All 51 entries tagged Warwick University

Session Report: Introduction to concept mapping for PhD and staff

Writing about web page http://freemind.sourceforge.net

Rather than a text based hand-out and lesson plan, I now always just use a concept map. This is given to the students in both an electronic format and on paper. The paper based handout contains several pages, each with a different set of nodes visible or hidden (following the planned path through the map). I start with a top level view, with all of the detail hidden. At this point I can check with the audience to see if the session matches their expectations, and if there are any sections they would like me to focus on. This approach is repeated as I drill down into detail through the rest of the session. Here's the top level for the concept mapping session:

Instead of immediately pliunging into the detail of node 1, we did a little exercise. Firstly, I introduced myself using a concept map that details interesting information about me (requires FreeMind to view) my work and my research. I made this available to the students, so that they could practice navigating and extending (adding to and annotating) a map. I then gave them an amusing scenario to play out in pairs, that would require them to create and use (in a discussion) a similar map about themselves.

This exercise illustrated some of the ways in which concept maps can be useful in planning, recording, and presenting to an unfamiliar audience. The students seemed to really enjoy it, and in fact several of them continued working on their maps after the session ended. Following up on the lessons learned from the exercise, we looked in detail at the second node of the presentation map "Why Concept Map" (after checking with the class, I skipped over the first node, which seemed un-necessary).

The first node is shown below:

And the second:

Out of these ideas for how to use maps, the nodes on "pattern discovery", "direct communication of ideas" and "frameworking writing" were of particular interest. I demonstrated a quite sophisticated map that I use for my philosophy research. I therefore focussed on these in the next two sections of the session, starting with node 3, "elements of a concept map", which covered the different types of element that must or can be used:

Next we moved onto the most important part of the session, node 4 "how to read or present a map". The first of the suggested techniques, "drilling down" was already obvious, as I had been using it throughout the session. This involves starting at the centre of the map, at the general level, and then moving down through increasing levels of detail as required (I check with the students to see if they need more detail). This is particularly good if you are presenting or writing to an audience that is unfamilar.

The second technique is "expanding out", which involves starting with a specific detail familiar to the audience, and then moving upwards to give that detail context, and across to connect it to other nodes. This is good if you have a specialised audience or audiences, and you want to show them the bigger picture.

These techniques are very powerful as means for frameworking presentations and writing. In particular, I recomended that when trying to create a document from a map, one should work out a path through the map (drilling down or expanding out), and rehearse it with someone. Make a commentary (written or recorded) as you go along.

Unfortunately we were now running out of time, so the coverage of the technical topics was limited. However, my message is fairly straightforwards:

1. don't overlook pen and paper, or the use of whiteboards;
2. MindJet MindManager is the best software for serious research work, with its fast intuitive approach and interoperability with Office;
3. MindManager has limtations (no Mac or Linux version, too much functionality, and its expensive);
4. the free alternative (almost a clone) is FreeMind which is open source, java based, has Mac and Linux versions, as well as a web applet, is interoperable with MindManager, and is entirely free and easy to download and install.

In fact, my recomendation was to use FreeMind until you really need some of the sophisticated functionality of MindManager. We used FreeMind during the session, and it was great. The ease with which nodes can be inserted and extended, using enter and insert, makes it the perfect tool for supporting fast thinking and planning. It's abilities with icons are a little limited. Moving nodes around isn't as slick as MindManager. But this not necessarily a blocker. Printing is also quite poor, but with a little investigation, I think I will be able to work it out.

If you like the sound of this session, then contact me a I am considering repeating it.

UPDATE: we now have a site licence for the very slick MindManager software. This is available to all staff and students.

Robert O'Toole : 04 Nov 2005 09:23 |  Tags: Concept Maps Concepts E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Planning Notes: All 95 philosophy research entries keyword tagged

A few of the advantages of tags are:

1. you can easily invent new tags for each new entry;
2. you can re-use tags previously used in your own blog, or even in other people's blogs;
3. for each tag, you have an auto-generated page showing all of the entries containing the tag, for example, see the list for the tag deleuze
4. the most frequently used tags in a blog are listed in the left hand column, linking to pages that show entries for each of the tags;
5. a page can be accessed for any combination of tags, for example, deleuze and art
6. you can get a list of entries that contain one or more tags within a department or the whole of Warwick Blogs, for example, this page shows entries on art
7. a single entry can have more than one tag, thus allowing it to be categorised in more than one way

This is potentially powerful, especially as people are starting to consistently share tags in an organised way. Expect to see this approach used in teaching in the future, especially as Sitebuilder supports a similar keyword tagging system, and we are writing "thematic navigation" tools that exploit it.

As for my own blog, it may well be the most thoroughly tagged blog yet. For each of the 95 philosophy entries, I added tags that represent the concepts covered, as well as the philosophers and books referenced. So now it is possible for me to see a page that lists all of my entries that relate to the concept extended_cognition
or, you can see a page listing entries about the book germinal_life

My ultimate plan is to take the complete list of concepts used in my philosophy entries, add them to a concept map, organise them with connections, and link them back to the pages that list them in my blog.

If you are interested in this idea, then contact me

Robert O'Toole : 01 Nov 2005 00:42 |  Tags: Blog Research E-Learning Philosophy Planning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Research Notes: small world networks, extended cognition, the mangrove effect, blogs

Follow-up to Research Plan: ideas for researching networking, narrowcasting and broadcasting by bloggers from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

As I descibe in a previous entry , Clark uses the lifecyle of a mangrove island as a metaphor for how we sometimes use public language to speculatively play with ideas and see how they grow. I summarise metaphor as follows:

a mangrove seeds itself in shallow water, grows roots, traps other roots and particles, forms a network of roots with other mangroves that seed nearby (helped by the first mangrove), and eventually forms a more solid island within the sea.

Clark's argument is that by stating words publicly using an external cognitive apparatus (a web log would be a good example), even when they do not represent well formed ideas, thoughts and sense can be encouraged to form. We can easily play with the publicy stated words, manipulating them and seeing what emerges as they connect with other words. As a social process, involving other minds, this technique can lead in unexpected and successful directions.

It seems to me that "mangrove" style social thinking could be a core activity of the localized cliques that are probably the context for most blog entries. The clique tends to select phrases to be repeated locally, and provides opportunities for social thinking in a controlled space. But the small world network of Warwick Blogs offers two other possibilities:

1. ideas that become well-formed can be transmitted to other localized networks through 'hubs' (people or pages that are authoritative in presenting selections of worthwhile content);
2. ideas can also just free-float from one clique to another, for example via the "show all" page, where they may take root, or at least make the transmission through a hub more likely (hearing a message through several channels makes it more likely to be trusted and valued).

Robert O'Toole : 22 Oct 2005 23:30 |  Tags: Andy Clark Being There Blog Research E-Learning Extended Cognition Mangrove Effect Mark Buchanan Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Research Plan: ideas for researching networking, narrowcasting and broadcasting by bloggers

Follow-up to Presentation of blogs at Oxford Brookes from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

During my recent presentation at Oxford Brookes about Warwick Blogs (during which there was an excellent debate), someone made the observation that from the perspective of some outside person browsing through the latest entries in the "showall" aggregation page, it would be hard to understand why anyone would read our blogs, and consequently (given that most people write with the expectation that someone else will read their entries), why would anyone therefore ever write anything?

This wasn't a crude condemnation of the standard of writing within Warwick Blogs. Rather, the observation was that it was hard for an outsider to understand what is interesting in most of the entries (although some are genuinely interesting to the outside world).

Having just read Mark Buchanan's book on small world networks, I could see the error in this observation.

The assumption behind this attitude is that the entries within Warwick Blogs are on the whole written so that any random person may come along and find them interesting and worthwhile. The question assumed that writing a blog is a form of "broadcasting". Indeed this is understandable, as it tends to be such "broadcast" style blogs, aimed at a general and unknown audience, that have caught the interest of the media. The reason for this bias may well be that the traditional media somehow sense that they are being challenged in their dominance of broadcasting.

I suspect that, on the contrary, many blog entries are written with relatively narrow audiences in mind (narrowcasting), but with the open possibility that a wider range of people may end up reading them. This is entirely consistent with the "small world network" model. Meaningful activity occurs on a local and limited scale, determined by the individuals in close proximity. In the case of blogs, that is likely to be other friends who blog, and probably in many cases the friends who introduced the author to blogging. That makes for lots of very small and localized activity, meaningful within isolated cliques.

But there's more to a small world network than that. Operating within a clique presents the risk of being disconnected from the outside world. One may lose track of how to connect to new and unknown people. For a student, that is potentially disasterous, as at some point reality will bite and the clique will dissolve (reaching the end of the course for example). So it makes sense for members of the clique to make some consideration of the outside, to open themselves up to possible extra-clique connections. The clique makes sense of the activity, but the outside is needed to give a small reality check, to add a little affirmation that the activity has value beyond the clique, and to safeguard that value should the clique suddenly dissolve. To cope with this, small world networks emerge, with "hub nodes" that provide a connection between the clique and the outside (or other cliques). These hubs take many forms. In some cases a single key individual may play the role. In other cases, a broadcasting channel may do the trick.

What is really interesting, and perhaps not yet thoroughly researched, is how different the arrangements of different types of clique and hub may be of great significance. For example, in designing a new interpersonal communication system that relies both on cliques and on hubs, if we get the type of hub wrong, then the development of the system may be restricted.

My question then is this: what is the arrangement of cliques and hubs in Warwick Blogs? What kind of small world network is it? Could it work better with a different arrangement of cliques and hubs? Fortunately, I think that it should be easy for us to get empirical data on this, so long as we ask the right questions. Our questions will be based on a model of the relevant types of clique and hub. To start creating this, I have listed some of the forms of "casting" (broad and narrow):

1. broadcasting – every entry appears on a "showall" aggregation page that lists the latest publications from the whole system;
2. segmented broadcasting, with entries appearing only to readers with certain membership status (eg student only, university member only);
3. directory focussed broadcasting – an entry appears in "showall", but the author is writing with consideration of one of the groups represented by an aggregation page in the blog directory;
4. tags based broadcasting – author targets their entry to people who are likely to be viewing all entries with a known shared tag;
5. Google targeted broadcasting;
6. narrowcasting to a limited known predefined group, controlled by privacy controls.
7. narrowcasting to a limited group, controlled by privacy controls and "favourites" subscription.
8. narrowcasting in which the privacy permissions are set to allow anyone, but the author tells specific people (often family and friends) to look at the entry (often by email) – added following Graham's suggestion.

And then we will need some questions that we can use to work out which of these are being used, and to what effect. For example:

1. did the author consider the mode of casting – the audience?
2. who did they consider the audience to be?
3. did this affect what they wrote?
4. were there instances in which they changed what they planned to write because of the mode of casting?
5. were there instances in which they changed the mode of casting because of what they wrote.

If you are interested in joining in with this research, please contact me

Robert O'Toole : 21 Oct 2005 00:04 |  Tags: Blog Research E-Learning Mark Buchanan Warwick University |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Presentation of blogs at Oxford Brookes

I just did a presentation for really nice clever people at Oxford Brookes.

What a great day.

(This entry is part of my demo).

Robert O'Toole : 14 Oct 2005 16:53 |  Tags: Blog Research E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Analogy of the week: how to get academics and students doing new things with IT

Following the success of the Warwick Shootout film making competition, i've been thinking about how holding such showcase exciting events may be a good way of engaging the academic community in e-learning.

An analogy: become someone who is known to hold really good theme parties, to which the best people want to be invited. Next, get them involved a little in organising your parties and coming up with the ideas (which will be recognized as a cool thing to do). Then, respond with grace when they start organising their own parties along those lines, claiming that it was their idea in the first place.

Robert O'Toole : 20 Jun 2005 16:14 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (17) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What is a university?

Considered with the methodology that Manuel De Landa employs in A Thousand Years of Non-linear History .

A university consists of many smaller bodies, some more formal than others, some more hierarchical than rhizomatic, networked or meshworked. These bodies attract, pass around and process the incoming streams of energy that sustain and extend the bodies. There are multiple streams. including the annual input and turnover of students, research funding and projects, academic careers, and technical and administrative mechanisms (including external legislation). As the streams are diverted and processed, the various bodies rely upon and interfere with each other, often bringing the separate streams into contact. Each individual stream also has three aspects, each of which is dependent upon the other through often complex connections. The three aspects are cash, creative opportunity, and affirmation of individuality (always a collaborative and tribal process). These three aspects feed and sustain the bodies.

Robert O'Toole : 13 Jun 2005 13:03 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Conceptual Failure of Higher Education Policy, Part One: Quality Assurance and Taxonomization

The first of a two part essay that reconsiders the nature and purpose of higher education and academic activity. Starting with a consideration of the neo-conceptual technical entities currently defining the debate, and considering their implications and limitations. Leading to the conclusion that a philsophical reconsideration of higher education is necessary.

Over the last week I have been engaged in an online debate with some of the key players in the development of new and exciting technologies that promise some radical changes in the British education system. Initially, my challenge was for a justification of the effort currently being put into making interoperable systems underpinned with universally defined schemas and taxonomies. Along the way, this debate has highlighted the different conceptions of the purpose and nature of education, especially higher education, forming often unstated assumptions guiding these developments. It has become clear that some of these assumptions may be contradictory. Whilst others are certainly not shared by the key actors involved. The most significant conflict being that between students and education providers. It is argued that the former are increasingly only interested in attaining a certain grade, whilst the latter are increasingly focussed upon providing a richer and more relevant set of skills and abilities during the educational process, regardless of the actual grade achieved. This may be seen as a basic contradiction within British higher education.

Lets try and get out of the quandary then, or at least try to understand it. My conjecture is this: British universities are still culturally powerful enough to redefine the purpose of the education that they offer, and to achieve a consensus amongst staff, students and the wider public. But they are failing to do so, and this is due to a conceptual failure.

There is in fact a remarkable political, cultural and commercial alliance calling for this 'revolution' to happen. It is almost dogmatically accepted that to maintain our economic position we must occupy the role of 'innovator' and 'inventor'. In fact we must be world leaders in 'creativity'. This is, in part, a response to the ease with which manufacturing processes can now be replicated anywhere in the world, along with a belief that the forces behind that change (invention of products and markets) are still beyond the third-world countries to which production has migrated (this is itself a myth, but that doesn't undermine the argument behind the calls for change). It is also a response to the perception that, as Ken Robinson has stated (Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, Capstone 2001), the global rate of change is increasing all of the time, and therefore societies and economies must become better at dealing with change. This is understood to mean that we need to become dynamic people, a society whose expertise is in change itself. And in order to become such a society, we need an education system that teaches creativity, independence, team-working, innovation, self-reflection, and all kinds of 'skills' towards the top end of Bloom's taxonomy.

But this is just not happening. Or at least we can say that there is a tendency to demand and supply a simpler, less active education process. A process closer to the transmit-consume-repeat loop of the stereotypical American higher education that we deride so much (of course that is just a stereotype). As Scott Wilson argues (see comments in a previous entry in my blog), for some time British students have been overtly degree-grade focussed. Of course in reality the grade matters, no one denies that. But only as an indicator of the quality of the process carried out to achieve the grade. What we are seeing is the connection between the result and the process becoming weakened, in reality and in the conceptual model that students have of the educational process. This is confirmed to me constantly in discussions with both students and staff concerning the use of IT to improve the process. We have means for improving research, study and PDP skills of all kinds. But unless those activities contribute directly to the end product grade, with extra marks being available, students are reluctant to take part. Alarmingly, last week I had an interview with a student who confirmed that even in a module concerned principally with teaching research skills, the students are entirely focussed on the exam and not on the skills.

It may be useful for us to track back in time to the point at which things started to go wrong. Go back to the time when the current system was adequate. A relatively small and closely connected sector of British society were able to go to university. That minority all went through pretty much the same experience, with the same result in mind, at a small group of institutions. They then graduated into positions appointed by people who themselves had been through that process. They didn't need a detailed breakdown of the meaning of a 2.1 from Oxford. They already knew exactly what that meant. And then all of a sudden we move to a situation in which the majority of people are expected to complete a degree. And furthermore, the diversity of those degrees, both in the subjects covered and the methods used (related to the great number of institutions), necessarily expanded beyond any one person's ability to conceive. But we didn't change the grading system, or the nature of the academic process, in order to cope with that expansion. We still expect a simple degree grade to be universally meaningful in the way it was before the expansion. And that just doesn't work. But unfortunately, we have created several generations for whom simple end-product quantification is the only means for expressing both results and the objectives employed in the course to those results.

As an aside, consider the response of our short-termist politicians during these developments. Consider that, due to the nature of our political system, their sole aim is to achieve quality assurance (or at least the appearance of quality) at the lowest possible cost, in the shortest possible time. And so if they can say that the number of students achieving a high grade has increased, they will assume that quality is being achieved, and they will carry on with this claim until it is already quite clear that quality is not actually increasing with the rise in grades, and in fact may actually be falling. At which point they will switch to the next least costly system for claiming quality assurance (see below). Does that tune remind you of the early days of the Blair regime?

I am sure that we can say that the set of concepts used to understand, determine and communicate academic processes is extremely impoverished. It may even be limited to some vague notions about the differences between academic disciplines, along with the obviously meaningless degree rating system. However, that is already a well established argument. The really important question is this: do we have a richer and more effective set of concepts that can meaningfully express the kind of education that we are aiming for?

Action is of course being taken to address the problem. We are slowly moving towards more detailed reporting of the processes that constitute a degree: transcripts. Every student may ask for a transcript of their degree. But I suspect that these will just consist of a more extensive set of reports of end-product quantifiers. In what sense would a statement that as part of my degree I have completed an optional extra Creative Writing Skills Module say much about my actual abilities? Again, unless you have yourself completed a genuinely similar module, it is quite meaningless. For a short time it may have seemed that transcripts would be the solution, as the next least costly means for guaranteeing and communicating academic quality. But in reality, perhaps not.

For the next solution to the problem, we must move up a level in descriptive sophistication and cost: the ePortfolio. Essentially, an ePortfolio should be the online equivalent of a folder full of examples and evidence. In theory it provides the detail and contextualisation necessary to give meaning to the reports of end-product attainment. It could well be seen as an extension of the kind of narrative that a student may usefully give verbally about themselves and their studies. It is an extension in that it is hyperlinked, and is populated with selected content over a period of time from a wide variety of sources, and with annotations added to that content. The production of the ePortfolio may also be automated and 'scaffolded' (meaning that the student is given a structure to fill in, with the aim of teaching them how to independently create such a structure). The automation of an ePortfolio is not simply done to save the student time and effort. Rather, it is there to impose something of the institution and the wider educational establishment into the ePortfolio, into the student's narrative. Automation allows for the inclusion of authoritative elements guaranteeing claims made. It is also intended to ensure that the structure of the ePortfolio, in terms of the order and relations between a predefined set of descriptors (what they call a taxonomy), is codified according to a predetermined machine readable pattern. Imagine the result if we all did have such interoperable ePortfolios held within a government computer somewhere. Imagine that one of the descriptors were 'creative act', and that this is appended to a sub set of learning activities. A civil servant could do a single query to discover the sum total of creativity in the UK over the last year. Quality. Or at least, quality spin.

This last development, the taxonomization of learning (of which the interoperable ePortfolio, the VLE and other learning technologies are merely Trojan horses), brings us up to the present. It offers to be the next least expensive solution to the problem of quality assurance and quality reporting in higher education. Politicians like it, as it gives standardization and quality assurance, but without them having to do very much. The work is devolved to the learners themselves. The technologists promote it because it gives them a chance to get some really neat tools deployed at every point in the education system. But should we in higher education be as enthusiastic? At first it seems to solve the problems outlined above. It will provide a means of precisely stating the nature and value of degrees in relation to school and college education, and onwards to careers and CPD. It gives the possibility for that restatement of higher education with which this paper began, reaching the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy (the activities of 'higher' intelligence). And furthermore, it will refocus the student on the acquisition, during their studies, of those higher skills. Hoorah for taxonomies.

And so we have the construction of what might be a univocal language of learning. Within the educational space over which it is placed, any single activity may be codified, transmitted to another seemingly un-connected location, and de-coded to make perfect sense. But first of all we must learn the language. And when I say we, I mean everyone. If we are seeking to encourage independent, self-directed, reflective learning, that everyone includes the learners themselves. They must all speak the taxonomy. Perhaps in a simplified and filtered dialect, but always with their goals, processes, reasons, progress and achievements translatable into the taxonomy. It acts as the educational infrastructure, the architecture of learning with which even a 2.1 from Oxford (as an example of an abstract educational entity) may be meaningfully coded for the consumption of the Secretary of State for Education, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Daily Mail or the 'wider electorate'.

But what kind of architecture is it? A kind of prefabrication system, with components that can be taken anywhere and reconstructed according to the specifications guiding their placement and interconnection. A perfectly portable and reproducible system, that can be easily communicated. And furthermore, as the system has been intelligently designed with components that encapsulate certain 'constructivist' concepts of learning, wherever such a building is assembled, the learner cannot help but learn in the right way, according to those concepts. The architecture as such is axiomatic. Or in edu-speak, it provides the scaffolding for good learning.

Scaffolding is a good metaphor. It wraps around (and sometimes within) a building in the process of construction. The scaffolding in a way shapes the building, guides it, but becomes invisible. It gets assembled, dismantled and extended where appropriate as the building grows. And at some point, is no longer required, as the pattern to which it has been working becomes internalized into the building. 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;
6. so at some point along the way, the building is forgotten and all we are left with is the scaffolding.

Or in other words, the ability to speak the taxonomy, to carry out activities that are validated through assigning them to nodes in the taxonomical tree, becomes the most important aim of learning. In this way, 'working to the assessment criteria' takes on a new meaning, with the outcomes being better documented and more thoroughly standardized, but at the same time increasingly vacuous and self-serving. The end of taxonomizing is for it to say too much about itself, about its order, and nothing about concepts that connect and do work beyond that order. Taxonomies are filled with words that eventually act too much as order-words and too little as concepts. And that leaves us in a position little advanced from the conceptual failure with which we started. The politicians and technologists may be happy for a while, but the questions will return. What is higher education about? What are its results? Where is its quality? What difference does it make?

In the second part of this essay I will look more closely at the nature of the various academic processes of science, arts and philosophy. I will argue that in order to recognize, reward and encourage these activities, a new set of concepts is required. Concepts more precise and more closely related to the many distinct activities within the various disciplines. This moves in the opposite direction of much recent educational theorizing. Away from generality of taxonomy and towards the value located in each discipline. But at the same time, I will aim to describe an absolutely minimal set of concepts that do provide some common ground between the disciplines, albeit not that of the short-termist politicians and their desire for simple quality assurance. This will itself require a reconsideration of the question 'what is a concept?' – the answer itself being closer to real academic activity, and the production of conjectures, design patterns, working assumptions, and critical and creative thought embedded and emergent from more vital academic ecologies.

: 08 Jun 2005 21:59 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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