This autumn we are offering more short courses than ever before, including 7 new courses
10th September
Brontës (NEW)
Learning to Look at the Visual Arts
New Economic Powers
Study Skills
12th September
Jane Austen
Learning to Look at Western Architecture
Philosophy Gym
Political Philosophy
17th September
Exploring Roman Britain
Islamic Art and Architecture (NEW)
Victorian Fiction: an Introduction (NEW)
19th September
Contemporary British Fiction; an Introduction (NEW)
Critical Reading
Durer to Bruegel: Northern Renaissance Art c.1480-1580
Learning to look at Modern Art (NEW)
Philosophy of Religion
Reality, being and existence: An introduction to metaphysics
24th September
Philosophy of Mind
Theory of Knowledge (NEW)
Visual Arts of India
Not my title but the title of a recent JISC podcast in which myself and JISC strand manager, Lawrie Phipps, discuss the nature of Web 2.0 and its possible relevance for education. We both take a cautious liberal view that recognises the potential in this new style of communicating and sharing whilst being clear that institutions can’t simply dive-in and appropriate the emerging online culture which seems to be in a permanent state of flux. If you are not sure what Web 2.0 is all about then this may be the non-technical introductory podcast for you.
What can the massively multiplayer game ‘World of Warcraft’ teach us about how to facilitate learning communities? Below is a video of the talk I gave at the Games Learning and Society conference in Madison Wisconsin. (Running time 26 minutes)
If you want more details before watching here is the abstract…
This presentation is an evaluation of ethnographic field work conducted in and around the World of Warcraft MMO. The study focuses on the motivation of guild members to construct communities of practice both to learn and to socialize. This suggests that the guilds can act as useful models for understanding how online social networks function and how they could influence the ideology of next generation e-learning services.
Successful collaborative learning can only be sustained if the individuals involved feel part of a group or community in which they can trust. The most robust communities tend to be those that form via a collective aim or interest; their formation has a social underpinning and is not totally utilitarian.
If an aspiration of e-learning is to move away from simply providing online programs of study, demarcated by subject, to increasingly fluid spaces in which students can build social networks, then we need to understand how contemporary collaborative and participatory environments encourage the formation of these types of groupings.
Some of the most sophisticated examples of online community creation and management take place in and around MMO environments. The current apex of this field is the ‘guild’ system which suffuses the World of Warcraft MMO. Guilds are effectively goal-oriented clubs or societies, many of which utilize the latest Web 2.0 technologies out-of-game and multi-channel text chat and VOIP systems in-game both to organize and to socialize.
This paper is based on data collected over a period of six months from an ongoing ethnographic study comprising self-reflexive observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in World of Warcraft and face-to-face with guild members. This extends into a study of the social software used out-of-game by community members that acts as a communication base for the guilds.
The data is evaluated using Wenger’s notion of communities of practice, which highlights the interweaving of goal-orientated learning and the immersion of those participating in trusted social networks. This has the effect of generating and communicating what Bourdieu calls cultural capital, the lack of which often makes online learning a poor second to traditional face-to-face learning.
The challenge here is how to abstract underpinning principles and practice that will be of value to e-learning away from the immediate goals or ideology of a particular MMO. This is not to suggest that killing dragons in collaborative groups is the future of e-learning. Instead it proposes that much can be gained from reflecting on the success of MMOs in motivating the formation of vibrant online communities and the ways in which these communities interweave socializing and learning.
You may be interested in my report on Web2.0 take-up and usage which I submitted to JISC a few weeks ago. It’s analysis of some data that blogged back in March. I included the responses to the data in the report. It was all very ‘participatory’. The report can be downloaded from here: www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitalrepositories/spiresurvey.pdf
As part of the Isthmus project I have started to investigate simple ways to offer forums from the Moodle VLE into Netvibes and iGoogle. This seemed simple enough, switch on the RSS feed for a Moodle forum, grab the feed into either a new widget or into an existing widget. Of course, like a lot of things that seem easy at first, it turns out to be a lot trickier that it should!
At first I thought it was me, I’m relatively new to Moodle so was happy to believe that I hadn’t switched something on correctly, but the more I investigated the more I realised that it wasn’t me, it was Moodle 1.8 and the RSS feed. I discussed my findings with some of my colleagues, who, unbeknown to me, had already tried to get an RSS feed of Moodle 1.7 blogs – with no luck. Then I started to think well it’s relatively new, maybe someone in the open source community of Moodle had accidentally broken the functionality while trying to develop new technology – I’ve seen it happen with my own work, even though I know what it does!
I believe now would be a very good time for the Moodle community to take a step back and ask itself why are we trying to recreate technologies rather than reuse very good open source products that are already available, thus allowing time and effort to be spent on new functionality that doesn’t exist!
As you may know, the argument of Recreate or Reuse is part of the ethos of the Isthmus project and for me it cements the belief that it makes a lot more sense for ‘institutions’ (and I’m including Moodle in that) to try, where possible, to reuse technologies and to do so in a less formal way.
Since launching the Department for Continuing Education’s new website (www.conted.ox.ac.uk) TALL have been looking for ways to improve both the functionality and design of the site. Individuals within the department have chipped in with a number of good ideas, all of which have been thrown into a large melting pot. However, all of these ideas, including those suggested by TALL, have so far been based on either the internal staff usage of the website or speculation of how visitors are interacting with the site.
Rather than define a second phase of development work based on speculation TALL have begun a month long project researching the usage of the departments websites. This project combines an online survey asking site visitors about their experiences and analysis of the web server logs to see how the site is being used.
On completion of the project TALL will produce a report on the findings, highlighting recommendations for website editors, marketing personnel and decision makers within the department, along with a series of departmental seminars giving further advice and improvements.
Watch this space for more information on our research efforts…
Last week (April 25th -26th) I attended the first of JISC’s Users and Innovation strand events in London. The event was run by George Roberts and a team from BrookesUniversity. There are just over 100 people in the ‘Emerge’ community (http://emerge.elgg.org/) within the strand and they are by no means the normal JISC crowd.
The whole format was very encouraging with Lawrie Phipps and JISC approaching the ‘new stuff’ that is happening on the web with an open mind. The focus was as much cultural as it was technical and it was one the very few days I have attended where the technology really didn’t come first. The main theme was that of community both online and offline. I can see that the members of ‘Emerge’ will find common themes around the provision of social spaces, the use of immersive environments and many others. It will be interesting to see how the community evolves as the process of putting bids together starts.
I hope that this new format works for JISC and that the individual members of Emerge will benefit from being part of what could become a really useful community. As far as I’m concerned it has got off to a great start.
Ethics for Biosciences
This is a short (ten week) online course designed to help students of science and working scientists to understand, reflect on and engage with some of the key ethical and social issues thrown up by biological science and technology.
