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Notes on inclusion in open learning
INCLUSION
Inclusion/Case Study : John, an engineering Postgrad PhD student with Cerebral Palsy.
Inclusion/Multimedia Demo: Xerte.
Inclusion/Workshop: Creative Problem Solving: YouTube
Loads of ideas in VanGundy’s book: VanGundy, A.B. (1988) Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, 2nd ed, Van Norstrand Reinhold. Techniques 4.01, 4.06, 4.57
INNOVATION
Innovation/Paper: Spaced-Ed, now QStream. A platform initially designed to support junior doctors as they revised for formal knowledge assessments. Paper (Paper available in OU Library)
Innovation/demo: QStream 90 day trial.
Innovation/Workshop: Creative Problem Solving:
TAGS: c
Reflection on a decade of e-learning
Having not taken stock for a while it was refreshing and re-assuring to consider the Open University postgraduate modules that I have taken, though it has taken this long to understand the meaning of a module that is approaching its final ‘presentation’. In some cases a better word for this might be ‘sell by date’ especially with a subject such as ‘e-learning’ as at least three of those listed below were on their final or penultimate presentation and it mattererd – ‘H817:Innovations in e-learning’ wasn’t particularly innovative for someone who had worked in the creation of interactive and online learning. I’m used to and value the amount of background theory, but I still feel that in these ‘H’ modules that form the Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MA ODE) is considerably biased towards learning in formal secondary and tertiary education, rather than applied L&D in business which interested me most – indeed I know of two people across these courses who quit early on because they were working in a learning creation position in business and felt the modules were not suitably applied. B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change was the exception as however dated some of the content (video content shot in the mid 1990s that included companies that had long since gone out of business and innovations such as laptops the size of a small trunk with a carrier bag of cables) the activities and theory in relation to innovation were timeless – it was also an MBA module. Any of us who have taken part in or hosted learning in an organisation involving games of some kind would have found B822 familiar – much of it also touched on the kind of creativity used in advertising, marketing, PR, events and communications.
H804: Implementing Online, Open and Distance Learning (2001)
H807: Innovations in Elearning (2010)
H808: The Elearning professional (2010)
H800: Technology enhanced learning: practices and debates (2011)
B822: Creativity, Innovations and Change (2011)
H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students (2012)
H809: Practice-based research in educational technology (2013)
I’m continuing with these modules to demonstrate that the standard I am now able to achieve is sustainable so that working in academia, even studying for a PhD is viable. ‘H819:The Networked Practitioner’ is a new module. Reading through the course notes and first units (it came online today and goes live next week) I can see the care, clarity and thought that has gone into it, as well as the substantial use of a variety of online learning tools for ‘connected’ or ‘networked’ learning … what some might call ‘social learning’ but here has more structure to it that that (parameters, goals, set tools etc:). It is tailored, every step of the way, to the production of a conference piece – there is considerable latitude here, but what is meant that you have a presentation that may be given in a variety of formats featuring a choice of core themes develop through the module but set in your ‘world’ or field of interest or expertise.
A teacher is taught to teach something in class, not simply to teach.
I feel that I have learnt over the last three years how to teach online, but I haven’t developed a subject specialism, prefering to date to behave as if I were in an e-learning agency serving the needs of many, disperate clients. For this module, and potentially for one or two beyond, I hope to develop and demonstrate how the history of the First World War can be taught using e-learning – apt as we approach its centenary. In parallel I will be taking a Masters in British First World War studies with the University of Birmingham. This is also a part-time course, and ostensibly ‘distance learning’ – though in this instance the distance component is handled by my driving to Edgbaston once a month for a day of intensive face to face seminars and tutorials. This in itself will make for a fascinating constrast with the 100% online experience of the Open University.
In the back of my mind, whatever the subject, my interest is in how to address the global problem of there being 123 million people who want to study at university, but only 5 million places. Even if every university modelled itself on the Open University there would still be a massive shortfall – the answer must be in Open Learning that is supported, possibly by a huge cohort of volunteer alumni, as well as qualifying participants as they accumulate credits. Somewhere in here there may be a question for me to address with doctoral research.
It’s disengenious of me to say that I’ve been studying online for a decade.
I did a module in 2001 but did no further online learning in the subsequent decade – though I did qualify as a swimming teacher and coach! The reason for thinking about a decade as a period of time in which to study is that some would say it takes this long to become an expert. This comes from a piece of research carried out at the Berlin Conservatoire in relation to muscians and the years of training and practice they need to put in to get them to the concert hall as a soloist. Actually it wasn’t years so much as tens of thousands of hours required – 40,000 I think it was with kids introdcued to the instrument early and pushed by parents and institutions getting the furthest youngest. Martin Weller, Professor of e-learning, suggests that a decade is still the time scale in which someone might be deemed a ‘digital scholar’. John Seely Brown, who has applied learning and e-learning to business in the US, notably at Xerox’s famous research institute, suggested earlier this year that scholarship or expertise of the kind we are talking about may be achieved in five years because online learning can speed things up. People do take two degrees in tandem if they study online. Is there a fast track to a PhD? My perspective as a parent with teenagers is that they could begin a part-time online degree in their A’ Level year and graduate at the same time as getting their A’ level results or the year after.
Methodological Innovation
From the Oxford Internet Institute
Methodological innovation is vital given the changing nature of the Internet and advances in ICTs which both necessitate and facilitate the development of new techniques.
OII researchers are developing methodologies such as:
- big data approaches;
- the embedding of ICT s for real time observation of social phenomenon;
- webmetric techniques for observing the underlying structure of the web presence of social institutions;
- artificial intelligence design;
- experimental research;
- on-line action research;
- content analysis;
- investigation of virtual environments;
- and online survey research.
The five current research foci examine the role of the Internet and other ICTs in:
- government and democracy: where ICT s offer significant opportunities for restructuring practices and institutions, for example in the management and delivery of government services and the functioning of governance processes
- research and learning: focusing on the use and impact of ICTs within academic and research communities and the social and institutional contexts in which this takes place
- everyday life and work: covering the role of the Internet and other ICTs in personal interactions in the household, the arts, and entertainment, and the needs of individuals and the wider community in work, social relationships, leisure, and activities in other arenas that bring society online
- shaping the Internet: how rapidly developing ICTs are liberated or constrained, including how the Internet itself is governed.
- network economy: how ICTs reshape business models, markets and economic development.
Creativity is improvisation … Edmund de Waal on pots, netsuke, writing and his desert island discs
Fig 1. Pots, Writing, Music and on being a Smarty Pants
Listen to it for yourself. What intrigued me where his thoughts on the creative process.
Edmund de Waal
Desert Island Discs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01p067p
Sunday 25th November 2012
On describing his pots
“Rigorous but humane – I’d like that on my gravestone if possible”.
“The rest of the world falls away”.
“The challenge is always the same, what are you going to do next?”
On a very particular recording of Ella Fitzgerald – Mack the Knife – forgetting the words and improvising.
Ella FitzGerald sings : “What’s the next chorus to this song now. It’s the one – I don’t know. It’s a swing song, that’s the tune … Something about Louis Miller and something about cash … tell me … ”
“This is music as it should be. This is making it up as you go along. This matters to me because this is what the experience of making things is like. That’s improvisation. That’s when when you think you’ve got it made before you start. And then … it all goes … it doesn’t go wrong – it goes different. And then you have to … then you’re alive. That’s the moment of absolute aliveness. Which is what music is about … and about what I do is about”.
A course on creativity could be constructed from interviews and music featured on Desert Island Discs. Like any frustrated creative I listen to this and find myself turning to a short story or a sheet of cartridge paper.
(A netsuke of the kind Edmund de Waal shows Kirsty Young, a signed piece from the early 18th century, is likely to be worth £10,000 to £12,000.).
I prefer invention over recreation.
Others I’ve caught on Desert Island Discs include
Another potter, form whom ‘creativity is mistakes’.
Related articles
- Mistakes, and Recovering with Style. (indirectroutes.net)
- Edmund de Waal on Cy Twombly (telegraph.co.uk)
- Desert Island Discs by Sean Magee: review (telegraph.co.uk)
- Diversity and tolerance – a celebration of humanity (mymindbursts.com)
It is well known that the average quality of websites is poor, “lack of navigability” being the #1 cause of user dissatisfaction
Fig. 1. A model for professional development of e-learning (JISC, 2010)
It is well known that the average quality of websites is poor, “lack of navigability” being the #1 cause of user dissatisfaction [Fleming, 1998; Nielsen, 1999].
Should a link from a reference that gives dated commentary such as this be given in a contemporary piece of e-learning on accessibility?
My frustrations may be leading to enlightenment but when a subject such as e-learning is so fast moving it is laughable to find yourself being referred to commentary published over a decade ago, and so potentially first written down 13 years ago.
At times I wonder why the OU doesn’t have a model that can be repeatedly refreshed, at least with every presentation, rather than every decade when the stuff is replaced wholesale. They need a leaner machine – or at least the Institution of Educational Technology does.
I did H807 Innovations in e-learning in 2010 – it has now been replaced by H817 – at times H807 told me LESS about innovations in e-learning that I picked up myself working in the industry creating innovative online learning and development in 2000/2001 while the tutor struggled with the online tools.
Here we go again, not from the resource, but from someone cited in it :
In 1999, in anticipation of Special Educational Needs and Disability Rights in Education Bill (SENDA), funding was obtained to employ a researcher for 2 days per week over a 6 month period to produce a concise usable guide to the factors which must be taken into account in order to produce accessible online learning materials.
I don’t want to know or need to know – all of this should be filtered out.
There needs to be a new model for publishing academic papers – quicker and perishable, with a sell-by-date.
In fairness, in this instance, I am quoting from a reference of a 2006 publication that is a key resource for H810 Accessible Online Learning. But I have now found several specialists cited in Seale’s publication on accessibility who say very different things in 2007 and 2011 respectively compared to how they are referenced in papers these two wrote in 1996 and 2001.
For example, compare these two:
Vanderheiden, G. C., Chisholm, W. A., & Ewers, N. (1997, November 18). Making screen readers work more effectively on the web (1st)
Vanderheiden, G. C.(2007) Redefining Assistive Technology, Accessibility and Disability Based on Recent Technical Advances. Journal of Technology in Human Services Volume 25, Issue 1-2, 2007, pages 147- 158
The beauty of our WWW in 2012 is that a few clicks and a reference can be checked and the latest views of the author considered, yet the module’s design doesn’t instigate or expect this kind of necessary refreshing.
The other one to look at is:
Stephanidis et al. (2011) Twenty five years of training and education in ICT Design for All and Assistive Technology.
Related articles
- New Survey Findings Report on How Educational Technology is Being Used in Classroom (infodocket.com)
- Day 33: Attend the BETT Learning Technology Show (howtocrossanocean.wordpress.com)
- Kauffman Foundation Partners with Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative to Offer Online Program to Identify the Entrepreneurial Mindset (kauffman.org)
- Do I join I club when it is clear I’ve become one of those students the OU will never get rid of? (mymindbursts.com)
- Pause (mymindbursts.com)
Creative Technique: Working with Dreams and/or Keeping a Dream Diary
This from B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change which ended in April.
Several reasons why as a technique it is out of the reach if most of us and impractical as a management tool.
a) What good is it ‘dreaming up’ something at random.
b) That has nothing to do with the course.
I found myself giving a presentation to an eager group in a crowded boardroom. I don’t know why.
‘and Jonathan is going to give you the criteria’.
And up I step, in a two piece suit with the manner of Montgomery addressing the troops – effusive, informed, consided and persuasive.
It went something like this:
“We human are blessed with an innate ability to float in water, though not necessarily fully clothed, or carrying a backpack and rifle.”
Laughter.
“We should encourage swimming for a number of reasons: for the love of it, as a life skill, as a competitive sport and for fitness’.
At which point I am full conscious, which from a dream state meant ‘I lost it’.
Why this dream?
I am reading a good deal on the First World War and I am swimming four or more times a week again after a long, slow easing back into the sport over the lt five months. I even got papers through yesterday which I only opened late in the evening before going to bed to say that I had passed the ASA Level 3 module on Sports Psychology (which makes 10// modules down on that ‘Front’.
Working with dreams
This from B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change which ended in April.
Several reasons why as a technique it is out of the reach if most of us and impractical as a management tool.
a) What good is it ‘dreaming up’ something at random.
b) That has nothing to do with the course.
I found myself giving a presentation to an eager group in a crowded boardroom. I don’t know why.
‘and Jonathan is going to give you the criteria’.
And up I step, in a two piece suit with the manner of Montgomery addressing the troops – effusive, informed, considered and persuasive.
It went something like this:
“We human are blessed with an innate ability to float in water, though not necessarily fully clothed, or carrying a backpack and rifle.”
Laughter.
“We should encourage swimming for a number of reasons: for the love of it, as a life skill, as a competitive sport and for fitness’.
At which point I am full conscious, which from a dream state meant ‘I lost it’.
Why this dream?
I am reading a good deal on the First World War and I am swimming four or more times a week again after a long, slow easing back into the sport over the lt five months. I even got papers through yesterday which I only opened late in the evening before going to bed to say that I had passed the ASA Level 3 module on Sports Psychology (which makes 10/11 modules down on that ‘Front’.