Technology and Education Research Group

OLnet’s Tina Wilson and TERG’s Giselle Ferreira have successfully bid to the HEA Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences to develop a new project entitled: Using Open Educational Resources and Web 2.0 Tools to support Ethical Reasoning in ICS Project-Based Learning.

The project aims to investigate the potential of Web 2.0 tools and Open Educational Resources (OER) to support students engaged in project-based learning in ICS. Capitalising on existing online environments and tools, this project will explore the potential of these openly and freely accessible resources to provide a space where students can be encouraged to identify, engage with and discuss ethical issues that arise in their project work. In particular, the work will involve repurposing and reusing the recently published Introducing Ethics in Information and Computer Sciences OER created by Giselle and John Monk and freely available on OpenLearn.

The availability of Web 2.0 tools and OER affords the emergence of novel learning spaces. Ongoing debate on these innovations, however, has predominantly emphasised technical, production and copyright -related issues. This project proposes to look beyond these issues by focusing on pedagogy. By taking into account the ways in which lecturers and students view social networking tools, the researchers will seek to shed some light on the potential of such arenas for formal, informal and, perhaps, new and less fragmented models of, learning. As such, it is envisaged that knowledge gained from this project will inform further developments of the Ethics OER as well as the ongoing research developed by OLnet.

The project starts on the 1^st December 2009.

On Thursday Oct 15th we had a TERG group meeting, where we:

shared our recent work, current activities and future plans

discussed an article about Connectivism (Siemens, 2005)

gave feedback to Karen on a draft book chapter.

These three types of activity will form a pattern for future group meetings, so that we keep up with what everyone is doing, discuss research literature, and provide constructive feedback on work-in-progress.

Members at the meeting were AndrewS, AndyL, Giselle, Karen, Mirabelle, Steve (via speakerphone) and Wendy.

Below are some brief notes on the meeting discussions.

Sharing what we are doing

Steve is working with colleagues on a proposed symposium for the Networked Learning conference. He will soon be starting an externally-funded research project related to the TUC.

Giselle has completed her project to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) on ethics, and is now exploring possibilities for re-use of these. She has recently had a paper accepted by the International Journal of Learning that focuses on two case-studies carried out as part of her COLMSCT project.

Andrew is working closely with Cisco as part of their education programme. He has a paper accepted for their conference, reporting on students’ collaborative work with a remote network modelling tool.

Mirabelle is working with colleagues in the Department of Languages to continue her work on feedback to students. Other work includes contributing to a symposium on assessment, and a book chapter.

Wendy has been working on a Faculty project to review assessment practices. She has also been working on a conference paper for EARLI and a book chapter, as well as reviewing research bids for the ICS group of the HEA.

Andy continues to be heavily involved in research on Open Educational resources. In particular, he is working on the HEFCE-funded SCORE project.

Karen is occupied writing her book about online learning communities, and continuing her COLMSCT fellowship. Together with TERG colleagues, she has been researching students’ use of wikis and (more recently) Elluminate.

(Wendy, Giselle, Jon and Karen’s Web 2.0 conference workshop has been described in an earlier TERG blog post)

Discussing Connectivism

We had a lively discussion of the paper on Connectivism by George Siemens. This paper includes ideas related to chaos theory, social network analysis, distributed cognition, knowledge management, artificial intelligence etc. Group members were not convinced by the paper’s claim that Connectivism was a new learning theory. We felt that there was some confusion between learning as a process and learning as a product.

This discussion moved us on to the idea of digital scholarship, particularly ’publish-then-filter’ approaches to sharing ideas within the educational community.

Feedback on draft chapter

Finally, group members gave some feedback on Karen’s draft chapter on learning theories. Points made include:

What is the audience and purpose for the book?

Need to make links between theory and practice, and to give practice prominence.

Needs taking more slowly (especially cognitive versus social constructivism).

Case study example is helpful for understanding and enlivening the theory.

The unit Introducing Ethics in Information and Computer Sciences has just been published on OpenLearn, marking the completion of Giselle Ferreira’s project A Framework for Teaching Ethics to ICS Students and Practitioners using Open Educational Resources funded by the HEA Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences.

A core element of the rationale informing the unit is a view of dialogue as a medium for learning. The unit is itself the outcome of extensive dialogue carried out in a preceding pilot project, and it is hoped that, rather than constituting a static object, a ‘final word by experts’, the material will be taken away and further developed, used, ideally, to prompt further conversations with students, colleagues and practitioners in the area.

The unit explores various types of sources including codes of practice, plays and literary texts, academic texts, media clips and audiovisual, most of which are available for download from the site. The complete set of materials is available for re-use and re-purposing under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License and can be found online on the LearningSpace as well as on the LabSpace.

International Conference Villach/Austria Sept. 23-35 2009 ICL (Interactive Computer Aided Learning) http://www.icl-conference.org/
Workshop: Exploring Web 2.0 to support online learning communities: where technology meets pedagogy

Giselle, Wendy, Jon and Karen, recently presented a workshop at the ICL2009 conference, currently in its twelfth year, at Villach in Austria.  The aim of the workshop was to raise awareness of how Web 2.0 tools can support collaborative learning.

The three-hour, interactive workshop was facilitated by Jon and Wendy in Austria, with Giselle and Karen making real-time presentations and contributions to the workshop via Flashmeeting and other online tools. Twenty three international participants took part in the workshop, which was a mix of discussion and hands-on activities via participants’ WiFi enabled laptops. The participants really valued the opportunity to work together in a face to face environment and at the same time work through online activities.

Two weeks prior to the event, the organisers of ICL 2009 provided the names and e-mail addresses of the twenty eight participants who had registered for the event. On the same day they were invited via email  to join a ‘Ning’ social network set up by Wendy. Using three profile questions, the organisers of the workshop were able to find out where people worked, what their interests were in Web 2.0 and what they hoped to get out of the workshop. This meant that the activities could be personalised for the participants prior to the workshop.

The workshop started with brief presentations from Jon and Wendy about the Open University and their own research interests, punctuated by a ‘speed-dating’ ice-breaker, to help everyone get to know each other. Giselle and Karen then joined the workshop via Flashmeeting and gave presentations from Milton Keynes on their research interests.

In the next activity, participants were invited to join the Ning social network (if they had not already done so) and explore its features, contributing their thoughts as blog postings within the Ning environment. (This ‘Ning’ activity was built on previous experience of its successful use at the 4th Blended Learning Conference at the University of Hertfordshire by Mark Russell.)

In the final activity, participants worked in small groups using a wiki. They were invited to choose from eight scenarios which each described a Web 2.0 tool used in an educational context.  The groups were asked to consider the scenario in relation to issues chosen from a list provided in the wiki.   They were asked to write a short commentary, in the wiki, on how these issues related to their chosen scenario. The issues and scenarios were then discussed in the final plenary. 

Feedback from participants at the workshop was very positive, showing that people value the chance to try web 2.0 tools and discuss their use in education. These are just some of the participants’ feedback comments from the evaluation of the event.

• “Very interesting and useful to get to know these tools.”
• “Very good to use the tools that you talked about, direct in the workshop.”
• “Very interesting, great to discuss the use of these tools in ODL environment.”
• “Just what we expected.”
• “To be made online : )”
Links

Link to the workshop’s ‘Ning’ social network http://tergou.ning.com – if interested then e-mail w.a.fisher@open.ac.uk for an invite.
 
Link to the workshop’s wiki http://icl2009web2.pbworks.com – if interested then e-mail J.P.Rosewell@open.ac.uk for a password.

Link to workshop’s presentations http://www.slideshare.net/J.P.Rosewell/exploring-web-20-to-support-online-learning-communities-where-technology-meets-pedagogy

Technology and Education Research Group (TERG) blog http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/terg/

The organisers would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of: COLMSCT, the ATELIER-D project, Regional Director Nick Berry, TERG and the Department of Communication and Systems for their sponsorship and financial support.

I’ve just been listening, via OU Stadium, to the recording of Brigid Heywood’s recent talk on OU Research Strategy.

(Can anyone locate the actual strategy document? )

Here’s a liveblog style summary of Brigid’s talk.

Consultancy exercise for REF (on website).

Evidence for world class research.

OU in top 4 for excellence in research and teaching.

453 staff submitted to RAE – grow this number for REF.

Research excellence and selectivity.

Funders and the external funding environment are changing. Funders trying to work with less money available.

Focus on global problems, which need multi-discipline approaches.

Research will be managed – shift in institutional practice needed.

We need to advertise the value of OU research. People don’t know the OU does significant research.

Long way to go on bringing in research income or on recruiting postgraduate research students. Need externally funded studentships.

Staff demographic (age) is a problem.

Read first ten to eleven paragraphs of the research strategy document.

Develop research leadership – person, group, discipline.

Three key objectives

Measurable outputs. Evidence of impact.

Contributions to the university’s teaching. Foresight _ proactive not reactive.

Focused scholarship activity. Genesis research.

Structure/ organisation of university not suited for optimising research.

Metrics. Income. Students. Already behind where we should be.

Uncertainly. But audit likely to be in 2012.

Hard metrics and soft metrics. Didn’t do so well in hard – did well in soft.

Can do better – have confidence.

Need wider source of funders. Over reliant on research councils

Cross-discipline thematic networks. Possibilities might be climate change, health, widening participation, a life of quality, personal finance, digital identities.

Senate will decide the themes.

Our teaching portfolio is also attractive to research funders.

Digital e-knowledge, open research resources, bringing together research communities, digital archives, digital research communities – global research communities.

Second round of chartered studentships. Matched funding.

Evidence-based narratives.

MCT ‘OU ver’ website about environment research.

ORO is providing information about why people download papers. This info will be used more in future. 25K hits/month. V. successful.

Strengthen agenda-setting scholarship.

Research which will help people of the future (long term benefit).

Questions:

Q: Mechanisms for supporting valuable conversations and research to turn them into actions?

A: New VC supports idea of research themes and integrating research into other OU activities. Centre around shortlist of proto-themes initially – discuss via wiki. Next week’s research committee will discuss. Academic champions will support the themes. At least two themes will be finalised this year – need to be externally focused.

Q: How do emerging thematic networks relate to existing structures?

A: Not about putting extra organisational layers in or creating extra formal structures. About creating narratives and dialogue (in order to gain external funding). Look to see how other successful places do it.

Q. How can we balance research and teaching time? What’s happening at strategic level to help people?

A: The strategy has high-level support. Priorities will need to be managed and balanced at all levels. Workload planning, promotion criteria, the debate about scholarship – all will contribute. Need to ‘manage the risk of fragmentation’ (quoting Anne De Roek). Discipline excellent underpins all these priorities.

Frances recently presented a paper at the annual conference of the Higher Education Academy’s MSOR (Maths, Stats and Operational Research) network.

The paper was co-authored with Karen, Helen, Judith and Hazel, and was titled:

The use of synchronous online tutorials to provide numeracy support for technology students

The paper reported on work carried out as part of Karen’s COLMSCT fellowship. A number of T175 associate lecturers used Elluminate to provide an additional numeracy tutorial for their students. The research gathered data on the students’ and tutors’ perspective of this experience.

Helen, Clem and Karen, together with Gill Kirkup from IET, have recently had a book chapter published. It is about the use of online communication and social networking for women’s career development:

Donelan, Helen; Herman, Clem; Kear, Karen and Kirkup, Gill (2009).

Online participation: Shaping the networks of professional women.

In: Dumova, Tatyana and Fiordo, Richard eds. Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends. UK: Information Science Reference, pp. 270–280.

The book itself is an interesting (and large!) collection of articles about online social networking. It is a good source of up-to-date research in this field.

As one of those who didn’t make it to the ALT-C this year, I’ve received some info by email that seems like something worth sharing more broadly: a link to a list of highlighted ALT-C 2009 talks on video. There are 3 keynotes and 8 invited speaker talks, all made available under a Creative Commons License. One of the keynote speakers is our soon-to-be-VC Martin Bean.

Jon and Wendy are in Villach, Austria, getting ready to present a workshop at the ICL conference.

The workshop, which was designed by Giselle, Jon, Wendy and Karen is titled Exploring Web 2.0 to Support Online Learning Communities:Where Technology Meets Pedagogy.

There are 28 people signed up for the workshop, which is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Giselle and Karen will be joining in via a FlashMeeting link.

As part of the workshop and to help participants get to know eachother beforehand, Wendy set up a Ning social network. This has worked really well, and a number of the workshop participants have joined, uploaded photos of themselves, and said what their interests are. Hopefully these connections can be maintained after the workshop too.

Jon has also set up a wiki that will be used in one of the workshop hands-on activities. This is using the PBworks wiki software. The wiki has been ’seeded’ with a number of scenarios of how Web 2.0 tools might be used for learning. Here’s an example:

In this scenario, students are required to research some subject area over a period of several weeks. They will each write an individual report on the topic and this will be assessed. Their teacher suggests that they should share relevant resources using Delicious (http://delicious.com/).

Participants will be asked to choose a scenario, discuss it in relation to a number of themes/issues (e.g. privacy, assessment, community…) and add their thoughts to the wiki.

Good luck to Wendy and Jon, and we hope the workshop goes really well, and helps us develop some good connections with other educators in Europe.

Now the bank holiday weekend is over, the ‘autumn term’ gets going. So it will be good to hear what everyone has been up to during the past weeks/months.

How about adding a quick comment to this post saying what you’ve been doing? You’re allowed to mention holidays, but also hopefully some research actiities too!