Final report from Online Educa

Phew...marathon end to the conference as I chaired a couple of sessions on the last afternoon. All that and the journey back made it tricky to update the blog, so apologies for the delay. I also, put away the recorder and left the podcasting to the official service this year once it got started. No point in trying to nab many of the same people for interview, even when I did get the chance.

There were lots of interesting conversations taking place about issues around higher education pedagogy and not just the technologies. Indeed, the role of the teacher and expectations of students were key themes. Some interesting comments from participants working in a number of universities that had undertaken local surveys included: (a) whilst most new students have a PC (usually a laptop, with the % ownership in the UK, for example, being 95%) many of them don't plan on carrying it around with them everywhere even when their university provides near-ubiquitous wifi - so there's still a demand for the provision of well-equipped, open access computer labs; (b) whilst many students are well aware of a range of technologies and have been exposed to them in school or in their social lives, that awareness shouldn't be interpreted as meaning high levels of confidence; (c) whilst they have used word-processors and spreadsheets to some extent in their schooling prior to university, presentation software such as PowerPoint which is used extensively at university is not something that many students have actually used before; (d) there are mixed views on  the merits of using social networking software, with most students prefering to keep personal lives quite separate from their formal education.

Anyway, that's a quick summary of the remaining points. The official website will in due course be populated by summaries, photos and other materials, whilst the attention of the organisers will now focus on next year's event! 

Open Educational Resources - panel session

Well that was interesting, even if at times there was a slightly 'retro' feel to some of the presentations and points being made. A colleague muttered in my ear "that was so 1999, wasn't it?" - a really bitter remark for those in geekdom. I guess part of the issue was that the talks were of a fairly general level, largely explaining repository models, but to be fair they did highlight on some of the challenges and reasons why the rapid growth in open education resources hasn't happened yet. 

Although every speaker mentioned the importance of IPR (intellectual property rights) as a challenge and some commented how there is widespread ignorance amongst teachers and academic staff about the implications of copyright (including creative commons) and that it is possible to still use things like CC to make a profit if so desired, one of the key stumbling blocks that none of the panel raised is that in much of daily practice in education people make use of diagrams from textbooks, video materials from a variety of sources, numerical examples from elsewhere, etc. In other words, we are actually closer in some ways to the copyright breaching, mix-remix subculture than perhaps many are prepared to admit. Rather than it always being the case that academics don't contribute to digital repositories because they want to jealously guard their own content, I suspect in some (many?) cases it is because they don't actually own the content they use in their teaching. This is something that can be seen in things like MIT and the Open University initiatives, where you might notice gaps in the materials provided for many of these courses, where copyright for a particular image, diagram or case study is actually owned by a commercial publisher or some other colleague.

Part of the outdated feel my colleague was referring to though, was the use of Lego (TM) to explain re-purposable content. There was an almost audbile groan when the first lego block appeared on screen. So there's still life in the old metaphor yet it would seem. However, I guess for those for whom  open content is a new concept this is useful, though that would only be a minority of people in this audience based on the show of hands at the start.

Nonetheless, from my own point of view, the talks were clear and helpful. Richard Baraniuk spoke very well and made some really good points not just in the presentation but also in the Q&A afterwards. He emphasised the reality of the approach to producing open textbooks quite powerfully by handing around a printed example of a collaborative text (as in the picture) and the numbers he used with regards to the California Community Colleges, where the costs of the texts outstrips tuition fees, was powerfully made. 

Francesc Pedro of the OECD, summarised their report entitled "Giving Knowledge for Free" and highlighted the moral dilemma they had with the report in that OECD normally charges for their reports. Given the title they had to offer this as a free download!

Rachel Bruce summarised JISC's approach to open content and repositories and talked about the next stages, using JORUM as the principal platform.

Artur Dyro, representing the commercial sector took a brave stand on the podium but was good natured and light hearted. His concluding remark was also well-received where he pointed out that without the commercial sector we would have no sponsored lunches at conferences like this in the future. A call for collaboration if ever there was one.

share and share alike?

This morning's first plenary session is on Open Educational Resources and includes speakers from Rice University's Connexions programme (Richard Baraniuk, a TED presenter - see below) and JISC in the UK.  There was a session yesterday on whether or not digital repositories are working. Unfortunately, I didn't get to it - that's the problem with 15 parallel sessions at an event! However, the discussions are spilling over into the foyer.

in Plain English

A little digression from the conference. I note that NMC (new media consortium) are hosting an online discussion session with the originator of the "...in plain English" video series. These are brilliant, fun and imaginative explanatory videos which we've featured before on this blog (if you haven't come across them before, hit youtube and search). Might be worth joining in the event. More details at http://www.nmc.org/connect/commoncraft

on sale....

It's interesting each year to look at the types of companies and organisations that have their stalls at this event. It isn't always easy to see whether there is any particularly dominant theme, but you do tend to see clusters of product types. For example in the past you would see a number of LMS/VLE companies flogging their wares and scowling at one another. Apart from the now ritual Fronter-Blackboard banter, that seems to have faded a little. There was a time when lots of universities and start-ups would be championing their own custom-built tools. On that side of things this year, it looks like two topics for small startup style companies are either :(a) lecture/presentation recording or (b) online assessment/quiz tools. Indeed, I'm not sure when I last saw so many variants of quiz tools, everything from Countdown/Who wants to be a millionaire to military style, punctuated testing regimes. Can't see much of a market there for all these players and don't know how they'd stack up against the bigger products that have been on the go. Of course, many of them have their own distinctive features and are clearly a labour of love on the part of the developers, but sadly in this competitive area that's not the key criterion for market success. Indeed in the current economic conditions it is likely that institutions are going to be a bit more conservative in their purchasing and stick with the usual suspects.

Of course, a few more open source solutions might help, but then for official high-stakes examinations, would you be willing to go out on a limb in terms of security and potential hacks?

video

At an interesting session on the use of video in HE where some nice examples were shown of the range of types of materials that people are now routinely using in their teaching. In one, humorous and clear presentation by Alex Stromm from Norway, we saw examples of where he produced short (3-5min) videos each week to tell the students what the key topics would be in the coming lectures and gave them a key question to find the answer for from their textbook in advance of the class.  They seemed popular. One weekend he forgot to do his usual recording and only remembered whilst out for a walk in the woods. So he  grabbed his mobile phone and recorded one there and then, albeit with his dog leaping around. Since then he has been producing them using whichever technology is to hand and they seem to be very effective at keeping student morale going as the weeks go by on the course. That, and encouraging them to do a bit of advanced reading was all he was aiming for and from his evaluations it seemed to do the trick. He also set up a system whereby the students could receive the videos on their mobile phone if they wished.  His more advanced versions included good, effective use of green-screen overlays.

I'll pop on the links later when I get sent them.  Other talks in the session were interesting too and the whole thing was masterfully chaired by Clive Young, a real expert and pioneer in video in universities .

Official podcast

The conference, this year is running its own 'official' podcast  with interviews with various participants. Have a look/listen here: http://www.icwe.net/oeb_blog/wordpress/

Opening keynotes

Well the first session is just over.  Michael Wesch gave an excellent presentation and his style of delivery is very pleasant, gentle but authoritative. He gave a similar overview to his talk to the Library of Congress earlier in the year, but with a little diversion into his parallel work on the cultural and social anthropology of remote communities in Papua New Guinea, showing how the advent of literacy and a national census has impacted on daily lives, including the physical realignment of houses, the adoption of personal names, etc, reinforcing the old Marshal McLuhan truisms about media shaping society. The implications for learning, or rather the opportunities to focus on the key aspect of moving students from being knowledgable to being knowledge-able were the focal points of his message. The issue of 'serious play' and the strength of weak ties in networking were brought out in the following presentation by Prof. Norbert Bolz of the Berlin University of Technology who spoke on the transition from knowledge management to identity management.

The session was concluded by the usual ad from Roger Larson, the boss of Fronter, a Norwegian VLE supplier and also a 'platinum sponsor' of the conference. At this stage, many who had heard the 'ad' before turned to their laptops and mobile devices, exactly as Andrew Wesch had described students in lectures!  One of the issues, for such a tech-savvy and new media group as this is that the Fronter slides and screen grabs looked so dull and unimaginative in style (not that any learning management system looks fascinating these days - how quickly they have become part of the basic infrastructure/furniture and how few people have hangups over particular products - the debate has moved on as more and more users and institutions become somewhat platform-agnostic, which in itself is an interesting development). 

One point made though was important and that was to stress that openness and the 'web 2.0' freedoms are fine in principle but in practice when you are dealing with students formally enrolled in programmes, especially those still at school (a big market for Fronter's products) then personal confidentiality is not only vitally important but also a legal requirement, so there still by necessity need to be those 'data silos' which protect the individual and which store the educational products, reports and signs of progress, feedback and development of individual students and school pupils.

Anyway, time for a quick coffee before the next session...

photo (CC) by wrubens at flickr, oeb2008

First Podcast from Berlin

I spoke with Christine Fischer of Die Volkshochschule im Second Life. Christine was demonstrating their virtual space at the Linden Labs' stand at the conference. She walked me through some of their learning environment and demonstrated some of the objects and atrefacts which they have created and use in a range of adult education programmes. 

Unlike so many other educational institutions' approaches to SL, they have at least tried to make extensive use of the construction tools and have designed a number of simulations and environments, using voice tools for communication with the students.

http://www.vhs-sl.de/ 

Snow in real life, heat in conference life and adult education in Second Life

Snow on the outside and boiling on the inside - welcome to Berlin's Intercontinental hotel where the conference workshops and trade stands are buzzing. I visited Linden Labs'  first ever conference stand and saw some examples of good work in Second Life that are a little more interesting than the usual simulated lecture theatres and crudely posted PowerPoint presentations.  One of the examplars was from Die Volkshochshule and I spoke with Christine Fischer for the first of the podcasts from this year's event.  Photos to follow shortly.

Online Educa 2008

Well, it's that time of year again when I realise that even that extra jumper isn't enought to stave off the Easterly wind that whips along Unter den Linden after sunset! 

Back in Berlin for what is now the 14th Online Educa conference and associated workshops and gatherings of research partners. The early morning start required to catch the first flight from Shannon is beginning to take its toll on an aged blogger like me, but still the impressive sights of Berlin are rejuvenating. This is the view from outside Humboldt University  in the square where the infamous book-burnings took place.

The delegates are beginning to sign in and the trade stands are being erected.  Little do they know that I'm stalking the corridors with my digital voice recorder in search of interviews for our podcast series.  This year I'm travelling lighter as technology continues to advance. I'm field-testing a Dell Mini 9 netbook instead of carrying my usual (already quite small) Sony Vaio. The keyboard is a bit bunched, especially for my right hand, but the build quality is pretty solid and the response, when not overloaded with things like Google Desktop, Audacity, Skype, Chrome and Picasa running at the same time (oops, got carried away) is actually pretty good. Thus far it is impressing for the price of only 349 Euros as a  laptop replacement.

Tech support rap