Activity 12: Choosing and evaluating a specific technology

The learning outcome for this week 4 of H817 was to be able to evaluate a learning innovation. It is now Thursday evening and I have learnt a lot but nothing to do with the intended outcome. However,I do want to get something out of this frustrating experience and the thing that occurs to me is that I would like to break down the activity and try to understand why this went so terribly wrong.

First of all, my own contribution was made too early, was completely wrong and I'm afraid it sent the whole group off into different directions, each equally confusing. I tried to step back through the error and get us back on track but that didn't work out. And this was the first lesson learnt about collaborative work and is associated to using a forum without editing capability:

Students need to be able to correct their own mistakes

The forum is organised as FIFO (first in first out), by default, this means that anyone starting to read will read from the top down. If they get at all distracted by, for example a link along the way, it is likely they won't make it to the bottom, even if that is where the correction is. But also that correction might not be placed next to the message that contains the erroneous information.

To be fair, this is particularly a Moodle issue; the majority of other forum systems I have used have allowed the poster to correct and amend their own messages at any time. Moodle is set up on a university wide basis, so even if this module (or any other encouraging student collaboration) wanted something different, it is likely to be quite tricky to change.

But on a broader question, is a forum therefore a useful environment for collaborative work? I have found forums useful as a tutor in order to collaborate with other tutors, but this is because a problem or issue is worked on in one thread only. And this leads to the second lesson:

Breakdown the activity

Various of us tried to break this multi-step activity down; I did, but skipped a step and going backwards didn't work. Others tried but instead of taking the original activity and starting from the top these attempts were also repeating the whole activity.

What might have worked would have been to break down the steps into different threads from the outset, perhaps drip-feeding them one by one as they became populated with material. The threads could have been something like:

1. Context & Goal: As a group, you need to decide on the context and the goal you want the technology to support.
2. Shortlist: suggest items for the management team’s technology shortlist.
3. Choose a technology: Each (see following lesson for discussion about terminology used in describing an activity) member of the group should choose a technology from the shortlist from point (2) and post the reasons for their choice (to the tutor group forum) here.
1. At the end of the thread, nominate a group member to collate the suggestions from point (3) in doodle.com.
4. Reviews: Review all the suggested technologies and why they are being suggested. 
5. Voting: (post the link to the Doodle vote here) Then each member of the group should vote for their preferred technology in doodle.com.

One of the barriers to progression seemed to me to be the way that we also had to wait for contributions from students we didn't know whether they were lurking, on holiday, just reading everything, too busy, working, lost, looking after family..... and so to the third lesson:

Avoid wording that slows down the process

In point 3 the module team used the word "each". This assumes that every member of every tutor group is going to a) be active b) take part in a timely manner. It set up the activity for failure from the outset and when I realised what it was requiring I simply dropped out of the discussion. But I also felt that we were being asked to do things in an unnatural order which leads me to the fourth lesson:

Collaborative work needs careful design

If this activity had been designed in a way where one thing flowed naturally on to the next, we might have found it easier to manage and been successful:

1. Context & Goal: As a group, you need to decide on the context and the goal you want the technology to support.
2. Shortlist: suggest items for the management team’s technology shortlist.
1. Include a review
2. Include a reason for your suggestion linked to the context and goal from point 1.

1. Voting: 
1. Nominate a group member to collate the suggestions from point (2) in doodle.com.
2. (post the link to the Doodle vote here) Then each member of the group should vote for their preferred technology in doodle.com.

As I said, I have stopped working on this activity altogether, apart from the fact that the final selection the group has actually managed to make is one that I have already looked at in detail so feel no need to continue with it, I also have simply run out of time this week. The idea of collaborating on the 2nd part of the week's activities, to produce a report, fills me with horror and so I will cut my losses and move on.

I feel as though I am letting my fellow students down, that I am letting my tutor down but I don't feel that I am letting myself down.

Activity 6: Innovation in your context

I am going to write expressly from the context of working as an associate lecturer at the Open University. I work on two modules, tutoring three presentations in all. One module seems in itself to be quite innovative, in approach, in its responsiveness to feedback and current knowledge. The other module is not exploring pedagogy of online learning in nearly as much detail.

On the basis of your own experience:
Do you sense that your innovations (as supporters of learning) have been valued, encouraged, supported?

This question assumes that I innovate in the context of my OU work as an associate lecturer and I am not sure that I really do. I think I make small steps and if I announce these to my colleagues then they are often supported. For example, I have made suggestions to students in a recent batch of marking that was noticed by a course team member during monitoring and he is thinking about including those in future presentations. But is my innovative nature, the one I like to think I possess, exploited, encouraged and expressly valued, no I don't think so. 

On the other hand, I am also taking part in the Higher Education Academy, Open Professional Academic Development initiative (HEA OPAD) ,I believe that the innovations that I explore through that piece of action research is being supported by being assigned a mentor, by being encouraged by my staff tutor and I am offered opportunities to explore my practice via staff CPD events.

I also believe that were I to produce resources, that perhaps were innovative, and share them with my colleagues in my modules, these would be warmly received and that would encourage me to do more. These might be valued on a professional level, through acknowledgement of my efforts rather than on a monetary one.

What evidence do you have to support your view?
As I mentioned, I have a mentor assigned to me. I don't have to pay to make an application to the academy for membership and if I don't succeed the first time I will get feedback about how to improve my application. The OU has created a supportive environment on an institutional level for anyone wanting to take up this opportunity. 

My staff tutor invited me to lead a staff CPD session about my chosen research topic, which also enabled me to distribute a survey and gather qualitative responses. I was paid for this extra work, so yes, that would indicate on a simple level that it is valued.

From the perspective of your context:
How widespread is innovation in your organisation?
One of the joys of working for the OU is the sense that it is a world leader, innovating and teaching, in the area of online learning. Two reports have been written "Innovating Pedagogy" by OU faculty. This would indicate that the organisation is supporting innovation and as an open report, it is not only supporting its own. 
Are there policies or statements that relate to innovation?
A policy does exist about how data associated with the OU's open and free educational resources.
If yes, how are they implemented?
These would be implemented at an organisational level, i.e. as modules are prepared to be made open certain aspects of the material are filtered for an open audience.
What implications, if any, does this have for your attitude towards innovation?
None.

Summary:
I think that the organisation I work for is very innovative, and has the reputation, policies and examples to prove it. However, in my role in that organisation I don't believe that we are institutionally encouraged to be innovative, in fact almost the opposite. But that doesn't mean that on an individual level we would not get support for any small innovations we undertook ourselves, for example, approaching using OU Live in a way that was not part of published guidelines. Examples of this might be having students moderate the Online Room, or using application share for students to engage in peer support (after OU Live training with their tutor). But these small innovations would be over and above our job specifications and if we committed extra time to them, they would be unlikely to receive any reward other than professional acknowledgement by our own peers.

Activity 5: Are OER both open and innovative?

1. How would you judge OpenLearn in terms of your definition of innovation?
   1. I am still working on a definition, and I am not quite sure how to make it "mine"? I am, however, very interested in the idea that innovation is about context (McAndrew et al, 2010) so can be something small rather than something that requires impact on "markets, governments and society" (Wikipedia)
   2. However, OpenLearn clearly seeks to impact on the market by attracting paying students to full time courses but it is also innovative in a smaller way, by allowing open access to modules that are now closed but that were, and are, still packed with good and useful information.
2. How open did you find OpenLearn? 
1. My first impression (today, I have visited before) was that it was not being used and that was a pretty big turn off. This was because the comments on the Get Started page are FIFO (oldest appearing first) rather than LIFO (newest appearing first). Having now gone to a couple more discussions I see that this is a site-wide setting. Isn't this a big mistake?
2. I don't find the concept of plodding through materials without feedback and participation attractive at all. Participation is via comments, relies on a critical mass which it doesn't appear to be achieving (at first glance).
3. Nevertheless, earlier today I offered the skills link to my students to help them with their study skills, so that is using the site a little differently.
3. How does OpenLearn challenge conventional assumptions about paying for higher education modules?
1. I agree with others, that because of the predominance of encouragement and signposting towards OU study it really doesn't challenge assumptions. There is also no assessment other than the self assessment tasks. Are automatically issued certificates enough to allow students to feel as though they have achieved something. Do they need to feel this? I know I do.
2. However, perhaps if used by other institutions and teachers, even in other contexts, for example using the materials from modules here in high school projects, perhaps it really is innovative but we cannot see the evidence of this.

Part B:

1. How would you judge OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) in terms of your definition of innovation?
1. Still haven't decided on a definition, however, this initiative, which encompasses others like iSpot, is very interesting. It is funded by major players in the world of natural science and so has an air of authority yet the learning projects incorporated in the site, and via the associated projects, are fun as well as educational. 
2. How open did you find OPAL?
1. It also is attractive to different age ranges, who could be doing some of the activities together or separately.  They could be incorporated into classes or something for the kids to do during half-term. The Kidszone also reminded me strongly of wet childhood saturdays spent following trails at the Natural History Museum.
2. It seems completely open, for anyone in the UK because the activities simply are not geared towards other environments. Does this mean that it isn't open? Well perhaps, but on the other hand the language is accessible and is not academic, so it is open in other senses of the word.
3. How does OPAL challenge conventional assumptions about paying for [higher] education [modules]? 
1. This question isn't appropriate as written so I have adapted it a little.
2. This is presented as fun and, often, social learning. The learning zone includes more obvious learning tools like video, quizzes, specific activities and background reading, but the majority of the site is jam packed with learning activities without expressly tagging them as such.

Activity 4: Reading an article and searching for relevant references

We were asked to read Seely Brown and Adler (2008), Minds on fire: open education, the long tail and learning 2.0, and then follow through on some of projects mentioned. This article, despite it's very cool title, has the feel of being a quite out of date and a couple of broken links leading presumably to dead or wound down projects only help reinforce that impression. I was interested in the KEEP Toolkit and though some parts seem to still exist (this link goes to a page containing links to papers written about the project) unfortunately the main repository is offline. When teaching I found a number of similar projects, perhaps too many? It was difficult to decide which to contribute to, if any. Some of the other projects I had already heard of and even explored, like the Decameron web (include "web" in the search term or one is likely to be whisked off to a holiday resort).

However, I was attracted by the term "Learning 2.0" and soon found that Steve Wheeler, someone I already "follow", had written an interesting blog about it. He develops some thoughts about Felderman's 4 Cs (Connection, Context, Complexity and Connotation). I particularly liked his retort to Bill Gate's statement that content is king, with the proposal that in  education context is king. Although there is a tremendous amount of learning content available, it is the educators role, to put this content into context.

Activity 3 - Getting to blog

I am going to continue to use eblogger. I first used a blog "properly" when travelling in Mexico and South America and am delighted to still have this record of that trip (if only I could find it!). Later I used another blog to record farewell messages to my year 11 students. That was fun, except for the year when it wasn't!

The conclusion of Ferguson et al's study  was surprising. I read the paper expecting it to conclude that blogging was the best thing to hit academic publishing since the advent of the typewriter and instead they recommend that blogs are used primarily as a tool to support and extend learning. However, the implicit intention of the study seems to have been to identify blogs as a way to modernise the perception of academic collaboration and authorship, but instead traditional values persist and this hasn't happened. The authors instead recommend that blogs, rather than existing alone as individual pieces of writing, are part of wider academic environments, like Cloudworks.

Activity 2 - Reflecting to Learn

So here we are again! I really don't know why I am still so resistant to formal reflection on learning, but I am.  Don't get me wrong, I think reflection is absolutely great and should be a requirement, for everyone except me! Despite how positively I wrote about it in H808 a year ago, the reality is that I still resist. Sure enough my own (formal) reflection went out the window during H809, however, as the spot light is on, I will happily  have another go.

Assessment is always a prime motivator, and sure enough reflection pops up in TMA03 and its value is 12% of the overall mark. Seriously though, Gibbs' cycle of reflection  is useful. It helps to have specific questions to ask oneself, even if not all them are always necessarily relevant. 

Having looked back at my earlier musings, I am interested to note that the moment I needed to do this particular task I started mindmapping again. 

If prompted, (and I am being really honest here, because I am more likely to actually do this reflection if it forms part of the structure of the module) I will use my blog to record these reflections or I may keep everything on MindMeister. In the end all my notes for H809 are mindmapped and I can envisage the same happening again because I liked how that worked. I am trying not to muddle up reflection and note taking, but I also do find that quite difficult to do.

Activity 1: Introducing myself (online)

I have been working as an associate lecturer at the OU for the last seven years, starting on M150 and now on TU100 and TT284. Until a year and half ago I was also working as a teacher and IT support manager at a local secondary school in Cambridgeshire having gained QTS after doing my GTP at the same school. Before that I lived in London and worked in TV & Film.  But my first career was working in publishing and the IT departments of various national broadsheet newspapers. So I on this module I am working towards my fifth career and, to be honest, I am also hoping it will be my last one.

Web development was a natural progression from the work I did in publishing and was also how I got into education. I became very involved in Moodle (the course management system the OU uses to deliver all its modules) at an early stage, way before the OU had started to work on its development. Now I am working on improving student interaction in OU Live, following my H809 research proposal, and hoping to create a career niche for myself by perhaps combining the two expertises. This MAODE module is the one I have been most looking forward to and although I took part in the innaugral OLDS MOOC last year, I couldn't give it the required time and dropped out after a few weeks. I have since managed to complete another whole MOOC and felt incredibly proud of myself for doing so! I am also very interested in Open Badges and gamification (it won't take you long to guess why that might be!).

Cobolt with one of his many toys

My great dane (he has his own FB page) takes up a good amount of my spare time as does playing World of Warcraft. In WoW I play most aspects of the game and am currently concentrating on battle pet achievements. One of my latest book purchases is written by Nick Yee, and I was happy to be one of the many research subjects that helped him in its preparation. Oh yes, and I also go to the cinema regularly, this afternoon I am struggling with the choices available, which is unusual. Finally, I love my Humax. It saved me from a life of TV addiction and freed me to watch only those programmes I really can't be without.