaging learning – classic text book model is over.
• giving educators better insight and more time.
• agile, efficient and connected learning systems – systems that give us access to the information we need as and when we need it.

The key considerations about the application of technology are more about people and processes than about the technology.  Technology fails 9/10 cos we spend all our time thinking about the technology and not about the brain.

The OU is using SocialLearn to connect social Web 2.0 uses to learning uses as shown below:

Beyond Social Networking tuned in for learning…

People like me TO People who challenge me

Friends TO Learning Peers/Mentors

Informal Chat TO Learning conversations

Quick facts/Info exchange TO Learning journeys/depth

Simplistic Numeric Ratings TO Endorsements and Critiques

Tag Clouds TO Connected Ideas

Shopping Recommendations TO Learning Recommendations

Connectivism September 17, 2009

Stephen Downes, CCK09 Course Video outlining Connectivism: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/688902

Connectivism is the knowledge that is distributed across connections.  What is created when information is sent from one entity to another 2 entities are connected, if the signal sent from one entity to another changes something in the other.

Learning is the capacity to construct and use these connections Knowledge is not acquired, or a thing, but it is the growth of these connections in the mind and in society. Knowledge is a set of connections, anything that has connections can be a learning thing. Knowledge is not propositional – K is not composed of sentences, composed of connections/interactions between entities. Knowledge is not contained in the processes but emergent from the processes.

Something is known only if it is recognised by a perceiver, but the perceivers may see different things making different knowledge depending on their context/frames (background knowledge, frames etc).

Knowledge formation is the development of these connections, these connections develop through a process of association. This is the mechanism that describes how connections become to be formed (between neurons). Knowledge is grown, develops between these connections, networks are not built, they grow, are nurtured.

It’s a skill rather than a construct. Knowledge is not transferrable, it is not a thing. K cannot be carried from place to place. C has 2 objectives – how networks are grown/development, processes to foster network development in yourself, others or society. 2. C is a theory that describes successful networks- that work, are reliable, give us information that we can act upon.

Why do assessments take all the fun out of learning? September 16, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

I just twittered this statement and thought I needed more than 140 characters for a good rant.

This course, H800, has been great. I’ve learnt loads, ‘met’ some great people and heard some interesting perspectives that have all fed into my new understanding of “Practices and debates in elearning”. But why does it have to be spoiled by assessment.

It’s like a nice day out or holiday being ruined by having to go home, or the anticlimax of a firework that doesn’t go off or when a sneeze doesn’t happen.

I feel forced into writing words I don’t want to engage with for the sake of proving that I’ve done the course.

But I could have learnt all this without doing the course, I could have used the wealth of information online and OERs available to me, my access to onlie journals that being a university employee gives me and got all this information that way. Well, the reason I have to do assessments is that I want a Masters qualification to put on my CV as that’s the only way I’m going to get shortlisted to move up the career ladder!

I also know that without the course I would have been less motivated and driven to progress through the materials, I would have given up earlier and without the cohesion of the tutor group, would have failed ages ago – even hearing that someone else finds an article just as hard as you did (especially when it’s your tutor saying that) is supporting and encouraging.

This is my way of thanking the course for existing, for my tutor mates and my new friends on my blogosphere from H800.

I realised something else earlier, custard creams really help you learn!

Rant over, time for a rest. Written words for assessment from 830-330 and then 730 til 9 today! Bring on the migraine!

By the way, Twitter was not only a good distraction but provided me with some almost realtime interaction with 2 fellow students, it’s good to know we’re going through this together whereever we are in the world.

Learning to Change-Changing to Learn – video September 13, 2009

Some really nice points in here about communities of practice, learning and how technology facilitates this.

ALT C 2009 – reflections and dissemination September 10, 2009

Alt C 2009 Reflections

Alt C - Photo By James Clay, that's me bottom right hand corner looking very interesting talk to the guys from WIMBA

All the powerpoints, abstracts and papers can be found here: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/

I found it a very good conference. With both my hats on – my Learning Consultant role and my role as a learner I could select sessions to attend based on work interests and H800 relevance, sessions that would help not only my understanding of concepts we’ve covered in H800 but in helping with my ECA. It has made it a very productive 3 days for me as I’ve been able to relate it to both of those contexts rather than only having one context. It’s great to hear so many different views as well, which complement the course notes and the opinions I am starting to form.

My favourite sessions were Tim Neumann’s stuff on e-conferencing, probably from my student Hat more than work, but work relevant too and Uni of Plymouth’s report on learner experience presented by Jennie Winter.

Some key learning points/points of reflection I’ve got right now are:

Although many (not all) people are becoming adept at multitasking this is not good for learning, as it means concentration on each task is shallow and good engagement is not occurring.

If we introduce too many social technologies to students PG/PT students, they will have greater difficulty in creating the  boundaries they need to focus on learning even thought the advantages of using these software are good for opportunities to learn in a socio-constructivist way.

Meeting someone from H800 was interesting, we found it useful to reflect together on things we heard at the conference against what we’d done in our studies, useful to exchange interpretations of course activities and so on. Although the distance learning communication tools of blogs, e-conferencing and forums go someway to give me social learning experiences when I am someone who needs the convenience of distance learning due to my work and life commitments, nothing beats F2f discussion. What is that X factor that this has given me that the social technologies have not – a lot of it is the visual clues, some is the synchronousity, and some is the ease at which you can communicate in person. The barriers to this were the asynchronousity, lack of emotional clues/visual clues and in Audio Conferencing, the turn taking issue.

However, the keynote speeches did not add anything by being f2f. I could not interact with the people around me or the presenter. The people who logged online while watching were talking on Twitter so they were able to engage in simultaneous discussion about the topic. It would have been fine to have saved a lot of money and the environment by having the keynote speakers streamed in from their places of work (or wherever they were).

Being at the conference really focuses the mind on concentrating on absorbing knowledge and reflecting. Being able to talk about sessions and reflect on what I’d learnt immediately afterwards with Carol was useful. I could blog it, which is useful, but any replies/responses/reactions I might get might be delayed or might not even happen. It’s likely that people will read my blog on this but will they comment – a challenge there for my readers.

Notes from sessions that really stood out for me follow below…H800 students wil find some of this useful I hope…

Arrived at Alt C 2009 in Manchester September 7, 2009

This year I haven’t had the fun and games as I did in Leeds, trying to find my accomodation in the pouring rain, internet not working etc etc.

I’m in accomodation this year right next to the building where the conference is taking place, so have a 2 minute commute to work tmorrow morning. The weather is lovely and as I look out of my window on the 11th floor I can see the “skyscrapers’ that make up the city of Manchester and hills and wind turbines beyond.

The train journey was good, managed to get on an early train from Telford to Wolverhampton, to find the last train to Manchester was running late so hopped on that one and got here about 330.  Decided to do the ‘decent’ thing and get the bus to the university, but could not find the bus stop so got a taxi so finance had better cough up that! That’s the only drama so far.

As you can see I’m online, on a funny laptop from work that is very sensitive, I will try not to upset it. It’s got a tendancy to hop around the page while I’m typing or send emails after one or two words. Hotpot thought I was drunk already! What ever would make her think that.

Getting online at one of these conferences is always a nightmare and with this being a Learning Technology you have thought at least we could manage it.

Now I’ve got 1.5 hours til a welcome buffet for dinner so must crack on with essay.

Just remembered too, room is not right next to door or under stairs like last year so might be able to sleep ok tonight!

Oh I’ve also just remembered, my conference programme is missing 8 pages so if I went by that I’d have 2 free days until the last day on Thursday. Oh, I there weren’t any towels when I got here. These things are so insignificant, I certainly believe that getting a train here is more sensible, I’m much more relaxed that this time last year.

Mindmapping is helping September 6, 2009

I had various articles I want to refer to in my essay, I had extracted loads of quotes to turn into my discussion and put them into word. but it was a mess, I had duplications of points with authors/evidence scattered all around.

So I’ve put it all into a mindmap, so as I read through my brainstorm of articles I’ve read, I can group them altogether in similarities.

I’ve also found a really useful Blog post that I can use for my discussion on using blogs here: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/01/blogging-as-occupational-therapy.html
Here, Martin Weller talks about how blogging had kept him in the professional loop while he had to take a step back from work for other reasons.  He talks about how people with busy working lives punctuated with busy personal lives, blogging can keep them in touch if they are distanced from what is happened at work. I’d like to turn this around and relate it to Distance Learners, who already have busy work and personal lives, and need to fit in learning but want to learn socially.

some clarity September 5, 2009

Image by Keith1999 via Flickr

Photo shows where I went last weekend – Cardingmill Valley in the LongMynd (south shropshire hills), nothng to do with blog post, just pretty!

I emailed some queries to tutor last night and had a useful Elluminate chat with Frauke. Having another online get together tomorrow morning (Sunday) at 9am.

Reflections on  Elluminate first – frustration is listening to someone speak and sat him umming, and nodding, laughing etc but not being able to convey this to the person talking unless I sit and type in my body language/visual clues. PLenty of literature points this out too. But really what does this take away from the experience. When it’s my turn to speak, I just have to make sure I convey those feelings back to the other person verbally. I think this helps you develop communication skills and awareness of your own responses to what others say.

Other than that, it is really useful to talk to someone in realtime, but why don’t we just use the phone? WEll Elluminate allows more people to come, and if we wanted we can use the whiteboard and if someone hasn’t got a microphone, they can type in their communications (ok skype does that too). But I think I’m right in saying Skype doesn’t allow many users at one time. Correct me if I’m wrong.

On to the ECA

Frauke explained her approach to part A being that she has found evidence of use of her two chosen technologies (incidently the same 2 I’m doing, e-conferencing and Blogs) in the context she knows (Language teaching) and then is using this to help her make her recommendations for language teaching.

My research to date had been very broad, I hadn’t thought of just looking in my context (Business education) and had just lots of elearning generalist evidence. However, woke up this morning and did some searches of blogging in business studies and found 2 x 2009 articles that I can use.

I asked my tutor and she recommended that I make sure I identify any similarities with any evidence uses and map these to my own context. More similiarities = higher confidence about achiving the outcomes. Make sure I also acknowledge the differences.

Regarding how to write it, she said the First person was perfectly acceptable- that’s great, but could be challenge as it’s a long time since I’ve written a formal piece of work in the first person (other than in exams).

I also told her about my new idea for the learning activitiy I’m going to do, and she liked it saying that is was particularly good as it was work relevant and would have real benefits.

Now just got to put pen to paper and get writing….unfortunately I lost the afternoon as I went to bed at 1pm with a bad headache and neither I or Livvy woke up til 5!

Slow Progress September 4, 2009

I’ve not made any progress with my ECA in a week, and due to the lack of attention I’ve forgotten what I’ve already done and feel like I’m starting from scratch again.

I don’t think my last attempt really dealt with the question properly, I think I was being too general. I think I need to list real examples of uses of the two technologies and the evidence that supports these uses, rather than just talk in general about different uses. I’m not sure.

I’m really not sure about the confidence issue. We’re asked to make reccomendations for how practitioners might use these technologies and indicate how confident you are in the light of the evidence you have presented, explaining your reasons. Conflicting evidence, for example, is likely to lead to a “low” or “medium” level.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Reading some of the tutor groups wikis, the tutors have posted up some tables to help them with the essay plan:

One says Preparing for the ECA Part B What kinds of evidence will justify your suggestions for practioners? – evidence from H800, your experiences and experiences of your students/peers, and other sources.

Then it says, deciding on your confidence ratings, what criteria will you use?

One tutor has told her tutees this:

Where sources make different points, students should highlight and explore those differences. For example, suppose he (or she) provides his/her own and other students’ experience of blogs as illustrating a certain strength in a particular context, but this experience is at odds with a point made by Kerawalla et al but is in agreement with a source the student found elsewhere. S/He might then write something like this:

My own and fellow students’ experience of blogging to some extent matches that reported by Kerawalla et al. (2008), in that we found…. But in one key aspect, our experience – where we found X –  was at odds with the point those authors make about “…..” (p.10). In literature outside H800, Smith and Jones (2008) report the following… Smith and Jones are closer to my own position, in that they argue… However, it is important to bear in mind that Smith and Jones were reporting a context that was rather different from that of H800, in that the module they researched had a face-to-face component and…

In that mock example, there is some conflict between the ‘Source 1′ evidence and the ‘Source 2′ evidence. That is likely to mean that, in Part B, the student does not give a ‘high confidence’ recommendation. A ‘medium confidence’ recommendation seems more likely. This possibility is allowed for, of course, in the wording of Part B:

So do I actually state – confidence rating, or does the reader know the confidence will be low due to the conflicting evidence given.
Here is another tutor’s comments on part D of the ECA too

Both individual and collaborative are in brackets which means that the authors of guidance are aware of the limitations of these constructs, so if I were writing an essay on the subject I would use this as a starting point for my discussion. In other words, I would say that the notions of both individual and collaborative learning are relative and one should not forget that there is no such thing as purely individual learning (as we continue to interact with texts, i.e. ideas of other people recorded on paper or delivered electronically etc.) or purely collaborative (as for example online collaboration is based on the input of individual participants etc.). Possibly a more accurate way of describing learning experiences on H800 would be by talking about the activities which focused on collaboration with other students and/or the tutor (so activities geared towards collaborative work) and the activities that were not focused on interpersonal interaction and relied on individual work with course or other relevant activities. I would then draw on some relevant external or H800 sources which show that all learning combines social and individual aspects. I would then carry on to talk about my experience on H800.

I know that many of you had a similar idea about the structure of the essay, but I think for a good paper on a postgraduate social science course you’d have to show your awareness of the compelxity and fuziness of some of the core concepts that we deal with on this course. I also think that simply applying Sfard’s ideas on acquisition and participation to your experience would not be sufficient as a) we have covered this in Block 1 and b) it would be useful to go beyond these metaphors to reflect on your learning journey on H800. Of course, where appropriate you could refer to Sfard as well as to a range of other sources to support your argument, but I don’t think that relying on this piece alone would be a good idea.

Another one says about Part A

I’d structure the essay around the use of two technologies and outline the key points for each part, after that I’d choose H800 and external sources to support your argument.

Yes, if I were you I would write in the first person

articulate your argument, refer to either your own experience or the experience of others (depending on what you would like to say) and make sure that you provide ample evidence to support your claim. eg Blogs are often regarded as one of the most popular Web 2.0 technologies (refer to relevant sources). According to (refer to source) there were x million bloggers in 2009. On H800 blogs were used to analyse our experiences with x, y, z, readings (list topics here). I found the use of this technology exciting/ frustrating/illuminating/ difficult/ eye-opening etc. (talk about your own experience here). My experiences are echoed in other studies. For example , author A (refer to sources here) noted etc.

So questions for my tutor:

Part A: Should we write in the first person in this essay as we are talking about our own experiences.

Confidences – please explain more

Uses – do you want specific examples, or just findings from research eg Kerawalla..or do I say, at X University they use it for…

Flu, The ECA and the next module… August 25, 2009

Well I’m stuck at home with what could be called Flu. It’s not full blown flu, I know, I had that in 1999 but this is pretty nasty and given the swine flu scares I’ve been asked to stay at home. They really had to twist my arm. So I’m off sick, so when I’m not sleeping or feeling miserable with my rather sore throat and achey bones, I’m trying to make a start on my ECA.

There is a temptation to start the whole planning and research stage again. We did the skeleton plan and research for TMA 3. The feedback I got from that is good and constructgive and to be honest, confirms I was on the right track. Therefore why am I inclined to start looking around again.

What I think I should do now is spend some time writing the essay based on that plan and that reserach THEN if I feel it’s not good enough or something is missing, bring in some more research ideas into it.

I’d like to get part A first draft started today. Getting fingers to keyboard (rather than pen to paper) is always the first step. I would love to have a first draft of the whole thing written before I go to ALT C (7th Sept) .

Still waiting to hear if I’ve got funding for the next module on my MAODE course, this starts in early September before my current module finishes so that’s another reason to get this ECA done early (official due date 28 September).  If I don’t get the funding, cos money is tight at work and I have had a lot already in the last year, then I can take a nice break over the winter/Christmas and maybe even “do some exercise” (in the words of Blur).

However I would like to continue and will appeal any decision as 30 more points will at least give me a Diploma, stopping now will give me 90 credits points of nothing. At least once achieving the Diploma taking a break wouldn’t be too annoying. Then the final 60 points can run from Oct-July next year.

I think the next module won’t be as demanding as H800 has been so I would like to get on with it.