What is important about our learning contexts? Why is it important to be aware of learning contexts? What the heck is a learning context?These are the questions that I have been grappling with of recent. Here is what I think I know When we teach with technology, and teach students how to use it appropriately […]

I have been very fortunate to have spent more than a decade dishing out advice, supporting and occasionally nagging, learning providers about the fantastic and often simple technology available to them. I feel the need to make the following observations which may touch a nerve with some, bewilder others and perhaps, just perhaps, encourage a […]

CC BY - flickr photo by kevin dooleyI've long been concerned about the various pressures on academic staff to pass students, and this confession of an ivy league teaching assistant, shared by Dr Mike Reddy on the Plagiarism Jiscmail list, brought it all back once more.The premise of the article is that the teaching assistant - a PhD student - just gave A- grades to students when they didn't deserve it to prevent them complaining, crying, and saying things like: "I hope you’re happy you’ve destroyed my chance at Goldman and ruined my life".Now I'm not going to focus on the wrongdoings of inflating marks. Well, not so much anyway. Instead, it's the other pressures on academic staff to get these students through the doors and out the other end. In my time in HE, and even more so in the last 4 years or so where I've been more hands on teaching with students, I've noticed a few pressures, many of which boil down to finances and the changes in funding (in one way or another).1) Retention/Attrition. The financial repercussions of students dropping out of courses early on is huge. This is an increasing focus for many HEIs now, and the link between failing students and dropout rate is obvious. Therefore there's a pressure to keep students afloat so they continue. Of course retention is a hugely complex area so I won't go any further than saying the obvious - there is a pressure to keep students for financial reasons, and getting them over the hurdles of assessment is one of those.2) Sweet spot averages. I remember marking and moderating in a previous role and there actually being a conversation about how our marks should turn out at the expected average - a typical bell curve with the mean somewhere in the high 50% area (I think). There was a focus on any modules that didn't meet this.I just find the idea that we should keep marks to an expected pattern and number absurd. There are always differences - new teaching staff; alterations to modules; differences in cohorts; etc, so expecting identical performances is unrealistic. This just adds pressure on staff to inflate grades of lower performing students or somehow coach them through assessments.3) Student surveys. Again in a previous role, students completed an Internal Student Survey (ISS) somewhat similar, and kind of used as a predictor for, the National Student Survey (NSS). Modules that didn't perform to at least the School/Faculty/Institution average was under the spotlight, with poor performing modules/programmes placed in a kind of 'special measures' with the threat of cutting the module/programme. Now you could see that as a good quality assurance mechanism, but when staff are tied to leading modules/programmes, there is huge pressure to keep students happy or essentially your job could be redundant (that was actually said to us, but the threat was obviously there). Of course I'm not naive enough to think those with good grades don't complain, but there is an obvious link between under performing students and complaints (or poor evaluations).[As an aside, I once had a student complaining because I reported their repeated (like constant) non-attendance which resulted in their student loan being withheld. That was a strange one.] Furthermore, with the availability of the Key Information Sets (KISs) there is a requirement to share the percentage chance of a student completing a particular course. It's natural therefore that students will gravitate away from courses (and related institutions) where they have a less chance of passing in favour of a course/institution where they have a good chance of passing.So what?So I'm not criticising the aforementioned teaching assistant for inflating grades at all. Obviously it's wrong, but there are so many pressures on academics to get students through happy than ever before. And when people's jobs are literally on the line, you can kind of understand the situation we're in. I blame the system. The overemphasis on the NSS. The ridiculous financial pressures we're under.I can only see the solution being greater transparency in everything that we do. I've emphasised assessment a few times in this post, and that is one place we could start given the recurring poor performance in the NSS. Greater transparency is needed here - in telling students how they will be assessed; how that assessment is relevant to the ILOs and course content; how we use assessment for learning; how and why we give feedback to scaffold learning; how assessment is authentic and related to defined career pathways; how we mark student work and the criteria related to achieving specific grades. Of course technology can facilitate many of these aspects, from providing recorded overviews of assessment requirements through to making marking rubrics available in Turnitin/Grademark. Either way, greater transparency is needed in so many aspects of our practice because things have changed. Let alone transparency being good practice as it is, but students, whether we like it or not, are becoming more like consumers and customers and as such they want a good product.There are likely many more aspects that I've missed off, but I'd like to hear other's perspectives on issues related to the pressures on academic staff to inflate grades or similar.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

A simple enough question one would believe, but not if you are a Learning provider starting from scratch. For example, type into a search engine ‘what is an ePortfolio’ and you have every chance of finding absolutely no useful answer whatsoever, regardless of what part of education you live or the purpose that you have […]

What if I said: IF you can identify your values about education, and justify why they are important and how they make a difference, THEN you will be granted full permission to teach to those values? When we become stuck in tradition, and resistance and our own fears about allowing for change in education, we […]

So last night saw the first day of a new iteration of the Bring Your Own Device For Learning short course, which encourages participants to access the spark for a particular topic via the website, and then engage in live Tweet-chats between 8-9pm (centred around the hashtag #byod4lchat).Day 1 focussed on the theme of Connecting - how we use devices apps to connect with others, and was facilitated by myself, Kay Hack and Anne Hole. We released 5 questions to provoke reflection and discussion, and what followed was a hectic tweet chat with almost 600 tweets within the allocated hour time slot, proving yet again that this type of activity is a powerful means for connecting and sharing ideas.It's always nice to reflect on these things. For me (like so many others), the web has really transformed the way in which we interact. With the added flexibility of devices and apps, I literally engage in my personal and professional online networks everywhere.In terms of apps/services, I mainly use Twitter as my primary channel. Obviously I blog a fair bit and it's really nice to engage in discussions here. Although I have an up-to-date LinkedIn and G+ account, I barely engage with it (beyond sharing the links to my blog posts). Twitter and Facebook were the most popular services in the discussion last night, but the beauty of these services is that people are different - Anne Hole for example uses G+ as her main network. So there's something for everyone.I think the hectic pace of the chat slowed a touch as it moved on to the later stages. That was at least my feeling - network fatigue perhaps? Or perhaps it's related to how quickly/slowly the questions progressed? Or something else? It would be nice to try to visualise the tweets by time....With the help of Martin Hawkesey (@mhawkesey) again, I've archived the tweets and visualised them below. There is an interactive version here.The network shows a couple of key nodes or big players in the #bbyod4lchat, with +Chrissi Nerantzi leading the way with the most influence (tweets, replies, RTs, etc), followed by myself, @suebecks, @helenrodgersSHU, and a few others. This suggests that tweetchats do rely on facilitators rather than being completely decentralised.I noticed a similar phenomenon when visualising/analysing tweets from the SOLSTICE conference in June. I think the visuals below share a similar 'betweenness centrality', as Chrissi, Helen Rodgers, Sue Becks, Myself, etc, appear to be hubs for the chat, whereby we each connect with people who would otherwise not be connected to other members. So in theory, person 1 is linked to person 3 via me (person 2). Because of this 'Betweenness Centrality' (our popular role in the network), there is a greater risk the network could break if 'we' were missing. A less centralised network wouldn't have any such 'points of failure'.This makes me think how a 'course' such as #BYOD4L could run with less reliance on facilitators.... Any thoughts?PPeter@Reedyreedles$nbsp;The Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Many Learning Providers recognise an urgent need to ‘upgrade’ their learning materials so as to make them more engaging, interactive and accessible on-line. Some ‘buy in’ whole packages but few realise that with the vast array of software tools available, even existing  paper based coursework can be adapted by the staff that use it, with […]

The following are curated resources for educators including classroom, subjects, leadership, special ed, and PD! http://www.pearltrees.com/bigideasinedu Tagged: Big Ideas in Education, content curation, education, Education Resources, teaching

Day 2 of the #BYOD4L short course focussed on using devices and apps to support communication. Another rich discussion took place in the tweetchats, which was facilitated by @andrewmiddleton and @Cheryl4Tel.The visuals produced (below) show the key movers and shakers in the tweetchat - follow the link through to the interactive version and you can easily click on a name to see that user's activity.Upon first glance, I'd hazard a guess at saying there were fewer participants in this tweetchat compared with day 1, and a quick glimpse and the spreadsheets suggest Day 1 had ~800 tweets compared with Day 2's ~600 tweets. However there are more users playing a bigger role in this tweetchat, evidenced by the greater number of larger/bolder names in the visuals.I'd have to go back and compare the data to be certain, but the increased engagement could be because users are gaining confidence and familiarity with the tweetchats and thus engage to a greater degree. Of course, it could be related to the questions asked. The fewer tweets in comparison to day 1 is difficult to to explain - it could be that there was more hype about the beginning of the BYOD4L course, and excitement dipped after day 1, or simply because people were busy. Who knows.It will be interesting to create more visuals at the end of the week to compare activity across each day.What do you see when you look through the visuals and engage with the interactive versions?Peter@Reedyreedles$nbsp;The Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

These are just a few of the many examples of software tools which are free or low cost, need little or no ICT skills to create and introduce into current Teaching and Learning practices. Please note: The list is by no means comprehensive and  this selection is simply to raise awareness of and for readers […]