UK e-University and MOOCs; polar opposites in philosophy and practice

Sue Watling / / open education, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Moocs are in the news again. They are dominating Guardian Online Education where the latest  headline is UK universities are wary of getting on board the mooc train.  MOOC should win a prize for the unlikeliest, and possibility ugliest, acronym of 2012. Putting that to one side, MOOCs, and the philosophy behind them, cannot be ignored. The speed at which MOOCs are developing makes it almost certain the Massive Online Open Course bubble is going to burst but it’s not yet clear what will make that happen.

Hindsight is enhanced with time and it’s now over eight years since the closure of the UK e-University. Two key documents tell the story; The real story behind the failure of the UK e university  by Richard Garrett and Lessons to be learned from the failure of the UK e-university by Paul Bacsich.

Times have changed. The UK e-University was complex involving massive amounts of investment, partnerships, market research plus the building of a new technology platform, all with multiple drivers including hefce and the government. Compare this with MOOCs. User generated content and social media networks have revolutionised the internet in a very short space of time. Uploading content and enabling platforms for discussion and collaborative working has never been so easily achieved while the production and distribution of multimedia has been democratised.

We live in changing times and MOOCs reflect this. In 2004, an e-university was conceived of as a company following traditional organisational structure and practices. In 2012 that model has been thrown out of the window. Open education is becoming a reality for those with means of access. Open Educational Resources and publishing is making quality content freely available online. The UK e-University and MOOCs are polar opposites in philosophy and practice. Somewhere between the two is a workable model but we haven’t yet recognised quite how that will look.

 

MOOCs: here, there and everywhere…

Sue Watling / / MOOCs, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

MOOCs are everywhere. This week sees the start of a free MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from the OER Foundation. Open Content Licensing for Educators runs from 3-14 December and is an online workshop designed for educators wanting to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses. 293 people are currently registered from 58 different countries. You can register at http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/Home

If you prefer a home grown MOOC, the Open Learning Design Studio’s ‘Learning Design for a 21st Century Curriculum’ is a 9 week course starting 10/01/13. Designed with further and higher education professionals with an interest in curriculum and learning design, the course has been funded by JISC as part of a benefits realisation programme and is intended to build on the success of the Open University Learning Design Initiative (OULDI) and other JISC funded curriculum design and delivery projects. Go to http://www.olds.ac.uk/ to find out more about the course and to register.

If you prefer a wider choice of subjects, Open Culture http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses has a list of 185 MOOCs offered by leading universities. Most offer ‘certificates’ or ‘statements of completion.’

MOOCs are currently getting media coverage and the only way to have an informed judgement is to try one. As well as the links above, MOOCs are also offered at Udacity and Coursera. There must be something somewhere for everyone.

Broader digital literacies as essential life skills

Sue Watling / / digital inclusion, digital literacies, digital scholarship, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

At last the government acknowledges digital exclusion is about more than access to technology – it is also about the quality of that access. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20236708 Digital literacies are moving centre stage. This is reassuring. For too long the focus has been embedding technology into systems or attention to early adopters pushing the boundaries. It’s time the user experience received some attention.

This past year the JISC Developing Literacies Programme has funded projects designed to embed core digital skills into the curriculum. JISCs definition of digital literacy is those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society. Within HE they give examples of using digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; PDP and showcasing achievements. But it’s not easy to package digital literacies into any single box and this makes strategic approaches to supporting their development a tricky task.

A report commissioned by Go On has concluded 16 million people in the UK lack basic online skills; defined as using a search engine, sending and receiving emails, completing online applications and accessing information online. Organisations are pledging to train their employees in these four areas. This barely scratches the surface when the full implications of digital engagement are set out. Broader digital literacies have become essential life skills for example personal and financial safety online, the permanence of digital footprints and hard criticality with regard to online content. In an unmoderated environment, the evaluation of authenticity and authority lies with the individual user. Distinguishing between knowledge information and personal opinion is an increasingly essential art – and not always an easy one.

Being let loose on the internet can be exciting and inspiring. It can also quickly become a nightmare. Digital literacies have moved on from the skills required to access virtual environments, although there is a danger these are assumed more than are in evidence.  However, I’m not sure they have moved far enough. There are broader issues around living in a digital society which are surfaced less often. Any attention to digital literacies is good but the attention has to be focused in the right places for it to be truly effective

Digital literacy: pluralised and complex

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

A recent Edudemic post addresses the non-use of teaching technology.   The reference to teachers who are ‘not comfortable with technology’ resonated. They may be more of them than is often realised. Change is always a challenge and adoption of technology for teaching requires major shifts in practice. Support for the process is essential, either through staff development or teacher education.  The Edudemic post claims the amount spent on technology for schools in the US is rising while professional development budgets are decreasing or non-existent. Here in the UK, it can sometimes seem resourcing for staff engagement with technology is not sufficiently prioritised. Competition for funds has never been greater yet digital literacy has not only become plural it’s become complicated. Keeping up to date with is hard enough when you work with the technology. For those at the far end of the digital spectrum, it can seem impossible to even know where to begin.

There is a growing need to support staff to use technology effectively. Without investing in resources to bridge the divide between teaching and technology, staff cannot develop the prerequisite confidence with virtual learning environments.  Embedding OER Practice at Lincoln, now in its final weeks, showed how staff engagement with the internet for teaching and learning doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens with appropriate targeted support, customised to suit individual disciplines and personalities. It works best within small groups of shared practice and requires initial scaffolding which can be withdrawn for use elsewhere as the affordances of being online are realised and the necessary skills and competencies embedded into day to day practices.  The review into the future of the institutional VLE offers an appropriate opportunity to also review the way in which digital literacies are defined and resourced across the university.  The internet and all its associated tools for learning are not going away any time soon. The more we invest in their use the better that use will be.

Offline; a new staff development activity

Sue Watling / / social impact of the Internet

Rory Cellan Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, went 24 hours without the internet, concluding he was unable to function without being hooked up to the online world. Most of those he spoke to during this time agreed with him. Later, on reflection, Cellan Jones concluded disconnection might not be a bad thing after all. I have sympathy for this view.  At Brayford this morning the internet was dodgy for about an hour and then disconnected for ten minutes to be fixed. That was bad enough. At the time. But what disconnection highlights is our addiction to being online in general and to social media in particular. We have become dependent and it has happened in a very short time. In less than a decade the internet machine has taken over.

What would Christopher Lasch have to say? In his book The Culture of Narcissism he claimed American society was out of touch with past and future and overly absorbed in the present. People were afraid of nothingness and, in order to fill the void of themselves, had become totally focused on the moment seeking immediate self-gratification through consumerism or entertainment. In an echo of Neil Postman’s  critique of mainstream US television, everyone was in danger of amusing themselves to death.

Both Lasch and Postman were wOiting before the internet revolution of the late 20th and early 21st century. The internet is probably the biggest void filler of all. It enhances opportunities to block out reality and encourages retreat to a parallel digital universe, one which responds to the screen swipe or a key click. The more we become dependent on accessing information online, and living out our lives via digital versions of social forums and media, the greater the risk of being unable to function in a disconnected world. Adopting an hour a day or a day a week when the internet is turned off might not be such a bad thing after all.

Free OERs and MOOCs

Sue Watling / / MOOCs, OER, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The presentation below was created to introduce students to the availability of free open educational resources and courses. It refers to the OU’s Open Learn, MIT and Coursera.  As I was recording the audio, Open Culture published a list of new courses, or MOOCs  (Massive Online Open Courses), for 2013 at http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses. If this were not enough to choose from, Open Culture link to a further 550 courses here http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourse.

I’ve been looking at Coursera’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (see http://thealphabetdances.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/2012/11/20/150) and recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about the history of US poetry from the 19th century onwards. There are a thousand alternatives including E-learning and Digital Cultures from the University of Edinburgh which starts in January 2013 and will explore how digital cultures and learning cultures connect, and what this means for e-learning theory and practice. Learning has never been so flexible or such fun!

The presentation below is best viewed with speakers or headphones.

Digital scholarship – shifting emphasis from tools to users

Sue Watling / / Blackboard, digital literacies, digital scholarship, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

The ongoing VLE Options Appraisal is a useful opportunity to look at the wider issues around virtual learning environments.  VLEs have come a long way since Dearing* but in terms of keeping up with wider developments on the internet, in particular the move to openness and connectivity, they can sometimes look a little out of date.

Open academic practice and the rise in content management systems are examples of formidable challenges to the VLE. Compare a locked down password protected environment to contemporary social media and you’ll soon find support for the VLE critics who say it is a staff driven content store, low on genuine pedagogical interaction and pretty ugly too.

So has the VLE failed? No, I don’t think so. It might never be the number one choice of personal learning environment but it has untapped potential. Rather than be critical of the tool, it may be worth investing more in research not only on the way it is – and could be – used within  the institution, but exactly what staff need to get started – as well as to get innovative.

Over the past decade a giddy variety of technologies have been personalised for education. Their mix is both widening and deepening the gap between active users and those who are less confident with online practices.  Innovation tends to be led by those with digital thought patterns who sometimes find it hard to conceive of worlds where paper and pen are preferred.  The word learning needs to be added to technologist. Learning technology describes roles which can bridge the gaps between technical support and pedagogical design for teaching and learning in a digital age.  Outputs from the JISC Digital Literacies  programme will be useful but how broadly they’ll be disseminated to those who have yet to move beyond uploading content and horizontal browsing remains to be seen.

Unless we shift from the tool to the user then the full potential of any VLE cannot be realised.  The VLE Options Appraisal is an opportunity to look beyond decisions based on the cost of the technology towards how best the university can resource the use of the technology. Digital scholarship in 21st century should include confidence with utilising the affordances of ANY virtual learning environment. To do this will inevitably improve the quality of use of those learning tools which are institutionally supported and maintained.

* Report of the National Committee on Inquiry into Higher Education  (1997) https://bei.leeds.ac.uk/Partners/NCIHE/

Keep up to date at the 2012 VLE Strategy blog http://vlestrategy.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/