Solstice 2010 - afternoon

So after lunch it was time for the second keynote, Peter Hartley from University 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 "Defining 'generation Y' towards and new typology of digital learners" - there are really four subgroups of students: digitally inexperienced, digital 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



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.



He asked do we need to reconstruct the VLE debate - what do students leave with? How do we move from student dependence to student independence? Do we need to wean them off the VLE slowly through their life at uni?



Learning spaces - how many do we need? We need and archive/museum, a playground (somewhere safe/walled off), the saloon (open to the world) and private space (refuge)



After that it was time some fab fun playing with Yahoo Pipes with our own Jim Turner - 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.

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 PowerPoint 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 revisited by students as well. Students can access all the materials from work. They also have a mentor in the workplace.

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.

Students are performing better in practical and written work that those attending each week. So far feedback from the students has been positive.

The final session of the day was by Ulrike Zwiers talking about using EJS 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.

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.

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.

JISC online conference 2009 - day 1

So day one was yesterday and I attended the two live sessions. The first was by Charlie Leadbeater 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.

Learning takes place in many different settings, both formal and informal and he showed us a grid of innovation. There are four sections:

• Formal sustaining - Improve - this is improving what we already have


• Formal disruptive - Reform - developing new types of schools, focusing on personalised learning, which is learning with and by not to and from


• Informal sustaining - Supplement - this is social and emotion conditions, the cultures and environments that influence


• Informal disruptive - Transform - this alternatives to school, its about collaboration, connection - this tends to come from social entrepreneurs

He asked - What are the keys to transformational innovation in learning?
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.

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.

Later in the day there was a presentation from Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham about responding to learners. Some of the things they found which may be quite surprise given all the hype about digital natives were:

• Students are often surprised by the amount of technology use expected of them when they arrive at F&HE colleges


• actually have few (or no) expectations


• are familiar with but don’t use (as in survey)


• appreciate online resources (this crops up a lot), because strategies they have developed from school, social, leisure technology use often aren’t appropriate to f/he.


• are guided by tutors in what they use

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