Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

John Naughton is one of the most thoughtful of mainstream newspaper writers on new media. Although aa academic at the UK Open University, his regular Guardian newspaper column covers a wide range of different issues.

His article yesterday, entitled Welcome to the desktop degree…, predicted the end of the road for the universities in sitting back and hoping their monopoly on accreditation would guarantee an unending throughput of students.

If all the world’s stored knowledge can be accessed from any networked device, and if the teaching materials and lectures of the best scholars are likewise available online, why should students pay fees and incur debts to live in cramped accommodation for three years?

John goes on to say:

Some things have happened recently that make one think that perhaps the water might be reaching boiling point for traditional universities. The key development is a set of three courses created by Stanford University academics and colleagues in three subject areas: machine learning, database design and artificial intelligence. What makes these significant is that they are: intellectually demanding; free; presented entirely online; taught by world-class academics; and inclusive of assessment as well as tuition.

160000 students from 190 countries signed up to Stanford’s “Introduction to AI” course” , with 23000 reportedly completing.

Only three years ago there was a debate at the F-ALT fringe event at ALT-C on whether MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were merely a passing fad. I can’t remember the results of the vote at the end of the debate but can remember that there was considerable scepticism. The truth seems to be that the MOOC model has taken hold. My only concern is that in adopting such a model for large scale commercial application by large and often private American universities, the values and dedication of people like Stephen Downes and George Siemens who pioneered the early MOOCs will be lost and such courses will just become an industrial treadmill for students.

The main reason I have been so quiet on this blog in recent weeks has been the European bidding season.

Pontydysgu receives no regular funding and although we have some small consultancy contracts and do some teaching, the majority of our income is from project work. In the past, we had considerable funding from various UK agencies, this largely dried up with the onset of the recession and government cutbacks. This, we have become more reliant on funding from the European Union.

There are two main programmes for education and training in Europe, the European 7th Framework research programme and the Lifelong Learning Programme. The Research Framework funds larger projects than the LLL, but has historically been more competitive.

For both programmes, the application process is not straightforward, requiring completion of long forms and documents. In general both programmes are targeted towards innovation, however defined, and both tend to set priorities based on current EU policy directives. Both also require multinational project partnerships. Both have been on call recently – involving many hours of work to develop proposals.

In the past, the reality was that one or perhaps two partners would prepare the project requiring only limit input from other project members. And whilst this is still sometimes the case things are changing fast. For large and c0mplex projects especially in the Technology Enhanced Learning field expertise is needed from different disciplines and from people with different knowledge and skills.

Technology for distance communication and for research has allowed the dispersed and collaborative development of project proposals to become a reality. We have recently submitted a large scale proposal to the Research Framework IST  programme on learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. This project has some 16 partners drawn from I guess around ten countries. And whilst the input and hard work of the coordinator was central to the proposal, the work was undertaken collaboratively with many of the partners making a major input.

What tools did we use? Google docs were used for collaboratively producing earlier versions of our ideas. Doodle was important for setting dates for meetings. Flashmeeting was used extensively for fortnightly meetings of partners (in the latter stages of the proposal weekly or even daily meetings became the norm). Skype was also used for bilateral meetings. And Dropbox was used as a shared file repository. Dropbox proved to be a little problematic in producing somewhat confusing conflicted copies which then has to be edited together. But overall the system worked well. I think what is important is that the tools do exist. And we do not need any big research infrastructure, rather what is needed is the imagination to share through the use of everyday productivity and social software tools.

And it seems to me that if we are able to use such tools to develop a complex and collaboratively produced research proposal, the same tools can be used for collaboration between learners or for small businesses. The barrier is not so much usability fo the applications themselves, but a willingness, understanding and appreciation of how to collaborate!

I haven’t been posting as much as I would like lately. This is due to the European project bidding season (more on that soon) and due to a lot of work on the Webquest 2.0 project (about which I have been intending to write). Anyway, here for starters is an abstract written by Maria Pedrifanou and myself for the ECER 2012 conference.

Developing Collaborative Blended Learning and Knowledge Development in SMEs through Webquest 2.0

Whilst educational technology has been adopted for use in large enterprises, research suggests there is little use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (Attwell, 2007). One reason for this may be the limited provision of Continuing Professional Training opportunities in SMEs. Yet SMEs are seen as critical for economic growth and the creation of employment and rapid technological change and changes in materials, ecological and quality requirements and changes in the organisation of work require the development and deployment of new competences.

Through a European Commission funded Transfer of Innovation project, Webquest 2.0, the authors have developed and are piloting a new pedagogic approach to CPD in SMEs.

The name ‘webquest’ is comprised of two parts: a) ‘Web’ – to indicate that the World Wide Web is used as the primary resource in applying, analysing, synthesising and evaluating information, and b) ‘Quest’ – to indicate that a question is presented within the webquest, which encourages learners to search for new meaning and deeper understanding (Pelliccione L. and Craggs G.J., 2007).

Webquest 2.0 activities stake advantage of the possibilities that current Web 2.0 technologies offer and are based on a revised Webquest framework created for teachers and trainers.

The aim is to develop effective, complex, authentic learning and training environments. Trainers should be able to design and develop their own content and generate learning materials that can help their trainees and can also be shared with others.

The development of the Webquest 2.0 approach is based on the Collaborative Blended Learning Model (CBML) (Perifanou, 2011). There are four key elements to the model. Firstly the model is based on the idea that Webquest activities can be undertaken face to face, in a blended model of face-to-face and online learning, or purely on line. Secondly it is based on a mix of individual and small group activities which collectively allow participants to explore a larger question or theme. Thirdly the Webquest should generate outcomes which can form an organisational learning resource for a community of practice beyond the initial learning activities. Finally the webquests are based on a seven-stage model – Learning Circles – which both scaffolds learning and provides templates for trainers to create webquests.

The model and the webquests are being piloted with SMEs in Poland, the UK and Sweden.

Methodology

In the first phase of the project the Collaborative Blended Learning model was elaborated resulting in the publication of a research handbook. Based on this model twenty initial webquests were developed in close collaboration between trainers and project partners. Following this, a handbook for trainers was produced and a evaluation framework developed.

The webquests and handbook are currently being piloted in workshops with SMEs in Poland and The UK. This includes workshops piloting the webquests developed in the initial phase of the project and workshops for trainers to produce webquest themselves for use in their organisations.

The outcomes of these workshops will be evaluated, and the research handbook and handbook for trainers revised.

This, in turn, will lead to another round of piloting in SMEs in the late spring of 2012.

The initial webquests utilise a commercial wiki, PB works, as the main technical platform. It is intended to transfer the webquests to an Open Source wiki to minimise costs for deployment by SMEs.

Conclusions / Expected Outcomes / Findings

There are a series of hypotheses which are being tested through the project.

Firstly, the project is developing an updated Web 2.0 approach to webquests seeking to scaffold learning in a Web 2.0–enhanced, social and interactive open learning environment.

Secondly the project is transferring an approach and methodology for learning in a Web 2.0–enhanced, social and interactive open learning environment previously develop din a school based and language learning context for training in SMEs.

Thirdly the project is seeking to develop a flexible approach to learning in a Web 2.0–enhanced, social and interactive open learning environment, facilitating a mixture of Face to face Blended and online learning.

Fourthly the project is seeking to facilitate the development of wiki based learning materials by trainers themselves.

Fifthly the project is seeking to develop an approach to developing organisational knowledge resources for communities of practice though training activities.

The evaluation of the initial workshops are extremely positive. The paper will be based on a full evaluation of the project activities and will explore the success or otherwise of our initial hypotheses.

References

Attwell, G. (2007) Searching, Lurking and the Zone of Proximinal Development: e-learning in Small and Medium Enterprises, Vienna: Navreme

Pelliccione, D. L., & Craggs, G. J. (2007). WebQuests: an online learning strategy to promote cooperative learning and higher-level thinking. Paper presented at AARE Conference, 2007.

Perifanou M. (2011) Web 2.0 – New era of Internet tools in learning and teaching Italian as a foreign language – WebQuest 2.0 activities and  Collaborative Blended Learning Model. Proposals of blended learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Athens.

Massive Open Online Courses are still very new and it is important to conduct research to try to understand how they support different types of learning. The Caledonian Academy, in Scotland,  are looking at self-regulated learning outside formal learning contexts and  have designed a study, they say, “which aims to surface, describe and systematise the activities and strategies that adult learners use to self-regulate their learning in the context of the Change 2011 massive open online course (MOOC). Our interest is specifically in professionals’ actions – practices and strategies that they use to plan and attain their learning goals.”

They are looking for volunteers to participate in this study. Participation in the study will involve completion of an online questionnaire (in January/February 2012) and participation in a telephone or Skype interview (in or around March 2012).

You can find out more and sign up to participate in the study on Colin Milligan’s blog – Learning in the Workplace.

Last Saturday, I visited the British Education Technology Exhibition at Olympia in London. I have never been to BETT before and was curious as to what it would be like.

I can’t say I was impressed and three hours left me with a headache and a marked aversion to interactive whiteboards.

I can’t really complain – BETT delivers what it promises on the label – an exhibition of educational technology. Perhaps naively, what I was looking for was something about the use of technology for learning and that I struggled to find.

There were lots and lots of stands showing the latest in shiny gadgets. Most were interactive whiteboards – a throwback I guess to the previous English government’s programme of funding a whiteboard for every classroom.

Being a bit of a nerd myself I like gadgets. But the few that impressed me were those NOT specifically designed for education. I liked HPs 3D printer (although it is not cheap).  And I loved the kit from animationsuupplies.net for stop motion photography and for developing plasticine modeling (shame the software they are using is PC only).

The Hepeel.net stand had the virtue of actually having some kids on it using computers for learning (a radical idea for BETT). And it seemed a little edupunky with print outs of how to use Google docs in education.

Despite all the hype form the ed-tech community about ‘mobile’, there was surprisingly little mobile on display. OK, there were stands showing off different handsets and a few tablets. But there has little on show that you would not find on any city high street.

Although most of the big companies had large glossy stands – including Google, Microsoft and Dell – Apple didn’t have an official stand. But there was a smallish stand sponsored by UK Apple reseller, AT Computers. And they lined up a rolling programme of demos / short workshops by teachers on how they were using the iPad for teaching and learning. These were pretty awesome. I especially liked the demo of how to use the GarageBand (one of my favourite programs) for teaching music. These presentations were full – every seat was taken.

And three seems to be a lesson in that. If you want to attract teachers and trainers to look at your product show how it can be used for teaching and training. But perhaps I am just being naïve again. Are trade shows like BETT aimed at teachers and trainers or are they really for the people with the money who buy the glossy toys for schools and colleges? And how much say do teachers and trainers have in what tech they end up with?

Postnote: Just when I was thinking I have done my duty and been to one of these trade shows I remembered that I had agreed to staff the Mature-Ip project stand at Learntec in Karlsruhe in ten days time. Have to start working on a survival strategy – any ideas welcome.

The fundamental model of school education is still a teacher talking to a group of pupils. It has barely changed over the centuries, even since Plato established the earliest “akademia” in a shady olive grove in ancient Athens.

A Victorian schoolteacher could enter a 21st century classroom and feel completely at home. Whiteboards may have eliminated chalk dust, chairs may have migrated from rows to groups, but a teacher still stands in front of the class, talking, testing and questioning.

But that model won’t be the same in twenty years’ time. It may well be extinct in ten.

Technology is already bringing about a profound transformation in education, in ways that we can see before our very eyes and in others that we haven’t even dreamt of yet.

Nothing too remarkable here, and any regular reader of this blog will recognise similar ideas spouted on these pages. What is remarkable is the person who said it – the unpopular Minster of Education for England, Michael Gove, in a speech at the opening of BETT, the UK education technology exhibition.

This was a long awaited speech, given that Give has said little about educational technology since the Con-Dem coalition government came to power. In a speech which seemed to go down well with the ed-tech community on twitter but was criticised by teachers union leaders, Gove went on to say:

• The present IT national curriculum for schools would be abolished leaving schools freedom to design their own curriculum. From September this year schools will be free to use the “amazing resources” that already exist and will exist on the web.
• Games and interactive software can help pupils acquire complicated skills
• He wants to see the introduction new courses of study in computer science
• We should “look at the school curriculum in a new way, and consider how new technological platforms can help to create new curriculum materials in a much creative and collaborative way than in the past
• Rather than concentrate on hardware procurement we should focus on improving initial teacher training and continual professional development for teachers in educational technology

Gove said three main things that technology can do for learning:

• Disseminate knowledge incredibly widely.
• Change the way teachers teach, with adaptive software personalising learning.
• Allow teachers to assess pupils in more complex and sophisticated ways.

Gove went on to talk about an open-source curriculum saying:

Advances in technology should also make us think about the broader school curriculum in a new way.

In an open-source world, why should we accept that a curriculum is a single, static document? A statement of priorities frozen in time; a blunt instrument landing with a thunk on teachers’ desks and updated only centrally and only infrequently?

It all seems a bit too good to be true. And of course a lot depends on how these chnages mucght be implemented and vitally what support and funding is avaiable to schools.

A website – schooltech..org.uk – has been launched to discuss the new proposals. Bernadette Brooks
General Manager of Naace and Seb Schmoller Chief Executive, Association for Learning Technology (ALT) explained the reasons for the consultation:

The effective use of technology has great potential to support better teaching and learning, but there are important questions arising from the opportunities presented by new technologies. For example: how teachers can best develop the right skills; how learning is organised and delivered; and how education can be agile in adapting to new technology developments. This is an important opportunity to discuss and understand the implications.

The site contains, initially, some “stimulus questions” suggested by DFE, which can be discussed by the posting of comments. During March Naace and ALT will work together to produce a report which we will share with DFE that draws on the discussion that we hope will now ensue.

We hope that parents, teachers, technology developers and practitioners, policy people, researchers, students, people from industry and any others with an interest in and experience of this field will join the conversation.

You can add your ideas on the conusltation web site. Or of course you can just add a comment here   I will be coming back to some of the issues raised by Give’s announcement in further blog posts over the next week.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), blogs on a report released this morning by the University and College Union (UCU) which “has revealed annual public spending on university teaching and research in England will fall to its lowest proportion in over a century, as a result of the government’s new higher education reforms.”

Sally goes on to say that: “Our study also highlights how as spending on teaching and research falls, the burden on students to fund higher education will increase. By 2013/2014 the proportion students contribute to university funding (through higher tuition fees) will be 47.2% – the highest since the 1890s when university was the preserve of the wealthiest.”…..

“These plans will put at risk decades of progress in opening up access to education and will endanger the health of the sector. You cannot maintain a world-class university system in the 21st century by turning the clock back to the 1900s and before.”

For the last year universities in England have been cutting back on expenditure and making teachers and researchers redundant. Research is to a large extent now dependent on external funding, meaning the research agenda is essentially being driven by big business.

The first effects of the increase in fees were seen in figures released by the Higher Education Funding Authority as reported in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper.

Whilst the number of UK-born students applying to start university this autumn has slumped by almost 8%,  applications from students aged 40 and over (who in the past have had lower incomes) have fallen by 15.4% compared with last year. Those aged 20 have dropped by 15%.

The Guardian also points out that “the number of applicants from England has dropped more sharply than those from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. This is not surprising since institutions in those countries will be able to charge up to £9,000, but devolved governments will provide generous financial support to their own students.”

As research gets taken over by big business, university education will, as in the 19th Century, become a preserve of the wealthy.

I got a great email from Rui Páscoa, Sérgio Lagoa and João Greno Brogueira, Masters students at the Open University in Portugal. One of their teachers, they say, Professor José Mota, “asked us to interview someone who is a reference in online teaching and, based on thisinterview, write a 2000-word paper as one of the compulsory activities for the subject ‘Elearning Pedagogical Processes’.”

They sent me the questions and rather than write a long text I agreed to reply by video. The questions – see below – are excellent – in focusing on the key issues around Personal Learning Environments. I struggled with some of my answers – it would be great if anyone else could add their ideas by video or in the reply box to this blog entry.

Questions:

1. What is the pedagogical model you follow as an online teacher and why?
2. You have been developing some serious thinking on PLEs. How important are they in the learning process?
3. Do you advise your students to follow a specific  “model” or do you give them full freedom in building their PLE?
4. Ever since the concept of PLE appeared there have been several discussions about this issue and the concept itself has been evolving. In what way has the PLE interfered in the change of elearning pedagogical models? Or is the PLE merely “a tool” that you can use and take some benefit from in the already existing practices, without real influence in changing them?
5. Many Universities and Colleges offering online courses tend to adopt pedagogical models quite close to traditional teaching and learning, centred on transmitting contents in closed environments (LMS/VLE) controlled by the institution. How shall we overcome this traditional approach and persuade the universities to change their practices?
6. Elearning is becoming more and more relevant, both in formal and informal education, and it is seen as essential in lifelong learning processes. How do you see the future of elearning, bearing in mind the technological development and the social and economical changes that will come along with the evolution of society?

I am not going to provide any list of posts / apps or anything else to mark the new year. The lists are getting on my nerves. What constitutes ‘best’ anyway? I rather wonder if making lists has become a substitute for thinking? I would provide some thoughts on trends for 2012 except I not really sure what will happen. Technology is changing too fast and too unpredictably. Education economy and politics seem wrapped in a slow waltz which is also totally unpredictable in its outcomes. Indeed it may be that people and the actions of people will be more important than technology in determining the course of educational development over the next period. Or lets hope so.

But I will add a wish (not a wish list ) for 2012. My wish is that we can get rid of all those letters in from of ‘learning’. ‘e’ ,’i', ‘m’, ‘b’ and all the rest of them. I even wonder if the term ‘informal learning’ (one I am probably overly fond of using) is of much use any more.

I suspect these terms came about because we wished to signify learning by the technologies being deployed – and to a lesser extent the design of learning with technology. Yet as technology has become increasingly ubiquitous the terms have ceased to have any meaning. We don’t talk about ‘b-learning’ to refer to reading a book nor ‘c-learning’ to refer to learning in a classroom.

So lets just return to that old word – ‘learning’ – and use it to mean all the different ways in which people learn and all the different artefacts that they use in the learning process. Lest move from instructional design to designing for learning. Lets try and support learning in all the contexts in which it takes place. And lets try and support learning for everyone – not just those privileged to be enrolled on a programme in an educational institution.

Very happy to see the paper on Building Personal Learning Environments by using and mixing ICT tools in a professional way, by Linda Castañeda and Javier Soto and presented at PLE2010, win the The Downes Prize 2011. Especially so as it was published in the Digital Education Review, an open access online journal.

And it coincides with the call for papers for PLE2012, being held in Aveiro in Portugal and Melbourne, Australia. Here is a copy of the blog I wrote to launch the call.

“When we first launched the PLE conference we wanted to do something different. “Why is it that the best part of conferences is the time you spend with colleagues outside the conference?”, we asked. “How can we make the conference sessions as entertaining as the social?” “How can we encourage people to learn from each other, rather than sitting passively watching powerpoint slides?”

And we wanted the conference to be open and accessible to as many interested people as possible including young researchers.

At the same time we realised that formal paper submissions were important in gaining support from universities for travel and attendance at the conference. We also acknowledged that journal publications remain important for career development for many researchers.

So we tried to balance all these things. We issued a call for formal paper proposals but at the same time encouraged submissions in other formats – workshops, bring-a laptop demos, and pecha keucha sessions. And when we were designing the programme we tried to build in unconferencing sessions as well as more traditional formats. We also said that even if you submit a formal paper, you can still use less traditional ways of delivering that paper. We tried to support people in working together in collaborative sessions. We also invented the unkeynotes where keynote speakers were challenged themselves to find new and collaborative ways of engaging with the audience.

Even small things can make a difference. Rather than provide the usual uniform conference badges we asked participants to make their own, to reflect their PLEs.

It seems to have worked. The PLE conference is not the biggest educational technology event, neither would we want it to be. But feedback constantly refers to the warmth of the atmosphere, the mutual support and the intensity of the learning experience.

2012 sees the third PLE conference, building on the previous events in Barcelona and Southampton. And yet again this year we want to push out the boundaries – to do something new. So this year conference takes place not in one venue but in two. And although the venues are interlinked by people and personal networks they are geographically a long distance apart. The conference will take place in Aveiro in Portugal and in Melbourne in Australia on 11 – 13 July 2012. Both events share a common organising committee and call for proposals. Both events will share common electronic spaces and spaces for networking. And we are hoping that despite the time differences we will be able to share some of the sessions through the use of technology.

One conference – two venues – PLE2012 is going to be a lot of fun.