New Year's Trends

How many of us bloggers have started the New Year with the resolution I must blog more often....hands-up ME for one. I noticed my last blog was in November, although I had a chest infection which debilitated me somewhat in December I should try harder, I should try harder. So here I am at the end of the 1st working week in January and multi-tasking reading Mashable's 5 trends to watch in 2012 which says:

Social/Digital Exhaustion

In general, more and more people seem to be reevaluating their social and digital existence. Even the SOPA battle is revealing some unforeseen schisms. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bad idea, not because piracy is good, but because of the plan for enforcement is wrong and dangerous. That said, no one who creates content can deny that the digital revolution hasn’t forced them to rethink how they create, sell and distribute content. There are no easy answers here and 2012 will be a year of introspection; one where we possibly rewrite the rules of content, copyrights and social interactions.


...whilst ploughing through the NME's best albums for 2011 on Grooveshark. This is after spending most of Christmas reading and not doing much techno stuff apart from Twitter, a bit of surfing and the very occasion Facebook commentary and not really missing it,   Now  I am wondering whether I am suffering from Social/Digital Exhaustion. Also, the earpiece has gone again on my Sony Ericsson w595, which is no way near a smart phone but I can get music onto it at half the speed on my nano - it synchs in the way I want - it's ok for Twitter and Facebook and a bit of surfing - I also, like my little speakers that I can use in the bathroom and hotel rooms and I am really trying to resist being pulled into the smartphone debate, and contributing it landfill. So it looks like another £20 replacement earpiece this weekend until I drop it again. 


But when I see the synergy between the NME site and Grooveshark I suddenly feel a bit rejuvinated. My research into various smartphones just in case I needed one has made me a little bit smarter. I still think RSS feeds are brilliant way to navigate the mass of resources out there and my iGoogle page is the start and end of most things. Google docs is still an excellent way to collaboratively author. I know there is a big debate about the control of Google but as a pragmatic eLearning practitioner I have seen little that competes and integrates, I, also notice it is number 3 on the C4PLT Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, after Twitter and YouTube. The Best of Breed for Learning 2011 is particularly interesting,  for me my etoolkit components featured, Blogger, Google docs, Google Sites, iTunes, Slideshare, Gmail, Skype, Tweetdeck, Evernote, Drop Box and Google Reader but my W595 did not feature and no Captivate. Seeing Firefox dropping off the 100 list seems to reflect the recent trend in Chrome, although, I was also surprised not to see Google Scholar and not to see Wimba Create

So what will I be trending this year for me mainly practice driven - 5 at the moment I may come back it:

1. OERs - for particular easier navigation
2. eLearnesque - must do more regular updates 
3. eLearning Webinars - to encourage staff engagement 
4. Video case studies - to share best practice 
5. CMALT portfolio completion 

....and my secret number 6 Scandinavian electronic music  

Short Online Taster Courses

Last week I participated in a Learning Tree ITL online taster course "Preparing for an ITIL v3 Implementation". I participated in this for two reasons the first was to see if there were any aspects of the ITL methodology that I could implement in our team's work, the second was to experience the online delivery. With respect to the implementation of ITL because there are correlations with the project management approach that we already apply which is a very simplified Prince 2 and the fact that we are currently trying articulate what services we provide, the course succeeded in reassuring me that we had already or are attempting to, integrated some of the ITL processes and considerations such as:

• providing clarity with respect to what are planning to deliver
• defining the service we are providing 
• asking the question whether we are doing what we said we were going to do
• providing milestones
• episodically reassessing our objectives and where we want to be 
• establishing metrics for measuring our service
• getting feedback on what we do

With respect to the eLearning participant experience. Firstly, as this was a taster I had managed my expectations with respect to what could be achieved in a couple of hours. The course was delivered using Adobe Connect, which I had used before and the interface and the set-up wizards are straight forward to use. Glitches with sound aka feedback were cleared up pretty quickly sound well done on that side. On my netbook I could control the presentation of the slides to taking over the full window but not the whole presentation interface was very small and there did not appear to be a facility to stretch or take over the full screen, so the participants pane was small and the chat box etc. With respect to hearing me, when I experienced a problem and used my microphone there did not appear to be any problems with audio on their side.. 

On the negative side I think there should have been more questions posed at points through out the presentation like JISC do, this made the taster a little transmissional. Putting this point to one side it is quite nice to have the opportunity to experience something before you decide to sign-up, and after attending some recent JISC webinars I think the webinar format is something that we could consider integrating into the range of services we offer. 

  

Research Methods Activity Design

This post relates to the previous one. As a result of running an activity workshop it has also led me to think that it would be useful to have a set of generic activity designs within our kit that we could refer to. This observation, also, aligns with our findings with respect activity design in research methods that I referred to a couple of months. Our team investigations found that we did not need to do a specific research methods version of an activity design workshop, that it would be useful to have a list of links for research methods resources (- maybe a Diigo group?) and refer colleagues to the generic activity designs that we develop, we could possibly put these in our learning repository. 

Activity Design

Within our team we have developed a workshop to help colleagues with designing online activities.  The approach that we take is that colleagues choose a face-to-face activity and create a plan for it noting

• Learning outcomes 
• Student tasks
• Tutor task
• Resources and tools

Then they consider how they would do this online using a plan with the same variables as above. And that is the workshop. We have very few slides it is mainly facilitated groupwork. However, we have found that the best way to facilitate this is to have somebody from my team sitting with the group providing advice on various aspects and to situate the workshop in programme or module planning to ensure authenticity, which really as a service that we offer.

Although it is early days we have found that activities can be generic and the subject content, resources, learning outcomes are the discipline specific components, the generic aspects means that we can introduce an open approach to activity design which influences the facilitation of the workshop. Facilitation involves getting academic colleagues to talk through what would be feasible taking into account student engagement, tool use (not too many, inducting students into use) and issues of parity with f2f not equivalence.  

ALTC 2011 - Resources

This is an overview of resources that were shared during ALTC-2011

• Enable Project Staffordshire University aims to embed coordination between projects within the university, to enable the development of new processes that will allow curriculum development to become more flexible and responsive.
• Cascade Project aimed to use technology to enable the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education to respond better to the challenges created by the government’s ELQ policy by enabling the Department to undertake its activities more efficiently, develop new, or repurpose existing, activities and augment the services currently offered to students.
• Google New Assessment Tool 
• VERiFy Project  aims to provide an innovative approach to the provision of feedback to learners in video form, accessed through personal computers and mobile telecommunications devices, encouraging learners to engage in a conversational framework by responding to feedback using video.  
• HELF Esubmission Survey

ATLC 2011 - Part 2 Assessment

Eassessment, specifically esubmission and emarking appeared to be hot topics at the ALT conference this year, which was really useful for me as we are focusing on this at our institution. 

The following papers stood out for me at the conference.

Visualising the holistic assessment experience – The use of Google tools to support effective design. Mark Kerrigan, Rita Headington, Simon Walker

This presentation demonstrated a development using google forms that tracked the assessment diet landscape, and illustrated assessment bloating, either too many assessments at the same time or too much of the same assessment. The reports provided

"displays assessment diet, landscape and importantly an experiential timeline. The timeline, based on a Google Motion Chart, interactively displays assessment periods, type and weighting concurrently for each course within a programme. Staff are then able to interact with the assessment parts of their programmes and see graphically, in real-time, the consequences of their design decisions. By linking this process to the face-to-face curriculum design workshops, staff are better informed about their programme’s design, thus permitting the evidential-based development of a supportive holistic curriculum that is aligned to both the staff and student experience and good assessment practice." (Kerrigan et. al 2011)



Managing Change in the Development of Sustainable Online Assessment PracticesAnn Liggett, Christopher Cramphorn

I should give this presentation a shout as it was from colleagues at NTU, and they did us proud. It provided an excellent overview with respect to the issues identified during piloting e-submission and e-marking. It clearly identified the processes and the roles and responsibilities of colleagues within the processes, as well as, providing an overview of the evaluation process. Again this presentation emphasised the importance of admin staff in the process. It, also, with respect to emarking, stated that the amount of time it takes to mark reduces with practice. The majority of students were in favour of esubmission, because it meant they did not have to queue, regarding e-marking they found the comments easier to understand/read than written comments. The presentation, also, noted that external examiners need to training in e-marking and that anonymising papers still posed a challenge.

Using Asynchronous Video and Mobile Technologies to Enhance Learner Engagement with Formative FeedbackJames McDowell

This presentation provided an overview of the project VERiFy which aimed to go beyond transmissional approaches to assessment feedback by introducing a conversational framework and using video "feedback loop system"
.
'has enabled the asynchronous exchange of video-feedback, facilitating a feed-forward conversation between learners and tutors around work-in-progress; a series of case-studies explores the learner and tutor experience of the intervention.' (McDowell 2011)


The project has also produced a repository of feedback objects, which provides another avenue for reusable objects. I was wondering in the next round of OER if any projects will focus on open assessment objects.


eSubmission – UK policies, practice and supportBarbara Newland, Lindsey Martin, Andy Ramsden

This presentation provided an overview of the Heads of Elearning eSubmission survey. It found the following

'Only 21% of institutions have an institution-wide policy on eSubmission with 18% have separate regulations and 24% included in existing regulations. The most common technologies used are Turnitin integrated within the VLE or the institutional VLE rather than “home-grown” technologies. Academic attitudes to eSubmission are more positive than those for eMarking and eFeedback. The variety of staff development includes 82% face to face and 82% how-to-guides with 58% providing online video/screencasts. Examples of good practice were identified as well as a range of issues...Effective eSubmission has the potential to increase efficiency in organisations by improving their business processes and eFeedback may enhance learning. The survey outcomes, sample guidelines and examples of good practice can inform institutional adoption and changes in policy and practice. (Newland et. al 2011)'


It was interesting to see that the majority of institutions surveyed did not have an institutional policy for e-submission.


Squaring the Triangle: Institutional Compliance, Academic Freedom and the Student VoiceAlice Bird



This presentation discussed students increasing involvement of students in policy at Liverpool John Moores University. LJMU have, also, piloted e-submission and have found that you cannot ignore marking and feedback when looking at esubmission. The presentation, stated that one challenge is that although institutions want e-submission not enough resources are being put into it.

ALTC 2011 - Strategy

Nearly 2 weeks late but not forgotten, my feedback on ALTC-2011 . I thought I would organise my blog according to specific categories that relate to my interests and what I was looking for at the conference. Before I go any further I would like to congratulate ALT for their excellent arrangements and hospitality. This conference goes from strength to strength, it attracts a very warm crowd of practitioners from various parts of the elearning world, who are willing to openly discuss and share best practice in a non-intimidating manner, which I think is really important.

Strategy:

Leadership in a cold climate. Leading where the past is no reliable guide to the future. A reflection on the strategic leadership of people, technology and institutions in UK HE. Ewart Wooldridge:
This presentation held back no punches with respect to how leadership should change to understand the potential of learning technologies. Wooldridge argued that institutions should move away from focusing on the operational aspects of technologies, to focusing on the strategic use, illustrating the shortcomings with respect to management and the exploitation of technology..He stated that leadership within universities should take a less adversarial and more collaborative approach. The great hoorah of the presentation for people based professional services was that Wooldridge said that he had banned the terms non-academic and back office, he could also clearly articulate the need for professional services in today's universities a contrast to this recent discussion in the THES with respect to changes at Northampton.



Not future-proofed but future-focused: graduate attributes and the digital universityNeil Witt, Helen Beetham

 Works at the University of Plymouth found that:


'while students have diverse preferences and expectations around technology use, there is a common need for consistency and clarity about digital practices at course level. Students want 24/7 access to course information and learning materials, but they also need opportunities for reflection and review of their own strategies for study. They value e-learning experiences where these are clearly relevant to their long-term goals, and they recognise the need for teaching staff whose own confidence and competence are high.' (from abstract)

They also, found that by improving admin processes they could improve student experience. The project, also, investigated the opportunities for e-submission. Successful initiatives, were online course payment, producing generic content and providing support via the VLE.

Improving Student Employability using Active Portfolio – the GWizards ApproachLachlan MacKinnon, Liz Bacon, Elaine Major

Mackinnon began with a challenging statement that the HE sector can only afford 4 research intensive universities. In this climate the University of Greenwich School of Computing and Mathematical sciences has initiated a project called GWizards that addresses the issue of student employability giving them the opportunity to be involved in real world projects. The project:

'seeks to re-engage the university with the local community. In particular, this involves working directly with all types of organisation to identify project activities of mutual benefit. This mutual benefit is determined by opportunities for students to gain experience in the workplace, organisations to gain practical technical help for little or no cost, and academic staff to gain project experience and publishing opportunities. To facilitate this process, CMS has developed credit bearing modules on its programmes that link to these employability opportunities, so students have the chance to follow directly relevant project work within their academic studies to earn academic credits for practical work, and also to be engaged in the management and control of these activities both internally and externally to the university within a student-run company structure.' (from abstract) 

It would be interesting to see if this could work in other disciplines.

Understanding the Development of Learning Technology Support Staff to Push Beyond MaturityJebar Ahmed 

This 5 year longitudinal study at the University of Huddersfield analysing VLE data and data from interviews found that:

'support strategies were initially capable of targeting large groups of teachers effectively via staff development workshops which led to an increase in the use of the VLE. Pushing beyond a level of maturity meant that LT support staff required additional skills to provide course teams with bespoke and specialised advice, an aspect often overlooked in strategic models. Once adoption of the VLE across the school had reached its peak' (Ahmed 2011)


Again emphasising the importance of strategic integrated approach to staff development when engaging academics in technology enhanced learning. The study found that support staff require technical and pedagogic skills. It argued that support staff personal development should include:


a) research on tools, techniques and trends; b) teaching and learning through courses such as a PGCE – Teaching Certificate and additional higher qualification' (Ahmed 2011)


I think the challenge with respect to PGCHE courses is making them flexible enough so that support staff can meet the assessment criteria if they are not full time teachers.