ALT-C 2007: Beyond Control

I found ALT-C 2006 to be a massively inspiring event, which ultimately led to the start of the Learning Lab, a number of project bids and greater collaboration on e-learning within some areas of the University. So, how did ALT-C 2007 match up?

Bit of a curate’s egg actually. Some good discussions, interesting sessions and some of the most boring presentations I’ve even seen.

I did come to one overwhelming conclusion with a few colleagues but more of that later.

Presentations

My typing is very slow, my laptop is very heavy, I can’t do shorthand and I didn’t get on very well with making notes on my PDA. Handily, just before the conference a colleague lent me an ACECAD Digimemo http://www.acecad.com.tw/products.html You write on paper using a special pen, upload your notes to a PC and convert them into word. It’s a good idea. However, it was only a partial success mainly due to the fact that I wrote too neatly when training the system. There’s quite a difference from my ‘training’ writing and the near illegible scrawl I used during the conference. I’ll have to retrain the machine.

I took notes during all the sessions I attended but only a few really caught my attention.

Dragon Slaying?

By far the most interesting session I went to was David White http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/whited/ on the rather impressively titled ‘Cultural capital and community development in the pursuit of dragon slaying (Massively Multiplayer guild culture as a model for e-learning)’.

In World of Warcraft (WoW) http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml users gather together in guilds of around 25 people to complete tasks. These tasks are impossible to do alone so a guild must be formed in order to complete the tasks, which become progressively more difficult as the game goes on. During each task the guild members work together, each member with a specific role, and there is constant communication between the guild members. He argued that whilst he wasn’t advocating the use of WoW for learning, what was happening in the game were the kinds of things we wanted to encourage in e-learning.

Some of themes he touched on were -

Nexus of Multi-membership – we are all members of more than one community – school, work, football team….

No community exists in a single tool – in WoW the guilds organized themselves with website outside the game, used chat etc

He introduced the concept of Rhizomes vs Scaffolds? http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/whited/weblog/598.html

He suggested that Multiple User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), such as Second Life http://secondlife.com , take some elements of WoW and can be used as a blank canvas.

He introduced his 10 musings on Second Life 10 Musings

The university campus already supports informal learning with bars, common rooms, clubs and societies etc

Some people are not interested in the social aspects and can work quite well without it. Although I think this raises the question of whether while the individual may be OK, the community is poorer without their involvement.

Whilst I found this session by a fellow ‘Emerger’ http://elgg.jiscemerge.org really interesting, I feel I must add a note of caution. Although I’m not Welsh, I did feel that, representing a Welsh University, I ought to have made some form of protest about dragon slaying being advocated at the conference J

Phoebe

http://phoebe-project.conted.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

An online lesson planning toolkit

The presenter argued that the concept of the lesson is alien to HE so used the terms learning session or learning experience.

You can use anything to plan – pen & paper, mind maps, LAMS etc

Phoebe is designed to help ‘teachers’ with designing learning sessions or learning experiences and to be able to combine it with tools with which they are already familiar.

It has been used in staff development and for initial teacher training and may have other uses.

Whose e-learning is it anyway?

Talked about a mainly F2F module with a strong Blackboard presence.

The tutor had had a good experience with discussion boards but this had now decreased.

Maybe they were all in Facebook? Yes, the students had set up a facebook group which had social activity, support across year boundaries sharing and critical debate. The students felt free in facebook and the groups became like a community of practice.

The tutor was asked to join the facebook group and acted as a broker between facebook and blackboard. She checked facebook and brought the comments into the classroom.

She persuaded students to bring facebook posting into Blackboard.

Led to some issues –

The tutor was a young ‘facebook’ like person and was invited into the group. What about other tutors?

Without coaching in facebook what are students learning?

Is facebook divisive? Only 80% of the students were there.

Facebook is not very accessible

Should we ban or control facebook?

Should we ignore it?

Should we engage with it?

Could there be a facebook/VLE mash up?

Students seem to want a separate space for formal teaching.

Keynotes

Dylan William - view keynote

By far the most interesting keynote was from Dylan William from the Institute of Education. He was both entertaining and thought provoking on the theme assessment and challenged the ‘anti-teacher’ sentiments of some of the delegates. He argued that one of the biggest influences on how well a learner does is the teacher; much more important than what school the learner attends or class size. His main point was that formative assessment is key to learning. Although I found what he had to say both interesting and informative it may be that I just liked having my own prejudices confirmed.

Peter Norvig - view keynote

Director of Research at Google, impressive CV, introduced as someone who hates boring presentations - wow, this is going to be good! Oh dear. After 5 minutes of a quite entertaining presentation, which he must have given a million times before, he drifted of into full ‘teacher from Peanuts’ mode. Either I missed the point entirely or he didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before.

Michelle Selinger - view keynote

Although Michelle Selinger was generally rather disappointing, she did make a couple of interesting points.

Employers say they want the following -

• Technical fluency 81%
• Communication skills using technology 74%
• Collaboration & teamwork 36%
• Leadership 34%
• Creativity 22%

However, she argued that those who have successful careers tend to be -

• comfortable with cultural diversity,
• High Tech/High Touch (people who have work-life balance
• Have a sense of pride - excellence

She talked about ‘pedagogical imperialism’ (the attitude that the western model of education is best), something that Hans-Peter Baumeister highlighted later in the conference

She also showed a really good South Park video about 15-20 minutes into the presentation.