sue watling – Page 21 – digital soapbox

Open for business!

Sue Watling / March 2, 2013March 2, 2013 / Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age is a short course (30 M Level CATS) delivered and assessed entirely online (12 weeks teaching/12 weeks eportfolio construction). This course is an output from the 12 month HEA/JISC funded project ‘Embedding OER Practice’ at the University of Lincoln http://oer.lincoln.ac.uk. OER (Open Educational Resources) are teaching materials made freely available under a Creative Commons licence http://creativecommons.org. OER are stored in repositories e.g. JORUM at http://www.jorum.ac.uk/ and MERLOT at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm Open courses are called MOOC, Massive Open Online Courses, and leading platforms are Coursera at https://www.coursera.org who offer free courses on Arts, Sciences, Humanities, Maths and Stats and other subjects. MOOC platforms include Udacity at https://www.udacity.com/ and the Open University Open Learn site at http://www.open.edu/openlearn/

MOOCing is an excellent way to explore a variety of online learning designs and collaborations. Like OER, MOOC raise important questions of authenticity and certification as well as the future direction of higher education in a digital age. A comprehensive understanding of the open education movement, and a scholarly approach to the development of teaching practice in open and online contexts, are integral to T and L in a Digital Age, which also looks at online learning design, online communication, assessment and feedback and digital scholarship and literacies with assessment by eportfolio.

Effectiveness within virtual environments derives from experience of learning online. Education Technologies have been around for over a decade but adoption only comes from applying the tools to practice. Too often technologies are promoted without first hand experience and this course is designed to offer that experience in a supportive, collegial style.

The pilot begins on 4 March with no cost to UL staff. If you are interested in joining the pilot, or would like further information, please contact Sue Watling, swatling@lincoln.ac.uk

Revisiting Prensky’s digital native/immigrant debate

Sue Watling / February 17, 2013February 17, 2013 / PhD, social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Uncategorized

Prensky’s polarisation of students and teachers into digital natives and immigrants was simplistic, but the KIS (Keep It Simple) approach can be an effective stimulant for debate. Prensky has been responsible for a lot of debate. Dig underneath the surface and the core of Prensky’s polemic remains relevant. The question of how can the social shift to digital ways of working best enhance teaching and learning remains unanswered. Prensky was right. Those with Britannica feet are being replaced by generations whose only reference source is Google. The image below is simplistic but contains a valuable message for anyone wanting to see digital literacies and scholarship embedded into the curriculum. How can an institution manage change and adapt to the digital impact of technology?

Neil Selwyn* offers a realistic appraisal of Prensky, usefully reminding us of the social shaping of technology and how usage mirrors existing social structures. The literature of digital divides should underpin all policy and strategic approaches. In the meantime digital technology is becoming more pervasive. Soon won’t need the T in ICT; it will be taken for granted. It’s ironic how the strata of digital engagement has ‘shallowness’ as the deepest and widest layer.

The key problem is the solid curriculum. It seems unable to flex enough to incorporate essential requirements for the century, namely individuals who can tell the difference between knowledge, information and personal opinion – online. The skills to manage vertical searching and differentiate between authenticity and conspiracy theories are the core basics of digital literacies, alongside the presentation of self and parameters of access. However, embedding all these into the curriculum, and focusing on digital graduate attributes, is only part of the answer.

It isn’t only about student education, it’s about teacher education too. In 2001 Prensky was saying ‘today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach’ but a decade later no one is saying today’s education system is no longer training the teachers it needs for a digital age. Calling people natives or immigrants drew attention to digital technology for education, but as well as redesigning the curriculum for students, we need to revisit support and resources for the teachers who are implementing it, something Prensky, Selwyn and other contemporary commentators appear – so far – to have missed.

* Educating the ‘Digital Natives’ (2011) from Neil Selwyn’s Education and Technology, London: Continuum –available from Continuum (now Bloomsbury) Companion website http://www.continuumbooks.com/CompanionWebsites/book-homepage.aspx?BookId=158591

All MOOCed out…

Sue Watling / February 17, 2013 / Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

There isn’t a great deal happening over in DIY Multimedia. This is no one’s fault. I feel we’re casualties of a learning design which made assumptions about its participants. The designers may have failed to take into account the diversity inherent in massiveness and assumed what worked for them would work for all. Failure is never easy. I’m sure the OLDsMOOC designers would not want anyone to feel overwhelmed or defeated by their OLDsMOOC experience but I’m equally sure I’m not the only one all MOOCed out. Disengaged but somehow feeling inadequate at not seeing it through.

MOOCs remind me of the complexity of digital divides. These are not just about access to computers and the internet but the ways in which that access is facilitated. MOOCs require you to have access plus the prerequisite knowledge and experience to ensure you swim not sink. There is no one-size-fits-all model for digital inclusion and the same applies to effective participation in a MOOC. One set of learning materials is not going to fit everyone.

OLDsMOOC has been a challenging experience. I thought I was coping with unfamiliar landscapes, self-selection, self-grouping plus all the social media, but ultimately it hasn’t worked for me and I need to understand why. It’s easy to blame the multiple demands of the day job but OLD is my role so this was important to me. However, I think fundamentally I misunderstood the purpose of the course. Whereas I interpreted it as designing for online learning, it increasingly appeared to be about learning design using online tools – two very different things. Consequently the majority of discussions across the MOOC related to classroom/client groups rather than virtual situations. Also the mix of participants from training as well as educational sectors clearly had strengths in terms of sharing practice, but the theoretical nature of the course content raised the question of how OLDsMOOC approached one of the first rules of learning design – know your audience. This comment summed up the feelings of many:

Plus, I’m not a teacher, so some of this stuff starts even going over my head … I need to adapt the course activities to my level of experience and field.

The idea for DIY Multimedia emerged from a lack of central resources in my institution for staff wanting to create short video clips and podcasts. One positive outcome from OLDsMOOC is seeing the benefit of developing a similar DIY approach to Online Learning Design. In cash strapped times, reusable support and guidance are becoming necessities but they have to be flexible for a diverse audience. In the beginning, I had many reasons for engaging with OLDsMOOC, and have taken from it many valuable insights, but as week 6 rolls on, I’m not sure if any of this will be enough to see me though to the end.

Ironic collapse of Coursera’s ‘Fundamentals of Online Education’ MOOC

Sue Watling / February 15, 2013February 16, 2013 / MOOCs, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The collapse of the Coursera MOOC Fundamentals of Online Education (#foemooc) with an alleged 41,000 students, has raised mixed opinions. It’s clear many students were satisfied with their initial learning experience, claiming those without the prerequisite digital knowledge and experience were being disadvantaged. The design and choice of technology appears not to have suited everyone nor the requirement for students to structure their own learning with peers. This self-direction is similar to OLDsMOOC which is now in week 6. There have been similar difficulties with self grouping and establishing learning projects. Looking at the noticeable decrease in emails to the main OLDsMOOC list, there has been a significant drop-out suggesting much is still to be learned.

MOOCs are too new to have found their feet. Many of the free courses contain poor quality materials with the standard of discussions not conducive to effective learning. Quantity is often achieved at the expense of quality and the massiveness of open online courses is no exception. MOOCs also draw attention to the diversity of individual digital literacies. OLDsMOOC has been a challenge through its use of unfamiliar software like Cloudworks and Google Groups as well as its reliance of individual motivation and self-directed learning. Failure is often the best teacher and from the Coursera collapse will come new knowledge about MOOCing. The blog How Not to Design a MOOC and its follow up post The MOOC Honeymoon is Over: Three Takeaways from the Coursera Calamity are early examples. These offer three key pointers for institutions considering going down the MOOC path.

The instructional model is shifting to be student-centric, away from an institution or instructor-focused model
Sound instructional design is the; key to supporting self-directed learning experiences.
Prepare students for the Learning Experience.

No surprises here but they seem to have been missing from Fundamentals of Online Education; an irony not lost on those who participated and commented on its sudden and unanticipated demise.

Go do a MOOC today!

Sue Watling / February 11, 2013February 11, 2013 / Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Today is the start of Flexible, Distance and Online Learning (FDOL). This is an open course designed and delivered by two educational developers; Chrissi Nerantzi from the University of Salford (UK) and Lars Uhlin from the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden). Chrissie was one of the HEA’s critical friends on Embedding OER Practice and it’s good to see so many principles of openness embedded in FDOL. The course aims to enhance understanding of the benefits and challenges online learners and facilitators are facing and will model the use of freely available social media tools and platforms for enabling connection and engagement.

These are interesting times for openness, in particular the development of online learning. It’s week 5 on the OLDsMOOC (Online Learning Design with the OU) and week 3 in EDC MOOC (eLearning in Digital Cultures with University of Edinburgh and Coursera). FDOL offers a useful choice between core course involvement or having peripheral status (that’s me on the periphery) and although registration is closed, it’s still possible to join as a peripheral group member and experience how social media can enable and enhance education using a Focus Investigate Share (FISh) model of Problem Based Learning (PBL) design.

There’s only so many MOOCs you can fit into the week but so far the experience has been well worth the stretched days and weekends. The concept of elearning has been around for some time but is all too often still understood as putting lectures online when it’s most effective through active engagement and shared practice. The best elearning experiences emerge from online inter-activities and related discussions. Learning online is not easy; it requires motivation, stamina and perseverance – fortunately this has become something anyone with access can experience for free with a MOOC. For anyone interested in online learning design I recommend it. Go do a MOOC today!

Down – but not defeated…OLDsMOOC Week 4 summary

Sue Watling / February 8, 2013February 8, 2013 / digital exclusion, digital inclusion, digital literacies, digital scholarship, equality and diversity, social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Uncategorized

In Week 4 we’ve been sharing pedagogical patterns, engaging with the BOTWOO concept (Building On The Work Of Others), been patronised (‘This is what we all do as researchers, but do much less as teachers. Teachers don’t find it that easy’) and partially ignored (many in the DIY Multimedia group and in Cloudworld are learning designers external to education; I’m in HE but not a ‘teacher’. The diversity of participants seems unrecognised yet we’ve agreed on the importance of designing for your audience and learner context in week 3. It’s been a good week – honestly – but maybe not in terms of MOOCing. I don’t mean to be grumpy – but OLDsMOOC is reinforcing some of my attributions and I never like it when that happens. In Week 4 I investigated the PPC Pedagogical Patterns Collector using the Pedagogical Patterns Collector guide but didn’t get very far – other than finding myself here in Week 5 and looking at making prototypes of my learning activities. Now we have moved into the realms of fantasy. I don’t know how to access to a programmer but I know I want one!!!

As if this were not enough cause for frustration, then the Wk 5 video transcript simply depressed me. I wanted to capture the part of the Week 5 video where DL compares ‘...something you can do yourself like a PowerPoint or sequence in Moodle‘ to how you communicate your idea for a digital design to a programmer. I thought this was a useful reminder of the digital divide between technologists and the day to day experience of most academic staff, but got sidetracked on finding the transcript is an image and this defeats the objective of providing one. Week 4 transcript was pdf. Not ideal but it could be copied into Word albeit with inconvenient line breaks. Text as an image is useless and misunderstands the potential of digitally inclusive practice. http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Media_Accessibility_User_Requirements

In DIY Multimedia we’ve stressed the importance of alternative formats from the beginning and it’s been reassuring to share awareness of the importance of this element of learning design. Providing digital content in a single fixed format assumes the MEE Model of computer access where users work via a Mouse for navigation and their eyes and ears for images and sound. This fails to reflect the diversity of ways people use computers and access the internet but the MEE Model underpins 99% of digital content. Learning designers have a critical role to play in challenging the limitations of single formats while championing the inherent flexibility of digital data to be customised to suit individual requirements.

One of my many problems with MOOCs is the divide between their potential and the reality. I blogged last week on the EPIC 2020 and Turning Point 2012 videos which present the threat posed through mass education by MOOCs. Back in the late 1980’s, the founders of the internet heralded the internet’s potential for democratic access. This isn’t happening and some days trying to keep inclusive practice high on the agenda feels like hard work.

Openness of a different kind (to OERs and MOOCs)

Sue Watling / February 8, 2013February 8, 2013 / PhD

Thinking is a quiet art. It was quiet on the PhD front last year. Lots of thinking but not much to show for it. I knew my approach would have to change and a few weeks ago created a PhD page on this blog. I would make visible my thinking, reading notes and progress. However, keeping a reflective log is not the same as blogging which is essentially an art in conciseness. So I made the page private giving access to my supervisor and anyone else who wanted it. The problem is, I don’t like having a private page without being able to explain why. WordPress doesn’t enable the passwording of part of a page; it’s either private or not. So I’ve opened it up. The current week’s notes will be visible. After each supervision they’ll be added to a linked document although I’m not yet sure where that will be located. On reflection, this will be another incentive to keep up to date! 🙂

More wrong than right with MOOCing so far…

Sue Watling / February 3, 2013February 3, 2013 / social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

At first it’s difficult to tell if EPIC 2020 is a promotion of MOOCs or a warning. Ultimately it may be both. The message is represent a one way direction with irreversible impact on higher education as we know it. EPIC (Evolving Personal Information Construct) 2020 offers a vision of a future where academia is no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge, tuition obsolete and degrees irrelevant. The reason is the MOOC. The shift has already begun with MOOC giants Udacity, Khan Academy, Coursera, MITX and TedEd supported by Mozilla Open Badges as alternatives to accreditation.

Like conspiracy theories the video offers a powerful argument but via a limited view of educational transformation, one which only sells a single side of the story. Bill Sams is behind EPIC 2020 and Tipping Point 2012 its partner video. Sams is a Commissioner on the eTech Ohio Commission and an Executive in Residence at Ohio University. He operates a locked down Twitter account but has publicly commented on the online universities blog saying ‘My objective in producing EPIC was to create a piece that would cause people to consider and discuss that there are dramatic alternatives to the traditional education system’

‘Traditional’ education is continually facing alternatives; not least digital technologies and affordances. The move to Open Educational Resources (OER) through the open education movement is one such inevitable product of the internet. The rationale for OER is strong; in particular enabling students to make appropriate choices of HEI as well as supporting the widening participation and life long learning agendas. MOOCs have been tried but are less tested.

I’ve been engaging in MOOC behaviours for a few months; initially thinking it was a bubble ready to burst but also watching the increase in MOOC collaborations become media headlines. Currently on Week 4 of OLDsMOOC, I’m confident (at the present time) there is more wrong with MOOCs than right. They are massive, open and online but with no ‘one size fits all model’ they can only suit some types of learning and student preferences better than others.

What MOOCs are good at is stimulating debate around the wider issues of learning design and the role of higher education in the 21st century. It’s time to be more critical about MOOCs, and some of the possible drivers behind the MOOCing phenomena. EPIC 2020 and Tipping Point 2012 offer useful places for these debates to begin.

digital design, doodling and divides

Sue Watling / February 3, 2013February 3, 2013 / digital literacies, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Condensing the complexity of digital literacies is always a challenge. At the recent Student Staff Conference on Future Learning, I reduced them to professional practice with social media and how SM might best support teaching and learning. SM and the use of mobile technology has relevance for learning design. It can be disconcerting when an audience appears engrossed in their digital devices but banning them is not the answer. Finding ways to maintain engagement with the subject matter while constructing an agreed code of conduct is more realistic.

This short video on the potential of digital technologies for education is a useful introduction to the concept of digital natives and immigrants. First outlined by Prensky in 2001, the digital dichotomy is now acknowledged as more complex than division by age and more related to use e.g. the CIBER report on the research skills of young people and Carr’s polemic Is Google Making us Stupid.

A decade after Prensky, learning design has shifted from constructivism to connectivism, with both support and critique, but also some consensus. When it comes to technologies, education is less about the tools and more how they’re used. With regard to social media the debate includes appropriate and inappropriate behaviours, in particular in lectures and seminars. Wherever learning design incorporates ‘real-time’ collaboration and/or interaction via social media it raises issues like shopping on eBay or personal tweeting irrelevant to the subject. This is part of the wider digital debate around personal versus public online identities, which in itself is only one component of digital literacies. An agreed code of conduct may be one way forward. Most discussion forums now include guidelines for appropriate use and behaviour and finding consensus on the use of mobile technology in teaching and learning is no different to agreeing capital letters equate to shouting and personal abuse will not be tolerated.

Digitally literacies are embedded in individual personalities making it hard to pull out a one size fits all model of use. New technologies amplify the affordances of traditional tones like pen and paper. We all doodle in learning situations. Doodling in itself can be a form of reflective practice. Today there are more choices on the formats that doodling can take and learning design learning needs to take the ever changing nature of ways of being, seeing and doing into account.

The design of learning is a continually evolving science, not least because space between users and non-users still exists. Replication and reinforcement of digital divides is less visible, but in the push to use social media to empower student voices and flip the classroom, technology remains exclusive. In an increasingly digital society enabling/disabling binaries are more relevant than ever. The potential for digital exclusion should not be forgotten.

Baby image from http://babyurl.net/names/baby-domain-name/establishing-a-babys-digital-identity-by-registering-their-domain-name