Tag Archives: research

conference, weeknotes

It was a really BIG Crane – Weeknote #246 – 17th November 2023

Leave a comment

I spent the best part of the week in Glasgow where I was attending and presenting at Learning Places Scotland 2023. Next to the Scottish Event Campus Centre is the huge, okay BIG Finnieston Crane, which I walked past every time I went from my hotel to the conference centre and back again.

It was an interesting conference, though the focus was very much on schools and from the nature of the exhibitors, furniture.

My presentation was in a session on sustainability, and for me specifically on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

I was supposed to attend a pre-conference planning call, however my flight up to Glasgow was delayed by over ninety minutes, so the call took place whilst I was in the air. We eventually did the meeting in person over coffee.

I had various conversations with key SFC stakeholders, Jisc colleagues at the Learning Places Scotland 2023 conference. This kind of informal ad hoc conversation is much harder to undertake in an online conference, not impossible, just harder, or just different. In the past at an online conference I would probably have had these informal conversations on the Twitter. As I have now stopped using Twitter (or X) and though Threads and Bluesky are spaces I frequent now, they don’t yet have reached an optimal size as a viable community for online conferences.

Thursday, I had originally planned to be in our Bristol office for a meeting with the Office for Students. However last week the decision was made to have the meeting online, so I worked from home and attended the meeting online.

On Friday we had another meeting of our Research Evidence Advisory Group at Jisc. As more and more teams and staff across Jisc undertake and utilise research, we are ensuring that moving forward we have a more consistent way of working.

I had planned to attend the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project webinar, but it clashed with my flight plans, but I now have access to a recording, which I aim to visit next week.

Did some preparation for Leadership Masterclass – Operationalising your Strategic Vision which I am delivering next week.

assessment, weeknotes

Tulips from Amsterdam – Weeknote #241 – 13th October 2023

1 Comment

This week was all about Amsterdam, where I was attending the EDUTech conference at the Amsterdam RAI.

However, on Monday I was in our Bristol office. I had a planning catch up meeting about prospective communications and publications.

Tuesday I was off to Amsterdam. Having arrived and parked at Bristol Airport I had time for a coffee before boarding.

It was quite a quick flight, by the time we reached the Suffolk coast, we started our descent into Amsterdam. Having disembarked, I headed to passport control. There was a huge queue. Schiphol Airport had free WiFi, so I could use that in the airport whilst I had a long wait to get through passport control. Took over 90 minutes to get from the plane, through passport control, pick up my suitcase and then I could head to the railway station. It wasn’t long before I was at my hotel next to the RAI conference centre.

Following some issues with roaming in Spain in 2022 I have been a little concerned about travelling abroad and if I would have connectivity issues. However this time I had no issues.

The EDUTech Europe 2023 conference was over two days and covered a range of topics and subjects, but as you might have guessed AI was certainly up there being discussed across a range of sessions. As well as covering higher education, the conference also covers the schools sector, but the interactive programme made it very easy to filter out those sessions, so I could focus on the higher education topics.

I had been invited to participate in the Smart Campus panel session at EDUTech Europe 2023.

I had proposed that in the discussion I would chat about the following.

How do we move from a smart campus to a smarter or intelligent campus? Bringing in more data sources to get deeper insights and understanding.

What are the ethical and privacy considerations we need to be aware of before building a smart campus? Do we need to consider algorithmic bias in our planning?

A campus does not exist in isolation, how could we integrate the smart campus into the smart city (or smart community).

Across the rest of the day there were a range of sessions, I focused a lot on digital leadership. It was interesting to see the reliance on champions to deliver change. My own experience has shown that though champions can have an impact, generally the process of using enthusiasm to deliver effective change is inconsistent, and if you want to deliver holistic change across a whole organisation, then the use of enthusiastic champions generally won’t result in that change happening. Of course using champions as part of a portfolio of change levers, is certainly something that can work.

Thursday morning I attended HEAnet Group Advisory Forum via Teams. We discussed the HEAnet strategy as well as other topics related to technology and higher education in Ireland.

On Thursday I was invited to participate in the Assessment panel session at EDUTech Europe 2023, after someone had dropped out. This was an interesting session looking at the role of assessment.

Had a good discussion with a delegate from the University of Birmingham at the EDUTech Europe 2023, on various topics and issues. Have agreed to visit University of Birmingham.

Had an informative chat with a Principal Lecturer from Sheffield Hallam University on various topics and issues including smart campus and learning analytics.

Got some nice feedback from EDUTech Europe 2023:

I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for your invaluable contribution as a speaker to EDUtech Europe 2023. Your expertise and insights added immense value to our event. The feedback we received from our attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and your knowledge and passion resonated with the audience. We look forward to the possibility of working with you again in the future.

On Friday I attended Jisc’s Research Evidence Advisory Group meeting. As we discussed research at Jisc I realised there were some key ways in which I interact with research. It started initially as three Cs, but by the end of the meeting this had grown to six.

Consumption – in my role I consume research by others, both internally and external research. Having access to that research is critical to the work I do.

Creation – I also create research, sometimes this is for projects, other times it has been for consultancy, and now and then for publication or for events.

Communication – It is important that research undertaken by Jisc is communicated internally and externally.

Community – I want to be part of the internal (to Jisc) research community, but also to be part of the external research community

Credibility – When we do research, it adds credibility to what we say and recommend. Having the evidence (gained from research) gives us the credibility we need when talking to the sector.

Co-ordination – It’s important to avoid duplication, or repetition; that we co-ordinate our activities.

Got some nice feedback from The Blended Learning in HE Conference I presented at last week.

I would like to thank you very much for speaking at The Blended Learning in HE Conference. We really appreciate the time and effort that you took in preparing to present at the event. Your address was well received by the delegates and the conference has already received some great feedback.

Did some initial organisation of Senior Education and Student Experience Group meetings, format and timings.

I spent much of the day travelling back from Amsterdam on Friday. Spent less time at passport control this time.

ipad

Does your pilot scale?

Leave a comment

scale model

One issue I have found with TEL research that is written about in journals or presented about at conferences, is that most if not all is based around small cohorts of learners and rarely looks at the impact across a whole organisation.

Sometimes the TEL research appears to be about doing research and not necessarily thinking about the scaling up and mainstreaming of the research at a later date.

Often the research has minimal funding, which means that you are forced to use a smaller number of learners. Often the lack of funding means that though there is existing research out there, rather than scale up from that, the research is duplicated (again with a smaller cohort).

It needs to be noted that sometimes TEL research shouldn’t be scaled up straight away because that may have a detrimental impact on the learners.

One lesson I would pass on, is if you are undertaking a small scale pilot is to reflect on how it would scale in the future. It’s not just about how the technology, device or process enhances and enriches teaching and learning, but what about all the other stuff. Logistics, charging, storage, training, support, staff development, sustainability, and end of life.

When the iPad was released in 2010, there were lots of iPad pilots undertaken by universities and colleges.

iPads

Most of these didn’t seem to take into account the challenges that a large scale roll-out of iPads would require. Where would the iPads be stored, how would they be charged? When it was released there were no charging carts available. I once asked a charging case company to provide a case for Nintendo DS, they couldn’t as there wasn’t the demand for one, and it was too expensive to test just for a single order. The end result was multiple six way gangs to charge the class set; it was no wonder so few people used them.

Another challenge with iPads was how a device designed for an individual could be use by multiple people. If you had a few you could reset them individually, fine if you had ten, impossible if you had a hundred. Then there was the challenge of getting apps on to them. You could sync multiple iPads to a single iTunes account, fine again if you had ten, not feasible if you had a few hundred! Eventually Apple released the management software to manage multiple iPads and the licensing platform to licence apps across multiple iPads.

However those initial iPad pilots weren’t always thinking in terms of that bigger picture, so weren’t able to scale effectively until those multiple iPad issues were resolved.

So if you are looking at a pilot, consider the following:

  • If it involves a device to a technology, what about the storage, where will they live when not being used? How will they be charged? What will be the process for booking them? Even if you have a small number consider the perspective if you had enough for everyone!
  • If it is a new process (or web based tool) you may be able to train the ten staff in the pilot, what about training the staff across the whole organisation, how is that going to happen and who is going to do it. Thinking about that at the pilot stage means that if the pilot is successful, it will be easier to scale and mainstream later. Similar considerations about staff development and support when things don’t go as planned.
  • There is also considerations of sustainability, whose budget will those costs by placed in after the pilot? Are they onboard?
  • What about end of life, equipment replacement, where will the funding for all that come from?

Small scale pilots are useful, but thinking about scale and mainstreaming early on will avoid major headaches and challenges later.

alt, stuff

Show me the evidence…

16 Comments

I think this line is really interesting from a recent discussion on the ALT Members mailing list.

…in particular to share these with academics when they ask for the evidence to show technology can make a difference.

Often when demonstrating the potential of TEL and learning technologies to academics, the issue of evidence of impact often arises.

You will have a conversation which focuses on the technology and then the academic or teacher asks for evidence of the impact of that technology.

From my experience when an academic asks for the evidence, then the problem is not the lack of evidence, but actually something else.

Yes there are academics who will respond positively when shown the “evidence”, however experience has taught me that even when that happens then there is then another reason/problem/lack of evidence that means that the academic will still not start to use technology to “make a difference”.

When an academic asks “for the evidence to show technology can make a difference” the problem is not the lack of evidence, but one of resistance to change, fear, culture, rhetoric and motivation.

You really need to solve those issues, rather than find the “evidence”, as even if you find the evidence, you will then get further responses such as, wouldn’t work with my students, not appropriate for my subject, it wouldn’t work here, it’s not quite the same, not transferable…. etc…

Despite years of “evidence” published in a range of journals, can studies from Jisc and others, you will find that what ever evidence you “provide” it won’t be good enough, to justify that academic to start embedding that technology into their practice.

As stated before, when someone asks for the “evidence” more often then not this is a stalling tactic so that they don’t have the invest the time, energy and resources into using that technology.

Sometimes it can be “fear” as they really don’t have the capabilities to use technology and lack the basic ICT confidence to actually use various learning technologies, and as a result rather then fess up their lack of skills, they ask for the “evidence”, again to delay things.

Just turn it around, when you ask those academics who do use technology then, you find that the “evidence” generally plays little or no part in their decisions to make effective use of technology.

So what solutions are there to solve this issue? Well we need to think about the actual problems.

A lot of people do like things to remain as they are, they like their patterns of work, they like to do what they’ve always done. This is sometimes called resistance to change, but I think it’s less resistance to change, and more sticking to what I know. I know what works, it works for me, and anything else would require effort. This strikes me more about culture, a culture where improvement, efficiency and effectiveness are seen as not important and the status quo is rarely challenged.

Unless an organisation is focused strategically and operationally in improvement, widening participation, becoming more efficient, then it is hard to get people to think about changing their practice.

When it comes to embedding learning technologies we often talking about changing the culture of an organisation. This can be hard, but doesn’t necessarily have to be slow. I am reminded of a conversation with Lawrie Phipps though in which he said we have to remember that academics often like the current culture, it’s why they work in that place and in that job. So don’t be surprised when you are met with resistance!

Creating a culture which reflects experimentation, builds curiosity and rewards innovation, isn’t easy, but also isn’t impossible. There are various ways in which this can be done, but one lesson I have learnt in making this happen, is that the process needs to be holstic and the whole organisation needs to embrace that need to change the culture. What I have found that you need to identify the key stakeholders in the organisation, the ones who actually have the power to make change happen. I found in one college I worked in that the real “power” wasn’t with the Senior Leadership Team (who often had the same frustrations I had when it came to change) but the Heads of Faculty, the managers who led and managed the curriculum leaders. They had the power to make things happen, but they didn’t always realise they held that power.

Getting the rhetoric right, but also understood across the organisation is critical for success in embedding learning technologies. Often messages are “broadcast” across an organisation, but staff don’t really understand what is meant by them and many staff don’t think it applies to them. Getting a shared understanding what is required from a key strategic objective is challenging. I have done this exercise a few times and it works quite well, pick a phrase from your strategic objectives and ask a room of staff or managers what it means and to write it down individually. You find that everyone usually had a different understanding of what it means. A couple of examples to try include buzz phrases such as “the digital university” and “embrace technology”.

Finally looking at what motivates people to use technology to improve teaching, learning and assessment.

When I was teaching, I would often experiment with technology to see if it made a difference, if it did, I adopted it, if it didn’t I stopped using it. The impact on the learners was minimal, as I didn’t continue to use technology that didn’t make a difference or was even having a negative impact. What I also did was I applied the same process and logic to all my teaching. So when I created games to demonstrate various economic processes, if they made a difference I used them again, if they didn’t then I would ask the learners how they would change or improve them. When I gave out a reading list of books, I would ask the learners for their feedback and, those that didn’t make a difference or had no positive impact, then they would be removed from the list! I was personally motivated, but we know you can’t just make that happen.

When I was managing a team I ensured that any experimentation or innovation was part of their annual objectives and created SMART actions that would ensure they would be “motivated” to do this. Again you need to identify the key stakeholders in the organisation, the ones who actually have the power to make this happen.

So when someone asks you to show them the evidence what do you do?

stuff

Was the approach wrong?

Leave a comment

Leaving Las Vegas

Reading the following article on Second Life, I am reminded of a few discussions I have had in previous years on the catalysts for change.

When looking at new technologies that have the potential to impact on learning, it needs to be recognised that though research and understanding is important, we also need to be realistic that this on its own does not necessarily change things.

Research allows us to understand the implications and the affordances of a new technology. What we need to be aware of when introducing a new technology of the main issues and barriers that could be faced.

What we must take note of is that research on its own does not necessarily cause change.

Most researchers I have met appear to prefer to build on existing research rather than embed practice based on research. That of course is fine, as they are researchers. It takes a different kind of approach to embed the results of research into mainstream practice.

Another aspect of research based practice is that due to the way it is funded, it often only looks at a small section of an institution, usually a single group from a single curriculum area. I don’t then blame people who look at this research and decide that the best way to move forward is to repeat the research with a different group. The end result is lots of small research project outcomes that are very similar. That is certainly the case with research into Second Life.

Wholesale, holistic mainstream change doesn’t happen because of research, that change comes about because of people.

Good people base decisions on good research, they will recognise the implications of that research and think about how they can use that research to influence and inform strategy to change practices and processes.

jiscel12, keynote

Levers of Change

Leave a comment

Last week I delivered a keynote at the JISC Innovating e-Learning Online Conference.

James Clay will be asking delegates to consider some of the conversations we have had over the last ten years and challenging us to consider why we keep asking the same questions, why we are sometimes slow to take action and to really look hard at our responses to change. James will offer some of his own observations around why we seem reluctant to learn from the past and argues that this is as important as looking to the future.

What I wanted to achieve with this keynote was to explore the reasons behind what we decide to research and to investigate what does change in organisations.

The slides I used were as follows and I think I broke the record with 143 slides.

The presentation was delivered online using Blackboard Collaborate and over a hundred people “watched”.

I made use of the environment to engage the audience and to get them to interact with me and each other.

Overall I was pleased with the presentation and the outcomes. I also got some really nice feedback too.

m-learning, mobile

New research report on 1:1 access to mobile learning devices

Leave a comment

The University of Bristol is conducting research into the impact of 1:1 access to mobile learning devices at KS2 and KS4. Five schools, which are part of the Learning2Go or Hand-e-Learning projects, are being investigated.

This Development and Research project is using mixed methods to evaluate impact in terms of learners’ learning skills, attendance, behaviour and attainment. It will also review the success of the implementation and sustainability of the schools’ PDA initiatives and provide examples of emerging good pedagogic practice.

The final reports from the project will be available in Winter 2008.

The Summer 2007 Interim Report is available here.

Emerging recommendations include:

Implementation – policy

  • The initial implementation of mobile projects is logistically challenging.
  • The open negotiation of contracts of acceptable and responsible use with learners and parents can be very useful in clarifying issues and building mutual trust.
  • When learners expect devices to be used, they are more likely to bring them to school every day and keep them charged. When all pupils in a class have their devices with them, the learning benefits are optimised.
  • Teachers need to play an integral role in choosing software and content to ensure that it is relevant to learners’ needs. They are then more likely use the devices.
  • Where possible, all relevant staff – especially teaching assistants, ICT co-ordinators and teachers – should be provided with mobile devices.

Implementation – technical

  • It is beneficial to ensure reliable wireless connectivity.
  • It is useful to consider systems for dealing with breakages and temporary loss of use of devices. This may involve planning for temporary loan stock.
  • Systems for storage of and access to work need to be developed. Teachers and learners need to access digital work to provide and receive feedback.
  • Consideration can usefully be given to possible software solutions to teachers’ issues around observing process, tracking progress and formative assessment.

Professional development of teachers

  • Teachers benefit from having time to explore what the devices can do before integrating their use into planned learning.
  • Using mobile devices is likely to increase learner autonomy. Teachers need to ensure that learners are able to evaluate resources, think critically and reflect.
  • It is important to consider the ways in which mobile devices are integrated with other (ICT and traditional) tools in learning at home and at school.