Like an amoeba we are creativity in action #creativeHE

Amoeba image from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/paint/subjects/protists/amoeba.shtml

The open online course Creativity and Higher Education is making me think.  Chrissi asks what is the difference between face to face and online? I say it’s the pedagogy of uncertainty – there’s so much you don’t know and can’t predict. Then Chrissi asks what is the difference between traditional online and open courses? Even more uncertainty. The open structure – emergent ideas – changes in direction – we’re creating as we go along – responding to the unexpected – like an amoeba the course is alive and moving about, ever changing its shape. How exciting is that? We are ‘creativity’ in action.

Last week I blogged about feeling less creative than I thought. This week’s activity reaffirmed it. Identify 3 things you would not use in your teaching.*  It was so difficult. I thought everything could be used to demonstrate some point or other. The best response was Jonathan Purdy (from Australia but distance means nothing online)  who used categories. What do his teaching tools need to do and does the object support it. I took the question literally and thought Jonathan’s more lateral approach was a perfect example of creative thinking.

In  my early HE days as Widening Participation Project Officer I worked with John Knowles who coordinated a Day at University for school pupils in Hull and Lincolnshire. These days were creativity in action. I still remember counting in Japanese! The #creativeHE activities remind me of De Bono’s Hats and Buzan’s paperclips from those days. It was the turn of the century – 2000-2004 – when the internet was new and social media hadn’t happened. How much has technology changed what we do? Have VLE encouraged or dissuaded creative approaches to learning and teaching?

Google site header
Feel the google-fear and do it

On the course I’m setting up a group looking at digital creativity (yes that’s right folks – feel the google-fear and do it!) At the SRHE Conference in December I’m presenting on the the Digital University  and at Bett Technology in January I’ll be talking about TEL adoption. One of my themes is the creative use of VLE – or the absence of anything posing a serious challenge to the dominance of the Lecture – so this might be a useful opportunity to share ideas.

Lectures remain the commonest teaching activity in higher education. Often accompanied by presentation slides – usually powerpoint, for many this is the limit of their digital discoveries. Lecture content might make it onto the VLE – before or after the main event – but there are still those who believe if they put their lecture notes online their students won’t attend.

The commonest word in the literature of VLE is transform e.g. the transformative power of elearning and VLE as transformers of higher education but we’re still waiting. Most VLE resemble digital document dumps. Examples of the creative digital campus are isolated in pockets with widening divides between those who do and those who don’t (i.e. get the whole digital thing).

butterfly transformation image from http://quotesgram.com/quotes-about-growth-and-transformation/

I feel for anyone who teaches or supports learning and is told here’s the VLE, get on with it. Affinity for digital education is not intrinsic. If tech is not part of your life or subject-expertise how can you be expected to develop digital confidence. It’s a question which has taken a long time to be asked. The risk is those with the answers are not those who understand what techno-fear feels like. We need more creative ways to manage digital adoption.

Next week in the group I’m going to ask for member’s thoughts on creative digital environments. Discussions might go off in directions I haven’t even considered. This is the challenge, the fun and the power of digital education. For a short period of time we have come together in a virtual collaboration. When the course is ended we’ll go off in our separate ways, but hopefully richer and more creative for having taken part in this unique learning experience.


* Activity – name three things you would not use in your teaching

Alcohol – during my first degree a psychology lecturer asked for a volunteer to drink vodka so we could assess the influence on cognitive abilities – during the hour she became more impaired and struggled for the rest of the day. It felt wrong then and still does – I like a glass of wine on a Friday night and another one (or three) over the weekend but for me alcohol and work never go together.

creepie crawlies and slidey slimies – I couldn’t bear the thought of carrying them around never mind having to study them close up – yuk!

Unlike Mrs Heerkens in Holland, I won’t be stripping down to latex body suit any time soon.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRtW4D0ycA8c

 

#BbWorld15 part five; personal reflections at the end of the show

This is the end of BbWorld15. My home has been the largest hotel, resort and convention centre I’ve ever seen. It’s a glass and steel bubble. For days I didn’t step outside. Apart from being too hot – in the mid thirties – you didn’t need to. Everything was on the inside including the trees and gardens although the glass lifts were not for the faint hearted! Also outside there wasn’t a great deal to see or do.

But on the inside it was was busy. Over 3000 delegates and dozens of parallel sessions, even going full pace you only scratch the surface. Already the conference is starting to blur but I have the key points loaded into these blog posts. They’re a bit rushed.  Some of the pictures aren’t too good and not all of have alt text but they will be my reminder of the privilege of being here.  Blackboard is one of the few conferences which crosses the boundaries and brings together this peculiar hybrid breed of academic developer, learning technologist and researcher.  What unites us is the value we place on technology to make a difference to the student experience. What separates us is the work we do supporting the late adopters and digitally shy academics whilst promoting the need for inclusive practice so ensure no one gets shut out or left behind.

Adoption was a core feature of many presentations. There was a distinct shift in emphasis from what could be done to how to encourage and support engagement through sequential stepping.

I’ve got some new ideas. Maybe developing a rubric for universal design; capturing the core content of the four TELEDA learning blocks – learning design, open education, social media, working with audio and video –  and releasing them as OER; continuing to find ways to apply the essential criteria of higher education – communication, critical thinking, deeper approaches to reflective practice – and applying them to technology training.

Underpinning it all is the affirmation I’ve received this week how core to all adoption just might be the shift from training to teaching – seeing e-teaching as the corollary to e-learning. While one of the messages of BbWorld  is to put the student first, it’s increasingly clear how some people are starting to consider the changing attitudes towards digitally shy academics. Overall, attitudes to ‘faculty’ were not hugely sympathetic and this is part of the problem. If ever I needed evidence of the digital divides on campus between technologists and teachers there was plenty to choose from. Looking back over the years it’s difficult to find many attempts to rethink how digital support is provided and now we’re in a time where everyone is stretched and squeezed, the suggestion to invest more resources into digital staff development will not be popular. It needs more people to recognise and accept the adoption of digital technology is problematic. What troubles me is how those who promote, support and maintain it are often those who find it easy to use. They forget or have never experienced what it feels like to be digitally lost and confused.

The phone on the hotel room has a button called Consider it Done.

It’s linked to your room so you are greeted with your name and what comes across as a genuinely meaningful-sounding question ‘What can I assist you with today?’ Once I’d experienced this response I actually felt ok about using the service again. It made a difference to how I experienced not knowing something or not understanding how things worked. This is the effect we need to generate and make happen.