JISC Netskills – The Rhetoric of Openness

The first JISC Netskills online seminar, ‘The Rhetoric of Openness’ by David White was delivered on Tuesday 21st June; if you couldn’t join the session – you can still watch & listen to a recording of the session here: http://t.co/8LlU95O – you can also comment on the recording, or if you’re tweeting use #nstalks.

Dave discussed openness from the perspective of the institution and the student. These are some of the notes I made during his talk, from my perspective and interpretation.

Institutions can misunderstand the open culture of the web. They tend to think more about opening access to their teaching and learning resources (such as MIT  and the Open University  have done) rather than think about how the resources are appropriated. In addition the institution’s marketing department is often behind the drive for openness leading to a tension between marketing aims and altruism. Dave reminded us that MIT have pointed out that their open resources do not provide the authentic teaching and learning experience, which can only be realized by signing up for a course at MIT.

When the marketing department gets involved there will also be a tension between professional production and the content of the resources. In some cases it is questionable whether the effort put into media production is worth it. Dave was enthusiastic about Nottingham University’s Periodic Table videos, which he described as friendly. But it is difficult to evaluate open content. There is little more to go on than the number of hits on the website.

There are many aspects of openness – open research, open content, open data, open practice, open software, open courseware (as in the case of MIT and the OU) and so on. But what does openness mean? Roy Williams, Sui Fai John Mak and I discussed this in our 2008 paper, The Ideals and Reality of participating in a MOOC, where we discussed the possible meanings of openness as being openness as ‘free’, as in beer; ‘free’ as in liberty, or speech; and there is an additional sense of ‘free’ as in transparent, and therefore shared. Dave discounts ‘free’ as in beer saying that open source resources are not necessarily free of charge – they incur costs – but he seems more in favour of ‘free as in liberty’, saying that the Creative Commons license can mean that you are free to do what you like with the open source materials. However, he points out that re-use in this way has been going on for years, but mostly below the institutional water line – students and tutors have been engaged in this re-use.

For students, openness means that they have access to vast sources of information – Wikipedia, Youtube, blogs etc., but the problem is that institutions often don’t allow them to cite these sources of information in their work. In this sense institutions are a little behind what is happening on the internet. This open access to online resources has led to changes in learning and study behaviours in students. They complain that they do not want to have to evaluate these resources but want to be guided to the ‘right stuff’ straight away, i.e. they don’t want to research and if they have to, then see this as a failure of search engines. As has been commented on before, Dave noted that students lack critical thinking skills and the desire to develop them. They are more interested in contact than content. For them contact is the more valuable resource. This highlights the differences between the institutions’ and the students’ perceptions of the meaning and value of openness. It is one thing to be open in the ‘broadcast’ sense and another to be open in the ‘conversational’ sense. For Dave the latter is the authentic bit of teaching and learning, but it is also the bit that institutions don’t want to let go of.

Dave concluded his talk with a call for ingenuity rather than innovation. We need to look at the use of technologies in new ways.

It seems that the topic of openness is quite ‘topical’. Frances Bell and colleagues Cristina da Costa, Josie Fraser, Richard Hall and Helen Keegan will be presenting a Symposium on the subject of The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online  at the ALT-C conference in September. It will be interesting to hear more about what they mean by ‘giving’ in this context.

The second Netskills online seminar, “Supporting Researcher Engagement With Social Tools” presented by  Alan Cann will be on Monday 27th June, 1-2pm in Elluminate.  To find out more about this session, and how to join, visit: http://bit.ly/m61leW

JISC Netskills is also on the lookout for future seminar presenters, so if you would like to deliver a lunchtime seminar (or know someone who does) – get in touch at 0191 222 5000 or enquiries@netskills.ac.uk

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The internet and the ‘older’ generation

This morning (9.00 am ish) I just happened to pick up 5 minutes of a programme on BBC Radio 4, which made my ears prick up.

Evidently 8.7 million people in the UK (many of whom are in the over 65 age bracket) have never used a computer. This was being discussed by two people (whose names I did not catch), who held opposing views about this.

One felt that it is a social injustice that nearly 20% of the population do not have access to the internet. She told us that 1.6 million people over the age of 65 do not see anyone in a one month period and believes that the internet could prevent the isolation felt by so many older people. Her view is that the internet helps people to feel more connected and more in control of their lives.  She felt very strongly that social divides should not be increased by technology (i.e. lack of access to technology).

The opposing point of view was put by a man who suggested that the internet increases the problems faced by older people. He likened it to a ‘foot-in-the-door’ saleman, where your privacy is invaded and you are subject to identity theft. For him there is not enough time to simply ‘stand and stare’ and that this is a need increasingly felt by older people, who should not be hassled to be connected and should be left alone to enjoy a quieter less connected period in their lives.

There are good points in both arguments. Ultimately I think it depends on whether using the internet is a choice or not – but the problem is that making these choices is never straightforward. My mother has never owned or used  a computer. She is one of the 8.7 million. Do I think the internet would make her life easier? No – not now. She is in her mid eighties and now after a hectic life definitely likes to spend a lot of time ‘standing and staring’ – metaphorically speaking – and I can see how easy it would be for her now to become the prey of the ‘foot-in-the-door’ salesman. But between the ages of 65 and 80, I think the internet could have saved her a lot of time, in terms of finding information, shopping etc. As for being connected – I don’t think she has ever needed the internet for that.

It will be interesting to see whether the 8.7 million figure drops as the next generation (my generation) moves into our 70s, 80s and beyond, or whether we will become those who like to ‘stand and stare’ – if we do not already!

 

Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(William Henry Davies)

 

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Hype and Rose Gardens

I wasn’t sure what title to give this post but I realise that occasionally I feel irritated by the hype and attitude that ‘everything in the garden is rosy’ – just be ‘connected’ and the world’s problems will be solved – we will all be autonomous, connected and open learners in diverse environments and everything will change for the better.

It’s not that I am against these aspirations. I am not. It would be great if all learners were autonomous – but the fact is that many learners do not even want to be autonomous even if they have the capability to be autonomous and that is another discussion to be had. Is it OK to ask for didactic teaching (tell me what to do!)? Perhaps sometimes that is just what learners need.  I suspect that this is heresy in the current climate of networked learning

It would also be great if all learners were widely and diversely connected – but the fact is that many a knowing or unknowing willing learner cannot access the web/net as we the privileged are accustomed to do, whether or not they wish to learn. I only have to holiday in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales here in the UK to experience slow internet connections and difficulties of access and I have worked with students in Africa who have to travel miles to an internet café to get access to their course. It is easy to forget from our ivory towers of easy access in most areas of the Western world that there are still many who do not have this opportunity and privilege.

Aspirations and dreams are great, but I would like to see more recognition of those who currently have no chance of accessing these dreams and aspirations and for us not to forget them and not to become subject to the group think that ‘everything in the garden is rosy for all’. Let’s keep our feet on the ground.

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Thumbs up to Big Blue Button

Well – I can give BBB the thumbs up. We had an enjoyable, informative and stimulating webinar today.

That’s not to say that there weren’t things that BBB and presenters in BBB need to think about.

I am used to Elluminate and missed some of the functionality of Elluminate – but not a lot. Three things I missed. These were:

1. Being able to write onto the whiteboard using a text box and your keyboard. Currently BBB has a drawing type tool, which is just too clumsy for participant interaction and contributions. It is really helpful if participant responses can be typed up onto the whiteboard.
2. A voting system – which is great for generating interaction. So for example, the presenter can create a slide with a number of contentious or thought provoking statements which participants need to think about and then vote on.
3. The ability to applause (clap) and smile in the participant window. I think these symbols are very important for gauging the ‘mood’ of participants.

But the advantage of BBB is that its open source. This is so important. Elluminate is very good – but is very expensive, especially for small self-funded community groups. Even HE institutions are struggling to meet the costs of Elluminate – given all the cuts that are happening at the moment.

BBB is developing and there will be increased functionality with time – but this is what I learned about using it today.

• You do need headphones and microphone to avoid echo and feedback (similar to Elluminate)
• I’m not sure how well it would work with large numbers – we had a small group and I found it difficult to see all the participants in the ‘listener’ block without a lot of scrolling up and down.
• We sought participant interaction in two ways 1) We asked participants to take the microphone and speak. 2) We asked participants to summarise discussion and upload their slides. This was a little slow – probably because we were all learning how to do it – but worked well. We found that power point slides saved as PDF worked best.

I was kicked out of BBB a couple of times. By that I mean that I lost sound and had to log out and log back in again to hear again. I did notice that changing and uploading presentations could interfere with sound – but I’m not sure why this happened.

Otherwise, the chat had exactly the same functionality as Elluminate. As yet there isn’t the facility to separate into rooms – but our group wasn’t big enough to do this anyhow.

So all in all it was a good experience – and I’m all for open source – so thanks to Big Blue Button

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21st century will be the century of identity

There was a lot in Etienne’s talk to the Lancaster University teaching and learning forum today. The title was ‘Learning in and across the Landscape of Practice’ in which Etienne talked about the multitude of communities of practice which we all come into contact with – a landscape of communities – and how the world is full of boundaries (created by histories – any history creates a boundary) around these communities which we need to decide whether to cross, negotiate or circumvent. We need to decide whether we want to be a member of these communities or not. These decisions affect our personal identity – how we perceive this identity and how this identity is perceived by others.

Learning, meaning, community and identity all work together. Identity is a filter to decide whether to invest in a community or not.  Learning is a claim to competence, but the paradox of learning is that it gives you power, but that power can also limit your learning. There’s a cost to learning and to power.

The big question for the 21^st century is – How do you manage your identity in a world which is so complex and in which there are so many mountains to climb – in which there are too many places to invest in who you want to be? In the past a person’s identity was closely linked to the identity of a community – so, for example  a person living in a small village a hundred years ago would have an identity which could be easily linked to the small community. But today this parallel link between community and identity has broken down. Identity is no longer linked to a particular community, but to a multitude of communities and the burden of identity is shifting more and more onto the shoulders of the person. So the 21^st century will be the century of identity and the challenge for individuals (Etienne prefers to talk about people/persons than individuals) and communities is how to engage with and enable this identity to be realised.

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Autonomy and accountability

Week 8 of the CCK11 course focussed on power and authority on online networks.

Overview
Networked technologies have changed power and authority. This, networked learning has a great deal in common with approaches to learning that focus on personal empowerment and freedom.

The speakers for this week were Frances Bell and Ailsa Haxell. Their session was recorded as was the follow up session by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. Both are well worth viewing/listening to again.

There were many thought provoking ideas in these sessions – but the one that caught my attention was the idea proposed by Ailsa that if knowledge and agency are distributed across the network then accountability must also be distributed. She asked, ‘Am I responsible for the ways that others around me act’ and answered her own question with a ‘Yes’ – there is networked accountability.

Given the activity on my blog for the past two weeks I have found this interesting to think about. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about ‘Attacks on Connectivism’ which to my surprise has attracted a lot of attention and comment. The interesting thing is that this attention and comment is not about me or what I have written, but about Stephen Downes, George Siemens, connectivism and those who have something to say about connectivism as a theory.

If we take the metaphor of blogs being a place where we can invite people to come and sit on our front porch, as opposed to forums which can be viewed more as a market place with lots of hustle and bustle*, then my blog has felt a little more like a market place recently – with a number of people visiting and holding their own discussions.

*(see Mak, Sui, Fai, J., Williams, R. & Mackness, J. (2010). Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC. In Networked Learning Conference, Aarlborg (pp. 275-284). Retrieved from http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/organisations/netlc/past/nlc2010/abstracts/Mak.html)

All this has been very interesting for me, but I have not felt the need to be involved in further  discussion about this – so to what extent am I accountable for the ideas expressed in the comments made on this particular blog post and does it matter?

I know some of the reasons for this post attracting such a lot of attention. First the ‘jury is still out’ on connectivism as a learning theory and there are plenty of people out there who are following associated discussions. More than this George and Stephen made reference to my blog post. That always results in increased readers on your blog. But mostly it was Twitter. For some reason there were lots of tweets about this post.  Am I accountable for all this? Am I responsible for the ways in which others have reacted to this? If I am, does this mean that the network has some sort of power over me and what I can post on my blog? How does this relate to autonomy, which is a key principle of connectivism?

Week 8 Readings

• Stephen Downes, Things You Really Need to Learn
• Henry A. Giroux, Paulo Freire and the Politics of Postcolonialism
• Gary A. Olsen, History, Praxis, and Change: Paulo Freire and the Politics of Literacy
• William H. Dutton, Through the Network (of Networks) – The Fifth Estate .pdf
• Infed, Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning
• Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller and Paul SkidmoreNetwork Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? (.pdf) (this is a book of essays; skim sections that you find to be of interest).
• Edgar Gumbert, ed., Poverty, Power and Authority in Education (.pdf) (this is a book of essays; skim sections that you find to be of interest).
• Mohamed Amine Chatti, Matthias Jarke and Marcus Specht, The 3P Learning Model
• Vance Stevens, Revisiting Multiliteracies in Collaborative Learning Environments: Impact on Teacher Professional Development

 

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Tales from a reticent Elluminate presenter

They say that the best way to learn is to teach – or if not teach then facilitate – or if not facilitate then engage, interact, participate and act. By act I mean ‘get in there and get your hands dirty’.

I have now twice found myself in the position of leading an Elluminate online conferencing session. For neither session was I the intended leader – but in both cases the leader’s technology failed, so leaving me no choice but to ‘pick up the reins’. I had to get in there and ‘get my hands dirty’. I never have liked having dirty hands However, since this has now happened twice I thought I would reflect on what I have learned about the physical management of an online synchronous session. Some people seem to do it so easily – but I do not find it easy. So here is my list of things that work best for me and what I have learned.

1. Plan the session well in advance and have a trial run through in Elluminate. This means that you can check that your microphone is working and that you know your way around the Elluminate tools. If you allow enough time you can even go out and buy a new headset

2. Some people might only ever run one of these sessions. I have attended a lot of sessions but only been responsible for running two.  Running a session is a completely different experience. If you are not confident with the technology then make sure you have someone there who is. We had Helen Whitehead today. It was such a relief to know that she was in control of the technology. She also is very experienced so she knew when to step in.

3. The main difference between ‘teaching/facilitating’ in an Elluminate session and in other environments is – for me – that the facilitator has to contend with the chat room, answering questions and managing the session/ presenting – all at the same time. I cannot do this. Despite being female I am not good at this type of  ‘multitasking’ . I cannot even follow the chat and presentation at the same time when attending an Elluminate session, never mind when running the session. Some people seem to do this wonderfully well and maybe it is achievable with lots of experience, but I have not got there yet. The answer is to work with a team. Someone to handle the technology, someone to do the presentation, one or two people to follow the chat and ‘gather in’ the questions to feed back to the presenter.

4. On the whole, in my experience, very few people are willing to take the microphone and speak in an Elluminate session and I don’t blame them.  The technology can seem daunting – you can hear yourself speaking in your own room, but you don’t know how you are sounding to others. This is where Elluminate teaching overlaps with any good teaching. It’s important to make participants feel comfortable, confident that they can contribute and that all contributions are welcome. I don’t find this bit difficult. What I do find difficult is paying enough attention to what participants are saying. I am nervously thinking about the next slide, the next question, the next activity. Again, this is where a good team could help.

5. I have attended many Elluminate sessions. The ones that I have enjoyed the most have been those that were most interactive. For me Elluminate sessions are not so much about the content to be presented, but about the discussion that can be generated between participants and presenter around key themes/issues related to the content on which the session is focused. If we wanted simply to present we could do a podcast or video presentation or powerpoint presentation – but the point of all getting together in real time is so that we can interact. Elluminate has a number of tools that facilitate interaction – like the chat, polling, writing on the whiteboard, moving into small groups/rooms for discussion (moving into rooms, in my experience, requires someone who is confident with the technology, but can work very well).  That’s not to say that I don’t respect those who don’t wish to interact, but prefer to observe.

6. All the other points I can think of are simply what you would expect of good teaching – e.g. not overloading powerpoint slides, giving people time to think of questions and respond, listening more than talking (I’m not sure if we got this balance right today), sticking to time etc.

I have never yet listened to the recording of the first Elluminate session I led.

I didn’t dare – but I have forced myself to listen to the recording of today’s session. Three things went wrong:

1.     I was completely thrown by having to lead this session – extremely nervous – I can hear that in my voice, but perhaps if you don’t know me you can’t – but this had knock on consequences.

2.     I ‘ummed’ and ‘aahed’  a lot. I don’t do this when I feel confident – although I am naturally a reflective person and prefer to take my time instead of jumping in with a response, which is why it is better if I don’t lead these types of sessions

3.     I simply could not listen. I was too concerned/nervous about managing the session. This meant that I did not give sufficient or adequate response to people who made very interesting comments – and I’m sorry about that – but at least the session was recorded

There’s probably more – but that’s all I can cope with for now. And I’m glad I listened to the recording because it wasn’t as bad as I expected and of course I learned a lot – more than expected – so I suppose you could call it emergent learning

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Emergent Learning Webinar – recording

I need more time to think about the outcomes of the webinar. We had a good turn out – about 30 people – and also lots of discussion in the chat. People were also very good about interacting and participating in the activities we had planned for the session.

For now I’ll just thank everyone and post up some links to information.

The power point we used is here Emergent Learning presentation (PPT) You will see that there is not a lot in it. We tried to plan the session to allow for emergent learning

The chat room transcript is here Emergent Learning Webinar Chat Transcript

This is The recording of the Elluminate session

We are hoping that there will be further discussion in ELESIG – some comments have already been posted

There is still lots to think about and discuss

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CCK11 Characteristics of an autonomous learner

The principles of connectivism are autonomy, diversity, connectedness and openness. Stephen has written and presented about this on a number of occasions. My experience of connectivism in MOOCs or even OOCs is that these principles are not straightforward to apply to course design or learning.

My current interest is in autonomy, as I believe that when thinking about the principles of connectivism – autonomy rules, i.e. it is not possible to experience diversity, connectedness or openness without autonomy, i.e. being an autonomous learner.

Being an autonomous learner seems to be a pre-requisite for successful participation in a MOOC/OOC – but what is an autonomous learner? Are you an autonomous learner? Am I an autonomous learner? Are our students/colleagues/children/friends autonomous learners? How do we know? What are the characteristics of an autonomous learner?

I have spent a bit of time trawling the web and journals with this question in mind and there has been loads written about autonomous learning, much of it in relation to language teaching (haven’t quite got to the bottom of why language teaching yet).  I have been wondering whether learners who participate in MOOCs/OOCs have unique characterstics in relation to autonomous learning – and I invite anyone who ventures here to read this blog post to join me in thinking about this – if you are interested. For me the design of a course based on connectivism principles will have to take account of the characteristics of autonomous learning – hence my desire to get my head round this.

So far I have come up with the following characteristics – the problem is that few of them could be said to be specific to MOOCs/OOCs.

Autonomous learners….

• show responsibility for their own learning
• show initiative
• are able to monitor and evaluate their own learning
• are reflective and show ‘high’ (in inverted comments because I’m not sure how high is high) levels of metacognition
• are self-aware in relation to their own learning (need unpicking)
• are intrinsically motivated
• are life-long learners (not sure about this one)
• can manage and regulate their own learning (OK but what does this involve?)
• are adept at taking/making decisions (how adept is adept?)
• are meaning makers
• are risk takers (not sure about this one)
• have specific skills and strategies for managing their learning online (OK but what skills and strategies?)
• are adaptable and flexible in their approach to learning (how adaptable is adaptable and how flexible is flexible? How would these characteristics manifest themselves?)
• are pro-active (i.e. they don’t wait for things/people to come to them)
• are critical and analytical thinkers (this might be too much of a supposition)
• know how to ask questions (and ideally good questions – but what is a good question?)
• are good at filtering and selecting the information they need
• can take constructive criticism
• can navigate the web
• are technically adept (not sure about this)

I am aware that each one of these characteristics could be questioned. After all how autonomous is autonomous?

If you think autonomy is important to learning in MOOCs/OOCs, then I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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CCK11 – Interesting start

An interesting start to CCK11 – which was marked by the synchronous Elluminate session tonight. I find these synchronous sessions critical to keeping a handle on what is going on and I noted that Sia Vogel (who I remember from CCK08) felt the same. CCK11 is not using Moodle for discussion as previous CCK courses have. Stephen suggested that the scaffolding of the course for CCK11 will be from the Daily rather than from Moodle – I think it also comes from the synchronous sessions – which is perhaps why – at one point – there were 103 people in the session, which finally settled down to about 96.

In terms of learner autonomy – this is a good indication that at least 103 people have been able to find their way around the course well enough to attend the Elluminate session and 40% of these people are new to MOOCs – according to George’s poll. I’m not sure yet how many of these people are talking to each other, although there is already plenty of sharing and group formation. A Second Life group (I think), a Diigo group, I think I noticed a Facebook group, a Pearltrees site, and posting of screencasts and other presentations – all examples of autonomy in action. Another aspect of learner autonomy would be that people are able to choose with whom to make connections, where, when, how to connect and what to discuss once the connection has been formed. I am keen to discuss and learn more about learner autonomy. What does it mean? How will we design our courses to encourage it? I see learner autonomy as being at the heart of what ‘teachers’ need to consider when designing their courses on connectivism principles – but I don’t think it’s straightforward. There are so many potential constraints.

It did occur to me to wonder at one point during this evening’s Elluminate session (evening in the UK ) to wonder how autonomy works between Stephen and George. To what extent do they feel that they have the autonomy to work on the course in the way they wish and how much do they need to compromise? Now there’s a thought. Does autonomy obviate compromise or not? Will have to think about it.

There was quite a lot of ‘talk’ about the need to ‘give’ and ‘create’. We didn’t discuss how much is enough giving and creating – or how we might interpret this. I suspect that one person’s giving might be another person’s arrogance or patronising – and one person’s creativity might be another person’s kitsch. We probably each need to work this out for ourselves and then hold firm to our beliefs. Is this autonomy?

The course was described as: ‘This is complexity by design… it is about enabling each person to have their own distinct perspective on the material’.  This is a noble aspiration but I wonder if it is a reality in the face of considerable (probably implicit) peer pressure from the CCK11 and wider networks. Another thing I am still thinking about as it relates to the reality of autonomy.

There was an interesting question about duplication of effort – are we, because we are all working in distributed environments rather than in one place – all inventing the wheel? Stephen’s answer was that there is an astonishing amount of duplication of effort in existing traditional courses, but in this type of course each person is creating their own representation (see his presentation on The Representative Student). We all have different perspectives which we express in different ways and this multiplicity of points of view creates a more rounded overall view. What does this mean for understanding learner autonomy?

It’s good to know that three or more MOOCs on, I still feel as though there is lots to learn. Perhaps – or very probably – I am a slow learner

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