tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11049559920142172602024-03-14T08:19:34.562-07:00Cath's musingsa place to reflect on life, the universe and anything else that comes to mindCathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-54325787135532750012011-03-23T03:48:00.000-07:002011-03-23T04:26:47.121-07:00JISC Conference 2011 - part 2OK so a week later I've got chance to sit down and write up part 2 of the JISC conference.<br /><br />The first session I attended after lunch was "How innovation helps to support an agile and efficient University". This session was to be a discussion about what helps innovation in institutions and what hinders it. The panel members gave us their views about innovation and where they are coming from and each member joined a different group for the discussion. We had an interesting discussion on our table about barriers to innovation and agreed that quite often there are pockets of innovation going on in institutions but that it isn't always recognised. Recognition we felt was important - it doesn't have to be a huge reward but recognising someones efforts is important. One of the barriers is how we get institutions to see innovation as valuable in cash strapped times. We talked about structure too - how much structure is needed? Too much and it can stifle innovation, not enough and nothing ever happens with the pockets of innovation that are happening. It was also asked can the institution be innovative or is it innovative because of all the individuals who are innovating within it? Which is the most innovative - the one that supports innovation of individuals or one that tries to cultivate innovation (i.e. tries to create innovators)?<br /><br />All in all a very interesting session with lots to take away and consider. It made me think about how much we are "allowed" to be innovative within my own service. I don't know the answer but I think that maybe we should stop waiting for permission try things out and then take them to senior managers for adoption more widely or rejection. Sometimes I think there is a tendency to wait for leadership from above for projects where maybe we should just be doing our bit in our small area and then sharing the knowledge (obviously if there is a cost implication this may not be possible) - the only danger to this is there's then no joined up approach and again you end up with isolated pockets of innovation. The key thing is if you come up with a good idea share it.<br /><br />The final session of the afternoon was "Re-thinking libraries: innovation in a time of limited resources". This session took a very different approach which I thought was really innovative. There were three speakers who had a 6 minutes to deliver a "pitch" - this pitch included details of an activity or discussion that we could choose to be part off for the rest of the session, with feedback from the three groups at the end. I chose to be part of the group looking at planning for an innovative future. There is a really good summary of the session (including the each of the three themes) <a href="http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/03/18/rethinking-the-library-innovation-in-a-time-of-limited-resources/">here</a> by Ben Showers who facilitated the session. Our discussion and outcomes are we recorded by Peter Tinson of UCISA and rather than re-invent the wheel and try to remember what was said (I wasn't taking notes) in our group here's a link to Peter's <a href="http://petertinson.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/rethinking-libraries/">blog post</a>. Plus he did a better job of summarising it than I could.<br /><br />I thought the conference was really good and provided much food for thought. It was great to have it in Liverpool as I was able to get to it very easily and still be home at a reasonable time.Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-32751934725468807702011-03-17T01:58:00.000-07:002011-03-18T07:21:48.024-07:00JISC Conference 2011 - part 1I was very pleased to be able to attend the full day of JISC11 this week as it was in Liverpool so very handy for me. I've never been to the BT Convention centre before and I have to say it's vast. As a lady I was speaking to said "it's a barn, a very nice barn but a barn" and it was. Lots of space and lots of stewards around to help you if you got lost.<br /><br /><br /><br />So having found my bearings and coffee I sat down to connect to the wireless and get myself ready for the day. I know some people had problems connecting to the wireless but I have to say it worked fine on my netbook (although I couldn't get it to work on my phone), which was a relief as I wanted to follow Twitter as well as use Evernote for my notes.<br /><br /><br /><br />The opening address was given my David Baker and he talked about financial challenges and digital opportunities, which was the theme of the conference. David talked about the role of JISC and said they needed help education leaders look to technology to increase efficiency and cut costs. He also talked about the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2011/11_04/">HEFCE review </a>of JISC. A key outcome of this was about JISC centrality - it is seen as playing a "pivotal role in the UK as an enabler of innovation and early and widespread adoption of ICT" (Review Report, #3). You can view the key recommendations in the report but what JISC needs to do now is to consider it's role and purpose over the next 5-10 years. You can comment on the recommendations <a href="http://www.hefcereview.jiscpress.org/">here</a>. David outlined 4 commitments and objectives:<br /><ul><li>Delivering a world class national infrastructure</li><br /><li>Providing value and valuable services</li><br /><li>Innovating through programs and projects</li><br /><li>Supporting take-up and embedding good practice across the sector</li></ul><br /><p>He then introduced Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol who delivered the keynote.</p><p>He looked at the historical perspective - since 1820 there has been a steady increase in the number of chartered universities. He argued that education in the 60s and 70s wasn't free - more tax was paid so education was paid for by increased tax. Now we pay less tax but we have more students. Values and ambitions are unchanged and we need to retain our values in the face of change. There is now a paradigm shift in how HE is funded, a move from funding from the state to funding of and by the individual loan. It becomes consumer led - the student decides where they want to put the money. Now we cannot predict that the same number of students will choose our university as they did last year - so we can't predict the income they will bring to us. There is also the problem of the income gap - the universities financial years don't coincide with the government financial years. </p><p>He stated that the additional fees are not additional income but it is percieved that way - we are still working with the same amount of money but is there a perception that we should be providing more because we are now charging higher fees?</p><p>What are the challenges to increased fees?</p><ul><li>Will if put people off coming to university?</li><br /><li>Pricing - students will look for value for money - charging the most doesn't necessarily mean it's the best</li><br /><li>Widening participation - there are unknown targets for this</li><br /><li>Marked increase in students and paretns expectations - "I'm paying for this"- but we aren't geting any more money</li></ul><p>We are living in a chaotic environment, predictability has disappeared and so we can end up with very different outcomes.</p><p>What makes you stronger to face this:</p><ul><li>Turnover and size</li><br /><li>Population centre - more students will go to their local university</li><br /><li>Highly sought after</li><br /><li>Location</li><br /><li>Excellent staff and excellent students</li><br /><li>Student union working with you not in conflict</li><br /><li>Being financially robust</li><br /><li>Governing body - that works well with you, challenging the executive of the university but also assisting to meet those challenges</li></ul><br /><p>Prof Thomas argued that the sector will have to diversify nad how to look at how you make your university attractive to your natural consituency. This keynote provoke a lot of comments on Twitter (despite the connection problems) with some agreement and some disagreement and it was interesting to tune into that whilst listening to Prof Thomas.</p><br /><p>After more coffee and lovely biscuits it was time for the first parallel session. I attended "Using digital media to improve teaching and learning" - there were three presenters Doug Belshaw, Zak Mensah and Jane Williams. Doug was up first and he talked about what we mean by "attendance" - there are 3 approaches to this: </p><ul><li>attention based definition - applying your mind or energies to something</li><br /><li>service based definition - very much the lecture format, "I am the expert and you must attend and listen to me"</li><br /><li>community based definition - action of coming together whether in the real or virtual world</li></ul><p>Doug argued that the best approach was attention and community, he then whizzed through a few examples of this, which are in his <a href="http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2011/03/15/using-digital-media-to-improve-teaching-and-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dougbelshaw+%28Synechism%29&utm_content=Twitter#">presentation</a>. He argued that "teachers than can be replaced by technology should be" - learning with digital media is different, it's not just about sticking something you already do in the VLE. Need to think more in terms of eco systems - you have our learning materials with you all the time - the smartphone has seen to that. He pointed to a couple of JISC guides that I need to investigate further myself (links below)</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/practice">Effective Practice in a Digital Age</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digiasses">Effective Assessment in a Digital Age</a></li></ul><br /><p>Another thing to check out is <a href="http://www.teacherstoolbox.co.uk/T_effect_sizes.html">John Hattie's Table of Effect Sizes </a>- Hattie says "effect sizes" are the best way of answering the question "what has the greatest influence on student learning?"</p><p>And something that is currently being worked on and will be launched at ALT-C 2011 is "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.jisc.ac.uk/elearningprogramme">Emerging Practice in the Digital Age</a>" - with that Doug handed over to Zak who is E-learning officer in JISC Digital Media. He said digital media can be daunting, some types of media have so many different formats how do you know what is right for you? Zak argued that using workflows allows you to identify the best format for what you are trying to acheive. So why focus on digital media? Because it's:</p><ul><li>flexible - you can use it for policy guides, marketing, teaching and learning and support</li><li>scalable - in terms of media but also in terms of audience and delivery - there are lots of opportunities for people to use digital media in their courses</li><li>affordable - use students in an engaging way to produce digital materials</li><li>measurable - you can track views on Blackboard for example and use that to improve your usage - if it's not being used ask why?</li></ul><p>Finally Jane Williams from University of Bristol gave some fab examples of digital media in use in teaching and learning. Students go to clinical academies as part of their course, they were getting a different experience depending on the academy. Using digital media allows them to get a level playing field. It gives a consistent approach for all students. I liked the interactive video, which runs with a bit of content and then asks you a question and you can't progress to the next bit until you get that question right. This is something that could be transfered into other disciplines. Many of these resources were created by students not staff. Involving students in digital resource creation is productive learning, it also keeps materials fresh and you can experiment with new technology. With this type of resource you are looking at quality content rather than quality production.</p><p>Very good and interesting session with lots to take away and think about and explore. Then it was time for lunch, which was very nice but hard to eat standing up - involved a bit of juggling as there were not enough seats for everyone, but I guess that is often the way with conferences. Nice chocolate cake though. More about the afternoon in part 2. </p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-16727132893906223252011-03-11T04:07:00.000-08:002011-03-11T04:20:25.090-08:00Handheld Librarian Conference 2011 - Mobile apps<strong>Top 40 best mobile apps for handheld librarians - Scott Brown</strong><br /><br />Some of these are iPhone/iPad some are Android, some are both. I don't specifiy in all cases as Scott didn't and I'm not providing links as I'm sure you are capable of looking up the ones you are interested in. He categorised them into different areas, which I've replicated here. With the exception of Evernote I haven't used any of these apps so these are purely Scott's opinions on them.<br /><br /><strong>Library stuff</strong><br /><br /><em>iBooks</em> - iphone/ipad - nice graphics, can search the text<br /><em>Kindle </em>on the iphone - most popular way to access Kindle content<br />Kindle for ipad too<br /><em>Buzz deck</em> - android app - aggregates your RSS feeds, twitter feed etc can use them by category. Can customise your own cards and categories<br /><em>Reuters News Pro</em> - quite a few vendors are doing this<br /><em>GoodReads</em> - scan the barcode of your books, rate it and share it with your network - iphone app<br /><em>Issuu mobile</em> - android app - looks really good - physical magazine reading experience<br />(librarything and library anywhere - don't know if iphone or android)<br /><em>Scan2PDF mobile</em> - fail - quality is really poor<br /><br /><strong>Productivity<br /></strong><em>Dragon dictation</em> - like dragon naturally speaking - translation into text. speak into your phone - send it via text, email, to twitter or fb<br /><em>Dropbox</em> - allows you to set up an account free upto 2G - allows you to draw that down on to mobile device so you can access them - put documents out in the cloud<br /><em>GoodReader</em> - handles pdfs makes it fit the screen - makes it readable, create sticky notes, annotation, markups and highlights draw on it, sync with Google docs, dropbox - $2.99 on iphone<br /><em>Evernote</em> - I love it using it :) mobile version of the web product - make them available - sync back and forth between the two pretty regularly can tag things. I used it to take notes for this conference<br /><em>Wi-Fi Finder</em> - hotspot finder<br /><br /><strong>Business/news<br /></strong><em>Flipboard</em> - ipad - larger layout - aggregate a lot of your different feeds on it<br /><em>Flipbook</em> - more of a drawing app<br /><em>Curator HD</em> - android and iphone - similar concept of flipboard only aggregates Google reader - newspaper style feed<br /><em>My6sense</em> - aggregates RSS and social feeds - android app may be a cost<br /><em>MobileRSS</em> - different interface only aggregates Google reader and makes that readable<br /><em>Apps.usa.gov</em> - several different government focussed apps<br /><br /><strong>Communication<br /></strong><em>Skype</em> - syncs with desktop account - easy to use for video chat - interface is nice<br /><em>Tweetdeck </em>and <em>Hootsuite</em> - allow you to manage your posts to twitter and fb - desktop utility as well as mobile. Can categorise that<br /><em>Anypost</em> - android - share to multitudes of sources<br /><em>Qik </em>- live streaming android - can do video chat, record video and share through your social elements<br /><em>Stfu </em>- Shut the phone up - android - turn phone upside down<br /><br /><strong>Lifestyle<br /></strong><em>urbanspoon</em> - decide where to go to dinner - location by type of food or cost, you shake it and they spin around, can get opinions of those places<br /><em>Daytrotter</em> - new studio set from a band, stream or download it - great way to discover new artists<br /><em>Pandora</em> - music app<br /><em>SoundHound </em>- hum or sing into it and it will try and identify the song - "what's that song?" 70% hit rate<br /><em>Netflix</em> - stream movies - picture is really good - iphone<br /><em>RunPee mobile</em> - look at popular movies and find good places to go to the toilet - it will give you a summary for what you've missed<br /><em>FlySmart</em> - airport app flight info, departures etc, layout of terminal, can search by categories works on a compass to help to locate facilities within the airport<br /><em>Car locator</em> - android only - identify where you are when you park your car - can check how long you've been parked and how far away you are from your car<br /><em>Talk to me</em> - android - translate text or voice between languages<br /><br /><strong>Location<br /></strong><em>Foursquare - </em>allows you to check-in at different sites<br /><em>Gowalla </em>- description of sites - more social aspect to it<br /><em>Layar</em> - augmented reality - real estate app, business and locations, museum of London - historical photo overlays as you go around London<br /><em>SitorSquat</em> - public restroom - weird, people take pics<br /><em>ALOQA</em> -android app - local stuff - hotspots, coffee bars, clubs etc<br /><br /><strong>Just for fun<br /></strong><em>unhearit</em> - get that song out of your head - provides you with a new song<br /><em>Draft</em> - for ipad - draw freehand - keep track of your drawings and share them via email - can collaborate using Campfire<br /><em>Hipstamatic</em> - 70s sheen to your photos - costs money<br /><em>Instagram</em> is another oneCathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-54044894528581893732011-03-10T06:31:00.000-08:002011-03-11T04:21:46.391-08:00Handheld Librarian Conference 2011 - Part 2So to part 2 (for me anyway). the first session I attended was QR codes and augmented reality by Robin Ashford. Robin asked the question why focus on mobile users? Because of the significant growth in mobile usage, in 2010 there was more usage, more apps and more developers. QR stands for Quick Response (probably should have put that in the last post) and allows you to jump from printed content to online content. This could be a video, a website, some useful text. What you need is a web enabled phone with a camera and a QR app. QR codes look like this:<br /><br />(this is the BBC's)<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWsJplpjE0G4fe5199Df88WhiHkky5aqkgl3Z_xT7evy1y7W_ecvwTnRczH3sLw_uStdg9j8EWLqKVijweZ8-kdTLpFXSyFBB7YfXRwfACwOZr0MhM5f6UfYvoWPNr0naIJh9l9niRHo7/s1600/qr+code.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582460428825390018" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 126px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 126px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWsJplpjE0G4fe5199Df88WhiHkky5aqkgl3Z_xT7evy1y7W_ecvwTnRczH3sLw_uStdg9j8EWLqKVijweZ8-kdTLpFXSyFBB7YfXRwfACwOZr0MhM5f6UfYvoWPNr0naIJh9l9niRHo7/s320/qr+code.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />For a quick an easy guide to QR codes have a look at this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Jk1bfobXA">Creative library </a>video. So what could this be used for in libraries?<br /><br /><br /><ul><li>film trailers for DVDs in the stacks</li><li>Art shows and exhibits - link to the website</li><li>room reservation - they didn't find that this was that useful as it didn't go to a dynamic page</li><li>library tutorial (videos)</li><li>in the library catalogue - gives you the title, author and call number (you can scan the code and then go to the shelf for the book) - I can see this being useful as so many students type class numbers into their phones (University of Bath use this)</li><li>Promotional cards or poster to library mobile websites</li></ul>You need to be aware that using a QR could actually have a negative impact if it doesn't go to somewhere useful. Plus remember not to overdo it. You need to ask the question does this add value?<br /><br />What are the challenges to using QR codes?<br /><ul><li>not everyone has an Internet enable device yet - this is true but I see us using them additional rather than to replace other things</li><li>poor implementation of QR codes - you need to get it right or it won't add value</li><li>not the prettiest </li><li>need for education and promotion</li><li>privacy issue</li></ul>And for the future we need ask<br /><ul><li>how long will they stick around?</li><li>will they mainstream?</li><li>does this matter?</li></ul>Robin then went on the talk about augmented reality (AR). AR overlays virtual date with what you see in the world. It combines the real and virtual worlds. Here's a <a href="http://www.blogger.com/h?p://www.commoncrat.com/augmented‐reality‐video">Common Craft </a>video explaining what AR is. This could be used to create campus and library tours. You use can use existing information or create your own story. Take a look at this <a href="http://youtu.be/8jG5Qeh1qlE">Junaio AR browser </a>with image recognition. There are other examples using this app as well. It give you an idea of the things you can do with AR. How about using to help with changing the toner in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6FMABGBMjY">printer</a> - useful? Potentially but you could do something similar with a QR code that takes you to a video of how to do it. There does seem to be potential there and this is likely to be a growing area.<br /><br /><br /><p>The challenges of using AR are:</p><ul><li>Devices need to robust and have GPS and a compass</li><li>Apps are always easy to use</li><li>You don't know what's a available - because it's based on the real world, there is no marker to tell you that additional information is there, you just have to hold up your phone and scan around. With a QR code there is something physical to tell you that there is more information available.</li></ul>I certainly think it's something to watch and one of the later talks showed how this had been used practically within a library service. This presentation was by Sarah Houghton-Jan and Nate Hill, both of whom are based in public library services in the US. In order to make augmented reality work you need GPS, a camera and an accelerometer (to do with direction). Sarah talked about a few different apps that are out there. <a href="http://www.wikitude.org/en/">Wikitude</a> connects information held in wikipedia with reality. The digital content is layered over the real world. <a href="http://www.layar.com/">Layar </a>is the most popular of these apps at the moment. <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text">Google Goggles </a>can scan covers of books, artwork, album covers and then searches the web for information about the thing you have scanned.<br /><br /><br />A lot of the applications for AR are still a bit clunky and bigger screens tend to work better with it. Sarah and Nate worked on a project (it's still on-going) to create local history walking tours in San Jose. The aim is to create a mobile web application using a Layar-based tour. The originally were going to design and Apple and Android app but as they were unable to recruit developers they changed direction and created a web based app using html5 - this actually makes it more accessible to more devices so in the long run this was a good decision. I found it really useful to hear that as you kind of thing you should be thinking in terms of creating iPhone and Android apps but actually doing it browser based means it would reach more people and you are more likely to have people with the skills in house to develop it. Testing across platforms is quite difficult and Nate borrowed a range of phones from others to test the application. Sarah and Nate also said that with GPS you can narrow down to a building but things within buildings are more tricky - so that made me wonder whether this could be used for library tours as was stated in the previous presentation. It could be that I am getting the technology confused because I don't know enough about it yet.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The last presentation I'm going to talk about here was by Andrew Walsh from the University of Huddersfield talking about handheld information literacy: mobilizing existing models. This session was really useful to me because we are just about to look at overhauling our information literacy/user education and I was able to pass on feedback from this session to the steering group looking at this. Andrew talked about models of information literacy (IL). The term was first used in 1974 by Paul Zurkowski. Early IL talked about what it was in terms of broad concepts and ideas but no method of measuring how information literate people were. Early 1990s onward were dominated by the Delphi study by Doyle (1992). The concept of "access, evaluate and use information from a variety of sources" became backed up by a large list of attributes. These attributes tended to be the least controversial as they were the ones agree upon by a group of "experts". A number of competency models were then developed (ACRL and Sconul 7 pillars etc). These models show the attributes of the information literate person and are generally based on the options of a group of experts. There is a lot of overlap between the different models.<br /><br /><br />These models were developed in the pre-mobile world. They imply that it's easy to measure IL irrelevant of the discipline in which a person is working as though there is some "absolute" of IL.<br /><br />Relational models take a different approach. Christine Bruce's (1997) "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Faces-Information-Literacy-Christine/dp/1875145435/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299837563&sr=8-2">Seven faces of information literacy</a>" is an example of this. These models take the experience from the users and are very different to competency based models. It depends on the person and how they relate to the information at that time. Sylvia Edwards (2006) in "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panning-Gold-Information-Literacy-Lenses/dp/1875145605/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299837855&sr=8-1-fkmr0">Panning for Gold: information literacy and the net lenses model</a>" talks about different lenses to searching but that individuals should be able to decide what is appropriate in the situation in which they are searching, you can choose. They are different options rather than a need to work through the different levels like in a competency model. The concept of IL means different things depending on the context in which you are operating and the process you are undertaking.<br /><br /><br />So mobile IL - how does this differ from traditional IL? Andrew outlined 4 key areas:<br /><ul><li>Where? - traditional IL is largely in set places (desktop PC) at a fixed workplace, within a library. Mobile - anywhere and on any mobile device</li><li>What? - traditional IL could be anything. Mobile tends to be quick information at the point of need, often context or location specific</li><li>How? - traditional IL uses a range of established tools to access and manage wide range of information sources. Mobile is often narrow apps and individual specialist sites rather than the open web</li><li>Time spent? - traditional IL the time varies, often slow, long periods spent searching, organising and extracting information especially for academic use. Mobile is quick, fast only, shorter search and little pondering</li></ul><p>More information needs occur in the home and even when there is a PC available users tend to turn to their mobile device rather than log onto a PC and use their normal search methods. Mobile searching tends to be app based rather than web based. </p><p>Andrew concluded that there is a desire for information on the move that is concept specific, that competency models just don't cut it anymore and that we need to research and define mobile IL to equip us for the near future. There aren't any models that look at IL for info needs on the move. We need to ask the questions: how do we know what information to make available in mobile format? How do we know what IL is needed to help users make the most of information on the move? and is this adding value? If it's not it shouldn't be there.</p><p>The final session I went to I will post separately as it looked at the top 40 best mobile apps for handheld librarians (in the opinion of Scott Brown) and I thought as this was mainly a list it would be best suited to it's own post. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-18364935392818862582011-03-03T03:48:00.000-08:002011-03-10T02:56:32.597-08:00Handheld Librarian Conference 2011 - part 1OK so finally catching up with the Handheld Librarian Conference from last week. I was never going to be able to view the presentations live due to the timing of the event but having booked it I realised I needed to take leave. Anyway this week I am catching up.<br /><br /><br />So I pretended to be a student and set myself up in our social learning zone to make sure I got some peace to listen to the recordings of the sessions.<br /><br /><br />The first session I attended was led by Amy Vecchione and Margie Ruppel talking about their SMS reference service. Students can text a question and an "expert" will text them an answer. They used <a href="http://www.springshare.com/libanswers/">LibAnswers</a> but there are number of services available. They particularly liked this service because linked to their FAQs, had good statistical reporting and it gave out of office messages. As of January they were up to 100 text messages a month. It was the librarians on the reference desk who dealt with these queries and they could use a PC to answer them, rather than a phone.<br /><br /><br />They surveyed a particular course group about the service, 35 students completed the survey, 14% had previously used an SMS reference service elsewhere, 91% said they'd use the service again. They got a 91% positive response when asking how much the students liked the service. Interestingly when they asked students whether the would want answers referring them to print and online or online only 77% wanted print and online.<br /><br /><br />Interestingly when asked how often they asked for help at a traditional desk only 29% said frequently or somewhat frequently. When asked why I was quite disturbed to see that 57% said it was because the person doesn't look like the want to help or looks too busy. I do wonder how we tackle this, as it's difficult getting a balance between sitting there looking like you're not doing anything and looking too busy. Tricky. However 49% said it was because they didn't want to get up from their PC so maybe it's not all bad.<br /><br /><br />After introducing this service they have seen a 57% increase in the number of questions asked at the desk - they hope this is down to them having a positive experience with the SMS service, encouraging them that staff are able to help and won't treat them like they are stupid for not knowing the answer. They don't use a triage system, it's the librarians that answer the questions whatever the nature of those questions.<br /><br /><br />So why should you use SMS reference?<br /><ul><li>to attract a new user base</li><br /><li>it's convenient to the patron</li><br /><li>it's another form of reference</li><br /><li>it's easily implemented</li><br /><li>it provides patrons with as many ways as possible to reach us </li></ul><p>Marketing ideas</p><ul><li>use your website</li><br /><li>have an "ask a librarian day" to launch the service or just to generally promote the librarians as a resource</li><br /><li><a href="http://qandanj.org/">QandANj.org </a>- have a marketing toolkit with some good ideas</li><br /><li><a href="http://provider.knowitnow.org/content/marketing-materials">Know it Now Ohio </a>- there is marketing ideas on their website</li></ul><p>I really like their Ask Away signs and think this is something we could definitely use. They displayed all the ways you could ask for help, include a QR code.</p><p>The second session I attended was by Joe Murphy talking about next trends in mobile technology. He told us that smartphones now outsell PCs and this defines where we should be focusing our resources. New trend areas are location, photosharing and check-ins. He talked about Consumer technology - what's guiding people's behvaiour - and foundational technologies - these shift with massive change. <a href="http://foursquare.com/">Foursquare</a> is now a current technology, it's widespread rather than emerging. Location is now a foundational technology for emerging trends and libraries need to be aware of these. Foursquare now has 7 million users, which is small when compared to Facebook and Twitter but it's impact is wider than it's number suggest. Foursquare is used a marketing tool as major brands are using this tool. Users can get virtual and real world benefits. </p><p>Location of the future - check-in and location diverted from one another but are coming together again. With entertainment check-in it's now not so much about where the activity is taking place but where the participant is engaging in the activity. </p><p>He felt that <a href="http://getglue.com/">GetGlue</a> was the technology to keep your eyes on. This can be incorporated into what we do in libraries. It strongly brings together than social aspect. Users could check in to books and enhance the experience.</p><p>Mobile photosharing is another important area. Foursquare incorporated photosharing into location check-in and had loads of uploads in the first week. It's another way to engage other socially. <a href="http://instagr.am/">Instagram</a> is another service to keep an eye. It's seen huge growth in usage. Joe used this in personal and professional life. You can use it to market content, for example he took a picture of a special issue of a journal that he'd edited and used the interactivity of the mobile technology to promote it. It's re-purposing of content. </p><p>He also talked about the need for mobile literacy, we need evolving skills to match the shifting trends. He said don't get comfortable because change is constant. We need to change institutional culture to be able to adapt and always be willing to invest time and money to investigate these trends. </p><p>So the final session I listening to on the first day was by the Library Tech Team at Fairfield University - they used a number of mobile devices to support their work. They used Evernote to document problems and solutions, this archives the daily activity of the team. It provides instant communication with the tech team, using voice, pictures or videos. They used Skype to communicate with each other via the iTouch 4G or PC with web cam. They used Dropbox where you can save files on one computer and open them on another, this used text, picture and video. This allowed them to open instructions for how to fix technical problems on their mobile devices as well as using Skype. The advantages is instant feedback in realtime and immediate results recording in real time. </p><p>I thought some of these ideas could be used by our R&LS team when we are trying to help users with tricky problems out on the floors. </p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-74414630337869636252010-12-16T03:29:00.000-08:002010-12-16T04:57:21.694-08:00E-Learning Forum - December 2010On Monday morning I attended our E-learning forum here at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">LJMU</span>, the theme of which was "the BIG share" Open Learning Resources. The first speaker was <a href="http://twitter.com/dkernohan">David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Kernohan</span> </a>talking about OER (Open educational resources) in a time of change. He was with us using the power of technology, which for the most part seems to work but I did find him quite hard to hear and I kind of wished there was a web cam so we could see who was speaking. It's funny because up until then I didn't think it was important to see the person, having sat in online sessions before where the speakers did have <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">webcams</span> but it seemed something was missing on Monday.<br /><br />His talk was a bit depressing for a Monday morning when we looked at the implications for any new funding model we might be faced with. Funding is more likely to become variable and it's very hard to plan an institutional budget a year in advance with variable funding. By the same token it impossible to guarantee staffing and he raised the possibility of whether we would see more of a move to atypical staff contracts. He also pointed out that if we chose to move around from place to place we aren't free to take our materials with us as the employer owns the copyright. Open licenses can help with this, it allows you to take your materials with you if you move. So what do we need to do within our <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">institution</span>:<br /><ul><li>Convince the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">institution</span> to get involved in OER and that means talking to your marketing people - you need show the benefits in student recruitment and retention - using OER you can show the students what to expect before they arrive. We need to use it as a marketing tool to recruit. </li><li>We need to get our stuff out there, but only things we own - use references rather than long quotes, select images from sites were you can use materials under a creative commons licence (like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Flickr</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Xpert</span> - which has automatic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">attributer</span>)</li><li>Use others OER to build on</li><li>Host it somewhere safe</li></ul><p>He directed us to have a look at Leeds Met and University of Nottingham to see what they are doing with OER. There is also an <a href="https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24836480/Home">OER <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">infoKit</span> </a>which is a good starting point to explore what OER can do. </p><p>This was an interesting presentation and given the email sent out to staff by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">VC</span> later that same day talking about the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">competitive</span> market we are finding ourselves in and how we need to make dramatic changes. Maybe this is one way forward for us as an institution to compete - we can give students a better taster of what to expect at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">LJMU</span> by using resource they can access before they even choose to study here. </p><p>Next up was Ruth <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Nagus</span> talking about how she uses OER resources within her own modules to provide richer content for students. She uses images in Blackboard to help students identify the folders they need to access for particular subject areas - really simple but really effective. She uses teachers.<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">tv</span> which can be used in an educational <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">environment</span>, you can download and edit to fit your purposes. These are just a couple of examples of things she does. Ruth uses resources and activities to make the students think and she does this in a multimedia environment. </p><p>We then heard from Neil Grant from our corporate communications department talking about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">LJMU</span> TV. Corporate communications are looking at marketing through different channels. They want to gather original audio and video content and distribute this through different channels. The two things he talked about were <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> and <a href="http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">iTunesU</span></a>. He said this was about recruitment but also about teaching and learning. We need to raise the profile of the university. </p><p>YouTube <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">EDU</span> is an area specifically for education - you upload <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">upto</span> 30 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">mins</span> of video and this area gets a lot of traffic as it's seen a "quality" content. It's possible to brand your own channel and you can embed videos into your own pages. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">LJMU</span> has it's own YouTube channel <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ljmutv"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">LJMU</span> TV</a></p><p><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">iTunesU</span> is similar to YouTube <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">EDU</span> page but is better for delivering audio content and users can can download that content to their devices. You can also link back to the university content from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">iTunesU</span> page. So Neil is looking for content to go into YouTube and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">iTunesU</span> - a lot of the content so far is promotional, he needs more educational content - lectures, practicals, content that would be of interest to those within or without <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">LJMU</span> to help raise the profile. </p><p>Finally we heard from Katherine <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Harbord</span> talking about the benefits of using OER both for your students and for yourself as staff. Katherine was very positive about the use of OER. She is new to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">LJMU</span> but has used OER in previous posts and found it to be very <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">advantageous</span>. As well as providing richer more varied resources for students, as staff it actually saves you time as you are not reinventing the wheel. You can adapt work others have done to apply to your own courses. </p><p>All in all an interesting morning, which did stimulate quite a bit of discussion. There was questions about whether putting all our stuff out there is a positive step or whether it leads us to being replaced more easily. It was acknowledged that whilst making resources available more widely was useful it still needs the expertise of staff behind it to put it into context and that contact with academic staff, whether actual or virtual is still incredibly valuable. </p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-34625555764168551692010-12-02T03:32:00.000-08:002010-12-02T04:34:33.077-08:00Shaping our learning futures? - final keynote JISC online conference 2010The final keynote was from Elliott Masie. He used one slide, which I was very impressed with, no death by PowerPoint here. He talked about flip happening - flip in learning. Sometimes you need to flip and idea to get it work. He told a story of an academic who used to give a lecture then send students home with homework - he flipped it, he recorded his lectures sent the students home to watch it then they did the homework in class. He found this worked really well and by watching the lecture before attending in person a lot of discussion was stimulated both before and during the class.<br /><br /><br />He talked about affordances - when a new technology comes to us we need to look at what it affords us the ability to do. What can we now do with the technology that we couldn't do before. We have a habit of falling in love with new technology without necessarily looking at their affordances realistically. It's about benefits, what are the benefits to our users?<br /><br /><br />He argued that our learners want greater autonomy of their learning but at the same time they also want more mastery and purpose.<br /><br /><br />He said the challenge facing e-learning is that it's been hijacked by regulation. I guess this takes some of the creativity and innovation out of it. There are a variety of changes coming, not to replace the instructor but people around the world sharing their knowledge.<br /><br /><br />We do however need to be careful in our language so we don't create the digital "in-group" excluding the "digital-out" group - we would run the risk of becoming an exclusive club which isn't helpful. We can learn from each other.<br /><br /><br />He sees the role of the university is to aggregate the students experience, assessment and feedback as we do gain value from learning together and from sharing space. It's not all about virtual learning. E-learning isn't a solitary activity and it isn't there to create the death of the classroom.<br /><br /><br />He also argued that failing is part of the learning process. We need to build more failure into our technological assisted learning. You need a pilot to crash in the simulator so they learn from that and don't do it in the real thing. The live chat talked about supporting learners to fail in a safe environment but Elliott argued we need to toughen up our assessment so failure happens. The question was raised though whether this is motivating or demotivating? I also think that in a time when universities are in competition which each other and in a world where league tables and results are valued, it's very hard for us to allow people to fail - it doesn't tend to be seen as a positive. So a wider change in the way we think would be needed for this to work.<br /><br /><br />Other possibilities for flip are to play with the sequence of laddering - do we ever analyse the order in which we do things in a course and play around with the sequence?<br /><br /><br />Video and time flips have an impact on industry in the creation of video stories and the fact that you can be one click away from expertise.<br /><br /><br />He talked about time compression and time expansion. With time compression 5 day courses are 3 day courses, 3 day courses are 1 etc. With time expansion you get the opposite - if you could do a 7 year MBA that had little impact on your day to day working, would this be attractive?<br /><br /><br />The question was asked whether reputation (especially digitally) would replace qualification as an indicator of who we can trust? Elliott sees it as more of a mosaic, user ratings along are not enough, qualifications plus the ability to continue to learn could be the way. He said we shouldn't be graduating people but that you should become a member once you've graduated and your membership is dependant on whether you continue to learn - very interesting I thought.<br /><br /><br />This session and in fact the rest of the conference was really good and I've taken lots away to ponder. For the first time I used <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">Evernote</a> to take my notes (not on the first day though) which I found to be really really good (thanks go to <a href="http://twitter.com/theREALwikiman">@theREALwikiman </a>for tweeting about this some time ago, which got me started). Wish I'd used it for the entire conference and I will certainly be using it again. I find when I type notes rather than scribble them I make better notes, because if something looks wrong in type I delete it whereas I would just leave the scribble on the page and then not know what I meant when I came back to it. Evernote also gave me the option to capture bits of the screen so as this was an online conference if any of the presenters had nice slides which diagrams I'd never be able to redraw (especially at speed) I just captured it. Still getting to grips with what it can do but liking it so far.Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-57937787817701384772010-12-01T04:27:00.001-08:002010-12-01T04:50:38.516-08:00Is the future mobile? - JISC Online 2010This session by <a href="http://twitter.com/GrahamBM">Graham Martin-Brown </a>certainly seem to spark a lot of debate. I wasn't able to attend live but tuned in the following day.<br /><br />By his own admission Graham isn't a practitioner or an academic - he was giving his take on the world of mobile.<br /><br />He thinks PCs are dead, laptops are on their way and the phone call is dead. Not sure I agree with the last one myself as I do like a good chat on the phone with my mum and my best mate. However....<br /><br />He showed that Internet trends are all about mobile web and not about desktop web. The Smartphone market is growing rapidly. The mobile app economy as disrupted the software industry forever - there is so much stuff out there that is available for download very cheaply or even free. Also now anyone can produce software apps. Looking at the iPhone market he showed that only 7% of apps are categorised as education. Apps for learning check out <a href="http://www.apple.com/education/apps">http://www.apple.com/education/apps</a> or <a href="http://www.androidapps.com/search/site?term=education">http://www.androidapps.com/search/site?term=education</a><br /><br />He argued that there has been little evidence of improved learning outcomes just from using technology. He said that the following technology is to support teaching not learning:<br /><ul><li>Interactive whiteboards - you can still do death by PowerPoint</li><li>VLE </li><li>Learning platforms - they become teaching platforms</li><li>edu software - described as boring</li></ul><p>These, he argued, maintain the practice of the 19C rather than moving us forward into the 21C</p><p>He had lots to say about Elluminate, the very software we were using to listen to his talk. He said there is a step learning curve, it's ugly and there is no support for modern apps</p><p>He talked about disruptive technology, technology that changes our normal way of doing things - used the iPad as an example.</p><p>It is more useful to teach kids how to create a blog post in Wordpress than how to use Microsoft Word</p><p>He had good things to say about <a href="http://www.molenet.org.uk/">MoLeNET</a> as examples of positive ways mobile technology is being used. </p><p>So the question "is the future mobile"?</p><ul><li>it's already here</li><li>the m in m-learning stands for mainstream</li><li>everything is shifting to mobile</li><li>it's not about supporting existing practice</li><li>resistance is futile</li></ul><p>Finally e-learning doesn't mean we need less teachers but we need a different range of teachers with different skills. Having technology is not enough, we need to think about how we use it</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-50031757282642160492010-11-30T03:11:00.000-08:002010-12-01T03:45:38.936-08:00JISC Online Conference - Realising the value (theme 2)<span style="font-family:arial;">Thursday began theme 2 - realising the value and the keynote for this theme was "how to get your innovations adopted (and change the world)" by Anne Miller. This was a really interesting presentation and Anne was really easy to listen to. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anne said that the most important innovations are the most resisted and that resistance to innovation is normal so we shouldn't get downhearted. She said some of the problems in academia are that there is a tendency for academics to think the job is done once the paper is written. Management used to think in terms of funding and now the emphasis is more on looking for a return on investment. There is also now more of a focus on cuts rather than growth.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anne went on to describe the 4 stages of resistance:</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Stage 1 - blindness </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anne showed us a clip for YouTube </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOQBp56j65Q"><span style="font-family:arial;">Who dunnit?</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> that had 21 differences in it that it's fair to say the majority of the audience missed - watch it and see how observant you are!</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The point she was making with this was that your brain filters out the things that don't seem relevant. So we are all prone to a bit of blindness when it comes to innovation. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">We then had the delight of listening to "Stairway to Heaven", forwards and then backwards to see if we could hear any satanic voices - I kid you not.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After listening to it backwards the first time and hardly any of us heard anything untoward we were presented with some proposed lyrics for the backward version - this time you hear the words that are proposed - it's force-fitted to your expectations, which can also happen with your ideas.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So with blindness a few things can happen</span><br /><br /><ul><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">filtering - filter out what doesn't fit</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">force-fitting - "ah yes that's just like my idea" - force-fitting into pre-existing pigeon-holes - you need to listen to the detail rather than force fit</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">"we tried that weeks ago and it didn't work" - to counter this ask for the details, the report, get them onside because you show an interest in what's already been done. </span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">"great this shows I'm right" - be careful you don't delude yourself that you are right when you are not</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">mismatched mental models - ideas that don't fit our mental models are ignored</span><br /></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So how do we open their eyes? - the hardest thing to do is stimulate. The easiest thing to do is to try and fit in with their interests, beliefs and concerns. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Stage 2 - Frozen</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">People are aware of your ideas but not motivated, What do you do about this? She talked about </span><a href="http://yfrog.com/f1iptk0p"><span style="font-family:arial;">Schein's unfreezing technique</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. It's about making it feel OK to act. The technique reduces the resistance to change</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Stage 3 - Interested</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So they say "tell me about it" - this is the key to selling your idea. You need to make it concise and clear, aim for no more than 10 words. Also make sure your evidence clearly supports your message - it's not easy to do this so beware</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Stage 4 - Embedded</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Will they say "sorry we forgot about it" or "we've always done it this way". At this point you need to make sure you don't fall into the trap of thinking it's all done once you've written the paper. Make sure it's not forgotten that you started all this.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">These 4 stages can happen quickly. They are human psychology so we need to be aware that we are not immune to this ourselves. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Great presentation and not just because of the Led Zeppelin, food for thought</span></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-41499929194121273052010-11-24T02:01:00.000-08:002010-12-02T04:35:28.982-08:00Transforming assessment for learning in the digital age - JISC online conference 2010This was session 1 by David Bould. Even though I'm not directly involved in assessment I thought this session was really interesting. David argued that assessment has such an influence on learning, whether that is good or bad pratice. The digital environement has frequently been misused producing poor forms of assessment. He said we need to think about how assessment affects learning and ask the fundamental questions:<br /><br /><ul><li>what is assessment for?</li><br /><li>why are we doing it?</li></ul><p><br />David argued that we need to transform assessment and stop pretending it's ok. That's not digitial assessment but any assessment. Assessment for learning and assessment for certification are in conflict -we end up with a messy compromise. Assessment should be about building learners capacity to make judgments about their work beyond the current task.<br /><br /><br />We need to see assessment in the digital environment as just part of the whole business of assessement otherwise digital assessment just locks into the primitive view of assessment. This is something I hadn't really thought about. Are we using digital assessment in a closed/negative way rather than making the most of it's potential?<br /><br /><br />We need to reclaim learning as the purpose of assessment - shift it to the longer term. Assessment for the longer term needs to be sustainable and beyond the immediate context. Something to consider - a students early experience with assessment will formulate what they believe is valuable. So if you start with memorisation then they will take that as being the most important - we need to set down at the start markers for assessment.<br /><br /><br />Employers look at what students have the potential to do more than what they have done - this is why longer term thinking is needed. We need to encourage students to develop informed judgment about their own learning.<br /><br /><br />Assessement needs to develop reflective learners. It should help them to become pratitioners, build confidence and develop the capacity to work well with others.<br /><br /><br />David provided a link to examples of assessment practice to foster learning - <a href="http://www.assessmentfutures.com/">http://www.assessmentfutures.com/</a> which I haven't had chance to look at yet.<br /><br /><br />Digital technology provides the opportunity to create assessement for learning. It allows for user-control, responsiveness, collaboration, multi-media (multi-model). But we must make sure we don't fall into certain traps:<br /></p><ul><li>teachers dominating because everything can be pre-coded - ends up being oppressive</li><br /><li>students not involved in key steps in the assessment process - for example when developing what are the appropriate standards and criteria to apply to the assessement don't leave them out of this stage<br /></li></ul><p>He saw the key areas for development as:<br /></p><ul><li>feedback - for feedback to be affective you must be able to see the effect on students work</li><br /><li>self-judgment - self assessement like e-portfolios or <a href="http://reviewsecure.com/">ReView</a></li><br /><li>collaboration in assessment - group tasks, peer feedback, consideration of standards and criteria, moderation of marks<br /></li></ul><p>To sum up it's not all about the technology, we'll use whatever is available and user-friendly. It's not about the method, there are plenty about. It's about the disposition towards learning and seeing assessment as an essential tool in promoting learning.</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-53690683324147647372010-11-24T00:56:00.001-08:002010-11-24T01:58:33.055-08:00JISC online conference 2010 - Opening keynoteWell yesterday was Day 1 of the JISC online conference (Innovating e-learning). I attended for the first time last year and really enjoyed the experience of an online conference but I had forgotten how tiring it is (more so then a physical conference). However yesterday was good. I was only able to attend a couple of the live presentations but both were really interesting. I need to catch up today with the session "what do students really want?" as I was sorry to miss that live yesterday.<br /><br />OK so opening keynote from Keri Facer was really interesting and has stimulated a lot of discussion. Keri asked a couple of questions prior to the session which were then discussed further in the live session:<br /><br />A. what do you think the world will be like in 2025?<br />B. Is there a future for the physical education institution in 20 years time? Why? What might we gain/lose by going virtual?<br /><br />Food for thought. It's hard to think so far ahead when many of us are worried about what might happen in the next few months rather than the next 20 years.<br /><br />Keri said that we are having to get used to living in interesting times. There is a worrying trend that we are seeing education as an individual investment rather than a social investment, so then the questions are asked about why fund it? So we need to think about what sorts of education establishments would rebuild the confidence that they are a sound investment for students and society's futures. When thinking about that we need to ask the question - what sort of futures do we think we are preparing for? This is no easy task and we have to overcome barriers to do this in a meaningful way.<br /><br />Keri then asked the audience what was our most important source of our belief about the future and then what we thought our institutions most important source is. It was interesting that the two did not match. The majority of those present said they used research evidence/reports from practice and industry but overwhelming felt our institutions used Government as a source - could this be a problem?<br /><br />She talked about BCH programme the aim of which was to build a set of long term future scenarios for education in the context of social and technological change 2025 and beyond.<br /><ul><li>We will have the capacity to know more stuff about more stuff - there will be a massive growth in the amount of digital information we'll have access to</li><li>Personal cloud - constant connection to other people, more filtering and shaping the information we get</li><li>Working and living amongst machines will become increasing normal - delegation of responsibility to machines, especially for management of complex systems</li><li>Changing organisational space - distance will be less of an issue (don't need to travel to the institution) but geography will still matter (place plays a role as an identity marker)</li><li>Weakening of institutional barriers</li></ul><p>So what does this mean? The growth of the "knowledge worker" - who will crowdsource, collaborate, manage multiple roles, work with, work on and rework data.</p><p>Thinking about the physical institution - did we think this would still be necessary in 20 years time - overwhelmingly the answer was Yes but.. </p><p>Keri went on to talk about complicating factors:</p><ul><li>Ageing population - will there be inter-generational conflict?</li><li>Decline of confidence in the knowledge economy future</li></ul><p>We were then asked which way we thought the future was going to go; business as usual, collapse/breakdown or transition/transformation? Being a positive group transition/transformation came out on top so the follow up questions of how did we want things to go came up with around the same result. Keri was surprised by this, but as Helen Beetham said in the discussion afterwards, is that people mean difference things by transformation. I also think that it's the group of people that she was talking to. By our very attendance at an event like this suggest that we lean towards transformation and changing attitudes - or am I reading people wrongly? </p><p>The final thing I took from this (headphone fatigue was setting in) was the idea that rather than trying to "future proof" we should be "future building". That means rather than trying to protect against change or build in flexibility we should be looking clearly at the potential future. We need a strong future vision of the educational future we want. We need to ask " how can we work together to tip the balance in favour of futures that offer real well being for our students?". We need to shape students ability to shape their own futures. </p><p>I found it hard to concentrate on the discussion that what going on in chat and listen to the presentation. With this in mind for the second live session I focused on the presentation and not the chat, as it's always possible to review the chat after the session. More on session 2 in a little while....</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-38061716789246644892010-08-05T03:23:00.000-07:002010-08-05T04:37:23.139-07:00It's all about the Twitterverse..really? How is Social Media working for you?Went to an excellent exchange of experience event yesterday at Mimas in Manchester organised by Nowal (title above). This was a great opportunity to share stories with other library people about how they used social media in the professional lives, whether personally or for their service... and I crazily volunteered to speak about our experience at LJMU.<br /><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/LisaJeskins">Lisa Jeskins </a>from Mimas kicked us off introducing the day and explaining about what Mimas is and does. We all introduced ourselves and gave a reason why were were there. The was a mixture of experiences of using social media and a range of reasons for attending.<br /><br />I was up next talking about what we've been doing at LJMU - we are at the very early stages having just set up a Facebook page and Twitter feed, with two blogs currently feeding both of these - the Electronic Library blog and the Customer Services blog which was set up by a colleague Simon Turner. I offered my 5 tops tips:<br /><ol><li>Get the boss on side - they can advocate upwards for you and on the whole makes it much easier to get things done</li><li>Preparation is everything - I showed the group our Facebook page drawn out on flip chart paper - we did this before we even went online</li><li>Listen up - we got good advice from others so I would recommend talking to others that have already done this</li><li>Adapt and overcome - be aware that things change in the world of social media so you need to be prepared for this</li><li>Strategy - make your social media presence part of your organisational strategy. If you have a strategy you can more easily move onto the next big thing when it happens. By making it part of the strategy you're not just relying on keen individuals - if you do this you run the risk that when they leave it all falls apart.</li></ol><p>I was really pleased that this stimulated a lot of questions and discussions and it's really weird reading tweets after the event where you are quoted. No longer does what you say remain in the room but it is broadcast to a much wider audience without you knowing what is being said. Very scary and exciting. </p><p>Next up was <a href="http://twitter.com/bethanar">Beth Ruddock </a>who talked about her use of social media for professional development. Beth finds Twitter a valuable tool for making key contacts in the profession as well as for following events (like this one) that you have been unable to attend physically. Beth reads lots of professional blogs and blogs herself as it's a great way to progress within your profession. She received an award and being a modest person said she didn't know that she was necessarily doing more than others but that she was doing it publicly. This led to other things including an article in Update about her. Having a good Twitter presence can help your career. She also talked about the success of projects <a href="http://twitter.com/theREALwikiman">@theREALwikiman </a>and <a href="http://twitter.com/Woodsiegirl">@Woodsiegirl </a>have been involved in that has come about because of engagement with social media.</p><p>Social media is a great tool to "grow" ideas and in her experience Twitter displays professional generosity - people are willing to help out. Through Twitter people have been asked to speak at conferences, be part of projects etc.</p><p>I thought what Beth had to say was really interesting and has made me want to be more active in my use of Twitter and other social media. I do post but not very often and am maybe not getting as much out of it as I could. I certainly use Twitter more for work than Facebook and get useful contacts and interesting links from others but maybe there is more... hmm something to ponder.</p><p>Next up was <a href="http://twitter.com/shedsue">Sue Lawson </a>from Manchester libraries. Her presentation was really inspiring, they seem to be doing so much. It seems that one area of developments leads into other things, sometimes by accident. The more engaged you are with social media the more opportunities seem to develop. I thought their Facebook page looked really good. Sue said she did used to spend ages get the boxes just right on the page but realised that many people only look at the news feed and never actually get to the page so she now spends more time writing interesting items for the feed - this is definitely something I will take away from the session. I was getting a bit hung up about what else we needed to put on our page but maybe we just need to focus on writing some more positive and interesting posts - it follows that I'll try to do this for the E-Library page too (this was my action point from the day).</p><p>I liked their use of flickr, which includes photos of central library before the refurb, much of this content is user generated.</p><p>Sue also showed us her "listening Wall" - this is a Netvibes space which collects what people are saying about the libraries and all the transformation team have logins to this - I thought this was a really good idea, bringing it all together in one space. Other things to investigate later would be <a href="http://hootsuite.com/">Hootsuite</a> and <a href="http://issuu.com/">Issuu</a> </p><p>After all that we needed some lunch and further sharing went on whilst we were eating. After lunch Lisa Jeskins talked about her experiences of using Twitter for work and how she's started a blog. Lisa talked about how tweeting at an event is a great marketing tool - the Mimas cupcakes - a few tweets to friends, spread and news of the Mimas cupcakes spread far and wide (Internet Librarian International 09)</p><p>Lisa also talked about the value and challenges of using twitter as a supplementary tool for training courses. You need to be careful not to alienate potentially half of your training course by providing information prior to the course via Twitter that those who are on Twitter don't get. She has set up a <a href="http://lisatraining.wordpress.com/">training blog </a>herself and said that by using Twitter first this gave her the confidence to set up the blog.</p><p>After this we split into two groups for a very stimulating and interesting discussion. Rather than reinvent the wheel Beth summarised the discussion really well in her tweets on the day so check out them out for the main points - available here: <a href="http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/nmee" target="_blank">http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/nmee</a></p><p>I have to say whilst writing this I've been re-reading the tweets to supplement the notes I made and that has been really helpful. So thanks to all those who tweeted and thanks for a great, stimulating and inspiring day. </p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-40872433804650278032010-07-13T06:20:00.000-07:002010-07-13T07:41:03.320-07:00Social Networking and libraries - MMIT eventLast Friday I attended an event held in our very own <a href="http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lea/77326.htm">Aldham Robarts LRC</a>, on social networking in libraries. Given that we are about to embark on this area it was timely. I attended with my colleague Pauline Smith and this post is based on both our notes from the session.<br /><br />First up was <a href="http://twitter.com/llordllama">Gareth Johnson </a>from the University of Leicester who premiered his new <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcRbOxNX2UE">weasel video </a>all about social networking. At Leicester they started off with a library blog, with clear house rules for content to ensure style and purpose - it's very important to decide who your audience is. It started quietly but gained voice as it was inclusive for the whole university. It has now gained official recognition and is referenced in the new staff pack. The team (core of enthusiasm) support each other and prompt each other for articles.<br /><br />Leicester also have a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> page, it's maintained by librarians but they don't post content directly to it, it all comes from feeds from other places. It's seen as providing information and there is very little interaction. In comparision the Graduate school at Leicester have a Facebook page which is updated much more regularly and is a good example of a two way conversation.<br /><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> - this is a good way of finding community and encouraging professional awareness. It's also been used an another channel for support.<br /><br />Gareth said that using such tools humanizes the library and that a lot depends on the personalities, ethos and culture. It is better to start small and often and be responsive to feedback from users.<br /><br />Next up was Zelda Chatten from University of Liverpool. In early 2006 Liverpool had many many subject blogs but it proved hard to keep this going - eventually you run out of things to say. However the most successful blog was the e-resources blog, which continues to be updated. This blog now filters information into Facebook and Twitter. In late 2007 a Facebook page was set up as another way to promote new resources and services and does get a good response.<br /><br />Twitter was set up for welcome week 2009 and was publicised in all library inductions. Relevant and interesting tweets are retweeted. They found it valuable to follow others as another source of information - I hadn't really thought about this for our twitter feed (about to be set up imminently) but I will now.<br /><br />Liverpool Uni like Facebook and Twitter - it sparks interest and keeps users aware of the library as well as giving the library staff a more "human" face. Facebook reaches those who never make it as far as the web pages and its free. Zelda also said don't forget the "lurkers", you may be reaching many more people than those who choose to engage with you.<br /><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/Puplett">Dave Pulpett </a>from London School of Economics was next talking about their experiences. They have a marketing and communications manager - which I think is key when trying to promote library services. Their motivations for getting involved in social media was a need to keep up, a feeling that they should be doing it and to fill gaps. The approach is very much experimental - see what happens, some things will work others won't.<br /><br />They used Twitter as feed for discussion on their library catalogue but as it was so successful continued it to cover all areas of the library. Like others they also have a Facebook page and their page is interactive not just static. They use <a href="http://delicious.com/">Delicious</a> and have >1000 bookmarks. It has proven to be a good tool for both students and sharing with colleagues. Dave talked about the way forward being mobile - Mobile usage will increase and we need to develop support for this. LSE have LSE mobile for iPhone, soon to develop an android version - this is something that is under development at LJMU too. He also saw feedback and how we respond to this as key, what do we do with what they are telling us via Facebook, Twitter etc?<br /><br />Last up was <a href="http://twitter.com/andywalsh999">Andrew Walsh</a>, who had the unfortunate task of being last as the presenters before him had talked about a lot of the areas in his presentation. As well as a Facebook page they have two twitter feeds, one for the main library and one for the digital repository @hudeprints - the second proving very successful for academics to promote their own work .The twitter feed has been embedded on library web pages as well. They have a number of blogs for different purposes, some of which have proved useful for internal communications e.g. Information Literacy blog has helped networking continue between meetings.<br /><br />Andrew also talked about comments and star ratings - they started with the library catalogue but now have moved onto other pages - we need to think about whether this is useful. The university have also used other web 2.0 tools previously mentioned by other speakers but Andrew also spent some time looking ahead. Some tools to be aware of are location social networking tools like <a href="http://foursquare.com/">foursquare</a> - these sites use GPS software on phones to tell you and other people where you are. Layering information on these sites could be a useful tool.<br /><br />All in all the afternoon was very interesting, as it's always good to see what other people are up to. I am glad we are about to embark on some social stuff ourselves, as we don't want to be left behind. But it was heartening to hear that we weren't the only ones who hadn't created a Facebook page yet.... I say yet... watch this space..Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-1472628596149693112010-06-16T03:08:00.000-07:002010-06-16T07:34:29.768-07:00Solstice 2010 - afternoonSo after lunch it was time for the second keynote, Peter Hartley from <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">University</span> of Bradford talking about "how far have we travelled?" He was very entertaining to listen to and talked about a number of ways in which we have travelled. He talked about the explosion of the myth of the digital native, referring to a paper he co-wrote with others from University of Bradford <a href="http://www.elp.ac.uk/downloads/Defining%20Generation%20Y%20Bradford.pdf">"Defining 'generation Y' towards and new typology of digital learners" </a>- there are really four subgroups of students: digitally inexperienced, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">digital</span> experienced, digitally reluctant and digital socialites. The digital socialites are probably what we mean when we talk about digital natives. We need to cater for all four groups<br /><br /><br /><br />He asked whether we had evidence of major change? There are certainly pockets of interesting things going on but we don't yet have the consistent engagement across the curriculum. Technology has transformed and there are lots of really good examples of practice but the really big issues are still the same, like lack of institutional support.<br /><br /><br /><br />He asked do we need to reconstruct the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">VLE</span> debate - what do students leave with? How do we move from student dependence to student independence? Do we need to wean them off the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">VLE</span> slowly through their life at uni?<br /><br /><br /><br />Learning spaces - how many do we need? We need and archive/museum, a playground (somewhere safe/walled off), the saloon (open <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">to the</span> world) and private space (refuge)<br /><br /><br /><br />After that it was time some fab fun playing with <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/">Yahoo Pipes </a>with our own <a href="http://twitter.com/J1Mturner">Jim Turner </a>- this was great because it was interactive and I was pleased to have created my very first pipe - shame it was on the training account so I'll have to do it all again. This is something I definitely need to explore further and play around with.<br /><br /><br /><p>After a break it was time for Jeffrey Lewis talking about delivering learning materials to the workplace. They wanted to change the delivery method of a course for dental technicians. The cohort of students were geographically dispersed and travel to campus once a week was time consuming. The delivery method was changed to using Adobe connect Pro, video conferencing - traditional lectures or practical demos were delivered straight to the workplace. Lots of images were also made available via Blackboard - I found out that <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">PowerPoint</span> does photo albums, which I didn't know, and it compresses them for you so that it loads much more quickly. Useful tip. Everything is recorded so they can be <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">revisited</span> by students as well. Students can access all the materials from work. They also have a mentor in the workplace.</p><p>Collaborating with dental hospitals and dental schools they can pool resources and students can use other organisations for practicals if they are not able to do what they need to in their own workplace. Students get support from their workplace as well as getting all the support from the university they would get if they attended in person. There is a need to support the employer as well, they need to be on board.</p><p>Students are performing better in practical and written work that those attending each week. So far feedback from the students has been positive.</p><p>The final session of the day was by Ulrike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Zwiers</span> talking about using <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">EJS</span> animation in an undergraduate engineering course. The courses are large with strong time constraints and mixed ability students. The curriculum is abstract so motivation is not high with the students. They used easy Java simulations to create learning units aimed to engage the students. Ulrike showed us some examples of simulations that had been created and whilst I have no knowledge of engineering I found them interesting as they were very visual and can understand how these can be used to increase motivation in their students. </p><p>Using this software doesn't require any programming knowledge as it creates the code for you. Student are then able to create simulations in workshops. Students found the workshops challenging - but that was the idea. They did rate them as helpful and encouraging although they complained about the lack of German tutorials for the software - this has been addressed. </p><p>After a quick summary of the day it was time to head home. All in all a very enjoyable event with some interesting presentations. It's good to see what others are doing and think about how you can apply them in your own work.<br /></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-56773646485268417412010-06-11T07:39:00.000-07:002010-06-16T04:02:07.933-07:00Solstice 2010 - morningArrived at my first Solstice Conference in sunny Edge Hill University and sat watching the ducks as I was very early. After registering, coffee and biscuits it was time for the first keynote - this was Gilly Salmon, from the University of Leicester, who I realised I'd heard speak before though I can't remember at which conference. Gilly talked about the tree of learning - the roots being the thousands of years of history that are behind us and that given this history it's no wonder that change is hard. She said from the roots the tree goes in different ways<br /><ul><li>informal knowledge sharing from chained libraries to creative commons</li><li>work based and vocational learning - she talked about a virtual oil rig they had set up and said that you don't need lots of money or need to do difficult things to get something really useful out of using technology. She talked about using E-book readers for distance learning courses, which I thought sounded like a really good use for them - all the materials the student needed was downloaded to the e-book so was in their hands</li><li>Universities - we need to think differently for the 21st century - the old models won't do</li><li>Schools - the "<a href="http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/Beginnings.html">hole in the wall" </a>experiment uses resources as a spark for learning</li></ul><p>Gilly said we need to constantly evolve - what worked this time might not work next time so we need to be a position where we are flexible enough to move and change where needed.</p><p>Most new technology isn't built with learning in mind so there is no pedagogy attached and what this means is you have the opportunity to be creative and create the pedagogy. You need evidence to prove the value for learning in order to get the university to recognise the value of it.</p><p>University of Leicester have a <a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/mediazoo/">Media Zoo </a>where staff can go to test out explore and experience technology and how that can be used to enhance their teaching and learning.</p><p>The first breakout session I ended was led by <a href="http://twitter.com/paullowe">Paul Lowe </a>from University of Arts, London who talked about Open-i which is a virtual community of practice for photojournalism. They wanted a space to mix established practitioners with apprentices to share tacit knowledge (storytelling, dialogue, debate and discussion). By engaging in the practice individuals were able to move from being an apprentice to an expert. The community is a global network and was set up completely separate from the visiting lecture programme. The community mixes high level thought leaders, academics, practitioners, MA level students and editors (and other people who use photography) - its a horizontal slice through the industry. This feeds the curriculum, teaching the students what they need to know to work in the industry.</p><p>They use Wimba classroom for webinars discussing the key issues in the industry. The pedagogy that had been used for teaching and learning was used for the community. This is supported by a social networking group on the Ning platform with discussion forums and personal pages. Paul talked about how they tried to stimulate asynchronous discussion but it didn't really take off and the feeling was that this was because this type of activity takes place elsewhere. The unique element was the webinars so focus was placed on that. These now run regularly. </p><p>The feedback has been mostly positive with negative feedback only relating to the technology. All the webinars are archived and people who had problems with the technology or who were unable to attend live have used this. In terms of staff time, they used a community coordinator (a day a week), a project evaluator (about 10 days) and a project administrator (a day a week). Paul stressed that if funding was an issue and you could only pay for one post the administrator is key. As he pointed out many staff would be happy to be community coordinators as part of their role anyway. I thought this was a really interesting presentation and enjoyed it.</p><p>After coffee it was time to two presentations around the active learning theme. The first presented by Martin Jenkins of University of Gloucestershire. Martin talked about the motivations for encouraging and active learning approach across the institution:</p><ul><li>learner empowerment</li><li>collaborative learning</li><li>development of reflection skills</li><li>employability</li><li>student motivation</li></ul><p>Digital storytelling was something that really took off in the institution. He asked whether it was active learning or active teaching and stated that active learning shortens the distance between student and staff. What is really important is an exploration space for staff and purposeful support - this includes management support as well as educational development support. I was a little disappointed given the subject matter that this presentation wasn't more "active" itself.</p><p>The second presentation in this section was better as it gave real life examples and with a number of presenters the change of voice helps to keep your focus. Angie Daly and Jo McNeill talked about digital storytelling. Students in HE who had been in some way involved in Aim Higher created digital narratives reflecting on their own experiences. They showed two videos, which were works in progress from students, who talked about their experience of deciding to go into HE, how the process was for them and what their future plans were. It was really good to see a practical demonstration of a digital narrative.</p><p>Collecting data in this way means that you give away some of the control and hand over some of the research to the subject of the research. However it is very rich data, there is something very powerful about the human/personal voice and you don't get the same impact with written piece of work. </p><p>Then time for lunch in the Garden Cafe which was very pleasant indeed</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-48777848927815031252010-04-23T04:43:00.000-07:002010-04-23T04:59:00.342-07:00LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Wednesday pmAfter lunch, which again was very nice, it was time for the last two sessions of the conference. The first session I attended was by Clare <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Horrocks</span> from the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, talking about getting a verbal/visual mix in the Communication and Cultural Research module. Clare talked about a number of different resources she uses including 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">th</span> Century UK Periodicals which we have a subscription to at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">LJMU</span>. She uses lots of digital sources and for her the visual layout is as important in teaching as the actual text.<br /><br />The last session of the conference for me was Steve Moss and Paul Welsh talking about using Blackboard to support the foundation degree in police studies. This is a course that working off-campus I need to be able to support so I wanted to find out more about what they were doing with Blackboard, to aid with any queries I might get from these students. The course has a number of different cohorts, totally around 200 students in all, who start at 5 week intervals. They have set up sections for each cohort with an FAQ section that is continually updated. They used the blog tool in Blackboard for group blogs stimulating discussion around key topics and individual blogs for reflection. Forum engagement is 20% of the mark and currently they are trying to address problems getting the students to engage.<br /><br />They have overcome many technical issues related to police firewalls as well as our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">LJMU</span> firewall, but this is always something that needs to be considered before introducing something new. They asked staff who use Blackboard to feed in any good ideas for areas they could adopt for this course.<br /><br />All in all a very interesting and stimulating conference as always. There are things to bring back to my area that we can use to enhance the student experience, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">particularly</span> in relation to user education and I hope next year more Library and Student Support staff will be presenting at the conference.Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-82415259469777933802010-04-23T01:59:00.000-07:002010-04-23T05:00:43.631-07:00LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Wednesday amSo it was back to a chilly Marsh for day 2. Coffee and biscuits on arrival helped a bit. First session was led by Phil Carey and Pat Eastwood and I liked the title of this one "Developing inclusive teaching and learning - a tortoise, mouse or dragonfly?" was interested to see what that was all about. They were looking at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">inclusivity</span> in teaching and learning and certain metaphors kept <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">reoccurring</span> during the project, that of the tortoise, mouse and dragonfly. They were defined as this:<br /><ul><li>tortoise - tenacious but slow (perhaps a little dull), ability to see the long game, willing to get things done - in some ways it reflected some of their concerns (especially in relation to speed)</li><li>mouse - scurry around, very busy but not many people notice them, quick, adaptable - could the mouse frighten the elephant of the institution?</li><li>dragonfly - captures you imagination but can be quite fleeting - was what they were doing sustainable?</li></ul><p>Higher Education still excludes lots of people so we need to look at <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">widening</span> participation and enabling access for people with disabilities. We have equality policies, procedures, action plans, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">assessment</span> principles in place already so we are demonstrating some direction of travel but how we progress this <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">further</span>?</p><p>They wanted to include all areas of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">inclusivity</span> not just disability and raise awareness across the university. Their focus was on the faculty of health and they worked exclusively in the faculty - so it needs to be looked at how this can be disseminated across the university.</p><p>We then did a task taking one of the metaphors and considering the qualities that are needed for change in relation to those metaphors, which was interesting. Our group chose the tortoise and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">focused</span> on the need to see the long game, be tenacious and stay on track, to appreciate that things can take time and not be swayed.</p><p>The next session looked at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">assistive</span> technology and was run by Phil <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Bakstad</span> and Max <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Fossard</span>. They talked about technology that can assist students with a particular need but argued we should be promoting inclusion in a general sense. Many of these technologies can be used to help all students not just those with a disability. Inclusive teaching isn't just about <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">satisfying</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">legislation</span> - we have students have individual needs and are from diverse communities and we need to take this into consideration. They demonstrated a couple of pieces of equipment, stressing that there was much more they could show us. We got to play with tablet PCs, drawing on screen with a pen, they could then display all four of the individual displays on the main screen split into four. It was possible to focus in on a particular groups work. </p><p>Throughout the presentation they used a microphone and there were speakers located at the back of the room as well as the front. This is really helpful in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">drowning</span> out background noise for all students. I think we should have employed this technology for the whole of the conference and any future conference. I don't have a particular hearing problem but do find some speakers harder to hear than others. I know using a microphone is a bit <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">daunting</span> for some but to encourage <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">inclusivity</span> we should be doing this as a matter of course, rather than singling out those with hearing <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">difficulties</span>, which can cause embarrassment or make people feel uncomfortable. They also passed around a portable hearing loop kit, which was really discreet and I thought would be useful for staff in meetings as well as for students in user ed sessions. It can be set up in advance so is discreet. Multiple receivers can be plugged into one transmitter. </p><p>Recording sessions was also discussed as a really useful way for students who missed lectures to catch up. </p><p>I thought this session was really good and gave practical demonstrations of how this technology can be used to help everyone. </p><p>After coffee I went to a session by Carol Maynard and Claire <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Milsom</span> "Great teachers: how shall we know them?". They said that we are not good at evidencing our excellence relating to teaching and learning. They talked about student evaluations of teaching and how we need to be aware of what they are judging good teaching . Student evaluations are important but we need to add our own ways of evaluating what is good teaching - to support and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">encourage</span> best practice across the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">institution</span>. According to the research good teaching is </p><ul><li>developing critical learners</li><li>student-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">focused</span></li><li>scholarly - researching your own teaching and your subject area</li><li>set of virtues - teaching attributes like respectfulness, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">openness</span>, pride etc.</li></ul><p>We engaged in a task to look at what we should be doing to evidence good teaching as an institution, as a team and as a individual - I found the task quite hard not coming from a teaching background but it was interesting to hear what was already in place and what staff thought should be in place.</p><p>The final session of the morning was about teaching with <a href="http://twitter.com/">twitter</a> by <a href="http://twitter.com/MariaBarrett">Maria Barrett</a> - Maria used twitter in to different ways for two off her modules. For Music Theatre and Entertainment Management, in the module The Producers she used the twitter community to gauge what the industry looked for in a good producer to bring this into her teaching. She found when she asked a general question she got no <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">response</span>. When the question was directed at specific people more responses were given. She got some responses from key figures in the industry thereby giving some authority/credibility to the answers. Graduates also responding, which was encouraging. the almost <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">liveness</span> of it was a big advantage, rather than refer to something written in a book 10 years ago this was what was needed now. The disadvantage of something like twitter is that's it a public space and views are subjective. </p><p>Maria then went on to talk about how she used the for the Contemporary Issues in Arts Management level 3 module. This is a speaker module where various external speakers come in to present to the students. The final assessment is presentation of a paper at the student-led conference. The presentation is 80% and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">continuous</span> assessment is 20%. Maria offered the opportunity for the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">continuous</span> assessment to be assessed by engagement with social media (including twitter). The students used twitter in lots of ways from general questions - help anyone got any ideas, to setting up study groups, providing moral support and sharing resources in a public space. The conference communication was also put out via twitter and it was used at the conference, with groups of students tweeting as the students presented their papers. A big advantage of using this was that there was much more awareness of what was happening across the college, others attended the conference from within the college and some "real" guests as well (this was unusual before). Also the Daily Post got in touch via twitter to ask if they could do a feature on the conference.</p><p>The advantages is that it allows students to contribute in their own time, in their own place., they could keep connected to the module whilst on placement and it makes continuous assessment more tangible. The disadvantages are that it can be distracting, time-consuming and does need some caution, with regards authority and veracity. Also its not a private site and there are ethical issued of privacy for students information, but we should be teaching them this anyway.</p><p>And then it was time for lunch.....</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-28798958137380614072010-04-22T02:44:00.001-07:002010-04-23T01:58:25.865-07:00LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Tuesday pmAfter lunch it was time for a bit of mind mapping - well learning about how mind mapping was used with English students. Kate Walchester talked about how mind maps were used as part of a staff research project and a Level 3 independent study module. Level 1 students were asked to create a map in groups exploring what it meant to be an English student. They could use text, symbols, pictures - it was completely open to them. What was demonstrated by the maps was that students have complex lives in which study is only a part. All aspects are integrated and we need to take this into consideration, we can't see study as a distinct aspect. The exercise allowed them to target some of the common anxieties<br /><br /><ul><li>making friends - created an English society</li><li>huge assignments - led to some year long modules</li><li>lectures and note taking - tried different lecturing strategies</li></ul><p>The Level 3 students led the task with the Level 1s and they commented on how much more focused on particular careers the current first years seemed to be - more than they were when they were in first year. It could be the current climate that accounts for a more strategic approach to university but we don't know. The maps can be used to help students realise their expectations. Where there is a discrepancy between what their expectations are and what staff know English to be they can see where the student is likely to be challenged. For the Level 3 students, they have been thinking about thinking - thinking about their subject and what it means to study their subject.</p><p>The next session was led by Alex Irving from the Liverpool Screen School and looked at the harnessing the power of metaphor in HE. She argued that metaphorical language is generally valued less than the literal and yet we talk about the need to be creative. Creativity is seen as a way to manage and cope with the rate of change that is currently happening. Can we teach creativity and creative thought? In an attempt to unlock creativity in students leg serious play and labyrinths were used. Students built a metaphorical model of their own identity. It's argued that learning happens when we create something external to ourselves. Level 3 journalism students created models of their learning journey, past present and future. </p><p>The labyrinth encourages mindful meditation. It is different to a maze (something I didn't realise) as it has one path that meanders into the centre and then back out again - so it's a meditative walk. I thought we could do with one of these and wondered if it would help with my attempts at mindfulness, which I'm finding pretty hard right now. </p><p>Very interesting - I think we should ditch PowerPoint at the next officers day and get the Lego out. </p><p>More coffee and then time for more sessions. The first was Jim Turner showing us the innovative learning spaces that have been created around LJMU. He looked at how the different aspects of the Physical, social and cultural act together to aid (or not) learning. Rooms can be amplifiers amplifying the social and cultural aspects, whether good or bad. The aim was to create spaces that aided learning. The students interviewed gave positive feedback on the use of the new rooms. In general space can improve the well being in the group which affects the level of learning. It looks like we have some really interesting spaces in LJMU that provide more opportunities for different ways of learning, than the traditional lecture style. I think we need more of these spaces and I hope the work of the group continues because some rooms across the university are incredibly difficult to work in.</p><p>The last presentation of the day was led by Martyn Stewart and Sue Piddock Jones looking at the forgotten students - the 2nd year students. They talked about the "sophomore slump" phenomena which students grades dip in their second year and then rise again in the 3rd year. They are aiming to research whether this happens across disciplines or whether some areas are bucking the trend, thereby giving possible solutions to the problem. Sue talked about the Sport Development course where the sophomore slump doesn't happen. They take a different approach:</p><ul><li>a 5 week transition period in year 1</li><li>personal tutor - pdp module, focusing on learning at your best, goal setting and reflection</li><li>problem based learning module at the start of level 2 (transition again)</li><li>worked based learning at the start of year 2 for 4 weeks</li><li>options modules in year 2</li></ul><p>Other things to consider are:</p><ul><li>assessments in year 2</li><li>marking in relation to level "twoness"</li><li>expectations at level 2 (staff and students -do they match?)</li><li>transition to more independent learning</li><li>curriculum content and delivery</li></ul><p>The other question to ask is: is it all about level specific strategies or building bridges between the levels?</p><p>An excellent first day - day 2 report coming soon</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-44454423526987380532010-04-21T03:02:00.000-07:002010-04-23T04:44:51.839-07:00LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Tuesday amIn IM Marsh for two days at the annual Learning and Teaching Conference. I'm being coming to these things for a few years now and it always fires my interest. It's good to know what's going on in other parts of the university - there is so much good practice out there and this is a really good place to celebrate it.<br /><br />The keynote session was really interesting - looking at student feedback and how what students expect from feedback isn't necessarily what they feel they are receiving. They want feedback and prefer to receive verbal feedback - "it's good to talk" - we heard from students about their experiences of feedback and what they want and then we heard from Alex Spiers and George Macgregor about how to provide verbal feedback via email. It was a very good demonstration of how easy it is to provide feedback in a way that students appreciated. Feedback need to involve a conversation so students receive it in the way that is most relevant to them. We also need to encourage them to make the best of feedback, to act on it and to use it for future assignments.<br /><div></div><br /><br />After the keynote is was straight into sessions on the student experience. The first session was by Phil Carey who is always a joy to listen to. He had looked at the experience of being a student rep at programme level. His focus was in his own faculty - Health and Applied Social Sciences and he interviewed about their experience. Phil talked about their motivations for becoming student reps and what in reality their jobs entailed. The students were all volunteers both for the role of student rep as to take part in the project, so the research needs to take that into consideration. The students saw the role in a number of ways:<br /><ul><li>A voice for fellow students - as a rep, as a consultant on particular issues and an advocate for students</li><li>A mediator - as a link in the faculty, but also managing conflict and a way to take the heat and anger out of student concerns and present them in a more balanced way in order to be listened to</li><li>Provide help and support - both as a source of information but there is a pastoral care function too</li><li>To develop a sense of community</li><li>Extension of the course team - anticipated the reactions of staff sometimes when concerns were brought to them but also felt as a peer in meetings with academics</li></ul><p>They all saw the role as beneficial both for themselves and for others. There are challenges for individuals associated with being a student rep and challenges for the institution in order to support the role.</p><p>The second session looked at students expectations and how we managed that. Graeme Mitchell ran this session and he argued that student retention is affected by a number of factors but part of the issue could be whether what they expect of LJMU and university in general matches their experience. He asked the questions - should we meet students expectations whatever they are? Should students expectations change to fit what is a "normal" experience? or should we both compromise? This stimulated some discussion with a couple of good examples of engaging students early on as they arrive in order to help retention. There was some agreement that whatever we did it needed to be done earlier i.e. before they arrived. Is it better that a student who feels their expectations cannot be met doesn't enter the university at all rather than drops out early on?</p><p>The examples of good practice made me think that we need to look again at our induction process. What are we doing in Library & Student Support to engage users early on. One of the students in the session said that they are bombarded with information in the first few weeks and told everything they need to know for the next three years and expected to remember it. She suggested that induction should be a year long process. Although we have looked at our initial induction I think more work needs to be done as we still do bombard students with information that at the time they probably fail to see the relevance of. Should we be asking them what they expect from the library service? If we ask current students what and when they felt they needed to know over their first year we could plan better more engaging user education. </p><p>Lunch was next which was very tasty although as always there was a bun fight around the bread/salad table (its round and too small)</p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-85308687926129901172010-03-03T04:20:00.000-08:002010-03-03T04:50:35.326-08:00How do learning technologies enhance students' learning?On Monday I attended a pedagogic research seminar looking at that very issue. The discussion based session was based around a couple of recent research papers aiming to develop a construtive critique of e-learning applications.<br /><br />Njenga, J.K & Fourie, L C H (2010) The myths about e-learning in higher education, <em>British Journal of Education Technology</em>, 41(2), pp 199-212<br /><br />US Department of Education, Officer of Planning Evaluation and Policy Development (2009) Evaluation of Evidence-based practices in online learning: a meta-anaylsis and review of online learning studies. Washington DC. Available at: : <a href="http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EvaluationofEvidenceBasedPract/174235">http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EvaluationofEvidenceBasedPract/174235</a><br /><br />The second is a really long report but the executive summary is really good and gives you enough if you can't face reading the whole thing.<br /><br />The first article talks about technopositivists and tries to dispel the myths it claims these technopositivists make about technology and technology enhanced learning - things like "e-learning is a saviour: it's redemptive power is overreaching and every educational institution should adopt it" - there were 10 myths in all.<br /><br />The group felt that the report was interested and raised some interesting issues, but was very one sided and the people in the room who used e-learning in their areas decided that if that was what a technopositivist "preached" then they weren't one. I kind of wondered where these myths were coming from and who was making the claims, because they were very far reaching and in some ways "extreme" - I have never heard advocates of using technology in education talk in these terms - they tend to be far more pragmatic in approach.<br /><br />The second paper attempted to see if e-learning enhanced students learning or didn't. The conclusion was that blended learning was more effective compare to purely face to face or purely online and it seem that most of the practitioners in the room agreed with this. There was some discussion about whether e-learning is appropriate in all cases and about how to get reluctant staff on board.<br /><br />There was discussion about whether it was a technology issue or a teaching/course planning issue - for some putting notes on a VLE is seen as e-learning - is it or isn't it? Making people meet targets for content on the VLE isn't necessarily going to enhance the learning experience for the student.<br /><br />Staff need to see the benefits in e-learning in order to adopt it and then sell it to students in a positive and more meaningful way - and students need to see the point of it as well. We shouldn't just be throwing technology at something because it's a requirement more that we should be looking to what we want to achieve and seeing if technology can help us achieve that in a more efficient/richer way.<br /><br />We also need to consider user-generated content and where that fits into teaching and learning.<br /><br />And not to forget accessibility issues - technology should be used to help with this rather than to disadvantage student groups.<br /><br />For me I think the important thing about "technology enhanced learning" is in the phrase itself - "enhanced" - it should be adding something to what we already do.<br /><br />In the discussion we still seem to be seeing e-learning as separate from the "lecture" - there was the lecture and there was the supporting "stuff" you put on Blackboard (or wherever) - it came across as a definite distinction for me, whether intended or not. What about bringing the e-learning into the classroom rather than seeing it as something separate to the classroom?<br /><br />All in all a very interesting discussion and as is often the way, raising more questions than it answersCathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-74184565343768781662010-01-25T08:36:00.000-08:002010-01-25T08:48:00.385-08:00Library Day in the Life<span style="font-family:arial;">I am the E-resources officer at Liverpool John Moores university library, well for the time being anyway (covering maternity leave) but I am also a member of the Marketing team so some of the stuff I get up to relates to that especially this week.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So first thing this morning is was off to one of our other sites for a walk round to see where I can put up posters for our first marketing campaign of the year. We are promoting the availability of PCs and our laptop loans scheme. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">That sorted it was off for a quick chat with my manager about a job I am going to apply for, got to be in on Friday. I will be glad when it's finished to be honest. This was followed by a walk across town to the site I am currently based in, to start the day job. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After spending most of last Friday designing posters I needed to catch up with emails, some of which has come in over the weekend. Bit of a mix bag as always but that is the nature of this job. There were a couple from students trying to access resources, a couple of journal queries that have now been resolved, hurrah. Then it was a licence agreement to sign, an invoice to process then lunch. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After lunch more queries, whilst checking out Twitter for any snippets of useful information and postings from others. Then another licence agreement to fill in and sign and more invoice queries. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Tomorrow I'm off to our third site first thing to check out poster locations, then I just need to do the one I'm based at - isn't it always the way that the place you are in gets sorted last! </span>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-70824137594091188912009-12-03T08:30:00.000-08:002009-12-03T08:59:22.910-08:00JISC Online Conference - Day 4<span style="font-family:arial;">Finally got around to writing up day 4, after catching up with my day job this week. I firstly listened to the recording of Peter Bradwell's session on <a href="http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/the-edgeless-university">The Edgeless University</a>, which had been recorded the day before. When he talked about being edgeless he was talking function not form. He asked what are the challenges for UK Universities:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">maintaining standards</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">rising demand and widening participation</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">strained resources</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">How can we maintain standards, continue to improve access all with strained resources? and what can technology do to help? He said technology aids collaboration, the availability of information and gets more people involved in learning. Technology poses a new set of possibilities but isn't just a threat. We need to emphasise the value, the quality, affiliation and authority that comes from the institution. Universities become partners in learning rather than sole providers. They validate learning, they are a driving force for research and collaboration. This the way in which they become "edgeless", not disappearing but broadening out. Learning happens beyond individual campuses and institutions. We need to rediscover why we still need universities.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">He then asked a number of questions looking at different areas and what the priorities and challenges are in those areas. Obviously this was just a recording so I wasn't actively involved in this but could see the results produced the previous day. The results were interesting (I'm not going to list it all here) and I think in some cases possibly reflected the majority of the audience as teaching featured heavily in the responses, but that could just be me making assumptions about the make up of the audience.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">After that I listened to the closing keynote (which was a live session) by Nigel Paine "From courses to communities". Again a very interesting session. He said you should be open to what might work, cull to what will work, and then focus your energies - sound advice, rather than trying to get into everything focus on what works for you and your students, in your institution. Don't just jump onto the latest band wagon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">He also said environment for learning is very important. It's not just about people - you do need to spend time developing yourself but you also need to work on the environment. He quoted Patrick Dixon, who when talking about companies said - visionary companies think radically, embrace radical new partnerships, integrate processes to create realistic products that meet real needs. This is just as applicable for universities. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">He argued that leaders need to move from framing to shaping - it's not your job to tell people what to think - you need to build environments in which people can create their own learning.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Learning to know, learning to be, learning to do, learning to live</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Things to consider:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">the good enough revolution - cheap and simple is just fine - get it out there, don't worry if it's not perfect</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">venue is very important both for online and face to face</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">the key to learning success = fun</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">develop tools for communities not communities for tools</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">make it easy to get started</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;">be flexible and be emotional</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">The quote of the day has to be "not everything is equally important" - how true.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">And that was it. By this point my ears were numb from wearing headphones for too long and my head was banging from concentrating so hard. Good conference but in some ways harder than a face to face conference because you spend so much time staring at a computer screen.</span></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-77261080107270423172009-11-27T03:56:00.000-08:002010-02-11T05:49:10.318-08:00JISC online conference 2009 - Day 3<span style="font-family:arial;">Day 3 was a bit of washout in conferencing terms for me. My son's nursery had a flood (so literally a washout for them) so I had to be off work. Oh dear that was my full days conferencing gone, no chance of doing it at home with an almost 4 year old around. So we went around Liverpool looking for <a href="http://www.gopenguins.co.uk/site/">penguins</a> instead. He was happy because he got to see the "big tree" and the lights as well as getting a couple of rides before home. I was happy because I fitted in a bit of Christmas shopping and got to spend the day with my boy. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">So day 4 of conference will be me catching up on day 3....watch this space</span>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-89198455388966990042009-11-27T03:30:00.000-08:002009-11-27T03:55:17.371-08:00JISC online conference 2009 - Day 2<span style="font-family:arial;">On day 2 there were no live sessions I wanted to attend so I could concentrate on other presentations. I was only around in the afternoon so focused on the presentation from the University of Bradford, which I found really easy to follow. I liked the fact they had a PowerPoint with audio that I could listen to at my own pace and go back if I missed stuff, which always happens in a live session. They also provided other useful materials to support their presentation. The presentation was by Becka Currant, Neil Currant and Neil McKeown and they talked about Develop Me! This came out of a review of the student experience, so given what LJMU have been going through it seemed really relevant to me. Develop Me! is an integrated package of transition, induction and study skills support for students to complement what they do face to face. There are 5 areas to this:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;"> a social network (they used <a href="http://www.ning.com/">Ning</a>)</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">online skills development resources</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">SaPRA (the university's in-house Skills and Personal Development Activity</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">mobile guides - <a href="http://www.braduni.mobi/">www.braduni.mobi</a> - they are currently considering a iphone app</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">research into the student experience</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">They found that early engagement with academic materials helped develop skills. They created learning objects that can be accessed 24/7. Student and staff feedback has been very positive and this year they had around 2000 members in the social network.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">As well as the presentation there was a podcast on why use a social network and why Ning, which was really interesting. The social network is designed to create a supportive community, it helps student to see that everyone else is in the same boat and no-one knows all the answers. They can join the social network before arriving at university so are making friends before they get here, that can only help that transition into university life. Ning was identified as a suitable option because it is more flexible than <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, it's easier to install 3rd party widgits too, it's more stable and older students were not as comfortable using Facebook because that's where their kids hang out. They wanted something for work stuff that was different to the place for social stuff. This is now managed by the central university web team in conjunction with the student union. They paid to remove adverts from the site and it is moderated. They wouldn't remove negative posts from students, but rather try to act on the bad feedback. However they have had to remove spammers and would remove offensive material. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">It's branded to look like part of the university website, which was important to students and links to the student union Facebook page and twitter feeds. Academic groups have been created and some students have created social groups too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">I think we need to get on board with this kind of technology and are in danger of being left behind, if we haven't been already. I hadn't considered Ning before because lots of universities and university libraries use Facebook. Maybe something other than Facebook would serve our purposes better</span></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1104955992014217260.post-78962749925828661622009-11-25T08:28:00.000-08:002009-11-27T03:30:17.525-08:00JISC online conference 2009 - day 1<span style="font-family:arial;">So day one was yesterday and I attended the two live sessions. The first was by Charlie <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Leadbeater</span> and he talked about the role of innovation education. He said the question you ask largely determines the answer you get. He then asked the audience "where would you look to see what education and learning might become?" there was a wide range of answers from the audience. I personally said nursery school children and some others said similar "my grandchildren", "children's play" so some people think like me, which is reassuring that I'm not completely off the mark. Charlie said that we need to take larger range of questions to get a larger range of answers.<br /><br />Learning takes place in many different settings, both formal and informal and he showed us a grid of innovation. There are four sections:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><ul></ul><ul><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Formal sustaining - Improve - this is improving what we already have</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Formal disruptive - Reform - developing new types of schools, focusing on personalised learning, which is learning with and by not to and from</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Informal sustaining - Supplement - this is social and emotion conditions, the cultures and environments that influence</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Informal disruptive - Transform - this alternatives to school, its about collaboration, connection - this tends to come from social entrepreneurs</span></li></ul><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;">He asked - What are the keys to transformational innovation in learning?<br />How do these areas relate to each other, which should be the driver (the largest)? Where do you invest time and money? It’s about how radical solutions from the informal sector get sustained and mainstreamed.</span></p><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The was much discussion on all aspects of how we make this happen in the conference discussion area after the presentation - some of which I haven't had chance to read yet. </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Later in the day there was a presentation from Rhona Sharpe and Helen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Beetham</span> about responding to learners. Some of the things they found which may be quite surprise given all the hype about digital natives were:</span></p><ul><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Students are often surprised by the amount of technology use expected of them when they arrive at F&HE colleges</span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">actually have few (or no) expectations </span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">are familiar with but don’t use (as in survey) </span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">appreciate online resources (this crops up a lot), because strategies they have developed from school, social, leisure technology use often <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">aren</span>’t appropriate to f/he. </span></li><br /><li><span style="font-family:arial;">are guided by tutors in what they use </span></li></ul><span style="font-family:arial;">They outlined a developmental model as one way of understanding how effective e-learners can be developed. They defined effective e-learners as those who are using technology in positive ways to support their learning. They asked the questions What practices do learners need in the digital age? and what are the challenges for learners? One of things that I got from this was we need to enable learners to learn across contexts and apply skills across contexts<br /></span><p></p><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p>Cathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010474919115918068noreply@blogger.com0