Technology and Education Research Group

We held our first meeting for the Autumn on Thursday September 15th. Members present were:
Karen, Mirabelle, Judith, Jon and Roger.

The main focus of the meeting was a discussion of two articles on the concept of ‘transactional distance’:

• Michael Moore (1993) ‘Theory of transactional distance’. in Keegan, D., ed. Theoretical Principles of Distance Education, Routledge, pp. 22-38.
• Paul Gorsky and Avner Caspi (2005) ‘A critical analysis of transactional distance theory’, The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 6(1), pp. 1-11

The first of these is a chapter by the originator of the concept, explaining the elements it includes, and discussing the relationships between them. The second is a paper disputing the validity of these ideas.

Group members were of different opinions regarding these two articles. Some of us felt that the ideas included in the concept of transactional distance were useful, even though the reationships between them did not seem to be clearly specified. Others felt that Gorsky and Caspi were right in their claim that the theory did not hold up to close examination. We agreed that further background on transactional distance, and the associated debates, would be of interest.

We then went on to share our items of news from the summer period.

Mirabelle is in discussions regarding possible publication of a book on developing students’ writing and self-evaluation skills. She and Judith are planning a co-authored paper on this aspect of the OU course T215 Communication and Information Technologies.

Judith is awaiting feedback on a co-authored journal paper submitted earlier this year. She, Karen, Helen and Frances are working on post-review revisions to a further paper. Judith has also made a good start on her two eSTEeM projects.

Karen has been working on a paper about social presence and user profiles in social networking.  This will link into her eSTEeM project with Frances and Helen Jefferis (OU tutor and consultant). Karen and Jon have been working further with Keith on the E-xcellence Next project to further develop benchmarks and a manual on quality in elearning.

Karen and Judith have heard from Giselle, who is on study leave in Brazil until Christmas. Giselle is also working on the E-xcellence project.

Jon has been working on his iSPOT project, including dissemination. He has also presented a poster at a conference on computer-assisted assessment. This links with his eSTEeM project on confidence-based assessment. His second eSTEeM project related to a change in assessment methods is going well, with an increase in retention on the associated course.

Our next TERG meeting will be on Thursday November 17th at 2.30pm.

Back in June, Keith, Jon and Karen attended a 2-day meeting in Paris as part of the ‘E-xcellence Next’  EU-funded project.

The first day was a meeting of the cross-European E-xcellence next project team.

The second day was the  European Seminar on QA in E-learning, at which Keith gave a talk and Karen and Jon presented a workshop on social networking and Open Educational Resources.

As part of the visit, Keith was involved in meetings hosted by Unesco to establish a Global Task Force for QA in E-Learning. This initiative involved our ex-Vice Chancellor John Daniels (see photo below).

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We had a visitor at our May meeting  – Ebba Ossiannilsson from Lund University in Sweden. Ebba is visiting the Open University for a short period in connection with her research on quality in e-learning. We hope Ebba is enjoying her time here.

Several group members were away, so there were only a few of us: Jon, Andy, Mirabelle, Karen and Ebba.

We started with the usual news and updates. In brief:

Mirabelle, has submitted a journal paper on peer feedback. She is also working on a second paper with a colleague in the Department of Languages. She will now be moving on to write a book chapter.

Jon has started work on his two projects within the MCT and Science ‘Esteem’ initiative: computer-marked exams; and confidence-based assessment. He is pursuing ethics and student research clearance, and is due to present a poster at an assessment conference.

Andy’s SusTEACH project is underway. This project, funded by JISC, will investigate the environmental impact of teaching and learning using technology. Data will be gathered from students and teachers at several universities, including the OU.  

Karen has submitted a journal paper, co-authored with Judith, Frances and Helen, on tutors’ experiences of using Elluminate audioconferencing for teaching.  

We moved on to discuss some administrative business related to the group budget, the department student research day (June 14th) and a possible TERG research day some time in the summer.

We then spent some time discussing two papers related to the concept of  ’digital natives’:

• Mark Prensky (2009) H. sapiens digital: From digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Innovate 5 (3).
• Chris Jones, Ruslan Ramanau, Simon Cross, Graham Healing (2010) Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation
  entering university? Computers & Education 54  722–732.

Mirabelle also pointed us to a paper by Bullen et al. which investigated the digital natives idea in Canadian universities.  

Our discussion largely focused on the idea of ‘digital wisdom’, as introduced in the article by Prensky. We considered what ‘wisdom’ might mean in the context of education. Ebba introduced us to the German term bildung, which seemed related, and expressed the broad ideas of learning, teaching and personal development.

Attendees: Karen, Judith, Mirabelle, John, Giselle, Richard

As usual, we started with news and updates:

• Richard is giving a conference paper at an IEEE conference in Venice in May.
• Mirabelle and colleagues are to write a book chapter on feedback in the book Reconceptualising feedback in higher education: towards an agenda for effective change, to be published by Routledge.
• Judith, Giselle and their colleague Soraya have submitted a paper to the European Journal of Open Distance and eLearning (EURODL) for a special themed issue on creativity and open educational resources. Their paper is a case study of the video creation work in Block 5 of T215.
• Giselle, with Tina Wilson, is writing a book chapter on Web 2.0 and OER.
• Jon will be trialing his eSTEeM confidence-based marking project through T216, and is also intending to work on converting the T184 ECA into a part computer-marked exam with the objective of improving retention.
• Karen mentioned a possible new part-time PhD student, who has proposed a project about VLEs in schools.

 The meeting then moved to general discussions. First, stimulated by Jon’s discussion of his T184 project, we talked generally about examinations in OU modules. Giselle talked about the new VMware course for presentation in 2012B that she is currently chairing.

 We finished the meeting with a discussion on finance. It was agreed that Mirabelle’s Survey Monkey licence should be extended for a further year and that Karen’s licence should also be extended and made available for other TERG members to use. Karen asked members to identify whether there were any conferences they would like to attend.

Leuven town hall

The E-xcellence project on quality in e-learning started on January 1st 2011. The OU contribution is led by Keith W, with Karen, Jon, Giselle and Wendy forming the rest of the team.

Keith and Karen went to Leuven, in Belgium, for the project start-up meeting on 17th and 18th January.

Leuven is a lovely old university town with ornate buildings and cobbled streets. The meeting was at the Irish College which was founded by Irish monks - this was also a lovely building.

The project meeting was attended by representatives from the many project partners and associates. There were attendees from Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Equador … The project partners gave presentations on their particular workpackages. Keith presented for the OU, and included a great whistle-stop tour of ideas and new developments in e-learning.

The project dinner

On the evening of the first day there was a project dinner in a Leuven restaurant. This was a very pleasant event and good for getting to know the other people, and finding out about education, and other aspects of life,  in the different countries represented. 

The OU team will be developing a set of self-assessment guidelines and benchmarks for quality in e-learning. The project will also run a number of local workshops where an institution can carry out a supported review of their e-learning.

Attendees: Karen, Judith, Mirabelle, Wendy, Jon, and Giselle – with Elaine on the phone from Ireland.

We started with news and updates. Jon reported that the iSpot project had won a prize, and was in the running for a second one.  Jon was in the process of bidding to JISC for further funding for his part of  iSpot. He and ChrisB had aubmitted an abstract for the CAL conference, about the history of online conferencing at the OU. Giselle continues to work with Tina Wilson on ethics and OERs. They have papers to CAL and a book chapter under review. Giselle, Judith and Soraya have a conference paper accepted for the SRHE (Society for Research in Higher Education). Wendy’s tablet PC project continues well, using a Ning network for communication among the 9 tutors. She has papers with Birgit Loch from Australia, to be presented at the Ascilite and ATEC conferences there. Mirabelle has a paper about feedback at the ISSOTL conference, together with colleagues in the Spanish Department. The proposed book on feedback is being discussed with possible publishers. Mirabelle has run a regional staff development workshop in Scotland, and continues her evaluation work on T215. Karen’s book is now in print. She is working on a bid with John Pettit related to real-time conferencing (e.g. using Elluminate). The paper with John Wookthorpe and two T175 ALs, about wikis, is now published. Judith has been working with Helen, Frances and Karen to write a paper about Elluminate in T175. They are using a wiki for this, which is working well. Elaine is in discussions with Arts staff tutors for a bid/seminar related to research on assessment.

For ‘other news’ Giselle reported that all the HEA subject centres have had funding withdrawn, so are likely to close. Karen reported briefly on the 2-year, EU-funded E-xcellence Next project - looking at quality in e-learning – which will start in January. Keith Williams is the lead for the OU, with Karen also involved. Giselle and Wendy are interested in contributing to the project.

We moved on to group discussion of  a journal paper suggested by Mirabelle:

Nicol, David J. and Macfarlane-Dick, Debra(2006) ‘Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice’, Studies in Higher Education, 31: 2, 199 — 218.

Mirabelle led the discussion, beginning by clarifying the meanings of ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ assessment and ‘self-regulated learning’. After an interesting discussion, we agreed that it might be valuable to look at the seven principles and try to find examples of them.

We finished the meeting with a few points on group business e.g. finance, web presence. Karen reminded members to complete the OU audit of research. The first stage is to make sure all publications are in ORO (Open Research Online). She also mentioned the MCT and Science Faculty ‘Esteem’ initiative for STEM-related work. This will provide support for various kinds of projects.

Back in June (Tues June 9th) the Communication & Systems Department held a research day for full-time and part-time PhD students.

In the morning, each student gave a short presentation of an aspect of their research. The photo above shows Paul Herring giving his talk on research into technology-enhanced learning for children with autism. Paul is supervised by TERG members Roger and Karen, and by Kieron Sheehy (from the Faculty of Education and Language Studies).   

In the afternoon, participants headed off to the Open University Library for a session on keeping up-to-date on research literature. This was  led by Fiona Bowtell.

On Thursday July 1st TERG joined with the Technology and Learning Research Group to host a talk by Caroline Haythornthwaite.

Caroline is Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2009-10 she is also Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, presenting and writing on the topic of ‘Learning Networks’. In August 2010 she is taking up the position of Director, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia.

Caroline’s talk was titled Learning Networks.  The abstract is given below.

Learning is supported through social networks of exchange – of information, support, or reference materials. In networks, learning is a relation that connects people – for example, when a student learns from a teacher or colleagues learn from each other. It can become the nature of the tie between people, such as when members of a class become a learning community. And it can also be an outcome of the combined set of interactions that tie people, such as when groups gain competence in their joint technology use. Through joint use of technology, communities hold among their members knowledge of their history, and societies becomes proficient at supporting their citizens.

The principles of social network analysis provide a grounding for exploring this multi-faceted aspect of learning networks, a short-hand I use to address overlapping themes of computer networks, social networks, and online learning. With reference to social network research studies, this presentation explores how social network principles can be used as a framework for addressing learning networks, including the kinds of relations that compose and sustain learning ties, and how these ties support networks of learning crowds and communities.

Caroline’s talk was very well attended, and was followed by a good discussion and question-and-answer session.

Caroline’s sides are at the link below:

PDF file of Caroline’s slides

On Tuesday June 22nd the Technology and Education Research Group had a joint reseach day with the Society and Information Research Group.  This was held at the Parkside Hotel, Woughton on the Green  – the same location as last year’s event.

There were 14 of us, between the two research groups. We started off with an ‘ice-breaker’ activity, allowing us to learn more about each others’ activities. Each person wrote down anonymously one research-related achievement from the past year. Then the others had to guess who had written which. I think the most memorable one was ‘appeared naked in Second Life’ – but I won’t tell you who that was! 

We moved on to more serious matters, with a session on theory – from Allan J, Chris B and Steve W. This covered a range of socio-technical ideas.

We also had sessions on: getting published in journals; journal impact factors; and the REF. We ended with a round-table session on people’s plans for the coming year.

I went to an event organised by CREET at which two commissioning editors from Routledge came to give a presentation and then to meet individually with people to discuss proposals. The editors were Bruce Roberts (educational psychology, learning and instruction, primary) and Annemarie Kino (early years, secondary, education studies).

The presentation (I have a hard copy of the slides) covered basic background and an outline of the publishing process. Advice started with making sure that what you propose is a book rather than something else: not time critical, telling a story, of interest to more than a few… Then choosing a publisher: ask advice from colleagues, pick one with other titles in similar area (tip: better to be one of a group than an oddity in catalogue — won’t be marketed well). Approach one publisher at a time, send your proposal to named individual, do everything by email.

Then some detail on what a book proposal should contain (I have a hard copy proforma). This contains some obvious things about book: title, synopsis (300-500) words, contents list (including brief abstract of each chapter), sample chapter if possible (but don’t send lengthy drafts). Tip: choose an obvious title so that punters using Google will find it; don’t go for puns! Also some obvious things about yourself: brief CV, proposed schedule (tip: be realistic; one year is OK, but more than 18 months unlikely).

But also much about marketing — which I naively thought was the publisher’s business! That should include indication of the readership and market, courses/student numbers for textbooks, international scope, and analysis of the ‘competition’: brief critical assessment of competing books, both to convince publisher why your book is needed but also bullet points to be used by sales reps in marketing. Tip: important to distinguish yourself from others.

Process can start with informal contact and possibly 1-side outline, but really starts with formal proposal. Commissioning editor makes initial assessment, then sends for review (tip: you can suggest reviewers, but best not from own institution). Author needs to respond to feedback (tip: be open/flexible but OK to make a stand if you believe you know better than reviewer; always reply to points in some detail). You may be asked to provide sample chapter and another review may be required. Then commissioning editor presents to publishing committee. If successful, contract will be offered specifying schedule and word count, details of format, etc. Marketing and cataloguing start now — ie before book is written!

Some liaison during writing, but next big stage is handover. Editorial assistants guide book through press including copy editing, indexing, covers etc. Amount of editorial input seems to vary considerably between publishers. For example, most expect authors to provide list of index terms, or will arrange professional indexing (but cost approx £100 to come out of royalties). Page proofs will be sent to author for checking.

The big day of publication is typically 6-7 months after manuscript handover. Then publisher should start active marketing — but tip was to be prepared to do as much as possible yourself, eg via special interest groups, contacts.

I guess I was surprised that a lot of the effort (besides the writing!) seemed to have to come from author, not publisher. Reality seems to be that commissioning editor will handle up to 40 new books each year plus similar number in production, so can devote only a few days total to each book. So be prepared to do your homework and make their job easy if you want your proposal to succeed!

Someone asked about potential sales. Routledge are prepared to publish books that will sell only a few hundred, but then will be expensive (£75) and marketed mainly to libraries. Otherwise, they would hope to sell thousands of a £20 textbook.

Another point in passing was that multi-author volumes need to be coherent, have a ‘story’, and add value in commentary to be successful as a book — otherwise should try for journal publication.