#Bbworld15 – sue watling

#BbWorld15 final reflections, the virtual versus the real

Sue Watling / July 27, 2015 / #Bbworld15, conference, PhD, social impact of the Internet

Our internet enabled lives brings everything to us via the screen. This makes it easy to forget the delight of an original experience. Delight was a BBWorld word. Not an adjective I’d have associated with VLE but Jay Bhatt used it a number of times in the opening keynote. Does Blackboard delight me? Probably not. Frustrating and at times upsetting maybe – but not delight. I tell myself affordances matter more than appearance.

However the association does reinforce how we’re all in relationships with our technology. If in doubt, go to work without your phone. Analyse what this feels like. The relationship between you may be more deeply complex than you realised. Today, free public wifi is increasingly available and we take connection for granted but in the convention centre I couldn’t log on (frustrate, upset etc!) so decided to go solo, aware that wherever I was, at least 75% of people were head down in active engagement with the internet, dividing their attention and multiple tasking. I describe myself as having analogue roots, realising as I get older, this is something unique. Soon no one will be able to tell it like it was at the beginning – in the pre internet days. I find this more alarming than delightful.

Conferences are only ever a brief visit to a different place. Your experience of any cultural difference is limited but often there’s a gap between registration and the opening session plus a night flight home gives the best part of a day to get out and about. BBWorld seemed a long distance from Washington DC although maybe through US eyes it was next door. I met people from mid and western states who’d hopped on a plane to be there like we’d catch a bus. The hotel ran a shuttle to Union Station so I did my homework and bought a map.

I tend to believe the real is an improvement on the virtual copies we’re becoming accustomed to in particular with art, for example any painting by da Vinci or Botticelli has a quality which gets flattened out in the digital or paper versions. During a brief sprint around Washington’s National Gallery of Art I looked at Wind from the Sea by Andrew Wyeth and realised the digital copies I was used to seeing had the opposite effect. The painting looked better online than face to face. I’ve been trying to analyse this ever since.

It’s an image of net curtains blowing in the breeze. Being net they’re translucent making it easy to see the countryside beyond. In the virtual versions I’d been struck by both the simplicity and photographic quality of the image. Seeing it in the real was like gestalt in reverse. The whole was less than the individual parts, in particular the fine, thin brush strokes of the net curtains foregrounded in black lines. As a photograph can focus on what is closest to the lens and blur what lies beyond, so this had the same effect. The virtual gave you the overall the image while in the the real, this foregrounded layer stood out and prevented me from taking in the whole picture; an effect which is completely invisible in the copy.

Virtual environments widen opportunities for educational participation, student centred choice and life long learning, but making the most of internet enabled education requires sophisticated digital literacies. Not only do we need the skills to authenticate what we find online, we also need to know the difference between the real and the virtual. Both my analogue roots and digital inclusion soapbox keep me grounded with continual reminders of the socially constructed nature of digital connections. The impact of the internet is a subject we’re all involved in with regard to education but the extent to which we reflect on it is less well documented. Digital capability frameworks are bringing in issues of digital identity and the permanence of digital footprints, but the attention we give to cultural change is still minimal. Few curriculums include critical reflection on the social impact of the internet on their subject discipline or how individual digital practices exclude rather than include participation.

The value of conferences like #BBWorld15 is the time and space they give individuals to engage with their own areas of expertise. What they could do more of is give time and space to the wider implications of teaching and learning with regard to the implications of working with the virtual versus the real. At the National Gallery of Art there was an exhibition by impressionist painter Caillebotte which included The Floor Scrapers, a painting which first showed me how art could substitute photography. This was an unexpected surprise and – to use Jay Bhatt’s word – a total delight – an experience very much improved in the real over its copy in the virtual world.

Washington DC landmarks are iconic to a degree you feel familiar with them. It must be similar for people visiting London for the first time. Using the virtual/real duality I’m reassured that for me (with the exception of the scaffolded dome of the US Capitol) the instances of the real had a more powerful effect than the virtual. The challenge for us all is to ensure virtual learning experiences are equally powerful – with affordances which at times exceed – the experience of learning in traditional environments which are face to face.

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

Sue Watling / July 25, 2015July 27, 2015 / #Bbworld15, conference, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

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.

#BbWord15 part four; the three C triangle of institutional adoption of technology

Sue Watling / July 25, 2015July 25, 2015 / #Bbworld15, conference, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

At #BbWorld I presented and took part in a panel on Institutional adoption of technology; a double opportunity to disseminate early research findings. Last year on the west coast for BbWorld14, an 8.00 a.m. slot was considered an advantage but not on the east coast, as I was told afterwards. Here people take time to get going first thing so we suffered a bit from numbers. Having said that, it was a large room and there were lots of questions, plus what has been really rewarding this week is the general interest from everyone I spoke to about the subject of institutional adoption. In the panel session I talked about TELEDA, how its multiple layers offer opportunities to experience Blackboard from the student perspective, while the stress on critical reflection – transferring the experience to individual teaching practice – appears to be developing an evidence based shift in the way academics view Blackboard as a technology for enhancing the student experience.

I recorded the presentation the night before using Camtasia Relay on my laptop. This is available to everyone on the University of Lincoln network. Download it from the Software Centre and it’s a quick way to record a narrative over PowerPoint slides. I opted for providing captions because apart from being inclusive, I appreciate their value. I find it hard to learn by sound or image and prefer words instead. There lots of reasons why alternative formats benefit the learner experience but creating captions take time – there ‘s no way around this. It demands a shift in attitude and practice. In the same way you wouldn’t upload a textual learning resource with half of it missing, audio and video transcripts are an integral part of the whole resource. Relay provides automatic captioning but you only have to switch on YouTube captions to see the nonsense voice recognition generates and Relay is the same.

This is the first slide of my presentation. I tell people this is me because as anyone who works with me will confirm, if the technology can go wrong its me it goes wrong with.

Right now I’m experiencing familiar frustration. The video is stuck in Relay. I can’t find a way to embed it into WordPress. Maybe I can’t? I don’t know. There’s no one to ask for help and I’m feeling pressured. I know what I want to do. I know it should be achievable but I can’t see how to do it and I’m running out of time. Does this sound familiar? If you are a digital education developer then you’d probably be ok. If you are an academic who views technology with a mix of awe for its capabilities but fear and dread with regard to your own confidence then you’ll identify with this. It’s part of the massive shift needed to adopt VLE. Without empathy then support is useless.

So back to the presentation. This is what I did with the how and the why of it.

I’m three years into the data collection, on the final set of interviews. Digital adoption is complex and involves at least three criteria; capabilities, competence and confidence.

Underpinning these three C’s are other findings which the data analysis appears to support. These are listed in the image below. It’s the final bullet point which I think lies at the heart of on-campus digital divides between those with the three digital C’s and those without. The literature shows how e-learning and the student experience has been privileged over the staff experience. While some say e-teaching is implicit in e-learning, I would argue than unless it is made explicit there is a risk of making assumptions about baselines and starting points, which in turn will lead to initiative failure.
PS Finally worked out the connection between Relay and WordPress and embedded the code below – which gives me the message ‘Security Error’! If the technology can go wrong then it’s me it goes wrong with….

#BbWorld15 part three; presentations

Sue Watling / July 25, 2015July 25, 2015 / #Bbworld15, conference, digital inclusion, equality and diversity, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The focus on reimagining education to fit broader cohorts – reshaping itself for students rather than students reshaping themselves to fit traditional offerings – is making tangible differences to approaches to virtual learning and a number of presentations at BbWorld15 included digital accessibility. The sessions were well attended and offered pragmatic frameworks where the rationale for changing practice was a given. Sessions had less emphasis on the ‘why’ and more about the ‘how’. It’s like the reality of widening participation to an eclectic student base, including people with varying disabilities and impairments, is accepted almost without question. Of particular note was the high profile given to veterans returning to education. Diversity was not openly questioned. Instead I found a genuine interest in how to ensure inclusive practice with online learning resources.

Henrietta Spiegel offered steps to make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF formats accessible and included useful examples of the rubbish generated by YouTube’s automatic captioning system. Come on Blackboard. Invest in voice recognition software and you’ll be onto a winner. Marlene Zentz, from the University of Montana, had student Aaron Page demonstrating Jaws screen reading software. Thanks Aaron. For anyone not understanding the value of technology for visual impairment, you may have taken them over the learning threshold with your real life examples of what happens if Heading Styles and meaningful text links are not used. It isn’t technically difficult. It just means use Heading Style 1,2,3 etc in MS Word and avoid the words ‘click here’ in a URL. No pictures unfortunately. I’m hoping all the presentation slides will soon be available online.

David Rathburn from the University of Cincinnati was a allocated a 5.15 slot but it was still well attended. This was the only session I saw which provided a handout – a useful reminder of how helpful this when information and experience overload in developing! I nearly cheered out loud (but I’m British) to see the quote from Tim Berners Lee on how the ambitions of the early internet pioneers was to create a digital democracy. Sad therefore that nearly 30 years on, digital divides are wider and more invisible than ever before. However, if digital educators can ‘get it’ then the future is is potentially a more inclusive one.

For me, accessibility sessions like these are inspiring. Digital inclusion is not difficult, it just needs a shift in alignment from assuming everyone operates in digital environments in the same ways you and your immediate colleagues do and a more critical ‘think before you link’ approach when uploading content to VLEs.

Closely associated to the subject of inclusive practice is multimedia. Many of these sessions were standing room only which emphasises the value being placed on audio and video learning resources. I liked the idea of using a video in site announcements and discussion threads. Blackboard have recently acquired VoiceThread so it would be useful if some of VT’a simplicity was incorporated into Bb. My TELEDA courses have raised a number of multimedia type issues. Many academic staff don’t have access to a webcam or a microphone or even a quiet place to make recordings; something reaffirmed by others here this week. (One session I missed was about developers carrying their tools in backpacks – not ideal but maybe a potential solution.)

A Poll carried out within one session – image on the right below – also reaffirmed the on campus digital divides I’m looking to narrow and bridge with my research showing an almost nil representation at the conference from academics/faculty.

A multimedia explosion has been created from the affordances of user generated content, the shift of media production from professional to amateur and from fixed studio to mobile (and personal) devices. Blended delivery and flipped learning are all creating pressure for more interactive resources. A starting point is to raise awareness of OER content and efficient ways of embedding multimedia into Blackboard sites. The next step is to look at creating our own. You don’t need to be a professional – content can be ‘good enough’ to still be effective. It’s the learning design rather than technical expertise which makes the difference.

Part of the problem is the need to rethink the traditional boundaries between ‘technology training’ and ‘teacher education’. This was the subject of my presentation and there is more information on this in #Bbworld15 Part Four.

#bbworld15 part two; panels

Sue Watling / July 24, 2015July 25, 2015 / #Bbworld15, conference

It was publicly suggested Jay Bhatt should smile. I wouldn’t have noticed but looking at the photos you can see why it was suggested.

Blackboard is in town. A small town. Blink and you’d miss National Harbour. There’s a couple of streets, one giant eye of a wheel and the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Centre. That’s all folks. The only similarity with Washington DC, where you might have expected to be if you didn’t do your homework and read the small print, is they’re both on the south side of the Potomac River. Squinting through the heat haze from my window I can just make out the Washington memorial on the horizon – but the country is flat and it is the tallest stone structure in the world.

The Convention Centre exists in a bubble of plate glass and steel. Over three floors – no maps provided – I walked miles down endless carpeted corridors and up complex marble patterned steps where each one merged into the other. National Harbour is underneath a flight path. Every minute a supersize-me passenger plane descends along the line of the river. That’s a lot of people flying into one single city every day. Multiply by all the cities in the US to feel small and insignificant. America does this to you.

Meeting Blackboard face to face can be daunting. They’re a multinational corporation. Education is their business and profit the name of their game, but underneath all the razzmatazz you can always find people like me, who believe in the power of VLE to make a difference to the student experience. Choice about time and place of access, widening participation, student centred independent and lifelong learning – these are the thoughts you need to hang onto, especially when you’re full of flight flu and your eyes are blurred because your eye drops have leaked all over your suitcase.

The official Blackboard messages contain few surprises. Metrics, data, analytics, even bigger data, more analytics, workflows, leverages, income streams – but there were some great presentations (more in #BBWorld15 Part Three), cool demonstrations (Collaborate is looking good!) and two excellent panels.

The student panel was given a main slot. Great idea! Coming from the University of Lincoln, where students as co-producers and contributors of their own education and wider institution (see http://edeu.lincoln.ac.uk/student-as-producer/ for further information) it’s easy to take a high level of student engagement for granted. It’s only when you hear it being talked about it as something new and innovative you realise not everyone has moved as far down the ‘students as partners’ path as Lincoln. Panel members were

Zak Malamed, Founder and Executive Director of Student Voice,
Joelle Stangler, Student Body President at the University of Minnesota,
Aaron Wagner, Georgetown University,
Ifetayo Kitwala from Baltimore School for the Arts
Kunal Bhadane, University of Maryland.

Kudos to all of them for presenting such different but important views of the student experience. All should be well with the world if these are its future leaders.

The second panel the next day consisted of

Richard Culatta, Director of the Office of Educational Technology in the US Department of Education,
Amy Laitinen, Deputy Director, Education Policy, New America,
Kent Hopkins, Vice Provost for Enrolment Services, Arizona State University
Kris Clerkin, Executive Director, College for America at Southern Hampshire University.

One of the resources on an early TELEDA course was Richard Culatta’s TED talk – Reimaging Learning.

Key points I took away from the second panel were to ditch the phrase non-traditional and use post -traditional student or new learners; as they now represent the majority of higher education enrolments. Education should fit around the learner because life happens and gets in the way of locked down routes and expectations. I liked the phrase ‘This is a wind me up and watch me go question‘ – it reminded me of my digital soapbox which is always ready to make an appearance – and technology should be like GPS i.e. give a choice about the road ahead and then seamlessly replot the route if the driver takes a wrong turn.

Lastly, the keynote by Adora Svitak was inspiring and the examples of Adora’s speaking style on YouTube show why https://www.youtube.com/user/adorasvitak

What I liked best was how she was one of the few people during the week to actively engage the audience, encouraging us to take out our phones and tweet answers to her questions which she then tracked live on stage. The surprise was the low number of people who put up their hands to say they would join in – maybe most were like me and couldn’t get onto the Blackboard wifi which effectively silenced me digitally – but did mean I was one of the few during sessions whose head was positioned at 180 degrees.

More about the presentations in #BbWorld15 Part Three.

Keynotes and panels are available to watch on http://www.bbworldlive.com/