Today is the start of a HEA Change Academy programme. This is part of the Embedding OER Practice in Institutions project here at the University of Lincoln. The project is looking at the philosophy and practice of open education and the use and reuse of OER and embedding that practice across the whole institution. The Change Academy is about supporting institutional change by working with staff and students to create those conditions most conducive to change. Engagement with OER is part of a much wider picture of the use of technology for learning which includes VLEs, Web 2.0 style tools and social media –as well as familiarity with the open education movement in general and open educational resources in particular. Even higher and wider to this is the individual need for confidence and competence working within digital environments and understanding what makes effective digital learning experiences. All of this involves change – in particular the adoption of digital literacies – those skills and understandings which are essential to teaching, learning and professional practice in a digital age. The Change Academy will help ensure individual project outcomes can be sustainable and identify ways for embedding them at departmental and Faculty level while overall project guidance to OER practice within teaching and learning aims to bring in all other academic and professional support staff from across the university. Watch this space for further developments…
SOPA and PIPA; be aware and be prepared to fight…
Posted on January 18th, 2012 byIf you haven’t heard of SOPA today is a good time to look it up. Try Wikipedia today (18 January) and you will be directed to information about SOPA and PIPA instead.
Briefly the 24 hour blackout by Wikipedia and a number of other web presences is in response to proposals by the US Congress - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) – which are designed to control user generated content. This is allegedly about infringement of copyright. Instead of reviewing existing copyright legislation in the light of an Internet age, the media giants have chosen to reinforce their monopolies with a cast iron boot approach. This directly opposes the original ‘openness’ of the Internet while hiding behind claims of piracy and thievery aimed at users who are refusing to be customers. Google, Twitter and EBay are also allegedly opposing this legislation although not with Blackouts – maybe they should – but at least two of the three carry advertising.
The fear is the US will have the power to control information and close any websites which contain disputed copyrighted materials. Should it come about I suspect DRM will inevitably be extended as commercial companies use this as an opportunity to protect their brands and products. Capitalism is fighting back and the only surprise is that it has taken this long. There are two issues; firstly the debate over copyright itself and secondly the exposure of the frailty of our digital connections. We take them for granted but they are more vulnerable to attack than we realise. Once the ways and means of imposing controls begins then the Internet will become just another commodity and all its potential for democratic access will be lost. These attempts to control the Internet should be opposed.
For more information see See Stop SOPA Now! by Dan Gilmour and Wikipedia Blackout Looms b Mark Sweeny.
Not being pedantic – but an important distinction
Posted on November 25th, 2011 byI’m writing this because of a blog post I saw yesterday which claims to reveal social charity incomes e.g.
- Scope – 101 million pounds
- Mencap – 194 million pounds
- RNIB – 135 million pounds
- Leonard Cheshire – 155 million pounds
Unfortunately, this isn’t referenced. However, the Charity Commission for England and Wales reveals a total annual income of all registered main charities exceeding £26billion and that seems to be a lot of money. However, the real rationale for this post lies in the accompanying text. Still unreferenced but I know it echoes current research e.g. the Scope ComRes survey showing attitudes to ‘disabled’ people have deteriorated , and the recent report uncovering disability hate crime No Hiding Place. So although there are no sources, I’m quoting from the blog directly.
- There is a stigma associated with being labelled as ‘disabled’;
- Being labelled disabled can impact on your ability to get, and keep, a job;
- Being disabled is not seen in any way as a positive personal attribute by the wider society.
How do you read these statements? I think they contain a potential ambiguity which is damaging to the individuals concerned. The word disabled is described as being attached to the person by a label. You can label something without it necessarily being correct or appropriate, so this isn’t necessarily calling the person disabled, but what is missing is the next stage where the reader needs to be reminded we are disabled as much by a hostile environment and social attitudes as by our diversity or difference.
The Disability Rights Movement called for a Social Model of Disability to replace the existing Medical Model. They wanted to show how we are disabled by external barriers – in the built environment and in cultural attitudes and misconceptions – which fail to cater for a broad enough range of diversity and difference. This approach does not deny the reality of impairment – it is about calling for social change in order to reduce barriers to access and participation and a starting point is the language we use.
I know it sounds pedantic but there are key differences between the phrase ‘being disabled’ and ‘being disabled by society’. It’s an important distinction and one which needs to be kept in mind.
NUS ‘Technology in Higher Education’ Charter
Posted on November 23rd, 2011 byThe NUS report Student Perspectives on Technology was released last year. Out of the findings has come a neat little Charter called Technology in Higher Education containing ten recommendations for the adoption of digital technologies within higher education.
It’s interesting how the impetus for change is coming from the bottom up. The NUS is calling for a modernisation of teaching and learning practices in order to take advantages of the affordances of virtual learning technologies. What is reassuring is that in place of the sector’s initial determinism of early promises of transformation, the Charter recognises the need for investment in staff development and practical support for both staff and students in order to make the most effective use of digital ways of working. The calls for accessibility and inclusion, a regularly revised ICT strategy and holistic management of expectations with regard to the use of the technology are equally welcome. The ten recommendations can be found below. Here’s hoping there are enough open doors and signposted routes onto the relevant decision making processes for the NUS to ensure they can all be adopted.
- All institutions should have an ICT strategy that is regularly revised
- Institutions should invest in staff development and should give recognition to the effective use of technology in learning
- All staff and students should receive comprehensive and appropriate training and support
- Institutions should consider the accessibility and implications of technology-enhanced learning for all student groups
- Innovative use of digital technology should be supported by the curriculum design process
- Administration should be made more accessible through the use technology, including e-submission, feedback and course management
- Institutions should understand and highlight the link between technology-enhanced learning and employability
- Using technology to enhance learning and teaching should be a priority when making investment decisions
- Institutions should conduct wider research into student demand and perception of technology
- Digital technologies should enhance teaching but not be used as a replacement to existing effective practice
Using Technology to Enhance Learning
Posted on November 18th, 2011 byAt the SEDA Conference ‘Using Technology to Enhance Learning’ it was good to see recognition of the value of transition into higher education activities and the need to address support for digital literacies. The concept of support for transition needs little explanation but defining the term digital literacies can be challenging. Inevitably we use phrases like ‘preparing students for a digital world’ often without consideration of all the prerequisites this entails. In a Keynote speech ‘10 years of technology enhanced learning – how far have we (really) come?’ Helen Beetham spoke of the role of public education to prepare students for a time in the future. In an increasingly digital society, it should go without saying this requires support for graduate attributes of the digital kind. At the moment the vehicle for technology enhanced learning has multiple wheels and all of them round. There is a lot of replication across the sector, much of it through individual pockets of excellence located within the Library, Student Support or Study Skills – where preparing students for a digital world remains a bolt on extra rather than any adjustment to curriculum design appropriate for the university in the 21st century. It will be interesting to watch the current round of JISC funded projects as these contain the proviso of embedding digital literacies as a whole institution approach.
Resistance to digital pedagogy is often disguised and conferences like these are useful for surfacing the issues. I attended a session on podcasting where staff followed guidelines to keep file length to under 5 minutes yet student responses included ‘ they’re too long’, ‘I’ve got too much else to do’, ‘I don’t have time,’ ‘I don’t like podcasts’. The myth of the digital native continues to be laid to rest. In another session we looked at teacher education where staff have opportunities to be students, in this case actively engaging with content creation, rather than content consumption, and using a range of Web 2.0 tools. Responses were inevitably mixed and it was interesting to see how in an age of ubiquitous PowerPoint, there are still many educators for whom this is a bridge too far. Supporting staff to be digital learners is key to this conference and it would be a shame for it to be a one-off theme. SEDA is for Staff Educational Developers so participants re seeing both sides of the digital divide. It’s not tech-heavy but tech-aware; accepting the necessity for digital ways of working and working on ways to make his happen. Recognition of the issues around digital literacies are being surfaced but we need to be sure the solutions are accessible and involve the enthusiasts who remember what techno-fear feels like as well as the technologists who are pushing at the boundaries with their digital hearts and minds.
Who’s responsibility is it?
Posted on November 15th, 2011 byTalking to a group of level three online-journalism students about digital divides. The group made accurate suggestions for what digital divides might look like, including incompatible file formats, unequal access to computers in different parts of the world and people having access problems with content. All perfect examples of digital inequities and discrimination.
I’m suggesting it’s the responsibility of the Web Workers (eg developers, designers, content creators etc) to ensure accessibility and a student asks if accessibility should be the responsibility of the user instead. That’s a really good question. We all want to be independent and in control of our lives via all the appropriate tools. In an increasingly digital society, we want equal access to online communication, information and entertainment. So should web workers design content to be accessible, or should the technology have an interface which translates the digital data uploaded by the developer into customised content for the user?
The BBC My Display http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/mydisplay/ trial seemed to be a step in this direction. My Display encouraged users to customise the text and colours to suit their own preferences, with these choices being stored as a cookie for the next time.
Multiple reasons given for the My Display trial being withdrawn. These included the new and unexpected complexity of digital resources, content being delivered by IP on multiple platforms, operating systems and browsers delivering more customisation features, cloud computing requiring bigger solutions and the move from static webpages to database driven webs with live feeds and richer interactions. The list goes on and the conclusion was the My Display trials were neither flexible nor scaleable enough ‘to cope with the growth, technical diversity and ambition of the BBC’s digital services’.
So although we have the access technology to ensure 100% accessibility on the part of the user, it looks like we are moving even further away from the focus on accessible content. This is close to other recent developments which try to shift responsibility for access onto the user. The re is the growing expectation that people should adjust their browser settings and the move towards directing users to separate accessibility web pages; ‘solutions’ which assume a confidence and competence with navigation, form fields and web jargon which many simply haven’t got. These answers are as unworkable as the My Display solution. At the present time it looks like it keeps coming back to the need for inclusive digital content in the first place.
