Doug Clow's Imaginatively-Titled Blog
Data science, research, analytics, technology development, and people
Something of a rocky debut for the New College of the Humanities (NCH @NewCollegeH), then – it seems that my instant reaction was mild by comparison to many others.
I’ve some points of accuracy to make, in an attempt to clear up a few things. And then I’d like to quote one commentator in particular at some length, because the quotes sum up much of my own view.
Continue reading “Commentary on New College of the Humanities”
Well, it certainly is interesting times in UK Higher Education provision.
Today’s news is the emergence of a New College of the Humanities, with a professoriate of (15) academic stars, led by Professor AC Grayling, who will become its first Master when it opens to students in 2012:
A new British college aiming to rival Oxford and Cambridge has been launched by leading academics. [BBC]
They are aiming high – with fees of £18,000 a year, three times the ‘normal’ rate of £6,000. They are, of course, a private, for-profit company, with significant investment behind them. The inspiration is unabashedly from US elite liberal arts institutions. It’s going to be small and selective: they’re looking for three As at A level … and people who can spare £54k plus living expenses.
This appears to be yet another instalment of less than perfect policy coherence in UK academia. Hot on the heels of the Prime Minister very publicly blocking the Minister’s floating of the possibility of paying for ‘off quota’ places … a new venture emerges where you can do just that. So you can’t buy a place at university … unless you’re able to pay twice the maximum cap on fee loans. I can’t see how this can possibly do anything other than reduce social mobility.
Cory Doctorow, the geek Dad, digital rights activist, writer, sci-fi author, and famous cape-and-goggles-wearing blogger from Boing Boing, visited the OU on 18 May 2011 to give a talk. He’s also a visiting lecturer in the Computing Department at the OU.
These are my liveblog notes.
Liveblog notes from an IET Technology Coffee Morning, 18 May 2011, in the Jennie Lee Labs.
Rhodri Thomas from the OU’s Learning Innovation Office (until the end of July) gave a talk titled “Google Apps – where next? Planning for curriculum usage”.
I last blogged seriously about this about a year ago, when I reported on what was on the radar. This is an update; at the moment it’s released to OU students on an opt-in basis only, but there are Plans for much more.
Excitingly, Rhodri tells me some of the stuff he’ll be talking around is under NDA, so this public report may well not be complete.
The slides are available in Google Docs – where else?
And the latest information is all on the Google Apps [OU only] part of the Online Learning Systems website [OU only].
Continue reading “Google Apps planning for curriculum usage”
There’s a longstanding argument – currently very live in the UK – about whether higher education is or is not a market, or should or should not be.
If it is one at all, it’s not a straightforward market by a long chalk, no matter how hard you might try (if, for example, you are a Government trying to make it in to a market).
In a market, you have sellers, products, and buyers. But in HE these are all unclear.
In fact, I think, the confusion between all these, implicit in the market view of higher education, makes a university look like nothing less than a Sinister Sausage Machine.
I’m after a better task management system – organising my to-do lists, projects and activities and so on.
What I really want is something that:
Here’s what I’ve found, in note form. I’m very interested in any other views, recommendations, suggestions!
There’s increasing concern that there is a higher education bubble.
Is there a higher education bubble in the UK?
This is an easy question, with an easy answer: No. There is no higher education bubble in the UK.
(Whether there is one in the US is a very different and much harder question, to which I may return later.)
(photo (CC) by D Sharon Pruitt) Continue reading “There is no bubble in UK Higher Education”
There’s a serious danger, I think, in Learning Analytics, of producing and processing ever more data in ever more exciting and attractive ways, but which aren’t connected up to making things any different for learners.
As Marx famously put it in his Theses on Feuerbach,
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern.
(Philosophers have only sought to interpret the world in various ways; the point is to change it.)
This is nowhere (!) more true than in learning analytics. Analysis without action is wasted effort – which we can ill afford now. Those of us with a penchant for data, sums and code (I know, I know, but we have our uses) can get terribly excited about new sources of data and new analyses. It’s great to come up with new ways of understanding and interpreting what’s going on. But if that effort doesn’t translate in to better action – it’s pointless.
On the other hand, action without analysis may be making things worse – you just don’t know. (A point sometimes lost on misinterpreters of Marx who focus only on the ‘change it’ bit. You can say many rude things about Marx – and I sometimes do – but not that he was short on quantity of analysis of capitalism.) We’re certainly going to be seeing a lot of dramatic change in universities in the coming years. If we don’t have the right evidence supporting decision-makers in that process, not only will the decisions be made in the dark, we won’t even know how wrong they are.
That’s why there needs to be a learning analytics cycle:
The process from learners to data to metrics/analytics is the core of what learning analytics is. But those outputs need to feedback to learners if the process is to be of any real value. (As Tony Hirst mentioned in his Learning Analytics Pre-Workshop, in technical terms, we’re talking a closed-loop control system.)
For me, this means engaging with all the frustrations of internal systems, processes and decision-making. If I was just interested in research outputs, I could just dive in to the systems I can get access to, grab some data, do some analysis, and go. It’s much harder to arrange and endure the endless meetings, papers, persuasion, and frustration that is what happens when you try to make a substantial change to a large bureaucratic organisation like a university. But that’s where the real value and potential lie.
Learning analytics starts with the learner, and their ‘data exhaust’. We need to make sure it gets back there again.
NB For clarity (thanks anonymous tipster!) that last sentence is meant entirely figuratively and I am emphatically not advocating gassing students. That would be Evil and Wrong. I’m trying to make things better for them.
(This post brought to you by my desire to bolster my resolve and enthusiasm for helping to work up an internal project along these lines. Will say more if and when there’s things to say.)
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Liveblog notes from the afternoon session on Tuesday 1 March, the second full day of the Learning Analytics and Knowledge ’11 (LAK11) conference in Banff, Canada.
[Edit 3 Feb 2014: Comments disabled because of spam – do comment on others if you want to say something.]
(Previously: The Learning Analytics Cycle, liveblog notes from Pre-Conference Workshop morning and afternoon, from Monday morning and afternoon, and from Tuesday morning.)
It’s still bitterly cold, but it’s bright, sunny and clear, and the views are even more stunning than this morning. With this scenery and situation, I can understand why Banff Centre is a hub for creativity and inspiration – it is remarkable here.
(Note nearly frostbitten thumb in top left hand corner.)
Liveblog notes from the morning session on Tuesday 1 March, the second full day of the Learning Analytics and Knowledge ’11 (LAK11) conference in Banff, Canada.
(Previously: The Learning Analytics Cycle, liveblog notes from Pre-Conference Workshop morning and afternoon, and from Monday morning and afternoon.)
It’s fearsomely cold here – about -30C this morning – but stunningly beautiful. This is a quick snap out of the window of the restaurant where we had breakfast. There are views of the Rockies all around. If I’d brought a better camera – and was a better photographer – you’d get some staggering pictures.
Doug Clow's Imaginatively-Titled Blog 