EdStartup: Getting Started

This post is my introduction for the Enterprise in Education MOOC (EdStartup 101).

Rough transcript:

I’m Doug Clow, and this is my introduction for Ed Startup 101. Hello everybody! I often say that video is rubbish, so this is not my usual medium. But it’s a much more personal and direct one for lots of people, so here’s me. If you want a longer, text-heavy intro, I have one of those.

This is the light version.

I’m an academic (a member of faculty, for our American and Canadian Cousins), and I’m proud to work at the Open University in the UK. I really like fiddling around with new technology and seeing what I can do, and I really like feeling that what I’m doing is helping people – helping them learn more and becoming better able to make a difference in the world. So being an educational technologist at the OU is great.

It’s a step away from frontline teaching, though. At the OU, the academics design and develop the courses, and our associate lecturers do the direct teaching. And I don’t even do that much direct course development.

There’s an old (and horrible) saying that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach. There’s an extension that says that those who really don’t know what they’re doing teach teachers how to teach. I’m the one who’s helping those guys.

As you might be able to tell, in presentations, I like to use the humorous technique of self-deprecation, but I’m not very good at it.

This week, I’m officially on holiday – or vacation in International English – so I’m doing the opposite of what lots of people do in a MOOC: I’m only dropping in from time to time for the first week, but will be more present later.

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Author: dougclow

Data scientist, tutxor, project leader, researcher, analyst, teacher, developer, educational technologist, online learning expert, and manager. I particularly enjoy rapidly appraising new-to-me contexts, and mediating between highly technical specialisms and others, from ordinary users to senior management. After 20 years at the OU as an academic, I am now a self-employed consultant, building on my skills and experience in working with people, technology, data science, and artificial intelligence, in a wide range of contexts and industries. View all posts by dougclow