Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) – Page 4

Talk to the duck. It works every time!

Sue Watling / July 4, 2014 / digital literacies, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Last month I wrote about social media and the question of blogging has continued to call for answers. Why blog? What’s a rubber dock got to do with it? A comment on the post Imagine Baudrillard on Twitter suggests blogs may soon be old news – too long too boring 🙁 This was food for thought on the haul up and down the A15. Commuting is a great place for head space.

I’m MOOCing again. This time it’s e-leaning ecologies with Coursera. Dipping in and out with curiosity, looking for ideas for TELEDA and swapping notes with other e-learners interested in e-teaching. It strikes me how similar the resources promoting the benefits of educational technology are to those written over a decade ago, like Diana Laurillard’s Rethinking University Teaching (2001) or Garrison and Anderson’s e-learning in the 21st century (2003). I’ve just read an article by Graham Rogers on the use of technology in History written in 2004. Cited by Sage* as the second most read article in 2006, it could have been written today. Maybe blogs have some answers to promoting shifts to virtual practice.

The blog derives from web-log – lists of ‘interesting’ websites for sharing. It supports reflection. What did I do, how did I do it, what did I learn? Blogging helps make individual thought processes visible. A bit like having a mirror on the internet; one which surfaces your reflections on connections between new and existing ideas. Known as deeper approaches to learning, the process can reveal new ways of seeing – the ‘I get it’ moment which is meaningful on an individual level. While early adopters were making claims for the promise of technology to harness more effective ways of learning, they were heralding the potential of virtual space for what the Coursera MOOC has introduced as collaborative/reflexive rather than didactic/mimetic education. What has the duck got to do with it?

Rubber ducking is the epitome of blogging. It works like this. You have a problem. You ask a question. As you’re talking the answer comes to you so rather than constantly revealing what you don’t know or have forgotten to colleagues, you talk to your duck instead. The phenomena belongs to the process of debugging programme code and demonstrates the magic of verbalisation. The mind gets crowded. Sometimes you have to extract the problem from its cognitive space and put it into reality. In doing so the answer becomes clear and the duck never laughs at you.

Blogging is like rubber ducking. It’s a place for cognitive extraction. The process of fine tuning edits the superfluous to reveal core insights. It’s also about writing discipline. Set a word count and get your point across in x words or less. Or ramble in a text document then extract key issues. Blogging can be a powerful tool for introducing virtual spaces, supporting interaction and demonstrating evidence of learning – good for building digital literacies too. I hope blogging stays. It’s got a lot to offer. Honestly, talk to the duck. It works every time 🙂

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* http://alh.sagepub.com/reports/mfr7.dtl

References

Garrison, R. and Anderson, T. (2003) E-learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. Psychology Pess.

Laurillard, D. (2001) Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies. London: Routledge

Rogers, G. (2004) History, learning technology and student achievement: Making the difference? In Active Learning in Higher Education Nov 01, 2004 5: 232-247

Imagine Baudrillard on Twitter!

Sue Watling / July 2, 2014 / social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Restoring the lost art of conversation – what a sweetly quaint idea 🙂 In the world of texts, tweets and emails, this piece from BBC News suggests conversation is on its way out. Social commentators is they often have a narrow frame of reference. After all, how much ‘conversation’ was ever meaningful in the first place?

Maybe we haven’t ‘lost’ anything. Maybe it’s just got replaced. Blogging is an alternative conversation, albeit to an audience of two and a cat. A tweet is still a voice, albeit speaking to no one in particular. Times are changing. They always have. The power of words is their existence more than their mode of delivery. We recall the song not the singer, the lines from a poem, not the poet. It’s the words that matter. Conversation has always been elusive. Pinning it down on paper or screen has a value of its own.

In the BBC piece Professor Sherry Turkle warns of the danger of losing the power of speech as we once understood it. This is where my analogue roots are useful. I remember Turkle’s enthusiasm about MOOs and MUDs in the dark ages of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) via America Online and CompuServe. When digital communication was freed from barriers of clocks and geography.

This was hypereality. Experimentation with alternative ways of being. It was the time for reconsidering traditional, unitary concepts of identity. Step aside for postmodernism. Nothing reinforces a PM world like the internet. It’s such a shame the timing wasn’t better. Imagine Barthes and Baurdrillard on Twitter! The internet had no limits. Physical barriers were being dissolved and simulation was offered on a global scale. Adopting the ‘other’ opened the brave new world of Dona Haraway’s cyborg manifesto. These were exciting times because they were new. We’re all more cynical now.

Today being anything ‘other’ online risks the wrong kind of attention. Digital media has become the crucible of egocentricism but it’s no different from the me, me, me of face-to-face conversation. Online our thoughts, comments, observations can be put out safely with no arched eyebrows, frowning brows or tightening mouth to indicate disapproval or boredom. It’s easy. What’s not to like? The internet is where Christopher Lasch and Neil Postman collide.The egotistic personality is amusing everyone else to death.

Thinking abut the early forums in the 90’s reminds me of a story of an academic who wanted to discuss their research with a colleague 9,000 miles away but the chat forum for their topic got crowded and argumentative so they arranged to meet in American Patchwork Quilts instead. It was usually empty and here their conversations on theoretical quantum physics could continue uninterrupted.

Times are changing. Maybe it’s less about relearning conversation and more about learning how to talk online effectively instead.

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image from http://www.brian-downes.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Art-of-Conversation.jpeg

Talking Xerte pictures; should we cite, steal or DIY?

Sue Watling / June 27, 2014August 5, 2015 / digital literacies, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Xerte

I’m guilty of image theft. Digital images in general and this baby one in particular. Gimmicky I know but illustrative of the social impact of the internet; in particular on digital literacies and education. I cite a url to show I’m not claiming ownership but frustratingly, this might not be enough. The protection offered through the concept of fair use is not as much as we might think. EDEU futures need to include the C word – shhhh……..copyright.

At the Making Digital Histories ‘Talking Xerte’ workshops this week, it was suggested managing copyright requirements by DIY. Digital technologies make content production feasible and this is an interesting idea. Given time and a heap more creative talent, I’d be happy to adopt a DIY approach but it’s not without challenges and reinforces how guidance on using visuals in teaching resources would be a useful development area for the new EDEU team; maybe we could build a TELEDA or EDEU image bank. Digital pix are fun ways to develop digital literacies staff and students on the Making Digital Histories team can demonstrate.

I attended both ‘Talking Xerte’ workshops with presentations from Sarah Atkinson and Adam Bailey, University of Brighton; Bob Ridge-Stearn, Newman University, Birmingham and David Lewis, University of Leeds* all sharing experiences of students producing learning objects with Xerte – a free tool from the University of Nottingham. We talked Xerte, used Xerte and had lunch. A perfect model for any practical professional development event aimed at enhancing digital literacies and knowledge 🙂

Xerte is a resource which brings digital content together. Text, images, multimedia and hyperlinks can be inserted into pre-designed Xerte template pages. It isn’t arguably the most exciting of environments but like Blackboard, Xerte is about active learning; using tools to generate interaction with content and facilitate learning opportunities.

Xerte is free. At Lincoln it lives at http://xerte.lncd.lincoln.ac.uk Sign in with network name and password; examples and help resources on the login page. As with all things digital there’s a learning curve but once colleagues had a go, getting their hands Xerte (sorry, couldn’t resist!) they all saw potential.

The example below is one I put together to demonstrate different template page styles. It’s part information and part guidance on using Xerte. Quick tip – the size can be customised in the embed code. Direct link https://xerte.lncd.lincoln.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=2267

Xerte is a great tool for developing and enhancing digital literacies. It ticks all the essential skills identified by SCONUL in their digital lens for information literacies. Identify, Scope, Plan, Gather, Evaluate, Manage and Present digital information http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publication/digital-literacy-lens A key message from last week’s Festival of Teaching and Learning was to have a list of supported software for generating teaching resources. My suggestion is Xerte has an evidence-based and well deserved place on it.

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* All projects funded through HEA/JISC Digital Literacies in the Disciplines.

baby with ipad image from http://proservicescorp.com/wp-content/uploads/ipad_baby.jpg

PhD part-time; experiences of guilt and fear of social media

Sue Watling / June 23, 2014June 25, 2014 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

My blog is an exercise in disciplinary reflection plus an increasing need to write things down less I forget. Which happens a lot. I blame the Phd. Poor thing – gets blamed for everything. I blog under no delusions of fame or fortune, believing most bloggers write or an audience of one – themselves. This weekend I read a paper by Liz Bennett and Sue Folley from the University of Huddersfield called A tale of two doctoral students: social media tools and hybridised identities

Excellent advice for aspiring doctorates (thanks Jim Rogers) is to visit EthOS to see what’s been written in your area. I found Learning from the early adopters: Web 2.0 tools, pedagogic practices and the development of the digital practitioner by Liz Bennett which was definitely my area, so I approached the paper with interest. I share a blogging habit with a PhD log page and social media is a component of TELEDA2 so I was grateful for the paper’s references. I also tweet but am not good with hashtags. They feel like gatecrashing but #phdchat which sounds helpful. I might not be the only one struggling with guilt and fear!

The key message I took from this ‘insider’ account was using social media risks fear of exposure and loss of credibility but it was references to insecurity around academic identity which most intrigued me. I hung my ontological despair on the public blog line thinking it was safe. My epistemological challenges and PhD meltdowns were between me and the screen. I’ve had no problems laying bare my doctoral troubles – until today. I started to post a research paper and was overcome with doubt. I must have absorbed ‘experiencing social media as exacerbating [our] feelings of self-doubt, anxiety and exposure.’ (p6) All I could think was what if it isn’t good enough?

I’ve read scary accounts of PhD researchers becoming parents to their project, experiencing all the angst of letting go. It’s true. It happens! But what’s missing from the literature is the guilt of of carving out time to do PhD things like read, reflect, blog, write papers. There’s always a feeling I have to justify the time I spend on research activities during the working week. Like today. Blogging on a Monday? My to-do list is next to me and Blog isn’t on it. Neither is write the paper in the first place. I have more affinity with Liz Bennett and Sue Foley’s account of doctoral studies and social media than I realised but not only fear – for me it’s more about feeling guilty. Blogging and promoting your research emphasises time away from the ‘day-job’. Despite the fact it enables me to be research-engaged and informed, I’m feeling guilty – like my research isn’t important enough to spend time on unless its evenings and weekends.

The Tale of Two Students paper also describes how social media can help overcome the isolation felt by PhD students. I wonder if this is the same, better or worse for part-timers. Maybe somewhere on the internet there’s a support site for us. We’re the ones hanging on by a thread a la Berger and Luckman’s social construction of reality. One little snip and we all fall down.

This is my paper which is a culmination of my research so far. The asterisks denote reference checks required and the layout is preordained: four pages including references with single line spacing in times new roman 11pt eteaching – a pedagogy of uncertainty and promise

Phew – is it only Monday?

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image ‘borrowed’ from http://michellesteinbeck.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Guilt-Trip-Sticker.jpg

DSA changes; Oh Mr Willetts, what have you done?

Sue Watling / June 13, 2014 / digital inclusion, digital literacies, equality and diversity, social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

In April Mr Willetts announced on changes to the Disabled Students Allowance. Claiming these will ‘modernise’ the system, he calls HEIs to pay ‘…greater consideration to the delivery of their courses and how to provide support’ which should include ‘…different ways of delivering courses and information.’ The definition of disability in the Equality Act 2010 will be the new guideline for access to DSA. This states you are only ‘disabled’ if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

At the present time, DSA is awarded to a broad list of criteria including students diagnosed with dyslexia. Support for these students is being withdrawn. Reasons cited include ‘technological advances’ and ‘increases in use of technology’. Clever technology!

What Mr Willets is describing is inclusive practice. Taking advantage of the flexibility of digital information to be customised to suit user preference i.e. adjusting font shape and size, altering colour contrasts, listening to content read out loud and providing transcripts or textual alternatives to all forms of multi media. Institutions are being asked to ‘…play their role in supporting students with mild difficulties, as part of their duties to provide reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act.’ In other words. taking personal responsibility for providing accessible content.

If it were as easy as that Mr Willets, it would already be happening.

Back in 1997, Berners Lee and Daniel Dardailler, internet and www pioneers, had altruistic aims for information democracy. These two quotes are important. We need reminding lest we forget.

“Worldwide, there are more than 750 million people with disabilities. As we move towards a highly connected world it is critical that the web be usable by anyone regardless of individual capabilities and disabilities. The W3C is committed to removing accessibility barriers for all people with disabilities – including the deaf, blind, physically challenged, and cognitive or visually impaired. We plan to work aggressively with government, industry, and community leaders to establish and attain Web accessibility goals.” Berners Lee, T (1997)World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Launches Web Accessibility Initiative. WAI press release 7 April 1997. www.w3.org/Press/WAI-Launch.html

“The users in our project are the Web users with a disability, like visually or hearing impaired people. The needs for these users are to access the information online on the Internet just as everyone else. The impact of this project on the users with disabilities is to give them the same access to information as users without a disability. In addition, if we succeed making web accessibility the norm rather than the exception, this will benefit not only the disability community but the entire population.” (Dardailler, D 1997 Telematics Applications Programme TIDE Proposal. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIDE/f1.htm

In principle, I understand what Mr Willetts is saying but I doubt we are coming from the same place. I’ve tried to raise awareness of digital inclusion for some time. In practice I believe attitudes like these risk knee-jerk and exclusive reactions. Like lecture capture; sticking a 50 minute recording of a lecture online without content being made available in alternative formats.

Digital engagement mirrors ourselves as individuals. The provision of accessible online resources involves changing behaviours from unintentionally exclusive to inclusive when the affordances of technology are managed by individuals who all interact with it in different ways. The process of developing digital literacies is complex in particular when it comes to inclusive practice. History shows how the principle of ‘reasonable adjustments’ is often seen as the responsibility of someone else. It isn’t going to be as simple as it sounds in this statement.

Barriers to a higher education just multiplied and the principles of widening participation diluted.

Oh Mr Willetts, what have you done?

International student-made films about studying at the University of Lincoln

Sue Watling / June 11, 2014August 2, 2015 / Getting Started, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Last year I successfully bid for a small learning development grant from ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) to support international students making videos about their experiences at the university. This was the same time as I was completing a HEA/JISC funded project under the OER Programme to look at transition for international students. Preparation for Academic Practice with OER for International Students- University of Lincoln Both projects fitted well with Getting Started; the university’s programme of transition support for new students which gives them access to Blackboard prior to enrolment. My interest in transition is preparation for studying in higher education. Research into the first-year experience of higher education in the UK (Yorke and Longden, 2008) gives lack of preparation as a key reason for withdrawal and the history of Getting Started, which began in 2005, can be found here http://gettingstarted.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/what-is-getting-started/history/

Students were given cameras and asked to talk about their own experiences as if they were giving advice to new students thinking about coming to Lincoln. The seven films were put together in their final form by Ray Wilson, CERD’s Media Intern. All of them are around one minute in length and are presented below.

Read and weep. Pass it on. Digital exclusion is real – but invisible

Sue Watling / May 15, 2014May 19, 2014 / digital inclusion, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

So many people don’t get it. The nature of exclusion is to be invisible and digital divides are no exception.

7.2 million people in the UK have never been online and an estimated 8.5 million don’t have the skills to get any benefit from the online world. Social exclusion is linked with digital exclusion.

The message from Helen Milner, CEO for The Tinder Foundation who manage the UK Online Centres and Learn My Way; introductory guidance to getting started with computers. The UK Online Centre website figures an estimated 11 million in the UK don’t have the digital skills to benefit from the online world, and nearly 7 million of these people have never been online before. Those already at a disadvantage – through age, education, income, disability, or unemployment – are most likely to be missing out.

The CfBT Education Trust tell a different story. Beyond the Digital Divide: Young People and ICT, a report from SSRU, Social Science Research Unit, claim the issue of access in now irrelevant. Debate over the ‘digital divides’ centering on whether or not school students can access the internet is redundant – internet access is all but universal…the digital divide is a myth…. Digital Exclusion

An accompanying report, Providing ICT for Socially Disadvantaged Students says ‘…findings clearly indicate there is little evidence of a digital divide in the UK. They suggest the lack of access to ICT is not really an issue for school students, particularly those who are disadvantaged.’ The problem is the ICT is ‘often readily accessible’ but is not being used in an effective way from an educational point of view to enhance learning and increase attainment.

If you have BOB access, PLEASE watch this 1 minute 30 second clip from BBC4’s These Four Walls, broadcast 2 February 2014, the Joseph Rowntree documentary by Peter Gordon. These ‘stories of aspiration set against a background of poverty and austerity, with the aim of finding the real people behind familiar media stereotypes’ include digital exclusion.

It’s long been recognised digital divides are complex. Quality of access links to quality of use, but to suggest access is no longer issue goes against all the evidence from the community which shows the opposite. The invisibility of digital divides continues to trouble me. As does an apparent inability of researchers and educators to acknowledge this new category of social discrimination; an insidious exclusion because it renders people unseen and unheard.

If you’re a user of assistive technology the problem is magnified by the increasingly inaccessible design and delivery of internet content; from web builders who are inadequately taught and trained on the need for inclusive design, who are unaware of the diversity of ways in which people use computers, access the internet and need to customise their digital experience to suit their own requirements. The root of the problem is assumptions about computer use. I call this the MEE model. People using a mouse to navigate, eyes to see the screen and ears to listen to content. It’s all about MEE and very easy as Helen Milner says “…to be in a bubble and think that everyone is like us.”

Figures from the UK Online Centre suggest of the 7.1 million people who have never used the internet, 3.8 million are disabled. Someone with a disability is just over three times more likely never to have used the internet than someone with no disability.

In the Guardian Online April 22^nd 2014, Robin Christopherson, head of digital inclusion at AbilityNet, said: “Even surfing the web is still fraught with difficulties since 85% of websites and 80% of digital devices do not have accessibility features built in.”

None of this is new. Back in 2009, the Consumer Expert Group report into the use of the Internet by disabled people reported urged the information to address these issues. Little has changed except the report is hidden in the national archives and unlikely to surface – except here.

Consumer Expert Group report into the use of the Internet by disabled people: barriers and solutions at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/CEGreport-internet-and-disabled-access2009.pdf

Read it and weep.

Digital Exclusion

The e’s have it. On raising the status of e-teaching.

Sue Watling / April 26, 2014April 26, 2014 / Blackboard, PhD, Teacher Education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Technology Alphabet image from https://sd36edtechlead.wikispaces.com/March+2 I’ve been promoting e-teaching as a partner to e-learning. A colleague shared a paper which referred to e-teaching and I thought they’d beaten me to it, but the authors opted for Digital Practitioner. At seven syllables a time, I don’t think it’s going to catch on.

Being an e-teacher is part of the wider conversation about online identity.

On March 28^th I asked ‘When it comes to online ‘tutoring’ what should we be called?’ The term e-learning has become part of the vocabulary of education but e-lecturer is less common.

Who are we online? Teacher, Tutor, Trainer. Lecturer. Facilitator. Moderator. Instructional Designer. Just passing through…

We should bring back the ‘e’ as in e-learning, e-resources. e-literature. e-teaching, e-practice. The e’s have rhythm. e-ducation. e-scholarship.

Research suggests there are no clear benefits to educational technology; any difference made relates to the environment as much as the machine. This runs contrary to the rhetorical promise of ‘e-learning’ which mostly ignores the role of teaching. Recent literature has called for greater attention to educational design – as if that will make a difference. I hope it will. I still believe in the VLE.

I also believe in promoting the role of the e-teacher. Learning online is no easy, cost cutting option. An authentic experience takes time to build; it requires community, through interaction. My ABC model of Activity Based Content uses collaborative tools like wikis, blogs and discussion boards. There’s an absence of powerpoint. Learning online is tough. The loneliness of the long distance teacher/learner has to be experienced to be believed. I’m not sure you can teach online if you haven’t learned there. Which comes back to identity. To be an e-teacher is a skill. Subject specialism isn’t enough. You have to be digitally literate as well and this part is often missing. The gap between SEDA and ALT is more like a chasm.

VLE make great content containers. While teaching has moved on from behaviourist pedagogy, the VLE is still primarily used to support a transmission model of education. Recent online ‘training’ sessions with Blackboard Collaborate reinforce the dominance of the active teacher/passive recipient dynamic.

Looking back, VLE were embedded into university systems and staff told to get on with it. I remember. I was there. The advantage of being er…um….a little more mature… is the benefit of hindsight. There’s been insufficient attention paid to the reality of teaching online. Focus has been on technology and students. Now the time has come to privilege the teaching. The status of the e-teacher needs raising; it’s e-lementary and e-ssential to put teaching first.

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Image from https://sd36edtechlead.wikispaces.com/March+2

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Not waving but drowning – in an ocean of words

Sue Watling / April 23, 2014April 23, 2014 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

In an idle moment, I word counted my phd files. Sad but true. The total was a shock. Notes on the literature review, action research log, TELEDA reflections, random thoughts, unfinished blog posts – all amounted to hundreds of thousands of words. Like googling yourself, it was an experience both positive and negative. Trying not to think about the life I could have had, it raised issues like how many backups are enough, do I trust the cloud and why can’t I have a bigger H Drive? The real ‘omg’ moment was realising I’ve already written my thesis – at least seven times over.

I have the words. I’m sure most of them are the right words. Now they need putting in an acceptable order.

I’ve never been good at boundaries. Fridges not made for half empty bottles. For me anyway. Better not open the box of chocolates or uncork the wine unless you’re in for the duration. I’ve started so I’ll finish. Although it works less well with words. For me, they just go on and on and on….

There’s a danger my thesis could ramble on indefinitely so I’ve been giving some thought to containing it. I like structures but I’m an activist. An atypical contradiction. Always diving in without enough preparation. My writing is rarely planned. It just happens. I know it’s not the best way to work but I also know some drastic decisions are needed. THE END needs to be in sight. There are other writing projects to do. My PhD moved in and for a while it was ok but now it’s like a house guest who’s outstayed their welcome. The relationship is not so good. Nor salvageable. I’ve done everything I can. Examined the literature (never enough) collected my data (not quite what I expected). Now I need a plan. Something which turns all this work into chapters. I need a thesis road map. From here to there. With clear signposts and a vehicle which matches the terrain. Without some clearly definable direction and limits this will go on and on….

Somewhere in all the How To Survive books, I’ve read a Phd is a means to an end. A lesson in getting up close and personal with research tools and tribulations. It’s about finding your own perspective. There’s no escape from the ‘…isms’ and ‘…visms’ or exclusive language of onts and epists but I’ve spent long enough grappling with the ‘…ologies’ or getting deliciously sidetracked*. Every time I go online I find a path less travelled. I have to STOP NOW and think about putting together what I already have.

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* For example The Craft, Practice and Possibility of Poetry in Educational Research by Melisa Cahnmann in Educational Researcher for an alternative approach to academic writing.

Image borrowed from http://dickstaub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Drug-Rehab-Center-Help.jpg

Get critical, get digital, get EDEU…

Sue Watling / April 12, 2014 / digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I’ve been looking for supporting materials on critical writing and reflection for Getting Started and they’re not jumping off the page. Like digital literacies, I wonder if competence with these skills and practices are being assumed. Yet conversations suggest support would be useful. As CERD divides and EDEU* begins to form, I’m looking back. Learning development was part of CERD, until Helen Farrell, our Learning Development Coordinator, was an unfortunate loss through redundancy. The work Helen and I did lives on in the [unmaintained] Learning Development@Lincoln website, now evolved into a library lib guide page.

Maybe bringing academic and digital together under a title like ‘Learning Literacies’ is a new way to represent them. I’d like to bring these aspects of learning development into EDEU because I’ve been here before. Digging around in my archives shows how the content is relatively unchanged over the years.

In 2007 I created the Academic Writing Desk. Home page image below.

Here is the Academic Writing Desk home page for Essay Writing.

In 2009 I developed Snapshot specifically for Getting Started. This was designed to introduce new students to academic practice; namely academic writing, reading, thinking and a bit on reflective practice.

Here is the Snapshot page on academic writing

Helen Farrell and I created the Learning Development@Lincoln website. The Writing page is shown below.

These are all different ways of presenting similar information. An interesting insight into life in 2008 is the lack of reference to digital literacies in the Learning Development@Lincoln resources – but this could easily be put right.

EDEU will be new but not so new. Before CERD, we were the Teaching and Learning Development Office with a remit not that dissimilar to EDEU. The difference is how times have changed, how the university and the sector has changed. Internationalisation, social media, online submission, multimedia communication etc. With additional resource the new unit will provide capacity to pick up on some of the learning development aspects of these areas. Time to get critical. Get digital. Get EDEU. Bring it on!

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* EDEU Educational Development and Enhancement Unit

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