The first Polish language dictionary (published 1746) included definitions such as: “Horse: Everyone knows what a horse is.”
Within the world of digital and online learning, assumptions are often made that everyone knows what is being discussed and there is a shared understanding of the terms being used. The reality is that often everyone has their own understanding of a term, such as blended learning, but they are not the same.
This lack of shared understanding can result in very different experiences for students.
It is critical when planning a shared curriculum and programmes of study that there is a common definition of key terms being used so that across all academic staff and the student body are working from the same understanding.
This shared understanding becomes even more critical when additional terms, such as hybrid or hyflex, are used. As across the higher education sector, there is a lack of consistency in how such terms are used.
A simple exercise that can be undertaken is asking a room of people to write down their definitions of a key term, such as blended learning onto a post-it note and then for people to share and like which definitions they agree with. Second part of the exercise is to come up with a single clear definition that everyone understands, which will then be used going forward.
The definition doesn’t need to be definitive, but the relevant stakeholders need to have clarity and a shared understanding of that definition.
So the Guardian is reporting that nine in ten university students in England have had at least one Covid jab. This does have implications for in-person teaching at universities across England.
Far from being irresponsible Covid spreaders, the vast majority of students at English universities have been vaccinated at least once and would request a test if they had symptoms, according to a survey.
This is a different scenario to last autumn when there wasn’t a vaccine and students were being accused of being super spreaders.
With more of the student population vaccinated then this should result in lower infection rates. We still need to consider those who may still be at risk from Covid despite being vaccinated as I found out recently it can still be quite nasty.
We know that there has been something of a backlash against online learning as a result of the experiences during the pandemic. We know that what was an emergency response, was in no way what would be described as online learning. How could staff deliver effective and engaging online learning, with no time for preparation, lack of skills and knowledge and remember they were also living through the pandemic.
Moving forward with demand from students and staff to have more in-person teaching, I don’t really want to say, going back to what they had, but we know how much students and staff missed in-person teaching. There is a pent up demand to return to in-person teaching. In some of the research we have been doing at Jisc, the students were very clear that when they said they missed in-person teaching that it wasn’t just the in-person learning experience it was also all the resulting interactions that happen before, during and after such in-person sessions.
This doesn’t mean that universities should stop doing stuff online, more that they need to think about what their students are saying, what their students are wanting, as well as working out the best way to deliver that, whether that be in-person or online.
Our discussions with students also showed that some things worked better online, they levelled things up between staff and students and were less intimidating than the face to face equivalents.
One thing we do need to recognise though, is that the pandemic is far from over. Infection rates which rose dramatically recently have started to drop, but winter is coming, and this means that it could rise again, combine with the other challenges that winter brings. Also new variants can reduce the efficacy of the vaccines, as well as the fact that the efficacy of the vaccine declines over time. Boosters are been given for a reason.
We may not go into another lockdown situation, but are universities prepared to pivot again to online delivery and teaching?
Hopefully we will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we do need to be prepared, as that light may be further away than we think it is.
Turnitin is quite good, it once showed me that JISC RSC London had plagiarised me. This was back in July 2012.
What happened was that for a Turnitin training session at Gloucestershire College I took three pieces of work.
A piece of work which was a straight copy of something from the internet.
A second piece which contained quotes of content from other sources.
A third and final piece of original content.
Each time I did the training I would have to create a new piece of original content, as once submitted it would flag another submission of the same content as plagiarised or with an originality warning.
So with confidence I went through the three pieces of work, so you can imagine the shock and surprise that the Turnitin system flagged my original content as being copied!
Time for a little detective work. The original piece of work (in theory) was authored by JISC RSC London. Though digging deeper, what had happened was that before then I had written a piece of work, which JISC RSC London then copied and used on their website.
When I wrote my original piece of writing, though it was written completely fresh, it bore a huge similarity to my writing that JISC RSC London had copied.
So what I thought was an original piece of work, was so similar to a piece I had written a fair few years ago, it was picked up by Turnitin. Though Turnitin didn’t pick up the original piece of work, it picked up the work by JISC RSC London that had copied my work.
That took some explaining to the academic staff in the training session.
When I think about innovation in the use of technology in education, I always look at the formal dictionary definition of the word innovation, my dictionary, says it is “a new method, idea, product” whilst the Thesaurus says: change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, reorganization, restructuring, rearrangement, recasting, remodelling, renovation, restyling, variation; new measures, new methods, new devices, novelty, newness, unconventionality, modernization, modernism; a break with tradition, a shift of emphasis, a departure, a change of direction.
This means that innovation for me means new or different. It doesn’t necessarily mean better or improved.
For me in the context of education technology, innovation means taking an existing non-digital educational processes and using technology to improve it.
It can also mean looking at how another innovation (such as a new device or an online service) and using it to improve teaching, learning and assessment.
I don’t actually think much of what is defined as innovative within educational technology is in fact innovative. Too much of it is small scale, poorly defined and low impact.
For me true innovation in educational technology is change which has significant impact across the whole organisation. However this isn’t always exciting and shiny! Too often we focus on the new and the shiny and less on those innovations, that are holistic, organisation-wide and would have a greater impact on the learner experience.
These are for me examples of innovations that had a positive impact.
Some staff from one college were using the collaborative aspects of Google Docs for assignment creation, with staff providing ongoing meaningful feedback as the assignment was created. There was also a plan to scale up and roll out across the whole college.
Is innovation a meaningful concept in education, or just a buzzword? Too often innovation focuses on tools and technologies, but innovation in processes and practice is often going to have a great impact.
The main barriers to innovation (change) in large organisations vary, but often a lack of understanding of what large scale implementation actually means. The words pilot and project are used interchangeably. Pilots often don’t scale as they haven’t been planned with a future large scale implementation in mind.
A focus on innovation in relation to specific devices and tools over impact on teaching and learning. It’s then about the technology and not the pedagogy. Though you do need to understand the potential of technology to successfully use technology innovatively to enhance and improve learning and teaching.
The pandemic has demonstrated that organisations can change, but change caused by a crisis, is just that change caused by a crisis. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t organized and the change we saw wasn’t necessarily the change we wanted.
The final day of the #JuneEdTechChallenge asks you to showcase your EdTech Journey so I created an infographic of some of the key moments in my personal EdTech journey.
This post is part of the #JuneEdTechChallenge series.
The WCC.
Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).
Wouldn’t it be nice if all learners in an educational environment had access to a wireless laptop and free wireless access to their digital resources at a time and place to suit their needs.
The reality is that learners don’t always have access to what we as practitioners would like them to have.
However, they do have access to some mobile digital devices which could be used, these include mobile phones, iPods, mp3 players, portable video players, PSPs… These devices are used extensively for entertainment, but rarely used for learning.
However, though many of these have limited web access, most are unsuitable for viewing traditional webpages, can not access a VLE or e-learning content, and often can’t read PDFs, Word Documents, PowerPoint presentations, or other complex documents.
Virtually all however can read images, short video clips and some have the potential for interactive content.
Most will work fine on buses, trains, planes, cars and even on foot, using a laptop or desktop in this way can be problematic…
The question is how does a practitioner convert and distribute content to their learners in the preferred format easily and quickly?
How can a learner access this content easily and quickly?
How can you ensure that mobile content will enhance the learning experience for learners?
Some devices have communication facilities, e-mail, SMS, MMS, Video, how does the practitioner interact with the potential learning activities which can utilise this functionality?
The WCC core team working with our partner colleges have been investigating the means and mechanisms to ensure that practitioners can both easily work with content for these mobile and portable devices, but also that the learners can access this content.
We shall demonstrate the processes been developed and implemented to allow learners to access their learning content and activities at a time and place to suit their needs.
We shall show how the WCC shared VLE is being used to host this converted content and distributing it to the learners.
There will also be some discussion on the use of similar processes being used for home based digital devices such as DVD players and media streamers.
The submission will be a short paper (webpage format) with examples of content for various mobile devices being made available for download and use.
Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).
I have seen many hot fads over the years, people focus on something and assume it will radically change education.
Usually they don’t!
Second Life
Google Glasses
MOOCs
Flip Cameras
iPad
Netbooks
Prezi
Ning
OER
Digital Badges
Twitter
Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).
Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).
My EdTech Klaxon goes off each time I hear the term Digital Natives. This thoroughly debunked term for labelling young people is often used to describe how the fact that as young people use digital technology then they are extremely competent in using digital technology for all aspects of their life, and in the case of students for teaching and learning.
The reality is that digital is not static, it is a constantly moving feast, the technology or digital tools they grew up with is not necessarily the technology and digital tools they will use today.
Also just because you are confident in the use of say, one consumer technology, this doesn’t mean you have the skills, capabilities and confidence to use all digital tools and technologies. This is very much the case with educational technologies.
Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
