All 43 entries tagged E-Learning

ePortfolios and the problem with scaffolded learning

Follow-up to How interoperable ePortfolios can solve your strategic issues, save money, and make you rich (not) from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

This is a reply that I have given as part of an ongoing (national) debate that I sparked off concerning the usefulness of interoperable ePortfolios, which some argue aim to provide degrees of 'scaffolding' to learners.

Scaffolding is a good metaphor. It wraps around (and sometimes within) a building in the process of construction. It gets assembled, dismantled and extended where appropriate as the building grows. And at some point, is no longer required. Then, the more difficult fine detail of the building can be worked upon.

Unfortunately, it seems that students often don't understand that we want them to be concerned with the building and not the scaffolding. This might be a result of the following:

1. understanding and navigating the scaffolding is itself a major achievement;
2. but understanding the scaffolding is still a quicker win than actually creating the building;
3. everyone has the same experience of the scaffolding, but they are all creating different buildings, so there's less of a shared understanding of the building;
4. it's the scaffolding that is provided by the authorities, not the building;
5. consequently, we end up rewarding them for understanding the scaffolding, not for the building or for the process of building, because its the scaffolding that everyone understands;
6. so at some point along the way, the building is forgotten and all we are left with is the scaffolding.

That's rather metaphorical, but perhaps captures an aspect of the current (and maybe eternal) problems of education. Warwick Blogs is initially an experiment in providing a powerful building tool but with very little scaffolding. The conjecture is that to some extent our students will self-organize their own scaffolding from within it. I think we have been little naive, given the wider educational context in which it exists. But we can see it starting to happen occasionally.

My argument is that we need to do a little more work to help a minimal set of scaffolding emerge locally to the many different and diverse regions of building within the university – scaffolding appropriate to each discipline and sub categories of discipline. However, if we are to see that happen, we have to convince the people in these localities that it is their responsibility to create the appropriate scaffolding, and use it wisely (given the argument above). I suspect that at the moment they just don't see that as their job. Or maybe they want to do it, but they feel that the authority belongs elsewhere (this is certainly true of any students who may want to create their own scaffolding). This perhaps is made worse by the appropriation of all scaffolding into a single taxonomic ePortfolio structure, which may be intended as a support to them, but which may have the psycholgical effect of disempowering local actors.

: 06 Jun 2005 08:32 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How interoperable ePortfolios can solve your strategic issues, save money, and make you rich (not)

Follow-up to Political motivations behind the interoperable ePortfolio from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Proving my point that the interoperable ePortfolios craze is not being driven by demand from students, today I recieved an invitation to a workshop covering these (and no other) points:

• How are ePortfolios used to solve strategic issues?
• What are best practice findings from early adopters?
• Developing reference models for ePortfolio services.
• What is the status and forecast for ePortfolio interoperability?
• Procurement advice.
• Operational issues.
• Opportunities for collaboration.
• The ePortfolio intersection between the Human Resource industry and education.
• Early experiences implementing ePortfolio standards and specifications.

More unwanted strategem-obsessive-bussiness-guru-babble.

: 01 Jun 2005 07:19 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The use of core texts in humanities higher education

There is a significant debate currently running throughout UK universities over whether libraries should stock multiple copies of core texts. If this is an issue in the humanities at Warwick, then it signals a dramatic change in expectations and ideas of how such courses should work.

I have just read a really good report (not yet available) about this issue, and some of the options that might be available to address it. In short, the problem seems to be that students are increasingly expecting libraries to stock the 'core texts' that they require for their studies. Clearly this is not feasible without a significant increase in funding for libraries. An increase in spending on core texts may also reduce amount of money that libraries have for building wide ranging collections of research materials. That would, for a university like Warwick, be a very bad thing. It would in the medium term have a serious impact upon the quality of the academic experience, including for undergraduates. I know academics in the humanities who, given the choice between working at Warwick or working at Oxford, would choose the institution that has the Bodlean's research collection. Hence the problem.

Firstly, with regards to the humanities, what do we mean by core texts? In the sciences the term would largely refer to text books, there are probably fewer useful texts books for the humanities. It was certainly the case that until recently there were no useable text books in philosophy, and those that are now available are relevant to the more scientific aspects of the discipline. They also tend to be compilations of key papers, rather than text books of the kind used in the sciences. In that case they are largely replacing the boxes of photocopied articles that we used to use from the SRC ten years ago. In many ways turning those course packs into a nicely packaged text book is a good thing. All that photocopying of SRC papers was a nuisance and probably a serious threat to the environment.

A further interesting question concerns whether there has been a change in methods of teaching that tend to rely more on text books. It could be that more teaching is now done by PhD students and other temporary lecturers who are less likely to give an authoritative and consistent overview of a subject. A text book can act as a prop to support these lecturers. I'm not sure that it is the case that fewer permanent lecturers are teaching. But if this is an issue, it might be better addressed by course teams developing their own online materials in Sitebuilder (and thus preserving the unique value of the module as opposed to commodified value of the textbook).

A second class of core texts are the primary source publications such as litarary novels and works of philosophy. Anyone who undertakes a humanities degree should expect to have to buy plenty of these. Some courses require more than others. I would guess that a philosophy degree would require about 20. This can be expensive, but decreasingly so. Book prices are falling all of the time. For example, a copy of Anti-Oedipus cost me £18 in 1992. It now costs only £9. Services such as Amazon have also made buying second hand books much cheaper. In some cases students do have to buy the more expensive editions of certain books, but again with the easy access to the second hand book market this is not a total loss.

My guess is that if we are more transparent about the costs associated with doing specific modules (we could easily give links to buy each book from a retailer so that the student can estimate costs), and compliment that with advice on how to reduce those costs (supporting the resale or sharing of textbooks, getting deals with publishers), the problem may appear as less serious than we think – at least for the humanities.

Robert O'Toole : 27 May 2005 15:24 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Political motivations behind the interoperable ePortfolio

Follow-up to What are ePortfolios for? from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

A speculation on the political reasons behind central government investment in the development of interoperable ePortfolios.

If a government were struggling with the task of enforcing quality control over a sprawling range of education providers, each intent upon hiding in its own obscure curricula and awards regime, interoperable lifetime ePortfolios might seem like a good thing. If a student were to present an ePortfolio to a prospective employer, in theory they would show more interest if it contained course transcript details that actually explained the meaning of a qualification. One could argue that the market would then reward education suppliers who are able to clearly state that a student has gained a useful set of skills and knowledge at a meaningfully quantifiable level, thus doing the QA work for free.

Or alternatively, the education suppliers might just become better at spinning a line when they are required to state what their students are doing, thus diverting further resources away from the much more difficult task of actually providing good education.

A more likely outcome is that lots of money will be sunk into technical development work for something that no one actually wants. Perhaps the money would be better spent on training people with the skills that they require to articulate their own education and training histories directly.

Am I cynical or what?

Robert O'Toole : 27 May 2005 10:45 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What are ePortfolios for?

Writing about web page http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20050523083528

What is an ePortfolio? Is it necessarily tied up with questions of interoperability and automation of content?

At Warwick we have been experimenting with providing for our students, initially at the PhD level, a structured set of personal web pages within which they can represent their academic activities. This is constructed using our Sitebuilder CMS, along with other tools such as Warwick Blogs. We have been calling this an "ePortfolio", that is, an online portflio of work and recordings of experience and achievements. The aim has been for these to exist within the student's home department web site.

Several seperate interests have motivated this:

1. for the student themselves – that the reflective process of building the ePortfolio is useful for the student. It also provides a useful way for the student to distribute their work within and beyond the university;
2. for the department and the university – representing what PhD students are doing demonstrated the wealth of research at Warwick;
3. for research councils and other funders to see what their students are doing.

As a result of these interests, our interpretation of 'ePortflio' is of something that exists within the context of the university, and as close as possible to the context in which the student is working. It is also a selective portfolio, presenting to the various specific audiences a carefully defined narrative – a story tied closely to the departmental context.

In his presentation on ePortfolios, Scott Wilson of Cetis (the UK body most concerned with interoperability), does a good job of outlining some of the usefulness of ePortfolios. However, he makes the increasingly common claim that a:

key requirement is the ability to export across transitions

Certainly in our case, I don't agree with that. I would argue that a key outcome of an education at the level of Warwick is the ability of a graduate to communicate effectively a selected overview of their work to each specific audience as required. If a detailed breakdown of skills and knowledge is required, the graduate should be capable of presenting that themselves, in their own way or within the bounds specified by the relevant professional body. This may be accompanied where necessary by references to authoratitive proof. The amount of data that would ever need to be exported out of the Warwick context is extremely small, if anything at all. The ePortfolio therefore just needs to exist within the context in which it was created.

And furthermore, I suspect that in almost all cases there is no need for us to be able to import data from a student's ePortfolio on the point of joining the University. For undergraduates, they have completed their A levels, and have now moved on to a very different kind of education. In fact it is probably the case that most people want to leave behind their past educational experience and start afresh. It certainly seems that the case for a fully integrated fully interoperable ePortfolio is not convincing enough for us to spend time and money on it.

Note that I'm not saying that it would be a bad thing for students to be able to easily aggregate information from various sources in which their academic work appears. In fact we are already doing this in several ways, for example by providing the ability to embed a list of blog entries from a category in the student's blog into their ePortfolio. We are also interested in exposing the student constructed ePortfolio to other services (such as a FOAF profile). What I am saying is that there is probably not a sufficiently strong argument for us to put time and money into full interoperability.

You can see an example ePortfolio (mine) at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/ep-pyrvae

: 26 May 2005 09:52 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Workshop paper proposal completed, finally!

Follow-up to Conference proposal: From Monadic Architecture to Nomadic Anarchitecture from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

I managed to get my proposal submitted almost on time (at 1am in fact just after the deadline). I almost didn't make it, as I stalled for two weeks whilst reading chapter 2 of The Fold. The first time I read it, i'm sure it made sense. Then when I came back for a more detailed reading, building a concept map as I worked, I was sure that Deleuze had just gone completely beserk. It made no sense. Fortunately, with just two days to go, it started to make sense again. The trick is to think about how for Descartes and for Leibniz (and later Kant) mathematics is actually an expression of something more fundamental than measurement – space, intentionality, and ultimately real time. However, the world is thankful that Deleuze never tried to teach mathematics, because he would have been absolutely hopeless at it.

You can read my proposal in the conferences section of my ePortfolio.

Robert O'Toole : 23 May 2005 11:58 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Using OneNote with online texts

Follow-up to Google Print – free books from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

I am currently evaluating the use of Microsoft OneNote in both my philosophy and my e-learning work, running it on a WiFi connected Tablet PC.

Now that I am a committed user of Microsoft OneNote, I am more interested in getting access to books and journals online. OneNote is a sophisticated note taking tool. One of its most useful features is 'Insert screen clipping'. This allows for a clip of another open application to be taken and inserted into the currently open notes page. When this is done with a web page, the url of the page is also inserted.

Annotations can then be added to the clip.

When a book is available digitally, this is really powerful.

: 28 Apr 2005 15:59 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Google Print – free books

Writing about web page http://print.google.com/

Google are moving into the digital library business, and I am one of their first authors.

More plans for world domination are emerging out of the Google Incubator. Google Print, they intend, will eventually contain everything ever printed! Maybe, but at least I can confirm that already even the work of very obscure philosophers is in their easily searchable system. For example, a search for O'Toole results in this kind of slightly rabid Deleuzianism (this link seems to have stopped working, and in fact any links to the search form have disappeared from the print.google.com homepage).

Perhaps one day I might receive some royalties? Although this publication is already available for purchase from Routledge as various electronic formats, so only selected pages are in Google. In fact, they seem to have included enough to make it useful, and left out just enough to make it worth buying.

: 28 Apr 2005 15:39 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Learning Designs Blog created

Follow-up to Loosely coupled and lightweight learning designs patterns from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

I have now registered a blog that will be used to record interesting learning designs. I hope that others will contribute to it. Rob Johnson has already compiled a long list of interesting patterns in his blog.

I have started off with an example, illustrating the suggested format. This has an overview in bold, followed by a procedural list of actions. The format is necessarily simple.

Robert O'Toole : 25 Apr 2005 07:36 |  Tags: E-Learning Emerging Requirements Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Loosely coupled and lightweight learning designs patterns

Follow-up to Learning design patterns – keeping it simple from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

More reasons to support the gathering and sharing of simple, lightweight learning design patterns (just renamed the concept!). This follows a discussion with Rob Johnson about how best to document and communicate good practice in PDP learning design.

As previously described, a learning design pattern is a simple high level description of a type of learning and teaching activity. It lists the key interactions between those involved in the activity, transactions between them, the range of contingencies, and outcomes. It could be documented in a short text, or a simple diagram.

A single pattern should not describe activities at too many levels. For example, a pattern that describes activities at the curriculum level should not also describe activities at the seminar level (justification for this to follow).

Why we need patterns

Currently, discussions about improving teaching through applying technology tend not to be effectively focussed. They fall into three classes:

1. concerning vague notions about generic approaches that are for no apparent reason assumed to be good things to do, but which are too disconnected from actual teaching and outcomes to make a discernible difference;
2. concerning very specific new features and provisions that are not useable beyond the context for which they are developed, which develop few transferable skills outside of the context, and which add an additional support burden;
3. complex and expansive new systems and grand visions that involve the rapid adoption of many tightly coupled components.

If we encourage the focus of discussions to be on learning design patterns, followed up with suggestions and support for the appropriate application of technology to support the implementation of the patterns, then we should be able to:

• ensure that we are doing work that has definite and appropriate outcomes within the specific teaching and learning context;
• avoid the development of unsupportable and insufficiently re-useable services and features;
• apply as far as possible the available services and features to real situations, getting feedback on their suitability;
• share good practice in relation to tried and tested solutions;
• encourage more experimentation – people don't have to buy into large scale redevelopment to try out a small scale pattern – the paterns are loosely coupled.

More arguments for simplicity

As previously argued, simplicity and lack of contextual information is important. The principle is that the consumer of the pattern should be intelligent enough to apply it to their own situation, and not be distracted by the patterns origin and application in another context. It is also the case that pattern providers (lecturers) are more prepared to share a simple pattern, without having to be responsible for explaining the contextual detail (which they may not want to share for other reasons).

We can add to this the fact that, if the learning design pattern were to become a common currency for describing teaching techniques, then we need to encourage many people to start exchanging them. This exchange needs to happen both in formal contexts, but also informal contexts (chatting). It must therefore be easy, at least in the first instance, to share such a pattern quickly. Then the law of network effect may come into play, with it becoming advantageous for many connected people to talk in these terms.

: 19 Apr 2005 17:09 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Warwick Blogs Experience, slide show online

Follow-up to Shock of the Old Conference, 2005 from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Robert O'Toole : 14 Apr 2005 16:22 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Learning design patterns – keeping it simple

Writing about web page /stevencarpenter/entry/e-orientation_event_notes/

Over the last two days the E-learning Advisor Team have been presenting to and discussion with a group of Warwick lecturers as part of an eOrinetation programme. One of the recurring features of this was that lecturers would describe a favoured approach to teaching, in quite simple and abstract terms, and this would provoke a discussion of ways of implementing that design pattern.

Main text

A great example of this came from Les Warrington of the Warwick Manufacturing Group. He described the following pattern:

1. Divide the students into two groups;
2. Assign a different resource to each group (perhaps presenting something from two different perspectives);
3. Send the groups away to prepare a report on a single topic based on the resource given to each group;
4. Bring the groups back together to present and compare their reports.

Some may think that such a simple description would be inadequate. I disagree for the following reasons:

• Warwick has a big diversity of teaching contexts, each with its own very specific characteristics;
• our lecturers are smart enough to be able to instantly see a pattern and know how it applies (or not) to their own context;
• further subject specific detail about the pattern should be created locally within the context of the department as it is used – this knowledge could be shared, but the first objective is for people to take the idea and run with it in their own direction;
• giving too much detail in the first instance discourages people from considering the pattern in their own context, and discovering new things about it;
• the best patterns will come from lecturers themselves, we don't want them to have to do too much work in describing them.

Why is this of interest to the ELAT? If we can effectively capture the popular teaching patterns, it will be easier for us to give advice on how technology can be fitted into an implementation of them. We may even be able to turn some of those implementations into templates that can be reapplied and modified. In fact we already do this with one core pattern – the module (and its web reperesentations). Note that we have no interest in giving people authoritative advice on which patterns are best, that advice needs to be generated by people out in the teaching context, in departments and other groups.

Having a common approach to this will make our work much easier, and increase the efficiency with which IT is introduced into current practices to improve efficiency and quality.

: 13 Apr 2005 09:59 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Process more important than content in Warwick e–learning?

Follow-up to Response to Derek Morrison's argument about the attraction of non–institutional elearning services from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

In a presentation to a small group of lecturers from around the university, John Dale emphasised that it may be that developing useful academic-IT processes (and tools to support them) may be much more important for Warwick than developing content.

Main text

John's argument for this is that:

• in Warwick teaching, most content changes rapidly, therefore is not suited to capturing definitively;
• the content is complex and expensive to reproduce online;
• the important content is emergent from the interactions of staff and students.

I would add to this Derek Morrison's argument that IT in HE should aim to support higher level skills, which are social, creative and emergent.

This explains the development of services that support informal, self-organized, emergent learning, such as Warwick Blogs.

Robert O'Toole : 11 Apr 2005 11:17 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Response to Derek Morrison's argument about the attraction of non–institutional elearning services

Follow-up to Shock of the Old Conference, 2005 from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

In his keynote speech at the Shock of the Old conference at Oxford, Derek Morrison argued that much of the current elearning infrastructure does not support the kinds of high-level social process that HE users require. And as a result, they are turning to services not provided by the institution. In a question at the end of the presentation i responded by saying that at Warwick we have observed this, and that in some areas we are attempting to provide the kinds of services that students want, but with valuable additional functionality that only university can offer. I now add to this the further argument that students do also value good guaranteed support.

Main text

We have observed that students, and to a lesser extent lecturers, are using external services in a self-organized way. However, they are quite smart about the risks in doing so.

I have had discussions with students who are maintaining blogs on both external systems and on our Warwick Blogs system. They understand the dangers of being tied into external services that are run for profit. They also know the limitations of free services, and the lack of guarantees that they offer.

They are, therefore, less likely to use such external services for critical activities. They are used heavily for less formal and less critical (although often important) activities.

On the contrary, now that our IT Service department is being much more serious about stating and maintaining levels of service, whilst offering the kind of services that student want, I suspect that students will start using our provisions more fully. The trick is to get the right provisions, with added functionality beyond external offerings, and furthermore, to support interoperability with the informal learning that students are carrying out on non-university systems (the filling-station model is an example of where we must get this interoperability right).

Robert O'Toole : 09 Apr 2005 22:59 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Qualrus – automated essay marking

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4425423.stm

Responding to student demand, the University of Missouri have introduced an automated essay marking tool. Claims concerning its abilities can be believed. However, does that necessarily mean that it is a good thing?

Main text

The Qualrus system is capable of pattern searching and semantic analysis of an essay, identifying the depth and exactitude of the domain knowledge contained in it. The developers are keen to stress that this only covers one part of the assessment process. A human expert still needs to consider creative and innovative aspects of the essay. That may welll be the case, and indeed could give the markers more opportunity to concentrate on these aspects of the student's work. However, the danger is always there that the machine's assessment will be trusted too much, and the human dimension will be forgotten due to a lack of time.

Unsurprisingly, students in the US have responded positively to the system. After all, it the aspects of their work that the system rewards, repetition of fatcs and content, are much easier to understand and perfect than the higher level skills that the machine cannot analyse. Worse still, it seems that the students are allowed to submit their essays into the system as many times as they like until the deadline is reached. Hence they may be adapting their work to meet the assessment criteria of the machine, which are inevitably limited.

My conjecture is this. Lecturers often do not want to be too explicit about assessment criteria. There is a chance that such over-determination stifles student creativity and innovation, precisely the characteristics of intelligence that higher education is supposed to develop. Machine marking may well act against this.

Robert O'Toole : 09 Apr 2005 22:09 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem