TALL blog

One of our key findings from Mosaic is that almost anything can be learning content. Yes learning objects are great if they exist, but  in many subjects they don’t, or if they do in about the right quantities to make up about 30 mins of learning.  For our Ancestral Voices course we used about 3 items that the creators would have classified as learning objects, but managed to create a 100 study hours course out of approximately 200 items of pre-existing high quality content from a variety of sources including:

• Academic articles
• Media articles (BBC etc)
• Pod casts
• Fully online courses
• Online textbooks
• Assets – Images/diagrams/maps etc
• Databases (especially archaeological ones)
• Sites developed by enthusiasts
• Academic sites (departmental and individual)
• Academic project sites
• Museum sites
• Blogs

These were not in repositories, usually had no special meta data, but they were discoverable through informed browsing and Google searches. While some of these map very closely onto the sort of content used in teaching and learning for decades, whether online or face to face, many do not.  However what is clear is that, if correctly scaffolded by the course, any content can be learning content.  Many of the discussions currently underway on developing repositories and standards, or more generally on approaches to sharing OERs in the future, work on the assumptions that learning content needs separate considerations , extra metadata and unique locations, something our experience contradicts (see previous posts about this).

Work on discovering, representing and sharing learning designs in particular suggests this is a complex field, and also a very personal one – there is no metadata schema, or standard or representation which can encapsulate the particular value of a particular learning design or item of content to all comers.  Where the value of these lies is individually derived and context specific (See the Mod4L report  for a discussion of this space in relation to learning design in particular).  Thus while improvements to standards and metadata, and development of specialised repositories are not in themselves negative, it seems likely that any benefit accrued by these undertakings is outweighed by the barriers to sharing and discoverability imposed by the extra complexity.  Note that it has been frequently observed that one of the main barriers to academics sharing is not intent (in theory they are happy to do so) but rather the complexity of the actual practice (they are not sure how to, where, don’t have time to consider metadata).  Materials openly available on the web are already found and used (legitimately or not) all the time, tapping into these existing locations and networks, seems more likely to lead to success then additional infrastructure.

January 2009

The taught version of the course is underway. In spite of the recession, a respectable number of people signed up for it, some of whom have taken courses with us before (I confess to  posting shameless plugs in the forums of other online courses during Michaelmas), and some for whom it will be a first foray into online  study. I lurked for most of the day on which the course was launched, feeling both delighted that Ancestral Voices was going out into the world, but also unwilling to let it go. In my capacity as academic director of the online courses, I do look in and sample posts frequently, to make sure that there is consistency of amount and kind of tutor response, and that things are running smoothly, and to try to anticipate and help with potential problems. I should also admit that I’m tending to spend more time on Ancestral Voices than with other courses, whether I was their author or not, and much more time than is strictly necessary. This is partly because of the volume of posts and partly because of their quality. The course and its tutor seem to be generating exactly the kind of student response one hopes for in an online course. That is, not of the post-and-run kind, but conversations and discussions involving several students at once, with engaged and reasoned responses.

I think Nicolay, the tutor, knows when to hold back rather than leap in, to allow space for this to happen. To an extent, the course is running itself, with Nicolay on hand to add further information and clarification as required. This makes me wonder whether an asynchronous forum or forums could work with the freely accessible and downloadable version. Some teachers will download the course and use it alongside their own forum, of course, which will be fine, but I wonder whether a general public version could work with discussion forums – if the department could resolve any legal and support issues to its satisfaction? People would arrive at different times, and be way in front of or behind others, but if there were enough people involved at any one time, that would not matter, just as many forums (for hobbies and special interests, for example) have topics with posts going back a long way in time that still attract new messages.

I particularly like the way in which the present students are not just opining but are putting forward reasoned arguments and responding to others’ posts with reasoned arguments. I hope that continues. As I follow them through the course, I feel that I am learning with them.

Over the last week I have been participating in a critical friends exercise as part of the Mosaic project with our partners from the RECITE and REGEN-1 projects. It has been interesting to start to see consensus about the realities of reuse, how it actually works in practice and what the opportunities and constraints really are.  As our final reporting for JISC is due soon I will be writing a lot more about this in the next couple of months.  In the meantime it is interesting to see Juliette Culver, who I know from her excellent work on Cloudworks give her take on it all here.

While Phoebe is still very much a prototype, over the last couple of months we have been upgrading it (or her, is software like ships?) to fix some of the known usability bugs from our last rounds of evaluation.  With so many people planning to use Phoebe in earnest over the next few months, as much as possible we wanted to ensure that the feedback we get helps us to specify development in the future, rather than forcing everyone to tell us about problems we already know about.  With this in mind the following are all now in plac:

• Implement a search across shared designs
• Ensure robustness of the view design screen
• Ensure that terminology is consistent and meaningful to users
• Allow formatted content to be pasted from MS Word
• Adding tables, headings, linking to images
• Allow the adjustment of a text entry box size in template
• Add links where appropriate to the final outputs of the D4Lprogramme
• Make it possible to copy and rearrange certain fields in a design
• Allow HTML codes to be included in the information entered in a design
• Ensure robustness in browsers other than Firefox
• Fix general usability bugs in template interface

We have also had a problem with Phoebe displaying the following error “Fatal error: Class ‘MDB2′ not found” – if you refresh the screen it takes you to where you were with seemingly no damage, but we have just migrated servers to hopefully eliminate this.

We are very aware that these sorts of updates and bug fixes are a job which never finishes, and just when we think we have it all working I am sure someone will be able to tell us something else we have omitted, or inadvertently broken by fixing something else.  To this end if you do use Phoebe and have a problem, can you to let us know  by emailing us at phoebe@conted.ox.ac.uk and we will do what we can to sort it out.

As the piloting activity of the Open Habitat project draws to a close it’s time to gather out data and our thoughts and consider what it all might mean. We have plenty of evidence that MUVEs are a useful for teaching and learning and much guidance and direction to give to teaching practitioners considering taking the plunge. We also have, I think, an overarching message from the project:

“Teaching and learning in virtual worlds is an experience.”

I’m not trying to be facetious or flippant I mean it in the true sense of the term. Taking part of a teaching session in an MUVE is more than simply using a tool or achieving a task, it feels like an event, a particular moment in time when you have the chance to interact with others at a level of intensity which is rarely felt in other online spaces. A teaching session in an MUVE can become a focal event for a significant slice of teaching. A learning design can be created which leads up to and then away from an MUVE session. Much like a traditional field-trip, the teaching can frame the time that students spend out in the field or in this case the MUVE and work generated during that time can be considered upon their return. The ‘otherness’ of the alternative environment can act as a mirror for the students, helping then to reflect on their practice as they see how it is influenced by the virtual world.

Like any immersive experience it is at times challenging for an individual to assess what they have learnt during the experience itself but over time the benefits of being taken out of the comfort of their day-to-day environment starts to become apparent. If you believe that MUVEs are capable of supporting an online culture or beyond that an online society then maybe a session in one is akin to visiting another country. We are socially and psychologically transposed into this new land and whilst not physically transported we are visually represented. Like any exploration into new territories it can be chaotic, alienating, exhausting, and frustrating. There are new forms of communication to learn and new cultural norms to adjust to. It can be intriguing, surprising and occasionally exhilarating, offering inspiration and new perspectives on ideas which may have become stagnant. These experiences with others in these virtual worlds is a form of travel and they do say that travel broadens the mind.

Last week I facilitated the learning design session (with talks from Grainne Connole and Alan Masson) at the JISC online conference.  Overall it was a great experience (if exhausting) and if you have never been before I would recommend it.  As part of my facilitation duties I summarised the discussion for each day,  taking inspiration from Grainne I thought I would share these here, as it acts both as a good starting point for some of the key issues and a source of links to a lot of interesting resources.

Day 1

From the start of the day when Gilly’s keynote highlighted the importance of curriculum design as a way of dealing with the challenges of the future, this session has seen an interesting discussion, which has touched on themes which seem to be emerging across the conference as a whole. The titles below match up to the discussion threads, under each I have tried to summarise the main discussion points and /or highlight links to interesting resources.

Hello and Welcome

Malcolm Ryan introduced us to the work on defining the skills, knowledge and attitudes required by the e-competent tutor http://e-competenttutor.ning.com/. Alan provided a link to the HLM cards which are described in his presentation, along with an indicative recording grid at http://cetl.ulster.ac.uk/elearning/downloadcentre.php .

Gilly’s keynote and design There was a consensus that everyone agreed with Gilly’s vision, but that ther real the question was “how” to achieve this. Alan suggested, “not only do we need to provide support, guidance and facilitation, we need to address quite distinct challenges – reflection, planning, design” Grainne added “getting the balance right of getting people to think differently/out of their comfort zone, whilst also not frightening or overwhelming them” Sheena Banks brought up how methods of production can effect design which led to a general discussion on the need for practitioners to see examples from others – both in terms of outputs but also practice. Grainne mentioned how Cloudworks was designed to support this.

Supporting culture change Richard Everett introduced us to the work they have done at Oaklands College (see S1 for more on this) where the aspect of students contributing to the design process was picked up. Academics, while reluctant at first grew more interested as students showed they had valuable contributions to make. Sarah Knight suggested that the JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programmes (www.jisc.ac.uk/curriculumdesign and www.jisc.ac.uk/curriculumdelivery) would be interested in knopwing more about this work. Richard uploaded the report written by the lead eMentor at Oaklands http://www.online-conference.co.uk/WebX?233@@.eebe0c9/23!enclosure=.eebec11 . Helen also drew attention to the conclusions from the D4L programme here Helen Beetham, “Resource sharing area” #4, 4 Nov 2008 2:13 pm which concluded there was a difference “between skilled self-directed learning (how learners direct aspects of their own learning as they engage with an already-designed curriculum) and skilled educational design (how learning is designed for a particular curriculum or cohort)”. Alan stated he was making a mind map of the discussion which would try and share before the end of the conference.

Changing culture is due to the physical space as well This thread looked at how physical space can shape curriculum design Richard Everett and Grainne reflecting on their experience , including how very practical constraints can affect things. This discussion also started to consider how virtual spaces and especially VLEs also can shape things, and the need for virtual spaces which are not always about learning (Alan).

Tools to support design This thread discussed the tension between visual and text representations with a consensus that these are useful for different people at different times. Other issues raised were Alan “representations are outputs from a process” which it is also important to capture. Sheena raised the issue of over simplification, with Grainne in response “the minute you represent anything by its very nature you are being reductionist because you cant capture everything about a design in one go” Sheena “how far do you think that learning designs can be reusable/shared?” Helen Beetham mentioned the work from the Source project http://www.eres.ac.uk/source/outcomes.htm (see figure C1) which also identified the tensions around mediating artifacts around design.

Change is due the virtual space too! This strand revisited the issues around the VLE as an artifact which shapes design, and also considered the tensions between a VLE being pedagogically restrictive and it providing “simple, clear guidance which is useful…So again as always we need to adopt a mixed approached tailored to different needs” – Grainne. The Exe tool was mentioned here by Adam Bayliss.

Sharing learning and teaching ideas Grainne introduced Cloudworks “which applies the best of web 2.0 tools and approaches to enabling teachers and designers to share learning and teaching ideas and designs” and Richard Everett mentioned the pack of cards technique they had used at Oaklands

Change is due to the institutional processes too! Alan Stanley raised this important point, and how accreditation proceses tend to look at the subject but rarely at “what do students actually do on this course” which led to comments on this at the micro level from me and Alan reflecting on how they were looking at this in Ulster. It was noted that the JISC funded Curriculum design projects would be exploring this.

 Day 2

While today felt a lot less intense than yesterday, looking at the total number of messages posted we actually had a similar level of discussion. As before the titles below match up to the discussion threads, under each I have tried to summarise the main discussion points raised today.

Change is due the virtual space too! This strand revisited the issues around the VLE as an artifact which shapes design. Michael Vallance raised suggested “We do not limit ourselves to one solution but look at what a number of tools can do, and do well” I raised the ideas that sometimes “we forget how many students (not just academics) value an easy to use integrated environment that lets them focus on the learning not the technology.” The conclusion from Michael was to u”se the best technology available to do the task required … and not seek that all embracing single solution”

Change is due to the institutional processes too! Today this thread talk moved onto ways we have managed to get the learning technologist perspective into the sign off process for course development, especially in terms of negotiating shared course visions. There was also a brief discussion the differences between working with enthusiasts and the mainstream.

Visualization Designs This theme kicked off the day with Grainne introducing the idea of visual v. textual representations generated from tools such as Compendium LD. Grainne linked to http://www.slideshare.net/PerryW/using-compendiumld-to-design-a-learning-activity-435001/ as a step by step guide to creating a learning activity in Compendium LD. Adam Bayliss raised the possibility of Compendium LD for the Mac and Andrew replied he was aiming to have this available by Christmas. EA Draffon introduced a selection of other generic tools. Accessibility was discussed with Andrew Brasher mentioning http://www.Web2Access.org.uk. There was a discussion about text v visual being better for different parts of the design process and Nigel Ecclesfield talked about generic tools that could cope with both modes. I talked about this in relation to the idea of a Phoebe/compendium link up, and also about how the LD tools report had looked at generic tools as well http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/LD%20Tools%20Report%20v1.1.pdf. We also talked about visual design being better for activities and textual for course level design – although Andrew Brasher had examples of when this may not be the case. Lastly Alan share 3 representations of a design from Ulster and we discussed ways of taking the same data and showing it in different ways, especially in light of how the Mod4L project http://mod4l.com/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=7 identified that most users did not have time to create multiple representations.

Starting day 2 – innovations that really work I started this thread by asking people to share innovations that had really worked. Richard Everett mentioned eMentors (where students teach the teachers to use technology appropriately) eInnovations – a £50K fund that staff (and students) bid into to do something innovative of relevance to the new building, but need culture to allow risk and failure. Grainne mentioned the OU ‘Design challenge’ to get people to design a short course in a day with support various stalls that represented stakeholders such as librarians etc, which raised as a key factor in success. Helen Beetham also mentioned other institutions’ ‘design intensives’ e.g. Brookes, Herts, Leicester. Alan Clarke suggested how Adult and Community Learning has used digital cameras, which led to a discussion of the Molenet project which James Clay was involved in and expanded on. Sarah Knight mentioned the ILT Champions programme for the FE which was reiterated by many, as something that had and was having a long lasting effect on their practice – this years conference is being hosted by James Clay, who shared some podcasts it had created http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=294259336.

Cloudworks Juliette Culver introduced the cloudworks tool www.cloudworks.ac.uk and the latest thinking here http://cloudworks.open.ac.uk/?q=node/363 and Paul Baily suggested tag clouds (of this discussion) as a possible feature.

I have just read Lorna Campbell’s post of the titled “Exclude teaching and learning materials from the open access repositories debate. Discuss.” which was really interesting to me, as a “repository” perspective on something which I am preoccupied about from the teaching and learning end.  As Lorna suggested I have a lot of instinctive agreement that lumping in teaching and learning content with the broader concerns of the repository world (and as an ex- librarian I find it far too easy to take that perspective) does produce tensions, and she identifies a lot of the right questions:

What to teachers actually do with their materials? Where do they currently store them? How do they manage them? How do they use them? Are there things teachers can’t do now that they would like to? How do learners interact with teaching materials? Are there personnal, domain and institutional perspectives to consider? And how do they relate to each other?

But I would say that a lot of these are  already being asked, and in many cases by projects under the  e-learning strand of JISC  (Design 4 learning, User Experience and Reproduce strands immediately occur to me and I am sure there are more) – perhaps the worlds of e-learning and repositories need to get better at communicating?

However I also think it is worth making the point that all repository content (from scholarly communication to a learning object) is potentially teaching and learning content and we should be able to create solutions that can cope with both.

We have recently heard from JISC that we have funding for the Cascade project as part of their Curriculum Delivery call.  This is really exciting news as it gives us a chance to properly explore implementing the technologies that can transform a learning experience across the whole of the Department for Continuing Education.For the Department as a whole it will provide us a chance to really explore how technology can be used effectively as we confront the challenges we face due to the ELQ policy (which removes HEFCE funding for students studying an equivalent of lower qualification and for TALL it will give us a chance to build on the work we have been doing in the last few years, both in research and in course development.

Image by Whirling Phoenix Some rights reserved.

Although we are only really halfway through the Mosaic project it is providing some real food for thought about how reuse actually works in practice and what it means for a lot of the assumptions underpinning other work we are part of through projects such as the LDSE and Phoebe in the area of learning design.

There is no question that engaging in reuse in earnest has clarified my thinking about the ways it really happens – we have always reused content up to a point but a commitment to producing a course which is made up of over 85% existing materials really focuses the mind.

Obviously at his stage  if the project all our findings about reuse are only from one course, but from what we have experienced so far I really believe that really reusing involves:

1. Using content found through Google overwhelmingly more than that found in repositories
2. Using anything that might enhance teaching, text, images, videos, databases, simulations, learning designs and very occasionally “learning objects”
3. Using things that  may be large- a course, or small- an image, but the larger they are, the more likely they will be changed.
4. Getting the materials into your course which ever way makes your life easiest, linking to the things you want to use or if you are really cutting edge bringing them into your space through mashups etc
5. Working alone or collaboratively but more often in ad hoc rather than formal ways

I am sure none of this seems particularly radical, especially in the blogosphere, but what it does do is undercut certain assumptions which are in play in a lot of educational technology research and development projects.

• Learning content is exceptional
• It lives in repositories
• It requires specialized metadata
• It will be delivered to students through a course in a VLE

I think it can be all to easy to design tools for how you think the world should work, rather than how it is. It is too late to make learning content work this way – and thinking about how our field has changed in the last decade would you even want to?

JISC have announced the projects funded under the Curriculum Design call.  We did not submit a bid  for this call, but were obviously very interested from the perspective of Phoebe, as although it is usually referred to as a pedagogic planner I would argue this is a process which encompasses curriculum design.  From the institutions funded it looks like an interesting mix of institutions who have done work that I know of in this area and new groups.

However what is really interesting for us, is the number of these projects who have said that they want to use Phoebe.  We were always clear that the next stage to a proper understanding of how planning tools are actually going to work was to use them for real planning, over weeks and months rather than for the duration of a workshop.  In addition I think everyone involved emerged from the D4L programme convinced that there was not one tool for everything (I know, not even Phoebe!)  and with many of these projects looking at a suite of tools, it will give us a chance to see how Pheobe and some of the other tools in this space (see previous posts in this area) work together.