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First set of liveblog notes from Digital scholarship: Advanced technologies for research – a JISC-sponsored roadshow held on 10 March 2010 in the Ambient Technology Lab, Jennie Lee Building, The Open University.

Lots of examples of resources and projects doing new and exciting things with electronic resources supporting research from David Ferguson. Then presentation of a project at the OU researching and promoting digital scholarship from Nick Pearce and Martin Weller.

Continue reading “Digital scholarship: Advanced technologies for research (1)”

There’s been a lot of commentary about Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, Is Google Making Us Stupid?  Carr is worried that, like HAL in 2001, he can feel his mind going.  He used to read for long stretches, but:

Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. […] The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet.

The article then goes on in quite a thoughtful way to explore the complex relationship between what you might call thinking tools and thinking.  He’s not a thoughtless Luddite (as he has been unfairly portrayed in some places), and points out that this sort of thing is not a new concern: Socrates bemoaned the introduction of writing, and there was much criticism of the introduction of the printing press.  However, he does seem to think we’re losing something valuable:

The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

I really don’t agree.  Sure, time to think is important – which is why I think it’s important to be offline some of the time.  The Internet makes it so much easier to see other people’s associations, inferences, analogies and ideas.  But it doesn’t make it so much harder to make or foster our own.

There’s another, more fundamental point here.  To me it feels like new technology makes me cleverer, not stupid.  Sure, if I was cut off from the Internet and computers I’d need to relearn the compensatory skills one needs to manage without ejournals, blogs and the whole wide world of useful information you can find within a minute of wanting it.  But I’m not cut off, and I can think better with all that stuff than I ever could without it. For me, the technology feels like an extension to my self, so it’s easy to include it in the “me” that I’m considering when I say “makes me cleverer”.  To take the systems view of Searle’s Chinese Room argument a little askew, the system that includes the pure unextended biological “me” acts as if it is cleverer, so we might as well call it cleverer.

To draw my own analogy (!) with another tech, my distance vision is rubbish without my contact lenses (or glasses).  If I didn’t have them for a prolonged period of time, I’d develop ways of managing (squinting and compensatory behaviours) that would enable me to see better than I can at the moment when I whip the lenses out at the end of the day.  So one could say that I would see better if I didn’t have the lenses.  This would be true in a certain sense – which I think is the same sense in which it is true that “Google is making us stupid”.  But it’s patently false in most broad senses.

If I want to see better, I should use the lenses.  If I want to think better, I should use the Internet.

My organisation – the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University – has recently been reviewed.  I think our response to the review should be to become radically more open about what we do.

We had a meeting about the review with the Vice Chancellor and our immediate boss, Denise Kirkpatrick (Pro-Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching).  I asked if it was Ok to blog about the review, and the VC said it was the first time anyone had asked (!) – but said fine so long as it’s circumspect.

In a circumspect nutshell, the review said that the staff in IET were “talented” but identified a serious problem in perceived value delivered to the University.  The proposal of the reviewers was to split IET in two.

We’re now in to a discussion phase where we explore how we might respond to the review.  To stick to the diplomatic and circumspect line, splitting precisely as proposed is proving a major challenge to operationalise.  My colleagues have already kicked the ball rolling with the discussion about what we could actually do.  Martin talks about how organisational structures are less important now:

There’s a lot of potential to improve things, as Will suggests:

And Patrick linked that back with the theme of new ways of working and said

So what is to be done?

I think  – and this is very much the direction we as a unit have been moving for a long time – the main idea has to be increased openness about what we’re doing.  Web 2.0 management!

One entirely-fun question – which I’m pleased that I’ve managed to hold off on, since it’s not what we need to focus on quite yet – is what technologies to use to support this.  But suggestions welcome!

Tags: ouietreorg, policy, management, restructuring, web 2.0, open

Back to liveblogging temporarily – if you can’t liveblog Tony Hirst’s presentation what can you do?

Vicky Smith chairing

Tony offers to do his talk from a seat at the back of the meeting room via a video link from his laptop to the presentation machine – only partly in jest.

Tony Hirst, Stuart Brown, Liam Green-Hughes, Martin Weller – Two unauthOUrised Facebook Apps

Presentation off-brand so trying to be on brand by wearing a pink OU T shirt.

Student peers are faceless – some chances in tutorials but hard. Lots of students inhabit Facebook – 6500 OU users in our network at last count with OU email addresses; lots of groups for courses.

Facebook growing – 4th biggest in terms of time spent – but traffic levelling off.  Over 50% of users go in once a day.

Why Facebook vs FirstClass? More informal, social first, say students.  Students use OU courses as conversation basis – in forums, in sigs, and so on.

First app – Sept last year – informal project with Liam and Stuart – Course Profile – not built on authenticated access or student records, it’s volunteered info from students.  Only OU stuff is the database of course codes and titles – rival app from a student doing similar mapping not as popular.

When add a course, appears on your minifeed, and messages from friends on your Wall.  With prompt to add app yourself.

Have had a handful of registrations from the app! For each course, shows OpenLearn, Comment Wall, Friends studying it, Recommend, find a study buddy. Now about 4500 users, probably saturated now unless big growth in OU users of Facebook.

Nice analytics on users, including study journeys through courses to programme/quals.

Courses Profile is not regular visit, came up with My OU Story – reason to visit regularly.  Student gives regular updates and moods – with graphs over time.
Can leave feedback to others, encourage mutual support.  Not promoted much yet, not much takeup.

Course Profiles and My OU Story

Questions: Contact from students and expectations need to be managed.  Have many privacy options.

How can you make this viral to get to people who aren’t already OU people? Hard. But could be decoupled and rolled out to students through the VLE or other social networks.

OUSA President – responsibility on FirstClass social side; jump through hoops to meet requirements e.g. looking out for bullying.  They need agreement from Course Team to create a conference, so if CT says no they can’t do it. These FB apps look like official groups even though they’re not.  Where’s the boundary?  Creators are not declared members of OU.  OU can’t control what’s happening here – students can just do it.  Use of brand without policing.  Behaviour can be reported through FB procedures, so it doesn’t need to be us.

Martin Weller, Simon Cross, Andrew Brasher, Grainne Conole, Juliette White and Paul Clark

Martin – Umbrella thing for lots of activity.  1 – Fact finding and user reqs – workshops, interviews, etc.  2 – Tool and resource development using Compendium.  Now Compendium LD, Cloudworks for sharing designs.

LD at the OU – background of expertise from Moodle, SLED,  IMS LD spec, LAMS, Course Models, Grainne on LADIE, DialogPlus before coming here.

Aims – Focus on OU academics, not interested in IMS LD.  Scaffold and support the design process.  Capture practice, bridge pedagogy and technology.  Share designs/promote reusability.

Simon – Investigating practice.  Interviews, workshop evaluations (four or five done, more planned), course observation, eLearning case studies produced by Peter Wilson.  Building an evidence base.

Key themes: Support and guidance; Representation of designs and thoughts; Process of design; Barriers to design process; Evaluation of design.

Demand for more pedagogic evidence and chalk-face experiences – but case studies under-used.  Why?  Doubt in relevancy, trust in ‘success’ claims, too ‘cutting edge’, too time consuming to find/understand, difficult to abstract.  Also preference for local circuits, personal networks.

Andrew – Compendium LD

Tool built – adaptation of Compendium knowledge-mapping tool.  (KMi plus Verizon.)  Visual maps of connections between icons representing ideas.  Icons on left-hand-side to develop maps in standard Compendium way.  Building the map will help you think through the learning process you hope the students will be undertaking.  (I think we could really do with some examples at this point – aha! the very next slide.)

Very interesting example of a learning design shown – it’s clearly meaningful to the person designing it, and probably understandable by others, and even is very close to IMS LD/UML style roles-in-columns layout … but there’s no way it could be automatically instantiated in a VLE in the way you can with LAMS.

Martin again – Cloudworks

New thing – ‘Flickr for learning design’ – a social networking site for sharing learning designs, sharing resources, finding people.  “Collaborative Learning Design at the OU”.  Can put stuff in, tag it up – made by Juliette White, want funding to develop it further.

Next steps – JISC bid around Cloudworks (perhaps what we were twittering about earlier); strategic bid internally around reuse.  Develop CompendiumLD, populate Cloudworks, work on community, integrate with social:learn, more public facing.

Issues – Do people re-use designs?  Is the design tool open-ended or structured?  (We suggest the swim-lane model but it is open; other tools are more structured.)  Is the open approach to formats correct?  Will people share?  Integration. with other systems.

Me – Why developing your own tool for Cloudworks and not an existing file-sharing site?  Why not standards-based?

Martin – Because there isn’t a site for sharing learning designs.  Flickr is for sharing photos.  So we’re building a community that doesn’t exist.  And it’s made out of Drupal so it’s not so innovative.

Non – External links?

Martin – Yes, Cloudworks is supposed to be externally-focused.

s/o – How as a simple course team member supposed to know about all of this stuff?  Staff development is a key issue.

s/o – Is this accessible outside?

Andrew – Compendium LD should be but there are technical problems.  Martin – Cloudworks will be, but still in alpha.

Tim – Sharing learning designs is a lot like sharing patterns in software development (like architectural design) (talking about A Pattern Language)

Martin – Yes.

Linda – What’s the advantages to using Compendium?

Martin – From workshops, good to surface complexity in designs.  e.g. didn’t realise they were getting tutor to do 40 hours.  Can also help get agreement from course team.

s/o – Do you expect this would replace course texts?  Like IMS Learning Designs?

Martin – Deliberately avoiding IMS LD spec, the entry level is way too high for most academics – they could understand it but they don’t want to sit down and learn the XML.  Not our intention to make it a deliverable system to students, it’s for the design process.  It could be useful for the students, as a guide to how the course works.

Tim – It might replace the course calendar (or guide), or a working view of that as it’s in development.

Martin – Yes, if it’s simple enough for people to instantly pick up.

Andrew – Can enter text that lies behind icons that’s not shown on the map, can export a textual version of the map.  But it’s not a good interface for inputting text compared to a word processor.

Martin – Aim is OU academics, but perhaps also ALs?

Non – powerful thing for other participants e.g. L&T librarians for skills development, at an earlier stage rather than right towards the end.  Could realise the benefits of institutional resources held in the library.

Keith – Done any retrospective mapping – typical structures of existing courses?

Simon -Yes, Peter Wilson’s case studies have all been mapped up in Compendium.  Working with Paul Clark and working through courses and how they could be mapped.  Taking an individual course unit and doing it.  So not just the final product but the process of development, asking questions, making notes – the nitty gritty of day-to-day development.  Work in progress.