Obama, social media and pedagogic change

Last month I blogged about whether the manner of an Obama victory had any implications for higher education. Since then, several reports have followed analysing the Democrats use of web and social media tools to connect their followers and organise campaigning. the excellent blog, ReadWriteWeb has analysed Obama's Social Media Advantage with several interesting outcomes:

1. the demographics of democratic support aligned with the demographics of social media users;
   
2. the number of people wishing to be connected with Obama rather than McCain, using social media, was demonstrated by the number of blog postings mentioning him and the number of Twitter and MySpace friends he had;
3. the second act of Obama's use of social media, namely his engagement with citizens as President through change.gov, highlights that "the Obama campaign may have found another way to continue the conversation that they started".

The change.gov site highlights Obama's commitment to ongoing conversation: it argues for "the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose". The site asks people to share stories and goals, and focuses upon crowdsourcing new agendas. Old ways of looking at the world are under pressure from social media and extended networks.

To be honest, this is a relatively simple, democratic approach that utilises established social tools and political ends, coupled to an apparent willingness to listen. This holds out hope for social change that might underpin progressive pedagogies with distinct characteristics.

1. The design of meaningful, whole programme curricula, rather than atomised modular courses, which start from the learner within her/his social networks. Empowering the learner to make sense of how units in a curriculum might build to something more will then scale personal involvement in decisions about: materials to be analysed and produced; tools to be utilised; educational networks to be developed (possibly from social networks that already exist); and tasks and activities that enable actions to be taken.
2. This links to a greater emphasis on negotiated, personalised assessment, which might be linked to patchworks and portfolios, which connect to, include and celebrate informal learning opportunities, and which can be represented in multiple media forms.
3. Linked to this is an engagement with an enquiry-based curriculum for personal change, and more of an emphasis on learning agendas set by individuals through personal enquiry. Negotiating a curriculum, or a set of problems that will support change in the individual, and enable that individual to achieve a set of personal outcomes requires the type of socio-constructivist scaffolding that is central to the use of social media.
   
4. Critical in the emergence of a curriculum that is co-managed by the learner is the partnership role of an experienced adult as mentor or facilitator. This mentor may be and more experienced student or tutor, but the key is for that facilitator to negotiate with the individual learner around: problems and concepts within an enquiry-based model; relevant social, educational and subject-based methods for analysing these problems; how to develop an appropriate social, educational and subject-based approach to knowledge creation; and the social networks and tools that can enable personal understanding and change.

The choice of technologies and networks, participation within multiple social forums and associations, a personalised definition of learning within a subject-specific context, and the development of critical literacies, are a function of partnerships between learners, mentors and institutions. For the institution, the mentor and the learner, the possibilities for empowered, pedagogic autonomy are strengthened by an active engagement with social media.

the kids are alright

I had a conversation with a couple of students at the JISC Users and Innovation seminar about what they thought the e-aware or e-competent tutor should be about, and what attributes would be appropriate for 21st Century HE. Their top tips included the following - they aren't rocket science, but they are usefully re-stated.

1. A willingness to take risks and explore new tools and techniques with students - a facilitation role in managing decisions about learning.
2. A willingness to involve students as mentors in learning, and thereby facilitate sharing and co-operation. This should happen across programmes as well as within modules.
   
3. The deployment of interactive technologies and techniques in the curriculum.
4. Give e-learning tools (e.g. Blackboard) a point.
5. Be responsive to the students' attitudes and approaches - empower them to use personal tools in the curriculum.
6. Use social tools that help them personalise their experience and share ideas beyond the programme. We need to pull students in, rather than push them.
7. Give students responsibility for the development of modules and programmes - give them choices and decisions to make about curriculum content and delivery.
8. Rather than focusing on telling, focus upon students' active involvement in doing and creating. Trust will help build ownership and engagement. Students doing and creating rather than listening is key!
9. Make better use of technologies to enable non-contact time activities and tasks.
   

They also pointed out that institutions need to enable the aggregation of tools and content, in order to give students safe places to share, pull in widgets and play.

Health and Life Sciences awayday

Malcolm and I led a session today at the Health and Life Sciences awayday, looking at new directions for e-Learning at DMU. There was a great mix of experiences, expectations and aspirations for the use of technology in the curriculum. Both Malcolm and I hold a position, which states that technologies should be used progressively to empower staff and students, and that the decisions about which technologies should be used need to be owned by programme teams. We also believe that these decisions should be made in negotiation with students.

However, an interesting discussion ensued with the 20 participants. The critical areas for discussion focused upon:

1. a concern that students are not reading and evaluating enough. Shafi responded to this, stating that he had used a combination of online journals and commenting through wikis to motivate students, and he used the lovely phrase "unfolding a story". This clearly connects into personalisation and ownership of a learning process, where feed-forward is as important as feedback;
2. Rob argued that getting students to read more is an aspiration with a long history of disappointment. The key is to stimulate their appetite, and the use of appropriate tools may act as motivation;
3. Simon argued that writing does not deteriorate due to online work, as long as the appropriateness of academic writing and academic literacy was highlighted by staff;
4. Peter wondered what students' experiences were prior to higher education - perhaps we need to look at BECTA and DEMOS and JISC;
5. Tilo was undertaking participative research with young people who have a culture of using these tools to engage with new ideas, and wondered how read/write Web tools might help the research process;
6. Malcolm noted that we were about to buy Penfield Hospital from the University of Huddersfield, and this virtual hospital simulation should help empower students decision-making.

This was a really useful discussion session. However, the key is for academic staff teams to understand the technologies that enhance their teaching, and their students' learning and to engage with those enhancements. In order to understand the technologies, and in order to make better decisions about them and their curriculum, targeted and focused professional development for academic teams may be the order of the day.

Charles Leadbeater

I always find it affirming when I "bump" into affirming or interesting ideas and stories - especially those that connect with my own. The Guardian Education is carrying a story about Blue Skies Learning focusing upon communities and leadership, and empowerment of learners. More liberal hand-wringing huh? But it opened up a new channel for me in the work of Charles Leadbeater who focuses upon leadership and participation and the role of the web.

I am really looking forward to his report for the Innovation Unit on the future of learing in England launched July 10th, entitled WHAT'S NEXT ? : 21 Ideas for 21st Century Education. Comment will follow...