Wikipedia Belongs in Education

St Leonard's Hall

The EduWiki 2014 event was held on Friday 31st October in the stunning St Leonard's Hall at the University of Edinburgh. Ever since I heard Toni Sant (Education Organiser with wikimedia UK) speak at the International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference (see previous post), which led me to join the Wikimedia Ireland Community working group, I have been fascinated at the potential of using Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) to support student development in higher education. So, I was thrilled to be at the one day event in Edinburgh to find out more about the Wikimedia UK education projects.

This was always going to be a different crowd from my usual conference network, and there wasn't much tweeting in advance of the event, so I was a little nervous when I turned up at the social event on the evening before the conference. I needn't have worried, the small group that had gathered were as welcoming as could be, including a nacho-eating dog, and several wikipedians. A collection of tweets from the conference and the lead-up was captured using storify by Brian Kelly, who spoke at the event.

Floor Koudijs: Why Wikipedia is great for students

The event itself was opened the next morning by Peter McColl, Rector at the University of Edinburgh, and followed by a presentation from Floor Koudijs from the Wikipedia Education Program at the Wikimedia Foundation.  Her message was a simple one: Wikipedia belongs in Education. Using Wikipedia in the classroom, students will start as readers, but they are future contributors. There followed some discussion about academic staff attitudes to Wikipedia, where it is often not seen as a valid resource. But even academics will use it as a starting point for research, so the suggestion was: instead of fighting it, why not embrace it?

Wikimedia in Education

During the morning, we heard from a number of interesting speakers, including Wikimedians in Residence at various UK institutions including JISC, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the National Library of Scotland. Of particular interest to me was a presentation from Marc Haynes, former Wikipedian in Residence at Coleg Cymraeg, Wales, which enables teaching through Welsh in the universities in Wales. Marc described his role: working with academics across Welsh universities, training them in wiki editing, sourcing content that could be shared under a suitable Creative Commons licence, and building up content on the Welsh Wicipedia. Since NUIG has a particular responsibility to the Irish language, there would seem to be opportunities to do something similar for Vicipéid, the Irish language wiki. 

Also of immediate interst to me was a very accessible presentation from Martin Poulter, former Wikimedia ambassador at JISC. Martin spoke about his approach to academic staff development around using Wikipedia in education: a Wikipedia comprehension exercise. Rather than starting with how to edit, he demonstrated an approach which highlights academic qualities of Wikimedia articles - the quality scale, citation guidelines, peer review, authorship, collaboration, cultural differences and opportunities for translation projects. Coming at this from the angle of supporting academic integrity, rather than a focus on the technology, is a fantastic approach and one that I hope to use in the future. 

A presentation from Greg Singh, lecturer at the University of Stirling, showed Wikimedia projects in action. I was particularly impressed by the WikiBooks project Digital Media and Culture Yearbook 2014, where students worked in 12 groups of 6, to collaboratively produce an open publication. Marks were awarded for content, understanding and engagement. Student feedback was almost all overwhelmingly positive (11 out of 12 groups).

Beginners Workshop for New Campus Ambassadors and Educators

Instructor Basics

In the afternoon I attended the workshop delivered by Toni Sant and Martin Poulter  for people who are getting started, or thinking of getting started, with Wikipedia in their own institutions. The first part of this was based on the excellent Instructor Basics: How to Use Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool publication. Based on 5 key policies (free content, reliable sources, neutral point of view, notability, good faith), we were led to consider different types of student assignments that can be used to help achieve various learning outcomes. 

Rather than create a new Wikipedia article, which could be quickly removed due to lack of "notability", we were encouraged to think about: translating an article (useful for building up content on Vicipéid, for example); copy editing to improve the grammar or readability of an article; uploading illustrations to Wikimedia Commons on a particular topic or theme; adding new content to an existing article; using Wikidata as the basis of an assignment. Wikipedia also has a number of sister projects that could be used as the basis of students work: Commons, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wiktionary...

At all times, the importance of interacting with the existing Wikimedia community was stressed, through writing messages on a user's talk page or on an article's talk page. This allows a student to practice skills in collaboration, not just with their classmates, but with a whole world of volunteer editors. 

Of course, students are likely to make mistakes when it comes to Wikipedia etiquette and although we were assured that the majority of Wikipedians will be supportive of fledgling editors, there are also stories of less than helpful behaviours. To support students and educators, we were introduced to the Wikipedia Education Extension which allows educators to register their institution and courses, and within this, identify clearly which articles students may be working on.

There is an impressive amount of online training for educators and for students, and my next step is to become a Campus Ambassador so that I can start to roll out projects at NUI, Galway.

WikiProject Ireland/NUIG National Monuments Editathon Nov 2014 

As a first step, I'm really excited that we are hosting our first An Vicipéid/Wikipedia Editathon this Friday!

Organised by Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, CELT and the Wikimedia Ireland Community, the aim is to highlight the value of An Vicipéid/Wikipedia as a learning resource and to improve its quality by encouraging Irish traslation students to participate in the event. The event’s theme is The National Monuments of Ireland. This was chosen on account of the Wikimedia Ireland Community’s previous collaboration with the international photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments.

For more information see the event invitation.

No doubt you'll be hearing more about Wikipedia projects at NUIG soon!

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CEL263: an emerging community

On a Friday afternoon, just over a week ago, I started with a new group of participants on our Learning Technologies module, CEL263, part of the PG Diploma in Academic Practice offered at CELT. During  the module, we explore various technologies for teaching and learning.

For the last number of years I've introduced twitter as a tool for communication as part of the course. Every year we have a few people who user twitter, some who have twitter accounts (but little more) and some who have never explored twitter at all. To motivate, participants can earn a Twitter Novice badge, awarded for completing a twitter profile and tweeting a few things using the #cel263 hashtag.

I also maintain a twitter list, which includes all the people who have been enrolled on the module in the last 5 years - currently 61 people. They are not all active, but those who keep tweeting make a great contribution to the CEL263 weekly newsletter, which is full of news and articles all year round.

So, that Friday afternoon, just before class, I posted a tweet to my followers asking them to help demonstrate the power of twitter, confident that I would get a good response:

Showing a group of academics the power of twitter. Pls say hi, where you are, and why you use twitter. Use #cel263.
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 12, 2014

A number of people responded, mostly from Ireland and the UK, and one from Canada (thanks if you were one of those people).

During the afternoon, my new fledgling group began creating their first few tweets, some with confidence, and others with great trepidation. They began to follow each other and build a small twitter community. We projected a twitter search onto the board in the room, and tracked progress.

But the real magic happened later that evening, long after the class had finished. Sitting back relaxing at home, I kept a watch out for anybody in the class dipping into twitter and sending some tweets of encouragement. To my surprise, previous members of the group (some who had never tweeted before CEL263) began to tweets words of welcome and encouragement:

@sharonlflynn @gerry_molloy Well hello to the new class. One year on this skeptic quite enjoys a little tweeting as a result of #cel263
— Dr. Jane Walsh (@DrJaneWalsh) September 12, 2014

@helen_dodson welcome to twitter Helen! @sharonlflynn & #cel263 got me started too & I've never looked back. Great for latest science news
— Róisín Dwyer (@RoisinMDwyer) September 12, 2014

@RoisinMDwyer @helen_dodson @sharonlflynn yeah welcome Helen
— Dara Cannon (@DaraCannon) September 13, 2014

 And when one student expressed doubts:

@SarahBerthaud it's a great resource for research. Give it time :)
— Rose Ní Dhubhda (@RoseNiDhubhda) September 12, 2014

How wonderful to see such a community emerging. It has taken some time, but communities can't be engineered. They take time and need nurturing. But the fruits, when they appear, are very rewarding.

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Wikimedia Ireland and Wiki Loves Monuments

In my role, I wear a number of different hats. Sometimes they are distinct, but often they overlap.

Apart from the use of technologies for learning, one of my major interests is in supporting academic integrity - not just plagiarism detection, but the creation of an environment where scholarly work can flourish. At the 6th International Integrity & Plagiarism conference this summer, I found these two interests overlapping in a new way (for me) in Toni Sant's keynote talk.

For a long time, I have been trying to persuade academic staff that Wikipedia is not necessarily the work of the devil. I argued that it can be a useful place for students to start researching a topic and can direct them towards more authentic and useful resources. I'd even heard of student assignments based on editing wikipedia, but I hadn't really thought too much about it.

What's wrong with Wikipedia? @tonisant #6iipc pic.twitter.com/tYWP8szPTI
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) June 17, 2014

Toni Sant is the Education Organiser for wikimedia UK. I won't give a synopsis of his talk here, but suffice to say that I was impressed by the 5 pillars of wikipedia (which include a statement about openness) and especially excited about the Wikipedia Education Program. Who knew there was a whole bank of resources for educators and students?

At the time of the conference, I knew that I wanted to know more and to get involved. Following a twitter conversation with Toni, he put me in touch with the Wikimedia Ireland Community, a small and very new group of people interested in promoting open, wiki-based activities in Ireland. Before long, I found myself part of the group and participating in (almost) weekly meetings via skype. Moreover, I am now the proud owner of a wikimedia account, have edited a wiki and even uploaded a photo to Wikimedia Commons (of the Sage in Gateshead, where the conference took place).

I have a couple of projects in mind, based around the Wikipedia Education Program and have been talking to some people locally in NUIG about these. The Wikimedia Ireland group is very supportive, and refreshing in their enthusiasm. Next month I'll be attending the EduWiki Conference in Edinburgh, where I'm sure I'll learn lots more. I'll report back on that on this blog.

The current project that Wikimedia Ireland is promoting is Wiki Loves Monuments. This is a global photo contest, and Ireland is involved for the first time this year. The group have put a lot of effort into listing monuments, by county, on the competition page. Anybody can submit a photo (as long as it's of one of the monuments listed) during the month of September. Winners will be announced at the end of October, with an awards ceremony in mid-November.

You can follow Wikimedia Ireland on Facebook and on Twitter (@wikimediaIE). Expect to hear more from me about this new adventure. It's always good to try something new.

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BbWorld14 Day 2, Part 2

I wrote this post a week after BbWorld14, while still on holiday, but I never got around to publishing it. So, here it is - just a month later.

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BBWorld14 seems like a distant memory to me now, a week later. All the people, the excitement, the bling of Las Vegas - it's all a little bit vague. But the time has given me a chance to reflect and consider the experience.

Before I get to the reflection, I will put together a few words on the parallel sessions I attended on the second day. Again, at times I felt that I should have gone to something else, some other part of the programme, but I will get back to that later, too. 

I went to a session on Outcomes Assessment in Blackboard, where some users from Syracuse University and Western Kentucky University spoke about their experiences. Outcomes Assessment sounds like a tool that could be useful, particularly for programme accreditation, where programme level learning outcomes can be measured and tracked. I remember playing around with them (possibly an earlier version) on our test environment in the past. My impression was that there is a lot of manual admin work to be done, by a Bb administrator, and also by a committed programme co-ordinator. From the session at BbWorld14, I don't think the situation has changed. The panel spoke about the need for training, consultation and support from Blackboard, having local champions and obtaining faculty buy-in. This doesn't sound like a project I want to get involved in anytime soon. Perhaps sometime in the future, when the tool is easier and less manual to use!

Total Working Hours for ERAU MOOC

Two sessions on the general theme of teaching online, one from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University on their development and delivery of MOOCs, and one from Columbia College about supporting staff, were interesting, but on familiar territory for me. I was impressed by the team from Embry-Riddle, who seemed to do everything right. The team of instructional designers supported staff to develop the first MOOC, on "The Human Factor in Aviation", they used social media for student engagement, they closely monitored student activity, they used badges to celebrate achievements, and put a huge amount of time and effort into the MOOC to ensure its success. Between developing, facilitating and maintaining the MOOC, 2,105 staff hours were invested. What's not clear is the business model - what does Embry-Riddle get out of investing this amount of staff time, to the detriment of other activities? From the first MOOC, four participants have since become students at the University. Perhaps, in the US system, that's enough. 

Leslie Buckalew, VP for Student Learning at Columbia College, and Melissa Colon, Distance Education Co-ordinator, gave a very comprehensive account of the systems they have in place for the training and support of staff who are teaching online. Their ethos is that, if faculty feel supported, then they are more willing to try, which is true. It doesn't hurt, though, that they can offer stipends to staff as an incentive. What I liked about both the Columbia College and Embry-Riddle presentations was that the student was at the heart of both; staff are being supported to provide the best possible experience to students. 

My last parallel session was one given by Respondus, a Blackboard partner company, because I wanted to learn more about their lock-down browser. Ok, yes, I was also attracted by the offer of a free webcam! While the session was very professionally given, and I learned everything I needed to know, I didn't like the starting point of the presentation. The very first phrase was "Digital Cheating" and we seemed to start from the assumption that our students are dishonest. This made me uncomfortable. But the tool is certainly impressive and I'll be looking at it for use at NUIG soon.

I also spent quite a bit of time that day with the guys from Kaltura. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm already a huge fan of their system. They have been doing some great work with their product in the last while and I'm very much looking forward to the new player (Java-free) and lecture capture system.

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BbWorld14 Day 2, Part 1

Leaving Las Vegas

I am currently sitting in an aeroplane, high above Arizona (I suspect) looking back over day 2 at BbWorld14. I had to miss the third day, which is unfortunate, but unavoidable.

Yesterday started with our own session, and I was joined by Darren and Fionn in Murano 3205, where we gave our presentation to a fairly full room. It was a very different audience to Dublin, but a good one all the same. Thanks to everyone who came along. We know you could have picked up a free webcam at the Respondus session, but we had no freebies to give, so we particularly appreciate your support. 

The big keynote of the day was from Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard, in the Venetian Ballroom again. As we entered the room, music pounding, there was an air of expectation and excitement. The theme of the keynote was Reimagine. Redesign. Redefine. which was expanded to: Reimagine the education experience; Redesign our approach; Redefine the teaching and learning environment. 

We heard about how Blackboard has restructured in the last 12 months, all of which sounds very positive. We heard about the new vision and mission, which is focused on the learner, and how this is driving development, particularly in the areas of the new user interface and mobile developments. We heard about how Blackboard wants to be our partner, with a global network of support centres and a series of services solutions. I had heard much of this at BbTLC earlier this year, so it wasn't particularly new. 

We were given a look at the new user interface, using responsive design, and a radiant  Stephanie Weeks talked us through some of what we can expect. Again, it's something I have heard before, but I am looking forward to the release of this new user experience. Although it means we'll have to completely redevelop all our local user documentation, I do think that the majority of our users will be happy with it. 

What did come as a surprise to me (shock?) was the news that Blackboard is changing how it packages solutions. In future, the basic product will be called Learning Core, including the capabilities of Learn, Content, Community, Mobile and XPLOR. The next step up is Learning Essentials, which includes Collaborate. Learning Insight will extend this to Analytics. 

What exactly does this mean for an institution, and when it will happen? I don't know the answer to that. For NUI Galway, where we just have Learn, Mobile and Collaborate, does this mean that our Blackboard capabilities will be extended? Will we finally be able to use Portfolios, which belong in the Content system? Can we create communities beyond the formal module codes? And what effect will it have on our licence fee? If the answers to the first few questions are "yes", and the answer to the last one is "none", then this is good news indeed!

Another piece of the keynote that made an impact on me was the piece about Big Data. I had assumed this related to the provision of information back to admins, but in fact Blackboard want to use it to provide students and instructors with better information about their progress in a course. Assuming that the information to be made available to students is customisable (it may not always be helpful to compare themselves to fellow students) this does look like something that could help the learning experience. 

After BbTLC in Dublin, I noted a new customer focus for Blackboard as a company, and that certainly seems to be true. Jay also talked about wanting to celebrate and promote our success stories. In a section on Industry Citizenship, he indicated that Blackboard will support research and studies to inform (education) industry dialogue. This seems to be more than just wanting to sell a product, and a very welcome new direction. 

I think there are interesting times ahead with Blackboard. A lot has been done in the last 12 months, but there's plenty more to do. 

I will recap the parallel sessions in a separate post.

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BbWorld14 Day 1

The first day of BbWorld is over, and I am turning to my responsibilities as an official conference blogger. These notes will be very much from my own experience and my own point of view.

From registration it was clear that BbWorld is unlike any conference I have been to before - it is massive! There are 2500 delegates, with lots of different backgrounds. There may be 14 sessions happening in parallel at any time. The logistics involved in moving people between rooms, up and down escalators, and organising them in the large auditorium for keynotes, is an exercise in complexity. 

With all this happening, trying to find people is impossible without using electronic communication of some kind. Luckily, the conference wifi has been fairly reliable during the day. 

The twitter stream (#BbWorld14) has been constant - with some contributions from myself - and during the keynote was more like a firehose. I found it difficult to keep up - though that might have also have something to do with my jet lag.

With such a full programme, it's inevitable that you sometimes feel you should have gone to a different session, especially if the tweets from another room appear much more interesting. In almost all time slots, I can identify at least two presentations I would like to be at. But I haven't mastered bilocation yet. 

I was at 3 quite different parallel sessions this afternoon. The first, Social Media: It's not just what you had for breakfast was given by Steven Anderson, @web20classroom. Aimed at schools, Steven gave some good reasons for using social media and some great advice about how to establish a social media presence. His main message is that it's all about storytelling, and social media gives schools the opportunity to be in control of their message, to tell their own story. I have followed @web20classroom on twitter for a number of years, so it was great for me to finally hear him present. 

My second session today was the Overview of Product Innovations for International Clients, a Blackboard led session, involving Matthew Small and Jim Hermans. In this, we were told how International clients have helped shape product development, and also how Blackboard wants to work with us as a local partner in the future. Most of the innovations I already knew about, from the Blackboard TLC in Dublin earlier this year. But I was interested to hear about the development of an app for instructors, which will include grading - I imagine a little bit like the GradeMark app. Also of interest is that Blackboard is looking at offline capabilities for mobile. Initially this will allow learners to "consume static eLearning content", but will be extended to other types of content. 

My third session was a panel session on Rethinking Student Services to meet the changing learner. This involved a distinguished panel of leaders in higher education: Scott Jaschik, founder and editor of Inside Higher Education; Joan Zanders from Northern Virginia Community College; Gloria McCall from Kentucky Community and Technical College System; and Kent Hopkins from Arizona State University. This was a tough one for me to understand without knowing the context of the US higher education system.  What is clear is that we have in common: increasing student numbers; a more diverse student population; and limited resources. 

Finally it was time for the big keynote of the conference, Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab. We were ushered into the Venetian Ballroom with loud throbbing music. I took my place at the bloggers area, next to @skyvking, where we have our own power sockets! After a short intro from Jay Bhatt, who will speak tomorrow, we were treated to a very nicely crafted, very visual, presentation from Joi. His message wasn't particularly unique: we need to change education. But he delivered it in such an interesting way, really drawing us in. I particularly enjoyed the section on synthetic biology, which illustrated nicely his point about the need for Anti Disciplinary spaces. (Although, now it has been named, is synthetic biology a new discipline?) He finished with a point about the role of serendipity, or just good luck, in innovation. If you keep meeting the same people all the time, with the same agenda, how can you hope to be creative?

With that in mind, I will conclude day 1 with the observation that my own attendance at BbWorld is serendipitous, and I am certainly not with the same group of people. In particular I had a lovely lunch with a completely new person, who was put in touch with me via a twitter connection. 

If you are in the area tomorrow morning, do join me and my student co-presenters at 8:15 in Murano 3205 to hear about student involvement in developing a campus app. I know there are 13 other sessions you could attend - but you won't regret it!

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Documenting BbWorld14

I am sitting in the airport at Philadelphia, waiting for the next stage of my journey to BbWorld14 in Las Vegas. It seems a very long time since I set off, early this morning, from Galway. I got the 5:15 CityLink bus from Galway to Dublin airport, accompanied by my 12 year old daughter, who is spending a few days with family in Dublin. 

As we sat into our seats, my daughter took out her mobile phone, connected to wifi, attached her ear buds and proceeded to ignore me for the whole 3 hour journey. As we left Galway, I was surprised that she started taking photographs out the window - it was dark - and posting them on snapchat and Instagram. Then I realised that she was starting to document her visit to Dublin, which is probably almost as exciting for her as my trip to Las Vegas. Maybe she's a future blogger?

In contrast to her single device, I am travelling with at least four (five if you count my watch - which I still use to tell the time). I have my phone and my iPad, to keep me connected. But I also have my 8 year old iPod, which I use for my music, and my kindle, for proper reading. I don't like extended reading on the iPad, although the kindle app does come in handy. And I have my whole music collection on the iPod, so why would I take up extra space on my phone? Evidently it's a generational thing - or is it?

Of these, my phone and iPad will both be used to document BbWorld14, in a variety of ways. 

During the conference, I will be tweeting my most immediate thoughts and reactions, using the conference hashtag. I will also be taking photographs, with my phone, and tweeting some of these. I haven't got comfortable using the iPad for taking photographs - it just seems too big and awkward. 

While tweeting is immediate, and can be conversational, it can also provide a useful archive after the event - the nearly now. A tool like storify can be used to collect together a more permanent record of an event. For example, I created a recent archive of the twitter feed at 6IIPC. 

But of most value, to me, and hopefully also to you, dear reader, is when I manage to reflect a little bit, and put something more connected and considered into a blog post. Sometimes this can happen quite quickly, and sometimes it takes a little longer to let the ideas take shape. But I've already had 3 hours on a bus, 7 hours on a plane, and quite a bit of time hanging round airport lounges today, so hopefully this one makes a little sense. 

In the last little while I have noticed David Hopkins, in particular, making use of sketchnotes. This is something I would love to try, and I am told you don't require artistic talents. I have gone so far as to download Mike Rohde's book The Sketchnote Handbook to my kindle, but haven't tried the techniques yet. Maybe this is the event to start. 

So, I will be interested to see the other BbWorld 14 bloggers, and what devices and techniques they use. What is your approach to documenting events?

Preparing for BbWorld14

Earlier this year I presented, with two student co-presenters, a session at the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference (BBTLC), which took place in UCD in Dublin. The presentation was based on a project that I've been involved in, along with the students, to develop a campus mobile app for students, based on the Blackboard Mosaic platform. The interesting thing about the project was that the project was entirely initiated, driven and implemented by the students.

My co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly, are both first year undergraduate students at NUI Galway. Fionn intends to major in Psychology, while Darren is a student of Biomedical Science. Neither would describe themselves as particularly technical. But they are now at the point of launching the first official mobile app for NUI Galway students.

The film crew at BBTLC

The students were excited to be going to BBTLC, which fell at an awkward time during their first year exams. Blackboard, the company, had shown some interest in the presentation, and we were able to spend some time with chatting with Alex Ackerman-Greenberg, the product manager for Mosaic. For the presentation we had a packed room, and a full film crew at the back. For two first year undergraduate students, they did amazingly well and delivered a very engaging and natural presentation. I collated the tweets from the session using storify, which give some sense of how it was received. You can find the presentation on prezi.

After the event, we got a lot of positive and useful feedback. We were very excited when we featured in a short video, embedded below, including an interview with us. From about 54 seconds in, you can see Alex Ackerman-Greenberg talking about the project.

A recording of the whole presentation then appeared on YouTube, which I still haven't managed to watch through (I hate watching myself). I am also aware that a Blackboard Whitepaper is in preparation.

But, our excitement escalated to a whole new level when we found out that our presentation received the popular vote for best session at the conference, and we were invited to take up a presentation slot at Blackboard World, to take place in Las Vegas next week. We spent some time trying to figure out if it was possible, financially, for the three of us to go. We even featured on the NUI Galway news page! But I'm really delighted to let you know that Fionn and Darren will be presenting with me next Wednesday morning at the very early hour of 8:15am in Murano 3205. If any of this blog's readers happen to be in Las Vegas, we'd love to see you there.

So, what do I hope to get out of BbWorld14? I'll only be there for a short time, and will probably be jetlagged and disorientated. From my limited knowledge, Las Vegas is a million miles from Galway (I don't mean distance, though there is a lot of travelling involved). This will be the biggest event that I have ever attended. But I do intend to make the most of every waking moment. I'm building my schedule, using the BbWorld14 app. I'm very interested to try out the new User Interface. But mostly I am looking forward to meeting a whole new set of people, including some that may already be twitter buddies.

I will certainly be tweeting lots, and also blogging about the experience - using proper English spelling, of course. Las Vegas, here we come!

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A Fragile Trust

At the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism conference last month there was an interesting juxtaposition of talks, some technology-related, but most not. In particular, the keynote sessions provided an array of ideas that I intend to follow up on.

Teddi Fishman (left) in conversation with Samatha Grant

On the last day of the conference, the programme opened with a keynote from Samantha Grant, a filmmaker based in San Francisco, who has made the feature length documentary A Fragile Trust, based on the serial plagiarist Jayson Blair, a journalist at the New York Times. The case, when it was discovered in 2003, was such a scandal that it brought down 2 NYT editors. The documentary features interviews with Blair, as well as with other journalists and editors who were caught up in the story.

During her keynote, Samantha played a number of clips from the film, which gave a great insight into the approach she has taken, and raises plenty of questions about ethics in journalism. I now am very keen to watch the full-length version, which may be coming to Netflix in the future.

At the very least, this documentary should be required viewing for all students of journalism. As part of the overall project, the company has also developed an online game Decisions on Deadline for journalism students, to teach ethical decision making. Lesson plans to accompany the game are coming soon.

But I think there are lessons to be learned for all of us involved in academic integrity when watching this film. The short clip below describes a scenario we are all familiar with.

I'm making a transition from the world of journalism to the world of academic, where some students use exactly the same approach as Blair. This points to a culture where we permit (perhaps even encourage) academic dishonesty. If the system does not have integrity, how can we expect it of our students?

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Good news for Turnitin and GradeMark users

Earlier this week I was at the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference (#6iipc) at the Sage in Newcastle/Gateshead. As a pre-conference activity, the Turnitin International User Group took place, where we got an opportunity to hear about the product roadmap and plans for the future. In the light of the recent acquisition of iParadigms by Insight Venture Partners, I was certainly interested in how this will affect us users of the Turnitin suite of products.

It seems the effect is that there will be increased investment in the product. This is a good thing, since apart from the iPad app (which I love) the products have not really been updated much in the last couple of years. Sure, students can now submit more file types, and rubrics can be imported from Excel, but the basic interface hasn't changed in a while.

Enter the new, Next Generation Document Viewer (DV for short). From what we saw, this looks like it will be a very nice improvment on the current one. For a start, the student paper will take up most of the screen space, allowing improved readability and better use of space. Other features of the new DV are:

• All the tools will appear in a menu on the right, which can collapse when you are not using it.
• Turnitin and GradeMark can be displayed within the single view in the DV, so you can grade while still having full colour similarities displayed.
• Thumbnails on the left will allow you to navigate more easily, while providing some context about where exactly you are in the document.
• There will be improvements to using rubrics, selecting rubrics and grading using rubrics.
• It will be possible to add inline voice comments (not just a single overall voice comment) which can be played back by the student in context.
• Some limited formatting of text comments will be available, including bolding, underlining and hyperlinks.

Apart from the Next Generation Document Viewer, other things we can look forward to are:

• Multiple marking - allowing two or more markers to grade and give feedback on a piece of work. This gives an opportunity for a moderator (for example) to determine which feedback is seen by the student and which overall grade is returned.
• It will be possible to create groups, supporting delegated marking (one marker allocated to a particular group of students), which will be very useful for large classes.
• A student will be able to submit multiple drafts for an assignment, which won't overwrite previous versions, each of which can be marked. This will provide students and instructors with a history of feedback on each draft.
• It will be possible to submit multiple documents for a single assignment.
• It will be possible to give letter grades, and decimal grades.

When can we expect all this at NUI Galway? Probably not until Summer 2015. Although some users will be able to see changes from later this year, because we access Turnitin through a Blackboard Integration, it won't be available to us until early in 2015. Not wanting to make any major changes to the teaching environment during the teaching semester, this means we can't plan on upgrading the Integration until the send of semester 2.

But at least we know there's something to look forward to!


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Discover, Explore, Create 2014

Last Friday, June 6th, we held our annual CELT Symposium. This year's theme was "Discover, Explore, Create" and it really was a very interesting and eye-opening event. After our keynotes and parallel sessions we rounded off the day with a whistle stop tour of our campus which meant making our way around campus guided by a map, stopping off at organised locations and meeting with interesting and enthusiastic colleagues who filled us in on what is going on in their specific area. It is amazing how little we sometimes know about all the different and exciting things that are happening in our University. Our videos from the event will be available shortly but in the meantime here is a little photo montage of the day:


Update: the videos from the day are now available and can be found on the CELT website.

There is also a twitter archive from the day, based on the #celt14 hashtag, which can be found on storify.

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Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2014

A few weeks ago I attended the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference, which took place at University College Dublin. Both David Hopkins (day1, day2 and day3) and Sheila MacNeill (here and here) have already blogged about the event. I know I'm quite late, but I thought I'd get a few thoughts down before I forget altogether.

This was the first Blackboard Europe event that I have attended in some time. In general, I find the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference more useful and better value. This year I decided to go, for a couple of reasons:

• It took place in University College Dublin (where I studied Science as an undergrad many years ago), which made travelling so much easier. Also, I could stay with my Mum and have a little quality time with her.
• I had been encouraged to submit a proposal on our Explore project with Mosaic, which was accepted. So I was able to present with my two (undergraduate student) co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly. More on this soon. Take a look at our prezi for an idea of the project.
• It was a good opportunity to network and connect with other Blackboard customers from across Europe, and also to hear from Blackboard about where the products are going. It was really good to catch up with friends, and especially to meet twitter buddy @sheilmcn for the first time.

So, what were my takeaways? New product developments, new customer focus and a few things to think about over the next couple of months.

What's new and what's in the roadmap?

The latest Learn release (known as the April Release) contains some features that will be of immediate use to us. On day 1 of the conference, Jim Chalex spoke about the new Delegated Marking feature, which will support the common activities of double and blind marking, where an instructor can also reconcile grades and feedback over a number of markers. A lead instructor can enable delegated marking for an assessment, and choose markers from list. He/she will then have an overview of marking as it progresses.

Even more exciting, the April release finally includes a Student Preview feature. This is something that our Blackboard instructors ask about constantly, particularly when it comes to assessment and grading. I've written a short overview, including the Blackboard Quick Hit Video, over on our Blackboard blog.

Further down the line, included in the product roadmap, is the improved user interface, using responsive design. From the demos and screenshots, this looks very nice, and will definitely enhance the user experience.

Looking at Blackboard Collaborate, I was certainly happy to hear that the Irish character problem (experienced when trying to use the Irish characters á and ú) will soon be fixed. While it doesn't affect many people, the impact is significant for those it does. Even better is the news that, sometime in the future, Collaborate will be completely browser-based, and users will no longer have to download java files.

A new version of the Collaborate app (version 2.0) will be launched sometime in the summer. Version 3.0, some time away, will include moderator controls.

Finally, the Blackboard Mobile app is also being developed, to be more consistent with Learn. Hopefully this includes features for instructors.

New Customer Focus

On day 1, just before Stephen Heppell gave his wonderful keynote, Matthew Small welcomed us to the conference. He said that the conference was about sharing best practices and advised us to take time to get to know the team, and to give feedback. This appears to signal a new approach by Blackboard, which was backed up during Jay Bhatt's session later that day.

Although I was uncomfortable with some of the language used ("student as customer/consumer", "content delivery", "countrification") there was definitely a sense that the company is interested in becoming a partner, rather than simply a provider of products. Jay spoke about wanting to offer solutions, rather than just a suite of products.

Over the three days, there was also a feeling that Blackboard staff wanted to talk with us, to find out about our experiences and to get feedback on the products and how we are using them.

User Experiences

During the conference I went to a number of talks from people using Blackboard products to do various things. Among my highlights were:

Transforming Science Higher Education into Active, Blended and Online Learning: a presentation of 3 case studies from Aarhus University. Based on the SAMR model for technology integration, they demonstrated 3 levels of transformation: augmentation, modification and redefinition of courses.

Mobile in the Field: Adel Gordon from the University of Northampton spoke about an award-winning project using mobile technology to enhance the experience of students of Geography in fieldwork. I'm really pleased that Adel will be joining us for the CELT Galway Symposium next month, when she will be talking about this particular project.

Using Blackboard to create an open, online course: Rob Farmer and Kate Littlemore (also from Northampton) spoke about the development of an open online course, entitled Study Skills for Academic Success. From a 100% face-to-face course, this was developed over about 18 months to a fully online version. The MOOC version of the course started on 5th May and can be found at northampton.coursesites.com.

Successfully Delivering Large Scale Online Summative Assessments: Ashley Wright from Newcastle University gave a very comprehensive overview of how Blackboard can be used for summative assessments. For more about OLAF (Online Assessment and Feedback) see the OLAF FAQ blog.

So, overall, a useful event, and a good opportunity to connect. UCD was a great venue and it was lovely to be back again. Although the weather wasn't great, the view from the O'Reilly Hall across the lake to the Library was stunning, and brought back some great memories.


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NUI Galway Blackboard Collaborate April Series

CELT is delighted to invite you to participant in the NUI Galway Blackboard Collaborate April Showcase presentation series.

About the April Showcase Series

The series will feature live online presentations from NUI Galway colleagues who have utilised Blackboard Collaborate live meeting rooms to engage with their students during this academic year.

The presentations will address pedagogical, practical and logistical considerations when engaging in live synchronous teaching and learning sessions, and will offer useful advice and recommendations to colleagues interested in adopting this approach in their own practice.

These presentations will be of interest to colleagues currently using, intending to use, or wish to have an awareness of the potential of the Blackboard Collaborate platform to support live online teaching and learning.

About Blackboard Collaborate at NUI Galway

Blackboard Collaborate provides a real-time bridge to geographically distributed students and staff through online meeting rooms which can be used in a variety of ways (e.g. webinars, online tutorials, student project work, project meetings and facilitating expert presentations with live Q and A sessions).  Blackboard Collaborate sessions can be recorded for archiving and reviewing purposes.

Blackboard Collaborate is integrated into the Blackboard Learn VLE platform at NUI Galway. Meeting rooms can be created by all Blackboard instructors from within their modules for student access. It is also possible to request that the creation of non-Blackboard based meeting rooms for wider institutional or external collaboration (e.g. for international project teams) from CELT.

NUI Galway is the only higher education institution in Ireland that has invested in campus-wide access to Blackboard Collaborate for all students and staff.

The April Showcase Schedule

Using Blackboard Collaborate with Nursing & Midwifery Post-Graduate Students
Presenter            Siobhan Smyth, School of Nursing and Midwifery
Date                   Tuesday 22 April 1:00 – 2:00

Using Blackboard Collaborate in Online Italian Courses
Presenter            Laura McLoughlin, Italian Studies; Schools of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Date                   Wednesday 23 April 1:00 – 2:00

Using Blackboard Collaborate with Advanced Language Learners
Presenters            Dorothy Ní Uigín & Éamon Ó Cofaigh, Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge
Date                   Tuesday 29 April 1:00 – 2:00

Implementing Blackboard Collaborate at NUI Galway: 2013-14 Review, Supports and Future Plans
Presenter            Paul Gormley, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT)
Date                   Wednesday 30 April 1:00 – 2:00

Booking Your Place

Please sign-up to your preferred presentations via the following Google form:
http://tinyurl.com/signup-autumnshowcase

 

Accessing the Presentation Meeting Room

All presentations will be delivered via a Blackboard Collaborate live meeting room. Please click on the following link (or paste it into your browser address box) to access the meeting room:
http://tinyurl.com/nuig-aprilscase-participant

Preparing for Your Session

We advise that you access the meeting room 10 minutes before the official start time in order to check your audio set-up. You can do this by selecting the Blackboard Collaborate Tools menu > Audio > Audio Wizard

Technical Support

If you have any difficulties please email blackboard@nuigalway.ie before the start time of your session.

Blackboard Collaborate Information and Resources at NUI Galway

Please access the CELT Blackboard resource site for further information, videos, walkthrough guides and case studies at:
http://www.nuigalway.ie/blackboard/new_blackboard/collaborate/landing.html

We look forward to your presence at the Blackboard Collaborate April Showcase series.

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On being a woman in technology

Flowers for International Women's Day

Yesterday was International Women's Day and there was a plethora of blog posts and twitter messages identifying various inspirational women. Twenty five years ago I would have found this unnecessary, demeaning even. But now, with a pre-teenage daughter about to enter secondary school, with her whole life ahead of her, I'm increasingly concerned about the world that she is about to encounter.

I grew up with just one sister, no brothers. We were never told that there were career paths not open to us. We both ended up taking Computer Science degrees and both continue to work in technology. I went to an all-girls convent school. I took Honours Maths and Physics, because I liked them. Originally I wanted to be an accountant (like my dad) or an actuary. But then I got the CS bug, and decided that's what I wanted to do. I graduated in 1990, one of 8 girls in a class of 34 computer scientists - that's almost 25% female. I took a joint honours degree in Maths and Computer Science; of four of us to graduate with this degree, 2 were female.

When I started lecturing computer science, the first group to graduate (in 1999) had five women out of 13 (almost 40%). For the first few years, as class sizes increased, the ratio of female students remained around 35%. But then something happened. Jump forward to the final year class of 2009, the last undergraduate CS class I taught, when there was not one female in the group.

Twenty five years ago, I thought Women in Technology was an unnecessary movement and wanted nothing to do with it. Today, it's a recognised problem. Catherine Cronin has written a much more informed article about the issue. There are various articles about why we need more women in technology. We also hear that women entering the field are likely to face a difficult culture. I think it's also true to say that many women who work in technology, like myself, are bewildered by the situation. Mounia Lalmas, who did her Phd at the same time as me, in the early 1990s, and who is a brilliant computer scientist, wrote about this recently. Perhaps Mounia's post, more than any other, has inspired me to write this today.

One suggestion that keeps coming up is that young women need more (female) role models. Like Catherine Cronin (in the article mentioned above), I don't subscribe to this as the solution.

I note that many recommendations focus on role models and mentoring for girls. I believe such initiatives are powerful and necessary, but by no means sufficient in effecting the level of change that is required. - Catherine Cronin


I had no female role models. I adored and feared (in equal measure) my Maths teacher at school (Mrs Kelly), but I never wanted to be her. As an undergraduate, I had no female lecturers in either Maths or Computing. The first time I encountered a female academic in CS was after I had started my PhD. And, as Mounia writes "why do I want to be like somebody else?"

I was certainly inspired and influenced by various people, male and female, and I was lucky as an undergraduate and postgraduate student to have people who encouraged and supported me. I never noticed a gender imbalance; although clearly it did exist, it just wasn't an issue. I'd like to subscribe to Mounia's conclusions:

 listen to advices and recommendations, and decide what is RIGHT for you. Change what YOU think should change while remaining you. Take responsibility. And enjoy being you. - Mounia Lalmas


But ultimately, I do believe that there is a culture problem. I find it hard to accept that this exists in 2014, but evidence suggests that the situation is getting worse, and I fear for my daughter's future. And here is my problem with role models: no woman should have to be a role model for her gender. I don't want to push my daughter, who is clever, sociable, sassy and very much her own person, into a STEM career, just to make up the numbers.

I had a conversation last week with a bright young postgrad student. She started out, in college in the US, as a Maths student, the only female in her class. After some time, she realised that she would prefer to major in English Literature. She felt guilty in making that change, because she felt she was letting down her whole gender. It took a strong woman to choose Maths in the first place, and an even stronger woman to give it up.

So, here's to all the strong women out there - you know who you are.

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BYOD4L: Communicating

Day two of BYOD4L mini course, and I'm still here, though a little late to blog about it. The theme was communicating and we had a very intense twitter chat on that topic.

The first task, which I completed over lunchtime on my iPad, was to

create a representation of yourself as a communicator in your private and professional life

The directions suggested that I find a free app that would help me with this. Some mind-mapping apps were suggested, but eventually I decided that iBrainstorm looked fairly easy. This is what I came up with.

Me, as a communicator

Interestingly, in retrospect, I focused on me (as a communicator) rather than focusing on the tools that I use - though some are mentioned.

I also chose to reveal an aspect of my personality, that I am an introvert. This was actually the first thing I pinned to the board, because I feel that it does define the way that I prefer and choose to communicate.

The Videos
I did look at both video scenarios. I reflected a little on them, but I'm not going to write anything here, because I felt that both student and teacher needed to establish some connections (theme of day 1) before they could worry about communicating.

Communicating
The twitter chat was more interesting to me. The first question was about what does communication mean to you, and my response was about listening. This turned into a conversation about lurking and the value of lurking. Somebody asked if shy people are also shy online, and I responded that I am shy, but not so much online. A number of others admitted the same thing.

Chrissi Nerantzi (@chrissinerantzi) asked me "what helps you open up online?" and "what helped you make the first step?". I've been thinking about this for a little while. My answer is not straightforward, but is relevant to the topic of Communicating. Here goes:

People are different.And they have their own preferred ways of communicating. I don't mind chatting with people on a topic that I know - but don't ask me to make small talk. I hate the telephone. I dislike large meetings. Going to an event (conference, meeting, party) full of people I don't know is a nightmare. But online communication is fine. Email is no problem.

When I first started teaching online, 10 years ago, I realised that I quite liked discussion boards as a discussion tool. I felt that everybody had the opportunity to say their piece, unlike in a meeting. Some people may choose not to participate, and it's difficult to tell the lurkers from those who are absent. But the platform suited me.

Blogging took a while. I started with short pieces of information, but doing a lot more reflection now. It's a personal thing, but I get a great buzz when somebody comments and it might result in a conversation.

I've written previously about my identity on twitter. I still find it the most useful tool in my own professional development, and I try to share that with others.

More recently, I'm very positive about the possibilities of online collaboration tools, I regularly participate in webinars, and have presented talks by webinar. Today I had a meeting using Collaborate, and realise that I'm much happier using the chatbox than the mic.

But that's all just about my preferences. We each have our own individual preferences about how we choose to communicate. Sometimes we are forced to use tools/platforms that we don't like, and sometimes we force ourselves to use tools that we don't like - I do attend conferences full of people that I don't know (I've never minded presenting at them - strangely).

So, keeping in mind that people have their own preferences, how can we encourage them to make better use of online or mobile devices? I think all we can do is demonstrate good practice, show them the value, help them to try (in a supported environment), share our own enthusiasm. But we can't force people to use a tool they don't like or aren't comfortable with, if there is an alternative (there are lots of alternatives to the telephone, luckily, most of the time).


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BYOD4L: Connecting

This week I am dipping into the open bite-size course BYOD4L: Bring Your Own Device for Learning.

I can't promise that I'll keep up, especially since the History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education MOOC also starts today. But since it's only over 5 days, I might just manage.

The first topic is that of Connecting. There was quite a bit of connecting on the twitter chat this evening, under the hashtag #BYOD4Lchat. It was fast and furious.

But, back to the task at hand. I watched both videos embedded on the Resources page and decided to reflect on the second one, from the point of view of the teacher.


This is a scenario with which I am familiar, since I work in supporting teaching staff in their use of technology. A constant refrain is "I haven't got time", which, to be fair, is usually true.

Academics are, increasingly, very busy with many demands on their time. To start using a new technology (device, app, system, tool) for teaching, they need to be convinced of its value, the return on  investment. It's only worth investing the time and effort if you can guarantee results - some benefit to the teacher and/or an improvement in the learning of the students.

When it comes to connecting, academics do this all the time in research. They connect and form research groups and clusters, they go to research meetings and conferences, they write joint papers. But many teaching staff don't feel the need to do this for their teaching practice. They just don't see the value in it.

When encouraging staff to use twitter, I often suggest that they start following people from their own research area or discipline, and any professional/research bodies or journals that are of interest. This can be a good hook to get them started.

Most teaching staff do want to connect with their students, but they may not yet have realised how mobile devices and apps can facilitate that. Perhaps that's the hook we need to use?

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Plumbing, Pedagogy, Policy, Personalised Learning and ePortfolios

Calman Learning Centre, Durham

Earlier this month I attended (and presented at) the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. This was my fourth time to attend the conference, which is always a very valuable event, particularly at the start of the new year. This year's event was no exception. Quite apart from the excellent keynotes (Patrick Carmichael and Robin Goodfellow) and the varied programme, this also gives me a chance to catch up with a very open and sharing community of learning technologists, teachers and administrators with common issues and challenges.

It's now about 2 weeks since the conference and I've had a chance to let some ideas and thoughts settle. Rather than being a conference report, I'd just like to write down some of my reflections arising from the event. Apologies for the long post, it has taken me a few days to bring the threads together.


An archive of the tweets from the event is available on storify.


Plumbing
One of the first things that I noticed on arriving at the Calman Building, before the Mobile User Group meeting, was a notice on the back of the toilet doors, politely advising people on how to use the facilities. My first thought was that I wished somebody would put something similar in the toilets at NUIG. But then I wondered how we have arrived at a state in society where such a notice is considered necessary? Surely these recommendations are well known! And if people (staff, students) in a university don't know how to use the toilets, how can we expect them to use the VLE?

Perhaps inspired by this notice, Elaine Tan (@ElaineRTan) in her final session asked if eLearning technologies should be like a toilet - functioning, clean and accessible, but not in your face? I would agree that many supporting IT systems should be like this, for example registration, fees, expenses, records etc. Elaine's question arose however in the context of a study of incoming student expectations around the use of technology in their learning, and the realisation that they weren't particularly looking for the latest bright, shiny tools.

When it comes to the use of social media, as Robin Goodfellow noted in his keynoted, students will not take kindly to attempts to redesign social learning practices already in existence informally.

I think this is a reminder to us all that we absolutely have to stop focusing on the technology, and finding ways to implement it in (or outside) the classroom. But rather than delegating technology to the status of plumbing, we have to remember to always focus on the pedagogy and start from there.

Technology and Pedagogy
 In a previous blog post, as part of my reflections on #edcmooc, I argued that technology does not change education. But, the introduction of a technology can sometimes have the effect of causing us to rethink our pedagogies. A simple example can be seen in the use of classroom response systems, or clickers. These are often introduced simply to engage students, but can cause a lecturer to think about how they integrating the clickers into their teaching, eventually even considering using peer instruction as an approach.

Sometimes the introduction of technology can expose poor pedagogy, as in the project described by Andy Raistrick (@AJRaistrick) in his presentation ePortfolios for Learner Engagement, Feedback, Plagiarism Detection and Electronic Marking. Although presented as an unsuccessful project, in fact the overall result was very positive. The complicated ePortfolio system was abandoned, when it was realised that that there were some basic underlying problems with the assessment design - a very good outcome. Andy's presentation was a highlight of the conference for me.

Robin Goodfellow's personal learning

Robin Goodfellow, in his keynote, also spoke about a failed ePortfolio project, which he described as a "triumph of design over need". This was in the context of his own personal learning journey and highlights again how failure can be a very effective learning experience.

There was a lot of talk about ePortfolios at the event, and tools to support these. But I think we're asking the wrong questions. Unlike blogs or wikis, which are particular technical tools, an ePortfolio can be different things to different people, in different contexts. Is the ePortfolio about the product or the the process? What is the purpose: to collate and archive, to reflect, to document, to get a job? I think the best presentation I've seen on ePortfolios was from student teachers at #GREAT13. This put the pedagogical considerations at the heart of the discussion. The technology is secondary.

Personalised Learning and Policy
One of the conference themes was personalised learning, which was interpreted in different ways by different speakers. But there was also a lot of talk about policies for technology use, which makes me wonder about personalised teaching.

It would appear that there are many academics who are incapable of using or making decisions around the use of technology in their teaching. We heard about lecturers who cannot set up their own assignments in a VLE, can't make rational decisions about assessment deadlines, or the results of a Turnitin report. And so it becomes necessary to make policies about threshold standards for VLE courses, online assessment design and submission practices, required use of tools, compulsory training etc. Once a policy is in place, as pointed out by Bryony Bramer and James Leahy, it then becomes necessary to describe the exceptions to the policy (because there always are exceptions).

I've written before on my thoughts on threshold standards for Blackboard courses, and how they are the invention of the Innovation Prevention Department. Here's why I don't think we should be making policies around how the VLE is used:

• I see a Blackboard course as an extension of the classroom/lecture theatre, where the teacher and students can decide how they want to use it to best support teaching, learning and assessment activities. A lot of the time, they don't use it very well. But maybe they can learn from their mistakes, rather than being told how to use it.
• Policies are problematic anyway. There are always exceptions. And when a policy is in place, somebody has to police it. That's a position of oversight that I don't want to be in.
• Why not just provide sets of recommendations, examples of good practice, and a rationale for why it's not a great idea to have a submission deadline of midnight on a Friday night?
• Most importantly, by removing the authority for teachers to make these decisions about assessment and to organise their courses themselves, we are also shifting responsibilities. Some academics will resent this (and they are often the people we want as champions) while others will quite happily abdicate that responsibility. As a result, the technology we want to promote becomes associated with administration rather than with teaching.

A simple example of my last point - at NUI Galway we create new, empty Blackboard courses each year for each module taught. Instructors have access to their new (empty) modules and to their old modules. We do not copy content from one year to the next for them. Why?  Because it is up to the lecturer to consciously make the decision to use exactly the same materials (and hence to perform a course copy), or reuse some materials, or to start with a blank slate.

Conclusions
As always, the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference was a splendid event. It was a great opportunity to network and provoked a lot of thought at the start of the year. Many thanks to Julie Mulvey, Malcolm Murry and everybody involved in the organisation.

Some other reflections from the conference:
ePortfolios, Digital Literacies and the Role of Data  (Matt Cornock)
Reflections on the Life of i (Sue Watling)
Durham Blackboard Users Event 2014 (Graeme Boxwell)
Durham (14th) Blackboard Users Conference 2014 – “Life of i”(Ashley Wright)

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What I learned in 2013

Shortly before Christmas, I followed a #edchatie twitter chat. This twitter chat, for Irish educators, takes place every Monday evening. While I am aware of it, I don't normally participate, because 1) the time doesn't suit me, 2) active participants are mostly from primary or secondary education, with minimal HE discussion, 3) although I have an interest in primary and secondary education as a parent, I haven't felt encouraged to engage from that perspective. However, I do like to drop in from time to time.

On this occasion, I introduced myself as usual, and said that I would be mostly lurking. I got an immediate response from @fboss, the convenor, who suggested that I should try to participate, and I agreed that I would. The topic on the evening was #whatilearntin2013. The stream was full of positive reflections on the year.

Maybe it was the time of year, end of semester blues, a particularly challenging year, or maybe I was just a bit down, but I could not think of a single positive thing to contribute. I was full of cynical thoughts, reflecting on the state of Irish education - cutbacks at all levels, reduced staffing and resources, teachers on strike, children being let down, students fighting against possible reintroduction of fees, increased workloads for HE staff (academic and admin)...

I kept quiet!

Over the Christmas break, this negativity has bothered me and I realise that I need to start back to work with a much more positive outlook. To start, I want to reflect on some things I did learn in 2013, and some of the more positive experiences.

MOOCS
For me, 2013 was the year of learning about, and from, MOOCs. I hadn't paid much attention to them before, but in 2013 they were hard to ignore.

Almost exactly one year ago, at the 13th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference, I heard Jeremy Knox speak about cMOOCs and xMOOCs, and talking about the Edinburgh MOOC on E-Learning and Digital Cultures, offered through Coursera and starting at the end of January. I decided that I would sign up. The Edinburgh MOOC, #edcmooc, was the first one I signed up to, and the only one I have completed. Others I have dipped into, and some I have not started at all. But hey, that's the nature of MOOCs, right?

I also read a lot about MOOCs, mainly through commentators such as: Audrey Watters, Martin Weller, Mike Caulfield, George Siemens among others. I am certainly no expert, but at least I can hold my own in a conversation about MOOCs (and anybody who knows me will know that I don't do spoofing).

I have learned that creating and offering a MOOC is a lot of work and resource intensive. But I probably already knew that, from a background of online course development and teaching.

Open Badges
The second new area for me was that of Open Badges. I was aware of the work, in particular, of Doug Belshaw with the Mozilla Foundation, but 2013 was the year that I started to learn a little more. I signed up for the Open Badges MOOC, and even earned my first badge, but I didn't get beyond the first couple of weeks. I did learn a lot from Cathy Davidson, co-rounder of HASTAC who gave a fantastic interview as part of one of the MOOC webinars. Cathy will be giving a webinar as part of our Coimbra Group Series this month. Follow @iainmacl for details.

This is an area that I am still pondering and trying to work through.

One experience that I am quite happy with was the introduction of digital badges to the module I co-ordinate on Learning Technologies, using the Blackboard Achievements Tool. Part of the assessment for this module is to demonstrate a set of technical competencies: create a podcast, produce a video, construct a Prezi, etc. this year I awarded an open badge for each competency demonstrated, and I think it added a little motivation (to achieve the badge), competition, and fun.

Other Achievements
Of course, every experience in 2013 has contributed to my learning, and it's good to look back and acknowledge some of the highlights of the year. Among these are:

• Invited presentations at the Kaltura Education User Group (March),  the Faculty of Science and Engineering 4th annual Learning and Teaching Day at the University of Limerick (May) and the #GREAT13 student conference (July).
• Along with Paul Gormley, we gave a presentation at the 13th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference in January on Approaches to providing Blackboard support to academic staff in the context of reduced staffing.
• I visited Brno in the Czech Republic in June and presented a paper at the International Conference Plagiarism across Europe and Beyond (not technology related, I was wearing one of my other hats).
• We (the Learning Technologies Team at CELT) organised two Blackboard "festivals", a new approach to staff development, in August and in December.

Looking Forward
So now I feel that I can look forward to 2014 and all the things I'm going to learn. I look forward to learning from my colleagues in CELT and NUIG, old and new. I also look forward to learning from and with you, my PLN.


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