Bringing the Me to CPD; developing a reflective imagination

Sue Watling / December 9, 2014 / EDEU, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

For many colleagues, the process of reflection is unfamiliar. In the Sociological Imagination C Wright Mills calls sociology the process of ‘making the familiar strange’. TELEDA tries to find ways to ‘make the strange familiar’. They sound like oppositional concepts but Wright Mills suggests tools which can be applied to both. He calls the sociological imaginations a ‘quality of mind’ for uncovering relationships between history and biography, for challenging the accepted and asking critical questions. Reflection is about our actions (history) and ourselves (biography), it requires taking these actions apart and challenging the accepted by asking the critical ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ questions. Reflective writing involves the familiar and the strange in a Mobius Strip type of duality.

Reflection is both description and analysis. It’s taking apart the surface experience to see what lies beneath. The two processes are one and the same but different. The alchemy lies in the action because critical reflect ion on practice reveals insights and understanding which were not there before. Reflective journals record narratives of learning journeys; fixing details and events which would otherwise be forgotten.

When time is tight, CPD activities are the first to go. As the ToDo list gets heavier, the tasks we do for others take priority over those we do for ourselves. Whether it’s HEA accreditation or one of EDEU’s Teacher Education courses it’s less DIY and more DDIY – Don’t Do It Yourself.

Colleagues on TELEDA are amazing; they juggle immense workloads alongside a range of activity based content and the reflective journals show how challenging this can be. I feel guilty about adding to their stress with each gentle reminder of absence or silence. Learning online has the invisible touch. Without a face-to-face timetable, a VLE slips under the surface of consciousness and the longer the lack of participation, the harder it is to re-engage.

Ormond Simpson’s research into retention for online learning is not cheerful reading but the loneliness of the long distance learner has to be experienced to be believed. All e-teachers face the challenge of maintaining motivation and participation in a silent, mostly invisible environment. VLE are where the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of digital education is realised. It’s the experiential learning which makes TELEDA successful but it also increases the risk of failure.

CDP is like digital literacies; there’s no-one-size-fits all model and it’s different for everyone. This is a strength and a weakness. Strength because it invites you to make time for yourself and weakness because no one has enough time to give. We have to find the ‘Me in CPD’ so it isn’t the first thing to get squeezed out but becomes a process we hold on to. To rediscover the value of reflective learning and make opportunities to develop a reflective imagination. Like TELEDA itself, the process of reflection is experiential – you have to do it to find out how useful it can be.

Don’t talk to me about transcripts, I’m a habitual being.

Sue Watling / December 6, 2014 / accessibility, DSA, EDEU

Changes to the DSA puts pressure on institutions to make reasonable adjustments to how they deliver information to students. In particular…through different ways of delivering courses and information. The principle of reasonable adjustment is a duty under the Equality Act. The duty is anticipatory.

The text above is taken from two government statements on the DSA. David Willets in April 2014 announced the expectation HEIs will ‘…introduce changes which can further reduce reliance on DSAs and help mainstream support.’ In September Greg Clark announced HEIs now have until September 2016 ‘… to develop appropriate mechanisms to fully deliver their statutory duty to provide reasonable adjustments, in particular non-medical help.’

Institutions should adopt a proactive approach by reviewing their practices – but where to begin?

The language of the statements is revealing. In the first document of 760 words there were 4 mentions of disabled students plus 2 in the title and strapine. In the second document, 695 words contain 19 mentions of disabled students plus 2 in the title and strapline and 1 of disabled people. Neither statement uses the words accessibility or inclusion. Yet these exist perfectly well in isolation from the word disabled. We all appreciate access. No one likes to be excluded.

I’ve long wanted to see Lincoln be a fully accessible digital university – but where to begin.

Last month I blogged on the flipped classroom and suggested flipping might be the new e-learning for 21st century. Flipping is about developing lecture by video or podcast, either DIY or from existing OER. Educause say ‘… the ease with which video can be accessed and viewed today has made it so ubiquitous that the flipped model has come to be identified with it.’ This is the reincarnation of early promises of e-learning to enhance – if not transform – the student experience.

Digital educational resources are the virtual equivalent of ramps into public buildings, created for wheelchair users but appreciated by pushers of prams, buggies, shopping trolleys and all. Having content recorded for replay and revision rather than a once-only experience clearly has value for everyone. The principle of universal design is inclusiveness. The problem is social and cultural acceptance of the need to change practice; in particular where it’s associated with disability because of a mindset which sees inclusive digital design as the responsibility of someone else.

To be human is to be habitual. We like routines. We’re busy. We don’t have time to create captions, subtitles, transcripts. It’s bad enough moving from text to multimedia in the first place without having to mess about with alternative formats as well.

Where to begin? This is the question the Inclusive Digital Educational Resources working party will need to answer. It’s going to be tough but someone has to do it. Cue the Educational Development Team in EDEU. Cue me. Watch this space…

ASS up your videos

Sue Watling / November 29, 2014 / digital inclusion, digital literacies, Multimedia

Now Youtube is owned by Google, there’s been a rethink about transcripts. Google uses the text from text alternatives in their search technology resulting in a new interest in ensuring inclusive practice. Only they don’t call it this – nor do they use the word accessibility – this is about being searchable and sharable. Put them together with accessibility and what have you got? that’s right – ASS.

YouTube/Google’s automatically generated captions are gibberish. The times when they make a weird sort of sense are often insulting or rude. The database is clearly not censored. Captioning companies claim increased viewing (thereby selling) figures to persuade us textual equivalents are worthwhile investments. Not only for the hearing impaired (and presumably anyone without the necessary access to headphones, speakers etc) subtitles and closed captions have the potential to open up your content to larger audiences, including speakers of other languages. Here is another example of inclusive design arriving through the back door. But so long as it arrives…

It isn’t clear how much google are investing in speech to text technology; they probably own all the captioning companies anyway. For now the onus is on the video producer to ensure their content is ASS – Accessible, Searchable and Sharable. Browser diversity makes it a challenge to provide one size fits all guidance but here are my seven steps to ASS up your video content in YouTube.

1. In the Creator Studio (under the profile menu top right of the YouTube screen) select Edit on the video to be captioned.

YOUTUBE edit video

2. Select Subtitles and CC from the top navigation bar. The first time you edit a video you’ll be asked to set video language.

YOUTUBE set language

3. Choose English (United Kingdom). I found English Automatic offers caption boxes but not the menu with the transcripts options.

YOUTUBE English United Kingdom

4. Click the English (United Kingdom) button to open the menu and select Transcribe and set timings.

YOUTUBE transcripts buttons

5. Two choices – either play the video and type – the option at the bottom to pause video while typing is a useful tool – or copy and paste text directly in from a text file. Either way, when complete, click the Set Timings button.

YOUTUBE transcripts box

6. It looks like setting the timings goes on forever but after a few minutes, click on the English (United Kingdom) box again.

YOUTUBE setting timings

7. This reopens the caption boxes with the text in them. Here you can check and edit. Click the Publish button to complete the task. YOUTUBE showing captions

There are other ways to add text; you can upload a transcript file but it needs to be saved as a text file first and there are formatting rules to follow. I tried typing in captions as the video played but lost them a couple of times when saving. In places YouTube seems to conflate captions, subtitles and transcripts which can be confusing initially but the 7 steps above, where you use the Transcript and set timings options to import text as captions/subtitles, worked well for me. The Set Timings function appears reliable although browser settings might create some small differences in following this guidance.

There you go – ASS up your videos today!

reflections on anomalies

Sue Watling / November 28, 2014 / digital inclusion, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

It’s been a strange week. Immobilised and restricted; never has the A15 in winter seemed such an attractive prospect. Did I really complain about leaving at 6.15 am and often not getting home till past 7.00 pm? It must have been another life. It was. This is my second week with a broken ankle. I’m trying to be good and R.E.S.T. When I broke a bone in my foot two years ago I walked on it and only stopped when the surgeon threatened to put my whole leg in pot. Half a pot is bad enough. This time I’m booted not potted. It’s heavy and high off the ground making one leg lower than the other. At this rate I’ll have hip trouble too – oh wait, I forgot – I’m supposed to be R.E.S.T.I.N.G.

Time off work and the internet are oxymoronic. This is a 21^st century anomaly. I can’t walk but I can use a laptop. Broken bones are not illnesses. They’re huge inconveniences, taking away your independence, making you reliant on family and friends to go anywhere and the Asda online shopping van for wine, but I’m not ill. Frustrated and upset but not ill.

Life carries on regardless. To colleagues on TELEDA I’ve always been an email or a Blackboard learning object. My Internet Outlook keeps most of me connected and phone calls fill in the gaps. I have social media although being home alone you realise there’s not much social about it. What’s missing is real life interaction and digital avatars can never take the place of human bodies. As government and institutions adopt ‘digital first’ policies and ever more public services go online, the future looks bleak in terms of empathy. While I’m out and about I’m the first to appreciate the convenience of the internet for enabling me to fit additional tasks into the day but it’s different when it’s the only form of interaction you have. However, inclusion beats exclusion hands down because it’s digital inclusion which enables to me to stay connected when the other aspects of my life have become broken.

Tripadvisor – how to miss a conference in one easy step

Sue Watling / November 24, 2014 / PhD, Teacher Education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), TELEDA social media and eresources

This is the third time a bone in my leg has let me down. Always at inconvenient times:

two weeks into my new job at the university,
a conference dinner in Stockholm,
48 hours before a flight to Dunedin, NZ to present at ASCILITE 2014.

It could have been worse, but as I looked at my foot, pointing in the wrong direction, it felt as bad as it could get. The up side is everyone has been wonderful; my room looks like a flower shop and I have cake, chocolate, grapes and wine – gifts don’t get much better than this. I’m immobilised but still connected and have recorded a narrated version of my presentation ‘e-teaching craft and practice’ which summarises the key points of my paper which can be downloaded here e-teaching craft and practice ASCILITE 2014 Concise Paper Fortunately this had already been uploaded to the conference proceedings so you could call it a break just in time!

The seven step guide to being an e-teacher can be summed up as follows:

pedagogy of uncertainty; always expect the unexpected, nothing can be predicted
go do a mooc; experiencing the reality of e-learning will help prepare for e-teaching
myths of digital confidence; not everyone knows their way around, expect to provide step by step instructions and reassurance
it takes two to talk; no one wants to go first, e-teachers have to make discussions possible through the design of their tasks
Activity Based Content (ABC); interaction is key, set up groups and make use of tools like blogs, wikis, forums and journals
signposting; new students feel overwhelmed by too much information, provide content in layers and hyperlink to non-essential resources
identity blur, virtual education is different, e-teachers can expect to become facilitators of learning experiences from back of stage rather than in the spotlight

e-teaching calls for a digital lens to be applied to teacher education programmes. The ‘e’ in e-teaching is not a pedantic endeavour. It’s the other side of e-learning; the side which has always received less attention but is equally important.

Flipping the classroom; e-learning for the digital university

Sue Watling / November 14, 2014November 16, 2014 / accessibility, digital inclusion, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Time for renewed interest in Academic Digital Literacies is nigh. The principles of flipped learning are one of the ten reports in the OU’s third edition of Innovating Pedagogy. Suddenly the flip is all the rage, It’s popping up in conferences and being talked about in high places. It’s too early to say if interest in the flipped classroom go the way of other initiatives – flip in and flip out – with the transmissive lecture remaining a key pillar of a higher education experience – but if not, then the VLE’s time might finally have arrived.

Flipping learning involves releasing content prior to lectures. Reluctance to upload slides and notes before lectures still exists but the practice has been a recommendation for some time. Research shows it supports learning and fears of students not turning up can be allayed by keeping relevant content back for the face-to-face experience. The preferred medium for flipping is video; either recordings of lectures or alternative lecture-related resources with contact time being used for interactive discussion and group work.

There are a number of reasons why current interest in the flip might catch on:

The ability to rewind and repeat: internationalisation is often cited but while this might be helpful for those with English as a second language, user controlled video is useful for all.
Changes to the DSA: starting September 2015 this will require institutions to revisit the provision of teaching resources. Accessible text, image, audio and video, which can be customised to suit the user requirements, has long been a strength of digital materials. Flipped learning is an opportunity to revisit the design and delivery of online content and ensure inclusive practice guidelines are followed.
The Single Equality Act: requires a proactive approach; no one should have to request content in an alternative format – it should be provided from the start.
User generated content: increasing quality of video and audio recorded on handheld mobile devices, and presented via free video editing apps, supports low budget ‘good enough’ production. DIY multimedia has become a reality.
Academic digital literacies: the learning curve is getting steeper for those still reluctant to engage in digital ways of working but institutional interest in flipped learning may well lead to recognition that the adoption academic digital literacies requires investment in CPD time and resources.

Closer to home, Lincoln is installing a streaming media server with a site-wide license for camtasia relay; software supporting screen capture and voice over. Editing functions are limited but you can top, tail and chop. A multimedia powerpoint has become perfectly possible with educational licenses for the full Camtasia Studio less than £100.

Lincoln also has Blackboard Collaborate with the ability to record live synchronous video teaching with an interactive whiteboard, sharing desktop and internet tour facilities. A webcam, microphone and speakers is enough to get you started.

Lastly, there is the new Inclusive Digital Educational Resources working party which I’m chairing; under the Learning Support and Environment Standing Group. The remit is to come up with a set of recommendations to feed back to the Education and Student Life Committee for ensuring the digital learning environment at Lincoln is a fully accessible digital university.

Flipping the classroom might well become e-learning for the 21st century university.

Who’s tweeting now? @TELEDALincoln meets Twitter

Sue Watling / November 8, 2014 / social media, TELEDA social media and eresources

TELEDA is on Twitter. We’ve had our first Tweet Meets. These are synchronous events, also known as Twitter Chat or Twitter Party. Social media creates connections which can lessen the isolation of learning online and on TELEDA we’re learning how. Tuesday, between 8-9 a.m. and 7-8 p.m., and again 8-9 a.m. Thursday, colleagues were invited to pose questions using the hashtag #askTELEDA. Tweets were collected via Storify 4th November and 6th November

Setting up @TELEDALincoln has exposed my own lack of Twitter Literacies. I could tweet and follow, throw in the occasional hashtag, but my performance had no depth. I didn’t really understand how Twitter worked. I’m still not sure I fully get it – or if I need to. This reinforces how shallow our digital literacies can be. We learn what’s needed to perform online. We become good enough. The Tweet Meets raised a number of interesting questions:

Management of multiple twitter accounts for work and non-work subjects
Boundaries between professional and personal online identities
Profile image choices? (@TELEDALincoln is an egghead. I loved the suggestion it looked like a finger on the button!)
Ways to engage students with Twitter
Ideas and recommends for people/organisations to follow

There were also suggestions for the most appropriate hashtag e,g, #Tweetites, #Tweetettes or #Tweetpeeps I like #teledites but I collect fossils so I would. #twite-quette was been used with regard to manners and #tw_eat_ing for twitter at meal times. Clearly, creativity is another reason to engage with tweeting! #askTELEDA collated useful Twitter themed resources.

Ten Commandments of Twitter for Academics http://m.chronicle.com/article/10-Commandments-of-Twitter-for/131813
Twitter Top Tips http://www.slideshare.net/suebeckingham/twitter-top-tips
50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom
25 interesting ways to use Twitter http://www.slideshare.net/travelinlibrarian/twenty-five-interesting-ways-to-use-tw

Not bad for the first week! There are multiple reasons for engaging with Twitter, not least because it separates the hype from the reality. 140 characters encourages precision with words, attention to sentence construction, rethinking how to communicate via text. These are all useful transferable skills. Twitter is like following a blog but quicker. Another name for tweeting is micro-blogging. The choice of who to follow is influenced by shared interests. Like wiki’s which harness the collective wisdom of crowds, Twitter offers links to information and alternative perspectives. what’s not to like?

Ultimately, Twitter is what you make of it. An online identity has become a prerequisite of professional practice. It shows engagement with digital ways of working and encourages us to consider how our digital selves mirror and extend our personality. Although the internet supports anonymity and alternative construction of character, we’re as recognisable online as off. Even in 140 characters or less.

@TELEDALincoln

image from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/10306627/Twitter-IPO-14-fun-facts.html

Blogging is like the lottery, you have to be in it to win it

Sue Watling / November 7, 2014 / Academic Writing, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Not sure if it was me or the theme but my blog broke so I’m on the hunt for a new one. This raises the inevitable questions. Why blog in the first place? What are the benefits? Who reads it? Is there anyone there? Blogging is the TELEDA topic for 21st – 28th November. Blogging ties in with the TELEDA Reflective Journal and portfolio style assessment which asks for critical narratives of the TELEDA journey. This seems like a useful place and time for some bloggeration

Why blog in the first place?

Well, why not? In a digital society, an online presence says things about you. It suggests you’ve engaged with virtual worlds, have considered your identity in pixels, can demonstrate some literacies with text and images, use reflection to achieve deeper approaches to professional development. Above all, it indicates you’ve accepted the influence of the internet on higher education. Technology is here to stay and there is much work to do in order to better understand how to use it to enhance student learning. A blog is a good place for exploring and sharing your ideas, practice and research around these areas.

What are the benefits of blogging?

In squeezed times, where priorities are continually juggled, blogging offers a point in the week for pulling together the disparate strands of your working life. It’s an opportunity to focus on a single topic, try out a new idea, demonstrate progress – or find the value in lack of it which is itself a worthwhile exercise. Blogging encourages you to keep to deadlines, develop an appropriate style and learn to write with precision and conciseness. Blogging is a mirror of your professional practice, it’s an opportunity to take control of your image before someone else does. Blogging also has the potential for networking with like-minded people on an international scale; this sharing of ideas and practice can be both affirming and inspirational.

Who reads it anyway?

This is harder to answer. Any blogger has to be comfortable with the idea of blogging for an audience of one and the cat. Yet someone might come across your tiny space on the internet and you want to make a good impression, so the craft of blogging is important. Categories and tags help ensure your blog pops up on searches (always have this function enabled) and new readers are picked up from a blog address on your email signature, online profiles like Twitter and Linkedin or from business cards. You can use Google Analytics to trace traffic to your blog and discover which posts were most popular but overall, I think audience numbers are probably less important than the craft and practice of blogging itself – for all the reasons already cited – and there will be more.

Like all digital literacies, blogs are personal. They reflect who you are and what you do and everyone has different blog drivers. It’s like the lottery – you have to be in it to win it. You need to give blogging a try to discover benefits.

Hanging my digital errors out in public…

Sue Watling / October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 / EDEU, TELEDA social media and eresources

Online mistakes are public. In the real world you can fluff a line or take a wrong turn and it’s over and done with. Digital is different; permanently. I should know. I made a few this week! Not sure how many people noticed. Other than those who pointed them out. In public. Don’t you just love virtual learning 🙂

The start of any new course is challenging and TELEDA is no different. Unfamiliarity with the site, resources and participants combined with heavy workloads make it a stressful time for everyone. This week I’ve been reminded over and over of the highs and lows of e-teaching and e-learning. Hurray for the highs. They make it all worth while.

TELEDA social media and e-resources is a fully online course based on the principles of experiential learning. Each week participants take part in an activity and reflect, contextualise, align it to their practice. Activities involve the benefits and challenges of online learning (LO1), critical evaluation of digital resources for extending and supporting teaching and learning (LO2), demonstrating critical reflection and awareness of inclusive practice (LO3) in particular with the design or selection of an online learning activity (LO4) making critical and developmental use of the relevant published evidence-base (LO5). That’s TELEDA!

So what did I do wrong? Just because I e-teach it doesn’t mean I’m a techie whiz – as anyone observing me trying to get to grips with a second twitter account will testify. Here goes.

I spelt @TELEDALincoln wrong – which didn’t help when you’re inviting people to find and follow you.
I set a deadline for 31 December instead of 31 October – this would have meant introductions taking a bit longer than planned for.
I forgot the set the discussion forum for users to edit their own posts – so they couldn’t – then I forgot to tick the box allow users to subscribe to threads – so they couldn’t – and as if that wasn’t enough….well, I think I got away with the other one so I’m not confessing.
I set up a Storify of Tweets from Week One and the link shows a 404 error https://storify.com/suewatling/teleda I don’t know why. Key TELEDA: a view from Twitter into the 404 page search box instead. That works!
I made plans for TweetMeets between 8.00 and 9.00 next week but mixed my pm’s with my am’s and set it for evening instead of morning. I’m an early bird not a night one – this was so not what I intended.
Setting up @TELEDALincoln has exposed my poor understanding of how Twitter works – with a single account you can get way with it – with two there’s no where to hide – and I’m still struggling with the synergies between the two.

I thought if I made my own mistakes public, it might make colleagues smile – or maybe raise their eyebrows in despair. Learning online is less about the technology and more about the learning it generates. This is why reflection is key to the TELEDA experience and I know most of these errors are largely of the ‘more haste less speed’ variety. There’s been a few TELEDA hiccups this week, including Blackboard going down on Tuesday, which I knew about and maybe others which I don’t. I hope everyone has survived the first week more or less digitally baptised but unscathed. Here’s looking forward to Week Two.

image from http://knight.stanford.edu/life-fellow/2014/15-social-media-tips-and-tools-for-journalists/

It’s official! EDEU-cate are us…

Sue Watling / October 24, 2014October 25, 2014 / EDEU, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Uncategorized

EDEU has officially arrived! We’ve been percolating for a while. It started in June when the creation of EDEU was announced at the Festival of Teaching and Learning. By August we were packed and ready to leave our Bridge House home for new EDEU shaped adventures. On 1st September we moved into One Campus Way with new members of staff and a week later had our first EDEU-shaped AwayDay On Tuesday 22st October at @4.30 VC Mary Stuart and DVC Scott Davidson formally welcomed EDEU into existence.

We’re almost but not quite a full team. By January everyone should be in post and finding their way around campus; One Campus Way is good for exercise. There is an expectation EDEU will have impact. We will be implementing the Teaching and Learning Plan, Digital Education Plan and Student Engagement Strategy. As well as the institutional shapers of our remit, a key question is ‘What can EDEU do for you?’ To begin the conversation during the launch event, Kelly bought a big pot for ideas.

Suggestions were written down and left behind. They included a broad mix of teaching and organisational issues. We’re going to be busy! Not that we weren’t busy before but there’s an additional layer of expectation that comes whenever extra resources in put into place. Also new team conversations leads to new ideas in particular on supporting the development of multimedia resources and workshops around critical reflective practice and academic writing. It looks like exciting times ahead. In short, EDEU is a great place to be. EDEU-CATE are us 🙂