I have been blogging for a long, long time now. Yes I go through phases of inactivity but on the whole I post on a fairly regular basis. My motivation for starting came from Martin Weller. I asked his advice about starting a blog. He said post on a fairly regular basis and follow other bloggers with similar interests. Well I can honestly say that blogging has transformed my practice. I blog about a whole range of things; half-baked ideas I am trying to work up, summaries of interesting conference presentations or publications, or updates on project work. I love being part of the blogging community, and find it great when people post comments. Blogging during the writing of my recent book, Designing for Learning in an Open World, was particularly useful. It motivated me to get on with writing chapters. The thought of writing a single authored book was daunting, whereas writing a 500 word seemed more manageable and once done was the start of a chapter. I would love to hear why others blog and what they value about it!

I have been thinking a little recently about digital identity. What does our online persona say about us? How do others perceive us? In recent years social media has become an important part of both my professional and personal practice. I love interacting and communicating with people online through a variety of channels; my blog, Twitter, fb, Flickr, Skype, etc. I have connected with people online and then later met them personally and have felt as if I already knew them really well. Other people, I have become closer to through online interactions. It’s great to feel part of a global, distributed community and I love the mix of light hearted, innocent flirting and serious academic discourse. Now don’t get me wrong, I also love face-to-face interaction and I am lucky to have so many lovely friends and colleagues. But it is interesting to reflect on the difference between my online persona and the real me. There are just a few close friends who know me well who see a different side to me, a world apart from the out going, extravert I appear online. It is funny how online communication has become so important. It is great to get to know people through fb for example, to learn more about their personal lives, their families, the day-to-day mini-crisis we all have. What theoretical frameworks can we used to describe the way we interact online? I feel things like Communities of Practice and Communities of Inquiry (although great concepts) are too limiting. With Rebecca Galley we recently developed a Community Indicators framework to describe online interaction, which consisted of four dimensions: presence, identity, social cohesion and creative capability.   But there is also an interesting framework for describing ‘spaces of learning’ developed by Campbell in the seventies might be useful, which consist of four parts. The first is the cave - where you go to reflect - which for me translates into the quiet me time, when I am on my own or with friends. I used to go hill walking in Scotland a lot, I could easily go a whole day without saying a word, drinking in the solitude and tranquility, comfortable in silent companionship with my partner.  The second is the fireplace, where you come together with others to listen to stories, the voice of the expert. This for me translates into interactions with others online building stories and discourse together. The third is the mountaintop, where you disseminate to the world. This translates to announcing, communicating, stating. The final one is the watering hole, where you have serendipitous interactions. This happens all the time in fb and Twitter, you connect with new people through others; you suddenly start chatting with people online and start to get to know them a whole lot better.   I also like Gibson’s notion of affordances and the idea that technologies have certain characteristics or affordances, which are only realised through individuals and their personal preferences. We all co-evolve with technologies, my digital environment is now very different to what it was five or ten years ago, social media have become part of my daily practice. I wonder how this will continue to co-evolve? What will my digital environment look like five years from now? What will the balance of the real and digital ‘me’ be?

So I thought it would be nice to reflect on the photo a day challenge. Thanks to the lovely Ricardo Torres Kompen for setting the Flickr group up. I am now a month and a half in and totally addicted! I love thinking each day about what picture to post that will represent something about the day. Surprisingly my pictures are not all cats and food! Countryside, people, meetings and technologies also feature…. I have just discovered a nice tool via one of the discussion threads on the Flickr group about a great tool, which enables you to post a picture of the photos in a month. It’s called shuttercal.com, it’s a bit fiddly to use but ‘vale de pene’ as they say in Spanish! The picture shows January 2013. It is amazing to see the variety of pictures and it brings back memories of all the things I was doing in January; travelling - Spain, Greece, Brussels, Portugal, food - nice meals with good friends, weather - snow mainly, work - validation panels and meetings. Also I am enjoying being part of the online community. There are over 50 of us, it is great to see what people are posting and the contrast of posts from Europe with those in Australia. Love the commenting and banter as well. Some people are very talented indeed. I absolutely love David Lynch’s pictures of Dublin. Clearly a city he loves and knows well. He really has an eye for a good picture! So can’t wait to see the full year! Would be nice to print out as a physical calendar or something…

  Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/267060150/ A lot of people say to me they would like to blog but don’t know where to start and how to go about it. As I said before I have been blogging for a long time and find it invaluable in so many ways. So I thought I would list some of the ways blogging works for me. Make a list of the kinds of things you can blog about. These might include: summaries of key points from a paper you have read or a conference presentation you have attended, notes from a project meeting, key themes emerging from an interview you are transcribing, thoughts triggered from a conversation with someone, new conceptual ideas you are working on, reflections on someone else’s blog post, reflections on a conference you have attended, a description of some teaching materials you are developing or reflections on how a teaching session went, a review of a new tool or site that you have across about or simply reflecting on your own practice and professional development. There are probably lots of other examples but hopefully that is a good start! If you are thinking of starting a blog, my advice? Go for it! And good luck!

The Internet is wonderful, right? It provides access to a wealth of materials and offers a multitude of ways in which you can connect and interact with others. But is there a darker side to the Internet? My daughter Eleanor made me watch a film last night, called Catfish. It was about a guy who was having interactions with a girl online. He had never met her and decided it was time to. The Film4 review of the film describes it as follows: Detailing the strange twists and turns of a long-distance relationship forged over the internet between New York filmmaker Nev Schulman and a rural Michigan A sophisticated and thrilling reminder of just how malleable the notion of personality actually is, particularly when poured into the bespoke mould afforded by the internet. Reality? Emotion? Love? In an online playground, they’re as pliable as play-doh. The photo is of an article I came across in Granada a few months ago. It was about a survey done in Spain looking at the amount of time kids were spending online. It says ‘Why are we not able to disconnect?’ It argued that many kids were spending way too much time online and that this was unhealthy. To what extent is this true? Are we spending too much time online? How real are people’s online persona? Is there a danger that by spending more and more time online we are eroding our real identity and existence? On the whole my interactions with people online have been great. As I have said before I have got to know people better online and met new people who I later met in real life. However, I have also had some strange encounters. For example there was a guy on fb who suddenly started liking and commenting on every single thing I posted. I began to worry that he was cyber stalking me and thought about de-friending him but didn’t have the heart. So I just ignored him and eventually he stopped. A more sinister encounter was a guy on Google chat. He started saying that he loved me and wanted to marry me. And then said that he wanted to send me a package of money to pass onto a friend, as he couldn’t send the money through normal channels. I won’t go into the details, as it is too complicated. Needless to say I decided there was something very dodgy going on, so I broke off communication with him. I guess a few strange connections are to be expected and we just have to be wary and on the look out for anything odd. And I am not even going to mention  my very strange interaction with a girl in Second Life!! We also need to be careful how we portray ourselves online; too much information can be a bad thing and I know that is a strange thing to say from someone who is generally so open online! Would welcome your comments and any experiences you have had.

I was recently asked by Panos Vlachopoulos to answer the following questions. Here are my responses would be interested to here other people’s views. 1. What would you consider the top 3 challenges that the Higher Education sector faces in your country? The top challenge for me is helping teachers make effective use of new technologies. They are confused by the plethora of possibilities and lack the necessary digital literacy skills to harness the affordances of new technologies. In relation to this then designing for learning is the key challenge facing education. Learning design has emerged as a new research field in the last ten years or so to address this. In general the lack of digital literacy skills is an issue for both learners and teachers. Jenkins lists 11, which he argues are needed to be part of today’s ‘participatory culture’. I would add an additional one on creativity. For formal educational institutions there is an issue in terms of new emergent business models, which are challenging the standard educational model of formal courses with accreditation. Examples include the peer-to-peer university, the OER University and MOOCs. In a world where resources and expertise are increasingly freely available what is the role for a traditional institution? I think we are beginning to see a disaggregation of learning, so that in the future many learners will opt to pay for particular things rather than take a full course. They may for example pay for high quality resource, which are kitemarked in some way, or they may pay to have a guided learning pathway or some structured form of support. Finally, they may choose to learn through free resources and then pay to be formally accredited. 2. Do you see any value of the OER (Open Educational Resources) movement in trying to address any of the challenges? Yes I think OER have an important role to play, this is something we explored in the OPAL initiative where we derived a set of practices around the creation and use of OER, which we then translated into guidelines for learners, teachers, institutional managers and policy makers. The guidelines can be used to first benchmark existing OER practice and then create a roadmap and implementation plan for future development. So those were my answers, Panos has collected a whole set of responses online.

  So it has been bid mania time again, writing proposals for the Lifelong Learning programme. So I thought it would be useful to write down some of my experiences and tips and hints for successful bid writing! Get a good strong consortium together, which has the necessary expertise to cover the different elements of the bid. Finding the right partners can take a lot of time and legwork. A good place to find potential partners is at conferences. Use conferences as a means of networking and getting to know people, which you can later call on to be bid partners. Ensure that you like the people you are working with! Sounds trivial but it is not! You will be spending a lot of time with them if the bid is successful and also it is much easier to work through conflicts during the project if you have mutual respect and trust. Make sure you have a good idea and a clear elevator pitch! If you can explain the idea to someone else in a few sentences and they say ‘that sounds good’ then that is half the battle. Try to think up a catchy acronym and one, if possible, that is unique Make sure you have a clear and pragmatic work programme and set of work packages. Always ensure you include: project management, evaluation and dissemination Show how the project builds on your previous projects and research Ensure that the budget is realistic and that adequate resources are allocated to the work activities Spread the management of the work packages across the consortium members Demonstrate how the project will contribute to knowledge and indicate how it will have impact Include indicators of success Have clear evaluation criteria, both for any trials being undertaken and for evaluation of the overall success of the project Try and be quantitative; for example how many participants will be involved with or affected by the project Be creative in terms of dissemination; in addition to conferences and publications, show how you will use social media Make sure the project proposal is well written, structured and that arguments are clearly backed up by relevant research literature (this also shows that you are knowledgeable about the field) Include clear statements about the expertise of each partner Make sure you have very clear aims and objectives and ensure that these map to the programme of work Include clear milestones and deliverables at key points in the project Make reference to the proposal call and show how your bid meets the criteria set out in the call Try and do as much as you can in advance, but be realistic; no matter how well prepared you are these things are invariably last minute so make sure you clear your diary as much as possible as the deadline approaches Get to know your research support office, their involvement is vital, get them in the loop with the bid as early as possible and keep them up to date

Jim Devine and Deborah Arnold  On the 4th-5th March I attended the Grand Challenge for Digital Jobs conference in Brussels. There were an interesting mix of attendees from both education and the IT industry. The focus was on how to address the issue of increasing e-skills and filling the gaps in IT jobs across Europe. The aim is to build on the conference to create a grand coalition of multiple stakeholders to address these issues and to create a roadmap for taking this forward.  Lészló Ancher argued that there were five key themes or challenges:  Training Transnational mobility Accreditation Awareness raising Innovative learning and teaching Richard Straub argued that the need for ICT skills has become pervasive and is a key issue for Europe. In addition, we need to develop Business skills in young people and enable them to become entrepreneurs. Tapio Koskinen focused on the educational aspects, arguing that we need to make use of the potential of ICT. He highlighted in particular the potential role of games and games design. He estimated that 90% of teachers need to develop a better understanding of ICT and how it can be harnessed for learning. He mentioned the ‘opening up education’ initiative as an important mechanism of achieving this, along with harnessing the power of social and participatory media. The E-Competence Framework (ECF) was mentioned a lot as an important catalyst and a means of achieving a common dialogue across Europe. For me the teacher voice was a little lost. I think they are a fundamental stakeholder in all of this. How can we embrace the teacher community? Many teachers feel that their expertise is being undermined by technology and they lack the necessary digital literacy skills to be able to harness the power of technologies. We need to provide them with the tools to do this. It was good to get the chance to hear the president of the EU commission speak. José Manual Barroso’s talk focused on the issue of the rise of unemployment across Europe and the lack of digital skills. He suggested that there are three key issues: Economic and social time bomb, social exclusion and poverty and the brain drain. He stated that the number of digital jobs is growing by 3% each year and that we do not have people with the skills to do these jobs. How can be address this and bridge the gap? He argued that we need to invest in ICT training in a much more coherent way, by bringing stakeholders from education and the IT industry together. Richard Burton (the Irish minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation) gave a passionate speech. I particularly liked his concept of the need for the democratization of entrepreneurship. He argued that the IT industry had a poor image, dominated by Geeks, with only 1 in 5 jobs held by woman. He suggested that we need to bring work experience into the curriculum and give students a better idea of what working in the IT industry would be like. He said that Ireland was leading the way on this, and has put an emphasis on the IT sector, with a particular emphasis on conversion courses. Neelie Kroes (Commissioner for the Digital Agenda) used a metro metaphor, ‘Fill the Gap’. She listed five key issues   Employment Education and learning The digital agenda E-skills Mobility Means of tackling this included:   ICT training New learning approaches Awareness raising Mobility Certification It was a good conference, lots of food for thought. It will be interesting to see how this is taken forward in the coming months.

It was good to catch up with Riina Vuorikari earlier this week in Brussels. She gave me a copy of an interesting booklet called ‘Teacher Networks’.  It focuses on the ways in which teachers are now harnessing the power of social media. The booklet starts with a quote from Derrick de Kerckhove: ‘It’s all about connected intelligence’. Teacher networks are defined as: Learning networks technology-supported communities through which learners share knowledge with each other and jointly develop new knowledge. The ultimate aim is to improve the quality of teaching and enhance the learner experience. The booklet describes the Teachers’ Lifelong Learning Networks (Telnet) project, which aimed to identify the main structures and mechanisms that are effective in sharing practices and encouraging innovation and creativity amongst teachers. Chapter 2 outlines the main trends and drivers for educational change. This includes:  The changing role of the teacher as a result of new technologies. In particular as learning becomes more personalised, the notion of the one-size-fits-all method of teaching is outdated. Teacher training. Teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills to harness the potential of new technologies and need support and professional development to develop these. Teachers need to experience a wide range of different learning environments. Teacher networks. New media provide a mechanism for teachers to network with other teachers globally. 21st Century skills. New skills are needed as a result of the potential of new technologies The role of schools. We need to think beyond formal education, to learning anywhere, anytime. Formal and informal learning. With the emergence of innovative technologies, learning is no longer confined to the classroom. Technology innovation and widespread use of technologies. Social media and tablet technologies provide a plethora of ways in which teachers and learners can communicate and interact. Data protection, data privacy and trust in networks. Data protection regulates control over how personal data as a commodity is exploited by third parties. Privacy is the right of the individual to be oneself, undisturbed and unobserved.  Five scenarios of the future are described: eNet European Education Network, with a focus on expansion of the eTwinning initiative MyNetwork, exploring user-centred social networking Intelligent agents, adopting a technology-focused approach Diversified teaching career, shifting to autonomous learning and teachers as mentors Informal learning camps, promoting bottom-up peer learning. The booklet is available online, well worth a look.

So I have just signed up for Martin Weller’s Open Education course. The main reason I wanted to join was to experience being part of this kind of ‘open course’ from a learner’s perspective. I have been involved in a number of MOOCs, but on the delivery side of things. Also ‘openness’ is a topic that I am really interested in and I am involved in a number of research projects to do with Open Educational Resources, Learning Design etc. I am also interested in how more open practices are changing the nature of research and the concept of the digital scholar, which I am sure Martin will cover at some point in the course. It will be interesting to see the extent to which there is participation between those enrolled on the course and the level of interaction.  Whether or not I can really invest 16 hours a week to this is perhaps a tad delusional, but we will see.

Simon Walker from Greenwich University mentioned this interesting report in the OLDS Google Hangout today. Entitled ‘An avalanche is coming’ the report critiques the current and future impact of more open practices and in particular MOOCs on traditional educational offerings. These are a few of the highlights from the exec summary. Just as we’ve seen the forces of technology and globalisation transform sectors such as media and communications or banking and finance over the last two decades, these forces may now transform higher education. The fundamental question in An Avalanche is Coming is whether a university education is a good preparation for working life and citizenship in the 21st century or, more precisely, whether it will continue to be seen as good value, given the remorseless rise in the cost of a university education over recent decades. Certainly there are challenges ahead, but surely also opportunities for those bold enough to seize them. The potential unbundling is a certainly a threat, but those who rebundle well will find they have reinvented higher education for the 21st century. This is an important and timely report, tackling one of the key challenges facing education today. I think that the future landscape of education is going to look fundamentally different, as alternative business model challenge traditional approaches.   

The second call for papers for the ECEL 2013 conference to be held on  30-31 October in Sophia Antipolis, France is now out. In addition to the main conference topics, the advisory group invite submissions to the following mini tracks: Life Long Learning Institutional change and e-learning innovation Tools for eLearning design and evaluation E-learning and knowledge production: a futurist perspective Social Media Integration to Improve Educational Outcomes for Diverse Learners Video conferencing in teaching and learning

Some days you are on a roll, others you can’t concentrate. Today I have definitely been ‘in the flow’. So far I have added comments to a paper on our X-Delia project, corrected proofs for a paper and a chapter, addressed reviewers’ comment on a chapter in a forthcoming National Teaching Fellowship book and blogged about the forthcoming ECEL conference. Csíkszentmihályi defined the concept. In essence it can be defined as follows:  Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. It can occur across a range of activities: swimming, playing video games, walking, etc. I think it is particular relevant to describing the way in which academics work and more particularly how we write. My writing style is pretty much a stream of consciousness; I am lucky enough to be able to write a lot quickly. The downside of this is that the writing usually then needs a lot of editing. For example, I found with my last book, Designing for Learning in an Open World, that it took me 3 or 4 times as long to edit the book, as it did to write it! I don’t know how others go about writing, but this pretty much sums up my approach:   I will mull ideas around in my head (for example I have been thinking on and off about writing this blog post for a while). I might do this whilst driving to work, cooking or when I am wandering around the house. Sometimes ideas come to me in the middle of the night, I try and get up and write down the main points, so that I don’t forget them in the morning Then there is the process of the first draft. I find it essential to be alone when doing this, somewhere quiet. My favourite place to write is in the kitchen, which is nice and sunny. I don’t write a structure for the piece, I just let the ideas emerge. This is the stage where flow really comes in, total concentration and immersion in what I am doing, to the extent that I don’t even have a sense of the time involved. Once I have something down it is then a process of re-gigging, moving things around, supporting arguments with references (I find Endnote invaluable for doing this). I am very much a visual person, so I like to support my ideas with illustrations where possible. Often my writing emerges from initial ideas developed for keynotes or talks I have given. Once I have a reasonable draft I tend to put the article aside for a little, so that I can then come back to it afresh. I find I need to print out and read the near final version, to iron out any last minute problems or mistakes.  There are six main components of flow:   Intense and focused concentration on the present moment - i.e. for me being totally focused on what I am writing. Merging of action and awareness - putting my ideas down on ‘paper’ thinking of both the text I am writing at that moment and the overall focus of the piece. A loss of reflective self-consciousness - being totally unaware of my surroundings. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity - I love seeing the ideas develop and crystalise into something meaningful. After a particular fruitful brainstormings session with my team around the concept of our 7Cs of Learning Design framework, I found I had to write a summary of what we had discussed to enable me to capture the key points and I posted this as a blog post. A visual representation of the framework was a key aspect of this. A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered - time definitely takes on a new meaning when you are ‘in the flow’ hours can feel like minutes. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience - translating ideas into writings is one of the highlights of being an academic for me. I was amazed to see my recent book come out in print. To see my ideas in black and white, to flick through the colour illustrations. So those are my thoughts on how I see flow and its role in my writings as an academic. I would be interested to hear other peoples’ ideas, whether they have similar experiences or whether they write in a different way.    

Creativity is a key facet of being an academic. Research is about investigating a problem or a real-life phenomenon; interpreting the data to make new meaning. Sometimes it involves relating this to a theoretical framework, like Activity Theory, other times it is simply about making sense of what the data is telling you. Jenkin’s (2009) lists 11 digital literacy skills that he argues are needed to be part of today’s participatory culture; I would add creativity to this list. But what is creativity? It is derived from the Latin ‘creo’, meaning to create/make. It is about creating something new (physical artefact or concept) that is novel and valuable. It is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, partners, relationships and create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations. For me it is an essential skill to deal with today’s complex, fast and changing society. Furthermore, discourse and collaboration are mediated through a range of social and participatory media. There are four main aspects of creativity: Process: mechanisms needed for creative thinking Product: measuring creativity in people Person: general intellectual habits (openness, ideas of ideation, autonomy, expertise, exploratory and behavioural) Place: best circumstances to enable creativity to flourish And five main stages:  Preparation: identifying the problem Incubation: internalisation of the problem Intimation: getting a feeling for a solution        Illumination: creativity bursts forth Verification: idea is consciously verified, elaborated and applied The illumination stage is key for me. I often find when I am trying to interpret data or trying to develop a new framework that I need to leave the idea mulling around in my head for a while and then a breakthrough suddenly occurs, often in the middle of the night. I don’t know the Physiological basis for this, I guess it is just that you have to let the idea fallow for a while and sub-consciously your brain slowly starts to piece things together. Alan Cann has provided a nice link to an article on the creative brain. Verification is also really important, new ideas or concepts only have validity if others buy into them and can see their value. Take Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998), for example, the concept took off like wildfire in the education community, precisely because it represented a good way of describing communities, and, in particular, online communities. Technologies can promote creativity in new and innovative ways. For example, by enabling new forms of discourse, collaboration and co-operation, and providing ways in which individuals can access and repurpose knowledge in different forms of representation. Social media provide a rich plethora of ways in which individuals can communicate and collaborate, and the sheer scale of our social networks allows for unprecedented aggregation and scale - knowledge is both distributed and collective. I recently experienced this when I was co-writing the conclusion chapter for the second edition of Helen Beetham and Rhona Shapre’s ‘Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age’ book (Beetham and Sharpe 2007). Helen and Rhona brought a small group of us together for a face-to-face workshop. They had already put a draft of the chapter online and had invited the community to add their thoughts. In the workshop we brainstormed ideas for the chapter and then worked in pairs for 40 minutes solid to work up a number of themes. I worked with Chris Pegler on the notion of openness. It was amazing what we produced and felt like a really creative process. I think collectively we wrote about 8000 words! Helen and Rhona then took this text and the online version and created a coherent narrative. Although a little far fetched, I think there is an analogy with the theme of the film, limitless. The central character is a writer with writer’s block. He takes this pill which means he is able to unlock everything he has ever thought or encountered. So if he has watched a Spanish film he is fluent in Spanish; picking up new skills is a breeze. In many ways I think the vast wealth of knowledge we have access to via the Internet and the distributed connected community of peers we are part of, means that we truly now have what Salomon called ‘distributed cognition’ (Salomon 1993). We are our networks. We are what Perkin’s describes as ‘person plus’.  References Beetham, H. and R. Sharpe (2007). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital age: Designing and Delivering E-Learning, Routledge %@ 0415408741 %7 New edition.            Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century, Mit Pr. Salomon, G., Ed. (1993). Distributed cognitions - psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.            Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.                

http://www.flickr.com/photos/remediatethis/2677276377/ As a follow up to my post on creativity I’ve had a couple of other thoughts. Firstly, that the research assessment exercise in the UK is killing creativity. It is driven by outdated notions of what constitutes ‘good’ research. It is dominated by an over emphasis on high impact journals and takes little or no account of alternative forms of publishing, such as blogs. As part of the last RAE I agreed to read all the papers submitted by the CREET research group at the OU, to assess whether each paperwas a 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4. It was an incredibly difficult exercise for a number of reasons. How can you compare a ‘solid’ empirically based paper with one, which is about developing new ideas and concepts? If I didn’t like the research topic (and I am not going to say which ones I don’t like) then I was biased against the paper. Similarly, if I knew the area really well I might be more prone to favour it, or, ironically, not favour it if the views were different from my own. Secondly, a game I often play with Mark Brown (from Massey University) is "Who do we rate (and not rate) in our field’? Tee hee. What is interesting is that although I admire the work of a lot of people there are very, very few people that are up there with the likes of Vygotsky, whose work was truly inspirational. What constitutes greatness is someone who fundamentally changes things, contributes something genuinely new. Not many of us can say that I fear.

I have just collated a list of my recent activities for my line manager and thought it might be interesting to share. It’s a real eclectic mix of activities - on the research side: from writing, to bids, to presentations, in terms of teaching working on our new MSc and doing PhD supervisions! March Final proofs for a chapter on learning design tools in Sharpe and Beetham’s second edition of ‘Rethinking pedagogy; Addressed reviewers’ comments on a chapter on learning design in a forthcoming NTF book  Confirmation that a workshop submitted to the EDEN conference in Oslo in June (with Mike Keppell) on learning design and learning spaces accepted  Online METIS project meeting  Final proofs for a chapter on ‘Social exclusion or inclusion—the implications of social and participatory media on education’ as a follow up to a keynote given in Australia February 2011  Final proofs for a chapter with Sandra Will (Wollongong University, Australia) on Cloudworks for the journal Educational Multimedia International as a follow up to a paper given at the ICEM conference in Cyprus in September 2012  Contributed to a joint paper with folk from the OU on our EU-funded XDelia project. Target is to submit to Computers and Education  4-5th March attended an invite only EU meeting in Brussels ‘Grand coalition for digital jobs’   Chaired a TEL SIG on MOOCs  Interviewed for the EU-funded HOTEL project on emergent technologies for learning  Webinar on OER as part of Open Education week FP7 bid on social badges FP7 bid TemLA on Learning Analytics February  Slides for the VC on innovations in learning and teaching at Leicester   Online METIS meeting    7 bids submitted to the lifelong learning EU call    2-day PhD research workshop    Online POERUP meeting   Film for Denise Sweeny on ‘Getting published’ and ‘Open access’   PhD viva Lancaster   OER Webinar for Alistair Creelman in Sweden   PhD viva Manchester January Article for the VC’s column in the Mercury on learning design Conole, G. (2013), Harnessing new media, pedagogical innovation and new approaches to design, 25th January 2013, E-Learning Symposium, University of Southampton. Conole, G. (2013), What is innovative teaching?, 23rd January 2013, Royal Holloway Conole, G. (2013), New ecologies and trajectories of learning, 15th January 2013, E-learning: teaching reconsidered conference, Athens. 4 bids submitted to the EU Erasmus call EU-funded METIS learning design meeting in Valladolid, Spain PhD viva Porto, Portugal E-learning papers journal online meeting (on editorial board) EDEN exec meeting (on the board) in Brussels Launch of INNOQUAL new journal (one of three editors in chief) EFQUEL editorial board online Online METIS meeting Other   PhD supervision sessions Bernard, Dina, Natalia, Marion Design and delivery of Week 3 and 8 of the OULDS MOOC on learning design (over 1,700 people registered) Discussions re 8 potential workshop to be delivered in Singapore (learning design, OER, social media, mobile learning, virtual worlds, augmented reality, gamification and e-pedagogies) Discussions  about some workshops we might run for a client Discussions about some learning design workshops and support to convert materials to an online format 22 blog posts (January - March) http://e4innovation.com  Addressing panel’s comments on the MSc documentation Working with Terese Bird on launch of presence on iTunesU

Finally, finally…. It has taken a long time but we are now live on iTunesU, all thanks to Terese Bird - the phrase dog with a bone comes to mind Terese did some research to find out what other institutions’ experiences were of going on iTunesU. The OU, not surprisingly, adopted a very centrally controlled approach, with strict quality assurance processes. They found that the benefits of going on iTunesU were twofold. Firstly, it got them recognition in North America. Secondly, it resulted in learners signing up to do OU courses, having sampled the tasters on iTunesU. Nottingham and Oxford adopted more of a peer-reviewed approach. The powers that be at Leicester required some persuading…. They wanted assurances that the quality of the materials would be good and that the materials would need to be Leicester branded. We having been working with academics and marketing for some time to review potential content. The launch is timely given the recent discovery of Richard III and there are some nice videos on the site on this. So have a look, feedback welcome!

The annual Horizon reports list the key technologies that are likely to have a significant impact in Education in one, three and five years’ time.  The MATEL (Mapping and Analysing Perspective Technologies for Learning) study provides a good evidence-based survey of key technologies. The study undertook a survey across schools, tertiary education, the adult learning community and the VET sector and validated the findings with an expert consultation group in the Autumn.  The study aimed to: get a better understanding of how technologies that are expected to play a decisive role in shaping future learning strategies will evolve in the short -medium term (5-10 years from now); understand how the market of such technologies is expected to develop and identify a set of strategies and actions to promote promising technologies, encourage implementation and ensure effective and inclusive deployment in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments. Not surprisingly perhaps, social media, mobile technologies and Open Educational Resources featured highly in the results. What was interesting was the lack of much mention of the role of Virtual Worlds, despite the original hype on the role these might play in Education; interest appears to have dropped off significantly. 

The METIS project has three main objectives: To develop an Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE). The ILDE will integrate existing free and open source solutions that include: co-design support for communities of practitioners; learning design authoring tools following different pedagogical approaches and authoring experiences; interface for deployment of learning designs on mainstream Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). To run a series of workshops for teachers at partner institutions using ILDE. The workshops will be aimed at fostering the adoption of learning design methods among teachers and advancing their skills in the orchestration of ICT-based learning environments according to innovative pedagogical approaches. The ILDE will play a central role in the workshops, because one of workshop goals will be to support teachers’ familiarization with the ILDE and to promote the usage of the authoring tools integrated in it. To disseminate the project’s outcomes and maintain a community of teachers engaged with learning design and its tools. Work Package 5 of the METIS project is concerned with evaluation. This work package is led by Istitulo Tecnologie Didattiche (ITD), in collaboration with other partners. METIS is adopting a user-centred design approach: the development of both the ILDE and the workshops will be cyclic, with two evaluation phases informed by practice. These two evaluation phases, nested within the four cycles of the METIS project development, will incrementally incorporate the needs expressed by end users for both the ILDE and the workshops. The workshops are the basis for the formative evaluation of the different versions of the ILDE and of the workshop packs themselves. Thus evaluation will play a crucial role in the project, will occur in an iterative way and will be formative, i.e. aimed at informing the following stages of re-design and development. Section 1 provides an overview of the role of the evaluation. Section 2 provides a clear definition of what is meant by evaluation, with arguments being made backed up by relevant research literature. The approach adopted draws on Guskey (2002) definition; i.e. that ‘evaluation is "the systematic investigation of merit or worth" (Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, 1994, p. 3). It goes on to state that: … evaluation in METIS will be mainly oriented to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of both the ILDE and the workshop package and to find useful indications to further tune and improve them, so we can state that our evaluation will primarily have formative aims.  Section 3 concentrates on the ILDE. Theoretically the focus is on user’s acceptance of technology, based around the follow factors: Attitude Toward Behavior Subjective Norm Perceived Usefulness Perceived Ease of Use Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic Motivation Job-fit Long-term Consequences Social Factors Relative Advantage Voluntariness of Use Image Visibility Performance Expectancy Effort Expectancy Social Influence The section then outlines six theoretical models in relation to technology acceptance: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Motivational Model (MM) Model of PC Utilization (MPCU) Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) Having reviewed these the Technology Acceptance Model was chosen; Section 3.2 provides a clear rationale for the choice.  Section 4 describes the approach adopted to the evaluation of the workshops. It states that there are two approaches to this: objective/goal-based models and systems-based models, and lists the follow models: Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels Hamblin’s 5 levels Guskey’s 5 levels Tyler’s model Hammond’s model CIPP (Context, Input, Process, Product) IPO (Input, Process, Output) TVS (Training Valuation System) Having examined the models, the team selected the Guskey’s model as the main source of inspiration for the evaluation of the METIS workshop packages, as this model seems to offer the closest fit with the project requirements. Using this the following aspects are listed: participants’ reactions, participants’ learning, organization support and change, participants’ use of new knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes. Section 5 states that: In METIS the evaluation of both the ILDE and the workshops will be conceived and designed by a team of researchers of ITD-CNR, and then carried out with the support of all the METIS partners and particularly those partners who will design and run the workshops (UKOU, KEK and Agorà + ULeicester as WP4 responsible), as well as the partner who is developing the ILDE (UBa and all WP2 partners). ITD-CNR is not involved in the development of the system and the workshops, except for what attained to its role of formative evaluator. Section 6 provides a discussion of the critical issues associated with the evaluation and in particular the fact that the evaluation will occur in real contexts. Section 7 provides a conclusion for the report and next steps. The document provides a clear and methodologically robust outline of the evaluation plan. It makes a clear rationale for the approach adopted for the evaluation of both the ILDE and the workshops. The report draws on a range of theoretical models associated with users’ acceptance of technology and uses this to develop a robust and thorough evaluation plan. Clear timescales and milestones are indicated, along with a critical discussion of any anticipated issues associated with the evaluation. References Guskey, T. R. (2000). Evaluating professional development. Corwin Press, Inc. Thousand Oaks, California. Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 8(3), 381-391. Venkatesh, V., and Davis, F. D. (2000). A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies. Management Science (45:2), pp. 186-204. Venkatesh, V., Morris, M. G., Davis, G. B., and Davis, F. D. (2003). User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View. MIS Quarterly (27:3), pp. 425-478. Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y., Xin, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. MIS Quarterly (36:1), pp. 157-178.      

An interesting new e-book has just been announced, providing a summary of the JISC/HEA funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. It provides an overview of the three phases of the programme and discusses the key issues and lessons learnt, which were: open content and open practices, OER re-use and repurposing, open is multidimensional, is use good enough?, what we do and don’t know about use, learners and OER, and libre vs. gratis OER. There are chapters devoted to resource management, resource description, and licensing and attribution.  

  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) seem to be the flavour of the month at the moment. Following on from Coursera https://www.coursera.org/ the Open University UK recently announced the launch of Futurelearn http://futurelearn.com/ (Leicester recently signed up) and the most recent addition is a new Australian MOOC platform from the Open University Australia http://theconversation.com/the-aussie-coursera-a-new-homegrown-mooc-platform-arrives-12949  The jury is out on whether or not MOOCs are a good thing. I took part in ‘The great MOOC debate at Ascilite in November. The recordings are available online. Given all the interest in MOOCs I thought it was be useful to collate here some of the articles on MOOCs. The positives associated with MOOCs are that they are free and hence promote social inclusion to those who can’t afford formal education. UNESCO estimate that there are more than 100 million people who can’t afford formal education. MOOCs also promote connectivist learning, enabling participants to harness the power of social media for learning. The negatives are that many are skeptical about the rational behind MOOCs; arguing that it is more about learning income that learning outcomes and that they are little more than a shop window for institutions - i.e. a marketing tool. Rita Kopp wrote a nice article on the evaluation of one of the earliest MOOCs on Connectivism She argued that: Self-directed learning on open online networks is now a possibility as communication and resources can be combined to create learning environments. But is it really? There are some challenges that might prevent learners from having a quality learning experience. This paper raises questions on levels of learner autonomy, presence, and critical literacies required in active connectivist learning. There is a nice scoopit space on MOOCs. Other articles include:    http://juandoming.sharedby.co/share/8G5rwz http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/how-could-cmoocs-be-designed-and-incorporated-under-an-institutional-framework/  http://competence.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/how-moocs-change-the-world-do-they-starting-a-list-of-myths-about-moocs/ http://www.rsc-scotland.org/curriculum/what-is-a-mooc-anyway/ And there are currently two call outs for special issues on MOOCs:  http://www.elearningeuropa.info/mt/node/123696 http://unescochair-elearning.uoc.edu/blog/2012/10/17/merlot-special-issue-massive-open-online-courses-moocs/  

I’m in a POERUP project meeting in Nottingham. We have a packed agenda of things to talk about. I’ll provide a summary of some of the key points in this blog post. Firstly, we began by discussing channels of communication; EDEN, Online Educa and the Media and Learning conferences were all suggested as potential avenues. Ming Nie from Leicester provided an overview of the work she has led on in terms of the country reports, 11 detailed country reports and 15 mini-reports have been collated and an impressive inventory of 300 plus international OER initiatives. Bieke Schreurs, from OUNL, provided an overview of the methodology we are planning to adopt for 7 in-depth case studies of OER communities. The research questions include: How are the user networks behind OER initiatives structured? Do users of the same online community networks’ size and density differ, in terms of: their role in the community, their educational level and their level of digital literacy? What do users share around the use of digital learning materials? What kind of activities do they develop within the network? We are also interested in developing an OER community typology, in terms of what kinds of communities exist around OER initiatives? Social Network Analysis (SNA) will be used as a means of understanding the nature and dynamics of the communities. Data will be collected via an online survey and a series of interviews. We are interested in three types of stakeholders: community organisers, community members and learners. 

This blog post summarises some of the key findings from the VISCED project  on virtual schools and colleges. The report states that these provide important alternative for learners who are not able to participate in face-to-face education. The report defines virtual schools and colleges as Institutions that teach courses entirely or primarily online. 70 have been identified across 17 countries in Europe. The report summarises 8 case studies: Bednet in Belgium  InterHigh in Wales  Ensino a Distancia para a Itineráncia in Portugal  iScoil in Ireland   Nettilukio - Otava Folk High School in Finland  Sofia Distans in Sweden  Rigas Talmacibas Vidusskola in Latvia  Wereldschool in the Netherlands Analysis of the case studies identified the follow success factors: Usability of the system, which supports students, teachers and others involved Extent to which a clear e-learning strategy is in place Appropriateness of recruitment and training policies Extent to which regular evaluation is in place Robust and reliable technical infrastructure Strong leadership skills and competences Strong emphasis on learning outcomes Availability of appropriate learning resources Clarity of the organisational system underpinning the operation of the school or college

One of the main deliverables to date for our POERUP project  is a set of country reports on OER initiatives. The table above shows the countries included. This blog post provides a summary of some of the key findings: Kuwait General: substantial e-learning and not only from Arab Open University. Schools: none found. HE: e-learning active, no OER found. CPD: Open Knowledge Zone. OA: Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Qatar: General: Qatar National e-Learning Portal  within ICTQatar context.Schools: none found. HE: some e-learning including from non-Qatar providers but no OER. Oman: General: eOman portal with focus on Knowledge Society. Schools: early e-learning activity, some content being developed. HE: Branch of Arab OU and some other early e-learning. Thailand: Schools: significant e-learning (not OER): virtual schooling, TV as well as internet. HE: substantial e-learning in HE e.g. at Ramkamhaeng University. HE: OER initiatives at: Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University and Thailand Cyber University consortium (TCU). Chulalongkorn University (part of OCW) UK: JISC/HEA OER Programme: Overall funding of more than GPB 13 million from 2009 until the Programme ended in 2012. Massive amount of OER covering a variety of subjects released. SCORE: Support Centre for Open Resources in Education. Provided support to OER-related activities, events, and service until closure in July 2012. France: Digital universities (7 thematic digital universities in 2012, 23,000 resources (video, courses, exercises, MCQ), not all resources are OERs. Other OER initiatives (MOOC ItyPA: first French-speaking MOOC, SILLAGES initiative: multimedia educational contents as OER, preparing students for entrance examination and Exo7: an online math exercises sites for HE students). Romania: OER in government programme (The Government Programme for 2013-16: support the innovative integration of Web2.0 and OER in education). OER in educational policies (The public policies for ICT integration in the pre-university system: promotion the use of open/free resources; development and sharing of resources by teachers). Poland: Digital School Programme (Government investment of Euro 13 million Schools will be computerized and educational materials will be produced and released in CC BY 3.0 licence). No significant OER activities in HE. Australia: Open government (AusGOAL). Free for Education (FFE) movement.  OER for schools: National Digital Learning Resource Network, Scootle. OER for HE: A university consortium to develop an OER protocol; The Australasian Council on Open, Distance and E-learning to promote the uptake of OER; USQ has a formal OER strategy, and joined OCW and OERu, Netherlands: OER available from both educational institutions as from cultural heritage and public broadcast. National program Wikiwijs (Mainstream OER in all educational sectors). HE uptake of interest caused by MOOCs. Some disciplines strong initiatives (Medical education (HE) and Green education (Sec. ed to university). Belgium: National (Klascement, Content for special (needs) education). Leuven University (Ariadne, Cultural studies). Italy: National (Only books with a digital version available are to be adopted. Oilproject (2004): 2200 lessons and 10K students). Regional (Trio Toscane (only free availability, no OER), Several institutional OER projects (HE), Survey 2009 revealed the common problems preventing an uptake of OER (a.o. distrust, no culture of sharing, lack of funding)). Greece: OER activities through all educational sectors. Several OA repositories and an OA harvester. National (Digital school: all textbooks of all educational sectors (e-books)), No institutional initiatives. Mexico: National programmes - e-Mexico (Telesecundaria - providing learning materials for 800,000 students and 23,000 teachers. Edusat - Educational Satellite Television Network - 6 tv, 24 audio channels reaches over 10,000 schools with a total of 20,000 receivers). OER in HE- small but growing (Temoa, developed by ITESM: is a specialized search engine that enables the educational community to search a public bilingual catalogue of Open Educational Resources, to find those educational resources and materials that best meet their needs for teaching). Argentia: National programmes: (Virtual Campus of Public Health available to the public health community - any professional can use it to support his activity and can participate in the virtual classroom, see learning objects, create courses, presentations, or videos (using Moodle Elluminate, MyMLE-Moodle Móvil and eXelearning), and add them to the Campus). OER in HE - Oportunidad Project (Strengthening and sustaining the EU-LA Common Higher Education Area, through a bottom-up approach, by the increasing use of open educational practices and resources (OEP & OER)). Spain: List of 78 OA initiatives identified (3 modes - Open Access contents on the Internet but authors’ rights honoured, Mixed OA and OER, enabling either the use of copyright, or the use of Creative Commons licenses). OER initiatives using only Creative Commons license. International level (Universia network of 1,1000 Universities located in 15 countries, 10.1 million students, 8 million users and 850,000 university teaching staff, Spain plus Latin American nations. OCW started by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in 2008, 21 universities now offer OCW in Castillian, but also in Catalan, Galician and English). Portugal: National programmes: (Portal das Escolas: repository of digital contents for teachers and that offers over a thousand digital educational resources - texts, images, videos or music and blogs. Teachers in public education up to 12th grade can upload educational resources into this repository. OER in HE (Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal - used freely by all the scientific and higher education institutions for hosting their repositories, thus integrating them into a coherent system of scientific metadata open access repositories in the country). South Africa: OER policies (The Department of Higher Education and Training has included the development of an Open and Distance Learning (ODL) policy framework in its strategic plan for 2010-2014, which will include OER).Teacher education (All educational resources developed through funded projects must be released under a CC licence). Regional cooperation (The Southern African Development Community is developing an ODL policy and strategic plan for sharing learning materials). Canada: National policy initiatives not possible. Open access policies: Athabasca University, Universities of Ottawa & Toronto/OIS Provincial OER initiatives: BCcampus in British Columbia; Contact North in Ontario. OER initiatives at Athabasca, Manitoba, Thompson Rivers, Royal Roads, Capilano and OCAD Universities. Lack of public funding - a serious threat. New Zealand: National policy guidance (Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL)). Schools sector (OER portals via Wikieducator). Tertiary education (OARINZ: open access research repository (Ako Aotearoa website), OER university - 8 NZ institutions, Otago Polytechnic has an OER policy). Norway: General: strong development of e-learning. Schools: several initiatives including: Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, Norwegian Centre for Science Education, Ovttas: for Sami schools. HE: Not much except Universities of Oslo and Stavanger. Denmark: General: Significant e-learning but little distance learning. Schools: Some major initiatives: EMU - main public portal, Danish Public Broadcasting: "Academy", University of Copenhagen portal for schools. HE: A bit at Aarhus University. Sweden: General: substantial e-learning and distance learning in HE; and some virtual schools. Schools: a few including: Länkskafferiet, National Library of Sweden Open Access. HE: OERSverige and a similar one for South Sweden universities. Finland: Long history of e-learning but not massified. Years of good collaboration in EU projects. Schools Initiatives: LeMill, YLE, and Edu.fi. HE: seems to be not much though note Helsinki Metropolia University (AS) in OCW. Hungary: Strong in Open Access, quite strong in e-learning & distance learning, not in OER. Schools: OER activities in Sulinet. HE: activities under way at U Miskolc and Eötvös Loránd U. Grass-roots activities by students. US: General: massive deployment of e-L and DL across HE, colleges and schools (NB Re.ViCa, VISCED, Sloan-C, WCET reports). HQ/core of many OER-related organisations. Schools: Free textbook movement is key driver; but only one OER Virtual School? HE: OCW and the MOOCs, but lots more. Business models emerging faster for free/low-cost HE - UNow, UoPeople, Coursera, Ameritas, edX, US HEIs in OER U, WGU use of OER, etc. More information can be found on the POERUP wiki.