Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

(via a Jisc press release) Open Access Week 2011 is full of inspiration on the benefits of free immediate access to the results of scholarly research.  Now more than 30 compelling stories have been collected together from across Europe showcasing the transformative effects of open access.

The stories have been commissioned by Knowledge Exchange, a Europe-wide initiative that supports the use and development of the technology infrastructure for higher education and research, of which JISC is a member.

They come from over 11 countries and are told by a wide variety of stakeholders, from individual researchers and journal editors to publishers and companies, and cover a multitude of disciplines.

The stories, which include the First Monday journal and Pedocs, a German educational science archive can be accessed at http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/ .

In a blog post circluated widely on twitter yesterday Gerge Siemens reports: “At the EDUCAUSE 2011 conference today, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Hal Abelson – founding director of Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons. He presented on the state of openness in education. While on the surface openness is gaining traction through scholarship and publication, content providers and journal publishers are starting to push back”

Goerge posted the slide (reproduced left) from Hal’s presentation used to argue that journal publishers have a monopoly. George goes on to say: “The surface progress of openness belies a deeper, more dramatic period of conflict around openness that is only now beginning.”

The slide is taken from a discussion document (pdf) containing “pertinent information, arguments, and data about the current debate over open access (OA)” for the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009. The document contains a second and perhaps more shocking diagramme comparing the profits made by academic publishers to other industries.

I suspect, though, that such inflated profits are confined to the large global academic publishers. Whilst in New York, I talked to Michael who works for a relatively small publisher in the city. He gave me the impression they were certainly not raking in so much money! His main current work was focused on providing e-book versions of older manuscripts and publications which are now out of press. He felt there was much valuable knowledge which was presently lost to the system because of the nonavailability of older print based publications and saw the possibilities of cheaper e-book publishing as opening great possibilities to bring this knowledge back to life.

He was not concerned about the possibilities of e-publications being pirated, arguing instead that if every 100 pirate editions brought one sale, then that was good for the publishers and of course good for learning and knowledge sharing.

In this regard I wonder if there is the basis for some kind of alliance between the Open Access movement and the smaller academic publishers.

I am intrigued by this presentation. Whilst I appreciate what Chris Taggart, who has been invo0lved in the development of the opencorporates and openlylocal data sites (and who undoubtedly has more experience and knowledge than me of the use of Open and Linked Data) I would be less pessimistic. I see the use of open and linked data as in very early days.

Firstly, although I appreciate that politicians and bureaucrats do not always want to release data – I think there is still a groundswell in favour of making data available – at least in Europe. Witness yesterdays unveiling of the Italian Open data store (sorry, I can’t find the url at the moment). And although Google search results do not help promote open data sites (and I am not a great fan of Google at the moment after they wiped out my account ten days again), they have contributed very useful tools such as Refine, Fusion Tables and Public Data Explorer.

I still think that as Chris Taggart says in one of his first slides the biggest challenge is relevance. And here I wonder if one of the problems is that Open and Linked Data specialists are just that – specialist developers in their own field. Many of the applications released so far on the UK Data store, whilst admiral examples of the art of development – would seem to have little practical use.

Maybe it is only when the tools and knowledge of how to work with Open and Linked data are adopted by developers and others in wonder social and subject areas that the true benefits will begin to show. Open data applications may work best, not through dedicated apps or sites, but when incorporated in other web sites which provide them with context and relevance. Thus we have been working with the use of open and linked data for careers guidance (see our new web site, www.careerstalk.org which includes working demonstrations).

Bu even more important may be finding ways of combining Open and Linked data with other forms of (human) knowledge and intelligence. It is just this form of knowledge – for instance the experiences and informal knowledge of careers guidance professionals, which brings relevance and context to the data from official data sets. And that provides a new design challenge.

Tent City Uni teach-in outside Bank of England from Jon Cheetham on Vimeo.

The wave of protests against the failure of the world capitalist system and the banking collapse are throwing up all kinds of alternative education events and movements. The #OccupyLondon protest has set up TentCityUniversity and this video reports on one of their seminars.

Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education from sam seidel on Vimeo.

I had the pleasure to present alongside Mike Neary and Joss Winn at the Mobility Shifts conference in New York. They are working on the idea of students as producers. This theme is also taken up in this excellent video, which looks at the theme of students as producers within hip hop culture.

A Ministry of Justice report from the UK government confirms what we all suspected about the riots which took place in the summer in England. Despite the prime ministers rush to blame gangs and gang culture for the riots this was not a major factor.

Instead, according to the Guardian newspaper, the report found “that those arrested during the riots mainly came from deprived areas and had the poorest educational backgrounds. More than two thirds of the young people involved were classed as having special educational needs and one third had been excluded from school in the past year. More than 42% received free school meals.”

Those arrested would appear in general to be young people alienated from the education system and with little prospect of skilled work (or indeed in the present economic climate any work at all). Education policies designed to promote traditional subjects and attempts to strengthen school discipline are not going to help. Neither will the cutbacks in educational expenditure, which are having a disproportionate impact on vocation education and the near closure of many youth services.

The debate over the future of Higher Education is continuing. There were two interesting newspaper articles in the past days in the Guardian and the New York Times.

The Guardian reports that the first set of statistics on applications to university next year, published by the Universities and Colleges and Admissions Service (Ucas), reveal that 52,321 applicants have applied from within the UK, compared with 59,413 this time last year. This is a fall of some 12 per cent, perhaps unsurprising given the steep rise in university tuition fees.

But the main interest is in the detail. The fall in applications is by no means even across universities and subjects, or by geographical region or age of applicant. The Guardian reports: “The figures suggest more women than men have been put off from applying to university. Some 10.5% fewer women have applied this year, and 7% fewer men.

Mature students appear to have been particularly deterred by the higher fees, the figures show. The number of applicants aged 40 or older has fallen by 27.8%, and among those aged between 30 and 39 the number has dropped by 22.7%.”

In terms of regions  the “numbers of applicants from the east Midlands (down 20%), Yorkshire (17.3%) and the north-east (14.7%) have fallen furthest, the figures show. London (down 9.1%) and the south-east (8.1%) have been less affected.”

And in terms of subjects “applications to education degrees have fallen by 30%, and those to business studies by 26.1%, the figures show.”

There are some pretty clear patterns here. Although there is no data on socio econo0mic backgrounds of applicants the fall in applicants is greatest from working class areas. And in  deterring mature students from applying, this will have a disproportionate effect on education which has in the past been an attractive second career.  The reduction in applications for business studies is more puzzling. Once more this may be an effect of less applications from mature students. Or it could be a general disillusionment with business as a whole. Or it may be that students are turning towards more vocational degrees and fear business studies offers little chance of post university employment.

It is also interesting to note that the fall in applications is uneven across institutions. The elite universities – like Oxford and Cambridge -  are little affected with the biggest reductions seemingly hitting the old Polytechnics.

Once more this can be seen as a class factor, with elite universities always having had a disproportionate number of applications from higher income social groups.

All in all, the figures appear to co0nfirm those critics who pointed to the UK university system becoming more elitist, with working class students afraid of the high debt levels the new fees structure will result in.

The New York Times published an “Opinion” article by Michael Ellsberg entitled “Will dropouts Save America”?

Although somewhat whimsical, Ellsberg points out most job creation comes from business start ups. he goes on to say: “Start-ups are a creative endeavor by definition. Yet our current classrooms, geared toward tests on narrowly defined academic subjects, stifle creativity. If a young person happens to retain enough creative spirit to start a business upon graduation, she does so in spite of her schooling, not because of it.”

But Ellsburg’s solution is hardly progressive. He thinks schools and universities should teach people how to buy and sell things as the bedrock of business start up. And in general he thinks young people are better off not going to university. Ellsburg ignores the importance of access to capital for those seeking to set up new businesses. But I would agree with several things he says. he points out that there is a dual job market in the USA – and I would contend in the UK as well. he points to an informal job market with employment being based on netwo0rking and contacts. “In this informal job market, the academic requirements listed in job ads tend to be highly negotiable, and far less important than real-world results and the enthusiasm of the personal referral.”

And he says “Employers could alter this landscape if they explicitly offered routes to employment for those who didn’t get a degree because they were out building businesses.”

Such employment routes used to be called apprenticeships. A revival of apprenticeship training could offer a high skills alternative to university education and provide the job adaptability skills need for succeeding in the highly unstable employment market today. But such apprenticeships cannot be left to employers alone. In the UK the government has taken to calling almost any course an apprenticeship, regardless of skills levels or length. Apprenticeship requires development and regulations to ensure the quality of the learning experience. Bit apprenticeship can offer an alternati9ve route of education to the failed model of mass university education.

I was in New York last Friday presenting at a panels session at the Mobility Shifts Conference on In, Against and beyond the Institution. The panel was chaired by Mike Neary and comprised of myself, Josie Fraser, Richard Hall and Joss Winn. Somewhat surprisingly to me some 15 people turned up despite it being scheduled at se4ven o’clock on a Friday evening.

Joss presented the  Student as Producer project which re-imagines students role in the design, development, and critique of the curriculum. The process of teaching learning is decoupled from traditional power relationships so students become an integral part of the governance of an institution rather than solely its customer (there is a paper available on this written by Joss together with Mike Neary.

Richard considered how students and teachers might dissolve the symbolic power of the University into the actual, existing reality of protest, in order to engage with a process of transformation (for more see his blog).

Josie talked about the transformative aspects of digital literacy. And I looked at changing pedagogies in work based learning and developmental competence – the capacity of the individual to acquire and demonstrate the capacity to act on a task and the wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape (design) it.

All good stuff. I found some of the ideas hard – and we certainly did not reach any conclusions. But the very fact that we are having such discussions – and the renewed interest in critical pedagogy – is testimony both of the crisis which pervades our univeristies and the growing opposition and questioning of the purpose and organisation of education including the role of researchers and teachers. To that extent I think the title – In, Against and Beyond – is helpful in linking the attempts to transform practices and roles within universities to growing protest movements outside the institutions – including the many initiatives – particularly in the UK – to explore alternative structures to the established universities.

More on this when I am less tired. in the meantime Doug Belshaw has written a  series of excellent blogs talking about some of the many wide ranging discussions which took place at Mobility Shifts.

This vid has got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that WALES ARE NOW IN THE SEMI FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP (ac mae’r tim Saesneg wedi mynd adre). It is a learning object and I’m using it to illustrate an article I read today about a BBC Wales project, targeting ‘hard to reach’ teenagers, that used rugby as a vehicle for informal learning.

By the way, the title of this post translates (possibly) as “Informal Learning through the Internet: a learning journey through the world of rugby.” ; ) – which is actually the title of a report on the project (more…)