Uncategorized – Page 18 – howsheilaseesIT

The lurking tipping point – socially and academically acceptable?

Lurking, just saying the word leaves a bit of nasty taste doesn’t it? Even though it is being defined in slightly less threatening terms by the Oxford dictionary. But as the march of the MOOCs continues and we are beginning to gain more insights into learner behaviour, drop out rates etc, lurking seems to be becoming more acceptable.

However I still don’t like the word. Perhaps because it still has connotations of internet trolls, and to be frank “not very nice people”. I recently tweeted that I don’t lurk on MOOCs, I absorb. Which might be a bit of an airy fairy statement, but I’m much happier being classified as a sponge than a lurker 😉

However, as I’ve been listening to the #altmoocsig live stream today, and particularly Helena Gillespie talking about the UEA experience, I do now wonder if we have come to a tipping point in terms of valid educational lurking? There is research coming through (particularly the work done by Colin Milligan , Allison Littlejohn and Anoush Margaryan) which clearly shows that people are self identifiying as lurkers in a MOOC context.

Participating in a MOOC is still not common and requires a new set of skills and coping strategies (as I have found out), at times it can be so overwhelming that as a learner you either have nothing to say because you are taking in too much, or you actually don’t know where or how to contribute. I think this post sums up a lot of people’s first experience of a MOOC (particularly a cMOOC)

Where’s the door? How do I get in? [struggle with site, find dashboard, maybe this will help . . . nope. Lost again] Who else is here? Do I know anybody? [read through introductions, post mine, try to find it again because there were some pretty good questions in there, can’t find it. Keep reading to get some sort of sense of who’s here too many posts, can’t make sense, can’t connect. I’m lost again.] (How do I get to know anybody?) What can I do here? [cool idea, massively crowd-sourced writing, whoops, the deadline is past. I’m still lost, can’t find my way in.] What are people thinking and saying, maybe I can just lurk. [Wander around from blog post to blog post, twitter post, not sure why some of this stuff is here, it seems there are intimate conversations going on, I really feel like an outsider here.]

What I looked forward to, I have come to dread. Tonight I found myself sitting in front of my computer, my head in my hands, feeling like an utter failure. Saying for the 10th time, that’s ok, you are learning how to do something new, and that means you don’t know how to do it. Keep trying. Just another half hour. Realizing ten minutes later that I’m standing in front of the refrigerator, thinking about making some cinnamon toast – my version of comfort food.

(http://vsuter.org/2012/08/16/why-cant-i-find-my-way-in)

I still wish I could find a better replacement word, but I am glad to see that the positive aspects of lurking are being increasingly recognised.

What is a Learning Technologist?

The question of what is a learning technologist has been on my mind quite a lot recently, for a number of different reasons. Firstly, my new role here at GGU involves me working very closely with our school based learning technologists, so I am in the process of getting to know them and their varied work and backgrounds better. There certainly isn’t a one size fits all LT at Glasgow Cally, and (imho) that is a good and very necessary thing. Like most institutions, each of our three schools has different needs and expectations to fulfil and develop their learning and teaching provision, and the LTs in each school work with “their” academics to develop the use of technology and blended learning approaches.

Yesterday I spotted some tweets from David Hopkins (one of my favourite learning technologists) linking to a piece of work he is undertaking in conjunction with Geraldine Murphy and Rachel Challen from Loughborough College, which is exploring the identity of a Learning Technologist through the “analysis of language”. The full project brief is available here. The main data collection is via twitter using the #LTFE and #LTHE hashtags between now and December. Already there are a range of different responses coming through. David has written a number of posts around this question too which are well worth reading.

The other reason this question has been on my mind recently is because, as you may know dear reader, in September I won the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year award. I was of course thrilled to win the award, and as I said at the time I felt it was recognition for the work and sharing with the community that everyone in Cetis was/is involved in. I think it importantly highlighted another really important aspect of the role of a learning technologist – that of sharing. Increasingly I was (and continue to) share via my online presence (via blogging and twitter in particular). In my institutional role I’ll now be doing more face to face sharing and working, but I’ll still continue to share with my extended virtual network, and use to it to continue to increasing my knowledge via the “good stuff” others share.

I have always liked the term Learning Technologist, in fact it was probably my favourite job title. In some ways I think that was down to the diversity of the role, and the backgrounds of people in the role (particularly 10 years ago or so when I actually was one!). So a part of me hopes that there will always be a quite a bit of space for ambiguity about the exact role and skill set of learning technologist as it is always evolving and shouldn’t become too rigid.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the end results of the project, and how Learning Technologists themselves describe their varied roles.

Where Sheila should have been this week #CD3RIDE13

I should have been at the RIDE conference today, but instead I have to do my civic duty and go to the High Court later today for potential jury selection. Not that I want to shirk my civic responsibility, but I am disappointed I can’t make the conference and be part of a couple of really interesting sessions around, yes you guessed it MOOCs.

However here is the presentation I would have given (NB link to prezi from image below opens in a new window).

Easier classroom interaction, but still a few niggles

I’m steadily getting know more about the blended learning approaches that are being used here at GCU. Blended learning is all about encouraging more creative, and engaging learning and teaching experiences and their are growing numbers of staff who are working with our learning technologists to make their lectures more interactive. One popular method which seems to be gaining traction across the institution is the use of clickers. There are a range of devices available, but as anyone who has used any type of clicker system knows, there are some practical issues around their use too – not least making sure handsets are available, in the right place and working.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to create simple web interfaces and apps that have a level of built in interactivity and record responses (which could be thought of as entry/basic level level learning analytics). Over the past month or so I’ve seen a number of approaches to this type of thing including a number of ideas from the Jisc summer of student innovation projects, Bb Polls (one of the first demos from Blackboard Labs), and today, along with a number of colleagues, I’ve been having a look at nearpod.

The Bb polls tool is an obvious reaction to customer feedback and a first step towards integrating polls into the core Bb offering. Just now the beta version runs outside Bb, so anyone can play with it, but it does have a couple of drawbacks. If you want to set up a poll you have to register with your facebook account. Last week at the Bb on tour events, the team explained this was simply because it was the quickest way to get a simple authentication service up and running. But couldn’t help thinking that without spending too much more time they could have easily added a couple of more authentication options such as twitter and google. I know I’m certainly wary of using my facebook login for “work stuff” now as facebook is increasingly a non work related space for me, whereas twitter and google are pretty much 100% work related. Also many teaching staff have similar issues about using facebook (despite reassurances of not being used for any other purpose than authentication) as they want to keep a clear demarcation between their private and professional online spaces and interactions with students. However as a basic, real time polling tool, it works.

It uses geo-location to display polls near to your actual location:

which is very “neat”, but if there was lots of take up (even in one department of somewhere like GCU) it could get quite confusing to find the right poll. Also just now it isn’t the most secure, doesn’t store results (only thing I could think of would be to screen grab results of polls as they come in). So, it really is just a beta development, which to be fair to Bb they are totally upfront about, and more for experimentation. However it is a step in the right direction for Bb to increase interactivity in their core product offering. If you are interested in an overview of the Bb events last week check out Alex Spier’s blog post.

Nearpod on the other hand is a much slicker tool which allows a teacher to upload content, create a variety of activities including the obligatory quiz, and share synchronously with students via an app or web interface.

It does have in-built reporting which will no doubt it will be renamed “learning analytics” soon. Clearly aimed at the byod/tablet market, this seems like a pretty straight forward tool to use (as long as you are confident enough students have an ipad/tablet device). As a teacher you get a pin code for your session which students enter and hey presto you are all synced and ready to go. No need to check if there are enough, or indeed any, clickers in your room.

Of course this is a stand alone tool so it’s not integrated to any institutional systems but that might have its advantages – but not if you wanted use it in a more asynchronous fashion as the demo suggests. In app emailing might involved a bit of copy and pasting of emails, and similarly comparing and/or sharing/integrating any of the feedback reports (in PDF of course) might be fun. However as a simple tool to create quick interactivity, help staff begin to experiment with flipped approaches it is quite attractive and for the moment free.

If you are using any other approaches or have thoughts about these and similar tools, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

All kinds of open

It’s open access week this week, so time to celebrate open access in our research communities. Now in its 6th year, the event in growing and there a lots of events happening all over the world. For more information check out the Open Access Week website, and/or follow the #OAweek hashtag. Quite a few events are being lived streamed so even if they aren’t local to you, you may still be able to join in.

Continuing the openness theme there were a couple of open things I spied last week and didn’t have time to blog about so it makes sense to include them in this post.

Glasgow’s Future Cities demonstrator dashboard continues to grow and now has 81 datasets available including data on gritting to film sets. Hopefully they’ll reach over 100 sets soon.

Whilst I’m all in favour of opening up data, there are some very serious considerations for education. “Data is the new oil” is being seen and quoted more and more often, as well as the promise of big data approaches being able to “fix” education. Audrey Watters shared her views and slides from a talk she gave last week at Columbia University titled “(Student) data is the new oil, MOOCs, Metaphor and Money”. An excellent critique of the underlying tensions around “opening up” student data, who and where the drivers are coming from. Well worth a read.

When you are involved and aware of openness, in all its guises, it is easy to forget that not everyone is aware of the open movement. I’m finding that now I’m based in an institution, I can’t (and I did try not to anyway ) assume that people are aware of open access or open education in general. So it’s great to see that the OER Research Hub have pulled together a useful “understanding OER in 10 videos” playlist. I know this is going to be a really useful resource for me and many of my colleagues, and is in itself a great example of the power of open, reusable, educational resources.

Ada Lovelace Day

October the 15th is Ada Lovelace day, an annual international celebration of the role of women in “celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths”. I try and mark this every year in my blog, but this year it has kind of crept up on me so I haven’t got a particular woman whose work I want to highlight. However I would encourage you to go to the Finding Ada website, to find out more about Ada Lovelace, the event itself and other women whose work has made a significant impact to all our lives. I’d also encourage you to follow the #findingada, #adalovelaceday and ADL13 hashtags on twitter and listen or listen again to today’s Womans Hour on the BBC. Already I’ve found out about Nicola Pellow from David Kernohan’s excellent blog post. I had no idea she developed the first cross platform web browser – tbh I didn’t have a clue who did 🙂 I’m looking forward to hearing/reading about lots more over the course of the day.

** Update – here is a fantastic resource about Scottish women in Science from the National Library of Scotland**

Where Sheila's been this week

This week I started a new job as a Senior Lecturer in Blended Learning at Glasgow Caledonian University. I’m based in LEAD (learning experience and academic development ) department. As you can imagine there has been quite a lot for me to get my head around this week as well as dealing with getting “switched on” to the GCU network when it is the first week of term and the IT department is dealing with a gizzillion other things.

Part of the first week is familiarising myself with the Uni itself, including the overarching mission and values. I know it is easy to be cynical about mission statements, values and principles but I really like the fact that I know work somewhere whose cores values and principles include trust, integretity and courage.

The University has just over 17, 500 registered students based in three academic schools: Glasgow School for Business and Society, Engineering and Built Environment and Health and Life Sciences. Each of the schools has at least 2 dedicated learning technologist and academic leads for blended learning that I will be working closely with.

One of my priorities over the coming months will be the implementation of the new institutional strategy for learning. And, working with colleagues, in particular my new boss, Prof Linda Creanor, to develop a road map for the increased uptake of blended learning approaches. This wordle gives a flavour of the strategy.

So lots to be done, but there are some very exciting opportunities to develop some of the work that is already happening here and also to be involved in some new avenues including learning analytics.

After the mooc has gone – the real collaboration and connectivisism begins

In my invited speaker slot at ALT-C last month I mentioned that MOOCs despite what you may think of them have given the sector a rush of some kind of energy. Measuring success on MOOCs tho is still fraught. Many much wiser souls than me have shared various theories as to why this may be, including the drop out rates, the “you take what you need”, “it’s more like a conference” etc. I’ve blogged a lot about my adventures with MOOCs over the past year. I’ve analysed and reflected on my own disengagement (and engagement) with them. By traditional measures I’ve only actually completed three MOOCs but from each of them I still have sense of community and connections that have endured beyond the set time of the actual MOOC.

#oldsmooc ( the learning design MOOC run by the OU) has been probably the most challenging MOOC for me but in many ways also the most rewarding as it was actually the first time that I felt that I had true learner autonomy. It was a challenging for many reasons but towards the end there was a real spirit of community, trust and support – and that wasn’t just because there were only a few of us left standing 🙂

Through the wonders of social media (particularly twitter) I’ve managed to stay in contact with a number of my felllow #oldsmooc-ers., and over the last couple of weeks I think we’ve done something quite extraordinary. Six of us have collaboratively written a paper. Like so many things these days, it started with a tweet.

And so the power of connectivism sprang into life (see this storify for more)

Coordinating suitable times between Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and Scotland was quite a challenge, but thanks to some people being willing to get up at 6am, we did it. Using google hang-outs we started to make our plans.

After much discussion we decided that it would be good share our contrasting experiences of the #oldsmooc and what we have individually and collectively classified as our own measures of success. Several months have passed since the end of the course, and I think it is only now that we all are able to begin to articulate and properly reflect on what we have all experienced and what impact it has had on us.

For me it was having the confidence to be able to in a way do what I wanted in terms of thinking about the context of learning and in particular the user interface of Cloudworks which believed could be far more user friendly and useful through visualising connections. For others it was about developing and extending their own personal learning networks, using some of the actual course materials and methodologies in their own practice and collaboratively developing new learning designs. There is a really rich stream of data from our conversations and notes – enough for several papers.

Fingers crossed our paper will be accepted but even if it isn’t, I’ve really enjoyed this extended learning experience and working with my peers from #oldsmooc. Another measure of a successful learning experience imho.

A walk on the student side of the street

Earlier this week I was invited to take part in one day meeting for the Jisc Student Summer of Innovation competition. Never one to grumble about going to Birmingham, I was really pleased that I could make this meeting to see and hear from the student projects as I hadn’t been able to make the previous meetings.

The rationale for the competition was to involve students in designing products to help the student experience. Who better to understand what students need than students themselves? The winners of the initial competition are now developing their ideas (for full details on who they are and how they were chosen read this blog post). Monday’s meeting provided an opportunity to refine and present their “product pitches” to their peer group and invited external experts. The pitches were grouped into four sessions, where each project had a one minute pitch followed by short “market place” sessions of c.20 minutes where further questions could be asked to the teams.

One minute pitches are quite an art form, so I’d like to say publicly how well I thought all the projects did. I was really impressed by the amount of work that they have all put into developing their ideas, and in some cases developing fairly sophisticated products already.

A couple of things did stand out for me, but more in terms of the issues (or should I say challenges) that the projects are dealing with. It seems that time management, sharing of notes, additional study skills, more tailored feedback (primarily via q&a), all done online with various peer recognition and/or reward systems (yes badges did come up more than once) are really high on the agenda. I did find this quite reassuring as I think most on the teaching side of things recognise these issues and there is lots of work (not least funded through various Jisc programmes) which are exploring and developing solutions to these issues too. The recognition of the role of students themselves was also really positive. However, there was maybe a slight “build it and they will come” naivety from all the projects. Which is totally understandable coming from a bunch of highly motivated students who have taken the time to get involved in the competition itself. And they’re not alone in that respect. Moving from a great idea to something that actually works and does actually “improve the student experience” is no mean feat, and very rarely relies on just technology itself.

I had fun playing at being a “dragon investor” for the day, and talking to a great bunch of students who were not only enthusiastic about their ideas, but also about the experience and opportunities that being involved in the competition has given them. I hope my feedback, which was mainly around thinking about actual implementation, how people would actually use the products, evidence of need for the products, as well as some links to quite similar products and some relevant research were useful. I was also not swayed at all by the fact that one of the projects brought along sweeties 🙂

The teams are going to be doing it all again in a couple of months, but this time to people who have real money. I’m looking forward to seeing which of the ideas progress to real products.

where Sheila will be seen in a couple of weeks

I’m very excited to say that I have a new job as a Senior Lecturer in Blended Learning at Glasgow Caledonian University which I’ll be starting next month. On the other hand I am sad to be leaving my old colleagues and friends at Cetis, and today I wrote my final blog post for Cetis explaining more. I have had the best time working for Cetis and the experiences I’ve gained have been instrumental in me getting my new job. It was quite emotional writing that last post, but I will continue my blogging here.