I’ve been in my current post over 5 years now and in a recent office move I found notes from a series of meetings from when I first started. After the previous VLE officer moved on, two e-learning support officers were employed, with one of the roles to expand the use of technology to support and enhance learning and teaching from a pedagogical rather than technology perspective. When I arrived, I discovered that the prevailing view in the department was that e-learning and the VLE were one and the same thing and anything outside that definition was not what would be happening here! One of us took on the VLE support role and the other one, me, was left in a kind of limbo. The VLE support didn’t require two people, even when training was included. So there I was, fresh off my masters, in a new city, an interesting sounding new job and ready to go but nothing to do. However, I’m not put off that easily. With the help of a keen and very supportive academic, I searched around for people with an interest in e-learning (I’m going to use e-learning as a term because I can’t be bothered to keep typing "technology to support and enhance learning and teaching" ) and asked if they would be happy to meet and share their thoughts. My aim was not to tell them what I wanted to do but just to listen and find out what was going on. I managed to find 10 people who were willing to give up some of their time. The notes I found have each person's comments divided into three categories - positive comments, negative comments and areas to explore. I'm not sure why I chose those categories but it obviously seemed like a good idea at the time.
So what did they say?
The positive
"It has changed out of lecture teaching. It's more efficient - I do different things."
"Initially it was time consuming but later not so bad."
"I use the VLE to deliver lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets for modelling and links to web resources."
"Some lecturing staff are very keen"
"The school has a group of believers."
"It's useful for seminar groups."
"Useful for links to websites."
"Nearly all lectures in my school use the VLE to some extent."
"It's useful for visually-impaired students who can print off in braille beforehand."
"I think many lecturers would be keen to move to the next level."
The Negative
"The VLE interface can be clunky."
"The VLE interface can be clunky." (No i didn't type this twice by mistake)
"Classes are too big for e-learning."
"Some lectures have problems such as the time it takes, not wanting to learn new skills, thinking 'it's not for me' and worrying that student won't come to lectures."
"Many lecturers are very anti the VLE."
"At the moment it's all about the tools in the VLE and not what the benefits of e-learning are."
"e-learning at the University is all just the VLE!"
"Not keen on the VLE. I don't see the point!"
The areas to explore
Virtual classrooms, podcasts and video for tasters of upcoming lectures
Virtual whiteboards
Interactive whiteboards
Blogs and wikis.
Collaborative social spaces for networking
More research into the effectiveness of e-learning
The University to run an MSc in e-Learning
JISC Plagiarism tool
As students have little contact with tutors during projects, explore the use of blogs and wikis to improve interaction.
Tools to ease content creation
Online surveys for module evaluation.
Use of audio to support students with accessibility issues
Would like to know more about what e-learning is.
Examples of good practice
Collaborative work
The use of video
Tools for content creation
More training
Want to provide something different for in and out of lecture time. Want to encourage students to think.
Keen to explore tools for formative assessment.
A question of knowing what's available
More flexible training schedule - one-to-one, department wide etc
Content creation tools
JISC plagiarism tool
Collaborative e-learning
Problem based learning
Scenarios
Easier content creation
Collaboration with outside partners such as the NHS
Use of streaming video in class - through the VLE?
Move beyond document store use of VLE
Learning objects to supplement class teaching
More advanced use of e-learning
So what does it all I mean? I'm not sure really. I'll take some time to think about this - about what's changed over the last 5 years, what's hasn't changed, what's new, what's worked and what hasn't - and return to it in another post.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Saturday, July 09, 2011
The Hippocritic Oath
Something a little different and not about educational technology. Unless I can pretend it's about the demise of old media....
The Hippocritic Oath- cyganski (2002)
I'll bring you down with poisoned prose
While I shove cocaine up my nose
and swear by the hippocritic oath.
I'll fill the page with your indiscretion
While I indulge my own obsession
It's all part of the journalistic game.
I'll stand in judgement on you all
and twist the knife again.
Then I'll run away
I'll always run away
I write my lies and ruin your life
And then I'll run away.
The story's out I've got it wrong
Have to tell the truth and then move on
To look my victims in the eye.
Do you really think I'd be contrite?
I'm a journalist. I'm full of shite
Don't expect honesty from me.
It's my right to judge you all
Because I've got an English degree.
And I'll run away
I'll always run away
I write my lies and ruin your life
And then I'll run away.
I'll always run away.
The Hippocritic Oath- cyganski (2002)
I'll bring you down with poisoned prose
While I shove cocaine up my nose
and swear by the hippocritic oath.
I'll fill the page with your indiscretion
While I indulge my own obsession
It's all part of the journalistic game.
I'll stand in judgement on you all
and twist the knife again.
Then I'll run away
I'll always run away
I write my lies and ruin your life
And then I'll run away.
The story's out I've got it wrong
Have to tell the truth and then move on
To look my victims in the eye.
Do you really think I'd be contrite?
I'm a journalist. I'm full of shite
Don't expect honesty from me.
It's my right to judge you all
Because I've got an English degree.
And I'll run away
I'll always run away
I write my lies and ruin your life
And then I'll run away.
I'll always run away.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Learning Technologists Anonymous?
I've been in the process of migrating a Technology Enhanced Learning site to a more general Learning and Teaching enhancement site and wondered whether what's below should go on the new site?
It's designed to go against the fahionista element in learning technology, where learning technologists rush from one new technology to the next and where, if you are still using what they have just left, you are told, "Oh, that's so last year?"
"Facebook that's rubbish we all use Twitter now." "Twitter? We're all on Grunter darling!"
Something similar is raised in this interesting post from the Ed Techie Thanks to @MrSimonWood for the link.The same people who were shouting about ePortfolios have now moved elsewhere. Always promoting the next thing in the same way they promoted the last big thing they are now dismissing without pausing to examine what they are actually doing. Is is just self-promotion? Is it the result of a JISC project fueled culture? Is it insecurity, thinking that anyone can do this job so I'd better look busy?
Why are learning technologists always trying to sell something? The latest tool they have found or that a salesman has shown them. And why do they think that what works for them (or more often their son, daughter, niece, cat...) should work for everyone else too? Don't get me wrong I think technology can be really tremendously powerful in supporting and enhancing learning and teaching but perhaps learning technologists are the biggest barrier in it's successful adoption.
Anyway on to Learning Technologists Anonymous. The first step. My name is Chris and I'm a Learning Technologist.......
Many men and women have heard or read about the unique Fellowship called Learning Technologists Anonymous since its founding. People who once used learning technology to excess, finally acknowledged that they could not handle learning technology in its current form, and now live a new way of life.
Learning Technologists Anonymous use the following 12 step programme.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the latest learning technology -that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn developing our strategies over to the learning community as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to the learning community and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked the learning community to work with us to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through Appreciative Inquiry to improve our conscious contact with the learning community, to understand their needs and find ways to work together to support those needs.
12. Having had a ‘spiritual awakening’ as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to learning technologists and to practice these principles in all our affairs
It's designed to go against the fahionista element in learning technology, where learning technologists rush from one new technology to the next and where, if you are still using what they have just left, you are told, "Oh, that's so last year?"
"Facebook that's rubbish we all use Twitter now." "Twitter? We're all on Grunter darling!"
Something similar is raised in this interesting post from the Ed Techie Thanks to @MrSimonWood for the link.The same people who were shouting about ePortfolios have now moved elsewhere. Always promoting the next thing in the same way they promoted the last big thing they are now dismissing without pausing to examine what they are actually doing. Is is just self-promotion? Is it the result of a JISC project fueled culture? Is it insecurity, thinking that anyone can do this job so I'd better look busy?
Why are learning technologists always trying to sell something? The latest tool they have found or that a salesman has shown them. And why do they think that what works for them (or more often their son, daughter, niece, cat...) should work for everyone else too? Don't get me wrong I think technology can be really tremendously powerful in supporting and enhancing learning and teaching but perhaps learning technologists are the biggest barrier in it's successful adoption.
Anyway on to Learning Technologists Anonymous. The first step. My name is Chris and I'm a Learning Technologist.......
Many men and women have heard or read about the unique Fellowship called Learning Technologists Anonymous since its founding. People who once used learning technology to excess, finally acknowledged that they could not handle learning technology in its current form, and now live a new way of life.
Learning Technologists Anonymous use the following 12 step programme.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the latest learning technology -that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn developing our strategies over to the learning community as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to the learning community and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked the learning community to work with us to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through Appreciative Inquiry to improve our conscious contact with the learning community, to understand their needs and find ways to work together to support those needs.
12. Having had a ‘spiritual awakening’ as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to learning technologists and to practice these principles in all our affairs
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Do we need teachers in Higher Education?
Interesting article by Paul Ramsden on the THE website about how "Producing graduates who are critical thinkers requires teachers who can bring scholarship and leadership to the academy."
As with many others, I have long thought that teaching is unbelievably undervalued and often poorly done in higher education. He argues in that although Student Satisfaction is now all the rage in the UK, universities are often barking up the wrong tree. How much marketing literature shows happy, smiling students studying on the beach and then walking off into the sunset with a good degree and a dream graduate job? The pressure to produce more happy students with a 2:1 misses what I think is fundamental about higher education. We could make students happy by handing out free beer at lectures, putting soft porn on the VLE and ensuring all students get a 2:1 but I'm not sure that would fulfill the mission of a University. We can often get dangerously close to thinking of students as customers to be serviced. However, when I go to a restaurant I'm not asked to think about the meal I'm about to eat. I don't have to go away and research the ingredients. I don't have to read about the great chefs who have cooked this meal in the past. I don't have to explore the cultural significance of the meal. I don't have to understand how to cook the meal and I'm not then asked to cook it myself, perhaps with my own individual take on the recipe. In a restaurant you are a customer, as student you are not a customer, more a partner in you own (and ideally the university's) development. As Ramsden argues, “Teaching in higher education should never fool students into thinking there is an easy path to success. Rather, it should make the hardest road enjoyable to follow by communicating complex ideas clearly and succinctly” and also that "Accomplished teaching is the single most important method of producing graduates who can reason and act for themselves, and can apply theory to practical problems - precisely the skills that any employer wants to see."
He also discusses the emphasis that is put on research to the detriment of teaching and argues that when interviewing successful researchers about their teaching he discovered that, “the researchers who were good at teaching - who went about it by focusing on students and their learning (rather than their own teaching performance or transmitting information) - were not those who necessarily produced the most research. They were the ones who focused on the underlying structure of their investigations, on the broad conceptual framework of their subject, rather than isolated individual problems within it - the ones who were scholars in their discipline.”
He concludes that, "The rationale for university teaching is not satisfying students, distributing information to them nor changing them, as some condescendingly say. Rather, it is enabling students to change for themselves." And that way to do that is through excellent teaching.
As with many others, I have long thought that teaching is unbelievably undervalued and often poorly done in higher education. He argues in that although Student Satisfaction is now all the rage in the UK, universities are often barking up the wrong tree. How much marketing literature shows happy, smiling students studying on the beach and then walking off into the sunset with a good degree and a dream graduate job? The pressure to produce more happy students with a 2:1 misses what I think is fundamental about higher education. We could make students happy by handing out free beer at lectures, putting soft porn on the VLE and ensuring all students get a 2:1 but I'm not sure that would fulfill the mission of a University. We can often get dangerously close to thinking of students as customers to be serviced. However, when I go to a restaurant I'm not asked to think about the meal I'm about to eat. I don't have to go away and research the ingredients. I don't have to read about the great chefs who have cooked this meal in the past. I don't have to explore the cultural significance of the meal. I don't have to understand how to cook the meal and I'm not then asked to cook it myself, perhaps with my own individual take on the recipe. In a restaurant you are a customer, as student you are not a customer, more a partner in you own (and ideally the university's) development. As Ramsden argues, “Teaching in higher education should never fool students into thinking there is an easy path to success. Rather, it should make the hardest road enjoyable to follow by communicating complex ideas clearly and succinctly” and also that "Accomplished teaching is the single most important method of producing graduates who can reason and act for themselves, and can apply theory to practical problems - precisely the skills that any employer wants to see."
He also discusses the emphasis that is put on research to the detriment of teaching and argues that when interviewing successful researchers about their teaching he discovered that, “the researchers who were good at teaching - who went about it by focusing on students and their learning (rather than their own teaching performance or transmitting information) - were not those who necessarily produced the most research. They were the ones who focused on the underlying structure of their investigations, on the broad conceptual framework of their subject, rather than isolated individual problems within it - the ones who were scholars in their discipline.”
He concludes that, "The rationale for university teaching is not satisfying students, distributing information to them nor changing them, as some condescendingly say. Rather, it is enabling students to change for themselves." And that way to do that is through excellent teaching.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The learner experience of transition - ELESIG Summer Symposium
Last week saw the 3rd ELESIG Summer symposium; this year in Leeds. ELESIG is “an international community of researchers and practitioners from higher and further education who are involved in investigations of learners' experiences and uses of technology in learning”. The website can be found at http://elesig.ning.com/
The first day was a mix of past projects sharing their stories and new hopefuls pitching their ideas
Terri Rees from Plymouth in her work with international students experience of e-learning talked about the how learners often have different levels of participation on and off line. Some individuals contribute less online than they do in class and some the other way round. She talked about the importance of rapport building before learners go online in order to build community.
Alice Lau from Glamorgan also talked about the experience of international students, with the iLExSIG project. Her presentation had the added bonus of having two students with her to talk about their experiences. You can find out more about iLExSIG on the ELESIG site.
The second day combined with the Aim Higher conference, with a keynote on Transition by Bill Johnston from Strathclyde. Among many areas he talked about were -
The need to look at transition in broad societal terms
The idea of Transition in and out of higher education. Do the careers service have an input?
Transition is about any aspect of the first year when individuals have to make a change – learning, social …....... many areas
Students often start excited but then dip in motivation and performance. “I only need 40% to pass that's me, I can get by.”There is a need to look more at what success is. Learning goals or assessment goals? Marks of real learning? Do we want students to learn or pass? Just passing will end up with everyone unhappy eventually.
Don't look at why students drop out, look at why they stay. What was it that made them stay, particularly if they were thinking about dropping out. Sounds like a case for Appreciative Inquiry to me :-)
He also asked what is success in higher education and illustrated his thoughts with a few quotes -
“to prepare students for lifelong, self-regulated, co-operative and work-based learning” Jan D Vermunt 2007
“used to think that academia, like the Vatican and prostitution, was great survivor of social upheaval”
“information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behavior to identify, though whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs leading to wise and ethical use of information in society” – Johnston & Weber
Hmmm…. Ethical? BP and RBS managers are graduates!
But how to embed Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC)into the curriculum? He argued for an Information Literate University, which has information literate staff, curriculum, students and graduates. It’s much more than creating knowledge workers for an information society
This was followed by a very interesting workshop by Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou and Deeba Parmer from Middlesex University, where we looked at what could be done to help some fictitious students make the transition to university life.
One of things that Middlesex has done is to show the real university, warts and all, in bridging materials before students come. Obviously marketing didn't like this. “Where's the sun and happy students?” they cried. “This will put them off” To which the response was that if they are put when they arrive and leave, the university is no better off but if some have a more realistic view of university life, the transition process may be smoother and some who may have dropped out will stay.
The first day was a mix of past projects sharing their stories and new hopefuls pitching their ideas
Terri Rees from Plymouth in her work with international students experience of e-learning talked about the how learners often have different levels of participation on and off line. Some individuals contribute less online than they do in class and some the other way round. She talked about the importance of rapport building before learners go online in order to build community.
Alice Lau from Glamorgan also talked about the experience of international students, with the iLExSIG project. Her presentation had the added bonus of having two students with her to talk about their experiences. You can find out more about iLExSIG on the ELESIG site.
The second day combined with the Aim Higher conference, with a keynote on Transition by Bill Johnston from Strathclyde. Among many areas he talked about were -
The need to look at transition in broad societal terms
The idea of Transition in and out of higher education. Do the careers service have an input?
Transition is about any aspect of the first year when individuals have to make a change – learning, social …....... many areas
Students often start excited but then dip in motivation and performance. “I only need 40% to pass that's me, I can get by.”There is a need to look more at what success is. Learning goals or assessment goals? Marks of real learning? Do we want students to learn or pass? Just passing will end up with everyone unhappy eventually.
Don't look at why students drop out, look at why they stay. What was it that made them stay, particularly if they were thinking about dropping out. Sounds like a case for Appreciative Inquiry to me :-)
He also asked what is success in higher education and illustrated his thoughts with a few quotes -
“to prepare students for lifelong, self-regulated, co-operative and work-based learning” Jan D Vermunt 2007
“used to think that academia, like the Vatican and prostitution, was great survivor of social upheaval”
“information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behavior to identify, though whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs leading to wise and ethical use of information in society” – Johnston & Weber
Hmmm…. Ethical? BP and RBS managers are graduates!
But how to embed Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC)into the curriculum? He argued for an Information Literate University, which has information literate staff, curriculum, students and graduates. It’s much more than creating knowledge workers for an information society
This was followed by a very interesting workshop by Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou and Deeba Parmer from Middlesex University, where we looked at what could be done to help some fictitious students make the transition to university life.
One of things that Middlesex has done is to show the real university, warts and all, in bridging materials before students come. Obviously marketing didn't like this. “Where's the sun and happy students?” they cried. “This will put them off” To which the response was that if they are put when they arrive and leave, the university is no better off but if some have a more realistic view of university life, the transition process may be smoother and some who may have dropped out will stay.
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