Category Archives: Generic

Events, Generic

FLAN: FutureLearn Academic Network Meeting

FLAN Meeting
Wednesday 17th March 2021
14:00 – 17:00
ONLINE: ZOOM

The meeting of the network was hosted by The Open University in conjunction with OpenTEL last Wednesday.

The international research event gathered a total of 39 people, including researchers, PhD students, course developers, educators and practitioners who were interested in learning about five presentations on the following themes:

  • Supporting people who are learning at scale
  • Training and supporting educators working at scale
  • Assuring the quality of MOOCs and microcredentials

Continue reading FLAN: FutureLearn Academic Network Meeting →

Events, Generic

Dear reader… “It’s okay to play.”

Academics, researchers, and PhD students have to search, select, and submit their work to peer review journals and conferences to disseminate their research to the world. “Think of your audience”,—they say, but how often do they think of making their research projects and findings more accessible to the targeted audience? Regardless of their disciplinary specialisms, they forget to play with how they share their work beyond academia. “It’s okay to play” were the words Dr Martin Glynn told us during his seminar last Wednesday hosted by OpenTEL. Before scrolling down to find the recording of his talk, allow me to give you an intro of Martin’s background and how he ended up writing a book on ‘Data Verbalisation for Researchers’.

Martin came to academia late. In the beginning, he did not harmonise with academics because he did not understand their world. Working with prisoners and the community was his reality. Nevertheless, he pursued a PhD because, as many academics, he saw in education an opportunity to make a difference. “When are you going to publish your findings?” —people used to ask him. Well, the truth was that he was never comfortable with the subtle pressure around attending x number of conferences or having his work published in academic journals.

Continue reading Dear reader… “It’s okay to play.” →

Generic

CALRG 2020 Evaluation Report

The Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG) held its 41st annual conference solely online for the first time in 2020. With some funding from OpenTEL, CALRG were able to collect extended feedback on the experiences of organisers, presenters and participants about attending an online conference. The findings have been compiled into a short report with practical recommendations that you can find here CALRG 2020 Evaluation Report!

Recommendations include:

  • For organisers: Take accessibility into consideration when selecting the platform for your conference and in the options given to presenters (e.g., some may prefer to send in a recording of the presentation and just take live questions)
  • For presenters: Set a timer next to your screen as it is hard for the facilitator to give you a discrete reminder about reaching your time limit.
  • For participants: Mute your mic when not speaking.

The ongoing pandemic will mean that CALRG2021 is likely to be held at least partly online. This report will inform the planning and running of the event, and the organisers will use this report’s evaluation methods as a starting point for an upstream evaluation approach to understanding the benefits and challenges of CALRG2021 (scheduled for 15-16 June 2020).

Events, Generic, Open & Inclusive SiG, Student Voice

Summary of Student Voice Event

Open & Inclusive SIG- Student Voice Event Summary Report
By Emily Coughlan

As part of the Open and Inclusive Special Interest Group, the team coordinated and delivered the first online student voice event on the 20th January2021. The event was intended to give students the opportunity to speak freely and openly about different topics, as put forward by both staff and students, and stimulate discussion around current and emerging issues regarding accessibility at the OU.

The event was attended by over 40 participants which included staff and students from different disciplines and areas within the OU. The event included three interactive workshops where students and staff were able to share their own experiences, discussing challenges they face and areas of concern as well as positive experiences.

The three workshops focussed on the following areas of interest: Continue reading Summary of Student Voice Event →

Events, Generic, OpenAIED SIG

openAIED Presentations in December 2020

Presentations from Andrew Gargett, Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, and Alison Fox, Senior Lecturer in Teaching and Learning (The Open University).

Wednesday 2nd December, 14:00 – 15:30
ONLINE: Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect Link for OU Staff
Link for external participants

Presentation 1: Topics in Social AI
Dr Andrew Gargett

Abstract:
While AI research and technology is becoming established in almost every sector of many national economies, from education and healthcare, to retail, transport, agriculture, automotive and professional services, it is far less clear how AI is impacting on other domains of our lives, including the social, psychological & cultural. My work in AI has taken me from more research-focused areas of modelling social and cultural features of communication and action between agents (natural and/or artificial), to more industry facing roles applying AI techniques, often at scale, to address business challenges across a range of industry sectors. This talk will attempt a kind of synthesis of these experiences. I will also report on an initiative within the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics around “social AI”. In order to bring these threads together, I will devote some time to considering the impact of the increasing push from within research and industry toward more socially responsible AI.

Bio:
Andrew Gargett recently joined The Open University’s School of Languages and Applied Linguistics, as a Lecturer in AI (July 2020). From February 2016, he led the AI team at the Hartree Centre, within the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Prior to this, he completed a Marie Curie Research Fellowship (2013-2015), at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, on the Gen-Meta project (automatically understanding and generating metaphor in natural language).

Presentation 2: Keeping humanity in AI in Education research
Dr Alison Fox

Abstract:
This presentation is based on a chapter drafted for a book under contract to Routledge entitled The Ethics of AI in Education: Who Cares? Data, algorithms, equity and biases, in educational contexts, edited by Wayne Holmes and Duygu Bektik. This was the result of an invitation to apply an ethical framework developed over the last 10 years, drawing together four ethical traditions, to the field of AI in Education research. This presentation will cover this analysis to identify a range of dimensions to keep in mind to ensure that humanity is retained within the field of AI in Education research.

Bio:
Alison is a Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching in the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport in WELS. She has developed interests in research ethics, including acting as part of the working group revising the British Educational Research Association ethical guidelines launched in 2018, as Ethics Advisor to a Horizon2020 project led by Cambridge University and is currently Deputy Chair of the OU HREC. She has led the design and running of two open courses about research ethics: A University of Leicester/FutureLearn MOOC People Studying People: Research Ethics in Society and is hosted at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-research and an OpenLearn Badged course, here at the Open University, launched in October 2020 called Becoming an Ethical Researcher can be found at: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/becoming-ethical-researcher/content-section-overview-0?active-tab=description-tab