All 50 entries tagged Ideation

Everything as PDF?

Follow-up to 3 essential elements for an e–learning strategy from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

My new found enthusiasm for the PDF format is a consequence of using iAnnotate on the iPad. Here's an example illustrating why I think every event should be accompanied by at least an overview PDF (at least until the tools to create a PDF from any format on the iPad become more effective). Last week I attended a conference at DeMontfort University on the Democratic Learning Conversation (great conference).

I received the agenda as a Word file, imported it into iAnnotate which converted it into PDF. I was then able to add notes to the agenda during the sessions. However, I quickly discovered another very effective trick. During some of the sessions I was inspired to create Keynote slides (the Apple equivalent of Powerpoint) and a Mindjet mind map developing some of my own ideas in response to the speakers. I was able to take image snapshots of these and embed them at the appropriate point in the PDF. So I left the conference with a single PDF document containing rich annotations.

That's good. But the longer term effect is particularly impressive. I lead quite a busy life. Lots of meetings, lots to remember and learn. Annotating the PDF helped me to remember the details of the conference (just in the act of writing the notes down I can remember them better) and to keep alive the thinking that it inspired. If a student were to ask me for a recommendation as to a learning technology that could make a big difference to their capabilities, this would be it: PDF + iAnnotate + iPad.

Here is a snapshot of the PDF that I annotated. You can see a thumbnail of one of the Keynote slides. The slide can be viewed as full screen in the PDF file. Audio annotations may also be added. So for example I could have interviewed another attendee, or perhaps even recorded a whole session.

One additional feature would be useful - to be able to add extra space in the margins of the PDF, or an additional blank page to contain my notes. CORRECTION - ADDING BLANK PAGES IS POSSIBLE IN iAnnotate

Robert O'Toole : 23 Dec 2011 14:13 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

3 essential elements for an e–learning strategy

I had a meeting this morning with someone who is planning to write an e-learning strategy for their department. He asked me for recommendations. I have three essential points:

1. As a policy, provide lecture notes (not necessarily detailed), summaries, agendas etc for every event (lectures, seminars, assignments) in a form that can be owned/curated by each individual student, and annotated and extended. Digital course packs are only the start. As a rule, provide supporting material for everything. And get students to create similar material for the things that they do (ie seminar presentations). Whatever learning, communications and admin platforms are used, make sure they produce these outputs. Format? PDF - there are many great PDF annotation tools. Packaging? Not so sure. Evernote notebooks provide a good model. They can be zipped and distributed. But whatever, make sure that everyone is doing this all of the time!
   
2. Try to define the kinds of behavior, techniques and supporting technologies that students can use to get the most out of the experience. Perhaps create a set of accounts explaining how a student might work with technology to optimise their performance. For example, describe how digital coursepacks and other PDFs can be accessed, used and annotated, and organised. Don't treat this as isolated gadgetry and skills, but rather as joined-up workflows.
   
3. Get academics more involved by giving them technologies that they can trust and which give them assured and instant access to all of the resources that they might need when teaching and (important and) doing research. A mobile device with a well organised store of images, videos, texts etc AND some means of displaying (eg an iPad with a VGA connector). Reduce dependencies on networks and systems. Make them more robust and self-reliant.
   

Robert O'Toole : 21 Dec 2011 18:52 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Future learning technologies (ELE not VLE)

People keep asking me if I think that Warwick should have a VLE. I keep answering NO!! – or at least nothing that looks like a conventional VLE (browser-based content transmission). My justifications: 1. VLE technologies are about to become obsolete; 2. the “environment” metaphor is a mistake. We need to think about extended learning ecologies (ELE) not virtual learning environments (VLE).

This vision of the near future illustrates some of the technologies and practices that will be common place very soon.

We’re in a high-tech open access learning centre. We walk over to a collaboration space. The large touch screen lights up, having recognized the members of the group (our mobile devices have already connected to it). Our shared notebook is on the screen, displaying the contents that we are likely to be using for this session (it already knows which seminar, which module etc). It is a version of the digital course-pack for this module, but with our seminar group’s additions and customizations. Our tablet computers and laptops (some of us are using the iPad 4) have also opened up the notebook in sync, with the same contents.

We can work on documents, and see our updates replicated across all the devices. On the big screen we create a mind map together. It is instantly replicated onto our own individual devices, so that later on we can carry on using it individually.

During the session, someone mentions that a useful documentary will be on tonight. Some of us add it to our personal calendars. But it clashes with a dinner that I’m going to. No problem, the calendar has already set up whatever is required for me to record the programme and watch it at a later date (it’s been added to my to-watch list, when I get to my television I see it listed there).

Part way through the seminar, one of the students does a short talk, pushing a sequence of slides (containing text, images, audio and video) from her iPad onto the screen and onto our own tablet devices. If we want, all of the audio of her presentation and our discussion is recorded along with the slides. We can also annotate them in our own digital notebooks.

As she talks, a resource finder identifies keywords that might be relevant to our work. It uses in-built intelligence and previous experience with the group to search for and make available (to the whole class) relevant resources. There’s a mention of the Port Royal Logic in the discussion. Instantly it’s there ready to use. As she starts to talk about the PRL, I realize that it’s really interesting to me. I start recording what she is saying into an audio note, but did I miss the bit just before I pressed record? No, the system was pre-emptively recording that, so I can include a few minutes pre-record in my note. The resource finder also knows about articles and books that will be of use to follow up after the session, some of which have been manually chosen, and some of which are intelligent suggestions.

Later, when I get back to my study, I’m able to access all of this as a timeline of events and as a collection of resources, replicated and presented onto my desktop. I can pick out key ideas, develop them, link to other resources, and build them into a more considered, more complete product – almost a complete essay, which might form part of my assessed work – I’m not sure. So I sleep on it. Then over the next few days, I revisit the essay (on my iPhone when I’m on the bus, on my iPad when I’m in a café, on my desktop computer, and even as audio read back to me as I exercise in the gym).

Finally, I decide that I like what I’ve written, and I submit it into the peer support app for my tutor group. Other members receive a notification (on their various devices) telling them that I’ve submitted an essay for consideration. They can access it and give me feedback, in the document’s workspace using whichever device (mobile, desktop etc) that is at hand. I receive notifications, and once I’m happy with it, I publish the essay to a couple of different “zones” – the module tutors, and also a student research network. It appears on their devices through the apps that they have subscribed to.

I’ve used a lot of new ideas in this work of fiction. But they are all things that are just becoming reality right now. Some of them are named by flashy buzz-words:

Ubiquitous computing: powerful, net-connected devices always at hand in an appropriate form, allowing immediate access to information, people, choices, productivity-functions etc, intuitively and unobtrusively. We can do sophisticated IT without interrupting the flow of ideas and events. Enabled by mobile web enabled devices like the iPhone and iPad, as well as smart connected devices (internet enabled printers, televisions etc).

Cloud computing: our data, files etc are stored over the network on servers, and replicated immediately across all of our devices (and potentially other devices such as presentation screens). Going further, the software that we use runs “in the cloud” and is replicated (in different platform-adapted forms) across all of the devices that we use.

Pre-emptive adaptive search: the computer listens to what I am saying, observes what I am doing, and makes guesses about what might help me – for example, by searching for and listing resources that might be relevant. If I start talking about Cezanne and Deleuze, having Cezanne’s paintings of apples ready at hand would be most useful.

Digital short term memory: the stream of events are constantly being recorded, but we don’t need a permanent record of everything, we just need to keep the important things. However, we often don’t realize that something is important right away. Having a digital short term memory allows us to at any point select the last few minutes to be permanently stored. The rest is deleted.

Digital cloud synced notebook: whichever device I am using, I can record notes, snap shots, audio recordings, links, videos into my note book. My notes are then replicated across all of my devices. I could take a snapshot on my phone, go back to my desktop, find it in my notebook, and add text to the note to expand upon the record. This is possible now using tools like Evernote.

Digital cloud synced course-pack: the resources for a course are packaged and available to students for download. The pack is then imported into their digital notebooks. They can use the materials, annotate, add to them, and share their additions. Again this is possible using Evernote, although not yet with all of the collaboration tools that we might desire.

Notifications: not a new idea, but one made more powerful as more devices become connected and access become ubiquitous. Notifications, and the ability to subscribe to channels of information are the basis for social networking (Facebook etc). We should see more flexibility in our ability to define what we want to be notified about, and how we want to receive notifications.

App-based channels: Starwalk is one of my favourite sources of information. It is an “app” (software designed to run on mobile platforms) that I have on my iPad and on my iPod Touch. It presents up-to-date astronomical information. I’m always interested to hear about new satellite launches. They get “pushed” into the app automatically over the net. I also get notifications on both devices, so I know that new information is there. The information is presented in the context of the app. I can view the locations of the new satellites in the night sky on its digital planetarium. I can use the information in ways appropriate to the field of study, afforded by the app. Increasingly, information will be presented in this contextually designed form.

Conclusion

That kind of rich interconnectivity, intelligence, adaptive flow, immediacy and collaborative productivity is from an entirely different world to the conventional VLE. But it’s not sci-fi. In response to the recession and to market-saturation, tech companies have been innovating with un-paralleled intensity. Who is driving these changes? Who are they targeting? Not geeks, not scientists, not James Bond. These are all consumer-oriented developments: students will become familiar with these tools in their non-academic activities faster than they are adopted in education.

These economic and competitive conditions have a second, perhaps more revolutionary potential. Consumers are becoming designers – that is to say, the rich range of options and interconnectivity means that ordinary people are starting to think about how they are constructing their information and technology capabilities. They are creating new species of cognitive agent, assembled from hardware and software choices. The success of these species is determined by many factors. They evolve and adapt, feeding back positively and negatively, and forming order through the operation of network effects. It’s not an environment. It’s a full-blown ecology, and should be treated as an Extended Learning Ecology not a Virtual Learning Environment.

Robert O'Toole : 04 Nov 2011 13:57 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

First draft for the student design competition

After Christmas, I will be running a design compeition for students, with big prizes (see below) and an exciting awards ceremony. This is the first draft of the brief for the competition. If you are interested, or have any feedback, please leave a comment at the end of this article. Thanks.

Learning is Design 2012, a design competition for students (Spring term 2012) brief:

Create a fully documented “design proposal” for a an innovative new product, service, technique, technology or community. The design must in some way enhance teaching and/or learning in higher education (taking Warwick as the principal context, but applicable more widely). For example, you could design a web application that helps with essay writing. Or alternatively, you could design a community platform that encourages good practice in peer-to-peer students support. Or perhaps you might redesign the lecture theatre, a department, a faculty or the entire university!

In the proposal, you must explain:

• the aim of the proposed design;
• who it will benefit;
• what the benefits will be;
• how it will work;
• how it could be implemented (a plan, with realistic economic and personal costs);
• how it would be sustained over a reasonable life span.
  

You must also demonstrate (with evidence) that:

• it will significantly enhance teaching and/or learning;
• it will be adopted by students, teachers, administrators (where appropriate);
• that you have engaged with your target “audience” and built a community of support for your proposal;
• it is feasible.

Finally, you must excite the imaginations of the judges (slightly jaded HE and design professionals)!

There are four prizes:

Best overall design - £500
Best participatory design event or campaign (live or online) - £500
Best design story (e.g. a realistic narrative about an end user and how the design will change their lives) - £100
Best individual contribution – a placement opportunity with a leading regional media company.

Support:

You have full access to the facilities and support that are available from the IATL Media Suite (iMacs, video cameras, etc). We will also provide training workshops in design methods and multimedia production.

Robert O'Toole : 26 Oct 2011 12:19 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Extended Learning Ecology versus Virtual Learning Environment

As part of the Open-space Learning in Real World Contexts project I developed the idea of the Extended Learning Ecology (ELE). It's not really a new idea. Rather I'm naming and providing a conceptual back story to the strategy that we have adopted at the University of Warwick (since 2002). Today I will be giving a presentation to a group of academics who teach politics. I was asked to talk about Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), but of course I want to show how an ELE is more appropriate to their discipline and aims. So how do I explain the difference in a single one minute slide?

The VLE is motivated by the wish to put the individual into a more controlled, more predictable, pre-structured, artificial environment in which they will grow according to the desired pattern. They are browser-based web sites with limited configurability and limited inter-operability with real-life activities. VLEs have several obvious advantages: students don't have to think as much, they don't have to understand or contribute to the design of the tools that we use for thinking-acting-evaluating, they don't have to worry about the collective negotiation of practices, it's all done for them. And the disadvantages: students don't have to think, they don't have to understand or contribute, they don't have to collectively negotiate practices etc.

The ELE is motivated by the wish to enhance a collective ability to operate in complex and uncertain conditions. To get connected technology out into the field, into physical classrooms and the many other places where learning happens. It demands a designerly, reflective, collective attitude to the tools that we use for thinking-acting-evaluating. Students have to: adopt and adapt custom assemblages of concepts, practices and technologies, suited to current challenges and transferable to future challenges (beyond the host institution). Assemblages that work collectively and appropriately.

Here's an example. Imagine students undertaking an activity that is both research-based (in the traditional academic sense), community-oriented and socially innovative. The students will have to think about what technologies they should use to support their project - meaning that they will have to think harder about the project, and in this case, especially about the community participants. They might decide to create a web site, perhaps with a blog that will be used to report news, events, progress, ideas. Will they allow people from outside of the institution to contribute to this? What will be the process? Many important design decisions have to be made, all of which force the students to think hard about their project, and to create an appropriate response. They might use a shared notebook system into which they all collect useful and interesting information. Do they allow the latest updates from the notebook to appear on their public site? Perhaps the use of collaborative notetaking tools will result in a useful evolution in their intellectual practices. Maybe these practices will stay with them for life, proving to be a vital adaption to the challenges of 21st century working and living. Perhaps they might cascade out amongst other students and academics. There are many further design issues to be addressed: How will they manage getting feedback from the community on their report? How will they ensure that their report doesn't just disapear into the depths of the internet? And how will they connect all of this back to their course and the requirements of assessment?

Robert O'Toole : 16 Sep 2011 13:27 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Key learning actions – some examples

As part of my project to develop a more systematic and creative methodology for learning technology support, I am using the concept of "key learning actions". They are well-defined, demonstrable actions that may be observed in student behaviour, and which significantly contribute to and enable student success.

It should be possible, for each action, to investigate how they are being achieved by students across different contexts, and to quantify success. We can consider if technology (and its use) is enabling or hindering performance. We can identify actions undertaken by other actors (teachers, administrators) that impact on success. We can then optimise or re-design the technology-enhanced practice and the services (people, hardware, software) that are used. These improvements can be undertaken with a clear sense of how to measure the impact of changes.

We can also use the key actions to evaluate technologies - for example, asking how a specific VLE might enhance success with each action (and producing a SWOT analysis). In some cases this will be directly afforded (or constrained) by the technology itself. In other cases, we must consider the technology and the way in which it is used.

My list of key actions will be developed through a widespread conversation over the coming term. Here are some examples to provide a starting point:

1. Effective admin: understanding, feeling confident about, trusting in and effectively using academic-administrative processes (e.g. assignment management).

2. Feed-forwards using feedback: improving essay performance by using feedback on previous essays (feed forwards).

3. Engaging with research: engaging with the current research activities of the academic department.

4. Developing academic identity: developing personal academic interests and specialisms within the academic context of the course.

5. Project work: successfully designing, managing and completing an academic project, using a variety of appropriate resources and methods, combining distinct activities and phases.

6. Academic writing: writing a good academic text within the parameters, styles and values of the department, course and module.

7. Making academia relevant to me: understanding how academic experiences are relevant to and can be used to further future career goals.

8. Collecting and using experiences: recording rich information and experiences from the wide range of sources encountered, including live personal experiences; organising recordings, reflecting on them, using them to enhance academic work.

9. Understanding assessment: understanding the assessment regime for the course and individual modules.

10. Writing with sources: using academic sources when creating personal, original texts, with correct citation methods and avoiding plagiarism.

11. Choosing modules: choose the most appropriate optional modules to undertake.

12. Academic sources: finding and using a good range of suitable academic texts (and other media).

13. Inspiring discourse: using digital media to spark discourse (in seminars etc).

14. Building to think: prototyping and testing ideas.

15. Telling a story: creating and communicating a narrative.

16. Reflecting: representing, thinking about and planning my own development.

17. Knowing people and resources that I can use: finding out about and accessing the available resources.

18. Identifying and developing a career.

19. Using data: recording, organising, analysing data (text, numerical etc).

20. Accessing teaching: getting access to lectures etc regardless of barriers (e.g. disability, physical location)

My strategy then is to identify a small number of priority actions (most important or those most in need of enhancement), investigate them, work out how technology might help, and make a plan for change (might be a matter of user education, or might mean a formal projet to change a service or to create a new service). Key Action 1 (academic-administrative processes) is already being addressed in a significant way by the Assignment Management project.

Robert O'Toole : 11 Aug 2011 09:59 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What is a digital magazine? What role might it have in HE?

On the small table next to my bed there's a copy of Scientific American. It's been there for a few months now. I've read most of it. I haven't yet discarded it. Eventually I'll move it to some dust-gathering position in my library. But even then it will not be forgotten. Next time we are discussing the evolution of the mammoth, I'll retrieve it to reference some interesting point. In terms of time and space, it's actually been quite significant to me - remarkably so considering it's physical form. I think I paid around £3 for it. That's a good deal. Sometimes I buy the Harvard Business Review, another of my favourite occasional magazines. The HBR is considerably more expensive. I did have a subscription. I probably will get a subscription again in the future, when I can get time to organise it. Interestingly, I have free access to all of the HBR's articles online through our institutional subscription. I use that for research purposes. But I don't really read it online in the same way as I do in print. It's an entirely different entity, with a very different phenomenological presence.

Why does this matter? Why is it important for us to reflect upon the magazine format and its role? The Apple iPad has something to do with it. We are starting to see devices that come close to replicating the magazine-reading/owning experience. Developers are just now starting to explore how digital and connected features might enhance the magazine format further. But there's more - I'm starting to hear educators saying that they "want to publish a magazine". Just a fad? Jumping on the iPad bandwagon? Maybe. But if we think more about the magazine format and experience, I argue that it in fact has a much closer fit with what many people are trying to achieve more broadly with their HE teaching. I suspect that for some time there has been an unexpressed desire to work in this format, and that much of what gets published in blogs and browser-tree based info sites (e.g. department web sites) is better suited to the extended digital magazine format. Over the last decade university IT departments have provided sophisticated and well supported tools for publishing in two formats: the info site and the blog. Perhaps there needs to be a third option: the digital magazine.

Let's imagine a scenario that illustrates how the digital magazine format might be used in HE. In many universities it's a real example - but not that common, or easy to do (the point is that it's about to become a lot easier). Consider a university service department whose role includes:

• facilitating academics in improving teaching (choosing the best methods, developing the required skills and resources, optimising practice, being better coordinated etc);
• getting academics to undertake training and development;
  
• promoting teaching quality improvement as a worthwhile, valuable, feasible activity for academics;
• getting academics to take responsibility for improving teaching quality;
• facilitating debate and new thinking about teaching and the institution;
• developing its own provisions to meet the changing needs of the institution.
  

The department publishes a periodical digital magazine to subscribers (anyone can subscribe). When a new edition of the magazine is published, the subscribers are alerted and can download their own copy in their favourite format. Each edition contains a collection of articles written by teachers from the institution and other invited experts (an editor with journalism skills might help with writing the articles). When the reader downloads their copy, they first see the front cover - in true magazine style, giving the edition a unique identity and sense of "newness". The cover image and teasers give a sense of what the edition has to offer - topics covered, themes, people etc. The reader might jump to a specific article, or they might use a simple interactive tool to browse through the pages looking for a starting point. The edition begins with an editorial, summing-up the articles and giving a sense of why they matter (at that particular point in time). Importantly, the articles are related but different, pursuing diverse aspects and perspectives in an interconnected way with a shared methodology or interest - just like a good HE course. The articles have been commissioned by an editorial panel (perhaps some are selected from projects undertaken as part of one of the department's training courses). The selectiveness and finality of the edition format (with a specified number of articles each edition), enhance the value of the content (as opposed to an info site or a blog which can be added to and edited indefinitely). The readers can respond to articles, or the whole edition through the good-old-fashioned Letters to the Editor page - giving guidance to the editorial commissioning, and helping to direct wider development activity - in this case informing the redeveloment of training provision, as well as feeding into key debates (e.g. on interdisciplinarity). Most importantly, the reading experience is enjoyable, quick and flowing, with articles of just the right length and style to maintain the magazine aesthetic. But at the same time, the reader needs to feel that they are getting something significantly important, substantial and trusted. This is the balance that magazines like HBR and Scientific American achieve so well.

If this is all done well enough, the magazine will become an influential, desirable, long-lasting and substantial entity. People will literally love it and what it has to say. They will look forwards to the date of publication. They think back to great articles from past editions. They will let it fill gaps in their day, perhaps set aside time to read an article with more depth, and even use it as a platform to develop their own ideas and views. The articles might suggest things to try out, workshops to attend (perhaps listed in a digest of events and news), people to talk to, books to read. But the impact will be social as well as individual. Articles will get talked about, editions shared (perhaps globally) in a way that rarely if ever happens with the less tangible and more dispersed content that appears in blogs and info sites. That's why people are starting to think about making magazines rather than web sites. That's why we might see the format used innovatively in other HE contexts. For example, what if we present an academic course as a magazine (rather than through a VLE or a department info site)? The articles could introduce topics, themes, issues in an engaging and interesting way, inspiring the students to find out more, to question, challenge etc. And perhaps the students could then contribute articles on their own research - following the example set by the academics? The discursive element of the magazine could provide better feedback from students to academics. It could help the course to evolve and adapt over time, or to make interdisciplinary connections. Like a text book, but more unique, local, special. Maybe this is even a good route to take from being a campus university to being an online distance learning provider? Perhaps its a way of getting to a bigger global audience without losing what is special about the local (glocalizing is what Immelt calls it).

Is it a realistic option? Are we actually being quite naive? After all, few have experience of this kind of publishing. What are the risks? What is the gap between current skills and those needed to do a successful magazine? How might technology help? Technically, the barriers to publishing a digital magazine are disappearing fast. We already have effective systems for collaboratively creating digital content (Sitebuilder, Sharepoint etc). If we can add features that give guidance to the writing process (word counts, media libraries, document templates, publishing workflow), the challenge of writing good content is alleviated - perhaps enough to lower the entry-level sufficiently. And there is already plenty of good stuff to write about. It's a university, it's full of fascinating stories. Two big challenges remain:

1. Visuals - getting access to good quality, relevant, (sufficiently) original, copyright-cleared images is still a challenge. Services like iStockPhoto helps. Having access to a good camera and photographic skills helps. That is becoming easier. Cameras are becoming smaller and more convenient. Having a media library that indicates if and how each item has been used might also help (so that authors can get images that seem fresh and new).
2. Presentation - the magazine format is very different to the kinds of digital publishing that we have become used to - the front cover, the ease with which we can move through the magazine, seamless integration of video and audio, and to make all this work on a variety of devices - that's still not straightforward.

These challenges are predominantly technical in nature, and perhaps worth addressing if we think that the magazine format is as important as blogs and info sites.

More considerations:

Might the digital format work seamlessly with print-on-demand services? So for example, a student could get a hard copy of a course magazine (having something tangible to put on your bookshelf and point to, saying "that's my degree").

Should they be branded as journals or magazines? Or some new type of publication?

To be investigated further!

Robert O'Toole : 10 Aug 2011 12:38 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Learning ecologies – visualisations

Concerns can be of many kinds - both active and reactive, vague or specific. Sometimes we are concerned about our own practices, wishing to change them, or defending them against change. People reflect upon their concerns in some quite different ways. That effects how they get transformed into projects, and how they reflect practices.

Projects are changes or productions that we care about and work on over time to achieve a more or less well-defined outcome. They often create or revolve around some definite artifact of a well known genre (e.g. a thesis). Sometimes they might concern the creation of a more substantial and less easily contained change (e.g. "a new me"). Projects may be explicitly about changing practices (our own or those of others). Projects can be co-productions. An organised even is a project - for example, a seminar is a co-production.

Projects can be formed and structured by the individual with relative autonomy, or follow a pattern defined institutionally, or they might be a compromise (negotiated or otherwise).

Practices may be habitual or exceptional, procedural or innovative. We have meta-practices that allow us to reflect upon, evaluate, choose and change our practices. Knowing is itself a practice. Technologies are artifacts that are designed to work within practices (their affordances and constraints), to achieve projects that satisfy concerns. "Technology is society made durable" (Latour, 2000)

Images by urbancow & mattjeacock - istockphoto.com

Robert O'Toole : 20 Jul 2011 13:45 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Innovating in HE teaching & learning support using participatory design thinking

A brain-dump, which might turn into a full article, and certainly a chapter...

Academic course modules in HE (the standard unit of assessed activity) are conventionally understood as being an assemblage of teaching activities (e.g. lectures), resources (a reading list), and student responses (learning, presentations, essays, exam responses). I have always found that model to be too superficial as a means for designing learning and teaching support and development. It fails to grasp the contentiousness of academic projects. For example, what it means to study and to know seventeenth century literature is contended, and that contentiousness is an important (perhaps the most important) matter to be grappled with by the students. Should students studying 17th C lit go no further than the established canon given in the Norton Anthology? Should they explore authors, texts and contextual issues that might normally be considered to be peripheral? If those lesser-known authors demand a more original and creative response, perhaps using film making and other new technologies, is that allowable within the module? How can the established canon then be reinvigorated using new techniques?

The simplistic model fails to grasp the dynamic, negotiated, 4 dimensional nature of teaching and learning. It overlooks the many points at which the module is actively designed and redesigned. When introducing a new practice, a new technology, it is within this contention rich and ever changing context - practices are contended, and differences may have significant implications. An effective methodology for improving learning and teaching through technology must employ a design strategy that works with this dynamism.

Confused? That's a common response. Choosing or designing technologies to introduce to a module, supporting their integration and use, and measuring their impact, is dependent upon lots of variable local conditions. We most commonly introduce technologies at a more global level, and fail to address their integration into the complex context of the module.

So, here then is a model that is more sensitive to local conditions, contentions, complexities and change. It takes as its starting point a simple model of social agency provided by the sociologist Margaret Archer in Making Our Way Through the World (2007):

To some extent it is idealised. Most modules as taught now are in fact adaptions of existing modules. Not designed from scratch, but redesigned. On the left hand side (in the idealised model), there is a group of academics. They collectively bring together their concerns (as the academic experts) and those of other institutional bodies and people (the course structure, the needs of the discipline, the inadequacy of current practice, the ethos of the university, the students etc), filter that assemblage of concerns into the kind of academic project that we call a module (designed within a given set of affordances and constraints). There are various creative, political and administrative practices that result in a module forming as a project from these concerns. Typically, the module as an academic project is then defined in module handbooks, the prospectus, and verbally to the students at events such as options fares. The module is bounded territorially, and through a set of affordances and a set of constraints. This definition will usually outline:

• The foundational concerns (often in a persuasive or rhetorical manner);
• The sub-projects (lecture topics, essay titles etc)
  
• A set of appropriate practices (including knowledge, writing and its practices) are explicitly or implicitly defined for the module. They vary between practices with which the student must enter the module, practices that they will develop during the module, as well as practices the development of which are themselves a concern and a goal of the module as a project.

The module is typically expressed as a journey: sign up to the concerns, the project and its practices, and you will get to some better place (better practices, better understanding, or perhaps a better grade). In the humanities, the student is expected to create their own variation of this journey - for example, in creating their own research topic and essay title - as well as, sometimes, critically introducing their own variations on the core practices (for example, introducing a different critical perspective, or using different writing styles).

There are many dimensions of change within this. The most significant being:

• The student will develop new/better/more useful practices.
• The practices upon which the module is based will change (over time, as a result of student and teacher innovation).
• A wider impact may trickle out, eventually changing the department, the discipline, the university, society and culture.

What does this mean for learning technologists and others? The service improvement process needs to be driven by some form of common ground drawn from these innovation processes as they happen in the wide diversity of modules. But also, any intervention at a global level (for example introducing a technology across a whole university) should be accompanied by assistance to co-adapt the innovation with the constant multi-dimensional innovation happening at the heart of module based teaching and learning. Sounds like a cue for participatory design thinking.

As a diagram:

Robert O'Toole : 12 May 2011 10:13 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Blogging for academic and personal development, a short video

I've just recorded a short talk about blogging for the History Subject Centre. In it I talk about how blogging as a form of writing (not a genre) pushes the blogger to behave in a specific kind of authorly manner. The blog presents affordances, constraints and enabling constraints, and when used in a certain way, can be an effective means for reflexively developing personal discoursive skills - an individual's 'voice' and (academic) 'technique' (I'm currently reading Writing: Self and Reflexivity by Celia Hunt and Fiona Sampson, which deals well with these ideas).

Transcript:

The term 'blog' is a shortened form of the phrase 'web log' - indicating that it is a log or diary of events that is written on the web. It's as simple as that. That doesn't imply anything about it's content or purpose. We shouldn't assume that all blogs are written for the purpose of self-publicity, or that all blogs are about trivial events in the life of the blogger. Indeed, not all web logs will have an audience, a single author or a common theme. Often when encouraging students to take on a blog, the first obstacle is to get them to understand that blogging is a form and not a genre of writing.

That does not however mean that the blog isn't a powerful and productive form. It is. It's essential structure encourages the blogger to think, read and write in a particularly interesting way. Consider the basic pattern: the blog contains a series of date-stamped texts, each of which is oriented towards some external thing or event that has occurred on or near to that date. Even if the entry were about an event in distant history, the time-boundedness of its publication in the blog ties it to a reflection of that distant event by the author at the time of publication. The empty form of the 'new entry' interface asks for a title, nominating some purpose for the writing. Typically the title must conform to a tightly constrained length, forcing the author to think about the essence of the entry. The body of the entry provides greater scope for expression, digression and consequently blogger's-block. The ability to add images, formatting, hyperlinks and multimedia offers routes by which the challenge of the blank entry may be overcome. But most importantly, the blank entry form demands some thing more of the blogger. They need a discipline of some sorts with which to fill it. It may be enough to attend to an interesting and significant event or object. But more usually, for successful blogging, the blogger needs to deploy some means for interogating the object or event with a writing strategy - for example, a set of questions.

So, a blog demands to be much more. It is a space that the author must fill through a mediated representation of an interesting object or event. The author is out-there, on the look-out for material. Upon finding material, they interrogate, expand it, filter un-necessary detail, get the right angle on it, and use their powers of expression to convey that story.

And yet there's even more to it. The entry need not necessarily lay dormant. The datedness of the entry may always pose the question: that was then but what of now? How might the event, the object, the author and the reader have changed over time? Most blog systems offer means for searching or browsing back in time. The blog is more than just a place to write an entry, it is a time machine. And there lies the real power of blogging: reflexivity. We can use a blog to review our past selves. To think about change, agency (or lack of), and to think about what might be possible in the future. For example, on a simple level, a student can refine the questions that they ask when investigating an event. They might over time find themselves more able to hear and amplify their own personal voice in theie writing. They might work with a tutor or their peers to refine the direction of their development. A blog may then be a medium in which we mediate between the world of events and objects, the individual, and academia.

So, to conclude, some recommendations on blogging for academic and personal development:

1. As with almost anything that is worthwhile, you need to acquire and apply an apporopriate discipline to your blogging. To become a good blogger, and hence to benefit from its potential for developing you and your writing, be an active and regular blogger, seeking out material and working it into entries.

2. Who are you writing for? Define your audience, large or small. It might even be an audience of one - you yourself (or your many future selves). Perhaps think of your blog as having distinct zones, ranging from a personal zone, through small group zones, to an entirely public zone. Perhaps you should first publish to the personal zone, and progressively widen-out your audience.

3. Actively seek out experiences to fuel your writing. Learn or invent tactics for finding good subject matter, or for making things happen.

4. Invent and refine systems for interrogating your subject matter - for example, a series of questions that you always start by asking.

5. Don't be overwhelmed by your audience or your subject matter. Retain the right to your own perspective. Make sure there's always something of yourself in there.

6. Quality does matter, even if you are only writing for yourself. But don't let it stifle your creativity and spontaneity. Write some content that is clearly identified as fast and immediate. Wrap it in text that is more considered and formal. Or use photos, audio and video to capture the moment. Then describe the moment with more well-developed, edited text.

7. Revisit your entries after some time. It's easier to be objective about your past self than it is about your present self. Set yourself objectives for quality and content.

Robert O'Toole : 26 Apr 2011 15:40 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem