The John Lewis Partnership operates a UK-wide chain of upmarket John Lewis department stores and Waitrose grocery supermarkets. It’s unusual in that the business is owned by its 76,000+ employees, and also unusual in that it seems to be thriving in these very tough economic conditions.
As regular, long-standing readers will know (hello, and how are you both?), I’ve taken an interest in new providers of UK higher education – notably BPP and New College of the Humanities.
In that light, a partnership model for a new university seems very interesting indeed. But I can see some very formidable barriers in the way.
Liveblog notes from an IET Technology Coffee Morning presented by Daniel Allington, from the OU’s Faculty of Education and Language Studies.
‘Losing is fun’ comes from Dwarf Fortress‘s original documentation. Losing can be fun – for the player. But also for the creator? And what are people trying to achieve when they make a game, and what do players want?
Dwarf Fortress is a work of art in a way that’s uncommon. Beautiful to look at – e.g. Myst when it came out – as the typical standard for games as art. But modern art isn’t beautiful to look at – think pickled sharks, not beautiful background.
Addendum, Dec 2012: For all those of you finding this blog post trying to find out ‘How does toady/Tarn make money out of Dwarf Fortress?’, the answer is simple: People who like the game give him donations. That’s it.
An IET Technology Coffee Morning by Rhodri Thomas, on Mobile Connections: joining up OU provision for mobile learners. Rhodri’s slides are available as a Google doc presentation. (The main demos are being recorded.)
Some history, some progress reports, and some live demos.
I did a review of To Do list apps about six months ago; I’ve just done a quick update, which I present here:
Things cloud sync is now in not-very-restricted beta, and seems to work Ok. Not, of course, available on the web.
Toodledo offline still not anywhere in sight, but apparently some third-party apps can provide it.
Omni Sync Server is still in beta, but seems to work Ok. Again, not available on the web.
Midnight Inbox finally released Inbox Touch for iPad v3.0, which has sync with Midnight Inbox 2.0 and Inbox Mobile 1.0 (iPhone) built in … but the latter two still aren’t released, so obviously you can’t actually sync across devices … yet. Website has updated “Coming soon” to “Coming soon – actually”.
Appigo Todo has a desktop mac app fully released, syncs with iPhone/iPad via the cloud using their own service ($20/y), Dropbox, or Toodledo.com. Presumably if via Toodledo.com that gives you a web version, which is cool.
Todo.ly is a new (to me!) web-based service – very nice interface for a web system. Can’t see any way to have it offline though.
I’ve decided, on reflection, that spending time on to-do list software is less of a priority than, you know, actually doing things I needed to do, so I’ve carried on with my current Dropbox/plain RTF system for now.
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It’s an interesting premise: what makes for sustainable e-learning? From the workshop flyer:
Financial challenges, market opportunities and technical innovation will drive greater use of e-learning. Some see cost-cutting as the primary driver, and fear that it will diminish the quality of the educational experience through reduced face-to-face contact. Others argue that e-learning creates new learning possibilities, and can strengthen educational quality, e.g. by enabling more rather than less learning contact with fellow students. The sustainability of e-learning is also contentious. Do virtual technologies have a lighter or heavier environmental footprint than traditional methods? And does e-learning create greater social inclusion, both globally and nationally, or will it lead to a ‘second class’ educational system with face-to-face methods reserved for an elite?
The flyer [PDF] teasingly suggests that assessment against best practice criteria “could be ‘light touch’ if the criteria were focused on the distinctive features of e-learning rather than aiming at a comprehensive QAA-style assessment”. I have my doubts – I think the distinctive features of e-learning make it more, not less important to do proper assessement. But the discussion should be interesting.
Martin Bean is the OU’s vice chancellor. Today, he gave his Annual Address to the University, entitled “Shaping the Future Together”. This address is the kick-off for the Council Residential Weekend – Council being the main governing body of the University.
I’ve always found Martin an inspiring speaker. He sends round regular video podcasts for staff (including transcripts, which as a video-skeptic I particularly appreciate – classic example of Access For All principles there). But it’s nice to have a chance to hear him in person. Back in January, he encouraged staff to sign up to attend one of our graduation ceremonies. I always used to do this once a year but had stopped for pressure of time. So I took his advice and went to the Milton Keynes graduation ceremony, and it was as moving as I remembered – and he was a fantastic presence on the stage.
We’re in a situation of enormous uncertainty and pressure, in general (the economic situation), in the HE sector (the economic situation), in the UK HE sector (fees, the rise of the private HE sector – e.g. BPP and NCH, and the economic situation), and at the OU (fees, ELQ, and the economic situation).
I think we could do with listening to an inspiring speaker about now.
These are my liveblog notes from his address. (The talk was also webcast, and should be available for replay shortly afterwards – if you’re coming to this long after 23 September 2011, you’ll need to navigate through the list to talks from that date.)
For students in England studying with us for the first time from 1 September 2012 there will be a standard fee of £5,000 based on 120 credits of study. This is equivalent to a year’s full-time study at traditional universities.
The OU’s fees structure is being radically simplified. At the moment, courses are priced individually. From September 2012, the fees will be simply proportional: if you study 120 credits, it’s £5,000. If you study 60 credits, it’s £2,500; for 30 credits, £1,250.
The other big change is that OU students will be eligible for the new student loans from that point.
The fee we’ve announced is the result of thorough research and is the lowest fee we are able to charge while ensuring we can continue to offer the quality, flexibility and accessibility for which the OU is renowned.
I believe this. My back-of-an-envelope calculation last November suggested “our annualised fees might need to jump from £1,800 to £4,700”, which is pretty close given the gross over-simplifications I was using.
But more fundamentally, I know and trust that OU staff at all levels have been working very hard on this. Making this decision can’t have been an easy one. Nobody working at the OU wants to have to put up our fees like this.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…more fees announcements. Less deadly but more upsetting than sharks. OU: £5k FTE
I’m sure the fee level wasn’t set with predatory intent. We want to keep our fees as low as possible, to keep education as open as possible. That’s the whole point of what we do. If minimising the cost to students (and the taxpayer, via the loan subsidy) while maintaining our uncompromisingly high standards of achievement and teaching quality is upsetting some people in the sector … well, maybe they should be upset a bit more.
I’ll take the THE quote charitably and assume that they, like me, find the level of fees charged to students upsetting across the board.
Update: the THE explain that what they found upsetting was “more the constant announcement of fees rather than the OU’s fees (or even fees in general)”.
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No further permission needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it’s nice to be notified if you do use it.
A structured debate, held at 2pm on Mon 20 June in the Jennie Lee Building, The Open University, on the following motion:
“In the next decade, digital scholarship (in open journals, blogs, and social media) will achieve the same status in academic settings as traditional scholarship.”
Martin Weller is presenting the pro argument for 5-10 minutes, followed by Rob Farrow presenting the con argument. Then 5 minutes’ response, open to the floor for 30 minutes, and then the vote. Jude Fransman is chairing.
This is a dress rehearsal for a similar debate planned for ED-MEDIA. There were a little over a dozen members of the audience. There’s a survey monkey poll to vote on the answer.
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