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Students demanding feedback…

December 17, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/866529

Students used to ‘quick feedback’, are becoming more and more demanding.

Students currently going through the higher education system are part of a “net generation” who expect instant feedback because of their heavy reliance on mobile phones, social media and video games, a conference has heard.

Arlene J. Nicholas, an assistant professor in the department of business studies and economics at Salve Regina University in New England, spoke at the Society for Research into Higher Education conference, held in Wales last week, giving findings from her research on learning methods among 100 students at a small private university.

She told delegates that the current generation of US students – defined as those born between 1981 and 2000 – were the most diverse, with a third defined as non-white or Latino. But they are also the most demanding, Dr Nicholas claimed. “This multimedia generation seems to expect multiple methods to learn,” she said.

She added that the net generation could be easily upset by negative feedback but nevertheless wanted more feedback than any other generation.

Read full story, and read more about FASTECH, a project at the University of Winchester considering how technology can enhance feedback.

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living Tagged With FASTECH, Feedback, Speed

RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms (Ken Robinson)

December 16, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

A really interesting video (using the beautiful RSA Animate style), which takes Sir Ken Robinson, arguing that the education system is no longer suitable for the modern day:
The video was suggested by Clare Killen at the #jiscel11 conference.

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living, The Future Tagged With #jiscel11, Education, Sir Ken Robinson, Why?

Digital literacy can boost employability and improve student experience #jiscdiglit

December 15, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

I am working on the JISC Digital Literacies programme with the Organisational Development in Higher Education Group. We are featured in The Guardian today: 

It starts as follows:

The nature of knowledge is changing and, in this digital age, our definition of basic literacy urgently needs expanding. With an estimated 90% of UK jobs requiring some level of IT competency, the notion of digital literacy – those capabilities that equip an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society – is one that needs to be taken seriously by colleges and universities.

We live in an online world with the digital divide closing up both through government initiatives (Martha Lane Fox, the government’s digital champion, recently took up the challenge of getting 10 million people in the UK online, saying that otherwise “they will be even more isolated and disadvantaged as government and industry expand ever faster into digital-only services”) and technological advances – more than half the UK population now own a smartphone with internet capability.

Universities and colleges have a responsibility to develop students into individuals who can thrive in an era of digital information and communication – those who are digitally literate are more likely to be economically secure and these skills are especially important in higher education given that graduate white collar jobs are almost entirely performed on computers and portable devices.

But it’s not just about employability – increasingly digital literacy is vital for learning itself. Digital tools such as virtual learning environments, e-portfolios and social networking software for peer mentoring are now common within further and higher education and students without the skills to navigate them risk suffering an inferior student experience at best, and being left completely behind at worst. It goes beyond IT skills, a complete culture change is required to live fully within the modern digital society, from understanding how to communicate ideas effectively in a range of media to managing digital reputation and history.

Read full story.

Filed Under Academic Research Tagged With Digital Literacy, JISC

Humanities Research ‘Surfdom’

December 9, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418343

As someone who was involved in early digital humanities research (building a database of wartime propaganda posters in order to be able to identify themes/patterns in the posters), this story is really interesting:

We are now witnessing what Martin Wynne, Oxford University Computing Services liaison at the Oxford e-Research Centre, describes as “a move from research leave to research grants, with academics required to hire staff and manage teams”. This is obviously more congenial to some people than others, and critics argue that it is a trend driven far more by financial than scholarly goals.

But there is widespread agreement that the developing discipline and funding regime have overcome some of the teething problems. “Digital resources and infrastructure are developed to solve scholarly problems, not as ends in themselves,” says Hotson, “to serve our own projects and interests on the assumption that other scholars have very similar projects.” This avoids the danger of what amounts to academic “deskilling”. And while some earlier initiatives by researchers may have produced obscure and sometimes self-indulgent resources that helped them but were of no use to anybody else, Wynne argues that “reusability, sustainability and visibility” are the guiding principles today.

So how should we regard some of the more grandiose claims that are made for the digital humanities? Open-access projects, we are constantly told, democratise knowledge by making it available to anyone with a computer. “Far from being geared solely to academic questions,” says the website for Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain, a chart that is thought to date back to the 1370s, “the project team was keen to ensure that our research findings reach the widest possible audiences, not least because maps are enduringly popular objects and always capture the imagination.”

New resources are also said to enable us to interrogate data in different ways and to ask fresh questions, including some that were previously not even imaginable. Since we can never tell what the scholars of the future are going to be interested in, almost anything might turn out to be useful. And if an academic discipline is in decline, digital tools can provide a way of reviving interest.

Such arguments are almost incontrovertible in the abstract, and are amply justified in particular cases, but often seem to be accompanied by very sketchy notions of what might constitute success or failure. Is it too crude to expect a database requiring x thousand pounds of research funding to generate so many thousand hits, five monographs, three spin-off radio programmes and 20 newspaper articles? And when does it become a dubious use of public money to create ever-more-sophisticated resources for disciplines that seem to be in terminal decline?

Read full story.

Filed Under Academic Research, Times Higher Education Tagged With Digitisation, History, Humanities

MIT ‘The new new thing’

December 8, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

http://www.media.mit.edu/

I’ve had quite an interest in MIT since I heard that they put all their lectures, etc. online (on YouTube, etc. under Creative Commons licences), something that is resisted by many an academic… and have found that it has increased interest in their courses. Here, Times Higher Education looks at their Media Lab…

Joichi Ito does not have the kind of background that would normally catch the eye of an appointment committee searching for someone to head a prestigious university research lab. To start with, he is not an academic – he is an internet entrepreneur, a venture capitalist and a former disc jockey. And, if that were not enough against him, he dropped out of university. Twice.

But not every lab is like the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which turned 25 last year, is world famous for its “renegade” research environment and creative and wacky projects that combine design with cutting-edge technology. It is responsible for, among other things, the electronic ink technology that e-readers use to simulate printed paper; for Guitar Hero, the hit video game in which players simulate playing the guitar in rock songs; for Lego Mindstorms robotics building kits and for the XO-1 laptop, a budget computer designed to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world as part of the One Laptop per Child project.

Nicholas Negroponte set up the Media Lab to explore human-machine interaction and the life-enhancing possibilities of new technology. He led it from its start until he stepped down as director in 2000. Ito, who took over in September, is the third person to head the lab since the departure of its founder; he took the reins from Frank Moss, professor of the practice of media arts and sciences at MIT.

“I was surprised as well,” Ito says of his appointment. The 45-year-old, who recently served as chief executive of the open licensing technology non-profit organisation Creative Commons, was an early investor in more than 40 technology start-ups, including Twitter and Flickr. But he admits that, until now, his experience of universities “hadn’t been great”.

Ito says he dropped out of university – once from studying computer science at Tufts University in Massachusetts and once from studying physics at the University of Chicago – because the learning environment did not suit him. This was not because he lacked respect for formal education but, as he sees it, because his brain was wired to learn by pursuing passion and interest rather than by attempting to absorb the contents of lectures and books. For this reason the Media Lab is a good fit, because it is a “whole class of people who are kind of like me”. The appointment committee wanted someone whose sole project was going to be the lab, Ito thinks.

Read full article.

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living, Times Higher Education Tagged With Creative Commons, innovation, MIT

#FASTECHUK makes @timeshighered

December 8, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Winchester/Bath Spa: High-powered feedback loops

Two universities have been awarded almost £200,000 to run a three-year project looking at how to improve the use of technology in student feedback and assessment. The Learning and Teaching Development Unit at the University of Winchester and its counterpart at Bath Spa University were given the money by the IT body Jisc to run the scheme. The project – titled Feedback and Assessment for Students with Technology – is designed to use readily available technologies to enhance assessment and feedback at course, faculty and institutional levels.

See in context, and more information about the project (a website is currently being constructed).

Filed Under Academic Research, Times Higher Education Tagged With FASTECH, Funding, JISC

Martin Kemp: Christ to Coke

November 24, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

This book looks really interesting, and I’m interested that there’s a disclaimer about Coke, who are clearly more to be feared as power, rather than the Church – says much…

Instead of an epigraph, Christ to Coke carries a disclaimer: “This book has not been approved by or endorsed by The Coca-Cola Company or any other company, and any views expressed in it are those of the author and not The Coca-Cola Company or any other company. Coca-Cola, Coke, and the Coca-Cola bottle are trademarks of The Coca-Cola Company.”

Given the subject of the book, it is tempting to read that deadpan declaration as an ironic commentary on image-making and branding – the iconic only a consonant away from the ironic – and a coca-corroboration of the author’s selection. Martin Kemp has interesting things to say about trademarks, which come in many guises, including people, or rather portraits: the shock-haired Einstein is himself a trademark. In the matter of Coca-Cola, it transpires that the soft drink’s logo gained trademark status as early as 1887. “It has been reused, adapted, and parodied in diverse contexts around the world,” Kemp relates, “exhibiting extraordinary geographical penetration and historical stamina.” One of the most apt illustrations in this copiously illustrated book is of Ai Weiwei’s Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (1994).

Kemp has selected 11 “supreme and mega-famous examples”, in the deathless prose of the dust jacket, “to see both how they arose and how they continue to exercise their enduring appeal”. They are widely gathered: Christ (“The true icon”); the Cross; the Heart; the Lion; the Mona Lisa; Che Guevara; Nick Ut’s photograph of the little girl running screaming down the road in Vietnam (“Napalmed and naked”); the Stars and Stripes; the Coke bottle; the DNA double helix; and the equation E = mc2. This is a highly personal selection. Christ to Coke is an effortfully personal book.

Read full story, and see also this story.

Filed Under Academic Research Tagged With Brand, Icon

#JISCEL11: David Puttnam: Towards a Digital Pedagogy

November 22, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Here’s my ‘live notes’ from David Puttnam’s opening keynote for the JISC Online Conference:

Old fashioned concept of ‘wisdom’ has disappeared., as e.g. we have ‘professional’ politicians, who’ve experienced nothing else.

Creative advisor in China re digital industries. Started with 5000 years of Chinese history used to set the context for the next 10 days, in order to ensure that the mistakes of history were not repeated.

We’re becoming too complacent, as Chinese not just producing low cost goods, but large numbers of cultural outputs. Renewed investment in ICT and Education are core to ensuring that remain relevant to modern society.

Creativity – builds on history, experience, social needs of the society.

We’ve been looking to the West for inspiration for too long, whereas we should have been looking to the East, whereas those of us thinking we can ignore it living in a fantasy world.

Oxford Economics Report (6 weeks ago) for most stats.

Digital developments. 1911 – a lesson then would be entirely recognizable today – as technology has not been allowed to make changes to pedagogy that it should.

Mind, Brain and Education – studies on absorption, retention & application of knowledge. We wouldn’t go to visit a Dr who we didn’t think was up to date with the latest developments, but within education, few are prepared to engage with the digital world in the way that many (younger) have already experienced – hence why we have lost trust of the 16 year olds, etc.

Debate – digital natives, etc…

Dangerous to think that formal learning is the only way – why are making such heavy weather of technology, when most carry them everyday in their pocket.

robbiepixelman: Students are not just learners but collaborators and facilitators of their own learning, and can often learn at a faster / more effective manner than ‘traditional’ teaching can provide. I think we need to recognise and develop the ‘learner’ as the central focus and contributor to peer learning.

David Kernohan: Not sure we need a digital pedagogy so much as a pedagogy. If we properly understood how and why learning happens we could use technology in a thoughtful way to enhance this.

Education needs proper investment, with staff given PAID time every year to develop appropriate skills (pedagogy/technology).

We need a world class education system to inform world class NHS, pensions, etc – the reverse can’t be possible. Where are the leaders in modern day education? The issues that students are protesting about are not just student issues, but e.g. the irrelevance of much of modern day education.

Digital – ability to use entire suite of assets (video, audio, text, etc.) – the ability to use each tool for the right issue… Students do much informal learning, how do we help them make the most of this?

HelenBeetham: ‘Digital pedagogy’ is perhaps the range of pedagogies we need in a digital age – not a special approach.

Younger generation – the notion of being articulate is not necessarily ‘mainstream’.

Lindsay Jordan: Practice what we preach as educational developers – stop trying to ‘tell’ people what to do. Show them. Conceal the message in the medium.

Sally Graham: Yes we’re often simply using technology to tell and to test!!

Sarah Ashley: Slowly and surely wins the race, I think you have to ease teachers/learner into change, don’t go in full throttle throwing your weight around. Perhaps suggest one small change, and facilitate this, help them as much as possible, then other things will come. What we also forget is teachers are very busy and so it has to be small steps, which are less timely.

HelenBeetham: @MaryAnn yes but when to teaching staff have time to reflect in a scholarly way on their own ideological/pedagogical position Sometimes technology can help with that self-recognition by giving new ways of thinking/seeing

David Baume: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Clare Killen: Learners don’t necessarily want to be called customers or consumers – some feel this denies their role as co-developers/collaborators in their own learning is expensive, try ignorance.”

Huge problem of changing the notion of students from ‘collaborators in learning’ to ‘customers’ with ‘rights’. Also an issue with the government thinking that a current elite group of universities will be enough to get the British to sail into the future.

Your job is to provide compelling content, and scream if don’t have the tools to complete the job.

Looking forward to @AaronPorter talk tomorrow re value of higher education.

http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/jiscel11

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living, Event Tagged With #jiscel11, Digital Literacy, History, Learning

Checking in with #JISCEL11

November 10, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

It’s nearly that time of year again, for the JISC ‘Innovating E-Learning’ conference, a conference which you could attend in your pyjamas if you like.. last year’s event was excellent!

For only £50, there’s the opportunity to listen to a number of experts present about the latest projects in technology enhanced learning, to connect and converse with a number of people.. and this can all fit around other things that you’re doing over the four days of the event.

As a super-delegate, I will be particularly active in the asynchronous forums, particularly important for me, as many of the sessions are ‘live’ at times that I can’t be, but I can listen to the recordings, see what people have already discussed, and then join in the discussions. To get a taster, JISC has an asynchronous radio show, with lots of recordings already in place.

There’s a great range of material. In the ‘Activity Week’ (next week), I’m particularly interested to see what Peerwise is/can do, to see Gradspace (which could complement what we’ve been developing with SkillsNet), practical guidelines for running virtual classrooms and a number of talks on digital literacy and mobile learning.

For the conference itself, I know I can make the opening keynote live ‘Towards a digital pedagogy’, and then it gets a little more difficult, as I’m running a couple of church events (so I KNOW I can’t attend anything live on Thursday), speaking at #digimanc (although I’m seeking space to join in with the closing keynote), running a Survey Monkey workshop and student tutorials. It’s a particularly packed week, and an interesting way of being able to stay engaged!!

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Literacy, Event, Learning Tagged With #jiscel11, Conference, JISC

Tablets in the Classroom

November 5, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Having seen the results of the University of Winchester’s tablet survey, and the knowledge that one module has been trailing encouraging students to use their phones/tablets in class, it’s interesting to see this story:

Image from Wikipedia

Teaching with the aid of notebook PCs is given a cautious thumbs up by lecturers. Jack Grove writes

The pros and cons of teaching students with a tablet PC have been assessed in a new study.

The tablet computer is the latest electronic device to be used in lectures, with market-leader Apple selling almost 40 million iPads since its launch just 18 months ago.

The merits of teaching with tablets have been evaluated in a paper by Kyu Yon Lim, assistant professor at Ajou University, in South Korea, in the journal Innovations in Education and Teaching International.

She observed the introduction of tablet PCs at an engineering faculty at a large US university, in which 28 staff volunteered to take part.

The new technology was not universally popular with academics. While some revelled in the ability to transmit information, graphs and equations using the touch-screen technology, others found it cumbersome and time-consuming.

Read full story.

Filed Under Academic Research, Mobile Technology, Times Higher Education Tagged With Mobile Learning, Tablet PCs
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