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.

Old videos never die...

Just back from Gregynog 2010 - several days of library, IT and e-learning presentations. There were and number of good sessions and lots of interesting people. I don't know why but on Thursday my mind drifted to an old Lunch and Learn session ...............

Is Powerpoint evil? from Chris on Vimeo.

Sustainable e-learning?

Last week I was at the 8th International JTEFS/BBCC Conference "Sustainable Development. Culture. Education at UNESCO in Paris. The picture is the view fron the UNESC canteen :-) I presented in the Education for Sustainable Development and E-learning strand, which looked at what are the challenges of e-learning/blended learning for higher education institutions? E-learning as the issue of non-formal education and E-learning and communication. My presentation was entitled "The Digital Natives Meme. Why context is more important than technology with the following abstract -

"Rising student numbers, greater funding pressure and an increasing consumerisation of education pose dilemmas for educators. Additionally, we are told that technology is going to transform education; that a new breed of young people, who have not known a world without pervasive electronic technology, are entering education; that this will lead to a paradigm shift and those unable or unwilling to make the change will be swept away. However, recent research shows this may not be the case. Using examples from an ongoing study of university students' experiences of using technology, this paper argues that a debate that is framed by thoughts of an army of homogeneous digital natives will produce technology 'solutions' that are unsustainable. It will go on to argue that a more context based approach towards the use of technology is needed in order to provide sustainable solutions to the issues facing educators in the 21st century."

The Digital Natives Meme. Why context is more important than technology

View more presentations from Chris Hall.

Overall the conference was pretty good with a number of excellent presentations from Dr Peter Purg(Slovenia),Dr Richard R. Jurin(USA) and Dr Mark Mifsud (Malta)

Not so grumpy?

Not so grumpy today. That might be because the sun is shinning. (For those in Swansea, I'll take some photographs so you can see what it looks like ;-).

Started today with two really good sessions. One from Andy Ramsden on QR codes - could be really useful. The other was by the ever excellent David White on the 'Visitor-Resident principle.' It's always good to see Presnky's Digital Natives ideas get a bit of a kicking but rather than just rubbish the idea the Visitor-Resident principle gives a much more useful view of how people use the Internet. It has implications for educators and staff developers. Great stuff!!

Today was also my poster session. I had some interesting discussions and the '12 steps' seems quite popular.

ALT-C once again........

I must confess I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with ALT-C. Whilst there are lots of interesting people to meet and much to talk about, there is an awful lot of twaddle and people admiring their navels. For example, there was a really rather pointless session on 'the VLE is dead' - all a bit playgroundy IMHO - let's get on with what we're doing rather than throwing stones at each other because of the technology we're using. That only leads to this. As Seymour Papert said, "If there is a why, any how will do."

There was a great keynote to kick of the conference by Michael Wesch, which I guess will be online at some point. The Chair then spoilt it a bit, in classic ALT style, by appearing to only take questions from people he knew. That seems to happen every time I come to ALT-C. I wonder if it's a policy or more an indication that ALT has an 'in' crowd so it's all about who you know?

Hmmm...... this seems like a bit of a moan. However, I am looking forward to tomorrow's sessions on QR Codes , the 'Visitor-Resident' principle and using Appreciative Inquiry with ePortfolios.

Excellence in Learning and Teaching?

Tuesday saw the first Swansea University Excellence in Learning & Teaching Conference - part of a post RAE plan to raise the profile and status of learning & teaching. I only got to attend half the conference as I was chairing the sessions in one of the breakout rooms. Although it wasn't a technology enhanced learning conference, over half of the presentations involved the use of technology in learning and teaching. What I particularly liked was that, in the presentations I saw at least, it was about the teaching and learning use technology was put to not the technology itself. Technology Last - yay!

Reflective learning seemed to be an underlying theme of the conference and I really like Michele Raithby's idea of reflection as a pensieve.

"The Pensieve is an object used to review memories. It has the appearance of a shallow stone basin, into which are carved runes and strange symbols. It is filled with a silvery substance that appears to be a cloud-like liquid/gas; the collected memories of people who have siphoned their recollections into it. Memories can then be viewed from a third-person point of view. "
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Pensieve

Could be a useful analogy for the PDP work here.

Overall a pretty successful day - the sun was even shining :-)