New technology and the modern university

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New technology and the modern university

• p.hartley_at_bradford.ac.uk

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Preamble

• Why me?
• Who are you?
• What are the most appropriate questions?

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Pre-preambleA few opening quotes

• You are a member of staff. You should not have a
  Facebook account.
• Weve installed the social networking software
  on a University server but we wont change the
  default from public
• Young people have constant social presence
  its never happened before
• Were delivering lectures on Second Life.
• You cannot be my friend on Facebook.

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Preamble

• Why me?

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Preamble

• Why me?
• Who are you?

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Preamble

• Why me?
• Who are you?
• What are the most appropriate questions?

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Todays brain-teaser

• Which is most likely to injure you in the USA
  shark attack or bits falling off a plane?

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And so what

• We understand what we can visualise and what we
  can therefore conceptualise
• Change perceptions and you can change behaviour
• So the questions become
• What do we visualise as the present and the
  future for learning
• What technologies do we need to support and
  enhance this?

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And what stage have we got to?
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E-learning in 2007?
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The new uses the old and familiar

• Railway coaches were stage coaches!
• coaches were not designed with corridors to allow
  passengers to walk along the carriage and from
  one carriage to the next - that would take up
  valuable seating space
• passengers were expected to stay in their place
  for the entire journey
• if you wanted a meal on the train you had to take
  it with you
• toilet facilities were not normally available
  even on the longest routes!

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Do we know what we want from students?
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(No Transcript)
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Can we predict the form and shape of technology?
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Nuff said

• "By the turn of this century, we will live in a
  paperless society," Roger Smith, chairman of
  General Motors, 1986.
• http//www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-jun
  e01/predictions.html

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How do we see the present and future of
e-learning?

• My argument in 2006
• reasons to be not cheerful
• 3 reasons to be cheerful
• But 7 but clauses

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Reasons to be not cheerful (from HE
practitioners)

• The hard fact is that e-learning took off (in
  HE) before people really knew how to use it.
• An educationalist with an open mind (is)
  forced to conclude that from a pedagogical
  perspective e-learning is a step backward rather
  than a step forward.
• Most e-learning is delivered in packages which
  do not foster participative learning or critical
  thinking.
• Business models for e-learning are not yet
  proven.

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Reasons to be not cheerful 2 The battle for
the classroom

• Typical skirmishes
• Paying lip service to learning outcomes
• The link to assessment where is the alignment?
• E-learning equals the VLE
• The rewards and support for teaching
• The explicit and implicit prioritisation of RAE
  research

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Reasons to be cheerful 1(the models are coming!)

• Examples
• networked collaborative e-learning (McConnell,
  2006)
• integrated e-learning (Jochems et al, 2004)
• smart enterprise framework (Rosenberg, 2006)
• But
• Limited application
• Social and organisational barriers

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Reasons to be cheerful 2(cheaper, smarter
stuff)

• Integration of technology
• Technological sophistication
• New tools for
• Social and personal organisation
• Communication

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Reasons to be cheerful 3(smarter students)

• Increasing complexity of their lives and their
  consumption of popular culture
• Technological sophistication
• Social and personal organisation

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Or things aint what they used to be
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The new digital divide?

• A recent study from the Pew Internet American
  Life Project found that 57 percent of teens
  online have created their own media content. As
  our culture becomes more participatory, these
  young people are creating their own blogs and
  podcasts they are recording their lives on
  LiveJournal and developing their own profiles on
  MySpace they are producing their own YouTube
  videos and Flickr photos they are writing and
  posting fan fiction or contributing to Wikipedia
  they are mashing up music and modding games. Much
  as engineering students learn by taking apart
  machines and putting them back together, many of
  these teens learned how media work by taking
  their culture apart and remixing it.
• http//www.henryjenkins.org/2007/02/from_youtube_t
  o_youniversity.html

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A brief digression into popular culture

• Evidence of increasing complexity and
  sophistication

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Life just gets more complex
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How do we see the present and future of
e-learning?

• My argument in 2006
• reasons to be not cheerful
• 3 reasons to be cheerful (but some but clauses
  social, organisational and technical barriers)
• My argument in 2007
• As in 2006, technology per se is not the problem
• There is a new fight in the playground
• The student experience is becoming more complex
• The landscape is changing
• And we can stay cheerful

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The new fight in the playground
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The lines of conflictthe collision of learning
spaces
The formal, public, controlled The institutional
world of control and individual assessment
The collaborative, informal, exploratory The
world of facilitation and enquiry
The personal, private and exclusive Talking to
invited friends only
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The lines of conflictthe collision of learning
spaces
The formal, public, controlled The institutional
world of control and individual assessment
The collaborative, informal, exploratory The
world of facilitation and enquiry
The personal, private and exclusive
The web 2.0 software
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The lines of conflictthe collision of learning
spaces
MUSEUM vs PLAYGROUND vs REFUGE

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And whowill win?
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And whowill win?
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The challenges remainstudent expectations

• Our students are struggling to become learners

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We still need to resolve transfer and transition

• Lack of transfer
• Education as a separate world
• Multi-tasking and confidence vs learned
  helplessness and game-playing
• Transition issues
• I dont want to be a self-regulated learner. I
  just want to be told what to do.

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And there are new group dynamics (?)
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From individuals tutor ..
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To the new intergroup
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Where are your students (and staff) now?
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What journeys do they have to make?
A
B
C
E
G
D
F
G
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The challenges remainorganisational barriers

• Organisational dynamics and ideologies are not
  necessarily in our favour

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Where/How does e-learning sit in your
organisation?

• Locations?
• A separate strategy?
• In the workload model(s)?
• In the course and module documentation?
• In the validation and approval processes?
• Role
• Essential component or value-added or neglected?

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The landscape is changingNew kids on the block

• Benchmarking
• Pathfinder
• JISC Innovations Community of Practice
• New studies of learner experience
• Growing interest in scenarios

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And so the modern university must

• Know the students
• Make its pedagogy explicit
• Support all the learning journeys
• Adopt the appropriate technologies
• Manage the boundaries between environments
• Align the policies and practices

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And finally

• Technology is a symptom it is not the problem
• Solving problems shouldnt be so difficult.
  Perhaps when it is, weve forgotten the people.
  (Oblinger, 2007)