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The importance of blogging as digital storytelling.

Last Wednesday night, like many others I participated in the #LTHE tweet chat on the intrinsic and extrinsic value of blogging facilitated and led by David Hopkins. As ever it was a fast and furious hour of tweeting. You can relive it via this storify.

The first question asked was “why do you write your blog? Conversely, if you don’t blog, why not?”

The reason I started blogging was very simple. I was told to. We had a change of direction in our web site at Cetis and it was decided that we would dynamically populate our web page from staff blogs. More than by accident than by design this approach actually worked with no editorial guidelines and a very minimal publishing process. It did take me a while to find my blogging voice, but I am so glad that I did because my blog has become a central part of my working practice. More importantly for me it is actually my professional memory/portfolio. If something significant happens I will blog about it. Blogging is a bit of a habit for me, and as any writer knows, getting into and staying in the habit of writing is crucial.

As the tweet chat unfolded I was reflecting on how lucky I was to have been “made to” blog within a very open (in the sense of non-one told me what/how/when to write) and supportive environment in Cetis. Finding a reason to blog is one of the biggest hurdles for people to overcome.

During the conversation, there were many comments saying “I’ve got lots of half written posts” – I know that feeling well. Blogging can be great for professional development but conversely that can bring about its own pressures particularly around academic integrity. If you are blogging with a professional qualification in mind, then you are probably inclined to write in a more formal, professional way. That takes time and the kind of time that not many have the luxury of, particularly if you blogging isn’t given as much recognition as for example a published paper, or an assessed piece of work.

One of the reasons I blog is that it allows me to write in a very informal, non academic way. I am the first to admit that my blog lacks academic rigor. That’s one of the main reasons I keep it going. It is a really comfortable place for me to start to play around with ideas, and to tell my stories. It has also help me to evolve my “proper” academic writing. For example, when David Walker and I wrote a chapter for The Really Useful Ed Tech Book, we used my blog to get feedback and comments for the chapter.

That said, I am aware that I’m in the somewhat luxurious position of having an established blogging presence. I don’t get nearly the same traffic on this blog as on my Cetis blog, but the numbers are fine for me. To be honest I’m not in it for the stats anyway.

As the chat went on, I did begin to think that if I was looking at blogging now, I probably would be like many others and still be a bit unsure, or start one and only post a couple of times. I think I would be more inclined to look for a team/group blog so that the pressure of publishing wasn’t just on me. The TEL team blog at the Uni of Sussex is a great example of this approach. They have a schedule of posts and everyone takes a turn of posting. We have a team blog here at GCU, however we haven’t got that organised. Importantly though we have a presence now and a place to share openly our activities. That is proving its worth in so many ways from just being able to remind ourselves of “stuff” and also sharing practice within the University and beyond. We have somewhere to tell our story. And that is crucial.

The importance of constructing and sharing our own narrative of what is happening in education just now has never been so important. Last week I also went to a seminar on digital storytelling, titled “powerful stories that empower others”. There are so many powerful stories around what actually happens across our education sectors, we need to keep sharing them. We need to be our own digital storytellers. We all need to help fight the neo-liberal onslaught (oh my, didn’t think I’d actually ever write that sentence) that people like Martin Welller, Audrey Watters, George Siemens and many others are leading.

So if you have a couple of half written posts, why not take half an hour and post them? If you do read other people stories and find the useful, share them – and every now and again leave a comment, that makes it all worth while. So come on, let our stories be heard, and make Simon Rae’s framework a reality.

Now I am 2

October 7th marks my two year work anniversary here at GCU. How time flies. I some ways I feel like I’ve been here longer and in others I still feel a bit like the new kid on the block. Over the past two years along with my fabulous team colleagues ( Linda Creanor and Jim Emery) I have been involved in a number of really exciting projects including our open event GCU Games On, the starting informal practice sharing through our Coffee Club, developing our blog and open Blended Learning resource site Will IT Blend?. It’s taken almost two years, but we are now moving forward with learning analytics with our involvement in the Jisc Effective Analytics Programme which will be taking up most of my time this month.

One of the reasons I enjoy my current role so much is the fact that is allowing me to draw on all my experiences from my time at Cetis. I was reminded this morning that one of the things that actually got me interested and involved with Cetis was Learning Design. I took part remotely in a new learning design practice network hosted by the OU this morning, and as we were doing the introductions, it hit me how long I had been involved in this area.

As we move more towards developing more fully online courses here at GCU, I have really enjoyed developing our learning design processes and methodology. Most of the rest of the day will be spent planning our activities around this for this academic year. I was heartened by the discussions this morning. I think there is so much effective practice still to be shared, but there is definitely a commonality of approach and challenges that we are all facing.

We are all creating our own “patchwork” approaches of bits and pieces of toolkits and processes such as Viewpoints and Carpe Diem.The investment from Jisc in learning and curriculum has really paid off in terms of helping mainstream practice and it is so heartening to see work from almost 7 years ago still having relevance today.

I’m trying to be a good “open practitioner” and share as much as I can of my work through blogging, tweets etc. But it is harder the more embedded I become. Time is one issue, but also there is relevance. I want my blog posts to be useful to me ( I often think of my blog as my professional memory). Some weeks I do so many little things it’s hard to find a focus for a post – as well as the time. For example last night I went to a really interesting presentation on digital story telling from a colleague from Brown University who is visiting GCU. I doubt I’ll have time to blog about it, but it has made me think about trying to be a better digital storyteller. In the meantime, and because every post should have a picture here’s my now obligatory doodle; and here’s to the next (hopefully more than) 2 years.

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

1000 blips on the wall

For the last 3 years I have been sharing a photo a day on the Blipfoto site. Last year I missed one day, the year before 3 or 4, so I am determined to post everyday this year. Yesterday I reached a bit of a milestone publishing my 1,000th blip.

I really like the site, despite some uncertainty over the direction of the site when it was bought over by Polaroid, it doesn’t seem to have changed much. I like that i connect with a different set of people than on other social media sites. It feels more meaningful that Instagram, which I like and use too but it seems a bit more instant. A blip feels like it has a bit more longevity. Anyway hopefully I’ll make 365 this year and maybe even get to the next 1,ooo one day.

Where Sheila's been for the last few weeks: restarting learning analytics at GCU

It’s been a busy couple of weeks what with the start of the new academic session, and I’ve been using up bits of annual leave so haven’t really had the chance to blog for a while. I didn’t want to let another week go by, it’s too easy to let the blogging habit slip, so this is just a quick update post.

One project that is going to be taking up quite a bit of my time this month, is our involvement in the Jisc Effective Analytics programme. GCU is taking part in the discovery phase of this programme. This means that we are working with consultants, in our case from Blackboard, to assess our institutional readiness, from cultural to infrastructure, for analytics.

My team have been trying to get a pilot project around learning analytics going for about 18 months, however due to various changes internally progress had stalled. However, now we have a new CIO and Director of IT, we are ready to start again. The support from Jisc gives us a great incentive to reappraise our current capabilities, and will give us a trusted, objective view of our capabilities. The analytics infrastructure Jisc are developing also gives us a possible route to develop our provision further as well as share our experiences within the programme and beyond.

We’ve already had meetings with the consulting team and so far we are impressed with the approach they are taking. Just now they are reviewing lots of documentation, including our new very recently launched 2020 Strategy. Having effective data and analytics capabilities will be crucial for us as we work towards the aims and objectives of the strategy.

I’ll be sharing more as the project progresses, particularly nearer the end of this month after the onsite workshops and interviews have taken place.

Coincidentally earlier this week a video of the invited talk I gave at the Talis Aspire conference in April was released (yeah, I take a while to edit me!) Anyway in it I had a bit of a rant about data, analytics etc. I’m hoping that through this project we will indeed start to get some actionable insights into our learning and teaching and student journeys.

https://youtu.be/ErBROipSSkU

What Sheila's seen this week : templates, principles and analytics

This is a probably going to be a bit of a rambling post as I haven’t really blogged for a couple of weeks as it’s been a busy couple of weeks here at Blended Learning Towers.

This year there has been quite a push on developing more fully online programmes. I’ve blogged about how we have been supporting staff through the curriculum design process, and developing our suggested workflows and tools. We’re now developing this into a series of support materials which we can use and share with more staff, and develop into some form of online staff development. Just now we’re internally reviewing our “stuff” but I will share it as soon as it is ready for open consumption.

As part of that process we are developing a set of principles for the GCU Online student experience. Following up from their presentation at the recent Eden Conference 2015 proceedings, I was able to catch up with Nelson Jorge from TUDelpht to discuss their approaches to staff CPD and online course production. They also have a set of principles which they are now starting to use as part of their evaluation process. They are a bit ahead of us, and have a dedicated unit supporting online developments, as well as a process for staff to get time off “normal” teaching duties, we don’t have that – yet. As always it was great to share with like minded colleagues and have the comfort that we are all facing the same issues of lack of time and resources.

A recurring theme for us around online developments has been templates. <sigh> Templates are tricky, some of people are very keen on them; more often than not as they seem them as a quick solution. However as you well know dear reader, it’s not that simple. We do have a default template in a sense in our VLE with our standard menu, and Blackboard does provide an extensive set of pedagogically based teaching styles templates too. However staff have the freedom and flexibility to structure their modules as they see fit. What we are trying to do is encourage a team design approach so that there is consistency of naming conventions and approaches across programmes. In that way templates naturally evolve. As ever consistency really comes down to planning, and that needs time . . .

As the new semester draws nearer, we’re having more discussions with colleagues about trying new approaches in their modules which is great. We have a number of programmes that have very large modules (over 600 students) so I was really interested in these two posts from Fiona Saunders at Manchester on her reflections on large class teaching and designing assessments that are equitable, meaningful and manageable. Fiona makes some excellent points particularly about equity in large class scenarios.

Yesterday we met with Paul Bailey and Niall Sclater about the Jisc Effective Analytics programme. Our work in learning analytics had stalled due to changes in our senior management and lack of CIO. However with our new CIO and IT Director now in place it looks like we will be moving ahead in this area and be part of the Jisc pilot. So look out for more posts around that.

And finally, I am now officially a jolly, good (HEA) Fellow. I originally submitted for Senior Fellow, which I always knew was going to be a bit of a challenge, mainly because of my lack of actual teaching practice and slightly non traditional career path. And the feedback I got did confirm that. I also think my case studies weren’t focused enough on institutional impact. They were more based on work and experiences before I started here. So after feedback from my initial submission I resubmitted for Fellow status and now have a nice shiny certificate.

What Sheila's seen this week: i-rights and the right to forget

What rights do you have online? If I’m honest I don’t actually know. I think I’m probably digitally savvy enough to be conscious of what I share online, with who and why. I know that I share too much data with Tesco and Amazon but I comfort myself with the fact that I get some trade off somewhere. I’m also lucky (aka getting old), in that when I was doing stupid things when I was growing up, they could only be shared within a relatively small circle – not potentially the world via Instagram. The mistakes I made, are now long forgotten and would take quite a bit of effort to find. As we all know it’s not quite like that anymore.

Like many this week, the i-rights campaign and this article by Suzanne Moore about the importance of the right to forget have caught my eye.

“iRights is a civil society initiative that seeks to make the digital world a more transparent and empowering place for children and young people (under 18) by delivering a universal framework of digital rights, in order that young people are able to access digital technologies creatively, knowledgeably and fearlessly.”

The 5 i-rights highlighted by the campain: the rights to: know, remove, support and safety, make informed and conscious choices, and digital literacy are actually universal – not just for the under 18s. Being connected online should allow us to share, connect, explore, make mistakes as and when we choose. But in the Big Data world it’s not that straightforward.

“The exchange of information is an essential component of the digital world. However, it is inappropriate for a third party, commercial or otherwise, to own, retain or process the data of minors without giving them the opportunity to retract it or to correct misinformation.”

We believe children and young people should have the unqualified right, on every internet platform or service, to fully remove data and content they have created. This must be easy and straightforward to do.”

Our data should be ours, not the plaything of big businesses and advertising. As I said at the beginning of this article I am aware of some of the data I am willing to “give away”. I’m equally aware that I am probably giving away far more than I realise, and that I have little control or indeed options about getting it back or deleting it.

Education is central to the well being all parts of society,from pre-school to university and beyond. So let’s all start asserting our i-rghts and provide our children, young people and not so young people with the capacity to live, work and create useful, safe and when necessary, disposable digital environments where individuals not businesses control their data.

What Sheila's seen this week #blimage,

I’ve been on leave for the past 3 weeks so this week has been a bit of a blur ( in more sense than one as I’ve just got new varifocal glasses #slightydizzystandingup) of catching up and getting back into work mode.

One thing that seems to have taken off this week is #blimage. I was thinking of getting involved but after mentioning it on twitter, the @GCUBlend account was thrown a challenge which I responded to yesterday. This post is a response to that – maybe a slight egocentric circle going on here, but it is a good way to get back into blogging after the holidays.

This is the image yesterday’s post invited comment about.

The picture is of a part of the major campus refurbishment that is taking place at GCU just now. It triggers a raft of emotions and thoughts for me including excitement, confusion, blind panic, will it all be ready for the students in September?

For most of us working in education, summer more than New Year, is the time of new beginnings, new students, new starts. Summer is often that mythical space where everything that you haven’t had the chance to “get round to” over the past year will be done as well as all the new things that you want/have to do for the new semester. It can be an exciting and scary time, and more often than not “other stuff” is thrown into the mix which takes priority over all your (half baked) plans.

I think my brain is a bit like that picture just now with bits and pieces of things sort of blocked out, but lots of stuff needing to be done to make sense of it .

So maybe it is the perfect welcome back to work #blimage. What do you think?

Where Sheila's been this week – being a bit creative

I’m on annual leave just now and this week I’ve been attending a week long summer painting school at Art4YouScotland. I have had an amazing time experimenting with different mediums and have gained a lot of confidence in my own abilities. I’ve also met some lovely people.

This is primarily a face to face learning experience – painting and drawing are very hands on pursuits. I have been learning loads from our lovely tutor Ewen and from my fellow students in the incredibly supportive and creative studio environment.

All of the individual and group discussions have been enhanced by technology. Particularly in terms of research and accessing the works of different painters, techniques, materials etc via “t’interweb” both in the studio and at home. Seems I can’t escape blended learning 😀

I love the mission statement for all the classes too. 2 and 3 I think should be part of every learning experience.

“1. become a better artist
2. feed your soul
3. enjoy the process”

Below is a little collage of some of the things I’ve been thoroughly enjoying creating this week.

You don't know what you've got til it's gone – RIP Jorum

Typcial! The day I on holiday is the day that the announcement about the retirement and refresh of our national open learning repository, Jorum, is announced. I think the news came as a surprise to many, partly because it’s not quite clear just what the refreshed version will actually be, and just what kind of open it will be.

Unlike some of my former Cetis colleagues like Lorna, I haven’t had any direct involvement with the development of Jorum. However, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for it. Mainly because I felt it got an lot of unfair press in its early days, and that was due it being an idea just a little bit ahead of its time in terms of easy implementation and adoption. I remember the struggles trying to get instituitions to sign up to use it – legal-ese heaven for some; the struggles with content packages, the metadata, the federated searche engines – happy days😉

Back in the day, there was always a bit of eye rolling and sighing from certain quarters whenever JORUM ( and at that time it was upper case) was mentioned. I think many of those people forgot that any system at that time would have had to contend with the early licence issues, the technical issues of uploading content etc. Despite all of this, Jorum kept going, growing and developing. Its transition form into an open repository was a testament to all who worked on it, and also to Jisc in terms of supporting open education. Like many others, the news this week has surprised me and made me feel a little bit sad.

This is where I have to “fess up”. I have never put anything into Jorum, and can’t actually remember the last time I looked at it. But, and of course there has to be a but, I have always encouraged others to use it whenever and wherever I could. It was like Elvis said, always on my mind, when taking about OERs and indeed educational resources in general.

So, maybe a new app/refresh approach might actually help me and others like me to share my stuff in/on whatever the new Jorum might be. It could be another step forward in the cultural and practice issues around sharing “stuff” which is at the heart of opened education.

In the meantime tho’, it does feel a bit like that Joni Mitchell song . . . You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone . . . And maybe in this case it’s a bit orange taxi . . .

Digital Participation and the Digital Common Good (#scotinfolit)

Last week I attended the Scottish Government’s Digital Participation Advisory Group at Holyrood. The Group advises the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Fiona Hyslop who chairs the group. I was there as part of a mini delegation (well there were 3 of us, Bill Johnston, John Crawford and me) from the Information Skills for a 21st Century Scotland Community of Practice.

We were fortunate to have been allocated quite a bit of the meeting to discuss information and digital literacy and the potential for closer links between this Advisory Group and the CoP. You can read our briefing paper Scotland’s Information Culture briefing paper (feel free to add any comments too).

There were a number of updates from other projects including the Let’s Get On campaign which has been traveling the length and breadth of the country and encouraging people to get online. Whilst listening to the update from the Wheatley Group on their pilot project offering low cost broad band access to their tenants in a Kirkton project in Glasgow.

The findings of the evaluation are showing that if you provide low cost access and in some cases devices, people will go online and start reaping benefits. These include saving money in taxi bills by doing online grocery shopping and using comparison websites. The requirement for online searching as part of job seekers allowance is also more easily fulfilled.

I was humbled whilst listening to the difference having access to a reliable and low cost wireless connection can make to peoples lives. I was reminded just how privileged a life I lead. Wifi is ubiquitous in my life, both at home and work. I don’t have to make a choice about eating or getting online. Comparison websites are more a game than a necessity for me.

It seems though, that there is still a disconnect between interactions with other key public services. The next steps are to explore that more fully. It might be due to the fact that many government services aren’t fully useable with mobile devices.

So whilst it is great to see these initiatives and the confidence and opportunities they are bringing people (particularly children who in the project come out as very much being digital champions) there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of sustaining greater digital participation and the developing of peoples confidence and ergo their digital capabilities.

Digital participation is where Universities can play a pivotal role in the digital agenda. Particularly a university like my own, GCU, whose mission is “for the common good” or as it was originally stated ‘the common weal”. We should be a key part or digital hub if you like, looking for more ways to link initiatives like the ones mentioned above with our own work in widening participation for example the Caledonian Club and GCU College Connect far deeper into our formal and informal curriculum.

Last year I proposed this model of engagement for us, pitching us as a digital agora, or hub

In the week when UNESCO released its Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? report, embracing digital participation could be a crucial way forward for all of us.

I’ll be exploring the understandings of the digital university later this week at the EDEN conference where I look forward to extending this discussion more.