So here we are. Again. End of Pathfinder "celebration"

Back in November 2005, Heads of e-Learning attended a Town Meeting at the Higher Education Academy in York. at this meeting, we were informed that there would be a benchmarking and Pathfinder programme initiated from the debris of the UK eUniversity farrago. I was one of a limited number of people who expressed, either at the meeting or via e-mail, concerns that benchmarking meant metrics, which in turn meant measurement and effectively a new column in a league table. A central concern for me was that any focus upon metrics should be subservient to, rather than lead, our enhancement/improvement agenda. Moreover, where metrics were deployed they should be used in context by HEIs to plan and deliver enhancement.

During the implementation of Benchmarking and Pathfinder at DMU the threat of the deployment of metrics and measurements receded. I felt that we embarked upon a process of understanding our own narratives, and helping both staff and students to come to terms with 21st century technologies to enhance their learning. We formed part of a collective, participant-led agenda for change, which for me was about:

1. empowering staff and students to make good choices about the technologies they deploy;
2. learning from others; and
   
3. developing e-pedgogies that demonstrate fitness-of-purpose and fitness-for-purpose in the 21st century.

The joy of our engagement in this national project has come through meeting other practitioners and celebrating their stories. I had hoped that this would be an outcome of our Making a difference day in London yesterday. Despite being talked at for over two hours in the morning session, we did get the opportunity to engage with people who are trying to change lives at the chalk face in the afternoon.

In the morning we heard from John Selby from HEFCE, who highlighted how institutions need to think about value the money, efficiency and latterly enhancement. Now maybe he didn't mean it in that order, but that's the order in which he spoke about these issues: money and metrics first, enhancement second. Dr Selby also highlighted that the Educating Rita model of curriculum delivery was outmoded and inefficient. Sadly he did not note that the politics of Educating Rita, and the empowerment of Educating Rita and the emancipation of that student in that story show its true value, more than the resource implications of one-to-one teaching.

Dr Selby did also highlight how the sociological power of technology-enhanced learning needs, more emphasis. He hinted at a pedagogic shift; one that takes notice of complex behaviours, and thereby empowers people to make their own decisions. This, I believe, is the next step for us. How do we engage with progressive pedagogies? How do we rethink higher education that has relatively static models curriculum delivery and design, in a world that is ever more networked? Do we have a 19th-century model of education in a 21st-century world?

The afternoon was powerful and important - we talked with and learned from other projects - theworld becomes a better place at the chalkface - we need leaders who can empower us there. The afternoon was also depressing. I had a crushing sense that we were back to where we had begun in November 2005, ostensibly due to a single unchallenged comment by John McLaughlin, from DIUS. He was asked, in effect, how we could engage with senior managers within universities to embed change and move the lessons that we have learned forward. His answer was that we have to talk about students as consumers. We have to talk about students in terms of value-for-money. We have to talk about our students in terms of metrics that would deliver efficiency.

Now at the PRHE conference last week, I heard an empowering 10 minute talk from the Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University, Professor Gerald Pillay. In it, he argued for a higher education that focused upon the mind, body and spirit of our students. My thinking about what Professor Pillay had argued relegated metrics, in the form of retention and progression, and value-for-money, to a secondary means of ensuring enhancement where measures supported our staff in improving learning. When we highlight our students as consumers, we raise up the power of metrics, and relegate the mind, body and spirit of our students. We all lose something in this argument; notably, we lose the opportunity to set progressive agendas about opportunity and meaning.

Sarah Porter, from the JISC, argued clearly that we need to know our strategic plan in order to engage with our strategic managers in an effective way. However, it was left to the QAA to offer a sensible and meaningful way forward. It is totally remiss of me not to remember the name of their assistant director who was speaking, but Icannot. However, his argument was that we had "a problem with the rhetoric". He argued that we have to focus upon giving our students "something of lifelong value". A constant, persistent focus upon metrics and outcomes, where those issues define and shape the landscape of higher education, demeans the work that we do every day with our students and staff. It reduces us all to units of measurement, or to actors in a process of measurement.

So, I feel like I let myself down by not challenging Mr McLaughlin. I feel like saying to him that all of the work we have done as practitioners since 2005 has been focused upon enhancing the life chances of our students, through a process of learning from each other. It has only been about costing models, or value-for-money, or efficiency gains, where each of these has been driven by something more humane, "something of lifelong value".

DIY Education

Nick spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought we should see it...

The shape of things to come: Around the world, an elite band of trend-spotters spend their days providing businesses with glimpses of the future. So what do these 'futurologists' predict for 2008? By James Harkin, Tuesday December 18 2007, The Guardian.

I was especially taken by the section on DIY education, and the "burgeoning demand among people to learn new skills, not from professional educators but from their peers." For me this is the true power of the read-write web - its ability to mix things up - to transform social frameworks and structures by giving people space for praxis and informal learning (c.f. Paolo Friere), that is not necessarily controlled by professionals (c.f. Ivan Illich) and where the democratising nature of education can be brought forward (c.f. John Dewey).

I think the point made by Sue T below also connects here, especially in that quote about "a constellation of functions and roles" in education. Such a constellation can be seen more generally across the boundaries of formal and informal learning, where the spaces and technologies that are demarcated for the "purpose" of education are no longer clear and separate.

Job losses over eBay 'addiction'

Three council workers have lost their jobs for spending too long on the internet auction site eBay.

One was sacked and two resigned after managers at Neath Port Talbot Council found some staff were spending up to two hours a day on the website.

Union officials have blamed bosses for "putting temptation in their way" - by allowing access to the internet.

The council said it carried out an investigation after officials spent a "significant time" on the internet.

It said another two cases were being investigated while another member of staff had been given a warning.

Union officials said in all, over an 18 month period, up to six council staff had lost their jobs.

Read more...

Folksonomy II: the wisdom of crowds

I love social bookmarking and tagging. It's a wonderful way to refind old stuff, share new stuff and discover things or people that you would never have found any other way. Yesterday's folksonomy sessions hosted by the IOCT nailed these issues for me. The key outcomes from the sessions focus upon:

1. new tools that may build the social networking experience by enhancing recommendations to users, connecting users to each other, to websites and to web objects, including: StumbleUpon; FURL; del.icio.us; and Magnolia;
2. the impact upon a user's identity, through participation with others in various groups, and the meaning that those users generate from participating;
3. the user's perceptions of the value of specific interactions (with web sites, individual taggers, tags and groups);
4. the politics of Web 2.0, the control of vocabularies and the means of production;
5. the impact on the user of the context of specific tags, based upon taxonomies, individual need and another individual's identity, in order to create personal meaning;
6. Rashmi Sinha's view that "the beauty of tagging is that it taps into an existing cognitive process without adding much cognitive cost";
7. the relationship between objects to be tagged, individuals who are tagging, the tags or metadata assigned and the communities that are created;
8. the differences between folksonomy and taxonomy, around the limits on or lack of: structure; control; resources; participation; democratic processes; and the nature of emergent and validated behaviour;
9. analysis of tags through a clean-up process that merges some (e.g. e-learning and elearning) or controls stems (are tags, tagging and tagger the same for analysis?) or evaluates synonyms;
10. the value for refindability; team-work; understanding context; storing resources; working across silos; and networking - I'm really interested in these as possible areas for development for support staff, as well as academic teams and student groups, and maybe in combination with other applications like Facebook for wider networking;
11. the user's ability to use tools for saving, refinding, exploring, searching and interacting, and the belief that granularity has value and that algorithms for searching can make life more efficient;
12. selective sharing, and building or evaluating trust in individual taggers, tags or web objects; and
13. the portability of tags, descriptions, identities and communities across applications over time.

In simple terms tagging and group folksonomies can impact upon work processes, and that will be a fruitful avenue for WP1 and WP2, as well as WP7. We need to focus upon the power for refindability of information, team-work, understanding context, storing resources, working across silos and networking.

However, the sessions got me thinking about control and power and politics, and the work of Ivan Illich. De-schooling and the impact on the role of the professional, in order to broaden a social democratic agenda, is definitely an area for more exploration. As is the merging of work and non-work identities where tools are used in both arenas (if such a dichotemy actually exists).

"It's like watching someone else's firework display"

A nice piece on the BBC website today about "stealing" other people's Wi-Fi. What does this say about social spaces and networking, co-operation and individualism? We see legal and moral issues around technology trailing both technological advances and usage-and-custom. Usage-and-custom being impacted by institutionalised norms is one of the really interesting debates over Web 2.0. It gets me thinking about control and the connections between real and virtual spaces. Does locking down Wi-Fi smack of enclosure? Should we really be encouraging more Wi-Fi commons?

Secret lives

The Independent on Sunday carried an article entitled "How embarassing is it to see your parents on Facebook?" The point being that the original users of the system are becoming uneasy about the influx of johnny-come-lately parents, politicians and the 'strange tide of "friends".'

So is this pioneer-fear or resentment of settlers within a space that pioneers thought was for them and for their university or college-based nonsense? Or is it less resentment of settlers and more a resentment of the presence of different communities [similar to the way that immigrant Japanese or native American communities were regarded, driven out or coralled by pioneers in the West of America?]. Or is it simply pioneers getting tired of their landscape, which has become less risky, adventurous and enthralling.

The flip side of this is the view that parents should be on social networking sites precisely because it is regarded as risky and adventurous, and because you do not know whom it will enthral. There are growing reports of police and parents spending more time on-line because more space, that is not regulated in the same way as "real space", is 'a perfect hunting ground' for ne'er do wells.

This tension between the psychologies of pioneers and settlers, and their precise reasons for being in a particular space or matrix of spaces, will impact upon the development of specific social networking sites, in just the same way that advertisers' refusal to have their brands linked with extremist and facist political organisations impact on those sites.

These ownership tensions exist with every form of "land": real; virtual; institutional; personal. Social networking requires social conventions and accepted rules of engagement. This is something that we spend less time on than we should; maybe issues of control and ownership in Web 2.0 will alter that.

Ron Paul: How a Fringe Politician Took Over the Web

Internet activism at it's best?! (or worse!)

When Texas Congressman Ron Paul entered the race for next year's Republican presidential nomination, few political analysts paid much notice....

Yet despite his status among the longest of the long shots, the 71-year-old has become one of the internet's most omnipresent.

Read More...

Social sites reveal class divide

Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study.



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Wikis and the means of production

Now I'm no Marxist, but I am interested in concepts that impact on civil society and the ways in which it is democratised or opened-up. In Marxian terms these include ownership of the means of production, the labour theory of value and, as David Prychitko has noted, alienation from labour and society:


"Marx condemned capitalism as a system that alienates the masses. His reasoning was as follows: Although workers produce things for the market, market forces control things; workers do not. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace. Work, he said, becomes degrading, monotonous, and suitable for machines rather than free, creative people."


The key concepts here that connect into our views of civil society include: control of products and ways of producing them; engaging work; and creativity. These concepts also align with developmntal views of citizen participation, and these are important to me as they are a framework for thinking about Web 2.0 developments. What does it mean to use Web 2.0 in your work? What are your politics of Web 2.0?


A few of us went to a valuable case study discussion of wikis in the classroom, lead by Marija Cubric of the University of Hertforshire Business School. Some of the key points she raised were impacted by the clear pedagogic and epistemologic focus of her wiki - its place in the curriculum, the tasks that built it, and the products of the students' labour were explicitly communicated to its users. Marija highlighted:

• the importance of Vygotsky and social development;


• the links between wiki-based tasks, Bloom's taxonomy of educational competencies, and the scaffolded learning opportunities that they support;


• the critical importance of feedback in the system and for individuals;


• student outcomes in terms of "motivation", "fun", "quality of contributions", "increased in-class interactions";


• raised student expectations for this type of learning opportunity; and


• the impact on assessment [peer, group, weightings etc.] and of increased contact-time.

Marija's talk was not political, but it made me think about issues I've already raised about belonging within a gamer-culture, and what it means to belong to a "community". It also made me think about ownership of the means of production, or the wiki, and its products, which in Web 2.0 environments ought to lie with the producers.