August 31st, 2010 by Lou McGill
As we might expect from a set of projects focussed on curriculum delivery innovation the Delivery projects are doing some very creative work with an incredibly broad range of technologies. These include virtual worlds and simulations, mobile technologies, learner portals, semantic technologies, video, audio, internet TV, assessment and e-portfolio technologies, and social networking tools and services. See Sheila McNeill’s CETIS blog for more detail.
Innovation doesn’t have to be about using new technologies though – it should primarily be about responding to real challenges, preferably articulated by the stakeholders involved in, and affected by, these. Sometimes small changes in existing practice can have the most far reaching effects. If we think about some of the work being done in relation to feedback and assessment, for example, the fundamental issues around how learners respond to feedback has more far reaching consequences than which technologies we can use to deliver that feedback. It helps if those technologies are appropriate and effective – projects are getting some positive responses from distance learners to feedback through podcasts for example. What podcasts offer is a more personal voice for remote learners.
Which brings me to the point of this post – sometimes the most appropriate technology is not the newest coolest stuff. The Delivery projects are doing some excellent work with technologies that are familiar to most institutions. The much criticised VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) plays a significant role in many of the project innovations. VLE’s have been criticised for being institutionally imposed monolithic systems which encourage the passive deposit of content behind authenticated barriers that support subject discipline silo’s. That the majority of the Curriculum Delivery projects are using VLEs creatively, and in a way that integrates with a range of other technologies, is some testament to the fact that both staff and students have embraced them and value them as an institutional support. Seven of the fifteen projects are using Moodle to support their activities, and have reported that the modular and flexible nature of this software has been significant in their choice. The KUBE project and the Making the New Diploma a Success project both have Moodle as the central element of their activities
It is worth drawing together some of the reasons that the use of VLEs is so pervasive across this programme of projects. It is highly valued by students as a portal to both their learning and support functions, including assessment and feedback handling. Remote students found the VLE to be a valued link to the institution when they were away on placements (MoRSE project) with VLEs offering reliable (mostly always available) and secure places for staff, students and others (such as industrial partners) to share information – both in terms of content and discourse. Several projects report that remote students (distance learners, work-based learners, placement students) value the VLE as a portal – as the place that things are brought together.
Perhaps this evidence of using familiar technologies reflects a need to make the most of what institutions have already invested in. I hope it reflects the fact that the projects are genuinely focused on pedagogy and on solving real problems, rather than finding a technology solution then seeking the problem to which they can apply it. There is clear evidence of the importance of the good relationships between IT departments and projects in terms of developing and supporting system integrations and the deployment of technologies to allow the pedagogical innovations to take place. This may reflect the growing maturity in relationships more generally between staff involved across departments. Not least for me, it reveals how well these projects are listening to their stakeholders and finding sustainable ways to support and enhance their learning experience.
Tags: Delivery Projects, innovation, technologies, virtual learning environments, VLE
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August 17th, 2010 by sheilmcn
Due to holidays etc I’ve been a bit late in reporting back on the Design Bash we held in conjunction with the 2010 European LAMS conference last month at the University of Oxford.
A number of projects and critical friends from both programmes attended the day along with a number of other national and international projects interested in and working within the learning design paradigm.
This is the third design bash I’ve been involved in organising, and they’re probably closest in style and structure to an un-conference. There is no pre-set agenda and the main aim of the day is to foster meaningful extended dialogue between delegates. In other words, just allowing people to speak to each other. This year, the groups divided along a number of lines. One group spent most of the day discussing the ” critical success factors for curriculum design”. Paul Bartholomew (T-SPARC) helpfully created a mindmap of the discussion.
In contrast to these more cerebral discussions, there were a number of mini-demonstrations of tools and systems including the GLO tool, ldshake, and compendium LD, and wookie. Again links to all the tools are in the available online from the Design Bash Cloudworks site.
James Dalziel demoed a number of new features of the LAMS system such as embedding which many of the delegates were interested in. At last year’s design bash, embedding and previewing of designs was a key theme of many of the discussions, so it was great to see how over the year the discussion has developed into an actual implementation.
Members of the LDSE project team attended and the day provided a great opportunity for the team to discuss and develop potential integrations from others. For example, Bill Olivier and Diana Laurillard had a very fruitful discussion about LDSE using the IDIBL framework that the University of Bolton have developed.
Unlike last year’s event there wasn’t very much activity around sharing of designs, and I’m not sure if that was due to the size of this year’s event – there were quite a few more people in attendance. Or, if it was simply down the the overriding interests of participants this year. If we run the event again next year, we may have a slightly more structured agenda and dedicated demo slots and a slightly more structured technical stream. We did also discuss the possibility of running a similar event online. And this might be very appropriate for projects from the programme(s) who want to demo tools/systems and get some feedback from an informed audience. The cloudworks site itself does allow for a level of interactivity, however I did notice that there wasn’t as much external contribution this year compared with last. However, again this just maybe down to fact that we had more people there in person.
Overall though, there was very positive feedback from delegates on the day. You can view (comment and contribute too) all the resources from the day from Cloudworks.
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August 16th, 2010 by sheilmcn
Gunter Saunders and the Making Assessment Count project team (University of Westminster) have created a SUM (service usage model) of their e-reflect process.
SUMs have been a key part of the development of the eFramework and are designed to give a high level, overview of a process with an accompanying technical description of services being integrated/implemented. Although the eFramework is in somewhat of a state of flux at the moment, SUMs themselves (imho) are really useful way to share practice and are a valuable shareable project output. However I would be interested in hearing others views on this type of narrative structure.
The SUM is available to downloaded from the e- framework wiki and will also be available in the Design Studio.
If you would like any advice, help and support in developing a SUM for your project, then please email me directly (s.macneill@strath.ac.uk).
Posted in Assessment and Feedback, Delivery Projects | No Comments »
July 6th, 2010 by Gill Ferrell
Various group discussions and the panel session at the QA & QE in e-Learning conference at the University of Hertfordshire on 2nd July looked to the future.
Nobody really seemed to think that the current round of cost-cutting would signal a move back to self-regulation as a cheaper option and there was some concern about how QA data might be used in future including more sanctions or data being used to create league tables.
There was a lot of talk around roles and responsibilities including the separation of QA & QE within institutions and the difference between top down and bottom up approaches. The phrase ‘unintelligent accountability’ came up a lot with the feeling that the government doesn’t trust QAA, QAA doesn’t trust institutions and institutions don’t trust their staff. It was noted that we need to get away from any kind of blame culture if we are to see real enhancement and to be able to learn from what has gone before. A Quaker saying ‘Speak Truth to Power’ sums up how many people wanted to be able to approach QA & QE within their institutions.
It was noted that although we see QA in FE as being driven by OFSTED inspections there are generally a lot of feedback loops and bottom up feedback in the process and there is much that HE could learn from this.
An observation that will resonate with our Design projects is the fact that people get very good at the validation process rather than the process of curriculum design and that the documentation generated is usually only useful for the validation process.
There was also a worry that the current climate may foster a sense of ‘short-termism’ and that we should be thinking long-term when we consider the role of a university and the nature of academic experience.
It was a very interesting and interactive day and a lot of people were interested in the work of our programmes so the programme team will be continuing to look for opportunities to maintain connections with the SIG and share experience and resources.
As an update to this post HEFCE has just published some information about changes to the QA system saying that information for prospective students will be a key element of the overhaul.
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2010/qual.htm
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July 6th, 2010 by Gill Ferrell
A toolkit created by the QAQE SIG was the subject of discussion & consultation at the QA & QE in e-Learning conference at the University of Hertfordshire on 2nd July.
The toolkit entitled ‘Harnessing Quality Assurance Processes to Enhance Technology Enabled Learning’ is being circulated to project teams for their comment. It is described as an ‘at a glance framework & tools for academics & support staff to use when considering employing technology to enhance course delivery.’ Some of the feedback suggested that it should also cover the design stage more fully and that there is a need to raise awareness of available technologies and their potential uses before designing courses.
On the basis of our experiences in the programmes I suggested the toolkit could be expanded to cover the business case for developing a new course in the first place & should include more on learning outcomes before getting into the detail of delivery mechanisms and both of these suggestions seemed to meet with a lot of support.
There is a section on good practice/case studies/resources that could be a good way to promote the outputs of the programme. The SIG is already using Cloudworks and I suggested that this could be flagged in the resources along with the Design Studio. The REAP principles and the Viewpoints toolkit, once it is complete, are other obviously useful links and I imagine there will be many more coming out of the programmes.
People seemed to embrace the toolkit as something that could sit alongside their existing processes rather than being something additional and also noted that it might attract those who would not normally consider technology to any great extent.
Comments on the toolkit are requested by Eileen Webb E.R.Webb@tees.ac.uk by the 19th July so if you haven’t received a copy via our mailing list contact Marianne Sheppard.
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July 6th, 2010 by Gill Ferrell
Brief notes from the QA & QE in e-Learning conference at the University of Hertfordshire on 2nd July.
The event was focused around the outcomes of a review of the QAA Code of Practice Section 2 (the bit that mentions e-learning as an aside). The respondents were apparently weighted towards Academics and Learning Technologists rather than people who specialised in QA in their job role. The things people were looking for in a revised code included:
Guidance on the following:
- Managing (not avoiding) risk associated with innovation
- Use of web 2.0 tools
- Green technologies & sustainable practice
- Protection of digital identity & safe working on line
Evidence that institutions are addressing the following:
Evidence of impact & effectiveness of e-learning on students
- Evidence of forward planning associated with technology enhanced learning
- Equivalence of learning outcomes across modes of study
- Earlier involvement of external examiners
- Effective practice in staff development for e-learning
- Preparation of students for using technology
There was a feeling that the Code should include a separate section on e-learning (perhaps better termed TEL) but that its inclusion should be embraced across all parts of the Code. It was also felt there should be a section on Learning & Teaching as the current code only separates out Work Based Learning.
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May 25th, 2010 by sheilmcn
CETIS has developed a free, open source, cross platform ArchiMate modelling tool, Archie, which is now available for download @ http://archi.cetis.ac.uk/.
The tool creates models using the ArchiMate modelling language. As described on the site, the tool has been developed primarily for the “newcomer to ArchiMate and not an experienced modeller. They do not intend to become a “modeller” per se, nor to be an “Enterprise Architect” but to borrow and apply techniques or Architecture modelling in piecemeal (often opportunistic) IT developments in a mixed HE/FE institution. The Archi user is interested in connecting IT developments to institutional strategy . . .”
The Team would really welcome feedback on the tool and have set up a forum area on the site for community contributions. So, if you have any thoughts, please post them into the forum. They will all help towards further development of the tool and user guides.
Posted in Agile Processes, General, modelling | No Comments »
May 19th, 2010 by msheppard
The programme meeting for the Curriculum Design projects held last week in Birmingham focussed on tools and projects for creating a more flexible curriculum.
After an update from the three project clusters the day focussed around three issues that had emerged from Cluster meetings:
The Open University Course representation tools
Dynamic Learning Maps at Newcastle
The Footprint timetabling project at Leeds Met
The Managing Academic Workload project at Salford
The Teaching Duties database at Cambridge University
View a full report of the day, kindly produced by Christina Smart, JISC Cetis.
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May 19th, 2010 by msheppard
The programme meeting for the Transforming Curriculum Delivery projects held in Birmingham last week focussed on sustainability, a perennial problem for JISC projects. The day consisted of a number of presentations and activities including a Dragon’s Den activity (which wasn’t as scary as it sounds!) on how to embed project outputs to ensure that the hard work of projects isn’t lost after funding has ended.
A number of themes and ideas emerged during the day on sustainability best practice:
- Make yourself indispensible
- Demonstrate clear value for money
- Develop a vision for what embedding will look like
- Align projects benefits to institutional and national strategy
- Focus on mechanisms for “transferring trade craft”
- Liaise with key staff
- Endeavour to move ownership from project staff to institutional staff
- Embed outputs/outcomes into Staff CPD processes and qualifications
- Provide evidence of benefits.
Thanks to Christina Smart from Cetis for producing a full report of the day. This also includes links to 3 short videos where the (friendly) Dragons give there thoughts and feedback on the project ‘pitches’.
The presentations are available on the JISC website.
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April 27th, 2010 by Gill Ferrell
All too often innovators can suffer a lack of recognition as ‘prophets in their own land’. This is certainly not the case for Dr Gus Cameron whose achievements have been recognised in the Bristol University Teaching Awards 2009/10. Gus is the winner of the e-Learning Award which is presented to an individual member, or group of staff who demonstrate exceptional and/or innovative e-learning practices. The Award is made where there has been improvement in the learning/teaching process for all, in particular: improving learner experience; increasing learner independence and releasing staff time in the longer term.
In making the Award the university noted: ‘It is clear that e-Biolabs has succeeded in its mission to revolutionise the way that undergraduate Biochemistry practical classes are taught at Bristol. Student feedback on these classes is excellent. Tutors and lecturers have noted a marked improvement of student understanding of topics covered by these practicals. Staff marking time has reduced dramatically. Without Gus’s drive, enthusiasm and skills in e-learning, none of this would have been achieved.
As further evidence of the success of Gus’s e-Biolabs project, the suite is now being extended to other first year teaching programmes within FMVS, and we are also hopeful that sufficient funding can also be attracted to enable its incorporation as the delivery platform for our second year practicals. Other institutions have also expressed an interest in obtaining the suite, and there is a very good chance that it will soon become the national standard for e-learning in biomedical sciences practical teaching.’
Congratulations to Gus (pictured here having a well-earned rest at a JISC programme meeting) and the rest of the team on this much-deserved success.
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