All 81 entries tagged Warwick University

Technology for research based [e]learning – presentation abstract

Advances in entrepreneurial and research based [e]learning at Warwick

Warwick has developed extensive [e]learning provisions: web architecture, software and hardware catalogue, support and training, network of experts and advisors, research and development programme, and most importantly a culture of innovation (especially amongst students). This has been undertaken to serve the needs of an entrepreneurial and research oriented university.

Our focus is then upon using technology to enhance student academic processes, key research and enterprise skills, and their assessment. This is achieved by making the tools and techniques used by researchers and entrepreneurs available to students. At the same time, we extend the technical capabilities of our academic staff as researchers. We aim to foster a digitally native, collaborative, network oriented, technically proficient and media savvy university population, staff and students included, such that research and enterprise is enhanced throughout. This represents an entrepreneurial and research oriented agenda for e-learning.

I will begin with a concise but effective clarification of the concept of entrepreneurial research based [e]learning, thus providing a framework through which specific technologies can be understood:

• Valuing the process as much as the product (and implications for skills and assessment).
• Students as researchers creating and developing novel opportunities (four essential research skills, the link between research, creativity and enterprise).
• Surveying and understanding current knowledge (revealing gaps and contradictions in knowledge, making opportunities appear, questioning and investigating).
• Beyond content transmission (digital nativity, collaboration, critical reflection, network/community orientation, technical proficiency and media savviness).

I will then provide a brief overview of the technologies and techniques that we have made available, evaluating how each of these supports entrepreneurial research based [e]learning differently.

Two particular technologies/techniques will be subjected to thorough investigation: podcasting and concept mapping. These have emerged, largely without conscious planning, as popular and effective tools. Podcasting, as a student collaborative research activity, has shown great promise. It has also proved popular with older staff, who find its radio-like format to be familiar and useful. Concept mapping (as opposed to mind mapping), has been rapidly adopted by individuals and groups as a tool for gathering and analysing information. It is a highly effective tool, and yet simple and intuitive to use even when dealing with large and complex domains. I will demonstrate how it can revolutionise learning, research and collaboration through the application of critical and analytical processes.

Robert O'Toole : 04 Jan 2007 14:14 |  Tags: E-Learning Research Based Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What is concept mapping? – and how could it be vital to your work?

Many of the things that we (in business or academia) work upon require efficient access to tens, hundreds, thousands or more related items of information. Each item of information may be small but at the same time distinct and important in itself. Think of an example from a domain that you work on. It could be a daily process like working out your schedule, or perhaps something more exotic, like designing a new rocket ship. The items of information involved might be many simple and diverse attributes of a real world entity, or perhaps events within an abstract and difficult process of reflection. Complexity is everywhere, and we need to manage it.

Complex domains of information can sometimes be stored within a database. These are usually designed according to tried and tested methods, using sometimes esoteric logical structures. However, in many cases, there is neither the need nor the opportunity to build such a formal solution. Database design is an expensive, specialised and time consuming business. When it goes wrong, the consequences can be painful for the end user. Perhaps a formal structured database is the wrong kind of solution anyway. In many cases, there is no obvious or simple structure to our information. Perhaps a structure could emerge over time, given enough data and sufficient opportunities for its analysis. But how then do we store and use large amounts of data, to enable structure to emerge, without a structured database design? The chicken-egg precedence issues are obvious.

What if it were possible to store large numbers of small items of information in an ad hoc way, with only a minimal schema or even none at all? Perhaps some degree of structure could then emerge during the process of storing and reflecting upon it. This could be a middle way between a structured database and a simple list. Concept mapping has developed to fit precisely this niche.

Concept maps have, for a long time, been scrawled onto paper and whiteboards in the hope that they will help to make more sense of what we know and what we don’t know. People find the approach to be effective for a wide range of uses, including:

• recording research information;
• recording known information and identifying gaps;
• fast generation, analysis and ordering of ideas;
• identifying patterns, relationships, causality, priorities and hierarchies;
• recording tasks and resources;
• planning projects;
• communication of ideas using the map itself;
• generating presentations and documents from the map;
• frameworking writing;
• assisting memory;
• cooperative thinking;
• decision making;
• designing system schemas;
• keeping a journal of individual or team activities.

Now take this simple idea, and add to it a brilliantly intuitive interface for storing and organising information within ad hoc structures. Combine this with powerful tools for extending that information (with text, links and metadata), and for searching, filtering and outputting the results. Would that be of use? If so, MindManager 6 from Mindjet is the application for you. It is the most professional, sophisticated and easy to use concept mapping system. Warwick has a site licence (Windows, on campus only) and a rapidly growing population of users.

Read on for more about concept mapping and MindManager.

What is a concept map?

A concept map consists of:

1. A central topic defining the domain (problem, or object) that the map is about.
2. Many small items of information about that central topic, the sub-topics of the central topic, such as facts about events and entities (real or imaginary).
3. Connections between topics.
4. Hierarchies, such that some topics are sub-topics of other sub-topics. Information is ordered into a tree structure with multiple branches and leaves.

Here is a simple example. It is a concept map about me. There is a central topic (in this case with an image). This has four sub-topics. Two of these sub-topics have their second level visible. There is much more information on the map, but it is hidden from view within closed topics (the + sign next to a topic indicates that it contains more). Note also the hyperlinks to web pages.

Concept mapping is the process of building such structures. The purpose is twofold:

1. To help to generate and to handle unstructured information;
2. Where necessary and appropriate, to draw out order and organisation.

For this to be possible, it is essential that our concept mapping techniques and tools allow the following:

1. The easy addition of topics regardless of patterns and structures.
2. A simple mechanism for moving topics from one branch of the tree to another.
3. Clear and simple means of presenting and reviewing the structure and the information that it contains.
4. The ability to search through the text of all of the topics on the map.

MindManager has all of these facets. New topics are entered simply by pressing the Enter key and typing. Sub-topics are entered with the Insert key. Topics are moved using drag-and-drop mouse controls. The on-screen and print view of a map can be manipulated to hide or show detail, and to scroll and zoom as required. A text search tool zooms into matching topics (and searches topic notes). It is, in fact, so simple that a new user can generate a complex but useful map in minutes.

Beyond simple concept mapping

So far this should sound pleasingly simple if not blindingly obvious. However, if you have used such techniques in any depth, you will already know that they have their limits. Want more? MindManager introduces some additional aspects to concept mapping, implemented with more sophisticated but easy to use features:

1. Any topic may also contain images and a more detailed text (hidden until required).
2. Both topics and the links between them may contain ‘call-out bubbles’ with additional short comments.
3. Topics and links can be formatted either for presentational or informational purposes.
4. Topics can be linked to documents and web pages outside of the map.
5. Topics can be linked to other sub-topics that are not contained on the same branch of the tree.
6. Additional meta data can be attached to a topic, allowing it to be categorised and described in further structured ways.

Breaking out from the tree

Features 4, 5, and 6 listed above help to transform the rigidly arborescent tree structure of the map into a more complex web like or rhizomatic structure. Trees are fine for many things, but as our ancestors discovered, you can only do so much by clambering up and down the branches.

There are very good reasons why you would want to go beyond arborescence. Most obviously, the real world, with its objects and events, is not structured like a tree. For example, Rachel may be the son of David, and could be represented as a sub-topic of David. However, Rachel is more closely allied to the Socialist Workers Party, a fact that we should never forget when considering her. So should she also be a sub-topic of the SSWP topic? A simple tree structure would find that difficult.

Perhaps we could link her topic node to the SSWP topic? There’s another much more powerful option: text markers.

Text markers

A text marker is a kind of keyword tag. For example, we could tag Rachel’s topic with the text marker “SWP member”. Other people on our concept map could also be tagged with this text marker (but not David, her father is a devout Tory). This could be an aid to finding all of the SWP members within our research data. Or, more interestingly, we could use it to search for patterns in the data. Perhaps we would see that the SWP are systematically infiltrating certain types of other organisation, in preparation for a coup d’etat. MindManager allows us to create whatever text markers are required whenever we want. It does, however, encourage some organisation within our text marker schema. Markers should be organised into groups, so for example we would have a text marker group called “SWP”, containing the markers “SWP member” and “SWP activist”.

Filtering

This is a feature that always prompts a “wow” when it is demonstrated. Once text markers have been applied to the topics on a map, a filter can be constructed to show only topics with specified text markers. For example, if we wanted to find out who the SWP activists are, we would select the text marker “SWP activist” and apply a filter. This can be used for analytical purposes, or to simple make the map easier to use.

Icons

For a more visual alternative to text markers, a set of meaningful icons can be applied to topics. For example, there is a set of emoticon icons including various smileys.

Topics as tasks (project management)

In MindManager each topic may also be treated as a task, with a start and end data, priority rating, progress percentage, and resources. Filters can be applied to the map, based upon these attributes. There is then an easy route between a concept map and a managed project.

Conclusion

Many people will have heard of concept mapping. Most of them assume it to be just another productivity or creativity technique. I argue that it is much more significant. Based upon the survey given above, I put concept mapping and its software applications into the same taxonomic class as wordprocessing, relational databases, email, and the web. It is that fundamental. Imagine life without those other fundamental applications? That should give you an idea of the scope of what you are missing out on.

Training

As part of my E-learning Advisor role, I can organise training sessions for groups of between 4 and 12 people. I only have a few free slots each term. Arts Faculty staff and teaching postgrads have priority, but others can be accomodated. Please contact me to enquire.

Robert O'Toole : 13 Dec 2006 23:38 |  Tags: Concept Maps E-Learning Mindmanager Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Random opinions about blogs and bloggers

We did try to get a mix of bloggers and non–bloggers, however, there seemed to be few bloggers around (perhaps they were all locked away in dark rooms desperately trying to write something worthwhile).

Note that it was compiled from victims found in University House during the summer vacation. The undergraduate population, at whom the blogs publicity campaign had been targeted, was scarce.

It reminds me of Aardman's Creature Comforts. Perhaps we could substitute animals for some of the familiar faces that appear. Any suggestions?

Robert O'Toole : 29 Aug 2006 09:00 |  Tags: Blogging E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The problem of transferable learning technology development – some guiding rules

There is an approach to the development of software known as 'agile' development. Based upon years of painful experience, it priveliges the frequent delivery of quality new features, with constant review and improvement (where strictly necessary), over the master–plans and monoliths that are forever looming up on distant horizons. It is a sensible approach that should perhaps be applied to domains beyond IT. Another of its principles is that rather than trying to satisfy a large number of poorly engaged and un–committed users, it is better to work closely with a small number of closely involved and enthusiastic individuals. This again is a sensible option. Developments thrive on quality feedback, direct from the field, delivered first hand and with the necessary degree of detail.

There is, however, a potential trap in this approach. What if those committed enthusiasts turn out to be mere eccentrics? What if they are unrepresentative of the majority? Perhaps the majority over time will follow their lead? In which case they stop being eccentrics and start becoming early–adopters. Or alternatively, other people may never adopt the new development. In some cases, the correct course of action is to simply seek other enthusiasts, other more promising directions. When one is adding new features/possibilities to an already existing service/pattern–of–behaviours, such change of track is acceptable occasionally. But there is a cost in terms of waisted opportunity, resource, and in people's tolerance of the process. Choosing enthusiasts well is therefore important. When one is initiating entirely new services/patterns–of–behaviours, the problem of who to trust is even more critical. For example, Warwick Blogs was built upon the asumption that a relatively small number of people had a representative and reasonable view claiming that many other people would adopt it once it became available. The innovation seems right to these people. Added to that is some justified belief that it will also transfer beyond that minority, and that this transferability will justify the effort undertaken to get the new service to the point at which a wider range of people can become enthusiasts engaged directly in the development process.

Are then such assumptions of transferability safe? Perhaps sometimes. In some cases the target user population is distributed amongst a very simple ecology – that is to say, there are few differing niches, and similarly few adaptive responses to those niches. Everyone behaves in the same way. Everyone wants the same things. I suggest that the ecology of learning, teaching and research at Warwick is not such a simple ecology. There are in fact multivarious niches, each with a range of overlapping adaptive responses. People here are varied and unique. In fact, as I have argued elsewhere, higher education in Britain is full of such variation. Diversity is encouraged. The result being the demise of the monolithic VLE and the rise of the individually selected mesh of diverse features. Ask a Warwick lecturer in English to describe their ideal learning technology environment and the answer will be different to that of an Oxford lecturer in English, and no doubt different to another Warwick lecturer in English.

The practical result of such diversity is that when given a limited resource and the need to engage and satisfy a large number of people, choosing what services/patterns–of–bahaviour to focus upon is difficult. How is transferability achieved? How do we judge whether we are satisfying an isolated niche or feeding the whole ecology? Difficult, but perhaps there are some guiding rules.

Rule 1

If a smaller number of unrelated users from quite different niches all respond positively to a proposal, or better still come up with the same proposal themselves, then this most likely points to some aspect of the proposal that is transferable across the niches, that has utility and attraction in every case.

This is always more indicative of transferability than when a larger number of users from the same niche back a proposal.

Rule 2

If you want adoption of the proposal to spread more widely than these few diverse people, then a second rule is necessary.

It is quite possible, in an ecology like Warwick, for people to occupy similar or tightly–knit niches, but in significantly different ways. Take two lecturers in philosophy, look at how they prepare lectures, and it's likely that you will see some dramatic differences. Therefore the second rule is: identify the current behaviour of each of the interested users to see just how the proposal fits in, consider how common this is to other people in their vicinity, and ask whether that will make a difference to its adoption within their niche. Just how typical is the relevant behaviour of philosophy Lecturer A in comparison to other philosophy lecturers? Looking at this from another perspective: is there anything that blocks other philosophy lecturers from adopting the proposal that has been adopted by Lecturer A?

Rule 3

In some cases, rule 2 would seem to indicate that transferability is unlikely. Philosophy Lecturer A cannot transfer their new found technique to people in their immediate vicinity. It may however still be worthwhile to other people. In such cases we should seek or create lines of transferability that link up isolated people in separate localities, perhaps with other things in common. For example, the PhD student ePortfolios brings together individuals with isolated needs from many locations.

I am certain that there are other useful guidelines. Feedback would be most welcome.

_

1. services are always coupled with behaviour patterns, never think of them simply as assemblages of features, as those features are only meaningful when used.

Robert O'Toole : 19 Jul 2006 23:12 |  Tags: Agile Development E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Do digital natives have differently wired brains?

Writing about web page /johndale/entry/digital_natives/

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

What is the relationship between interior design and learning technology?

At the moment there are two big concerns that are occupying my thinking. The most pressing of these is the need to reorganize our large three–story four bedroom house so that the generously portioned spaces within it start to support the kinds of activities and lifestyle that we want. My biggest demand of a home is that it be a place in which I can write. It must contain a writing studio, with all of the elements that make up such a place. Not being an [entirely] selfish person, I also want it to accomodate the extremely adventurous spirit of a one year old baby (one day he will climb Everest), and an overworked KS1 co–ordinating teacher/wife. The second of my big concerns is the question: how do we make a digitally native university? – and the implied question: what does it mean to be digitally native? There is a genuine and interesting connection between these problems.

The interior design problem forces me to reflect on how I get things done. What is my learning/doing/creating/writing style? I do certainly lean towards the connector end of the academic connector/dissector continuum. My process is as follows:

1. Rambling, mooching, bimbling and fiddling;
2. With occasional frenetic and concentrated bursts of activity, gluing things back together and boiling them down.

If you were to watch me work, you would see much more of the type 1 behaviours. You would also be surprised by the amount of space that it takes up. My ideal writing environment contains lots of different materials (books, papers, photos, artworks, maps, etc), all open and spread out for long periods of time. I'm not an indexer. I don't have a system. I'm a haptic/tactile kind of thinker. I make a big mess of fragments, each of which may have post–it notes or scraps of paper attached. Plus there are cups of coffee and items of food. However it certainly isn't total chaos. I always have a mental map of what has been discovered and laid out. And I don't want that map to be disturbed, because it is the thinking process. My thinking process is what cognitive scientist Andy Clark calls extended cognition

And furthermore, this is never a stationary process. I wander around. I sit in odd positions. I look out of the window. I walk in the garden and beyond. Until suddenly a tipping–point is reached and I sit down and write. And after that? More wanderings, with occasional trips back to the computer to edit the text with some correction or new insight.

That then describes how I work. It is, I believe, how many other people work, both now and in the past. Although few people have taken this art to the extremes of Francis Bacon's studio. There is, however, gathering support for the notion that 'young people today' are cognitively different, that they think in a different way. Marc Prensky has invented a pair of terms that encapsulate this difference: digital natives and digital immigrants. The proposition is this: people who grow up in an environment built from online and digital technologies have thought patterns that are significantly different to the previous generation. It is claimed that they are less concentrated, that they multitask most of the time, that they process a wider range of sources, that they tag (categorise with keywords) or discard more readily. There is then a claimed generational difference, one that must be at least challenged by my interior design requirement, for I have realised that there is actually little difference between the so-called digital native approach and my old-fashioned paper-centric approach. There is definitely a difference, but first we should dispel the conjecture that there is a fundamental cognitive difference. Andy Clark has demonstrated that there are many such forms of 'extended cognitive apparatus' some of which work in this way and which have done so for many years. Digital online technologies are just the latest addition. There is no revolution in the structure of our brains.

There is, however, still an obvious difference. The apparatus of extended cognition have been extended significantly. The physical/haptic space merges into a digital space of unlimited depth. The question of whether this new digital space can ever overtake the non–digital is significant in itself. I would argue that software still cannot replace my writing studio. Except in one very significant way. Few people will ever visit my physical space, but tools like Warwick Blogs allow it to be extended into a potentially huge social network, with much greater possibility for collaboration in the thinking process. I argue then that this is the real aspect that marks out the digital native: a greater ability to collaborate and to manage collaboration using digital and online technologies.

: 18 Jul 2006 12:23 |  Tags: Culture E-Learning Education Tech Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Blogs in Learning Research Symposium – agenda first draft

A more final, but still draft agenda can be seen in the e-learning web site.

Feedback?

If you are already an invited participant, then please feel free to comment on whether this fits your interests, and if there is anything missing.

If you want to come to all or part of the session, then please contact me, we might have some spaces left.

Robert O'Toole : 04 Jul 2006 16:35 |  Tags: Blog Research Blogging E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thematic Navigation and Contextual Navigation

Firstly, some definitions:

Of course such convoluted routes are usually circumvented through the use of bookmarks. The user jumps right into the required context, or at least one close enough to it so as to save time. In such cases other tricks are required to speed up the communication of context. In the Sitebuilder web content management system, each sub site (department, research project, sometimes course and sometimes even individual modules) have their own visual design (within the boundaries allowed by Sitebuilder). This design provides instant visual contextualisation. Warwick Blogs, however, is much more flat in terms of context. Each individual blog has its selected design (sometimes customised) and title. All entries are presented in that context. Even pages that represent entries with a single tag vary little in contextualisation. So for example, my Philosophy Research page looks just like my Baby Lawrence O-Toole page.

Thematic navigation may therefore connect content across contexts. This has obvious advantages, in that related content is automatically aggregated together. But more interestingly for learning and teaching, it encourages the end user to view related content from different contexts, and consider the differences between those contexts explicitly. So for example, a topic may appear in the module of a lecturer in Continental Philosophy, and in a module by a lecturer in Analytic Philosophy.

An obvious question to raise at this point is this: surely this could be achieved by the student doing a free–text search of all of the pages (or even the whole web)? Yes, but, if each of the lecturers were to consciously assign themes to their pages from a pre–figured set of themes (possibly even a taxonomical model), and the student were provided with that model as a guide to understanding the course, then they are given clearly specified and consistent concepts for understanding a diverse set of content or activities. This happens to be an important and widely respected pedagogical method. Curricula are in fact often designed as a combination of contextual navigation (modules, lectures, seminars, assessments) and thematics that run across those contexts (skills, concepts, competencies, objectives, values etc). Almost all of the modules that I am asked to look at work in this way. A diverse series of activities is undertaken, which have their own developmental logic. But alongside that diversity, a core set of concepts (often skills) are supposed to be the objective focus of development. However, frequently the problem is that the students and lecturers do not understand the themes, or lose sight of them in the diversity.

Robert O'Toole : 30 Jun 2006 13:49 |  Tags: Contextual Navigation E-Learning Networks Thematic Navigation Warwick University Web Design |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Web publishing channels of communication

Follow-up to How to write a communications strategy from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

My table maps each of the following channels/technologies:

Static web site (Sitebuilder)

• Department
• Module
• ePortfolio

Blog, web log, online journal (Warwick Blogs)

• Individual
• Team

Discussion forum (Warwick Forums)

• Public
• University wide
• Restricted group

Interview or recording

• Podcast (MP3 recorder, Sitebuilder)
• Online video (Video camera, Sitebuilder)

Against these parameters:

• Owners (in order) – in each case what type of person[s] has ownership of the channel? For example, an individual blog is owned by a single person;
• Broad or narrow cast?– is content aimed at an unspecified wide audience (broadcast) or a known/delimited audience (narrowcast);
• Audiences – who is it typically used for;
• Update pattern – summative or accumulative? Accumulative channels add new content to old (blog), rather than replacing it.
• Visual design – how does the look get determined? How much control do the owners have?

You can download the file from the E-learning at Warwick web site Please feel free to redistribute it as needed.

Robert O'Toole : 30 Jun 2006 11:01 |  Tags: Communications E-Learning ITS Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Four case studies in copyright and intellectual property rights

Follow-up to More about how you can use copyrighted material for free in criticism or review from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Case Study 1

During her summer vacation, a lecturer in aesthetics visits the Fundacio Miró in Barcelona. It is a very relaxed gallery, with no major security presence and none of the ugly signs that pollute the nearby MNAC gallery with warning of criminal charges to be levied at anyone who breaks the rules. On seeing one of the paintings, the lecturer realises that it could form the basis of a lecture. She quickly takes a photograph of the painting. No one seems to mind. Later she finds an internet cafe, and logs into her module web pages on Sitebuilder at Warwick. She uploads the photo of the artwork, and adds it to the resources page for the lecture in which she plans to discuss the artwork. The page has its security permissions set so that only Warwick staff and students can access it. The image will only be used in teaching of the module.

Has she done anything wrong? If so, what do you think she should have done?

Case Study 2

A research student attends a lecture on cognitive science by a visiting lecturer from Edinburgh. Many of the colleagues in the student's research network are unable to attend, for either timetable reasons, or because they are at other universities. It all seems very exciting, a new theory about how intelligence is founded upon its extension into materials and tools in the world beyond the brain. The visiting speaker is particularly excited about some new examples that he has discovered that will answer the many existing criticisms of such a theory. He explains that he will very soon be publishing a book that details these ideas in full. He expects this to be the most important book in its field ever to be published. However, despite his excitement, he feels the need to try out some of the ideas with a small number of other researchers. He therefore elaborates upon these new discoveries in his lecture. The research student finds that these ideas fit very well with his own work. He also knows that his colleagues at Warwick and beyond will find new impetus to their research from these new ideas. It offers a chance to really bring together all of these people. After the lecture he quickly finds a computer and writes a blog entry to explain everything that he has learnt. His friends all across the world are able to read about these great new ideas right away.

What will the effects of his actions be? Would you do anything differently?

Case Study 3

A lecturer is an active member of a discussion forum hosted in the Warwick Forums system. The forum is open to all members of the university. It is a very popular forum, with people from across Engineering and the Warwick Manufacturing Group participating. Such a diverse collaboration of knowledge and skills often leads to new perspectives on old problems. One particular problem seems to be quite intractable, so the lecturer posts a long description of it on the forum. She already has some possible solutions, but just needs a little input from elsewhere. The tactic works, an MSc student offers an unusual insight that inspires a solution from the lecturer. A journal paper follows, along with, a year later, an unusual email from the exams secretary. The student has been accused of plagiarising from the journal article. The plagiarism seems to be quite clever, but the ideas are the same and a few sentences are shared. When the lecturer looks at the student's essay, it appears that some of it has been copied from the forums discussion.

What factors should be considered in resolving this? What could have been done differently?

Case Study 4

A researcher regularly writes short articles and publishes them on her blog using Warwick Blogs. The articles usually attempt to make some connection between her work on the history of the Middle East and current events in the news. The blog becomes a popular read for many specialists in the area. After some time, the lecturer is contacted by a friend who asks how she managed to get her work published on the web site of a slightly extreme Islamic student's organisation in France. She is baffled. On looking at the url, she finds a blog like web site, mostly in Arabic, with one of her articles sitting in the middle of the page, surrounded on all sides by arabic, of which she can decipher nothing. The article is about the Arab Revolt of 1916, and the coordinated attacks on trains that were an essential part of it. She is a little concerned, as she has absolutely no idea what kind of context her work is being presented in. It is attributed to her, with a url link to her blog, but it seems to be a very different article when presented out of its original context.

How do you think this happened? Do you think it is likely? Has anything illegal been done? How would you respond?

Has anyone got any other opinions on these cases?

Robert O'Toole : 20 Jun 2006 15:44 |  Tags: Copyright E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

More about how you can use copyrighted material for free in criticism or review

Follow-up to Neat tricks for dealing with copyright? from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Note: I am not a lawyer. You should not regard this article as providing perfect and sufficient advice.

Permitted use for criticism and review

British copyright legislation includes some significant protection of what could be conceived as "free speech". The use of copyrighted material for criticism and review is an essential component of this.

Clearly the legislation is vital in such an extreme case. But it is also intended as a general support to activities of criticism and review. It supports all such open debate, and is thus essential in supporting the very essence of arts education and research.

Limitations on fair dealing for criticism and review

We can therefore safely reproduce copyrighted materials if such an act is essential to criticism and review. There are, however, restrictions. The first of these is stated clearly by Raymond A Wall in his very useful book Copyright Made Easier:

Copying or quoting a sufficient extent or significance to render consultation of the original unnecessary or less necessary would be unlikely to be judged 'fair' in court. Wall 2000, p177

There are two aspects to this limitation. The most easily understood of these is the limitation on the quantity of material copied. Most people are familiar with the idea that they cannot copy an entire book, play, movie, song or other such production. There are commonly accepted definitions of this regarding the quantity that can be copied from a book. However, this is in fact much less important than the second aspect. It isn't the quantity that really matters, it is the significance of the copied excerpt.

Note that "significance" is entirely a matter of judgement, until the damage has been done. Any use of copyrighted material in criticism or review may be challenged by the copyright holders in court. There is therefore always a risk in using this defence.

Protecting the moral rights of the author

Whenever we use a copyrighted work for criticism or review, we are still compelled to protect the 'moral rights' of the author. For example:

Any reproduction must be accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement. Wall 2000, p177

We must also ensure that we do not distort or misrepresent the author or their works. This limitation is quite significant. Authors can argue that the presentation of an edited or extracted part of their work presents it wrongly. Artists frequently use this moral right to object to their work being presented on screen. Again this is a matter of judgement. Our best defence is to seek advice from the author as to what is acceptable, and to explain in the criticism or review that the presentation of the artwork in the reproduced sample is only a partial representation of it.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Jun 2006 11:57 |  Tags: Copyright E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Neat tricks for dealing with copyright?

Follow-up to E–learning Research: copyright and the principle of fair dealing in education from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Firstly a statement: I'm not a lawyer! This may be imperfect advice, so do not rely on it, make your own judgements.

Richard started the day by stating that, although he has lots of expertise in the field of IPR and copyright, he is not a lawyer. So the person responsible for managing rights in the UK's most content dependent university is just an ordinary person on an ordinary salary. This kind of work can be done without constant recourse to expensive lawyers. As the session proceeded, Alma and Richard demonstrated how they are constantly required to give advice as to what is acceptable. It seems that they have a good body of knowledge and experience upon which to safely proceed, getting legal support where necessary.

Alma then stepped through, in an effective way, the implications of UK copyright legislation. The details of what is not permitted were clarified. This was quite familiar to me, except for the details of two 'restricted acts':

• providing means for making infringing copies;
• authorising infringement.

I asked for more detail on these, raising a familiar example:

What if a university provided a web publishing facility to all of its staff and students, and one of them used it as a means for making infringing copies?

The response was that the university should have:

1. a set of terms and conditions, agreed to by all members, that prohibit such acts;
2. mechanisms for guiding users in understanding the legality of their acts;
3. an effective complaints mechanism, and a swift "take down" policy, so that illegal content can be removed as soon as a complaint is received.

Warwick does well on points 1 and 3, which are relatively easy to do. All members must sign an agreement. We also have an effective complaints and take–down procedure (in Warwick Blogs there is a Report a Problem link, and in all systems content is easily attributable). However, the second point is much more difficult. We assume that users understand blatant copyright abuse, but it seems that they are poorly educated on the more complex issues such as breach of moral right.

Permitted acts – using copyrighted material without permission

And so we first received the bad news: copyright is both strict and pervasive. Alma softened the blow by explaining some of the 'permitted acts' that allow us to use copyrighted material without necessarily having permission. It should be noted at this stage that:

• the existence of permitted acts should not be used as an excuse to avoid having an effective copyright clearance process, as permitted acts are in fact quite rare, and always need to be thought about carefully.

As I have explained in the past, the most well known permitted act, the right to use content for private study or research, does not actually permit the use of copyrighted material in teaching or online. I'm surprised by just how often people who really should know better get this wrong.

There are some useful permitted acts. For example, we can copy an 'insubstantial' part of a copyrighted object. This is commonly taken to simply mean a specific percentage or a certain number of words. There are some accepted conventions, but unfortunately they are misleading. For example, if I were to reproduce online the most significant 400 words from a book of a thousand pages, I would be quite seriously in breach of copyright. If my act of copying damaged the commercial success of the book then things could get quite expensive for me.

A second permitted act is potentially much more useful. It may be possible to reproduce copyrighted material if that reproduction is for the purpose of criticism or review. This again is a matter of judegement. The copied material must be essential to the purpose, not incidental, although it is not necessarily the case that the review has to be about the copied material.

I want to investigate just how far this permitted use can be taken. I suspect that much of what happens in the Arts Faculty is in fact criticism and review. The key is to make sure that the content is used in this way. For example, if a lecturer uploads a copyrighted image to a web site, but immediately makes a critical assessment of that image, is that then a permitted act? Also, it must not breach the moral rights of the author. I shall investigate.

In the second half of the course, Richard explained the copyright clearance process employed by the Open University. Content creators at the OU are expected to refer all possible uses of copyrighted material to the rights management team. The OU employs full time specialists to perform this role. Obviously the OU is content dependent, but as other universities become more digitally native, they should consider if they also require such an office. As Richard explained, there role goes beyond copyright clearance, they must help content authors prioritise. They suggest identifying early on which copyrighted material is most central to the content, so that more time and money can be spent upon obtaining clearance. The clearance process itself is greatly assisted by having full time experts who understand contracts and have many contacts within the business.

Robert O'Toole : 07 Jun 2006 15:06 |  Tags: Copyright E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What does it mean to be digitally native?

We do a lot of work on the assumption that the wider use of ‘e-learning’ or ‘learning technology’ is necessarily a good thing. This of course needs some explication and justification. Our founding claim is that learning, teaching and research (LTR) can be significantly enhanced with the application of appropriate digital and online technologies by staff and students for whom those technologies are self-evidently obvious and natural.

LTR activities are usually collaborative. The use of technologies within such collaborative activities requires that the various partners are comfortable and capable with the tools used. Each collaborator can be skilled to a varying extent, with some super-users leading the way. But experience shows that the more widely the skills are spread, the better the uptake of the technology, and the more effective it is in enhancing the activity.

The concept of ‘digitally native’ is useful. My conjecture is that the more people who are ‘digitally native’ the more effective the technologies can be in enhancing these collaborative activities. Steve Carpenter (Sciences E-learning Advisor) introduced me to the term ‘digital native’, and its antithesis ‘digital immigrant’. The terms, it seems, were invented by Marc Prensky (CEO of Games2Train and author of Digital Game-Based Learning). You can read more in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants in which he makes the more dramatic claim that there is a mismatch between digital native students and the digital immigrants who teach them. I’m not going to assess this claim. Rather, I want to give a more explicit definition of what it means to be digitally native, as a means to outline a vision of where I think the university should be in five years time.

What qualifies someone as being ‘digitally native’? A simple set of skills, employing the best available technologies. The digital native does the following:

1. produce and store quality content (text, images, audio, video, diagrams, databases etc), with consideration of its presentation online;
2. share content online, in an appropriate location and with appropriate security constraints (considering legal, moral and inter-personal issues);
3. where responsible, maintain, update and remove content;
4. structure the relations between content items;
5. classify and describe content to make it more meaningful and useful;
6. locate, assess and use shared content;
7. edit and extend, comment upon, filter, and recommend to others;
8. record and reflect upon their own work and that of others as represented by their online activities;
9. create,define and manage networks of other online people;
10. build up an electronic portfolio and profile;
11. present samples of online work;
12. reflect upon this work, in collaboration with others, so as to identify strengths, weaknesses, and actions for improvement (informally, or formally as peer review).

My assessment of the Arts Faculty at Warwick is that it is edging slowly towards being digitally native, but progress is slow, and in some areas non-existent. This pace is surprising, considering the technologies and services that are available. We have a reliable and increasingly extensive web architecture (Sitebuilder, Forums, Blogs), which is well supported and increasingly ubiquitous. There are also many isolated examples of successful technology enhancement of learning, teaching and research. But these remain isolated. Prensky would argue that the big blocker to a digitally native university is that the majority of the people who do the teaching and set examples to be followed are in fact digital immigrants.

Robert O'Toole : 07 Jun 2006 12:29 |  Tags: E-Learning Key Entry Warwick University |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The death and rebirth of the MLE?

Writing about web page /caseyleaver/entry/mle_learning_platform/

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

Yes, the rotten decaying body of the corporate Managed Learning Environment stinks. We should bury it.

Hold on a minute, i detect a heart beat. Can it be revived? Should it be revived? Perhaps it will come back having undertaken some kind of near–death moral transformation. Born again.

Sorry, i'll get to the point. We are seeing the emergence of a kind of self–assembled, loosely coupled, lightly managed learning environment (LCL–MLE?). This is made possible by the increasing ubiquity of RSS data feeds, single sign on, and keyword tagging, along with service development and provision strategies such as agile development and managed diversity.

The idea behind the old fashioned centralist MLE (OFC–MLE?) was that the user could see a range of data about the learning process, all in one place. So they would see their timetables, list of courses, marks, tasks, courese content etc all together. And furthermore, it would be possible to join them up. OFC–MLE systems would contain all of this data in a single repository, as a tightly coupled system. Years of painful experience demonstrates that such monolithic systems are hard to develop, difficult to maintain, and harder still to engage the wide range of people and processes. The answer has been to grow more independent services, with responsibility distributed more widely and designed to meet the requirements of each type of user (academics, students, administrators, communications professionals).

The trick is for each of these two make its content available openly to the people and systems who need to use it, but in a filterable, secure and timely manner. This adds up to a LCL–MLE. And that means a data environment in which people can:

• advertise information so that it gets to the right people (using directories and search based upon keyword tagging);
• find relavant information (using directories and search based upon keyword tagging);
• recommend information to others (by building their own del.icio.us style directories or by adding additional tagging);
• combine information in a single location, and present it in a useful way (see how RSS feeds are blended in the left hand panel of the E-learning at Warwick web site.
• allow the user to return information to the systems from which it was harvested, or to get diverse information to interact;

The last of these is enabled by Single Sign On, which is the key to allowing people to easily go from information, presented anywhere, to functionality that allows them to act on it. For example, on a page that I have constructed from a combination of sources, I could see that there is an interesting event happening, and easily add that event to my personal calendar without having to go off into a separate system.

Keyword tagging also contains some revolutionary force. Remember how OFC–MLE systems where built on the assumption that learning processes were constructed by a single individual (or well coordinated team) with a strong overview of all of the contents and connections that should be contained in the learning experience? That has always been the antithesis of the kind of research based learning (RBL) that makes a top UK university what its is. RBL is more like a mentoring and guidance model, in which less centred and hierarchical teams develop a shared understanding of the direction in which the students should be steared, and then input resources, links to resources, and feedback that does the work of moving the students in the right direction. The student is themselves expected to gradually (or sometimes quite quickly) take over the helm and navigational responsibility. OFC–MLEs tend to work against this. But imagine a technology that allows the teaching team to create and select resources, and then annotate, tag and connect them for the students. The students can then explore these resources, and even create their own tagging, annotation and networks of them, to be shared with others or even assessed by the teaching team.

The E–learning Advisor Team are already working on several projects that exploit these possibilities. Our web architecture (Sitebuilder, Warwick Blogs, Warwick Forums etc) provides many of the tools that we need to make this a success.

See this interesting paper on Connectivism presented to Google by George Siemmens.

: 02 Jun 2006 11:06 |  Tags: E-Learning Keyword Tagging MLE Networks VLE Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Blog styles for better academic writing

The appearance of a Warwick Blogs blog can be altered by its owner using a language called CSS. This allows for the appearance of elements on the page (such as the calendar) or classes of elements (such as the entries) to be modified. The Admin –> Appearance page of your blog contains a text area (bottom of the page) into which you can enter your custom CSS. It also contains a warning that should be taken seriously:

Caution: If you don't know what CSS is or how you use it, then you should probably leave this textbox empty.

Despite this rather forbidding note, there are some things that you can do very easily. You can, for example, create custom styles to indicate extra semantic class differences between various items of text in your blog entries.

I have defined text types for:

• Overview, used as the first paragraph of each of my entries.
• Conjecture, used when I am making a claim to be assessed.
• Definition.
• Example.
• Technote.
• Conclusion.

If you look at one of my recent blog entries using the Firefox browser (as any sensible person would), then you will see various paragraphs that are marked up as having one of these specific roles. In Internet Explorer 6 (an older browser) each of these types of text looks the same, with a grey background and a dashed edging. In the more recent Firefox, however, each type of text is prefixed with the name of the type of text.

If you want to have a go at this, you need to add two extra styles to your CSS for each of the types of text. For example, for overview I have added:

.overview {margin-bottom:10px; padding:3px; border: 1px dotted #A1A1A1; font-family: georgia, Times, serif; background-color: #EAEAEA; }
.overview:before {content: "Overview: "; font-weight:bold; font-style:oblique}

The first of these styles changes the background, border, layout and font. I could, if I wanted, use different colours and fonts for each type of text, but I personally like to keep things visually simple. The second style adds the 'before' pseudo element. In order to apply this to a paragraph of text in your blog, you need to wrap that paragraph in special tags that apply the style to the text:

<div class="overview">This is an overview text.</div>

I also have some styles that change the background colour of selected phrases, allowing me to highlight them with some extra meaning. For example, I can mark them as key terms or just apply a yellow highlighter pen:

.highlighter {background:yellow}
.keyterm {background:#BBE9F6}

In these cases, I use a different tag to contain the text to be effected:

<span class="highlighter">Highlighted text</span>

Highlighting is particularly useful when I am working with a qoute from a text.

• CSS defined on Wikipedia
• CSS tutorials at W3Schools

Robert O'Toole : 30 May 2006 07:32 |  Tags: Academic Writing E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Academic connectors and academic dissectors

Kay's analysis of my own work quite rightly places me towards the connector end of the line, meaning that my intellectual habits tend towards seeking out related phenomena in distinct realms, looking for connections, and searching for a common underlying dynamic. Other people tend towards the dissector extreme, they are primarily concerned with analysing a single phenomena by dissecting it continually into more fine–grained constituent parts.

I'll leave that conjecture open and unassessed, as there are two more immediate questions that interest me:

1. Are the two modes of operation in fact just two aspects of the same intellectual process? – inseparable;
2. Does the application of one without the other lead to empty meaningless results?
3. Are our learning technologies capable of supporting each mode in the right way and at the right time?

Connective synthesis and disjunctive synthesis

The notional connector person and their counterpart dissector are characterised as such because they tend to make things following one particular pattern. The product of their creativity being conceptual structure, developed within and expressed by various forms (texts, diagrams, programmes, maps).

The creation of concepts, of whatever pattern, is an act of synthesis:

With the two syntheses defined, the inseperability of connection and dissection (question 1 above) is clear. But why should there be character types that favour one of the modes almost exclusively over the other? Surely the best approach would be to recognize the importance of each synthesis in its own time and place, whilst retaining a critical stance? There are no doubt many reasons why people become inflexible in their thinking, becoming trapped within an obsessive dissection or a delirial search for connections. I would like to raise the possibility that our learning technologies may be part of the problem.

To that conjecture, I added the clause 'most current learning technologies'. I do believe that there are a couple of technologies that do encourage this kind of non–linearity, namely wikis and concept maps. Both of these tools allow us to do the following:

• Create a set of topics in relative isolation from each other (the MindManager concept mapping tool even includes a 'brainstorming' tool to assist with this).
• Create a proposed structure drawing upon these topics.
• Extend the structure with new topics, or old topics further dissected.
• Create new connections between the topics.
• Revise topics without drastically effecting the overall structure of connections.
• Revise the structure without drastically effecting the individual topics.
• Track revisions and authoring actions.

In these ways, wikis and concept maps actually work to promote a more effective combination of the three syntheses (connection, disjunction, conjunction), and open that process up to the critical view of both students and tutors.

Robert O'Toole : 28 May 2006 20:40 |  Tags: Conjunctive Synthesis Connective Synthesis Disjunctive Synthesis E-Learning Synthesis Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem