Season’s greetings one and all. As the Ed. tech team finish the washing up and recycle the wrapping paper (providing we’ve all been good this year), we take a little time out to reflect upon last year and predict what’s on the way for Educational Technology in 2015. In 2014, we predicted technology would enable collaborative activity in the learning environment, that mobile device usage would increase as access to resources became easier and  that data gathering and social media management would be key considerations for the University. We think we can be fairly confident that our crystal ball of learning technology is in good working order. Our projects and general support activity over 2014 would attest to our predictions and have seen these themes cropping up in conversation and strategy over the year. For 2015, we’re backing up our crystal ball gazing with some wider conversation and looking at what the New Media Consortium consider key trends within Ed. Tech. for Higher Education over the next few years. As with the Christmas Turkey/Vegetarian Option, we’ve taken our choice cuts and linked to a few places online, where the thinking and the talking is already happening. Fast Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in Higher Ed for the next one to two years The Evolution of Online LearningSuch a huge topic that we can’t really do it justice in one article. But increasing access to technology, huge investment into Ed Tech Startups and study into fields such as game mechanics in learning are changing the way in which we access learning material. In HE, conversation around the role and nature of the traditional, centralised Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) model has been bubbling away for a while (see this panel from ALT in 2009), but surfaced again this year in Audrey Watter’s talk, "Beyond the VLE" and Sheilla MacNeill who talks about first hand experience of living with the VLE dictator in HE. Higher Education presents all sorts of constraints in terms of management of data and interconnectivity between systems, so the VLE may be here to stay for a while longer, but maybe we start to think about it more as a starting point, curating learning material and signposting and guiding learners to and through it. Rethinking Learning SpacesTechnological development is also enabling us to rethink the physical as well as the online learning environment. Browser based applications like Google Apps (and their offline work mode) and Adobe’s experimentation in this direction mean that learners aren’t tied to desktops in dingy locations or relying on sketchy wi-fi provision. Google talk of Democratizing IT administration, in that a lot of the enterprise wide management of IT could be devolved to the learning and teaching community. This might allow for changes in space usage through things like DIY lecture capture using campus Hangouts On Air/Youtube. In terms of physical space, in her post on this year’s Ed Media Conference Amy Sampson talks about creative learning space in Finnish education and the ET team will be connecting with Cornish villages in pubs, village halls through the University of The Village Project. Mid-Range Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in Higher Ed for the next three to five years Increasing Focus on Open Educational ResourcesAccessible and freely available resources to aid learning, teaching and research . OER puts the web to work in the way that it was intended, encouraging redistribution and redevelopment/remixing of content. Whilst adoption hasn’t hit the mainstream, OER is becoming central to policy and strategy within education, as the Open/OER movement in Scotland and Wales testifies. In England, Leicester City Council are promoting OER through a range of resources and guides for schools Long-Range Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in Higher Ed for five or more years Agile Approaches to ChangeChange is the only constant, as someone might have said. HE is in a continuous state of flux as it responds to funding changes and external pressures from other educational providers and non-traditional models of learning. Process and procedure is often dogged, outmoded and not easily adaptable to change, but agile methodologies adopted from software development allow for iterative project development that can respond to the VUCA world. Falmouth’s Student Course Information Page project facilitated an agile response to a Student Experience audit and added a layer to the VLE that pulls in relevant course data from the various business systems at the University, avoiding document duplication in the Learning Environment. Solvable Challenges: Those which we both understand and know how to solve   Adequately Defining and Supporting Digital LiteracyOne of the key functions of the Ed.Tech team is to nurture and develop literacies in technology; the Why, When, Where of technology use in the learning environment. De Montfort University and Leicester City Council’s partnership in DigiLit Leicester presents an excellent framework and reference of for educators in understanding how we support these new literacies and Mozilla encourages an experiential approach in learning to Teach The Web. These are just a few examples of Educational Technology developments that are responding to current and upcoming trends, but there is some fantastic work being done across the board in HE. 2015’s Horizon report will arrive in the early new year and previous editions are available online for a little light reading over the festive period.

The Association of Learning Technology held their first annual Winter conference last month at the University of Edinburgh. The event focused on Creative CPD in Learning Technology, an area we’re passionate about in our team. Professional development can incorporate creative approaches so it was great to see ALT hold an event around this subject. ALT’s peer-based accreditation scheme CMALT was featured as one such approach to aid professional development. eLearning consultant David Hopkins has recently completed the CMALT qualification and gave a talk at the conference along with staff from UCL and Reading College.  Talks were streamed on the day and can be accessed using the links below.  CPD Rebooted - Creative Professional Development in Learning Technology AM CPD Rebooted - Creative Professional Development in Learning Technology PM

One of the fundamental affordances of web technology is the ability to connect with content at a time and in a place convenient to us and there are a wealth of online opportunities to learn more about how technology can support learning and teaching. Here’s an introduction to some of our favourites and some ideas for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in incorporating Educational Technology into teaching practice. Conferences/Events Many of the events that the team attend are relevant for all involved in learning and teaching. Some to note over the coming year are; BETT which looks at Educational Technology across schools, FE and HE, JISC’s Digifest15, the annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology and OER15 which focusses on Open Education. Courses There are also a huge range of self paced opportunities for professional development in the form of free and open courses, a great deal of which are listed over on the Open Culture website. ALT hosts an Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning each year for anyone working in or with an interest in Educational Technology. Connected Courses aims to join together open educators the world over and help them develop themselves and their teaching. Additionally, A big forking course looks at rhizomatic approaches towards learning, making use of P2PU’s ability to build a course in a box that others may reuse and remix as they see fit. Twitter  Deserving of it’s own heading, the international  educational community is huge on Twitter and it has widely been adopted as a tool for teaching and learning. Follow us @ET_Falmouth for regular updates from the team and if you are new to Twitter, get in touch to chat about it’s use in Education. Twitter lists are a handy way to manage your Educational Networks, you could create one with just Falmouth colleagues in for example, or with various educational news Twitter accounts. Another useful feature of Twitter is the hashtag, a way of tagging tweets that enable others to search for them. Often used for conferences and module codes in education, here are some that the team engage with: #LTHEchat - Learning Technology in Higher Ed. UK Weekly chat on a Weds eve. 8-9pm. #ALTC - Conference hashtag for ALT, used to signpost items of interest to other conference participants. #EdTech - Catch all hashtag for anything relating to Educational Technology. #edtechchat Weekly chat, hosted by US educators on Mondays 1-2am GMT #HEAenhancement hashtag for  the Higher Education Academy’s enhancement series of events #BYOD4L an open course in mobile device usage in learning and teaching, reconvening for 2015 on 12th Jan. Other online resources (blogs, sites) Using a news aggregator like Feedly, helps create as a one stop source for news via blogs or any site that has an RSS feed. Your first visit  should be to  Falmouth’s Educational Technology Team site and associated Blog and Projects site. If there’s something relating to Educational Technology that isn’t already here and  that you’ve seen somewhere else, we more than likely have an opinion on it, so come and chat to us. Sussex University’s TEL team blog is another great place to pick up tips and the following web resources all provide insights into working in learning and teaching developments with technology:   Hack Education Inside Higher Ed. Times Higher Ed. JISC Research In Learning Technology  Think Out Loud Club Google Apps for Education These links aren’t an exhaustive list and we will be adding a calendar of events to the ET site soon, so you can put dates in the diary. We’d welcome any feedback on other events and resources that people find useful, so email, tweet or drop in to the cottage for a cuppa whenever is convenient.

As a team we’re often asked to attend sessions and give an overview of Educational Technology and how it can be used to support teaching within higher education. Instead of diving straight in with gadgets and apps a good introduction to ed tech is to look at the learners themselves and their experiences. Students coming from FE and other educational pathways bring with them their own expectations of digital technologies; these need to be recognised if our institutions are to fully support the students who come to study at University level.   Jisc is currently working on a project which focuses in this area; The Digital Student Project commenced in October 2013 and aims to explore and develop students digital journey through FE, HE and beyond. The project is due to be completed at the end of this year, although there are already some published outputs available, including a literature review and two reports; "Students’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment" and "Incoming expectations of the digital environment formed at school".  Compiled by Helen Beetham, David White and Joanna Wild the report "Students’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment" is one resource we’ve highlighted in introductory staff sessions. Taking into consideration expectations of connectivity, technical support and resource availability is something we encourage of teaching staff and so to have a national project addressing these themes is encouraging for future educational policy making.  Further information about the Digital Student Project including upcoming FE consultation events can be found via the Jisc Website, Twitter (#digitalstudent) or the project blog. 

Whether you’re wading through papers, fully immersed in writing or going through one of those ‘processing’ phases, tools to support research are always welcome … aren’t they? Well actually, a lot of the time I’ve found that no, they’re not welcome, at least not right now. Often they are the wrong tool at the wrong time or it’s far too in depth for what I need or it feels like the learning curve would be too steep etc etc. You have to look though, because occasionally a gem comes along and below I’ve shared a couple of tools that I’ve found straight forward, easy to use and above all incredibly helpful! Google Keep https://keep.google.com/ This has completely replaced my notebook for those random thoughts or must read texts that come up day to day. With the ability to keep notes, to do lists that you can check off, leave voice memos, add images, all on the go from your phone / tablet / laptop or desktop (basically anything you can access the net from) I have instantly been more organised with my note gathering. Notes and checklists can be colour coded and the search facility means even if you chuck loads in there you can find what you’re after - text that appears in images is included within the search. And, if you’re brain is full (or you’re just plain forgetful) you can set reminders based on time or location to any of your notes. If you live in fear of losing your notebook then fear no more! Google Keep is saved in ‘the cloud’ and unlike a notebook, you can share & collaborate with others on your notes. From taking pictures of the cover of books/journals to sharing notes re: upcoming conferences (with a reminder set for submission dates) I’m finding Google Keep increasingly useful. ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net Research can sometimes feel like a lonely pursuit yet just scratch at the surface of one of the ‘social’ networks for researchers and you can find others who are as equally enthusiastic as you about your research topic, articles so current they haven’t reached publication yet and ask questions to others in your field. ResearchGate enables you to do all of this (and more). Whilst it can feel tedious setting up yet another account on a social network (LinkedIn - yep, Academia.edu - yep, Twitter - yep, Facebook - ugh, yep) it does seem as though ResearchGate will actually aid your research with searchable publications and questions posed that get answered by the community. I was completely converted after coming across a couple of articles, due to be published soon, by authors that I have been ‘following’. LaTex http://latex-project.org/intro.html So, you may have seen journals or conferences stating a preference for submissions in LaTex format and wondered what on earth it means, or perhaps you got as far as glancing at it and have been put off by the look of articles in LaTex format. However, don’t be scared! It actually saves loads of time formatting documents in Word (or other text-processing software) and means the people receiving your work will be able to convert it into exactly the format they’re after. Often you are provided with a LaTex template by the conference / journal which means all you have to do is enter your text.

Last week with help from The Compass we set out to gather some feedback from students on the apps they would most recommend to others to aid study at University.Recent statistics reveal that educational apps are the second most downloaded category in Apple’s app store, but what constitutes as an educational app? Often apps that aren’t typically seen as educational can be assistive in University study, so using the speak-board on Penryn campus helped us gain further insight into the apps our students found useful and would recommend to others. Referencing apps were the most recommended of all the apps posted on the board, RefME in particular received praise; the free app syncs to your RefME account and allows you to scan resources using your phone or device to create citations, reference lists and bibliographies. EasyBib was also noted as a good app with the pretty much the same functionality as RefME, however this doesn’t support Harvard referencing.Video based apps were also those featuring high on recommendations, especially those which involved an element of learning; You Tube and Ted Talks were seen as good apps for watching content on the go, SciShow, VSauce, Crash Course were specific You Tube channels which were put forward as being particularly educational and interesting to watch. Khan Academy was also mentioned, this app features a host of educational materials available for free. Needing some music to help with studying? Spotify is a music streaming service which puts millions of tracks at your finger tips. 8tracks was another recommended app which featured on our feedback board, described as the peoples playlister, users are able to create mixtapes of 8 tracks or more to share with the online community. Of all the types of apps posted to help with studying, organisational tools were by far the most recommended. Document organisation tools such as Evernote and Google Drive were suggested, also note taking and list apps: Todolist, Keep Notes (which featured in our recent Tools to Support Research post) and Reminders. There are an abundance of these tools available for phone and tablet, it’s easy to see why they’re popular especially when it comes to University study. HabitRPG came highly recommended from a few individuals, the ‘gamified’ to do list app aims to 'make habit building fun’ by rewarding points when you complete day-to-day tasks. The University of the West of England also features in our list of recommended apps with SAM, a tool to help understand and manage anxiety. It’s free and allows you to visualise your anxiety profile and connect to with a wider community who use the app. For those wanting to make apps for your device Aris was one tool mentioned last week, one student has used the platform to create a campus tour for fellow classmates, built as user-friendly and open source it has all the resources to get you started. To accompany the feedback received from students we are holding an apps event for staff to come and share tools they find useful as part of their teaching at University (12:00, 11th February, Peter Lanyon, Seminar 7, Penryn Campus). Thanks to all who took part in the speak-board, if you’d like any more information about any of the apps mentioned or you’d like to talk about using apps as part of Learning and Teaching at Falmouth University please get in touch - etsupport@falmouth.ac.ukHere’s the full list of recommended apps from the speak-board: Referencing:RefMEEasyBib Video: You TubeTed TalksKhan Academy Music: Spotify 8TracksLuminOrganisation: EvernoteGoogle Scan to Drive Google Drive Dragon Dictation Calendar & Reminders Todolist HabitRPG Google Keep Notes PreziThetrainlineFlashlightImagesSnapseed Social FacebookWordpressWellbeing SAM App Make your own appAris Games University apps: iExeter app Games/Other:Looney Tunes, Flappy Bird, Tetris, Candy Crush and Insta 3D

Weds 11th February saw the first of our AppsAnon events faciliating discussion around apps we use day to day. This event was part of a joint provision initiative from our Staff Development team for Falmouth, Exeter and FXPlus staff aimed at sharing practice and developing our community.Participants put a post-it note with the title of an app they use in a jar, which we drew from at random. The author talked for a couple of minutes about the app; how they found it, why they used it, what they liked and any limitations. That person then gets to pick the next post-it from the jar.Here are the movers and the shakers for 11th Feb:Vivino -  Crowd sourced wine reccomendations. The app lets you scan the barcode of a bottle of wine and submit your own or look at reviews posted by others. You can also follow friends to compare tasting notes like a true wine snob. iOS/AndroidAdobe reader - Quick access to reading resources. Adobe reader allows you to take a photo of a document and convert to pdf. Reader also works with Microsoft formats and lets you bookmark web resources. Useful for organising and accessing docs on Falmouth’s Learning Space.Qu - New Anonymous Question/Answer App in the fashion of Yo messenger and Tindr, you can swipeto answer or dismiss a question. The app offers stats on amount of people answering and views etc. This app might have potential use for entry/exit ticket measures of understanding in the teaching environment in a similar way to Responseware and Exitticket iOS only at present Twitter - Brilliant and huge educational community on Twitter, the app is widely used within education and they have recently introduced group messaging, video upload and analytics about your tweets. On the flipside, promoted content in your feed soon beomes annoying and their recent updates have brought requests for deeper access to phone settings. There are interesting alternatives like sublevel.net now entering the market iOS/Android

On the 11th February NMC officially released the 2015 Higher Education edition of the Horizon Report. Commissioned by the New Media Consortium (NMC) in collaboration with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), this annual publication is widely referred to in the field of learning technology and education as a leading source for depicting potential future trends. This year’s publication marks the 12th anniversary of the Higher Education edition of the report; other published editions as part of the Horizon series include the K-12 edition and the Museum edition.The report itself is broken down into three main sections; key trends, significant challenges and important developments. Each of these areas are further categorised as part of the report, for example trends can be either short-term, mid-term or long-term.As a comprehensive document it would be very hard to cover every aspect of the report in one blog post so for benefit of keeping it shortish we’ve selected a few topics from each category.Key Trends:Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation: Basing approaches taken to innovation in education on agile startups, where technology acts as a catalyst for change, has been suggested in this years long term trends. This method highlights the need to adapt in an era of rapid technical development, something not all Universities are comfortable with. There is a definite need for policy change in this area; digital technologies that students use in their day to day should be seen as a catalyst.Increasing Use of Blended Learning: The development of new tools that can be used for education will enhance the options that are available for use in online learning and increase use as a result. Traditional face-to-face courses are complemented with online learning as students require more accessible means to access learning content away from classroom interactions. Increased use of blended learning solutions requires concrete guidelines which has implications for policy and leadership.Significant Challenges:Improving Digital Literacy: The ability to understand digital tools and information is seen as a significant challenge in this years report, not least because there seems to be a lack of consensus as to what constitutes as ‘digital literacy’ across many colleges and universities. Suggested as being an iterative process to accommodate for range of tools and evolving methods of use, this challenge has been defined as solvable.Rewarding Teaching: With research so high on the agenda in Universities implementation of effective pedagogies for teaching are lacking. The REF has put greater pressure on teachers to be publishing research, meaning a reliance on part time teachers to cover taught sessions. This "Wicked Challenge" (Those that are complex to even define, much less address) suggests methods of teaching and quality of instruction need to be at the forefront. Important Developments: Bring Your Own Device: A widely used term, BYOD refers to when people bring their own equipment to their learning or work environment. Links between productivity and personal device usage have been documented, not least because users are already accustomed to working with their own laptop, phone or tablet. Personalised content and individual settings can be assigned to each device, again making them easier to use for study or work. Sufficient infrastructure and policies should be in place to support people who wish to use their own devices at University. Flexible workspaces that allow for personal devices to aid study should also be taken into consideration.Flipped Classroom: The flipped classroom is a model of learning whereby the time spent in a class environment is dedicated to more active cognitive learning, time away from the class is spent learning through podcasts, videos and associated materials. This method shifts the ownership of learning from the instructors to the students and has proved popular in HE. The flipped classroom can be implemented at various scales and has a reported adoption time of one year or less according to the horizon report.How these topics evolve over the coming year will be interesting to observe, especially from the perspective of policy and leadership in these areas. Further topics from the report were debated in an earlier post this year for those wishing to look at some additional key trends. The Horizon report is published annually and individuals are recommended to get involved using the projects wiki page - http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/

Feedback In this series, the Educational Technology team will be providing an insight into existing practice using technology for learning and teaching at Falmouth University and also at projects being undertaken within the wider HE sector.Our first installment looks at the process of Feedback.Feedback is a process that aids learning based on a dialogue about an assessed activity, this could be through a face to face tutorial, email, commenting on a google doc, could be a one off or a continued discussion and could be between lecturing staff and students or amongst peers. The NUS charter on Assessment & Feedback calls for a choice of feedback methods for students and that it is timely. Use of learning technologies can support this.We’ve discovered some great examples of use of technology in the feedback process at Falmouth; from peer assessment activity in the VLE, through use of iPads and bespoke computer programming to speed up the process and use of video to aid lesson observation in the PGCHE. The Educational Technology team also piloted the use of Turnitin’s Grademark facility with some courses at Falmouth University and received positive feedback from staff and students about it’s use.This presentation from JISCs assessment and feedback project showcases a couple of approaches towards using technology to support the feedback process and details some of the issues faced and lessons learned. Of particular interest is the suggestion that values and approaches towards dialogic feedback and reflection should be introduced to students early on in HE to aid understanding of the process.A study undertaken at the University of Liverpool to replace text with audio feedback found that it was successful in meeting student expectation and led to more detailed feedback and timely response. Apps like audacity, soundcloud, audioboo and kaizena for google docs support the use of audio as feedback. The University of Sussex are currently undertaking a three year project to encourage adoption of online submission and feedback methods and are also making use of Grademark. Their site informs staff and students about the process.In addition, rapid feedback methods like exiticket and polleverywhere facilitate an overview of student understanding and promote use of mobile devices for learning and tools like Twitter and todaysmeet can be used in similar fashion as a backchannel. For further information read a description of exit ticket methodology and some examples. A timely #LTHEchat took place in January around the language of feedback and conversation arose around feedback in formative and summative assessment and use of feedforward to help students understand how they might do better in future assessment.These are just a few initiatives and conversations around feedback in higher education, please feel free to send us a link to your own project and Falmouth Staff are welcome to contact the team about any of these examples they might like to apply to learning and teaching in their own areas.

image by opensource.comHow Open Source supports EducationThe Open Source movement grew out of the frustrations users have in proprietary hardware and software; technologies that enable barriers to use and models of development that alienate the user. Eric Raymond uses the metaphor of the Cathedral and the Bazaar to talk about these opposing models of software development. In the Cathedral model there is top down control on the design and the implementation of the project (an analogy to the building of cathedrals in the middle ages). The project is unveiled once built, whereas the bazaar model is much more informal, messy, open and relies on community participation. Open Education and Open Educational Resources share a similar ethos with Open Source with a focus on sharing and accessibility to learning.A brief history of Bloom’s taxonomy for learningIn 1956, Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist developed a taxonomy of Educational Objectives, proposing that  that learning fits into one of three psychological domains; Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor and that learning objectives can be designed around these. Fast-forward to 2001 and student of Bloom Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, revised the taxonomy to include the use of verbs rather than nouns for the categories within the cognitive domain and rearranging it as a progression from ‘lower order thinking skills’’ to ‘higher order thinking skills’:So this…                                              Becomes:Creating a Digital taxonomyOn the Edorigami Wiki, Andrew Churches documents an update to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy that accounts for the "new behaviours, actions and learning opportunities emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous". This revision provides further granularity and suggests a taxonomy based upon the opportunities that technology provides:The Tools Within the educational institution, we are often prescribed proprietary solutions to work with, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, but there are a range of free and open source alternatives that help develop transferable skills and promote sharing and collaborating. So with this and Bloom’s in mind, here’s a freely available collaborative list of tools that support a taxonomy of learning and teaching verbs. Feel free to use, add to, comment upon and vote for your favourites.

ScrivenerI never quite appreciated the phrase ‘lengthy document’ until I started trying to draft part of my thesis. I’ve always felt pretty confident with academic writing and structuring but suddenly I was no longer looking at putting together a long essay or dissertation but an 80,000 word beast! Scrivener has allowed me to bring some sort of organisation into the chaos. My usual tact was to use multiple Google docs however just one section of my thesis seemed too long to contain in one document and I needed to be able to flit about, reorganise and edit as needed.Scrivener allows you to break your document into chunks, drag them around, put them back together and break them apart again. You can move between your notes, research papers and the document you’re writing with ease, with all on display if required using the quick reference panes. You can create outlines of your entire project which you can move around as well as labelling and tracking parts of your work. There is also a live word count for the document you’re working on, you can see the word count for your draft as a whole and you can set targets for a sessions work or a particular section.When you reach the point that you want to export your work into one document the options available are sure to cover your needs! Now usually I wouldn’t recommend a tool that costs however I’ve included this for two reasons! (Other than the fact it’s awesome). 1) You can have a 30 day trial - which is 30 days of use not 30 days from when you first download. This could be enough for you depending on how much you have done so far and what you want to use Scrivener for. 2) I only intended to go for the trial and have found it so useful I’ll be purchasing … anything that can keep me sane whilst composing this thesis is worth it!Draw.ioSo this has been around for a while now but still really good for quick, easy diagramming. No need to register / log-in and your diagrams can be saved to your machine, Google drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. The diagrams / images you create can be exported. There are a large number of graphics / shapes to choose from in order to build your diagram / flow chart or whatever it is you need and all for free!MendeleyAfter trying many different reference management tools I keep returning to Mendeley. It syncs well between all my devices - essential seeing as I flit between my PC, Mac, iPad and android phone. It’s easy to drag my documents in allowing me to view them quickly if I need to and I can annotate or highlight them as needed. I find my references are really easy to organise, search, sort into folders and attach notes to. Although I haven’t utilised the networking and social side to Mendeley yet it does allow you to search for other articles, join public groups in various subject areas and build your own online presence. Personally I don’t currently want this from my reference management software however I may go and play one day! My only disappointment currently is only being able to have three people in a group to collaborate and work on papers. To be fair this isn’t a situation I find myself in often but it felt like an unnecessary restriction if you wanted to use this for group reference management.

February marked the publication of the digital skills report from the House of Lords; Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future.  Presented as a call to action for the next government the report aimed "to consider and report on information and communications technology, competitiveness and skills in the United Kingdom".Education featured highly within the report and there was concern that the UK will be left behind in this digital era, something that has been echoed by others in the past; Google CEO Eric Schmidt has previously stated that the UK hadn’t embraced its ‘computer heritage’ to the detriment of economic growth. As the digital skills demanded for industry increases it’s only natural that the education sector comes under scrutiny; "Universities should ensure that all graduates are digitally competent." Jisc’s current Building Digital Capability project helps to address these issues by promoting effective use of digital technologies in education, at the recent Digifest event delegates in sessions were asked to reflect on digital capabilities within their institutions. The variations on how individual universities are responding to these issues were surprising, and shows we still have a lot more to accomplish in this area.       As a learning technology team we’re always keen to develop and support institutional initiatives around digital capabilities. Should you wish to find out more or see how we can assist please get in touch.   

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 […]

Originally posted on Ontario School and System Leaders Edtech MOOC:(Pic and Post shared by Deb McCallum) This image is an example of one way to use twitter as a PLN. My image is just a snapshot of a longer informative and helpful conversation I had on twitter this June. When I had a question about Minecraft, and chromebooks, Ontario educators…

Using communication technology for education has been around since long before most teaching practitioners were born and in 2015 with everyone from toddlers to pensioners chatting away over the internet every day. Why are so few learning providers making use of 21st century technology to teach, assesses, talk with learners or employers, train staff or […]