Tag: #iblc10

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Academic Digital Event

Plenary #iblc10

PLENARY

Jon Alltree, Irene Anderson, Peter Chatterton, Amanda Jeffries

Question for the panel: How do we get those who are not converted to develop a more profound & sophisticated understanding of Blended Learning.

Martin: Know your students. Peter: Know your staff/stakeholders. Develop communications & engagement strategy & plan. Understand the stakeholders and their needs & the key messages want to communicate to them, and then how you’re going to do it. (e.g. Heads of School – what resources are required?). Have to convince through good case studies, good evidence why people should buy into blended techniques. Are other techniques – e.g. CABLE – get buy-in & have time on away days to consider adopting different BL techniques. What about from private sector – e.g. scenario planning.

Irene: Clear objective – where do you want to be with course/module/programme. For change management – how does BL fit into that? Really challenged over past 2 days – what do we mean by Blended Learning. We so often don’t have space for learning conversations. Those who are here are already ahead of the game. Can do a lot with little steps, praise those small achievements & people realise that they are making a difference – need indiv. & collected conversations – as the top-level stuff often puts people off.

Amanda: Digital Divide (generational divide?)– what does it mean to be digitally literate? Colleagues are afraid of technology & don’t have time to master it & as soon as they learn one thing things move on – safer to do things in the same old way. How do we move people out of this? StudyNet Champions – dealt with on a departmental basis. Pay students to provide digital literacy – that they might not accept from other staff.

Peter: Can leapfrog barriers in just one project..

Jon: Lack of confidence in staff – unwilling to try – someone came in and said “I’ll have a go”.

Blended Education NOT Blended Learning – need some focus on staff.. Taking on any of this involves a big investment of time… (University of Gloucester paper – space/right environment – to make transformational changes). Need bottom up enthusiasm as well…

Brett’s talk – stop needing the staff to keep up with things, and use students to be e-learning guides for modules.

Irene – teaching people in their 40s/50s – staff find it a challenge, but know that they increasingly need to use it.

Important to recognise variety in population…

Need a special kind of student? Not necessarily – ask student union to provide?

If technology, students, etc. move on – lecturers should not be able to opt out – it’s not optional if it aids teaching.

If do cultural change, need to have curriculum change as to how it is delivered. If team taught – can have a mix of staff – change agents, young students, etc. = continual evolvement of the curriculum. A single academic owning a course = a real barrier.

Til 2012/2015 – going to be lean times, especially those that have had huge project budgets which have ended… Adapt or die? What’s the low-hanging fruit?

Irene: We have the skills/the people who can do more with less – but don’t have the time for the conversations. Make changes to make good use of resources already have.

Amanda: There are huge opportunities in making use of online materials – e.g. may not have the luxury of travelling to consequences. Make best use of what’s there already and help that inform our practice. Be more nimble even if larger cohorts & less resources.

Peter: Universities have had it good – would we still do things without big piles of money. So do we have to become more business like? Where do we get the most value from technology? See e.g. universities in Latvia who are doing great things with little funding.

Shared services/efficiencies programmes – JISC/HEFCE/Employers.

Jon: Will need to be a big cultural change – lots of information about open educational content. What else can we do with our students so they feel part of learning – doesn’t always happen serendipitously…

CABLE – often not about resources but around the passion of people who wanted to change. Empower those who don’t usually have the power to effect change = real change.

Peter: More creativity comes from a limited budget…

Most are still doing collaborative work in a spirit of individualism. We tend to reward/promote individualism.

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Academic Digital Event

Guy Saward (@guy75) – Social Bookmarking #iblc10

COLLAB & SOCIAL BOOKMARKING – Guy Saward

What/Why?

Pilots

Impact on teaching & learning

Practitioner in teaching, manages lots of daily information, business/IT background…

Online resources – accessible anywhere in the world (losing information between machines).

Do the students have the same needs? How do they save bookmarks? Use in multiple contexts?

Online (social) bookmarking? Uses?

  • For active/problem based learning?
  • Chickering & Gamson, boast to reciprocate & co-operate online
  • Promote collaborative learning?
  • Who is the online target for this (is it just the innovators or the mainstream?)

Replace the button in the browser with the use of Delicious, where it’s saved in the cloud! Digg, Furl, Google bookmarks, all same basic principle – capture information seamlessly so continue to browse.

Http://delicious.com/guy75

Social features – use tags to organise bookmark. A folksonomy develops based on repeated use of popular tags (or that’s the theory).

Tag clouds display prominent concepts.

Can find via structured URLS (http://delicious.com/tag/twitter+evs)

Act as personal, short urls – e.g. http://delicious.com/guy75/tagging+example

Why do we need more technology?

  • Learning Resource links/news/readings lists
  • Discussions
  • Blogs (modules/groups0
  • Wiki
  • BUT – can find it easier to find all in one place (better link density, others require specific action on the VLE, ‘editing’ is higher, other areas may be e.g. read-only)

Blogs provide good spaces for reflection & comment, starting point for discussion, narrative to show development of ideas.

Most posts used to share, not expound, brevity is key & ?

http://delicious.com/guy75/term+research

How do students manage information and what role could bookmarking play – especially in aiding collaborative work? 50% own their own laptops. Internet commonly used for all activities – more bias to using for assessment activities. Mixed preferences of print over web based resources.

Bookmark: 10% in browser, rest on paper, in word/notepad or emailing to self // none VLE, no mention of online/social bookmarking… focus group 2 years ago. Generally open to sharing, although some worries that others would ride on the sharing.

Why not really being used?

  • Too complicated?

DESIGN SOLUTION: SLIDE (password by proxy so still retained some control. From StudyNet: Tags link to external resources. Didn’t need to go to Delicious specific site. Computer literate colleagues over-complicated it.

  1. Needed customised ‘bookmarklets’ into the browser.
  2. ?
  3. ?
  4. Tagging page gives suggestions based on module resources
  5. Saved page will end up in the module account.

Usage

All students used the page, around 25% uploaded material. 50 new materials to module, 25 by students. Had core group of early adopters, most are lurking. Editors ensure that people are tagging correctly so folksonomy has consistency.

At end – were increasing digital literacy – they might use the same tool. Most wanted to save outside the VLE.

Second Pilot

Kept the module account, but each individual tweet, use for:mcom0104 to gather suggestions. Meant staff had to be more active as suggestions came to the tutor who said yes/no.

Students downloaded own third-party apps/bookmarklets for delicious. Students saved in own account, but put “it was for” and it pulls up.

The more web savvy tended to use the Delicious interface, the less through the VLE.

But still, WHY would you want to promote bookmarking. As a core digital literacy, obvious. Do we promote as collaboration? Chickering & Gamson – get people to spend time on task, so need to find learning activities which will show them HOW they are useful!

  • Find a case study approach – help them manage the resources that they find.
  • Students sharing stuff – did help reciprocity.
  • Staff-student-student contact improved, by-produce of user identification/sharing activity.
  • High standards – promoting discussion of quality of resources.

Conclusions

It IS a useful tool for supporting learners in their study.

Very much the Cinderella of Web 2.0 technologies

Early adopters need to drive critical mass to generate perception of usefulness

Make bookmarking a core information skill

Focus on usefulness via personal accounts rather than ease of use (VLE)

Future Work

Twitter/Delicious integration (via Twitterfeed)

Mobile Platforms (easy to access bookmarklets?)

Developing support materials & events to increase digital literacy & promote mainstream adoption.

Use of Delicious via ‘network bundles’

Delicious as part of UH browser customization, so students can use easily on every system.

QUESTIONS

  • A: will find interesting material, the C students will find material they think is interesting (but really is quite dull); can you filter to put the best students towards the top? Maybe add user tags for each user so can see who they come from? Can add comments. Use the measure of number of times quoted as measure of quality (doesn’t really work). Can build own API which runs as a filter.
  • Diigo – can go to pages and annotate them… See them in context. Could be useful for academics in ranking, etc resources. Are specific academic platforms, but this seemed better.

Think I might set up a blwinch Delicious account – or just a TAG – one way to get people to use it in a simple way.

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Academic Digital Event

Creating a Community in Blended Learning using the Talents of All? #iblc10

Barbara Lee & David Moxon

Creating a Community of Practice in Blended Learning using the talents of all?

How far does your CoP exist?

  • Likelihood that Universities are at different stages with their community
  • Certain things evolve
  • May have a mix of lecturers that wish to see student uptake and those that wish to use as research
  • Is tech there for ‘student support’ or is a ‘Community of Inquiry’ being created? Different technologies depending on what the answer is…

 

In this conference interchanged ‘Community of Inquiry’ and ‘Community of Practice’.

CoP are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger 2006) – do we have lots of small CoPs or what?

  • A shared domain of interest
  • A community that interacts with each other
  • A share repertoire of resources leading to shared practice.

What is a community? How big should it be? Should say that there are lots of small communities of practice that fade in/out of existence and it’s more important that we’re here and aware of the skills we have.

What is Blended Learning?

  • Use of appropriate tech
  • Informed by pedagogy
  • Enhancing student experience
  • MANY – however, see it only in relation to certain activities
    • Supporting the full time curriculum to provide a more flexible support to student learning
    • Building it into the curriculum with p/t students receiving a mix of online & f2f
    • Using new technologies to drive pedagogical change?

 

QUESTION 1: Is there a recognised definition in your university? If so what activity do staff associate it with?

Hertfordshire does – may depend upon faculties, Solent’s is above, most don’t – those that don’t tend to have good bottom-up stuff going on, but if there’s a recognition that there’s over-arching strategy (not imposed), but bringing together the best practice. WebPet (web presence in every topic) – Flinder Uni, S. Aus. Now trying to move beyond that – easy in some, not others! Discussion tool, link to library page, link to help & support button.

SLIDE (http://tweetphoto.com/27641738) – everyone needs to sign up to Level 1 (equal provision) – how get it embedded? Is it a brain thing or is it social? Level 3 – more Community of Inquiry – more transformative/learn together. Can be hard to get to level 3? Does it come back to knowing your students? Depends on your subject – e.g. Computer Science = not a very discursive study. Level 2, not too many variables. Is it more difficult to get to the higher levels of interactivity with larger numbers or early on in the course? Nature of students, nature of disciplines. Wikis = great for problem based learning/interaction.

QUESTION 2: Is there a common focus or sharing of practice around (all sites on VLE fully stocked, using tools to support students as an individual, fostering online community where students work together on tasks? People work independently using support from central services?

VERY different practices in the same institution dependent upon the discipline. To some people, it’s about “that’s what we do”. Get a sense of evangelizing (there are more progressive uses of the VLE & we should be nudged?) – some of this information is helpful, but it can be dangerous. MUST be about your students. Where are your problems (e.g. getting students to read more) – start to look for solutions… Talk about learning aims, rather than systems & uses.

Even e.g. blogs – can be used differently – can get people speaking to each other naturally, or can push specific answers. Get more interaction if leave more open (less fear of having to get the question ‘right’).

Level 5, not a reading list, but offer 2 core texts they might want to buy, go out to read other materials, but we don’t put it there fore them – they have to be active. Social comes in – as can draw on each other’s material if it’s in a Wiki.

Need acquisition & participation.

To reach 3 – have to DO SOEMTHING different!

Can you stop/start things? Is it really a constellation of practice? Is there a definite group?

Is it a false environment? Do we need a clear purpose/are people getting together?

QUESTION 3: Are there interest groups that work together? (individuals, starting to move towards group work; definite communities)

What are the incentives for people to be involved. “You want me to give more of my time that I have very little of anyway.”

Quite circular – those who were new – in the centre, supported by others, those with more experience moving away to form interest groups as a result. Whose responsibility is it to support the use of new users (Faculties, central, or…?) Is there a community that works as mentoring? Is that not socialisation rather than mentoring? Natural formation? Different levels of granularity – a lot of it is to do with personality.

Can you belong to a community without knowing that you belong to it? Do we over-intellectualise this?

Constellations? Networks? Connect new staff to networks… Induction – specifically re: linking to new people, rather than introduce them to the technologies. CoP relates to projects, whereas networks go off and do another project.

Healthy organisation – how to break down barriers between these networks.

QUESTION 5: How to healthy networks interact (see above)

QUESTION 6: Is it an issue for you to use the ‘community’ to encourage more research into the pedagogy of blended learning? (Encouraging uptake, are there those actively looking for projects in the university, looking for projects outside the university, working partnerships & e-Champions leading the way for others into publication)

Hertfordshire – encouraged to write up & make something permanent – mostly about capturing and sharing practice & not reinventing the wheel.

Winchester – looking to blog or wiki for good or bad practice – but people don’t want to say what’s gone “wrong” in public – the idea of “the publication” limits things.

Are we writing it up as research or are we essentially reporting practice?

JISC projects are – how to do (rather than how not to) projects.

What is the community there for? Networked/sharing practice – not necessarily a communal thing – can be both, but not necessarily! For most it’s an idea of INDIVIDUAL research – rather come up with idea and then might COLLABORATE on it, but it’s not the driver for doing research. Are there projects where the community decides the research…

Hertfordshire, a great community – so e.g. Peter Bullen may give a paper, but 80% of his slides may have come from other members of the team. Communities come & go – e.g. CABLE core team = close knit, but not necessarily the entire…

WHO ACTUALLY HOLDS THE RESOURCES? How are they shared, is the holder also part of the community of practice?

USING THE TALENTS OF ALL TO CREATE A COMMUNITY IN BLENDED LEARNING (Staff,academic/support, Staff)

  • What has worked?
    • Lots of relationships with many individuals – not very efficient, but people like it, but now need to build a repository of resources. Short videos of people talking ad-hoc about their practice. (Takes about 15 mins to get a 3 min video) – not v. academic, but gets engagement (they may talk with couple of PPT slides). E-Library of people doing anything interesting.
    • CABLE, v. successful, but need about £60k per year. 4 depts £10k each, and £20k to arrange social events to bring people together. Works like a dream.
    • Emerging Technology User Group meet once a ¼, meet to share practice in what people have been doing – but tend to be preaching to the converted. Still supporting those who are trying to push things forward.
  • New ideas?
  • Pitfalls?
  • Targeted support (cognitive v social – where do you see the next course of action?)
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Academic Digital Event

Twitter for Communities of Practice, #iblc10

Twitter for co p bex lewis & david rush

View more presentations from Bex Lewis.

The slides from the presentation I’m giving with David Rush at the International Blended Learning Conference, Hertfordshire, today.

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Academic Digital

Paul Brett, using students as e-ambassadors #iblc10

Students as Partners in ‘e’ blended learning: can they help us?

Dr Paul Brett, University of Wolverhampton

 

Strategic E/Blended Learning

Widening Participation: 22,000 students, most 1st generation, wide ethnic mix

VLE is widely used, and recently successful in the use of e-portfolio students, with 21,000 students with active engagement.

 

3 x 180 degree changes that need to make:

  • The e-side of the curriculum might better be done by students than staff

  • We might be better off using technologies that are free & not owning the technologies that we do stuff with

  • We need to stop providing kit for students and incentivise students to own & use their own kit.

 

We are never going to keep up with the developments in hardware/software, and the nature of the learning opportunities that those provide.

 

Not harnessing the possibilities fully – so work in partnership with students, rather than trying to OWN it.

 

Changed learning context? 97% children use internet and a majority of those were creating content…

 

When printing press was invented, had to stop orally relating stories, so no need to use those areas of our brain, so those parts of the brain shrunk. Neuroscience – functionality of the brain is changing.

 

Verbal activities & multitasking better, but jury out on critical, reflective faculties… Studies on cognitive processes.

 

Sir David Melville, CLEX – use students to help

 

Knowledge isn’t owned – available to all – possible to PERSONALISE!

If we started from scratch now we wouldn’t start from where we are.

 

Much of blended learning – implies a mode of transmission? Based on an old model?

 

Now – much is ‘shovelware’ – notes & resources – so how much of the power of the web is actually being used?

 

Potential barriers – lack of time, lack of staff knowledge, lack of money, institutional culture – for 8 years have been the same issues. Are we really making the radical differences that we could make? Despite staff/teacher development being funded like no other European country.

 

Students understand better than staff? Is putting a load of data into the VLE really an academic’s job? Work with the students to use the places that students understand with the ‘doing’ of the e-stuff, and what they NEED. Use them to e-support face-to-face options.

 

Flip Camera ? Photobucket, etc… Tried this on 3 modules. With student ‘E-Champions’ – had mini interviews with them. VLE, PebblePad – told them to do whatever they thought would help in the learning on the module for their peers. Overall – 2 were a success (the one in Performing Arts less successful)

 

Evaluation of the Project

  • They all set up Facebook groups for their students (focus for 7 types of peer-peer support)
  • Course materials (extra research & extra notes for topics on module where felt was a gap in the teaching, or misunderstandings from the students)
  • Pebble blogs (Place to gather student feedback about issues – going well/not understood; over semester use subsided and it all went into Facebook)
  • Video (but technical issues – largely to do with the video size)
  • Subject Q&A for students (Multiple choice questions on the content that the lecturer was providing).
  • Also functioned as liaison between academic staff/student cohort. Unexpected, but very useful.

Types of peer-peer support (note, “only” 80% of students on the Facebook group)

  • Content creating, extending & sharing
  • Finding new resources
  • Created Learning Activities
  • Filled in Gaps in subject understanding
  • Filled in Gaps in administration understandings
  • Asked colleagues for ideas/issues
  • Mediated between staff and the students on course issues.

 

Student e-Champions

  • Positive:
  • Role was validated – staff & students accepted it
  • Their motivation – to fill in ‘gaps’
  • Became learning leaders amongst their peers
  • Increased their own subject learning by immersion
  • Negative:
  • Engagement from some students = a degree of apathy (to anything)
  • Technical issues
  • More support & time

 

Staff

  • Far richer, deeper feedback, and far more than they would have been able to do on their own.
  • Improved the dialogue & interaction with the students (staff were members of the Facebook groups).
  • Gave resources, dialogue and a window into learning issues.
  • Had concern about the accuracy of data, but overall very positive about it all.

 

Rest of students

  • Very much in favour as extra support
  • A source of INSTANT help (not possible from the tutor)
  • Felt more able to voice concerns to peers than staff
  • Would have liked the videos.

 

Conclusions

  • E-Partnership concept works for STAFF and STUDENTS.
  • Need careful selection of e-champions – fulfilled slightly different roles
  • Was no issue with Facebook
  • Students didn’t really need pedagogic direction & tech support.
  • Students learnt more and staff felt communication channels are opened.

 

Questions – should we be using Moodle or Facebook? Wrong question? Are there great free tools that we should actually be using? Let the students lead the enterprise – maximise Web 2.0 opps, save staff loads, save institutional costs for hardware? Should the role be a credit-bearing one?

Next

  • Longer lead in/selection process
  • Pre-module planning, meet e-champions/staff to map out the e-side.
  • Give the students full support – meetings, etc.

 

QUESTIONS

  • Students paid £75 each in e-tokens. Not all have collected. No stipulation as to what needed to be done. Largely those who were self-motivated.
  • Do you monitor the content? Staff didn’t (as they don’t have time to monitor Wikipedia – which students will go to first!) – don’t have time.
  • Exeter, Students as Change Agents (about to implement e-champions). Ethics of payment, what about those who do better? Credit as a mentoring role, etc.
  • Students probably doing around 4 hours a week…
  • What would you say if students all put the WRONG answer in an exam which is on Facebook? But aside from a ‘health warning’, similar to Wikipedia. Get the students in literate in using web information – evaluate sources as with everything else.
  • Around 50-85 students per module.
  • Did staff NOT use the VLE then? Yes – they gave PPT to the students to do what they want to do with as they like. Students had admin rights for VLE modules – could use if wanted (which they didn’t) – and also a lot of legacy material on there.
  • Take advantage of material that’s already in students technology… Institutions work on a robust wireless network, rather than hardware infrastructure…
  • For Widening Participation – probably cost-neutral, as provide materials for bursary students…