Rethinking Dissemination in Educational Technology Projects
What is the purpose of dissemination? For most of the projects that I have been involved with dissemination is about telling people about the project. But this idea of dissemination can be traced back to when the web was a unidirectional medium; most conferences in this field have been around, at least, since the birth of the internet. For most of the 90’s and the early part of this century to disseminate a project the most effective way was to go to a conference and hope that more than 4 people turned up to your presentation or workshop (I have been to several where that was the case, and in one particular case there were only the 5 presenters giving 3 papers in total and myself as the session chair).
In many of the bids that I’ve read there is an almost Pavlovian response to the question ‘how will you disseminate your project?’ Most bidders give you a list of conferences that they will present at (and assume that they will have their paper accepted – and of course some conferences will take as many papers as they can because they need delegates).
But how does this activity help? The best that can be hoped for is that someone asks you a question, and tells you that they may try your idea in their institution. And most of the time that is only way you’ll know if the project is having any kind of impact.
But what if… Instead of taking the team to XXX conference, which if there are 4 people could cost upwards of £3,000, you used that money to run 4 seminars/workshops in different institutions where you knew that people wanted to try your project? This approach is something that I trialled with my Users and Innovation Programme, and am trying with the Institutional Innovation. Instead of making dissemination a passive or serendipitous activity we are asking that the project identify partners and work closely with them to help them test their assumptions and trial the project.
Of course this relies on having people know about the project, and that was often done by mail list or at conferences. That need no longer be the case. I know the activities of almost all of the projects I manage through their blogs and tweets, and I’ve even been to a few webinars. Regular blogging and tweeting generates and maintains knowledge about the project in the cloud, and when it comes to finding willing partners it is easier than finding them in a bar at an event. Of course what I’m really talking about here is the idea of generating ad hoc communities around projects and clusters of projects which makes the embedding and sustainability of projects easier and more cost effective than turning up to a 3 day conference and hoping for someone who’s really interested showing up to your 20 minute presentation.
Go to conferences, for whatever reason, but not for the dissemination of your project. With the plethora of online tools and communities now available dissemination is most effectively achieved by careful management of the project’s online identity.
And what of conferences? At the JISC 2009 conference a delegate approached me and said “This event’s been great, a good keynote, not too many parallels and loads of space to network” and it was that last point that was the key. Conferences are still good for networking, as long as they aren’t too big, or even worse a clique; but generally a nice small (100 – 150 delegates) 24hr conference, with long lunch and coffee breaks is still a good way to meet like –minded people. And if you really want value for money, keep an eye on the institutional learning and teaching conferences, I’ve been to a dozen or so and found some real gems of ideas and practices.
Location Independent Working Conference (April 2009)
“…Work is not a place where you go but rather something you do”
Morgan R.E. (2004) Teleworking: An assessment of the benefits and challenges, European Business Review
David Morris introduced the day with a series of concise slides explaining the concept and also that his project was a 3 month pilot. A series of presentations took place that gave different perspectives from the institution.
The Basics
- LIW Is a formal recognising that work does not just take place on the campus and supports people in working from other locations.
- LIW staff give up their offices but have “touch down” spaces on the campus.
- Training the staff and managers involved in the pilot was essential.
Some Myths
- Everyone is doing it anyway.
- LIW is for everyone.
- It’s a recipe for avoiding work.
- LIW staff are never around and the rest of us can’t talk to them.
- LIW people get left out.
- Non-LIW colleagues carry the can.
Expected Benefits
Individual
- Improved Work-Life Balance
- Reduced commute time
- Reduced travel cost
- Reduced Stress
- Legitimisation of home working
Employer
- Improved work flexibility
- Improved recruitment (good working environment attractive to potential employees)
- Reduced absenteeism and stress
Environment
- Lower Carbon Footprint
- Reduced congestion and transport burden
- Improved teaching quality and innovation in teaching
The Process
At Coventry all staff went through a process to support them and the scheme. This involved Consultation with staff > Briefing Sessions > Expressions of interest > Decision Making (is LIW appropriate for members of staff) > Training > IT Consultation (what staff needed) > T & Cs (formal LIW Policy) > Set up and Start up
At Coventry….
120 people attended briefings, 52 expressed interest, 35 participated (25 academic, 10 non academic)
Lessons they learned
- Have a senior champion – who believes in it
- Create LIW spaces, both big and small (promote cross dept etc)
- A formal system is essential
- Training is important
- Dispel the myths
- Process for storage of University owned material.
The Day closed by looking at the “costs” of LIW
There was a caveat placed on the data in that individual costs can very enormously. In terms of carbon saving it was predicted that a saving of somewhere between 133kg and 785kg.
At Coventry University it estimated that, per member of staff, a notional saving of £1,061 could be made, per annum. This figure includes start up costs of the scheme, office space, heating etc.
Further details http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/culiw/
An interview with the Project Manager Dina Shah
Leeds Learning and Teaching Conference 2009: Keynote Gráinne Conole
At the Leeds teaching and learning conference today, two of the U&I projects are presenting Reflect and Awesome. But the keynote is by Gráinne Conole, Towards Technology Renaissance.
Renaissance - revival or renewed interest, repurposing or rethinking. How does this apply to e-learning. What are the technology trends? Grainne talked about the increased complexity of mediation, making the key link between e-learning and communication (learning and communication). Refering to LeX research. Grainne seems to be advocating the idea of Digital Natives, Net Generation etc. Good point about the next generation being task-orientated coupled with cumulative.
Shift in communications, “we co-evolve with the tools and practice” email is for filing, twitter is for communicating. Learning in 2008/2009 is more about communication.
Learning Design Research. Grainne’s research is focused on tiangulating the visualisation, Sharing and guiding of design as a way of understanding design. I’d like to have seen something along the Downes’ and Siemans’ Participative design in web 2.0 environments. Good point about the fact that Case Studies are not enough to change practice.
Current Issues
- Transformation - not as great as hoped
- Echoes of past failures
A technology Renaissance? Can we use to technology to ‘tech-enable’ our current approaches? Is this the right question. Again, given the web 2.0 availability, and the knowledge of new learners (be them 18 or 80 ) what would a curriculum designed by the learner look like?
What future for the VLE?
Back in May I wrote, with Dave Cormier and Mark Stiles an article for Educational Developments entitled “Reflecting on the Virtual Learning Systems - extinction or evolution?”; on Friday, we three, present on a panel session about our views and conclusions at the Altered States (online) conference, along with Blackboard and Moodle representatives. Mostly our musings looked at how we thought VLEs would change, concluding that they may become much lighter and slimmer, act more as aggregators, and be controlled by learners, rather than extinction. Like a good presenter I was preparing for my session and reflecting on how we really hadn’t discussed the scenario where VLEs did become extinct (and like the dinosaurs - what had caused the extinction, perhaps the web 2.o asteroid?).
Anyhow, as I was preparing I was d tweeted by dr_neil with a note about his latest blog posting which provided a superb and topical diversion, and I am now shamelessly printing it as prep material for the panel. If you would like an entertaining discussion about the pedagogy of VLEs and the role of senior managers in their procurement, and for those of you familar with the Emperor’s New Clothes (a metaphor used before by Neil and I to describe accessbility standards) take a trip over to Neil’s blog posting The Vice Chancellor’s New VLE it is a hoot…
FOTE 2008: Final Session
Building 21st Century Learning Environments, John Hickey, Apple
Where we need to go - evolution of education
Student as both consumer and producer.
Disconnected in an interconnected world
Students say that going into class is like taking a flight, they have to switch things off and cannot access the outside world.
Students expect an interconnected (academic) life, they see the real world as incredibly advanced, when it isn’t they lose interest.
Technology Brings; Advance > Engage > Outreach
There as been as shift in power in the consumerisation of IT. New drivers for performance, productivity and collaboration include: Facebook, youtube, googleapps etc. IT depts are drilling through to adapt rather than taking it as the norm.
Students’ dorms are like mini IT departments.
Consumer technologies are setting the pace for students’ expectations.
Moving from context (80%) to core (20%). Core is the things that we must do (as HEIs) ourselves. Core is what makes HEIs unique. Apple suggest flipping the model.
Apple’s learning environment is? He didn’t say, I assume from the motherhood and apple pie image that it is all the products they have?
FOTE2008: 3rd Session
Mile Metcalfe, Ravensbourne
Miles started by discussing the college’s move to Greenwich. The innovative ideas for ICT include:
- Flexible Learnings Spaces (you had to hear the visualisation)
- Serendipitous Commons
- Subsidise personal technology
- high end reources integrated with user owned workflows
- Software as a service (google), opensource alternatives to ‘money grabbing’ proprietory systems
The curse of the Mobile - Mobile Phones did away with the need punctuality.
Technology
- The VLE is no longer the whole answer
- RSS, OpenID preserve the VLEpanopticon
- Bounded systems give way to more open collaboration
Some parting shots
- OpenID is far from perfect
- I don’t trust these extra-institutional software as a service
Miles did an excellent and entertaining presentation which is available at http://www.slideshare.net/mmetcalfe/ravensbourne-tomorrow-fote-2008-presentation/
FOTE2008: 2nd Session ?, Ian Forresster (BBC), Ian Broad (Yahoo), Phil Butler (ULCC)
Mobile technology, Harold ?
Not quite sure what is being said other than it’s been suggested that we revisit Vygotsky and apply it to the use of mobile technology in learning and teaching.
He asserts that education ‘will’ move toward a more consumerist based economy, and that the customer choice will be based on the use of technology, mobile technology. And that they will do this because they will have better job prospects.
..l and then he just stopped.
Why Portability Matters - Ian Forrester, BBC backstage
There is a revolution in tech, this is based on the user being in control. But are they?
- Data portability - principles
- Bill of Rights for users
Cloud computing - beware of propriety tools in the cloud, “how do you get stuff out of SL”, there is a lot of service lock in. Good quote from Stallman:
cloud computing forces people to hand over control of their information to a third party. His objections echo his longstanding belief in non-proprietary software. One reason you should not use Web applications to do your computing is that you lose control, It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program.
Likes Bascamp for project management and Yammer as an alternative for Twitter, BlipTV instead of youtube
Opening up the Web, James Broad, Yahoo
“Yahoo is my home,
my girlfriend hates my job,
I do css and stuff
http://www.carbonsilk.com/”
How lucky are we - tech innovation, SatNav, Mobiles, sharing stuff across all activities
The Web 10 years ago, mostly read only, 1996 45 million users, mainly company websites, homepages, portals, basic webforms, Netscape or IE.
The Advances, Javascript, PHP, ASP, JSP, XML, RSS, Web Services, Communities, Tagging, Web Apps (The Web of today)
He seems to be trying to atribute a lot of social activity to tech advances, which it can, but.. “the web as gone through a a massive advancement (image of Facebook)”
We (Yahoo) realise that trust is a big issue
Dismisses encarta as something that we could have been ‘fed’, it could be biased by the author, whereas he asserts that wikipedia is something that is safer! He is very dissapointed that he didn’t have wikipedia during his education (I think he’s serious!).
A quick reflection on the title of the conference - I’m sure that he’ll make a reference to education.
Phil Butler
Lunch is Next (Phil’s first slide).
I’m not a technologist, I don’t even like technology.
The future of technology for me is something that does what it does when I need it to.
Harnessing Technology Review
It [technology] motivates learners
It opens up a world of resources and materials
Learning will be personalised
Learning culture is shifting
- individual > social
- information > communication
- passive > interactive
- insitutional tools > personalised tools
Q&A
Melissa Highton: Who should be responsible for teaching digital literacies
- Harold - there is a new paradigm of digital culture
- Ian F - the BBC is good, everyone needs to learn, a combination of teachers, friends and peers should be responsible
- IanB - I’ve got a little sister and I believe in this, Yahoo answers is the answer
- Phil B - Digital literacies - immigrants and natives, we’re all immigrants
FOTE 2008: 1st Session Google and Second Life
Here at FOTE (Future OF Technology in Education) 2008, Welcome from Tim Bush (organised the event) and David Rippon the Director of ULCC.
Sam Peters from Google
What’s driving cloud computing:
- Falling cost of storage
- Ubiquitous Computing
- Democratisation of production
“We’re all part of the revolution”
Sam described how the previous technology paradigm was focused on products that did only one thing - this led into a description of google apps for education. She suggested that cloud computing provides leverage with existing infrastructure. She also suggests that the Cloud computing model allows us to break out of existing software cycles.
The challenge of moving to the cloud, Sam suggested how her grandparents kept their money under the mattress, whereas she uses a bank - this led to considerable mirth. Gartner suggested that in 2010 10% of all businesses will have their apps in the cloud. And that currently 70% of businesses are looking at the cloud.
Last Thoughts on a Cloudy future:
- Companies must focus on core business
- Employees need better tools
- The move to the cloud is imminent…
- …many are there already
Pauline Randal on Second Life
Pauline started by posing the question “Why am I in there?” followed by what are “we trying to achieve?”
Students will not be entranced by watching powerpoint slides whilst in Second Life
The killer question - is there a better tool? Pauline’s talk appears to be asking us to focus on user needs.
Her project is focused on bring mature buisiness students together to familarise?
How to engage students:
- clear purpose to being there
- make it interesting and challenging
- have definite outcomes
Not that impressed with her case studies - but good on the user stuff.
Final thoughts:
- students need a proper induction, base it on your experience - how long did it take you to become familiar?
- Don’t make the activities too simple (average age of an SL user is 35 - are we sure?)
- Ask students for help
Hand’s up who’s using Second Life to teach?
QR Codes in education: watch this space
A QR (quick response) code is a two dimensional bar code that can be read on a mobile device, such as a camera phone. Once the device decodes the information then it will enable an action to be undertaken. For instance, this might be accessing a web page, displaying text information or subscribing to an RSS feed. For the learner this offers significant potential as it connects the physical and electronic worlds.
There are several free generators on the web, I use Kaywa. And there are also several free readers available for a variety of mobile phones, currently I’m using i-nigma. Andy Ramsden (University of Bath) is currently undertaking a small piece of work for the JISC Users and Innovation programme to develop a ‘beginners guide’ to using QR codes in education. So watch this space, and we’ll post information when it’s available. If you are already using QR codes in education please post information in the comments box and we’ll try include your details in the guide.
In the meantime, there is a prize of a box of chocolates for the first (UK based) person to contact me and tell me what the QR code is below.
Managing the Crowd
“Imagine an organisation where users are free to describe the content they create as they see fit. Where they help decide the retention and disposal of every record that they create or use, based on how useful and valuable they deem it to be. Where, based on a combination of their thoughts and actions, they are responsible for determining who can use the information they create and who cannot.”
Steve Bailey, a former colleague, opens his new book, “Managing the Crowd, rethinking records management for the web 2.0 world”, with the above scenario, which for many records managers, is a recipe for chaos.
The book covers a wide range of topics such as web 2.0 trends, the nature of change in IT systems, and approaches to the appraisal, retention and destruction of records. Helping records management professionals come to terms with a web 2.0 reality that many would not have wished for. Perhaps what is most useful in this volume is Steve’s 10 defining principles for Record Management 2.0 (even if I don’t like the 2.0 title). I won’t put everything down, but Steve identifies that RM 2.0 must be:
- Scaleable
- Comprehensive
- Independent of hardware, software and physical location
- Extensible
- Potentially applicable to all recorded information
- Proportionate, flexible and capable of varying levels of detail and quality
- Benefits led
- Marketable
- Self critical
- Acceptable to, and driven by the RM community
This approach seems highly pragmatic and achievable, and I recommend reading the book for further information. It’s available from Facet Publishing and Steve’s blog is also a worthwhile read.
