Category Archives: General

Maximising the effectiveness of virtual worlds in teaching and learning

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That’s the title of a joint JISC CETIS and Eduserv event we’re running on Friday 16 January here at the University of Strathclyde, and it’s an event I’m looking forward to enormously.  If you fancy coming along I’d advise you to register as soon as possible, as places are already filling up rapidly and if you’re not on the list you ain’t getting in.

Although there is an understandable emphasis on Second Life, the event will look beyond that particular environment to consider some of the issues and barriers to the use of virtual worlds in general in education.  It should be a hugely interesting and valuable event.

Wikipedia as a teaching aid

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There’s been a fascinating discussion on the use of wikis, particularly Wikipedia, as a teaching aid on the Association of Internet Researchers discussion list over the last few days.  A number of courses are already active in Wikipedia, and some useful guidance is available on the site together with sample learning activities and a list of projects.

One aspect of suggesting or requiring that students become involved with Wikipedia that seemed to cause some surprise was the extreme unwillingness of many students to engage as authors with the encyclopedia.  One possible reason suggested for this, that students don’t yet have confidence in themselves as ‘producers of knowledge’, is compelling and I sympathise with those students who were uncomfortable with the ‘public nature‘ of Wikipedia editing.  There were also some entertaining stories of students blithely vandalising Wikipedia pages as the class viewed them and an audacious attempt to avoid an accusation of plagiarism by claiming that the plagiarist actually wrote the Wikipedia entry that raise questions about how so-called ‘Generation Y’ learners relate to crowdsourced content.

LearnHigher CETL website launched

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A new website from the LearnHigher Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning is now available, making resources on a range of topics freely available to support students’ learning development.  LearnHigher is a collaboration between sixteen UK universities, lead by Liverpool Hope, each with responsibility for a particular learning area; the University of York, for example, coordinates work on assessment.  There are still some tweaks that I hope to see in the site over time, such as changes to the rather unhelpful descriptions attached to search results, but the use of creative commons licensing and the team’s clear commitment to the project suggest that this should be a useful resource for all involved in learning and teaching.

UCISA Technology Enhanced Learning survey outcomes

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The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) have just released a report on the outcomes of the 2008 survey on the use of technology enhanced learning in the UK Further and Higher Education sectors. 

There’s a wealth of valuable information here, particularly when viewed in the context of the surveys conducted in 2001, 2003 and 2005.  Like the 2008 Horizon Report, streaming media, mobile computing, and podcasting and other Web 2.0 activities are identified as major trends emerging as support priorities, with use of eassessment, eportfolios, blogs and wikis being surprisingly prevalent.

The statistics for VLE use within institutions are of particular interest.  In response to the question ‘what VLE, if any, is currently used in your institution?’, Moodle has a clear lead over second-placed BlackBoard; however, when looking at enterprise-wide adoptions Moodle is in a very poor third place behind BlackBoard and WebCT, suggesting that while community-based open source solutions effectively meet pedagogic needs at departmental level, institutional management may prefer the apparent security of lock-in to traditional vendor-and-client models.

Eassessment systems are also addressed.  Eassessment tools are the most common centrally supported systems used by students, followed by blogs, podcasting and with eportfolios in fourth place.  Respondents identified BlackBoard as the most commonly used eassessment system, followed by QuestionMark Perception, but this result should be viewed with caution as BlackBoard was also identified as the most commonly used blogging tool despite the fact ‘that BlackBoard does not have a hosted blogging tool’.  The report suggests that respondents may be confusing the VLE itself with third party plugins such as Learning Objects, which does at least suggest a seamless user experience :-)

There’s a great deal more intriguing information in the report, including full data from the 2008 survey and a longitudinal analysis between the 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2008 surveys.

Twitter ye not

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Brian Kelly raises the delicate issue of conference wifi etiquette by highlighting complaints made to a live blogger at a recent event with respect to his ‘distracting‘ typing. Kelly supports the use of wifi and laptops, but for ‘purposes relevant to the session’ without suggesting how participants might be policed to ensure that their laptop use is indeed for relevant purposes (or who defines what is ‘relevant’). The notion of strutting, Sally Bowles-like around the conference venue flicking off switches with a riding crop whenever inappropriate use is discovered has a rather alarming appeal, but might not be the best approach to managing the issue.

There’s definitely been a signficant increase in laptop use at events in the time since I joined CETIS, although inevitably there was always a core of laptop users tapping away even in the earliest days. Wifi provision is a significant issue when considering venues, particularly for our annual conference, and people often seem disappointed, or even a bit nonplussed, when we can’t provide it. But why do we set so much store by it? Is that email really so urgent? Will your IRC channel collapse without you there? However did we network before CrowdStatus?

Kelly, Clow and those they cite comment on the value of live blogging, and the invaluable service it provides to people who can’t be at an event. But does it? I’ve followed, and thoroughly enjoyed, Twitter updates on events, but more for the subjective, qualitative impression they give of the event rather than for their information content. Live blogs are useful narratives, but out of context from the event they describe and lacking reflection in the light of the day as a whole and subsequent consideration, how much value do they actually provide beyond slidecasts and podcasts? If everyone’s live blogging and twittering to the world, who’s going to read the blogs – and who’s going to listen to the speakers?

It’s kind of ironic that I learned about Kelly’s post in the backchannel of this year’s Eduserv Foundation Symposium, as I found the live chat system wildly distracting itself. It didn’t help that, owing to a combination of non-Eduserv related factors, I could barely hear what was being said in the live streaming, but I found the activity in the backchannel so ‘loud’ that it completely drowned out what the speakers were trying to say. I’ve found this in the past in – of all things – training webinars where there were no sound problems at all, just a chatbox buzzing with babble and an increasingly demoralised sounding speaker struggling in vain to make his points. Yes, there can be useful information there – such as the alert to Kelly’s post – but it can itself be buried under the rest of the chatter.

Focusing on the technology, however, diverts attention away from the real issue, which is perceptions of courtesy towards presenters and delegates. Only a few people feel it’s appropriate to speak to each other during presentations (and even Paddington’s hardest stare won’t stop the truly dedicated disrupter), yet many people seem to feel that the same standards don’t apply to unspoken communications. Is this because there’s something inherent to these technologies that make their use somehow acceptable, or just because they’re so new that accepted standards of behaviour around their use simply haven’t emerged yet?

Ever increasing circles

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A thought-provoking article by David Nicol in yesterday’s Times Higher explores some of the issues around the provision and reception of feedback in UK HE.  Writing in response to the National Union of Students’ Feedback Amnesty which was itself inspired by the poor rating for assessment and feedback in the 2007 National Student Survey, Nicol discusses a range of issues that can impact on the quality and value of feedback, describing it as a process that permeates every stage of the assessment process.  Feedback is a dialogue, not just from teacher to learner but from the learner to his teachers, his fellow students and most of all, himself.  The general understanding of feedback as something that is done by teachers to students should be refocused to centre on the learner, and give him both ownership of and responsibility for his own learning. As Nicol says, ‘when teachers deliver written feedback, students must be able to decode it, internalise it and use it to make judgements about their work.  Only then can they make improvements.’ 

Of course, the teacher has to provide a good level of feedback to enable the learner to do this.  It’s hard to start a dialogue when the only feedback provided is a mark and a terse comment.  One comment from the survey cited by Talat Yaqoob on the Amnesty’s Facebook page illustrates the frustration students can feel: ‘Getting an essay back where the only comment was “use a bigger text size” [tells me] nothing on how to improve my grade’. 

Despite this, however, Nicol observes that ‘a further problem is students’ willingness to participate’ in such dialogue despite the range of opportunities some teachers and institutions provide.  One of the reasons for this apparent student disinterest could be revealed in another story in the same issue, the publication of a ‘manifesto for change’ in assessment processes to which Nicol is one of a number of signatories.  Amongst a number of issues identified, the manifesto argues that the emphasis on marks and grades encourages students to take an instrumentalist approach to their studies at the expense of deeper learning.  It’s hard to imagine how this can be avoided, however, in a financial climate which effectively only allows students ‘one shot’ at university, and in which student loans, tuition fees and graduate endowments make a degree all about ‘the magical 2:1′ and very little to do with learning for its own sake.

Death of the author

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This Sydney Morning Herald article on Philip Parker’s prolific publication record popped up on a couple of mailing lists this morning and is certainly worth a read (it’s also worth noting that, since the article was written, Amazon have added a further 127 titles under Parker’s name, taking his current total to an eye-watering 85,864).

Using patented technology to source, compile and distribute works on some phenomenally obscure subjects, Parker is able to make it economically viable to produce titles which may sell to just a handful of readers.  These are strange, Frankenstein books, not worth anyone writing but worth someone reading – a genuine ‘birth of the reader‘, perhaps.  There does seem to be something empowering about such bespoke reference works, and even a vague post-structuralist appeal to Parker’s forays into poetry and romantic fiction, although there’s still an unshakeably forlorn aspect to these parentless little books.

This technology is also of interest given the increasing emphasis on personalisation in education and lifelong learning.  The ability to automatically collate, summarise and deliver content that is directly relevant to very specialised interests has definite applicability, particularly for assessment in vocational training courses where general principles taught in a course can be supplemented with assessments that are narrowly focused on learners’ particular requirements in a way that would otherwise be impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Future imperfect

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Following the third Pew Future of the Internet survey and the most recent Horizon report, I came across this Map of Future Forces Affecting Education recently and keep finding myself drawn back to it despite myself.  Though the interactive map itself looks smart, it’s a bit clumsy and impractical to use (somehow I wasn’t surprised that their ‘how to use this map’ video was made on a Mac ;-) ), but there’s a nice pdf version (requires registration) also available for the more Web 1.0 amongst us.

It’s intentionally US-centric, but many of the trends, dilemmas and topic hotspots will be very familiar to educators elsewhere, such as participatory pedagogy, cheap mobile devices, serious games, open content, transformed learning environments and alternative financial models.  The map offers an opportunity to look at these in a wider context of change and under influence from other, competing or complementary, factors.

So why does it make me feel so uncomfortable?  There’s a heavy emphasis on personsonalisation and diversity, yet at the same time there’s a strong underlying perception of ‘Generation Y‘ as a homogenous group, all of whom are highly adaptable (or fickle), socially-orientated, technologically adept and heavily into group activities, and a distinct sense that all the innovations proposed serve a single, extroverted learning style.  There’s the inevitable reference to ‘integrating digital natives and digital immigrants’, yet voluntary and involuntary digital exiles are disregarded, and there’s an apocalyptic, been-watching-too-much-Mad Max feel to some of the predictions which undermines its intention to ‘provide a common framework to explore innovations, new solutions and experiments’.  To be fair, it doesn’t intend to propose a single potential future but rather to act as a ‘conversation catalyst’ based on the assumption that ‘a trend is a reasonable possibility’, and it largely achieves that with only the odd wtf moment. 

REAPing the benefits of transformation

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Attendees at last September’s SIG meeting will remember Martin Hawksey’s lively presentation on the Re-Engineering Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education (REAP) project.  Funded by the Scottish Funding Council and supported by JISC, the project explored ways in which technology can be used to enhance and transform assessment practice in large first year university classes, resulting in enhanced learner skills, greater achievement rates, and deeper engagement.

A final report on the project is available, discussing a range of topics such as project achievements and lessons learned, preparing for, managing and coping with large scale organisational changes, the pedagogic principles underlying transformation and a study on the use of electronic voting systems (EVS) and the surprising impact they can make on learning and achievement.

The figures reported are impressive: one course saw mean pass marks rise from 51.1% to 57.4%, another’s examination failure rate dropped from 24% to 4.6%, while a third saw a 10.4% gain in mean examination marks; hundreds of hours of staff time were saved through reductions in lectures, tutorials and the use of online assessments while students actually spent more time ‘on task’, and the nature of staff-student contact became more supportive and facilitative.  Self-assessment and peer assessment gave students more responsibility for and ownership of their learning, to which students generally responded positively.

As the report suggests, ‘these findings suggest that these processes of transformation are a plausible prospect more generally in the HE sector’.

Joint CETIS Assessment and Educational Content SIGs meeting announced

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Registrations are now open for our next Assessment SIG meeting, and you’re warmly invited to book your place for this event hosted by the University of Cambridge.  It’s a joint meeting with the CETIS Educational Content SIG, something we’ve been planning to do for some time, looking in particular at two standards of interest to assessment: IMS Common Cartridge and IMS Tools Interoperability.

Common Cartridge hasn’t even been released yet, but has already generated significant interest amongst content vendors and publishers and has been heavily promoted by IMS.  It combines profiles of a number of different standards, including IMS Content Packaging v1.1.4, IMS Question and Test Interoperability v1.2.1, IMS Tools Interoperability Guidelines v1.0, IEEE LOM v1.0 and SCORM v1.2 and 2004.  The resultant learning object package or ‘cartridge’ is intended to be fully interoperable across any compliant system allowing content to be delivered to any authorised individual.

The appeal of Common Cartridge coupled with authentication and digital rights management systems to content publishers is clear, and the specification is particularly suited to the American educational system where there is a closer relationship between content vendor and courses than in UK Higher Education; in the UK, its primary impact may be in the schools and Further Education sectors where there is more of a history of buying content from publishers than HE.  The inclination of many UK HE lecturers to produce their own content and the bespoke nature of many higher level courses are issues we’ve already encountered when looking at topics such as open content and item banking, but there is some interest within UK education, in particular from the Open University.  As a major content producer whose resources are used far beyond their own courses, Common Cartridge has clear potential, and Ross McKenzie and Sarah Wood of OU OpenLearn will offer an insight into their experiences of implementing the specification and developing cartridges.  There has been very little work to date on the delivery of assessment material through Common Cartridge, a topic which will be addressed by Niall Barr of NB Software.  Our own Wilbert Kraan and Adam Cooper will update delegates on the current position of Common Cartridge.

IMS Tools Interoperability has received rather less fanfare, but is a valuable specification which takes a web services approach to seamlessly integrating different tools.  It allows specialist tools to be ‘plugged in’ to a learning management system, such as integrating a sophisticated assessment management system with a VLE which only provides limited native support for assessment, or discipline-specific tools such as simulators.  It also supports accessibility requirements through the (optional) incorporation of the user’s IMS Accessibility Learner Information Package profile to allow silent interface configuration.  Warwick Bailey of Icodeon will be discussing his experiences with the specification.

In the morning, Steve Lay of CARET, University of Cambridge, will be providing an update on the current state of IMS QTI v2.1.  Steve is co-chair of the IMS QTI working group (with Pierre Gorissen of SURF and Fontys University).

The afternoon will feature a presentation by Linn van der Zanden of the Scottish Qualifications Authority on the use of wikis and blogs in education and assessment, picking up on an increasing interest in the use and potential of Web 2.0 technologies in this domain.

The meeting is colocated with a workshop by the three JISC Capital Programme projects focusing on assessment to which you are also invited…