Martin Bean Key Note – notes from the 2012 HEA conference.

If there is a transcript please let me know!

Martin Bean, the Vice Chancellor of the Open University (OU) makes the point that technology in education has everything to do with brain-ware, not software, that ‘we thought our job was done when we got people plugged in’ – (he comes from a commercial technology background).

Martin Bean calls for educators in tertiary education to ‘do the right thing by our student’

Technology is the enabler – it still requires great teaching.

He is at pains to point out that our approach to education is stuck in the past, that it is NOT about rote learning to regurgitate in an exam, but helping students make sense of the information available to them.

Martin Bean is HIGHLY critical of research students who rely on the top 15 hits in Google Search and Wikipedia.

His handle on the current student is insightful.

He makes the point that ‘they want to blend their digital lifestyles with their learning – rather they would say it is ‘just the way they live’.

‘We need to create a trusting environment where the student can challenge the information’. Martin Bean

There needs to be deconstruction and reconstruction of the pedagogy to make it more relevant

Martin Bean calls for the ‘sage on the stage to coach on the side’.

He makes the point that the OU’s National Surveys say that our students want to spend time with us.

This human component is crucial for success and retention.

Martin Bean asks, ‘what would Steve Jobs do?’

• People and process remain more important than the technology
• What the OU does: relevant, personalised, engaging learning.

How do we inspire people in those informal moments?

The OU are lucky and unique to be able to work with the BBC on productions like the Frozen Planet …

• YouTube as an open education repository
• iTunes – 1:33 come in to find out more
• Apple authoring tools

The value and opportunity of mobile

• Akash – a tablet from India running on Android for under £50, so cheaper to give students one of these and access to the Internet than buy academic books.
• 400 eBooks. e.g. Schubert’s poems, listening to music, seeing the manuscript, reading annotations then looking at the original handwritten manuscript …

How do we as educators do what we do so well?

• MOOCs – engagement of hundreds of thousands, if not millions in meaningful ways.
• More than anything esle technology creates access

We are at the Napster moment in Higher Education

See the Hewlett Foundation website for the scale of OERs. 12,000 hours of OU Open Learn for example.
Nurturing powerful communities of learning

In his final remarks Martin Beans suggests

• Breaking the content down into shorter milestones
• And the need for qualifications with market currency