Matthew Allen

Upcoming Workshop

A Question of Boundaries: What Next for the ‘Edgeless University’?

(Workshop details)

I will be organising and facilitating a workshop on the impacts of network technologies on universities at the Oxford Internet Institute in May, focusing on a critical appraisal of the notion of ‘edgelessness’. Here is the extended abstract and plan for the workshop:

---

In 2009, the UK Demos Foundation released a report, The Edgeless University (Bradwell, 2009), exploring the impact of digital network technologies on British universities.

Subtitled, ‘Why higher education must embrace technology’, its author, Peter Bradwell, argues cogently for both the opportunity and necessity to remake higher education according to the new realities of a world relentlessly connected, digitised and increasingly distributed in time and space away from centralised locations.

Re repurposing Richard Lang’s insights about the edgeless city, in which the functions of the city occur, but the form is now more fluid, dispersed and without the clear boundaries which have previously helped define ‘the urban’, Bradwell proposes a shift in higher education analogous to that within the popular music industry: technologies will not ‘do away’ with universities but, to prosper, those institutions must change systematically and with a “coherent narrative” to embrace digital networks.

While much has changed in terms of the funding, politics and general cultural climate around higher education in recent times, nothing has changed to make less the threat of conservatism in the face of global knowledge networking, nor to reduce the opportunity which universities have to become central to the new forms of knowledge and learning which the Internet and related technologies demand.

This workshop will explore practical opportunities and problems that confront academics and institutions of higher learning in light of Bradwell’s prognosis for the technology-oriented future. The focus for the workshop is to ask:

what exactly should a modern comprehensive university do that will unleash the creativity of students and staff and maximise the potential of distributed, edgeless learning while, at the same time, also making the most of the physical spaces which will remain critical markers of ‘a university’?. In other words, how can we utilise digital technologies and networks to fashion ‘new’ edges — temporary boundaries, if you like — that assist us in making education a collaborative, collective experience?

Format of Workshop

The workshop will be 1/2 day, including lunch:

• Introduction / overview (30 minutes – Matthew Allen)
• Open discussion: what are the key changes needed for enhanced, engaged teaching and learning within the edgeless university paradigm? (30 minutes – plenary)
• Groups work on the key changes proposed, examining critically its validity, refining it and making sense of the likely outcomes (30 minutes – sub-groups)
• Lunch (45 minutes)
• Report back and group presentations and discussion, including consideration of the need for edges to be re-introduced at times (60 minutes)
• Conclusion, including overall response (15 minutes – speaker TBA)

Listening to Michael Dyson, from Monash talking about portfolios in teacher education: great presentation.

Dyson says:

• Education of educators is first of all premised on turning them into people who practice self-development. gives example of very first unit. [So, care of the self is central, and making students include themselves as subjects in the learning process - nice!]
• Learning is change dramatically – globalisation, computing, and so on. [But, perhaps, there is an important qualification on some of the more optimistic claims for 'new' learning: learning is embedded within society in ways that shape those possibilities in ways that are not entirely concerned with 'better' learning. At the very least, the definition of better is contested: is it cheaper? is it more orderly and commodifiable? is to linked to national norms and needs?]
• The creating mind is the goal. [Interesting - not creative, but more positive and active - creating. Good difference]
• Reflection is essential to achieving the kind of succcesses in self-developmental learning; using Dewey (2003), emphasises “active persistent and careful consideration”; reflection is not taking “things for granted…[leading to] ethical judgment and strategic actions” (Groundwater-Smith, 2003).  [ Further work needed, perhaps, to understand reflection for this new generation, if one takes as given the significant changes in knowledge: is reflection as developed in 20th c the right kind of reflection?]
• ALACT model – action, looking back, awareness of the essential aspects, create alternatives, trial.

[This is really helpful - I like the added 5th step, compared to the normal action research 4-step model]

• “the artefacts placed in their portfolio showcase who they are and their current onling learning”; these artefacts are attached to the standards which define what it is to be an educated teacher according to outcomes required. [So portfolios are a clear negotiation of the student's understanding of those requirements and standards?]
• Exploration of the actual portfolios that students have created, using a paid-for service iwebfolio (was subsidised). Variety of successes and failures, all the material goes into a digital, not paper portfolio. Notes the fact that the metadata on when and how material uploaded is available, unlike other means of generating a portfolio. [I emphasise: the portfolio is a genuine, real requirement for teaching employment. It is authentic learning]
• Use of standards / outcomes as information architecture to drive cognition in inputting information (adding artefacts, commenting etc [So, the portfolio is 'scaffolding' into which a building goes, with a clear design brief. It might be a hghly structured knowledge engine]

I am wondering if the students genuinely are doing this work for themselves or if they imagine an audience of ‘judges’ – their teachers who grade the portfolio or the employers who might use it? Managing multiple audiences is tricky, even with technology that allows it – because if you can shape the portfolio for several audiences…. then does the self audience survive?

Then again, maybe the whole point is that the students are not yet capable of being their own audience.

Some other portfolio software (and look how it is more than just a portfolio…)

http://www.pebblepad.com

See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context.

Web Publishing 206

(basic unit description)

Students doing the BA (Internet Communications) learn, in WEB101, to create a web presence that acts as the primary locus of their online identity, with links to other services and applications. In Web Publishing 206, the focus moves much more directly to writing effectively for the web (where writing can also including other media, but emphasises the written word).

The authenticity of the assessments in Web Publishing 206 are principally mobilised by requiring students to write regularly, on their blog, exploring different aspects and techniques of good online writing. The blog is assessed in its own terms, and also as the basis for students’ reflective essays which ensure that students are thinking about (as well as doing) this crucial online communication task.

Some examples of students’ blogs are:

• Eighteen Songs – WEB206 Weekly Blog
• Percussive Sweet Spot
• On the Internet, No-one Knows I’m A Blog
• Damien’s Web Publishing 206 Weblog | The Worlds of MMO’s

Notably, most students make virtually no reference to the ‘study’ component of these blogs: these are genuine blogs addressing audiences outside universities. Use of the tag Web206 however enables academic staff to look into them to find relevant content! And one student cleverly ‘colonised’ the name WEB206 : WEB206 | a Curtin University of Technology unit

While in WEB101 there was a strong sense that other students were the audience (along with the teacher), in WEB206 students are developing a much greater awareness of real audiences. In this respect, if no other, the assessment task is significantly advantaged by making it public knowledge networking.

As before, the blogging linked with other services and tools, pricipally delicious, as in these examples:

• Annoted Bibliography Feed (on the blog)

Once again, we see the value of the tag – the tag Web206 enables just the relevant links to be pulled from delicious into the blog, enabling a student to also use delicious for many other purposes. In this way, knowledge networking drives the nature of the assessment completion.

More findings from Web206 (which has only just run for the first time in late 2010)  will emerge over time. Thanks to Dr Helen Merrick, chief wrangler of publishing.

—————————————————-

The first of several posts, each relating to a different unit of study at Curtin

Introduction

Over the past two years, students in Internet Studies, Curtin University studying the BA (Internet Communications) and related courses have been doing a lot of authentic assessment involving online activities. These assignments are  authentic in that they are ‘true’ to the content of their studies (that is, aligned with the outcomes), ‘ real’ within the likely fields of employment for graduates, and ‘natural’  for the the emerging dominance of knowledge networking in society. More on these three variations on authenticity in a moment.

Not all assessments fit this pattern (nor should they), but we have seen significant improvements in the motivation of students to complete and exceed the requirements of assignments, as well as a greater degree of creativity and expression suggesting deeper engagement with learning. It has also, we think, improved students’ attention to more scholarly traditional assignments (such as essays) because of the variety we engendered across all assignment tasks. (And, it should be noted: essays are authentic – to the lifeworld of academic which also remains important as well as work and elsewhere).

Much of what makes these assessment approaches authentic is that they are public. Here, then, are some examples which suggest some of the value of embracing public knowledge networking as the basis for assessment, at least in courses that involve digital media and communications but, most likely, in any course where students need to work with, communicate and reflect on knowledge and, in doing so, become producers, not just receivers.

Web Communications 101 (WEB101)

A major component of the assessment in this unit is a ‘web presence’. More than a website and blog, a web presence interlinks a central node with linked  services and nodes to expand the digital footprint of a user and established their online identity. The negotiation and communication of identity is central to this unit: it’s not just ‘how to blog’.

A very small number of examples of these web presences are:

• Michelle’s Curtin Uni Learning Portfolio
• Caja Design – Web 101 – Blog
• Smartworks Education
• Outback Gold – A Website For Those With Gold Fever
• Reflection (and Stuff )

Over 400 students have taken the unit: sorry, can’t show them all. In particular, look at how some students have made their web presence almost entirely ‘real’, with bare hints of what it connects to (their study); others have not. Some students, as evidenced by these presences, are now using them as part of other units of study too.

Note that students happily created their own informal, computer-mediated network spaces such as Web101 – Curtin University | Facebook; and staff teaching also use the web as it was intended – free and rapid information exchange – to support this unit:  Web101 Assignments FAQ.

A big part of the unit also involves the use of twitter: see the most recent  Twitter search; delicious is also used.

Please look at “I Tweet Therefore I am?” by Dr Tama Leaver, chief architect of the WEB101 learning experience.

———————————-

As I have argued elsewhere: the authenticity of these assessments is not a simple ‘flip’ from artificial academic work into ‘real’ web work. They are a negotiation and a compromise in which equally valid requirements from both knowledge networking and education are brought into a creative and productive tension. In the next instalment, I will provide some examples of what happens for students in the followup unit to WEB101.

On Thursday 2 December, I am presenting at the National Curriculum Innovation and Quality Forum on the subject, “Risks and opportunities in authentic learning via the Internet”.

The basic brief for this keynote presentation is to:

• summarise approaches to authentic learning in the BA (Internet Communications) at Curtin University;
• identify the key benefits in using a public knowledge networking approach to authentic learning; and
• highlight risks and strategies for managing those approaches in the pursuit of authentic learning online.

While I hope to do that, with a particular emphasis on giving some examples from the great work that students in the BA (Internet Communications) have done, I also have found that in preparing my talk I have had to develop a more coherent argument about the nature of authenticity in learning and the relationship between education and learning.

The talk can be found here: https://netcrit.net/content/nciqf2010.pdf

This paper draws also on some specific work I have done on the authentic assessment in our online conference unit, Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 and more generally on social media and authentic assessment (presentation in the UK, May 2010)

Some of the examples I refer to will be listed on my blog within the week.

Some important things I learned from the E-Learn conference recently attended in Vancouver

1. Why and how do people ‘get’ online learning
2. New Media Literacies
3. 2010 is the new 1995

Why and how do people ‘get’ online learning
Further evidence of the link between expertise, knowledge, experience in distance education as leading to a different way of thinking about, understanding and approaching online learning; this point is probably self-evident for individuals (though not necessarily so); but is clearly an important aspect in the institutional and cultural basis for the development of elearning. Papers show that many, especually in USA, are still back in 1995 – faculty just starting to think ‘how to use the Internet’, because this is a technology imagined to be about ‘something other’ than classroom. So, at first, distance education background was a strength, when net was strongly oriented towards being a replacement for / enhancement of, traditional DE approaches; DE background also allowed people to imagine and experience teaching and learning without physical co-presence. But, perhaps, now there is an issue – people have now pigeon-holed internet-based learning as something associated with distance education; and people who don’t see themselves as distance educators therefore don’t think about the Internet as central to learning?

Perhaps now, the people who ‘get’ Internet and e-learning possibilities are not those with DE background or need; but those who are themselves ‘connected’. It is one of the problems with my own work on elearning – too often it presumes a kind of academic subject who is ‘networked’ (like me!). Yet, many colleagues are not like that. They are either ‘tool users’ – seeing the Internet in very functional terms which limits their ability to imagine unusual applications; or they approach the net, still, with trepidation – something which has to be used, in ways that are very personal to them, rather than as a systemic shift in social organisation.

This issue is becoming particularly significant in USA as there is a ‘ramp up’ to more online learning in a way presumed to be happening in 1990s but which didn’t happen then; is happening now. There’s now a greater gap between faculty (15 years on) and the Internet, especially in an ageing workplace.

New Media Literacies
Am unsure yet as to whether people within the professional elearning community are really engaging with ‘New Media Literacies‘ (Jenkins et al). Great paper on gaming literacies (see the blogsite for this paper, ‘gaming literacy‘); literacy is a problematic word – some people still see it as being linked to reading (and perhaps writing).

And, of course, we need to ask whether faculty are new media literate? Will they ever be? Is, actually, one aspect of new media literacy that it re-empowers younger people in society to be more capable knowledge workers (and believe themselves to be?). Or do these ‘savvy’ new media users actually have limited reflection on what they know and do and consider others to be experts? It is likely that small numbers of faculty will be expert and sophisticated; they may struggle to work ‘down’ to student capabilities in a manner analogous with the content expert talking over the heads of students.

2010 is the new 1995

Hearing several presentations which are 1995 in their tone and feel. One of the recurring themes is – ‘people now expected to do this more and more’, yet there is no real discussion of economics and politics. There is the same arguments concerning identity, teaching 24/7, too many emails, learn as you go, take it slowly, loss of prestige and so on.

One challenge faced now is that there are many more technologies, tools, possibilities and so on: further emphasises the ‘gap’ between online learning and traditional learning.

There are cultural differences: US-based academics seem to focus on the notion of ‘prestige’ (the centrality of the professor?), the change in assessment and feedback (because students are required to be more engaged and do more in USA?), the 24/7 issue – staff worried about always being online (because there is a remoteness culturally to US academics?). One deeply felt constant, however, is the loss of control – failures and frustrations with technology make highly competent and powerful people experience a major loss and a sense of marginalisation.

I also reflect on the fact that, if technology is meant to make for better teaching and so on, why has that not occurred after many years of tech? Perhaps it is because technology serves only to enable different (better?) pedagogies when it is integrated into person’s schema for understanding the world?

Perhaps one difference: more disciplines and professions now involve the Internet directly when compared to 1995; thus, for some, there is no ‘decision’ to be made. So, perhaps the main similarity between then and now is to be found in disciplines and other areas where the Internet has not embedded itself.

During June/July I have been presenting and facilitating a workshop on innovative online learning as part of my ALTC Teaching Fellowship project. My thanks to all those involved in helping organise and host the events, at Curtin Uni, RMIT, UTS, QUT, and ADFA; especially thanks to Elaine Tay, colleague and LINK Project Officer.

The workshops went particularly well, mainly thanks to the thoughtful contributions of all those involved (the workshop was mostly small-group discussion and presentation). Those who participated will soon receive a collated and developed response, spanning all the workshops so far, which will guide and assist in reflecting on what was learned in the workshop.

The presentation component of the workshop is now available at https://netcrit.net/writing

Nice article by Ted Coopman in recent First Monday…
Toward a Pervasive Communication Environment Perspective

‘In a world where pervasive communication technologies facilitate an increasing percentage of human interaction, the traditional dichotomy between face–to–face and mediated communication (especially computer–mediated communication) obscures more than it illuminates. This affects both teaching and research. To address this, I propose a holistic approach: Pervasive Communication Environment Perspective (PCE). Represented as a graphic model, PCE illustrates the circular flow of information and communication across media, channels, and individuals. This provides a conceptual tool with practical applications for teaching as well as research.’