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?
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.
Research 2.0? Risks and Rewards of Using Emergent Technologies
This blog post supports a presentation at the UKGrad Yorkshire & North East Hub, E-Researcher Development Meeting, an e-learning day for trainers and developers.
The presentation will open with a brief introduction to the JISC Users and Innovation Programme and discuss the importance of eliciting user needs. This section uses an image from a Flickr user (pauliepaul).
The presentation then moves on to discuss the growth in 2.0 tools, not only in terms of the number of web 2.0 start-up companies, but also in terms of the number of areas that are using the ‘2.0’ suffix as a way of demonstrating that we are now doing something different. To illustrate the number of web 2.0 tools that are available the montages created by Stabilo Boss are used.
However, whilst some of the characteristics of web 2.0 as defined by people such as O’Reilly are discussed, for the purposes of the presentation the presentation centres on the existing web 2.0 tools that may be of use to delegates and their communities. This user centric approach is first illustrated by discussing ‘Ross’, one of the students who has worked with the programme and presented at JISC events. Are there a set of activities that Ross would need to do as a researcher that can be achieved with either greater ease, or more efficiently? These should be two primary drivers. However, there is a third – security.
So, having identified that there are things we want to do more efficiently or easier, what sort of activities might they be?
- Publishing and Disseminating
- Networking and Communities
- Collaboration
- Sharing stories (privately and publicly)
Having identified tools the idea of digital footprints will be covered and the implications that may have. The feedback from why PhD students think that online profiles are important:
- Collaboration: finding colleagues and peers to work with
- Advertising or Promoting ‘you’: a way of showing what you can do
- Dissemination: either of information or ‘products’, where products could be ‘papers’ or ‘software’
- Networking / Community Building: all online communities require you to have an online ‘persona’
- Contact: a way of people finding you, perhaps after seeing a presentation or reading a paper – often they will ‘Google you’
- Saving time, having an online presence is something you can send people to if they want to know more about your work etc, rather than you writing individual emails
- The Web is an established medium: “if you’re not on the web, you don’t exist”
Rather than cover many of the issues that were to be covered in the parallel sessions, this session looked at some of the issues around blogging as an example of some the things some research students are engaging with, including:
- as a way of building a literature review
- to share ideas with an overseas supervisor
- to practice English
- to get interact with the ‘subjects’
- to self promote
Finally, the session looked at some of the issues around security and some of the negative impacts that may occur of using the technologies.
The slides for this session are below
Eliciting Answers using web 2.0 tools.
Linked-In is a tool for maintaining and developing contacts – one of the features is the ability to ask questions of your network of contacts and the ‘public visibility’ of these questions.
I thought it might be interesting to pose a question around web 2.0 and then see what sort of answers we got back.
The Question: Does Web 2.0 facilitate connectivism, circumvent constructivism, or just pollute the knowledge stream with contradictory chatter?
In one week I received 8 ‘public’ responses and 2 private responses. The private ones were from contacts that aren’t involved in this sector, and know me from separate routes - both of them questioned my sobriety at the time of posting the question!
The answers to the question are all below, so now it’s over to you, do they answer usefully? Is it a tool, when used with trusted colleagues, that could help us in our practice?
Jose Roig
Web 2.0 does all of the above… which is kind of a cop-out for an answer. I blogged last week (http://tech-consulting.blogspot.com/) about how some of its functionality has great potential for corporate use. Wiki’s and Blogs are great tools for collaboration and for the publishing/sharing of documentation. Coupled with instant messaging, such tools are transforming the way that geographically dispersed teams work together.
In the public arena, Blogs give everyone a forum for free expression, which carries with it the risk that only the most shocking and confrontational viewpoints get noticed. It also carries the risk of doing nothing but turning up the volume on the noise and clutter. But I believe the potential reward of knowledge sharing is worth the risk.
Marc Aniballi
Web 2.0 connects databases to web interfaces so that you can do custom content generation and personalisation. This includes (obviously) user generated content.
Put any group of 10 people in a room and you’ll get all of your situations above. Online just happens bigger and faster.
David Kernohan
Web 2.0 is a resource like any other, and can be used to facilitate learning based on any theory of pedagogy you fancy. It’s like asking whether a textbook facilitates connectivism, circumvents constructivism…
Just because it is interactive doesn’t mean it is not a learning resource. It’s what you do with it that counts…
Malcolm Murray
I agree with the concept that there isn’t a one to one mapping between any technology and pedagogy - i.e. using Web 2.0 doesn’t make, nor require you to be connectivist.
That said, I think some of the tools really help, if we take connectivism to mean the ability to stay in touch with and lever the collective intelligence of a network of contacts and indeed their network of contacts.
The key issue for me is one of credibility/quality. How does a user know that the information they find is any good. Some of the newer web 2.0 tools (such as this discussion) help by providing information and context about the posters. For other older tools (e.g. wikipedia) although content may be subject to peer review, much of it is not directly (read easily) attributable.
Does this matter? Yes I think it does! Whilst “pollution” may be too strong a term - and I can see the massed ranks of social scientists just waiting to analyse the cultural loading this term implies) the problem for many today can be summed up as “there a shit load of material out there, but loads of it is shit”. To succeed we still need to be selective. That’s where the networking aspect comes in - it gives us help filtering out the dross.
Bruce Mason
I would say that this question veers towards technological determinism. I suspect that a couple of thousand years ago there may have been similar questions about this new-fangled writing business. That’s a somewhat flip response but it gets at the point that these new resources are useful in as much as we make use of them.
I do think that we’re having to acquire competence in web2.0 usage and that also includes those who design SNS sites. For example, I was on the verge of quitting Facebook until, one day, I noticed a little “block this application” link beneath all my notifcations. Now Facebook is positive for me again. Those who run Facebook responded to an emergent phenomenon and the site has been improved.
So, I think what is happening is that we’re acquiring competence in the emergent, communicational affordances of web2.0. Give it a few years and we’ll wonder what all the fuss was about…
James Farnhill
I think my natural first response was that you’ve got to understand the terms before you can couch an answer to this at all. Web 2.0 means very different things to very different people and can be more confusing than it is helpful. Having said that, I’d agree with the other posters that if you’re using social networking tools like Facebook and LinkedIn (and even stuff like Flickr, that might not seem like an obvious choice) and other Web 2.0 ‘most wanted’ apps such as blogs and wikis sensibly then there is a considerable amount of benefit from them. It’s just that some people are using Web 2.0 because it’s there and because it’s a bandwagon, meaning a large volume of rubbish gets generated that doesn’t help connect people or do anything else; for example, I’m getting to the stage where Twitter and tweets are really annoying me as they’re used as buzz words by Nathan Barley noo media types who only use it because it’s ‘cool’! So, I think for the future we need to have Web 2.0 to generate content but we also need Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as some of the stuff being done with Google maps and AJAX to bring the content together in a meaningful way. We can also use text mining tools and some of the more sophisticated tagging to start getting data about data and get some provenance in there. All that’s doing is what any arts and social sciences student could tell you they’ve been doing for ages, which is quality assuring the data they trust by review, meaning large amounts of seemingly contradictory opinions can be distilled into material that makes sense for you. Hope that hasn’t turned into too much of a ramble…
Tony Linde
To me (and I agree that it means different things to different people) Web 2.0 means three things: 1) the ability for users to add content to a website; 2) the use of AJAX to make pages more dynamic; and 3) the exposure of a site’s content via one or more APIs. All of these things existed before the Web 2.0 term but the explosion of websites with all three features did mark a significant shift in the web experience.
It is primarily #3 above which helps ‘facilitate connectivism’: our own experiences, exposed via #1 above are connected by #3 and by the internal workings of the website. Seeing these connections would, I would have thought, aid constructivism rather than circumvent it, in that only simple connections will be forged by data and software: the user of the sites ought to be able to construct knowledge upon a wider base using the connections supplied (needs research though).
The knowledge stream will only ’seem’ polluted by those students who are not able to critically assess what they see. Critical reasoning ought to be the first skill any student is imbued with, from primary school onwards.
Mark Childs
I’m currently conducting a research project (funded by the wonderful people at JISC actually - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning_pedagogy/elp_blups.aspx) looking at how students use web 2 technologies and whether this has any effect on their learning. The answer is that, yes it does. Because students are more connected now, this gives them more opportunities to share ideas, help each other with their learning and (often underestimated in its importance) exchange information about the course and university procedures. This is sometimes due to them setting up specific groups within Facebook, for example, but it’s mainly because they are communicating so much using web 2.0 tools for social reasons, and it’s natural for them to segue from talking about meeting up to go down the pub to talking about the latest assignment.
Seven steps to developing an effective communications plan
This week Alice Gugan, who works with the U&I team on communications and marketing, has written seven steps to developing an effective communications plan. This is a really important area for any project involved in the Users and Innovation programme as many of the themes will be based on new and emerging technology; effectively communicating to potential audiences what a project is about is of paramount importance when little or nothing is known in the area.
Marketing or disseminating your project is more than having a website. Your project is exciting and dynamic and for the most part people will want to know about it! Sometimes it’s not easy to see clearly and distinctly which bits to tell others about.
Take a step back and try telling a completely new person what it is you do (try telling the cat, if you can’t get someone else to listen, not a dog; too indulgent!). This may give you a whole new perspective.
Marketing is rather a grand term for really what is basically common sense:
- What are you doing?
- Why is it important?
- Why will it make a difference and to who?
A little bit of planning in this area will pay dividends in terms of coherence and consistency in what you want to say and when. You also need to give some thought, especially in complex projects, to who is going to do the talking!
Here are seven things to think about in putting together a comms plan:
1. Know what your overall priorities and objectives are.
This might sound ridiculous; of course you know; you’ve got a project plan. But how do these objectives translate into messages your audience can either relate to or will be interested in? How do they fit in with what might be happening in the wider world? Many priorities and objectives don’t necessarily need to be relayed to anyone outside a project – they’re merely part of the development. Having those accessible on a website or where people can find them if they need to, should be fine. But one or two will be real corkers, else you’d not be doing the work!
2. What main themes do they fall into?
Keep these themes straightforward.
3. Who do you want to tell?
And who needs to know (funders, partners)? How aware of you or your activity are they already? (one of the biggest challenges is dealing with different potential audiences who are at differing ends of the awareness spectrum). Try not to be too ambitious and reach too many people – better to keep it small and do it well. Map your audiences against their likely angle of interest in the project (in the technical or the social networking side for instance?).
4. How do you think you can reach them?
What do they read/attend/listen to/log onto? How much of your dissemination might be simply word of mouth and networking at particular events? If that works for you, fantastic; don’t discount it! Equally, other partners can help your message get across and often even strengthen it.
5. What bite-sized messages can you break your themes down to?
Don’t confuse through making a message too complex or irrelevant. Are the end-users really going to need to know all about how the technology works? Focus on what each person needs to know and tell them simply and succinctly. Avoid jargon and too much background. If people want that they can get it later. Less is more, as long as less gets to the point!
6. What sort of timescales are realistic?
Don’t be over-optimistic; don’t underestimate preparation time and capacity. Having just a few, but strong, key comms milestones is probably a good thing to aim for, with perhaps some drip-feed for inbetween times.
7. And finally
Map all these back to objectives and main themes – keep it focussed on the end goals!
A comms plan often doesn’t seem to be finished – and maybe that’s how it should be, because they do need constant revisiting; things change, both in the outside environment and within the project. So keep going back to it, and treat it as a living document.
Portrait of a User #1
These ‘Portrait of a user’ posts aim to provide snapshots of both staff and students in higher education.
Mel, Mature 3rd Year Anthropology Student (part time)
Interview conducted by MSN, Oct 07
What do you think of as ‘technology’?
Anything online, I use the University databases a lot.
How would you describe your ability to use technology?
I think through work and my partner being involved in IT I am probably more knowledgeable than most of my fellow students
What sort of technologies do you typically use?
Through my athens log in, all the relevant databases to my course, facebook, msn, I am also registered to a online datastore for literature that can be read in pdf.
On a typical day what’s the first couple of things you do when you switch on your computer?
Log in to msn (automatically), check hotmail and my university email and VLE for updates.
Your institution uses a Virtual Learning Environment, how much time do you spend using it and what are the main things you do in there?
I use it to check essay questions, seminar and lecture updates and relevant reading we need to do.
Do you have your own blog or something similar that you use either for your academic work or outside?
No, but I have been thinking about starting a personal blog.
Do you use any social networking sites?
I use Facebook.
How do you feel about using the same sites for your academic work, such as discussions etc?
There are a lot of anthropology groups from my institution on Facebook but I am not a member of any of them, I don’t really consider myself as my university would put it a ‘3D student’, i.e a student who gets involved with all the activities and the ‘brand’ – I’m a 2D student, I want what I paid for – my degree.
If there was a ‘device x’, a technology that doesn’t currently exist, or one that you’re not aware of, that could help you with your studies, what would it be, what would it do?
Annotated and indexed podcasts, that would be very helpful - as I work it would be nice to review things and have website links if I am unable to make it to the library, especially as there are shortages of key texts.
7 things to do in Education with Web 2.0
I recently read an article by Laurel Delaney about small businesses marketing within the social software environment. It tells the story of ‘Sidney’ a web designer who reinvigorated her business by using existing social networks and web 2.0 technologies. My immediate thought was how this can be applied to educational projects and individuals (ignoring the teaching aspects – I suspect that will be a much longer post and better done by other people). Taking the approach that I normally abhor I looked first at the tool or technology and sought out an application for it. During the course of doing this I discovered that in each of them there was already someone using it in that way, unsurprisingly! So here’s a short list of five, some of them are platform specific (apologies) some are generic, and if you know of any others please post them in the comments, I’ll post a further list at a later date.
- Facebook, love it or loathe it, for now it’s here. The premise of Facebook is simple a social network of people interacting for ‘fun’. However, one colleague has used this as a tool for eliciting feedback on a tool he’s been developing. Another example is Edge Hill University who have a closed (private) network on Facebook for their staff with 2,087 members.
- Instant Messaging (IM). This is one that immediately springs to mind for my practice and this article is a good example. During the writing of it I used my IM client to elicit comments from colleagues; one of them came back and immediately gave me the example of this article! One of things that I understand is effective is the group IM chat where a record of the conversation can be used to create quick action points. One project told me that they often use IM during meetings as a way of clarifying things that were said without interrupting the flow of the meeting.
- Slideshare. More than just a presentation tool, this allows for interaction and discussion. The colleague who alerted me to it regularly presents material at a variety of universities and uses Slideshare as a way of providing a ‘copy of the slides’ without wasting paper. It also allows him to use the discussion function to allow questions there was not time for in the session and eliciting comments from peers prior to presentation. It also allows you to provide a simple online resource for anyone to access: do a search for federated access management and you’ll find an excellent presentation (http://www.slideshare.net/rsc_southeast/federated-access-management-jisc-presentation) given to a small audience at a Regional Support Centre Event but which as been now viewed 459 times (at time of writing).
- Googledocs, “to be honest it could be any interactive writing tool but I like the format” was the comment that stood out. This colleague needed an easy shareable and ‘familiar’ tool that she can share potential research proposals on and refine them with colleagues whilst maintaining a log of what’s been changed. Simple and effective, as an aside I asked if she had got any successful proposals yet – “no comment!”
- Flickr. A personal repository for storing, sharing and discussing your photos and images. One of my favourite uses is for presentations: instead of using text heavy powerpoints do a search for the keywords or concepts you’re looking for in the advanced search (you can select to search only those images that have an creative commons licence). Try doing a search for web 2.0, community or Emerge in the tags only section.
- Personalised Homepage (www.google.co.uk/ig or www.netvibes.com). These tools are great if you need to assimilate information. All of the projects within the U&I programme use RSS feeds and report regularly using their blogs etc, I just aggregate them all on to one page using www.google.co.uk/ig and I get a great snapshot of what the projects are up to. I also get my email, calendar and news from other blogs that I’m interested in (I also get news about rare birds and my football team).
- Meetomatic. For me this is one of the key tools in my job, it’s a way of organising a meeting date – select the dates you need, email the link, identify any ‘must attends’ or ‘VIPs’ and wait for the responses. Simple to use, does one thing and does it well, and it’s free.
Got a favourite tool? – tell us about it!
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Lawrie is available through Skype
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