Still MOOC-ing around with MOOCs: too much or not enough

Too Much or Not Enough? TV.McKin cc: a-nc-sa

A couple of years ago I did a post on MOOCs Seeing the wood for the trees - eLearning Design can we learn from MOOCS? - my highest viewing blog post to date. (By the way this is not an attempt to get another high viewing blog post in case you were wondering) I am still MOOCing around although my completion rate has been low my information acquisition rate I think has been high. The last MOOC I completed was Research Data Management and Sharing on Coursera. It was jointly ran by the University of North Carolina and the University of Edinburgh, and I actually paid for the certificate to get it on to my Linked-in profile. I am currently dabbling into neuroscience, courtesy of the University of Chicago, with a bit of international leadership from the University of Bocconi in Milan, also both via Coursera.

MOOCs have not only entered into my own personal development world but they are having an influence on my thoughts and practice with respect to online learning. At the moment I am writing an online course for librarians on "Digital Leadership and Collection Management" which I want to turn into a MOOC, I am also designing a course on digital leadership skills for students, which I also want to MOOCise. This has entailed me not only pulling out my eLearning design skills out their digital box, but also reflecting on the things I like about MOOCs and what puts me off. So here we go.

What I like

• Simplicity of the MOOC platforms, they tend to clearly designed with clear about learning expectations
• Courses are free and open access
• There is the possibility to link up with people all over the world (even if you do not always do this)
• You can do as much and as little as you want 
• The combination of text and video material 
• Notifications of what I need to do

What I don't like

• They are addictive, so many to do so little time 
• Overly long videos, 20 minute videos, overly short videos, 2 minute videos
• Completion rate very low 
• Too long 10 weeks, overly short 2 weeks 
• Not enough written material to consolidate the video material
• Notifications they make me feel guilty  

In my previous professional life, when I was involved in eLearning design, I regularly said to academic colleagues if you are putting together an online course you need to have a go at being an online student yourself. Before MOOCs this was a bit of a challenge now there is no excuse. As a result of me being MOOCer all my above observations can be added to my eLearning design toolkit.

The difference between the MOOC and the traditional online course according to Jeff Hayward (2016), at the University Edinburgh, whose research has focused on MOOC engagement, is the scale. On a medium sized MOOC there are about 30,000 students. There are not the norms of having to complete the course, and participate in all the activities and assessments, as learners can start and leave whenever. Research has also found that individuals enroll onto MOOCs not only to learn new things but also to experience what it is like to be an online learner. For those involved in teaching, Haywood claims that MOOCs "offer a testbed for experiments in teaching at large scale through technology", discovering, for example, that video is an efficient teaching tool and there are opportunities for peer review assessment, rather than just reverting to multiple choice tests.

Furthermore, the University of Edinburgh's involvement in MOOCs has influenced their mainstream education provision and they have extended their ambitions with respect to student engagement with online learning. Their aim, now, is to provide all their students with one fully online course to choose in their degree by 2025. This will give students the graduate skills for the future, as the University has observed that once students have completed their degree they often return to learning in an online format.  

Haywood, J., 2016. Learning from MOOCs: Lessons for the future. Engwall, L., Corte E. D., & Teichler U.(dir.), From books to MOOCs? Emerging models of learning and teaching in higher education, pp.69-79.

Digital Communication Contemporaneity and the Women's March

P-Hat TV.McKin cc-a-sa

A week has gone by since the #TheWomensMarch. I spent last Saturday watching the live stream from DC, first via Periscope then Buzzfeed. This was accompanied by me tweeting my observations and staying in touch with my sister who was marching with my niece in Asheville NC.

That night I went to see the the excellent film Arrival. The plot of the film is the attempt by Dr Louise Banks, a linguist enlisted by the US military, to try and communicate with an alien landing and find out their purpose for landing on earth.  One of the theme's of the film is non-linear communication,  specifically the Hetapod's (alien) gift of a language that affects the perception of time, allowing Dr Banks to see into the future.

This got me thinking about contemporaneity and digital communication. Horologically, the rally in DC took place 5 hours behind my time but the ability to access a live stream meant that I could see all of the speakers in the present. Despite it being daylight on the broadcast and dark outside here in the UK it still felt like I was watching the present not the past. Pretty much the same sensation I have when I Skype my sister. In this context, time may be inconsequential, those of us, who wanted to, were able to participate in some way in an activity that was taking place in a different time and thousands of miles away. Of course since the invention of telecommunications that can stretch long distances, like the telegraph, we have been able to communicate with people in different time zones, but does the medium or communication tools have an impact on our perception of the present. Did the combination of the real time broadcast and the synchronous communication, with my fellow women marching activists, as I stood cooking in my P-Hat in the kitchen, have an impact of my perception of the present.

I have recently become interested in Neuroscience, as a way of trying to explain some of my perceptions of the world that cannot be explained sociologically. Closely linked to this are philosophical studies of temporality.  For example, I cannot seem explain sociolgically. my feelings of being in the present with my fellow women marching across the world last Saturday.

Tim Barker's paper Media In and Out of Time: Multi-temporality and the Technical Conditions of Comeporaneity (what an excellent title!) - investigates how contemporary media culture creates a "phenomological experience of being in multiple times, in the present but also in the past and future". Barker goes on to say that "media technologies put their users in contact with events of the world, allowing us to engage in events closer to real time, but drawing us out of this time into other technically produced times". Referring to the aftermath of current events such as September 11, and this could possibly be applied to the in Women's March, he introduces the condition of living in a repeatable present, with contemporary culture no longer living within history but in the aftermath of repeatable large scale events.

Yvonne Förster-Beuthan's paper Conscious experience of time: its significance and interpretation in
neuroscience and philosophy.  investigates the body's role in the perception of time, in the same way it does with colour. She refers to by A.D. (Bud) Craig's article  Emotional moments across time: a possible neural basis for time perception in the anterior insula. Craig's explanation is that time gains its unity by proprioception.

"The insular cortex which is involved in motor control, perception, emotion, self awareness and other important cognitive processes seems to be connected to the unity of time perception. Proprioception, the constant and unthematic awareness of ones own body posture and state seems to facilitate the integration of time perception, of the flux of time. The constant feeling of being alive and being in situations." (Förster-Beuthan referring to Craig)

So simply, and I say simply as this is not a research article, just me trying to find some reason for my perception of the present last Saturday, which I could not explain by observing human behaviour. It could possibly have been the combination of the media technologies delivery of the event and my insular cortex that were influential in my feeling of being in the present with 1000s of women marching all over the globe.

Post-truth society: Librarians now is your time! The citizen librarian

When the text ends TV.McKin cc-nc-sa

My first post of 2017. We all probably know that 2016 was the year of post-truth. Indeed my brother William Watkin has an article in this year's first issue of the Big Issue on that very subject - "The Truth About Post-truth"  The Oxford Dictionary's word of the year post-truth “is an adjective relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” William being a philosopher goes on to discuss what truth is and not wanting to reproduce my brother's article in my own blog, (the words familial, ethics and limelight come to mind), I recommend you read the article yourself.

Despite some common assumptions of what a librarian is, from book shelver to book stamper, librarians in all settings have a role and responsibility for helping individuals to find, evaluate and validate information - what we commonly call information literacy. Even the Wikipedia entry includes this in its opening paragraph:

"A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library, providing access to information and sometimes social or technical programming. In addition, librarians provide instruction on information literacy"

(I will not go into discussions about Wikipedia and truth or professionalism and librarianship I'll save these issues for another time)

When the Oxford dictionary announced its word of the year in November last year, it was like a call to arms for librarians and many of my colleagues got out their digital pens and blogged about the importance of the role of the librarian in a post-truth society. The blogs ranged from the importance of integrating information literacy in education from an early age, as in Joyce Valenza's Truth, Truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world, through to the responsibility of librarians teaching and leading by example as outlined in Georgina's "Being a librarian in a post-truth society"

And here are some more:
Post-truth and Information Literacy Lane Wilson
Post-truth and a New Disruptive Phenomenon Geoff Walton
Information Literacy Lesson Crucial in a Post-truth World Sara Stevenson
The Library's Role in a Post-truth Fake News Era - Proquest
Bursting the Filter Bubble: Pro-truth Librarians in a Pro-truth World Claire McGuiness 
When Information Professions Collide: Applying the ACRL’s Framework to News Media Consumption Kristina Williams

I would go a step further from encouraging individuals to be information and digital literate to encouraging individuals to be citizen librarians, information advocates, sharing their information literacy skills and encouraging others to develop theirs. So maybe an extension of information literacy teaching should be techniques for sharing your skills with colleagues, friends and family, together with engaging in respectful but challenging discussions about information evaluation. This would involve the integration of ethical communication skills in information literacy teaching, or even the development of programmes dedicated to becoming a citizen librarian, focusing on information skills advocacy and as well as responsibility. This could be something aligned or integrated into the global citizen cause championed by Hugh Evans.  Along with the fight against global poverty, climate change and gender equality we should fight for the right for all citizens to have the information literacy skills to be global citizen librarians.

Staying afloat on the digital fall, resilience and new library and information professionals

Pisgah Falls TV. McKin BY: NC-SA

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of teaching one of the sessions on the Information Organisations and Their Management modules on Manchester Met’s Masters in Library and Information Management course. The module develops students’ understanding of the information organisation landscape. It encourages them to take a wide perspective on contexts in which their skills might be relevant, giving them the opportunity to develop their management knowledge and skills, including people skills such as leadership and teamworking.

I called the session “Libraries and Their Digital Offerings, Disruption and Resilience”.  I began by reflecting on my career development over the last 20 years in the context of a digitally disruptive society. I punctuated my career timeline with significant digital happenings that had taken place along the way.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         For example in the library I worked in as pre-professional trainee the Times Newspaper was on CD-Rom on the floor above, which could only be networked when somebody physically put the disc in. Now look where we are today in a world of mobile devices and media saturation.





I then followed with a series of group activities based on my own case studies which mapped to the Digital U values of the University project I am currently involved in:

• Communication, Collaborator & Participator:  using technology to network and develop working relationships and effectively communicating online - Case study: reading list upgrade communicating with suppliers at a distance using conferencing software
• Information & Data Handler: managing and interpreting data, as well as keeping it secure - Case study: collection management review, understanding data and communicating this to academics
• Creator and innovator: using a range of technologies for different activities - Case study: identifying technological solutions with limited resources, cloud solutions and open source
• Leaner and self developer: utilising different digital learning opportunities and using a range of online tools to participate in this - Case study: constructively developing knowledge in an new area using MOOCs and joining professional networks
• Digital ambassador: developing a positive digital profile and looking after personal health and safety in digital settings - Case study: how to select an area of expertise and building your professional profile    

The aim of the case studies was to help the students to identify the digital skills they had and would need acquire to make them resilient in the future digital library world. This was a collaborative digital exploration, I was really impressed by the innovative contributions of the cohort. As I have illustrated above the profession has changed considerably over the last 20 years in the public and private sectors, mainly due to digital disruption. New professionals have to be resilient with respect to addressing unexpected challenges, challenges that some had predicted but possibly not so soon and not so impactful. The group’s engagement revealed a prepared awareness and enthusiasm to promote their existing skills and to find ways to develop these. This showed a real commitment to the profession making the whole experience for me extremely rewarding, I felt an optimism for the profession knowing it will be in such good hands.  

Technically tetchy, hoping for more women digital leaders is it hopeless?

V McGarvey 2 Tetchy Pumpkins
CC-NC-SA

I know it's not Halloween but it was the best tetchy image I could find in my collection. I am a feminist, I follow loads of hashtag discussions @ women in tech. However, it is still really frustrating to see air punching moments when one more woman gets a CEO tech job, or a one-off award for a innovative enterprise when it should be the norm. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to work in and manage 2 progressive areas in HE, elearning and librarianship, the former male dominated the latter female, both areas have demonstrated great creativity in their use of technology. Even so I have observed across the sector that males still have a strong presence in the management of the digital and technical domains and this has made me tetchy but despite my tetchiness or should that be "techiness" I have hope.

With the swell of organisations supporting women's progression in the tech world and pressures within education to adopt more inclusive approaches to teaching technology, I think things may gradually change. This is also supported by the growth in the number of female led technology focused SMEs, particularly in the wearable market. These companies have been established by women too impatient to wait for the trickle of change.  Brighton based Brighton Digital Women founded in mid 2015 brings together women with a shared passion for digital. Eloise McInerney's  March 2016 blog post on digital leaders reducing the gender gap, referred to last year's government press release which reported that the proportion of women in the digital and creative industries falling  Despite this she injects some hope into the debate stating that "there are a growing number of dynamic, forward-thinking women in the UK digital sector who are not only successful in their own fields, but who are also leading and designing initiatives to get women and young people more excited about digital" She then goes on to profile 5 female leaders who are making an impact with innovative enterprises. A complimentary report is Elearnor Burn's article in the Computer Business Review which listed10 of the most successful women in UK technology. Burns says that although there are "a number of high profile tech leaders Gender equality is a fantasy in the business technology world - men outnumber women and it is apparently going to take around 100 odd years to reach gender parity".  This sounds pretty hopeless however Burns concludes that when we have women in positions of digital leadership, we have role models and role models with a voice. So am I still tetchy? When I see articles that surprisingly exude the isolated success of another female digital leader then yes, but if the article exemplifies hopeful illustrations of leading female role models in the disparate tech world, then I have hope, hope that we are moving closer to the norm.

Acknowledgements

5 Female Digital Leaders Working to Reduce the Gender Gap
29/03/2016 Eloise McInerney

10 of the most successful women in UK technology on influence, leadership, equality and being digital role models Eleanor Burns April 26 2016

This is a modern world: a framework for developing students' digital leadership skills

Bijmer Centrum Amsterdam V McGarvey BY-NC-SA

In June I was awarded a University Teaching Excellent Fellowship. This is a 2 year fellowship and my focus will be on the development of a digital leadership skills via an online multidisciplinary module for final year and postgraduate students, that can be repurposed for different subject areas, using badging for competency acquisition. The focus will be leadership behaviour rather than role. I will be using Staffordshire University's Digital U digital capability values, based on the JISC digital capability framework, which are:

• Communicator, collaborator and participator: using technology to network and develop working relationships and effectively communicating online 
• Information and data handler: managing and interpreting data, as well as keeping it secure
• Creator and innovator: using a range of technologies for different activities and creating digital artefacts and materials  
• Learner and self developer: utilising different digital learning opportunities and using a range of online tools to participate in this
• Ambassador: developing a positive digital profile and looking after personal health and safety in digital settings

Proof of concept will be demonstrated via a mini MOOC for academic staff, which will develop their digital leadership skills and will enable them to be involved in the development of the module so that it is of a quality to deliver to students.

Wan NG at the Sydney University of Technology, has undertaken extensive work on digital literacies, saying that leaders in today’s world need to be digital literate, this means the ability to adapt to new and emerging technologies quickly and being able to engage with the new methods of communication that arise. This literacy includes an intersection of technical (online interfaces, applications), cognitive (critically thinking), and social– emotional (netiquette, safety) dimensions in digital literacy

Edinburgh University Business School's Dr Jim Hamill has stated that transforming digitally is the number one business challenge facing organisations today. Staying relevant in a digital world is the number one personal challenge we all face. We need leaders who possess both the confidence and personal skills to drive digital-led organisational change

Josie Ahlquist's 2014 article, Trending Now: Digital Leadership Education Using Social Media and Journal of Leadership, affirms that leadership educators are charged with preparing students to be relevant and productive citizens; capable of taking on the challenges our society has in store. Technology is a particular challenge that students have to deal with as it is all pervasive, can be disruptive and ever changing,which requires flexibility and being able to adapt. Ahlquist has developed a digital leadership framework, which has 10 competencies that equip students for digital disruptive world, which I will also look at integrating.    

    

1. Awareness of emerging technologies 

2. Digital content analysis and evaluation 

3. Online self awareness 

4. Establishing personal values, privacy, time management 

5. Cultivating professional strategic career online branding 

6. Building personal learning network 

7. Cyber conflict resolution and mediation – identification of negative behaviour 

8. Digital decision making strategies based on positive authentic constructive activity 

9. Integration of digital technologies into leadership presence – common activities encouraging other leaders leading by example 

10. Using social media for the social good 

The aim will be to engage students with the concept that leadership is not only role driven but about showing leadership within a given role. Developing a core set of competencies which they could possibly illustrate in a portfolio of evidence and also applying social change model which integrates reflection. This will develop resilient individuals that are prepared to enter digital world they are about to enter, that can show digital leadership in their given role.

Ahlquist, J., 2014. Trending now: Digital leadership education using social media and the social change model. Journal of Leadership Studies, 8(2), pp.57-60.

  

JISC Digifest 16 Blog (better late than never)

My JISC Digifest blog is available on the Staffordshire University Digital U project blog.  Together with recent blogs I have written for the project.