Places where learning takes place (#moocmooc day 2)

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So I survived day 1 of #moocmooc, and the collaborative task of creating a 1,000 word essay explaining the history, context and potential and potential pitfalls of MOOCs, worked surprisingly well. Thanks to the people in the group I was assigned to, who took charge and got things done. I’m curating the resources/ recommended readings from the course on Pearltrees and you can see links to all the group submissions in my #moocmooc pearl.

Today’s theme is “places where learning takes place”. Participants have been asked to create a video sharing their views, experiences and share them on Youtube. There there are some really great contributions which have been collated in this Storify.

Now, today has been not quite an average Tuesday for me. We had our almost annual CETIS Scotland meet up at the Edinburgh festival. This was a bit of a family affair too and so we went to see Horrible Histories - which is a very fine live learning experience in itself. Those in the UK will know what I mean – if you’re not from here, check it out for probably the best guide to British history. Anyway I was thinking about where I learn at various points during the day. For #moocmooc, it is primarily online – at the office, at home, on the train – anywhere with a decent 3G/wifi connection. But I do need quite space to contemplate too. This tends to be when I’m walking to or from work, sometimes in my favourite chair with “a nice cup of tea”.

However the level of contribution and activity in this (and any online, never mind “massive” online course) can be overwhelming. In the twitter chat last night a few of us agreed that boundaries were important to help stay focused, and also the ability to not feel overwhelmed by the sheer level of activity is a key strategy which learners need to develop.

It sometimes feels that you’re trying to juggle all sorts of mismatching things, whilst trying to doing three other things at the same time and speak to 200 people you’ve never met before.

This afternoon we stopped off to watch a street performer who ended up ten feet up a ladder, took his kilt off and then juggled three very large (and sharp) knives. All this on cobblestones! Sometimes being in a mooc feels a bit like that. Slight crazy, a bit dangerous, but great fun – particularly when you get good feedback and connect with others.

Anyway here is my little video (I’ve bent the rules slightly but using animoto and not posting to youtube ).

To MOOC or not to MOOC?

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Is the one of the underlying questions of the week long MOOC being run this week by Hybrid Pedagogy. Like many others working education I am interested in MOOCs, and there has been a flurry of activity over recent months with a number of big guns joining, or perhaps taking over, the party.

The #moocmooc course is running over a week, and today’s themes centre around “What are MOOCs? What do we think they are? What do we fear they may be? What potential lies under their surface?”. There’s a group task to complete – a 1,000 word essay on “What is a MOOC? What does it do, and what does it not do?”, and a twitter conversation tonight to share experiences.

However, I think that these questions need to be underpinned by a couple of “whys”? Why are you interested in MOOCs? Why are you thinking about taking the MOOC route? Sian Bayne and her colleagues in the MSc E-Learning course at the University Edinburgh have done exactly this in their recent ALT Article “MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera“.

And by way of not answering the assignment question, I’m trying to reflect on my experiences of MOOCs to date. So far it looks like the majority of participants seem to be from North America, although there are a few UK faces in there too. I’m particularly interested seeing if there are any major differences in implementation/drivers between North America and the UK. Not everyone is going to be able to go down a full blown MOOC route, but what are the key elements that are really practical for the majority of institutions? The open-ness, experimenting and extending notions of connected learning? Potential to get big enrollment numbers? It’s probably far too early to tell, and as most of the participants probably fall into the early adopters category their motivations may not reflect general practice or readiness.

Although I have a professional interest in MOOCs, it’s probably their potential for me as a learner that really excites me. I’m not particularly motivated to do any more “formal” education – for a number of reasons, but time is probably the main one. I’m also very fortunate to have a job where I really do learn something new everyday, and I feel that my peers do keep my brain more than stimulated.

Being able to participate in open courses around topics that interest me, without financial risk to me personally or my employer (which adds pressure for me) is very appealing. I’ve tried MOOCs before (LAK11) which I enjoyed – particularly the synchronous elements such as the live presentations and chat. But if I’m being honest, I didn’t spend as much time on the course as I probably should have. On the plus side, I did get a feel for being a student on a MOOC and some useful insights to learning analytics.

Although I probably tick the right boxes to be a self motivated, engaged and directed learner, sometimes life just gets in the way and it turns out that I’m a bit rubbish at maintaining engagement, direction and motivation. But that hasn’t put me off MOOCs. Like tens of thousands of others I signed up for the Stanford NPL course, and very quickly realised that I was being a tad optimistic about my coding capabilities and that I just didn’t have the time I would need to get anything out of the course, so like tens of thousands of others I silently dropped out. I did think the traditional design of that course worked well for that subject matter.

But #moocmooc is only a week, no programme required, and also a week in August when things at work are a bit quieter than normal. Surely despite the twitter conversations talking place from 11pm my time I’ll be able to cope with that? Well we’ll see. Already it has got me thinking, given me the opportunity to try the Canvas VLE and back into blogging after a brief holiday lull.

*Day 2 Places where learning takes place
*Day 3 Massive Participation but no-one to talk to
*Day 4 Moocmooc day 4
*Day 5 Designing a MOOC – moocmooc day 5
* Analytics and #moocmooc

Enhancing engagement, feedback and performance webinar

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The latest webinar from the JISC Assessment and Feedback programme will take place on 23 July (1-2pm) and will feature the SGC4L (Student Generated Content for Learning) project. Showcasing the Peerwise online environment the project team will illustrate to participants how it can be used by students to generate their own original assessment content in the form of multiple choice questions. The team will discuss their recent experiences using the system to support teaching on courses at the University of Edinburgh and the findings of the project. The webinar will include an interactive session offering participants the opportunity get first hand experience of interacting with others via a PeerWise course set up for the session.

For further details and links to register for this free webinar are available by following this link.

Binding explained . . . in a little over 140 characters

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Finding common understandings is a perennial issue for those of us working in educational technology and lack of understanding between techies and non techies is something we all struggle with. My telling some of the developers I used to work with the difference between formative and summative assessments became something of an almost daily running joke. Of course it works the other way round too and yesterday I was taken back to the days when I first came into contact with the standards world and its terminology, and in particular ‘bindings’.

I admit that for a while I really didn’t have a scoobie about bindings, what they were, what the did etc. Best practice documentation I could get my head around, and I would generally “get” an information model – but bindings, well that’s serious techie stuff and I will admit to nodding a lot whilst conversations took place around me about these mysterious “bindings”. However I did eventually get my head around them and what their purpose is.

Yesterday I took part in a catch up call with the Traffic project at MMU (part of the current JISC Assessment and Feedback programme). Part of the call involved the team giving an update on the system integrations they are developing, particularly around passing marks between their student record system and their VLE, and the development of bindings between systems came up. After the call I noticed this exchange on twitter between team members Rachel Forsyth and Mark Stubbs.

I just felt this was worth sharing as it might help others get a better understanding of another piece of technical jargon in context.

Couple of updates from the JISC Assessment and Feedback Programme

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As conference season is upon us projects from the current JISC Assessment and Feedback programme are busy presenting their work up and down the country. Ros Smith has written an excellent summary post “Assessment and Feedback: Where are we now?” from the recent International Blended Learning Conference where five projects presented.

Next week sees the CCA Conference and there is a pre-conference workshop where some of the assessment related standards work being funded by JISC will be shared. The workshop will include introductions to:

• A user-friendly editor called Uniqurate, which produces questions conforming to the Question and Test Interoperability specification, QTIv2.1,

• A way of connecting popular VLEs to assessment delivery applications which display QTIv2.1 questions and tests – this connector itself conforms to the Learning Tools Interoperability specification, LTI,

• A simple renderer, which can deliver basic QTIv2.1 questions and tests,

• An updated version of the comprehensive renderer, which can deliver QTIv2.1 questions and tests and also has the capability to handle mathematical expressions.

There will also be demonstrations of the features of the QTI Support site, to help users to get started with QTI.

The workshop will also provide an opportunity to discuss participants’ assessment needs and to look at the ways these might be addressed using the applications we have available and potential developments which could be part of future projects.

If you are interested in attending the conference, email Sue Milne sue.milne@e-learning-services.org.uk with your details as soon as possible.

The Digital University – A Proposed Framework for Strategic Development (#apt2012)

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At the Employer Engagement in a Digital Age Conference next Wednesday (4th July) Bill Johnston and myself will be presenting a workshop around our recent series of blog posts around what it means to be a digital university.

Our session, The Digital University – A Proposed Framework for Strategic Development, will give us a chance to present the background to the posts, but more importantly will allow us to get feedback from delegates as to whether or not our framework could actually be a useful tool for discussions about strategic developments within universities.

The session will mainly be discussion based, but we do have a short set of slides available. If you have any comments, then as usual please feel free to comment either on this post or via the comment space on slideshare.

The Digital University – A Proposed Framework for Strategic Development
View more PowerPoint from Sheila MacNeill

Five new publications from JISC

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The JISC e-Learning Programme team has just announced the release of five new publications on the themes of lifelong learning, e-portfolio implementation, innovation in further education, digital literacies, and extending the learning environment. These publications will be of interest to managers and practitioners in further and higher education and work based learning. Three of these publications are supported by additional online resources including videos, podcasts and full length case studies.

Effective Learning in a Digital Age: is an effective practice guide that explores ways in which institutions can respond flexibly to the needs of a broader range of learners and meet the opportunities and challenges presented by lifelong learning.

Crossing the Threshold: Moving e-portfolios into the mainstream is a short guide which summarises the key messages from two recent online resources, the e-Portfolio Implementation Toolkit, developed for JISC by the University of Nottingham, and five institutional video case studies. This guide and accompanying resources explore the processes, issues and benefits involved in implementing e-portfolios at scale.

Enhancing practice: Exploring innovation with technology in further education is a short guide that explores how ten colleges in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland (SWaNI) and England are using technology to continue to deliver high-quality learning and achieve efficiency gains despite increasing pressure and reduced budgets.

Developing Digital Literacies: is a briefing paper that provides a snapshot of early outcomes the JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme and explores a range of emergent themes including graduate employability, and the engagement of students in strategies for developing digital literacies.

Extending the learning environment: is a briefing paper that looks at how institutions can review and develop their existing virtual learning environments. It offers case study examples and explores how systems might be better used to support teaching and learning, improve administrative integration or manage tools, apps and widgets.

All guides are available in PDF, ePub, MOBI and text-only Word formats. Briefing papers are available in PDF.

There are a limited number of printed copies of each guide for colleges and universities to order online.

The problem with most university websites

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is pretty much summed up by the genius of xckd in this cartoon

xkcd comic - the university website

xkcd comic - the university website

and was the focus of one of the plenary talks at this weeks #iwmw12 conference given by Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Principal, Robert Gordon University. The gist of Fredrick’s talk centred on the contradiction in Universities of the innovative role they play in terms of creating, developing and using technology and the apparent lack of creativity and user focus when it comes to using technology for communication purposes.

Do you find the corporate comms emails you receive a bit like former Soviet block communications full of “interesting” facts on 5 year plans etc? I hadn’t really made that connection before but I did find myself smiling along in agreement with that analogy. However it was University home pages which were the main bugbear and the focus of Fredrick’s talk. News, too many links, scrolling pages, all were taken to task.

I think it is fair to say that most University home pages are quite busy spaces, but telling that to a bunch of institutional web managers . . . well it was almost a Donald Clarke, ALT-C moment :-) However I think it was useful to highlight the schizophrenic nature of universities and how that is reflected in home pages. Fredrick pointed out that big companies/corporations seem to be much better at simplifying their home pages, however they have a much clearer corporate identity.

What is the key focus of a University and so it’s home page? Research? Teaching and learning? Information for prospective students? Everyone wants their “bit” on the front page, despite what stats might tell us about no-one actually reading the news sections, if Professor X has just got a gizillion pounds for their research project, they, and the institutional marketing team will probably want something about that visible on the front page. And, as was pointed out in the Q&A session, university web sites are usefully managed and created by very small teams with little or no budgets and in that sense actually do a pretty remarkable job compared with commercial websites.

During the conference I was introduce to this alternative homepage for students at LSE.

LSE cloud

LSE cloud

Great idea isn’t it – these are the web spaces the students want to access quickly. But of course not that useful for prospective students.

So what can be done? Well as Fredrick did admit, communication is the key. But the communication and future developments should be based on real stats and analysis of site use and not just someone’s personal preference.

cetis @ #iwmw12

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This week I’ve been in Edinburgh with a number of my cetis colleagues at this years IMWM 12 conference which is organised by our sister JISC Innovation Support Centre, based at UKOLN.

Cetis contributions to the conference included:
*Identifying and Responding to Emerging Technologies
*What Can schema.org Offer the Web Manager?, Phil Barker, workshop session
*Developing Digital Literacies and the Role of Institutional Support Services, by me – more info in the text below
*Data Visualisation: A Taster, plenary session with Martin Hawksey and Tony Hirst
*Data Visualisation Kitchen, workshop with Martin and Tony.

This is the first time I’ve attended the conference, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was particularly useful to have conversations with colleagues involved managing university websites, as this is a sector of the community I don’t have very much contact with. I tend to have more contact with people who are building and using teaching and learning environments, and not the more corporate side of a universities web presence.

I ran a workshop session on the first day of the conference around digital literacies and the role of institutional support services. This was very much a discussion session, based on the findings of the current JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme, in particular the technology review I undertook with projects earlier this year and the results of the baselining work the projects have all conducted, and the baseline synthesis produced by Helen Beetham. I was particularly keen bring out the relationship and potential tensions between the personal nature of developing digital literacies and the role of institutional provision. I wish I had recorded the conversation – as it was very wide ranging and I hope, it gave some food for thought for those who came along. A copy of my slides is embedded below.

Developing Digital Literacies and the role of institutional support services
View more PowerPoint from Sheila MacNeill

Edubloggers survey

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Following Martin Weller’s example, here are my responses to Alice Bell’s educational blogging survey. If you want to participate (deadline 15th June), then either cut and paste the questions (and your answers) onto your blog, or comment on Alice’s original post.

Blog URL:http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/sheilamacneill/

What do you blog about?Developments in educational technology, conferences and events I’ve been to. A large part of my work recently has involved supporting a number of JISC funded projects, so I blogged a lot about themes relating to them e.g. curriculum design, digital literacies, distributed learning environments, learning analytics. I also blog about our “corporate” use of social media.

Are you paid to blog?It’s not formally in my job description, but is an unwritten expectation and now an essential part of how I fulfil my work commitments.

What do you do professionally (other than blog)? Tweet :-) I work for one of the JISC innovation support centres so networking is central to my job. I experiment with, and use a wide range of web technologies for sharing innovation and developments in technology within the education sector.

How long have you been blogging at this site? Since September 2009

Do you write in other platforms? (e.g. in a print magazine?) Sometimes e.g. in other online publications, conference proceedings etc I also contribute to CETIS briefing papers which are available both in print and electronic formats, but the majority of my writing is on my blog.

Can you remember why you started blogging? I was told to! Our former Director thought it would be a good idea if we all started to blog.

What keeps you blogging?Habit, and as I said earlier blogging is now part of my working practice.

Do you have any idea of the size or character if your audience? How? Via google analytics, but my blog stats are amalgamated with the rest of CETIS staff blogs. We get around 10,000 visits per month.

What’s your attitude to/ relationship with people who comment on your blog?
I usually know them, so that is good, and I’m always delighted to get a “real” comment for a number of reasons including validation.

Do you feel as if you fit into any particular community, network or genre of blogging? (e.g. schools, science, education, museums, technology)
Educational technology

If so, what does that community give you?
Sense of common purpose and sharing of ideas/knowledge in an open way

What do you think are the advantages of blogging? What are its disadvantages/ limitations?
It is a good discipline and as much of my work centres on dissemination and networking it is an obvious medium to use. The disadvantages are that it can take a while to find your voice, I blog primarily in a professional context so I have to sometimes moderate my language/tone. On saying that, sometimes that’s no bad thing as it makes me be more considered and thoughtful about what the points I am trying to put forward.

Do you tell people you know offline that you’re a blogger? (e.g. your grandmother, your boss)It depends, sometimes, but when I’ve told non work people and they’ve had a look at the blog they think I’m from another planet.

Is there anything else you want to tell me about I haven’t asked?
Blogging is an essential part of my working practice. I don’t get a huge amount of traffic but I get some and it is a great addition to my memory, as well as illustrating what I do. A lot of my work isn’t very obvious and blogging gives it a presence/makes it more tangible and explicit.