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.

Wii-velopment for staff

For sometime now we at Staff Training & Development at DMU have been musing over whether we should be introducing some appropriate technologies to enhance training sessions; after all, learning technologies is for [both academic and support] staff too, and not just for enhancement of student learning.

There is another justification to using technologies for staff development, which is for students to appreciate and use learning technologies, it is fundamental that staff understand and use learning technologies. For staff to use learning technologies effectively it is crucial that the staff/educational developers also understand the use and appreciate learning technologies. Staff/educational developers therefore have an important role to play but are generally reluctant to do so because they are not yet sufficiently capable, or moreover, simply not confident. Therefore it is incumbent that Staff/Academic Developers employ techniques in their training with learning technologies; more so at De Montfort University where our strapline is Professional, Creative, Innovative.

At T&D we had been thinking for ways of incorporating gaming, especially video consoles, but had refrained because we thought that video consoles wouldn't go down well with training staff, especially the academic; put beautifully by an academic colleague from Academic Professional Development Unit, "They'd [staff] simply walk out"!

However there was another issue that was at the back of our minds, at DMU we have around 3000 staff and are committed to recruiting appropriate people from all walks of life and ages, and so we may have many "digital natives" now amongst our work force who have grown up along side all sorts of technologies, and by using new technologies in training and development we may tap areas that are natural and indigenous in their lifestyles.

However, this shouldn't be at the expense of others being left out. We couldn't expect staff who are new to many concepts in technology to join in and naturally feel comfortable with a Playstation controller and the latest shoot 'em up like Resident Evil. Well, not until now; several months ago Nintendo released a new games console aimed at a broader demographic than that of their counterparts such as Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo claim that this console will attract people from all ages to play video games, and many titles together. See clip below.

Wii Made History



Richard Hall already commented on a previous post about his experiences with a friends family (and an eight-year old who thrashed him on a virtual game of Tennis) using a Wii; only recently did I learn that a US study showed that surgeons playing a Wii before entering the operating theatre perform better.

If studies show there is an improvement of performance using such technologies then perhaps similar appropriate techniques be used appropriately during staff training & development - or should we call it Wii-velopment.

One such example where Wii's can be used that quickly comes to mind is during ice-breaker session towards the beginning of a training event. Instead of spending 20 minutes having each member introduce themselves, or any other popular ice breaking examples staff trainers employ, participants can be gathered together and put in front of a Wii to have a game of bowling.

Richard Hall and I are currently discussing this initiative to see where other scenarios a Wii can be used in Staff Training/ Development/ or Teaching and Learning, and we will subsequently investigate, and experiment to see whether this particular technology do in reality enhance training , teaching or learning.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas the do let me know.

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Passion Based Learning

I came across this very interesting and simple philosophy on self education and the creation of your own Personal Learning Environment (PLE).

I think this philosophy is there in abundance in the work of the inspirational Vicky A. Davies (One cool cat teacher, in fact the coolcatteacher). One of her recent posts that i found particularly enthralling is The Twelve Dreams and Goals for 2008.