In addition to my notes below, there is a plethora (OK, at least 3) other ways of following what happened during this conference:
- a 'blog' of the event is available (though this was actually captured by people posting comments to each of the presentation descriptions, so not as easily viewable as a true 'blog' of the event)
- Sarah Holyfield from CETIS also recorded the presentations, in preparation for putting together an article on the event, so look out for this on the eFocus site
- all presentations were recorded by the U&I team (erm, I think that's Lawrie?) and will be made available on the U&I blog (same url as for the first bullet point above)
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New Technology and the Modern University - Peter Hartley
Peter began his talk by highlighting the importance of 'learning' in 'e-learning' - although this is obviously not a new concept, it's always helpful to be reminded of this, especially at a conference entitled 'next generation environments'. He also made the point, very well supported by visual examples of the earliest train carriages (take a look at the slides when they're available), that visualising the future is inherently difficult and predicting it even harder. We naturally try and fit new 'stuff' into what we already know and do, rather than imagining new possibilities.
Peter went on to revisit some points of a presentation that he made last year, where he identified reasons not to be cheerful and reasons to be cheerful in eLearning.
- reasons not to be cheerful :-( which included that some applications were more of a step backwards rather than forwards, e-learning is just understood as meaning VLE and the implicit prioritisation of RAE.
- reasons to be cheerful :-) which included networked collaborative learning, cheaper/smarter stuff, new tools for social & collaborative working and smarter more technology savvy students.
- landscape 1 (the museum) - formal, public controlled. the institutional world of control and individuals
- landscape 2 (the playground) - the collaborative, informal exploratory. the world of facilitation and enquiry.
- landscape 3 (the refuge) - the personal, private and exclusive. talking to invited friends only.
He finished by saying that the modern university would need to:
- know the students
- make its pedagogy explicit
- support all the learning journeys
- adopt the appropriate technologies
- manage the boundaries between environments
- align policies and practices
2. Blackboard (a community based development product...) - Derek Jones
US focussed presentation, which was not a sales pitch (well it couldn't have been, as Derek was at pains to remind us frequently during the talk) . The presentation only included US based case studies, which was a shame. The transferability from these to the UK was obvious, but it would have been nice to see some from the UK, or at the very least from outside the US.
Derek outlined 4 pillars of institutional effectiveness:
- enhancing the student experience
- responding to globalisation
- improving institutional accountability
- increasing resource use and revenue
- student-centred.
- unconstrained by time and place.
- operating simultaneously in local & global contexts.
- Engaged students - web2.0 user experience. social learning within classes and in life. focus on writing and reflection
- collaborative communities - learning and life spaces outside of classes. academically focused social networking. inter-institution collaboration via blackboard (interesting concept!)
- well served constituents - academic, student and admin efficiencies. effective instititution - student & institutional assessment for local improvement. understanding relationships between activities and outcomes.
- optimised enterprise - continued improvement of emerging standards and elearning web services. easy openness for academixc choice. ever improving scalability.
The obvious patent issue was raised during the morning Q&A session, to which Derek referred to the patent pledge that they have (uniquely) made following the world-wide reaction to their patent application. Peter was questioned on whether there was really a battle between the museum and the playground, or whether it was just a case of the tools being used creatively in the different areas. However, Peter still felt it was a battle, as the museum staff are trying to force order on the playground. The issue of finding time for tutors to learn how to work in this new environment was raised from the floor - Sarah Porter responded by saying that she saw this as a real policy and institutional issue - one that is a problem worldwide, but one that does need to be addressed. Peter added that it was also important that staff need to see that efforts in this area have a long lasting value and are so worth investing time in. The importance of developing high quality physical learning spaces to facilitate this kind of learning was also raised and supported.
3. Community as an Education Model - Dave Cormier
Dave began his talk describing the work of Edtechtalk, which was set up to help improve the management and sharing of knowledge in an increasinly 'knowledge cluttered' world, evidenced by the growth of digital objects that we store and manage, the increased tendancy to store files/objects across multiple computers, the use of multiple email addresses, and the storage of items in multiple formats (to name a few!). He saw the targets to help address this as:
- a sacred dedicated space,
- filtering,
- security,
- collaboration (with a network of experts)
* free knowledge exchange
* minimal infrastructure
* minimalist technology
* open government
* community focus
Dave also gave an interesting demonstration of how SecondLife (SL) can be used as a learning tool, taking advantage of the fact that SL is an immersive world (and refreshingly not using it as just another way of giving a lecture). The demonstration is available on YouTube and is well worth a look: Mayan Temple Tour.
4. New Technology: the learner perspective - Ross Graham, Glasgow Caledonian
This short, but revealing and insightul presentation gave an individual students (Ross Graham's) perspective on the use of social tools, and was the highlight of the conference for me. Whilst Graham did feel that social tools and academic tools needed to be brought closer together, especially in terms of helping academic tools feel like they related to him (which clearly they do not at the moment) - he strongly argued that he didn't want to see his uni appear in facebook, he didn't want to have lectures on his i-pod (he wanted to listen to HIS music on that!) and he didn't want to start receiving uni emails on his personal email account. He was very clear that he did not want uni to encroach on his personal social space and that he saw this as a separate refuge for him, outside of the university world. [Note: Scott Wilson recently reported on a paper in this area, which supports much of what Ross says]
5. New Technology: the institutional perspective - Linda Creanor, ALT
Linda talked about some of the key emergent themes in terms of the use of new technology taken from recent studies that that she has been involved with, they were:
- fitting learning around life
- control & choices
- expectations of technology
- discussion boards generally not popular
- strategies/ways of coping
- influence of/on family
- personalisation of environments
- course design issues
