Intellectual heritage tracing

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Simon Grant

I’ve only been hearing and thinking about plagiarism in the last few days – since going to the Assessment Think Tank in York in fact, but since then reading in many places. One of the debated ideas is encouraging students to use plagiarism detection services. Another, heard at York, is that the more adventurous students run more risk. Why? It is unlikely in some subjects (say Philosophy) to come up with entirely novel ideas, so if a student has an idea which was not represented on the reading list, they are less likely to know if someone has had it before, and thus more likely to be judged to have plagiarised – have passed off some ideas as theirs which actually came from someone else. They may not have known that, but they can’t prove it.

Those two ideas together spark off a bigger idea.

Sophisticated plagiarism detection services could be rebranded to be thought of as tracing the intellectual heritage of a piece of work. That would be very useful – I could write some thoughts down, submit them, and be returned a list of similar ideas, along with how my ideas relate to theirs (according to the software, which is not of course going to be perfect). Then I could look up the originals, and work them in properly: paraphrase and reference, for example. It would also be a powerful self-critical tool: instead of simply imagining the objections to one’s own supposedly new idea, one could see how others have argued against similar ideas in the past.

Incredibly useful in the field of patenting, as well, I would guess…

Have the anti-plagiarism people got on to patents yet? I’ll ask.

Assessment think tank, HEA, 2008-01-31

Posted on February 7, 2008 by Simon Grant

Assessment think tank, at The Higher Education Academy, York, 31st January to 1st February 2008

Several of these events appear to have been arranged, and this one was with the Subject Centres both for History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA), and for Philosophy and Religious Studies (PRS).

Around 20 or so delegates were present, mostly from representative subject areas, but including from the JISC’s Plagiarism Advisory Service. Previously, I only recognised Sharon Waller from the HEA, and had talked with Costas Athanasopoulos (PRS Subject Centre) at the JISC CETIS conference: he was the one who invited me.

I won’t try to document the whole event, but to pick out a few things which were highlights for me.

The discussion around plagiarism was inspiring. There was very little on the mechanics and technology of plagiarism detection (Turnitin is popular now) and plenty on good practice to avoid the motive for plagiarising in the first place. This overlaps greatly with other good practice – heartening, I felt. George MacDonald Ross gave us links to some of his useful resources.

Also from George MacDonald Ross, there was an interesting treatment of multiple-choice questions, for use preferably in formative self-assessment, avoiding factual questions, and focusing on different possible interpretations, in his example within philosophy.

As I’m interested in definitions of ability and competence, I brought up the issue of subject benchmarks, but there was little interest in that specifically. However, for archaeology fieldwork, Nick Thorpe (University of Winchester) uses an assessment scheme where there are several practical criteria, each with descriptors for 5 levels. This perhaps comes closest to practice in vocational education and training, though to me it doesn’t quite reach the clarity and openness of UK National Occupational Standards. Generally, people don’t seem to be yet up to clearly defining the characteristics of graduates of their courses, or they feel that attempts to do that have been poor. And yet, what can be done to provide an overall positive vision, acceptable to staff and student alike, without a clear, shared view of aims? Just as MCQs don’t have to test factual knowledge, learning outcomes don’t have to be on a prosaic, instrumental level. I’d be interested to see more of attempts to define course outcomes at relatively abstract levels, as long as those are assessable, formally or informally, by learner, educator and potential employer alike.

One of the overarching questions of the day was, what assessment-related resources are wanted, and could be provided either through the HEA or JISC? In one of our group discussions, the group I was in raised the issue of what a resource was, anyway? And at the end, the question came back. Given the wide range of the discussion throughout the day and a half, there was no clear answer. But one thing came through in any case. Teaching staff have a sense that much good, innovative practice around assessment is constrained by HEI (and sometimes wider) policies and regulations. Materials which can help overcome these constraints would be welcome. Perhaps these could be case studies, which documented how innovative good practice was able to be reconciled with prevailing policy and regulations. Good examples here, presented in a place which was easy to find, could disseminate quickly – virally even. Elements of self-assessment, peer assessment, collaboration, relevance to life beyond the HEI, clarity of outcomes and assessment criteria, etc., if planted visibly in one establishment, could help others argue the case for better practice elsewhere.

TRACE project, Brussels, 2007-11-19

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Simon Grant

Monday 19th November: I was invited as an expert to the final meeting of the TRACE project, held in Brussels. TRACE stands for Transparent Competences in Europe. The project web site is meant to be at http://trace.education-observatories.net/ . I didn’t realise how many competence projects there were in Europe at the moment, as well as TEN Competence which some CETIS people are involved with.

The meeting consisted of some presentations of the project work, followed by a general discussion which particularly involved the invited experts.

TRACE has created a prototype system to illustrate the competence transparency concept. In essence, this does employment matching based on inferences using domain knowledge embedded in an ontology, as well as job offers on the one side, and and CV-based personal competence profiles on the other. They didn’t try to do the full two-way matching thing as the Dutch Centre for Work and Income do. On the surface, the TRACE matching looks like a simpler version of what is done by the Belgian company Actonomy.

The meeting seemed to recognise that factors other than competences are also important in employment matching, but this has not been explored in the context of the TRACE project; nor has the idea that a system which can be used for competence-based matching in the employment domain could easily and advantageously be used for several other applications. It would be good to get a wider framework together, and this might go some way towards countering social exclusion worries.

Karsten Lundqvist, working at Reading with the project leader Prof. Keith Baker, was mainly responsible for the detailed ontology work, and he recognises that the relationships chosen to represent in the top-level ontology are vitally essential to what the ontology can support, and what domain ontologies can represent. They have a small number of relationships in their ontology:

has part
part of
more specific
more general
synonym
antonym

While these are reasonable first guesses at useful relationships, some of my previous work (presented at a TEN Competence meeting) proposes slightly different ones. I made the point in this meeting that it would be a good idea to check the relevance, appropriateness and meaningfulness of chosen relationships with people engaged in the domain itself. I’d say it is important in this kind of system to gain the trust of the end users by itself being transparently understandable.

But further than this, comprehensible relationships as well as terms are vital to the end of getting communities to take responsibility for ontologies. People in the community must be able to discuss the ontology. And, if the ontology is worked in to a structure to support communications, by being the basis of tags, people that work in the field will have plenty of motivation to understand the ontology. Put the motivation to understand together with structures and concepts that are easily understandable, and there is nothing in the way of widespread use of ontologies by communities, for a variety of purposes.

Putting together the main points that occurred to me, most of which I was able to say at the meeting:

relationships chosen for a top-level ontology for competence are vitally central, providing the building blocks for domain ontologies where the common knowledge of a community is represented;
we need further exploration about which relationships are most suitable and comprehensible for the community;
this will enable community development and maintenance of their own ontologies;
the UK already has some consensus-building communities, in the Sector Skills Councils;
SSCs produce National Occupational Standards, and it is worthwhile studying what is already produced and how, rather than reinventing the complete set of wheels (see my work for ioNW2);
to get practical success, we should acknowledge the human tendency for everyone to produce their own knowledge structures, including domain ontologies;
but we need to help people interrelate different domain ontologies, by providing in particular relationships suited to cross-link nodes in different ontologies (see my previous work on this)

All in all, an interesting and stimulating meeting.

Uniform tags, not uniform templates

Posted on November 18, 2007 by Simon Grant

On Friday (16th November) I was at a meeting of the Academy Subject Centre e-portfolio projects, in Wolverhampton. Among more gently interesting topics, the big thing that came out in the end was the desire not to be able to navigate around e-portfolio related information and resources without being swamped or overloaded. Initially discussing case studies, people at the meeting agreed that we don’t really want uniform templates, but rather uniform tags. Exactly how these might work was not discussed, but the question got me thinking.

Ideally, to get a coherent and consistent set of domain tags, they need to be based on an agreed domain model. This could be a domain ontology, but what one calls it is less important than the reality of it being: (a) widely and commonly agreed; and (b) able to be put in a machine-processable form for use on the web – the Semantic Web in fact.

JISC could perhaps fund one or more projects, absolutely not, under any circumstances, to invent their own domain models or ontologies in isolation, but to explore what common ground there is in a particular domain, and to explore also the processes which can result in broadening the area of agreement in the domain model. A by-product of this would be an evaluation of the usefulness of the tools needed to facilitate broadening of consensus in the domain model. Here, graphical representations will be vitally central.

More on the nomenclature of identity/personality

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Simon Grant

Back on 26th July I wrote about this issue. I was at the time sticking out for using the term “identity” to refer to that complex of personal qualities and attributes associated with particular contexts, groups of people, roles, etc., and having strong implications for personal values.

I’ve recently changed my mind, and reflected that in my LEAP 2.0 work. (Translators of) Jung used the term “persona”, just like Nicole Harris. I had some problems with that. One of them is that “persona” is too close to the very frequently used term “person”. But what about the term “personality”?

Personality has plenty of common language meaning. Comparing the relevant Wikipedia entries for identity and personality, I’d say that personality as a term has a lot going for it. Though I wouldn’t want to base terminology on pathology, “multiple personality disorder” does seem to display the right kind of exaggeration of what I’m trying to get at, while the terms “multiple identity” and “multiple personality” seem to be used together quite often in the same context.

Development is a very important concept for me. “Identity development” seems to be used in a sense which implies one identity per human being (leaving aside the pathologies above). “Personality development” lives less with psychology and more with life coaching – not very far, I suspect, from the “personal development” that is better known to us.

But I like the greater scope for plurality in “personality development”. It sounds, to me, more like something that can be put on at will. It leaves nicely open the options, firstly to accept or cultivate several personalities suited to different situations, and secondly to work towards an integrated personality. The very fact that people talk and write about “well-integrated personality” or “fully integrated personality” implies that one can have something that is not fully integrated. If it is not integrated, there must be disparate parts.

I also particularly like the connection with personality inventories and such like. Whereas the assumption seems to be that we have just one “personality”, I think this is an idealisation. More likely, one’s responses to several personality inventory questions would be affected by the situation of the test, or the situation in which one is asked to imagine oneself when taking such a test.

Maastricht e-portfolio conference, 17th-19th October

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Simon Grant

Wednesday 17th October was the first of the three main days of the ePortfolio 2007 conference in Maastricht. It was a varied day, with the plugfest track for which I was billed as chairing, as well as work on HR-XML and ontologies, which I would have liked to attend as well. The practical plugfest work was mainly, as it turned out, on IMS ePortfolio. There was some success with exporting and importing files, though little details continue to cause problems.

One issue with IMS eP which was raised is about to what can be related to what. The eP spec suggests that relationships use identifiers inside the XML. Marc van Coillie suggested that relationships could be defined on the Content Package (things in the manifest). Several people suggested that instead of the relationships each being in their own file, they could all be put into one file. Various people have just implemented this anyway.

I suggested that the two final sessions of the day from the plugfest and from the HR-XML discussion be merged, and the resultant discussion was certainly interesting. There seems to be a consensus that the educational and employment domains should be brought closer towards interoperability. This could conceivably happen through building a common ontology. On the one hand, cooperation between IMS and HR-XML could be helped through organizations that are members of both. On the other, perhaps ontology could be developed independently, to guide both efforts. But who will resouce building such an ontology?

One of the things that came out in the day was that HR-XML 3.0 will refer to the UN/CEFACT CCTS and the OMG IMM approaches.

The Thursday and Friday were regular ePortfolio conference days. On Thursday there was an inspiring plenary about the Dutch car manufacturer, NEDCAR. They are using a portfolio approach both to prepare employees to move out or in, depending on the fluctuating need for employees, and for interfacing with the Dutch job system, which includes sophisticated matching services.

I chaired a session on “ePortfolio Challenges in Higher Education” on Thursday afternoon. I was somewhat disappointed. It seems that educators and agents of institutional change are different people: the continuing discussion on pedagogy and e-portfolio practice no longer inspires me. Yes, I know that various pedagogical theories can well be adopted in conjunction with e-portfolio tools, and that the resulting practice is often well-received. That is no longer news. But what of the challenges to institution-wide adoption? What about the issues of getting to grips with the institutional change that seems to be required? These were not, unfortunately, discussed in that session.

The main theme I followed on Thursday and Friday was, appropriately, to do with organisations and employability. To me, there did seem to be real progress being made and to be made, related to what we often call “employer engagement”. This ties in with what seemed to me to be a well-chosen theme for the event as a whole – “Employability and lifelong learning in the knowledge society” – and a move away from the token “e-portfolio” towards the wider implications of such practice in the economy.

The sense I got was that people felt the conference overall was a distinct improvement over last year. Maastricht is a very pleasant and interesting town, with a fascinating history.

A Centre in search of a centre

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Simon Grant

Yesterday, 2007-10-03, Wednesday, we had an “all of CETIS” meeting in Bolton. The theme that seemed to come across throughout was, where is CETIS going? Perhaps towards being the Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability & Standards (note the moved &)?

And, is the role of CETIS to support, to advise, to lead, to explore, or what? One view is that it is to provide enough information for people to make informed choices. Then we looked at the CETIS mission statement, which wasn’t all that helpful. It doesn’t say anything about our values – these are often included in vision and mission statements, so maybe we ought to be thinking about them?

One matter that is clearer to me is the role of CETIS boundary management, gatekeeping domain coordinators’ relationship with JISC. I’d say this has improved over the last year, and that good work needs to be kept up. Perhaps there is space to keep high in JISC’s awareness that while accountability is accepted, excessive bureaucratic demands sap morale as well as eating up time.

The newly-appointed JISC expert consultants came up in discussion several times. Perhaps the distinction is that they will work more directly to order from JISC, whereas CETIS still aspires, rightly in my view, to an independence of initiative. We could decide, for example, on the subject areas where technology intelligence reports could be written.

Having a consensus process to create such reports could be a great unifying factor within CETIS. We could:

decide on a set of current / developing technologies, and review them;
review the current evidence base (we don’t want to be “faddist”);
circulate review for comments around CETIS, to ensure we have “all based covered”;
set out what our view is now, and why;
decide what evidence will be appropriate for future re-evaluation, and when it is expected.

These reports could be a vehicle to express and embody our “strategy for technology” (not “technology strategy”). Though this wasn’t mentioned explicitly on the day, a systemic approach – perhaps even a Soft Systems approach – would fit well. We need to implement a strategy of responding to technological advance (actual or envisaged) by considering their systemic effects, including whether institutional culture is, or can be, adapted to their use. We need to think even of the political effects on learners as well as educators. And we need a holistic approach to developments across the educational technology space: what interrelationships are there; what parallels; what side effects, in different domains?

Writing technology intelligence reports would be one way of having influence, but maybe there are others? Firstly, could CETIS act as agent of institutional change? We could imagine starting a Technology and Institutional Change SIG, though perhaps this is first better thought through as a thought experiment. But we ourselves are not experts in organisational change, so if we want to get into this area, we would need to do it in partnership with others who are expert.

Secondly, where are the levers to influence, and which ones are most within our grasp? Paul seems to have some good ideas on this.

Thirdly, how do we most effectively influence development of standards and specs? We have to be wise about what is achievable. Where the juggernauts of commercial interest are rolling, there is no point in, umm, going against the flow (I was thinking of a more graphic, but less polite and less gender-neutral phrase here). We need to watch for opportunities to act, when the commercial forces have released their iron grasp. But there are always going to be areas where we can have influence, at the leading edges. Developing approaches following the Dublin Core Abstract Model sounds like a very promising way to go. XCRI has had that in mind, LEAP 2.0 is going there as well, hopefully. Along with DCAM, there are closely related Semantic Web approaches. This is surely an opportunity to lead, and to lead clearly and strongly.

At the other end, how do we disengage from approaches that we feel are no longer fit for purpose? Can we do that at once honestly and gracefully? It’s an open question, but I don’t think we want to just sneak away.

There is another aspect of dealing with commercial interests: engaging with employers, which is a big theme in many places including HEFCE at the moment. Employers, particularly SME employers, in some ways have a diametrically opposed point of view to ours. They want technology that works, simply, intuitively, now. Can we give leads on that, can we influence the development of that kind of technology, and can we actually help seed developments where no plausible ones have been started? Yes, we have an academic and intellectual function. But can this knowledge and expertise be pressed into the service of this kind of practical requirement? That would give a good basis for playing our part in the quest for employer engagement.

Identities, personas or what?

Posted on July 26, 2007 by Simon Grant

What may people have several of?

Nicole Harris from JISC dislikes the phrase “multiple identities” but prefers the term “personas”. (And I was flattered to see my own blog appearing on her blogroll ).

Googling for “identities personas” or “identity persona” I find other blog posts like this (though it’s from 2005) and this article. Maybe it’s time again to get serious about the matter of the terms to use – particularly as people were already struggling with it a few years ago.

Then there’s another distinction made by Scott Wilson among others: between identity and principal. (I referred to this before in a previous entry.) It seems to me somewhat pleasantly ironic that this discussion, grounded in the technical side of identity management, is a basis for separating an “identity” from the real embodied human being that may be associated with that identity among others.

I find myself in two minds. One of my minds likes the term “persona”, and would like to use it. But I can’t help feeling that just calling the things we’re talking about “personas” is a little weak: a bit like trying to reassure ourselves that we really know, don’t we, what people’s real identity is? And all this persona stuff, well isn’t it a bit like Second Life? “Who is that green lizard?”, or whatever the question might be. It is true that separating “identity” and “persona” would be one way of distinguishing those of us who are interested in personal identity (identity as in “crisis”) from those who are interested in identity management (identity as in “cards”). But maybe that is a little too easy, too neat. The relationship between the two ideas of identity may not be close, but it does exist: people often use different identifying information, in terms of different usernames and passwords for instance, to authenticate themselves in different roles or for different purposes.

This brings us back to the question, what is the essence of identity? It is certainly possible to see identity as being about a physical body, or ultimately DNA (except it isn’t ultimate: consider identical twins and clones). But would that get us anywhere? We could call that “genetic identity”. It is most certainly of interest when considering inheritance, paternity, evolution and related issues. Some of these issues are legal, and that’s not surprising, because genetic identity is provable and stable (except for identical twins etc.). But when considering the sense of self, and other psychological matters, it loses its grip.

What matters about people? In our culture, at least, people do not normally enter into voluntary relationships with others on the basis of their genetic identity. (In other societies, maybe kinship – close to DNA – is or was a more pervasive factor.) Rather, people want to associate with others on the basis of an understanding of “who they are” that is not closely related to genetic identity, but is more to do with their “character”: what they can do, what their intentions and values are. If we are going to have a useful concept of identity for our society and our social software, then it doesn’t make sense to base it on DNA.

However, non-genetic identity is much more fluid, if not slippery, and harder to define. Not surprisingly, I think that what we need in terms of identity is related to the personal information that can be represented in e-portfolios.

Enough for today.