In a reflective mood on my Friday evening commute home I tweeted that:
Being an advocate of #elearning and #edtech in universities is a bit like trying to sell solar panels to oil sheiks
Mark Smithers
marksmithers
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Selling Solar Panels to Oil Sheiks
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Response to: ‘Anatomy of a PLE’
The following is a response to a blog post by Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth). I tried to post it as a comment but it was too large so here it is instead.
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The PLE as a Single Tool and the Issue of Institutional Lock-in
I had a very enjoyable evening listening/watching the livestream of the opening unkeynote address at The PLE Conference facilitated by @courosa and @grahamattwell. The format was great, particularly for the tight buggers who didn’t pay the conference fees but were attending remotely from all over the world. Basically they presented a series of questions about the PLE on a series of interactive web based white boards that allowed ideas to be posted and, even, some short debates to be engaged in. This was complimented by crowdsourced presentation slides, twitter questions and questions from the audience. I gather that there were some technical problems but I have to say that these were barely noticeable to the remote observer (apart from when the stream stopped for a short time but that was no problem really). Both Alec and Graham carried a very interesting discussion seamlessly. Read More
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Spoken Like a True Non-Academic
Licensed Creative Commons by Eric "Claptøn" Nelsøn
I had an interesting experience last month, I was asked to participate in focus groups to help a university IT services department develop its IT strategy for the next 5 years. The brief was to help generate ideas for what might be required to inform a five year strategy but we were also asked to think about what university IT services might be like in ten years time. I think about four or five focus groups were facilitated by an external consultant. They covered all aspects of IT in the university from teaching and learning to administration. As I am notionally responsible for the technical ownership of enterprise wide teaching and learning systems and research systems at my university I was invited to the focus group on teaching and learning and the focus group on research. Read More
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A Draft Educational Technology Landscape Map
Educational Technology Landscape Map
I’ve been working on educational technology strategy and implementation for what feels like as long as I can remember but one thing I have always intended to do was to develop a visualisation of educational technologies in the form of a ‘map’. There are a number of such maps around already. Some of these are very good but they were never quite what I wanted. Specifically they focussed on the product rather than the tool or technology. So you would get a map that nearly always showed the LMS/VLE product at the centre with an eportfolio, some streaming media and some other technologies around the edge. I wanted something that showed the tools but also showed where they fitted in the landscape. Whether they were learning tools or management tools and whether the tools were focussed on the student or the staff member etc. I also wanted to get away from the LMS being at the centre of the tool map becuase the LMS is basically a collection of tools in one product that combine some management and some educational functionality. This isn’t because I am against the LMS as a concept but because I wanted to show that there are alternatives and that not everything needs to fit within an LMS. Read More
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A Brief Review of the VDIT (e)learning Environments Forum
Licensed Creative Commons by -sel
Last Friday (25th June, 2010) I attended the Victorian Directors of Information Technology (VDIT) (e)Learning Environments Forum which turned out to be a bit like a curate’s egg, good in places.
Before I talk about the day, just a bit of background. VDIT is the representative group for the Directors of Information Technology of the universities that operate in the state of Victoria. Earlier this year at one of their meetings it was observed that many of them were simultaneously reviewing their e-learning environments and they suggested that a forum be arranged at which the universities could discuss the issues and share some insights about the changes that were and are happening. The intention was to make this a day for both those involved in IT and those involved in teaching and learning to come together to discuss the current issues facing universities. Read More
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The Size of Universities in Australia and the UK
For a long time I have been interested in organisational innovation. At the the moment that is focussed on the way that higher education and universities specifically can adopt and mainstream innovations in eductaional technicology and changing pedgagogy related to the adoption of new technologies. One barrier to innovation adoption may be related to the size of an organisation. I thought I would start by looking at the size of universities. The data for student enrolment at Australian universities are readily available in spreadsheet format. Being a visual thinker I like to put these into charts. This post doesn’t draw any conclusions it is simply designed as a starting point for a discussion with myself and anyone else who is interested in some the issues that affect innovation and mainstreaming of educational technologies. I’m also making these charts available for anyone that wants them. All of the data is in the public domain and links to them are included. Read More
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A Silly Game?
Yesterday lunch time the hastag meme #lesserbooks started flowing into my Twitter stream. The aim of this game was to think of a book title that was a lesser version of a famous original. For example ‘The Great Gatsby’ might be posted as ‘The Modest Gatsby’, you get the picture. Similar memes go around from time to time and I often like playing them but I really enjoyed this one, probably because it came along in my lunch break after a pretty hard week dealing with some of core and intractable problems of universities. -
The Effect of Casualisation in Higher Education on the Adoption of Educational Technology
I was discussing the problem of creating a broader adoption of educational technologies across the university with colleagues when they told me that 50% of the people they have to deal with are employed casually. It was therefore difficult to provide adequate functional and pedagogical training to such staff who were, typically, only employed to do specific teaching activities. I countered with suggestion that course (subject or units at other universities) coordinators would not be employed casually at that they would be able to direct casual staff within the context of online delivery. My colleagues made the observation that quite often course coordinators were in fact themselves often employed on a casual basis. -
The Problem with MOPPs
Does your university have a minimum online presence policy (MOPP)? Is it successful?I have a bit of a problem with MOPPs. I don’t think they work and, in fact, I think they are counterproductive. Here are my reasons:
1. Command and control
Let’s face it universities aren’t corporations and never have been despite what proponents of university corporatisation would have us believe. Universities are based on a collegiate model in which command and control does not work very well. Simply put, the academy don’t like being told what to do and many will passively resist in reaction. This includes being told that they must use the institution LMS as part of a MOPP. Read More
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