For those of us who saw Blackboard’s aggressive acquisition of commercial competitors WebCT and Angel, and seen the patent litigation they unleashed against Desire 2 Learn, the idea of Blackboard pledging to be a good open source citizen may seem a bit … unsettling, if not 1984ish.

But it has been clear for a while that Blackboard’s old strategy of ‘owning the market’ just wasn’t going to work. Whatever the unique features are that Blackboard has over Moodle and Sakai, they aren’t enough to convince every institution to pay for the license. Choosing between VLEs was largely about price and service, not functionality. Even for those institutions where price and service were not an issue, many departments had sometimes not entirely functional reasons for sticking with one or another VLE that wasn’t Blackboard.

In other words, the VLE had become a commodity. Everyone needs one, and they are fairly predictable in their functionality, and there is not that much between them, much as I’ve outlined in the past.

So it seems Blackboard have wisely decided to switch focus from charging for IP to becoming a provider of learning tool services. As Blackboard’s George Kroner noted, “It does kinda feel like @Blackboard is becoming a services company a la IBM under Gerstner”

And just as IBM has become quite a champion of Open Source Software, there is no reason to believe that Blackboard will be any different. Even if only because the projects will not go away, whatever they do to the support companies they have just taken over. Besides, ‘open’ matters to the education sector.

Interoperability

Blackboard had already abandoned extreme lock-in by investing quite a bit in open interoperability standards, mostly through the IMS specifications. That is, users of the latest versions of Blackboard can get their data, content and external tool connections out more easily than in the past- it’s no longer as much of a reason to stick with them.

Providing services across the vast majority of VLEs (outside of continental Europe at least) means that Blackboard has even more of an incentive to make interoperability work across them all. Dr Chuck Severance’s appointment also strongly hints at that.

This might need a bit of watching. Even though the very different codebases, and a vested interest in openness, means that Blackboard sponsored interoperability solutions – whether arrived at through IMS or not – are likely to be applicable to other tools, this is not guaranteed. There might be a temptation to cut corners to make things work quickly between just Blackboard Learn, Angel, Moodle 1.9/2.x and Sakai 2.x.

On the other hand, the more pressing interoperability problems are not so much between the commodified VLEs anymore, they are between VLEs and external learning tools and administrative systems. And making that work may just have become much easier.

The Blackboard press releases on Blackboard’s website.
Dr Chuck Severance’s post on his new role.

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HE institutions, from architecture and business to pedagogy and content delivery, have been designed for the classroom-based lecture model. However, rapid technological change now means that lecture capture technology is becoming widely available and lecturers can easily record their presentations so that students may view them anywhere, anytime. Millions of audios and videos of OERs have been produced by subject experts and are freely available at iTunes U for teachers and students to use and re-use in their teaching and learning. And students can search and find most of the information they need on Google, YouTube and social networks via their mobile phones or laptops. As a result of this ever-increasing student access to technology and online learning content, institutions and educators are being forced to rethink how student learning can be facilitated to make class time and activities as relevant and valuable as possible. A term “flipped classroom” has been articulated by some education practitioners, to describe a reversal of the traditional teaching method that gives students video lectures to watch in their own time at their own pace at home and then go to their classrooms for discussions, coaching and interaction with teachers and between peers. The idea of the “flipped classroom” has been brought to the public by the popularity of Khan Academy and its founder, Salman Khan’s TED Talk on reinventing education via using videos.

There is an ongoing debate on the concept of “flipped classroom” and its implications for education, in particular, most recently in the US school sector. A growing number of success stories have been shared by advocators and practitioners but some confusion, critique, and hype also need to be addressed. As with any technology related educational practices, technology itself is only a tool that can be used to address some problems and challenges in education. In this case, the flipped approach offers a simple solution, for using technology in teaching and learning, that helps educators move from ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘side-by-side learners’ in the classroom. To many educators, however, the idea behind “flipped classrooms” may not be new and it could be interpreted and implemented in different ways in different learning contexts.

In general, it could be argued that technology has failed in its promise to transform education, especially, when PowerPoint and whiteboards have come to dominate classrooms, reinforcing the lectured–based class model. However, the “flipped classroom” may provide a new way to think about the role and relationship between technology, teacher and students. In essence it would allow the classroom to be used for interactive discussions and collaborative activities while using technology before, after and outside of the classroom. In this way, technology can be employed in radically different ways to support educators to explore new pedagogical approaches to meet individual student needs.

Eventually, the rapid and continuing developments in the areas of lecture capture technologies, OER, digital textbooks, search, social network tools and mobile devices will change students’ learning experience within and outside the classroom. The flipped approach provides a good example of how technology might be used to disrupt the existing education model and traditional education practice. However, to make real change for a better education system we need also to ‘flip thinking’ at all levels of education sector, from practice, method to process and business models, in order to take full advantage of these disruptive technologies in institutions .

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I’ve recently come to the end of working with the team supporting the JISC Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development Programme (LLLWFD) which ran from 1 March 2009 to 31 March 2011 and funded 13 projects.

I was involved in this work as part of our programme support of JISC activities, and the main support was provided by the Support Synthesis and Benefits Realisation (SSBR) team, who have been busily collating and digesting all the outputs and findings from the programme. I had the opportunity to provide feedback on draft final reports from the various projects in the programme, which surfaced the issues uncovered in the period of activity. There will be much more coming out of the programme in the next few months (and when it does I will announce it).

Several of the projects continued their work in the guise of a Benefits Realisation (BR) project, which basically applies the findings of the initial work and sees if they apply in another, perhaps wider setting or institution.

For anyone interested in work based learning, I would encourage you to have a look at these projects and their findings. I’ve provided summaries and links below; the project summaries are derived from the Final Reports from each project, and I have included a focus on the technologies and standards used.

Main focus

Lifelong Learning summaries wordle

Lifelong Learning Technologies wordle

The technologies wordle above shows the technologies and standards used across the Programme. The Programme was not hugely technical in that it did not develop a great deal of new software or applications, but that was never the intention. It is in the deployment and effective use of existing technologies that a richer picture has emerged. The Programme work resulted in many interesting uses of technologies and successful integration of these with work based learners, in addition to exposing common issues that can occur in such initiatives and are more widely applicable, both to other institutions and also for campus based learners.

Many projects set out with an initial hypothesis which more often than not was proven. But it is often the journey that project staff and students go along that is the real outcome, and that can be quite difficult to capture. Also pertinent to future work are the things that didn’t go well, or not quite as expected, as is often the case through nobody’s fault. Economic climate, change in personnel, sod’s law; all have an impact. It is really useful (and interesting from my point of view when reading through the reports) to have an honest account of ‘what didn’t work’ – and these are often the pitfalls that others can try to avoid if they know about them.

Work based learners are indeed a group of learners that often require a rethink from the traditional norm. But it is a growing market, and one that we need to be geared up for. Naturally, projects set out to correct a genuine need or concern, and some have implemented their developments into standard practice, which is the desired effect as nobody like to see a worthy project run as a pilot and then end.

Findings

The main issues coming out of the Programme from a technologies stance can be summarised as:

1) Identity management – including employer access to institutional systems & different levels of access
2) Course information – needs to be held in a consistent format to allow interoperability (with XCRI being the suggested way forward)
3) Learner Access to information at a time when it suits them (in line with lifelong learning principles)

The project information below also links to a PROD page. PROD is a CETIS directory and monitoring tool for JISC funded projects. It lets you search for and quickly gather information about any of the projects in the system. It is used by CETIS to update our information about current and past projects that we support, with the comments on there being largely from a technologies slant. It is a development area in permanent beta stage but it may be of interest to look at the CETIS PROD page listing all the LLLWFD projects

Project Summaries

Each summary below includes:
Project Acronym & Longname, Lead Institution, Project website, Project Summary (derived from Final Report) Standards & Technologies, PROD entry for Project (CETIS)

CCLiP
Culture Campus Liverpool Portal, University of Liverpool
http://cclip.jiscinvolve.org/
The project aimed to offer an enhanced and expanded service of information about CPD provision from HE and local cultural organisations to the creative/cultural industries – the Liverpool Culture Campus Portal, involving a large number of partners. The project started out with a challenging set of objectives, the main achievement being the development of a portal for the cultural sector to display CPD offerings which can accept automatic feeds which are XCRI-CAP compliant. Lessons have been learned throughout this process about the business process developments to achieve this, together with the necessary developments in technological systems and organising of information.
Technologies & Standards: XCRI
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/CCliP

Co-genT
Co-generative Toolkit, University of Gloucestershire
Project website: http://resources.glos.ac.uk/tli/lets/projects/cogent/index.cfm
The project created an online resource that supports the development of co- generated higher education courses by universities and employers; using language and terminology which is familiar to employers – and the employees who would be acting as learners – whilst also satisfying the quality assurance requirements of higher education institutions.
The Toolkit produced contains four separate elements: Vocabulary Builder; Outcome Builder; Task Builder and Design Builder. These elements combined support the development of courses and allow learners to provide evidence to demonstrate that they have met the learning requirements of the course.
The Toolkit developed was far more flexible than was originally conceived and can be adapted for use with other higher education process, such as: accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL); employer- based training accreditation (EBTA); quality assurance processes (e.g. validation); and general staff development (e.g. the creation of appropriate intended learning outcomes) The tool integrates with PebblePad.
Technologies & Standards: PebblePad, LEAP2A, ELLI, WSRP, IMS Enterprise, HR-XML
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/cogent

CPD Eng
Personalised systems supporting IPD and CPD within a professional framework, University of Hull
Project website: http://www.hull.ac.uk/cpd-eng/
This project aimed to integrate systems that support personalised initial/qualifying professional development (IPD) and continuing professional development (CPD), applicable to professional competency frameworks and enabling work-based learners to control and share their digital artefacts.
A Moodle plugin (MyShowcase) plug-in was created and piloted in HE and also FE institutions, with interest from various other sectors. It allows users to integrate learning evidence from a range of online sources to showcase for CPD, career planning, and lifelong-learning. Users can bring together Web 2.0 feeds and a range of other digital content to create rich evidence streams of their online content.
Technologies & Standards: LEAP2A, ePortfolio, XCRI, PebblePad, Sakai, Moodle, Skype, MyShowcase
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/CPD-Eng

ePP SME
An e-Portfolio based Pedagogy for SMEs, University of Wolverhampton
Project website:http://www.wlv.ac.uk/ePPSME
The ePPSME project provided the HE sector with reusable models and resources for an e-portfolio based pedagogy to address the needs of SME based learners. The project adopted a participative action research approach through a series of design workshops and consecutive pilot study units to develop the use of an e-portfolio tool as a virtual learning environment and personal learning space to introduce and develop the learners’ reflective practice around targeted learning content.
Initial study units in the pilot subjects were based around a web-folio structure using three types of blog-based engagement: individual activity responses, group collaborative discussions, personal critical reflections. This approach ensures ease of use by utilising typical IT skills required for activities such as web-browsing and simple word-processing to avoid deterring learners who lack confidence in their IT competencies.
Technologies & Standards: PebblePad
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/ane-portfo

HELLO
Higher Education Lifelong Learning Opportunities, Leicester College
Project website: http://hello.lec.ac.uk/
The project aimed to tackle three important development issues:
a loss across the whole college of 65% of students’ social space, thus creating the need to provide an alternative in the form of a ‘virtual social space’. Also identified was a need to provide bespoke e-learning training opportunities for teachers and to actively engage with known pockets of inactivity with regard to e-learning across the college. Thirdly, to address a need expressed in Focus Groups to establish a ‘Higher Education (HE) identity’ among staff and students within an institution that is predominantly devoted to the delivery of Further Education (FE).
With a view to achieving these aims, two major developments were undertaken:
The use of a Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to build a Higher Education Student Community Site. This innovation was of particular success with the part-time learners who were now able to carry out ‘keeping warm’ and formative assessment activities week to week, and to use the common room area for peer learning activities.
The adoption of Mahara, an open source e-portfolio tool to enable learners to build their own personal profiles, form groups and take ownership of their own space.
Technologies & Standards: Moodle, Mahara
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/hello

i-WoBLE
Interactive Work-based Learning Environments, University of Westminster
Project website: https://sites.google.com/a/staff.westminster.ac.uk/iwoble/
The project exploited the institutional virtual learning environment (VLE, Blackboard) to establish simple models for the development of communities of support and guidance and to manage and administer the programmes; with a significant amount of administration being moved from paper based to online processes. In order to include employers within the institutional intranet and VLE the university’s identity management process was re-engineered to allow selective access to online systems.
Technologies & Standards: Blackboard, Netware, Elgg, Student blogs, Video
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/interactiv

MUSKET
Middlesex University Skills and Education Planning Tool, Middlesex University
Project website: http://www.musket.mdx.ac.uk/
The project aimed to support employer engagement and workforce planning requirements by providing a tool intended to provide an integrated view of curriculum provision, both in employer based and higher education sectors of UK. This tool allows end users to import documents containing course descriptions from professional providers, employer specific training and HE, and provide a semantic similarity between the documents.
The work also investigated defining types of course information required to support employer-led learner route planning and the potential for exchange of this information (using a specification for the eXchange of Course-Related Information or ‘XCRI’) between various providers.
Technologies & Standards: XCRI-CAP, UML, Semantic Web, Jena2, OWL, Java API
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/middlesexu

PineAPPLe
Partnership INvEstigations into Accredited Prior/Previous Learning, University of Plymouth
Project website: http://www.pineappleproject.org.uk/
This project developed a web-based tool to support staff through the management of an APEL claim. A desk study, staff survey, piloting and numerous formal and informal meetings led to the creation of the PINEAPPLE core builder which can be used to design and deliver an online APEL process for any institution. The project also produced a range of support materials that can be adapted for use in other contexts.
Technologies & Standards: AJAX, Javascript
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/partnershi

SAMSON
Shared Architecture for eMployer, Student and Organisational Networking, University of Nottingham
Project website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/samson/
Improved the effectiveness of postgraduate student placements as a means of HE engaging with new employers supported by technology, including web services.
Validated the technology developed with not one but two different eportfolio systems and demonstrated the savings that can be achieved through shared services, developing lightweight applications and integrations of existing applications or services.
Technologies & standards: XCRI, LEAP2A, OPUS, uPortal, Desire2Learn, iWebfolio, SAML, Shibboleth, OWL, RDF, BPEL, HR- XML, ZXID
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/sharedarch

SMART
Supporting Mentors and Resource Transformation, Buckinghamshire New University
Project website: http://bucks.ac.uk/employees/employee_services/fdlc/smart_project.aspx
The SMART project was designed to support mentors to overcome some of the difficulties they face in assisting work-based students who are severely ‘time-pressured’, by providing a specifically designed, accessible and supporting interface for inexperienced users of technology. Further aims were to develop the mentor’s role and improve learner engagement while promoting inclusion and collaboration. The research included reference to a selection of ‘Use Case’ scenarios. These involved the interface of mentors with technological modalities for enhancing provision delivery as used within two challenging work-based education programmes currently offered. SMART incorporated various advanced technologies (Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Game environments, On-line tasks) in an innovative learning environment and assessed the impact on mentor engagement and mentor use of technology-enhanced Learning.
Technologies & standards: Blackboard, WebEx
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/smart

TELFWD
Technology Enhanced Learning for Workforce Development, University of Wales Institute
Project website: http://www.uwic.ac.uk/ltdu/telp.htm
The project aimed to identify sustainable models for technology-supported delivery of workforce development provision, and associated strategy and policy implications via developmental activity undertaken in different contexts. Two different work-based learning processes, Learning in Work, and Learning through Work were identified, as were transferable models of technology-supported delivery. Case studied were created to capture the experience of work based learners and use of technologies. Several good practice and additional ‘how to’ guides were created covering technologies such as Adobe Connect, Adobe Presenter, Luminosity, PebblePad, Wimba Create, Wikis and Blogs. A Work-Based Learning Mentoring Handbook was also developed alongside repositories with other useful resources. The e-portfolios were developed using the Blackboard Campus Pack plug-in XPO-XL.
The solutions developed are embedded in the participating programme areas and the process of stimulating additional impact through wider adoption is in progress.
Technologies & standards: Blackboard, PebblePad, XCRI, Adobe Connect, Video conferencing, Adobe Presenter, Luminosity, Wimba Create, Wikis and Blogs
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/telwfd

TELSTAR
Technology Enabled Learning Support for Training and Accreditation Recognition, University of Central Lancashire
Project website: http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/lbs/about/facilities_resources/telstar.php
The Project has developed technology enabled resources and tools to support work-based learning, working closely with employers and learning providers to develop a learning framework that allows learners to gain accreditation of both certificated and experiential prior learning (APEL and APCL). The underlying framework and support processes can act as a template for other schools and industry sectors. The project used PebblePad software with work-based learners, with PebblePad Webfolios to support the APEL process and negotiated learning at module level. A level/credit estimator tool assists with admissions and a mapping tool to match employer courses to credit/level has also been developed. A web-based portal for work-based learning provides information and guidance on work-based learning for employers, employees and academics. Customisable Open Educational Resources have been created and released through the JORUM repository and project repository. Course materials created are all SCORM compliant and packaged using Wimba Create (formerly Course Genie) with mini lectures created using Adobe Presenter.
Technologies & standards: LEAP2A, Pebblepad, Adobe Presenter, Wimba Create, SCORM, JORUM
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/telstar

WELL
Workforce Engagement in Lifelong Learning, University of Bradford
Project website: http://www.brad.ac.uk/escalate/current-activities/jiscwell/
The WELL project designed, piloted, and evaluated a model for work-based learning (WBL) module/unit delivery and assessment which integrates technologies to support personalised learning whilst satisfying University accreditation and progression requirements. The model aims to aid sustainability of WBL courses, supporting continuous improvement by revealing key barriers and enablers in a programme’s learning and teaching process.
The team’s ‘Benefits Realisation’ project extends the WELL model by providing a model for HE providers to assess their maturity in embedding Work Based Learning programmes. Working at institutional, faculty and programme levels it includes a range of maturity criteria, level statements and indicators for assessing WBL maturity.
Technologies & standards: Elluminate, Pebblepad, Develop Me, Bradton, Blackboard
Prod entry: http://prod.cetis.org.uk/projects/well

List of projects (JISC page)

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JISC broadly defines digital literacy as “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.”

The briefing paper is very thorough and references a vast amount of work that has already been done. It is by no means a new area starting from scratch, although it has been discussed with many different terms, including IT literacy, social inclusion etc. It looks like a really interesting area of work and one that could genuinely shape the future of education provision and the impact that this has upon the wider society. If we get this right, we may even crack the ‘digital divide’, but it has to be approached carefully and with empathy and caution; some do have a genuine dislike/fear/apathy/distrust/lack of desire to be ‘upskilled’ in IT capabilities, and to wade in with a big stick will not help that. It needs to be understood and recognised. That said, I am not suggesting a ‘pandering to luddites’ approach, and those less keen need to be persuaded of the benefits of the wonderful world of technology. It should be a really interesting programme and best of luck to those that work on it, I look forward to seeing how it progresses.

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The Festival of Assemblies brought together projects from the JISC Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development programme (LLLWFD) and was very efficiently organised by the Support Synthesis and Benefits Realisation project for the programme.

Activities included parallel sessions of collaborative Assembly sessions led by LLLWFD – Phase 3 and Benefits Realisation or ‘BR’ projects, which basically take forward the work of the projects in the programme and see if the lessons learnt/tools developed can apply in other institutions or organiational contexts.

I chose to attend the TELSTAR & PINEAPPLE: Development of APL systems session which included information about the projects and their findings to date followed by some very interesting discussions and anecdotal evidence from various institutions about the actual application of accreditation of prior learning (APL) and the sheer bureaucracy in some quarters which has led students to scrap the idea and just follow the ‘normal’ route. Concerns over parity were raised in particular about the detail and focus on APL processes when compared to traditional learning/ non APL route. An interesting analogy to this was made re the introduction of VLEs and online learning aspects within universities, often any course with an ‘e-learning’ aspect would have to go through a whole separate validation process, maybe with much more scrutiny that face to face teaching. That seems to have settled down, or just become the norm and people know which boxes to tick now, so perhaps the APL teething niggles may turn out to be the same? Nonetheless, with the much discussed ‘current climate’, raise in fees etc, APL will be a key focus and one we have to get right. Potential learners will become savvy (and rightly so) about choices, duration of courses, accreditation and qualification and institutions need to be ready for that and make the whole process as painless as possible for everyone. It looks promising that such projects in the programme will come up with some important lessons for the sector and tips to take forward.

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