The Technology Empire and the Struggle of the Educationalist

11:00 AM

This morning I set myself to explore some technologies to support the upcoming OLnet virtual workshops. The OU itself offers a number of them, such as Cloudworks, Cohere and FM. These are great tools that have been used successfully by a growing number of people worldwide. Nevertheless it’s important for us to keep an eye on what else the world finds interesting, and try to understand how best to make use of these tools for community enabling and to support our research purposes. In less than half an hour of what I would call a ‘very modest’ exploration, within my own social networking links, I found out three new tools. This time I didn’t even have the luxury of doing a Google search! I realised that in order to keep up with the technology available out there I would have to keep both eyes on it and not only one (excuse my Brazilian irony, I hope it makes sense lol). Just by reading some colleagues’ twitter messages and blog posts, as well as by looking at the technologies they use, I found out this whole new universe in front of me, that if I were to seriously explore, it would take at the very least the rest of my day time. Most immediately after this realisation and a quick look at the clock, I gave up searching for new technology and decided to think about how to make the best use of the tools that I already know. But is this the best option? I wondered. Maybe yes, I could get things done timely and effectively! Maybe not…. I could be missing out on better ways of doing things… and I would also be missing on the innovation side of things… the buzz tools, the buzz words, the DIM DIM, the DIGG, the Wave….

What a struggle. I concluded. And this is because I am not the most dummy of the persons when technology is concerned. Ok, I am more of an educationalist than a technologist, but even though… Perhaps the problem is not so much on ‘how’ to use the tools (at least for me), the problem nowadays is that there’s too much out there. It’s a Technology Empire. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, excuse me the techie ones. But that this infinity of options can be rather blurring, distracting and time consuming, oh yes it can. And when it comes to OER design, use and re-use, do people actually have that much time to spend on shopping around the options? In fact, perhaps one of the biggest appeals nowadays about shopping around for technology is that it’s free: you can download and play as much as you want with the tools without digging a hole in your pocket. And pardon my rather naive comparison, but I wish make-up and shoes were available in the shops and free in the the same way … 

Now, seriously, how on earth can we expect people to get grips with all that is around (even if it means two or three tools) and still produce wonderful reusable open content materials? And come up with great expertise and stories of success they can share with the world? And convince their institutions, colleagues and students that OER is a really cool thing to do? In most of the interviews with users I conducted for the past three years (teachers and general practitioners) they say something like this: “I love this technology, I really do. I think it is clever and could be really useful. But I sincerely do not have the time to invest in learning how to use it.” And they not rarely add “There’s a sea of options out there, I do not know what to choose and I do not even know where to get started. It’s a pity but it’s reality”. They are not alone. What to say next?

I still do not have a conclusion for my technology matter. It seems I am going round in circles, both counciously trying to get out of the technology trap (I like your term ‘trap’ Patrick) at the same time fascinated by the options these digital era gives me. And to give you an insider view, potential virtual workshop participants seem to prefer to use their own technology (they also develop cool things in their countries, you know?). So I wrote to my colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Orkut, MySpace, Skype and Messenger (have I forgotten anything?) and asked for their help; I asked them to suggest me some interesting virtual learning environments and social networking websites that could make great mediation tools to our virtual workshops, something they would like to use. Some of them sent me some total unfamiliar (to me of course), really  cool stuff they say, something we could never do without, all open source…. I must try them out… mustn’t I?

I need an aggregator, now I got it! I finally got the inspiration I was after, it only took me a blog post and it came my way. I am off to look for one now. Hum? The virtual workshops? The OER stuff? I think they can wait a little longer, I have something more important to do right now…

Explore, map and build: the 4 themes and their connections

Live blog post, 3pm

continued form previous post:

1) Models of technology:

All projects use a pool of technologies: social networking (e.g. Facebook, Ning, Cloudworks), repositories (OpenLearn, slideshare, flickr), mapping software (e.g. Compendium, Cohere).

2) Models of learning:

Common to all projects: an attempt to blend formal and informal learning;

Discussed: the individual and social dimension; structure and unstructured materials.

3) Models of community:

Various foci: content, social interactions etc. How do these things characterize different types of interactions between learners, how does leadership happen in these spaces? 

Common to the projects: personalisation, content-focus, forums, openness. The concept of the collective, learning design (as a community)

4) Models of design:

Different models of design and how these projects can be placed in these models:

4 types of design model: 

1) configuration and re-configuration design (creating new patterns from existing ones) LDI, SocialLearn, OpenLearn

2) Inspirational design (Creativity): OLnet, VirtualMphil

3) Effective design (for particular requirements):  VirtualMphil, TERGU, Atelier-D

4) Collaborative design & Cooperative design (teams of people doing things): OLnet, Atelier-D

We will continue the conversation at Ning/Cloudworks. Cloudworks is open to the public view. Photos of the day are available at OLnetChannel on Flickr.

Explore, map and build: brainstorming questions

Live blogging: 2:15pm continued from previous post: What does each project think they can get out of this workshop? What are the models of learning? What do we mean by communities? What about collaborations? In terms of technology, what are the experiences we have in terms of using different tools? How can we pull this knowledge together? How can we use tools to better communicate and support communities? How to explore ways of communication between OU existing projects? What are the dimensions of formal and informal learning within our projects? In terms of the design of materials, are there any approaches that would help us achieve what we want? How can we draw on the visual elements of design? And representations in various ways? Creative thinking and creative learning: how could people make the best of the opportunities that they are given? Social technologies allow for creativity: what is the effect of this creative on the learning? How can we build more authentic assessment drawing on users’ personal experiences? Boundaries: how to manage our identity in social networking spaces? How can we explore new ways of collaborating between the projects? 3 main themes: communities/collaboration, design/learning, technologies (formal &informal learning) 4 Models: models of learning: models of communities; models of technologies; models of design Big question: How to explore ways of communication between OU existing projects? We are now being divided into 4 groups, each group being a gatekeeper of each of the themes above. Our aim is to create a representation of how each of the 7 projects discussed today tackle the models above. More to follow….

Explore, map and build workshop

Live blogging:

11:25am

This morning we are gathered together at the Open University, The Design Observatory, Observation Space, to discuss the connections amongst the various OER projects existing in the university. By ‘we’ I mean representatives from projects such as OLnet, Atelier-D, OpenLearn, SCORM, LDI, iSpot, the TERG research group and the OU Library.

We started by ‘building’ a virtual representation of the projects, using traditional technologies such as pens, paper, glue and magazines! Interestingly, most posters have pictures that evoke meanings such as networks, international scope, multiculturality, technologies and mixed age-groups.

Andreia Santos started by talking about the main three elements of OLnet (Open Learning Network): networking, participatory research and fellowships. OLnet is an international research hub that aims to bring together OER researchers, providers and practitioners with a view to promote a space for the sharing of experiences in designing, using and re-using OER. It offers a website and links to tools such as social networking (Cloudworks), a mapping tool (Cohere) and blogging/discussion forums to support community engagement.

Lucia Rapanotti follows by talking about The Virtual MPhil, a research programme offered by the OU computing department aiming to support a diverse community through online technology, bringing together supervisors and students working at a distance. It involves a number of technologies, such as Second Life and Ning.

Andy Lane talks about OpenLearn as a test-bed, a project to develop OER on big scale (big ‘d’). It exposes the OU content and other people’s content , but it is also a platform in which many things can be done. There is the LabSpace and Learning Space, and overall 20000 download of study units every week. OpenLearn is a test-bed for learners, for students, for educators, for the universities. People can do things with it and they do not have to ask us to do so. Research continues to be an important element to the understanding of how useful these materials are for the community and actually what they ‘do’ with them. 

Theo Zamenopoulos talks about Atelier-D: Achieving Transformation, Enhanced Learning and Innovation through Educational Resources and Design. Atelier-D is a design studio (of materials), a place for people to work together in collaboration with tutors and other students. It is a social environment for collaboration. The big question for the project is how to use the technologies to understand the dynamics of a traditional design studio. They use a mix of technologies such as Facebook, Second Life, Compendium, Flickr and Elluminate. They aim to bridge the use of these tools and try and create an infrastructure for the students to work with. How to integrate the complexities of the use of all these technologies is one of the project’s challenge (and of OLnet too, I should add!)

The next project showcased is iSpot; a project interested in wildlife and providing a space for the sharing of ideas within a friendly community. It is a place for informal and mobile learning, in which individuals can use the resources provided to observe wildlife and share information. The research side of iSpot is to observe people in their journey, how they use resources and make connections with them, although they say it is a real challenge!

TERG (Technology and Education Research Group) is a research group in the communication systems department, focusing on the use of technologies for learning and on how to learn with technologies. It involves different people at the OU collaborating and sharing experiences. 

More on Explore, Map and Build to follow….

 

 

 

 

How to…OER

Live blog:11:25AM

New OER initiatives are popping out throughout the world.  It is often the case that institutions are looking for answers on how to get started as OER providers, and how to get their staff and students involved in the process. Today I am in a meeting with some Dutch universities, which are either already offering content online or considering joining the OCW movement. The questions they ask and discuss in the meeting are, in my view, very relevant for any institution contemplating offering OER. These are:

• What is the best audience for OER, learners or teachers?
• What sort of support should an institution provide to its staff to design OER?
• Should lecturers be involved in publishing the materials as well as developing them? Or should they only concentrate on designing, and the institution provide the infra-structure for publishing?
• How to involve lecturers in designing and providing content?
• What criteria to use to guarantee that the material offered is of high quality?
• What do lecturers have to know before they get started?
• With so much technology available, how to decide on the best media for OER provision?

OpenLearn has answers for many of these questions (perhaps all), but “does one size fit all’? By the way, this is one of the favourite questions of our new VC, Mr Martin Bean. And it is also something that OLnet is interested in finding out, evidence of best practices that can serve as a starting point for discussion around these issues. OLnet welcome ideas, experiences and stories to share with the community.

Hewlett OER meeting in Monterey

The annual Hewlett conference on Open Educational Resources (3-5 March 2009) has just finished. It has been a great conference for us as it provided a platform to launch OLnet and the team from the project (Candace Thille, Grainne Conole, Andreia Santos and myself) had quite a high profile in kicking off the Wednesday sessions and bringing things together at the end.

The main challenge for us was that we used Cloudworks throughout the conference. This did make us a bit nervous as the software is still alpha and in development by Juliette Culver alongside the olnet.org site being built in Drupal by Nick Freear. there are a few rough edges (mainly edit limitations and user interface design) but overall it was a great success. The aim was to create a conference experience that persists and it delivered: there is now a great collection of comments, clouds, interviews and feedback on cloudworks for the OER Meeting, Monterey discussions. I was especially impressed by the way the hosts (Ruth Rominger and Gary Lopez from the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education) adopted Cloudworks not just for this conference but also for their own NROC conference that preceded it. They took ownership of the site and had a great idea in organising a team to report alongside the attendees. Those students (led by Jonathan Lopez) did a very good job.

It is also worth reflecting on why we were able to get Cloudworks adjusted to our needs so quickly. We needed a site that could handle video, slides, audio, live twitter streams, blog aggregation, etc. In the past that would have meant a lot of setting up – now though we very much drew on the power of embedding and used public sites (YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, internet archive) alongside homegrown tools Compendium and Cloudworks. A little HTML goes a very long way!

We got a lot out of this experience with some real feedback but also initial data for our research. It shows the value of being brave and embracing the go with beta (ok alpha in this case) appraoch of Web 2.0. We are now discussing ways to use these tools to make ideas persist and are hoping to find a way to run a distributed event across the time zones.

For OLnet we now can tick off a whole set of early milestones: launch, leaflets, day-one collaboration system, input from the community and some connections with people wanting to feed into our sub-projects.

Research 2.0: researching the open world

Afternoon session of OLnet/CREET workshop

Martin Cooper talks about research bids. Martin describes the difference between novice and experienced bidders and focuses on the sorts of support that the university must provide to novices. There is a need for right timing when putting a bid together, where the ‘bright idea’ must be included in the work plan timely. Martin argues that researchers would be able to put forward many more bids if there was a higher level of administrative and project management support offered by the Open University. Martin was asked: How happy would you be to have your proposal out there in the world? He said yes, not a problem, whenever there are no confidentiality issues.

Kim Issroff was the next speaker on business models for open educational resources and web 2.0 research. A business model, as she explains,  is a framework to create social and economic values. It should sustain itself and generate revenue. Business models for OERs – various possibilities. Scholars that discuss these include: Chang, MIlls & Newhouse; Stephen Downes; Clarke 2007. Kim asks whether we do value more what we pay for and yet nowadays most things are offered for free (open source, open content).
Research questions arising:
What is the difference between business models of open source software and open educational resources?
What happens when we get to OER saturation point?
Is a financial model appropriate to think of open educational resources?
Will technological developments chagne these financial models?

Next, Chris Pegler talks about OER research beyond the OU: spotting opportunities. According to Chris, there are various opportunities for researching the use and reuse of OERs  in real communities of practice, such as TESSA (Teachers Education in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The day concluded with a group discussion of the outcomes of the day.

Interviews with all speakers sumarising their talks are available in the OLnet YouTube channel, with the tag ‘OLnet: Research 2.0′.

Research 2.0 – research in an open world

At OLnet/TEL day workshop. The group discusses what it means to be a researcher 2.0 .

Martin Weller presents his session on Elluminate and and points to the importance of trying and exploring new media and innovative ways of publishing and sharing content.

‘Liberate the archive’ is Martin’s message to the Open University. The community could consider more ‘distributed research’, with a set of interesting research questions generated by the community. Share results in a wiki for example, and blogs to overlap and share parallel conversations.

OLnet – designing a network of OER research

The aim of OLnet (Open Learning Network) is to establish a network for information sharing about OER research. Questions such as ‘How can the design and reuse of OERs be improved?’ and ‘How can we build a socio-technical infrastructure to serve as a collective evolving intelligence for the community?’ are the heart of OLnet’s  interests.

Launched in January 2009, OLnet is in its very early days, but already planning a number of initiatives to start up its engagement with the research community. A fellowship program is being structured, in which researchers from all over the world will be able to invest their expertise in researching and sharing OER best practices and challenges. Alongside the fellowship program, OLnet first event will take place at the Open university in Milton Keynes in February, in which the OU community will have the opportunity to join the network and share experiences. The OLnet website is http://koi.open.ac.uk/olnet

CETIS – VLE session

Phil Barker’s session [live blogged - needs cleaning]
on The Learning Content Management

Why do we still have VLEs? What is the reason that we use such systems rather than something focussed on content managment. This might just be a way of labelling but for OpenLearn where we adopted Moodle it did have an effect. On the plus side it meant that we led with a system that could support the individual learner and had tools that could support collaboration. On the minus it meant that tools that dealt with the sharing and management of content were not a strong as they might be. In terms of positioning OpenLearn using Moodle has been very helpful but now we have the content itself there is a good argument for providing a more managed environment.

In this session there are echoes of my own past – Phil Barker, Stephen Vickers & Richard irby are all ex Heriot-Watt people as am I.

Stephen is now at Edinburgh University and described the work he is doing to assess how they should/could adapt to a future VLE if they move from their current use of WebCT. He had analysed the way tools were used on WbCT and found that many were using simple tools with something under 10% using the novel and innovative tools.
Comments on strengths often referred to integration with other tools rather than the VLE itself. Weaknesses also tended to not be about functionality but instead user interface and reliability.
The key lesson then is reliability and workflow (marking) are concerns along with notification, content management, collaboration (between systems – perhaps interoperability ratehr than collaboration) and empowering student learning. One item was also the opening up of access to content – avoiding the VLE becoming a silo for content.

List of roles of VLE:
Authorisation
Registry
Roles and permissions
Group tool
Conditional release
Combining tools in learning sequences [Learning Design!]
Work management tools
Tracking student activity
SDK for integrating with other systems.

Other things are then added on beyond that.

Richard Kirby – CAPDM talking about single source publishing.

Capdm is a model as a design and information model. Capture/Author/Publish/Deliver/Manage
Single approach to store everything in XML (Docbook) with extension. Added a question format (pre -QTI but similar). Capture from Word but also author directly into XML aware editor.
This is similar to the process that OpenLearn has followed, however the OU adopted its own schema. I have wondered whether the Docbook format would be an alternative or mappable from the OUXML schema. Not sure but could be worth investigating?
Richard also described some neat features such as automated table of contents that could be used to keep track of e.g. learning outcomes. MSWord documents can be converted with “80%” accuracy. The content is then managed through RCS version control with linked multi-lingual versions to help pass information efficiently to the translators.

Sarah Currier from Intrallect covered the repository aspect. A run through of the features that are offered perhaps shows how a move to a repository approach could bring the availability to a lot of tools. Comment that there needs to be a person who will take responsibility for the repository aspect of a service including the metadata side. Sarah also pointed out that repository based initiatives needed institutional support as well as project support.

Mark Stiles took a broader view – pointing out the eLearning is now deprecated. His personal history showed mix of success and that full use of VLEs remains the excpetation (as reported in UCISA surveys. His current view is that learners will opt out unless we can provide something better or be prepared to “let go”.

Current work is using the Hive repository with XCRI not just for content but also to bring in validation comments and course descriptions. Approach to allow different solutions and sustain innovation.

Tony Hirst,
Showed figure:ground as an analogy for how people react to Web2.0 (the classic vase or two faces). Medium:Context is Marshall McLuhan’s take on this. Equally for the PLE – it is not just the media it is the context.
PLE v VLE
Personal – Institutional
Portable – Monolithic
Social – Privare
Lesson – Course

There are lots of tools – cannot tailor to all of these but need to be aware of them (not know them in depth). Do not see it as institution against the student. Key to working with all these tools though is RSS as a way to move content around. An even easier version is the embed code (e.g of the slides on slideshare such as Tony’s own talk – BUT this tends to be stripped out.

As an example he talked about Jim Green’s wordpress_mu use to provide easy learner blogs and republishing. This also interoperates with MediaWiki to pick up best http://tinyurl.com/6s92gw

VLE to SLE (S=Social, Syndicated, Scruffy)