Friday, 30 June 2017

Workshop on Learning Design with Prof. Gráinne Conole


I recently had the pleasure of visiting Mary Immaculate College for the first time.  David Maloney from the Blended Learning Unit had organised a workshop on Learning Design with Professor Gráinne Conole, who is currently Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University.

The half day workshop aimed to empower participants to prepare courses for online and mobile environments.  The premise for the workshop, and the design process, stems from Conole's 7 Cs of Learning Design framework:
  • Conceptualise
  • Create
  • Communicate
  • Collaborate
  • Combine
  • Consolidate
Before the crowded room got to any actual design, we were asked to discuss topics such as the challenges posed by technology and how to ruin a course.  It was useful to hear the different angles with which users approached these somewhat loaded topics. I was seated with an educational developer and an academic, which proved to be quite the useful triad.  The educational developer and I, as a learning technologist, were able to work with the academic's course content to complete the exercise like we might do in one of our own training sessions or workshops. Many of the academic staff spoke extensively about how students affect teaching and learning, while so much of the work we do from the support side focuses on how the teacher affects teaching and learning,  

Next on the agenda was a pedagogical features sorting exercise that utilised materials from the Open University Learning Design Initiative (JISC-OULDI) project. Groups were tasked with analysing a course and determining which features were very important, somewhat important or not important. The cards were categorised as:
  • Orange = Guidance and Support
  • Blue = Content and Experience
  • Green = Communication and Collaboration
  • Purple = Reflection and Demonstration.
Participants were soon to realise that everything couldn't be labelled as 'very important'!

It soon became clear to participants that there was a necessity to balancing the categories and choosing pedagogical features carefully in terms of the learning outcomes, course content, platform, and assessment.

In the next exercise, participants were asked to design a typical student that might be taking the course:

Resources for this exercise can be found here.  Overall, the personas were quite specific to the variety of courses on which we were working.  In our case, we created a mature student working in early childhood education undertaking a blended learning course to advance their professional goals.  We assessed our students' technical skills and motivations before moving on to the final portion of the afternoon, creating our course map.
In this exercise, we used the four colours/categories to decide which tools we would use, and what roles/responsibilities correspond to the use of each tool.  I found this part of the day to be useful, as we had to triangulate the roles of teacher, learner and tool.  A recurring theme in our group was modelling of tools by the instructor, both technically and in terms of best use.  We found that communication tools such as discussion boards can often fall flat in terms of student engagement. This can occur as a result of a lack of exemplar content, rubrics, or modelling by the instructor.  We decided that students needed to see for themselves how the tool could help them learn, and not just earn easy points for participation.

While this might have been a whirlwind session, there was much to take away in terms of the relationship between the course, pedagogy, learner, and tools.  Events like this remind us to be cognizant of the many facets of learning design.  We must think about processes, relationships, skills, and attitudes.  Thank you again to David and his colleagues at Mary Immaculate College for hosting, and thank you to Prof. Conole for providing us with resources to use in the future.

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Monday, 19 June 2017

ILTA EdTech 2017 Conference - TEL in an Age of Supercomplexity Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies



As our own CELT Symposium looms at the end of the week, it seems fitting that I finally reflect on the last conference I attended.  

This year's EdTech theme allowed us to pause and reflect about TEL in a complex age. Throughout the two day event, it was evident that we are indeed facing challenges, but also using those challenges to create strategies and opportunities.  

The first keynote of day one was from Gráinne Conole, who is currently a visiting professor at DCU. She focused on the future of learning and harnessing technologies.  Her presentation encompassed so much of the landscape and set the scene well for what was to come.  In discussing the characteristics of the 21st century learner, necessary digital literacies, the integration of OERs, structures of MOOCS, and the benefits for students; she arrived at a heutagogical approach that allows students more affordances in the Web 2.0 landscape. 
In summation, she called on us to rigorously approach learning design, to harness the power of analytics, and implement pedagogies that support the supercomplexity of the future.  Her slides can be found here:

The next session that I attended, Assessment and Feedback in the Digital Age, was rife with ideas, but one in particular stood out to me.  Mark Glynn from DCU posed a simple idea:

I really appreciated how such a nuanced idea could sum up the whole TEL landscape so succinctly.  It's clear that even in our terminology we can accidentally place the focus on the technology rather than the pedagogy.

The Global Challenges in Higher Education session was led by Lawrie Phipps and Donna Lanclos. The discussed Leading with Digital in an Age of Supercomplexity, and namely on the JISC Digital Leaders programme. As a bit of a fan, I get presumptuously excited that Donna was in Sligo, but I was to be disappointed.
At the same time, I unfortunately missed Mary Loftus speaking about her work on learning analytics, but her slides are available here:

The second keynote from Professor Paul J. LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University.  He discussed the success of competency based learning at SNHU. He also joked that Americans don't talk about MOOCs as much as the Irish do at an ed tech conference!
The Jennifer Burke award went to Antonio Calderón of UL for a fantastic project with initial teacher educators in PE.  This project, #CoolPE, is definitely worth looking at, as it could be adapted across sectors and subject areas.
On a beautiful Friday morning, we launched into day two of the conference.

Mark Glynn outlined Turning off Turnitin.  This might sound like a frightening challenge, but Mark was open and candid about the process, and the difficulties they faced.
Niall Watts from UCD, again quite candidly, discussed the creation and use of MOOCs in first year Geography to largely positive feedback from students. His slides can be accessed here.
I unfortunately missed our NUI Galway colleague, Bonnie Long, talk about the Flipping the Flipped Classroom:
One stand out presentation for me was from Sam Cogan of the National College of Ireland, who discussed dual delivery in his lectures.  I've flagged this one for follow up, as he seems to be actively and progressively focused on changing the dynamics of the lecture hall.
Professor Meg Benke's keynote was refreshing in its reflective nature and its focus on scholarship through the work of Boyer.  She discussed the importance of education, communities of practice, and new methodologies in the age of supercomplexity.

It was also announced that ILTA would co-sponsor ten people going forward for CMALT certification.
In closing, ILTA made a call for members to get involved in the coming year.  It should also be noted that submissions are welcome for the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning.
Reflecting on the two days, it's evident that in age where we as practitioners are faced with complex challenges, that we must remain vigilant and become involved, reflective, and active practitioners. The keynote speakers and presenters at this year's conference are working through challenges and planning for an uncertain future, while focusing on learning and success that is only enhanced through technology.

And on a final note, videos will be available soon!



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Tuesday, 9 May 2017

My #100CommonsDays Challenge

Regular readers of this blog will know that I strongly support the use of Wikipedia (and Wikimedia generally) in teaching, and that I'm a member of Wikimedia Community Ireland. I'm still very nervous about editing, and until recently have only made very minor contributions to the online encyclopedia. It's one of my own development goals.

I am completely in awe of anybody who takes on the #100wikidays challenge - to write an article a day for 100 consecutive days. I first heard of this through our community member Rebecca O'Neill, who completed the challenge in 2015. Mourning my mother through a hundred days of Wikipedia editingis another, more recent, account of the challenge. Given that I've only written one article from scratch, I'm a long way from even contemplating the challenge.

However, earlier this year I saw that Rebecca had started the #100CommonsDays challenge - to upload an image to Wikimedia Commons every day for 100 days. I thought that sounded very much more manageable. I have contributed a small number of images before, mostly of the University, and have also been using the Commons as a gateway strategy for introducing academics to the notion of contributing content to Wikipedia.

And so, on 27th January I uploaded my first image of the challenge - an image of the diving board at Blackrock in Salthill, Galway.

Over the next 100 days, I added a new image every day. My final image of the challenge was uploaded on 6th May. They are mostly of buildings, or plaques, or statues, or places. They are all my own work, and are shared under the default Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This means that anybody is free to share or remix the images, but I (as the author) have to be attributed, and any use of the images must be shared under a similar license.

So, the images can be used to illustrate any of the articles on Wikipedia (in English or any other languages). But they can also be used for other purposes - making Wikimedia Commons a very useful resource for finding images for teaching purposes.

Commons-logo-en

What did I learn from completing the #100CommonsDays challenge?

I had to be organised. While I like to take photos, not all of them are suitable for the Commons. I created a dropbox folder into which I dumped photos that might be useful. Each day, then, I had a source of images that could be uploaded.

Sharing helps. From day 1 I started to share my uploaded images with my friends and family on Facebook. This meant that if I missed a day, somebody would know! It helped to keep me on track, and also elicited some questions from friends about the Commons. So - another teaching opportunity!

I had to do my research. There's no point uploading an image if I can't remember exactly what it is of! Sometimes, I had taken a photo of a monument, but couldn't remember what monument it was. I just had a vague recollection of where I had been. Sometimes google maps was quite useful to do some detective work.

Categories matter. I quickly found out that the category structure is how files are organised and found on the Commons. Every file (image) should be associated with a category. Categories form hierarchies, and a file should be associated with the most specific category in the hierarchy. It will then also be associated with all parent categories. It took a number of edits of the categories of my files (mostly by bots) for me to figure this out!

Look for gaps. There's no point in adding yet another photo of the Empire State Building - somebody, with a better camera, has been there before me. Instead I had to do a little investigation before adding an image, to make sure the subject wasn't already well covered.

You can't upload just anything. I was careful to only contribute images that I had taken myself, and that meet copyright requirements, and that are suitable for the Commons (i.e. not my holiday snaps). Anything else may be speedily deleted!

I am still a new user. Having completed the challenge, and made some contributions previously, I now have 139 contributions - but I'm still classified as a new user and my uploads are actively monitored. A new user is anybody with fewer than 150 edits on Commons. Nearly there!

Uploading from a smartphone is a hassle. From the mobile site, although you can login, there is no option to upload an image. You have to force your browser to switch to the desktop version. There are rumours of an app, but if it still exists, it is not available on the  app store in Ireland, at least.

Would I do it again?

Possibly, but not for a little while. I want to focus on my Wikipedia editing and build up to another article there.

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Monday, 13 March 2017

Making Connections - Computers in Education Society of Ireland

On Saturday the 4th of March 2017, I had the good fortune to travel to the 2017 annual conference of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI) at the St. Patrick’s Campus of Dublin City University.

The theme of this year's event was on "Making Connections: Transformation through technology and teamwork", inspired in part from two recent policy documents. Firstly, the Department of Education and Skills have published their Digital Strategy for Schools 2015-2020 report, setting out a vision
clear vision that is focussed on realising the potential of digital technologies to transform the learning experiences of students b - See more at: http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communications-Technology-ICT-in-Schools/Digital-Strategy-for-Schools/#sthash.CQNqSJM7.dpuf
focussed on realising the potential of digital technologies to transform the learning experiences of students - See more at: http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communications-Technology-ICT-in-Schools/Digital-Strategy-for-Schools/#sthash.CQNqSJM7.dpuf
focused on realising the potential of digital technologies for enhancing student learning, and secondly, the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning’s Roadmap For Enhancement In A Digital World 2015-2017 that recommends:
 “a multi-level approach to foster digital literacy, skills and confidence among students at all levels of education needs to be developed”.
Against this policy backdrop, the focus in two of the keynote sessions was on mainstreaming technology in education, with inspiring keynotes from Brendan Tangney, Bridge 21, Trinity College Dublin (see slides), and Anne Looney, Interim CEO of the Higher Education Authority in Dublin.

Both the venue, the organisers (including my colleague Kate Molloy), and the conference team conspired to showcase the best use of technology in action by streaming, captioning and tweeting events as they unfolded. The Youth Media Team interviewed several of conference speakers and have made podcast recordings available. Other slide resources were shared by the PDST on http://www.pdst.ie/cesi2017 and more individual links to follow up were also posted to Twitter (Iain MacLabhrainn's presentation on All Aboard included).

The flagship Lego® Education Innovation Studio (LEIS), was a particular highlight, with Deirdre Butler of DCU giving us a tour of the facilities, and the inspiration behind allowing students a space to create, make, and build.
Lego® Education Innovation Studio in DCU

In the sessions I attended, innovation was clearly evident - in using educational mobile apps, animations, minecraft, iPad coding, digital storytelling, and more. A summary Storify of tweets is here (note this isn't a comprehensive catalog of the conference hashtag tweets), and a link to all the conference abstracts is available online.
@Seomraranga - a whirlwind tour of the best educational apps   

@michaeliteach using the iPad to make a drone fly   
The All Aboard digital skills map on display (developed by colleagues in CELT)
Many presentations were informed by action research and displayed considered pedagogic reflection on their use. Several presenters were researching practice at masters or PhD level, whilst others were deeply involved in enhancing their classroom practice in a variety of educational contexts. It was the first CESI event I had the opportunity to attend, and look forward to connecting again in future. 
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Saturday, 22 October 2016

Reflections on Visitors and Residents as CPD in Learning Technologies module

The metaphor of the Digital Native is still very much used in academic circles - perhaps because it is easy to understand. Many academic staff feel comfortable to describe themselves as digital dinosaurs (or immigrants), separated from their students' apparent ease with technology by a gulf so fundamental that it cannot be bridged. When pushed, they do accept that students are ill-prepared to use tech in their educational lives - unable to navigate the VLE, not aware of file types, completely fazed when faced with a zip file. But still, the Digital Natives narrative persists and is accepted as a truth, an excuse.

Read Donna Lanclos on The Death of the Digital Native.

At the outset of my module on Learning Technologies (#cel263 on Twitter) I ask my group of participants - all academic staff - to reflect on their comfort in using new technologies for teaching1, by writing a group blog post. Despite including works by Donna Lanclos and David White in the readings for the module, still the Digital Native rears his head in these reflections, every year. This last month, a number of staff quite happily identified themselves as Digital Immigrants, describing their discomfort with technologies that are effortless for their students. 

I think this is a good start. By explicitly articulating this in the group, in writing, it gives me a chance to gently challenge the position. 

The Digital Visitors and Residents metaphor, approached through a 90 minute workshop derived from David White and Donna Lanclos excellent guidelines, allows my module participants to focus, not on the technology they use, but on how they use the technologies. By working through the mapping process, creating their own maps while working and discussing in small groups, they get to explore their own interactions and purposes. The maps themselves aren't so important, but rather the follow up questions "so what?" and "what next?" By reflecting on their own maps, each participant can take ownership of their own technology use, and purposely determine what they want to do with it. 

How we did it


The guide produced by Donna and David is for a full day workshop, with a second day for more strategic use within an institution. Having participated in such a workshop, run by Donna and David last year, I found this a very valuable experience. But I only have 90 minutes, as part of the second workshop (of 7) in my module. 

The first reflection, about comfort in using new technologies, is an outcome of workshop 1. And without any encouragement on my part, the Digital Natives narrative always comes up. Though commenting on the reflections, I can begin to suggest that the Natives theory doesn't work, and maybe there's an alternative. 

Before the face-to-face 2nd workshop, I ask participants to watch David's short video explaining the V&R theory, as preparation. By the time I meet them, it's clear that at least some of them have watched it, and nobody admits otherwise. So, my intro can be short, referring to the video and also to their reflections. There is great hilarity as they Google each other - some definitely more discoverable than others - but everybody with a trace.

I spend some time working though the drawing of my own map, deliberately leaving out Wikipedia initially. This brings up various questions, which we discuss a little. But my intention is to get them working on their own maps as quickly as possible. They do this in small groups of just 2 or 3. Initially quiet, within 5 minutes the room is full of the sounds of discussion. I circulate, commenting and asking questions. 

One observation is about whether somebody's name, in the case where it might be unusual or unique, might have an effect on how comfortably open they might be. Anything on the open web would be immediately associated with that person. Somebody with a common name might find it easier to hide. 

Another group had quite a discussion around e-commerce apps and tools. While not discoverable, there was some anguish about online security of data. 



After a while, we stop and discuss a little. I draw Wikipedia onto my map, still a little to the Visitors side of the axis. We talk, in general, about the clustering or spread of activities on the maps, and what it might mean. We talk about a third dimension, which some have identified, and how they have use colours or shapes to represent this on their two dimensional grid. They spend another few minutes considering the So What?

In the last 15 minutes of the workshop we start to think about What Next? I explain my relationship with Wikipedia as a fledgling editor and how I am deliberately trying to move that block to the right of the V&R axis. I leave them contemplating the What Next question on their maps. Before they leave the room, we have a quick gallery walk. 


In the 2 weeks between each workshop, each member of the class writes a workshop report as a post on the group blog. This week the report is to include an image of the map with some explanation and a consideration of the So What? question. It takes some time for these posts to start appearing - which may be a good sign. Either they are still reflecting, or just too busy to get around to the report. 

Suddenly, a week after our workshop, there is a deluge of reports. Almost everybody indicates that the activity was of value and that they have learned something new about themselves and their technology use. Each person has identified some direction they want to take, either by eliminating some aspects or changing others. 

With a group of academics who are now more self-aware and purposeful, I now have a solid base to begin exploring the use of technology in teaching and learning. I look forward to the many discussions over the next 5 workshops. 

Some Participant Comments

I have asked my group if I might share some of the comments from their workshop reports. None of the participants are identifiable from the comments.

"In order to construct the V&R map, I had a think about where I go online – and one thought usually led to another, and there's certainly some things I've left off."

"This activity was extremely useful to me in relation to getting an accurate idea of my use of online tools."

"I wasn't aware that I was consistently using so many tools and I also underestimated my visibility online."

"Upon first consideration, I foolishly thought there should be a clear divide between my personal and institutional online activities. However, as I started to give it some attention, I found that while some activities were clearly separated into different categories, there was more overlap between groups than I had expected."

"In the first report, I wrote that I consider myself a beginner in terms of using technologies in teaching. After creating the map last Friday and after a few days contemplation since then I am not so sure any longer."

"By using David White’s system of mapping ones online activities, I have been able to clearly see how I interact with the web, and the roles that my online activities play in both my personal and work life. That brings me to the stage of thinking how I might be able to use the web in more effective ways."

"I was surprised by the way this exercise helped me to articulate my feelings towards email. It is by far the biggest influence on my life and it has become almost uniquely work-related."



[1] The prompt for the first reflection is:

Write a short report (no more than 3 paragraphs) answering the following question:
How would you describe your level of confidence in using and learning new computer based technologies?


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Thursday, 29 September 2016

Demonstrating the power of twitter

Every year, for the last 6 or 7 years, I've started teaching my module on Learning Technologies, aimed at members of academic staff, by introducing them to twitter. We then use twitter as a tool throughout the module, sharing information and developing a community.

Each year there are always one or two participants who are already twitter users, some people who have dabbled or lurk, and always a few who have never used twitter before. It can be a challenge to convince people to give twitter a try, because the value of twitter to an academic is only realised after a period of time spent engaging. Even building up a network takes time, and often it's not clear to the academic that the time invested now will pay any dividends.

To that end, I was helped enormously this year by a short presentation from Jane Walsh (@DrJaneWalsh) who gave an engaging, often amusing and very persuasive talk on the value of twitter in her own research and teaching. Jane was a participant herself on the module 4 years ago, and I claim full credit for her twitter success to date.

Asking the Twitterverse for help 

Something I've always done in the past, and I see others doing from time to time, is to put out a call on twitter for help. This usually results in at least a few responses to welcome the new group to twitter, and these are often geographically dispersed, which can be quite impressive.

This year, though, I really wasn't sure what response I would get. I see fewer of this type of call, and I wondered if people might be less likely to respond. Anyway, I live in hope, so on the morning of the workshop I put out a general call:
Not feeling very confident, I also tweeted to specific people (former students in the module) to tweet a welcome.

I was pleasantly surprised to get responses, not only from former participants, but also a few from people around Ireland (Dublin and Donegal/Monaghan) and one from Melbourne, Australia. A good start! In addition, a couple of people "liked" the tweet, but didn't bother responding - hmmm.

Just before the workshop, I again sent out a call:
This time I was completely inundated with responses. It was amazing. As well as tweets from around Ireland and the UK, people also responded from France, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Israel. There was a great response from across the Atlantic - from Kentucky, Florida, Michigan, Boston and Delaware. There was even a tweet from Brazil.

To see the full collection of tweets received, you can take a look at them on Storify.

I've been a little bit quieter on twitter in the last few months, so it was really amazing to see such support from my PLN. Thank you to everyone who responded and really gave an impressive demonstration of the power of twitter.





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Friday, 15 July 2016

Guest Post: Vene Vidi Recordari

My last blog post - on the Etiquette for Tweeting at Conferences - got quite a bit of attention, and a number of comments. One person who commented is Dr Andrew Flaus (@andrewflaus) who sent me a long email including a discussion on etiquette for students in lectures. I invited him to contribute a blog post on the topic.

Crayons
My wife is an early childhood teacher so people sometimes ask her what she teaches to 3-4 year olds: “Everything”. Children who are new to the school environment start by learning etiquette of the classroom: How to wait in turn to answer, how to respect the efforts of others, how to share crayons.

The recent post about twitter at conferences reminded me how fresh we and our students are to the use of technology in our lecture theatres.

Whether they are “digital natives” or not, most students reflexively use smartphone technology for a variety of activities. If a student can see or hear something they have the technology to record it in their hand. They are also very savvy about the usefulness of this recording, yet many seem to be naive or oblivious to the etiquette of this copying.

Last month I presented a secondary school outreach activity in a PC Suite. Our computing support has professional security practices so I dutifully obtained temporary user IDs and passwords then distributed these to the students on a sheet of paper. Several students simply photographed the sheet and handed it on.

Very resourceful and not a big deal, but the concept of etiquette when dealing with security credentials clearly does not occur to the students.

(flickr photo by Dominique Godbout https://flickr.com/photos/dominiquegodbout/5157516276 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license)

Assume every teaching activity might be recorded 


Sit at the back of any undergraduate student lecture and you will see lots of smartphones on desks. Look carefully at the direction of those phones: At least a few will have the bottom (microphone end) facing the lecturer. If you watch as the lecture begins you might even see students turning on their audio recording apps.

I don’t have a problem with being recorded. I’ve given up caring. Anything that reduces the rate of despairing exam answers is ok with me. But I’m not sure every lecturer thinks that way. I also doubt the students are too worried about what we think.

It’s hard enough work to be interesting about protein structure and function, let alone controversial, so I doubt there is a back catalogue of Andrew’s Best Bits. And I’m not deluding myself about competing with Kanye West or Taylor Swift on my student’s smartphones. OK, I admit I’d like to be ahead of Justin Bieber ...

Who knows how the illicit audio of our lectures is subsequently shared. While I don’t mind being recorded in general, I would like to be confident that this is for personal study and revision only. Nothing else.

A handful of years ago when disabilities support issued voice recorders there was an etiquette of students asking before recording lectures, but I can’t recall anyone actually asking me this in recent years.

 

Be explicit about etiquette for invited speakers. 


As a research-led university we should be exposing our advanced undergraduate students to “real research”. For example, we have final year students write short summaries on a selection of departmental research talks given by invited speakers.

But real research is harder than predigested lectures, and it’s often delivered by people from research-led research institutes that have no idea about learning objectives. This places extra temptation for students to capture a recording of these research talks from invited speakers.

Recently we had a very interesting human clinical genetics speaker. I noticed one eager and ambitious student front and centre taking smartphone snaps of slides, including unpublished data and clinical cases. In fairness the cases were appropriately anonymized, but I doubt the student understood this or had thought about the sensitivity of clinical research. He had definitely not asked permission.

A couple of years ago I even saw a student bring a laptop into a research talk, dim the screen, turn it round and use the webcam to record the talk as a video.

In the days when we had smaller advanced undergraduate classes our students were more directly mentored and we could expect them to imbibe our etiquette implicitly. In the heady days before massification it wasn’t possible to record things anyway. What came on tour with the visiting speaker’s film slides stayed on tour.

Nowdays, what goes on tour ends up on Facebook.

 

Whose crayons are they? 


Our wonderful classroom full of learning technologies gives new and unique ways for students to engage with information to develop their understanding.

However, it’s important for them to understand that recording data inappropriately is just as improper as reproducing it inappropriately. Are we helping them to appreciate that everything they see and hear is not fair game for recording and publishing?

I came and I saw, not I went and I copied.

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