Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online? – reblog

May 29th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 29 May 2011
The concept of the “retweet” is now well established and so there was also scope for an older sibling the “reblog”

This one was spotlighted by Stephen Downes’ excellent OLDaily last week but the topic is so important I’ve decided to spotlight Rob Jenkins’ article Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online? (Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 May 2011) again here. Rob raises some pretty uncomfortable points regarding the, at times, questionable employment of online learning for reasons other than the purely pedagogical. Although we should be cautious of direct application to other cultures it would, nevertheless, certainly be useful to get a sense of what are the comparative attrition figures in the various European HE sectors for: undergraduates; postgraduates; and those undertaking continuing professional development (CPD). The long term impact of employing online learning for CPD which is linked to maintenance of a position on a professional register rather than providing (or insisting upon) the more expensive face-to-face development experiences is also an area worthy of further study. Don’t get me wrong, my enthusiasm and belief in the power of technology to generate good when utilised ethically and in an informed way is undimed but my enthusiasm is increasingly being tempered by a growing caution; and Rob is right to want us to look at his “elephant in the room”.

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Periodic Table of Videos

May 26th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 26 May 2011

The University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos is an excellent example of science outreach. All 118 elements in the periodic table now have supporting and stimulating videos hosted on YouTube. Even if you don’t have an interest in the chemistry you have just got to admire the enthusiasm and creativity of the various presenters. And it’s not a bad recruitment approach either. The Periodic Table of Videos has made YouTube stars of some Nottingham notables, including Professor Martyn Poliakoff and Dr Peter Licence. It was the video journalist Brady Haran who dreamed up the idea. Just click on an element and off you go.

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Open University does Moodle 2

April 21st, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 21 April 2011

Some time ago I posted Open Opportunities, Open Threats? (Auricle, 30 April 2009) in which I opined that, far from breaking out in a fearful sweat or reinforcing the status quo barricades, the transition to an open source MLE/VLE solution could provide an invaluable organisation-wide opportunity to refresh and develop thinking and explore different ways of doing things. Anyone open to such a “nudge” may be interested, therefore, in the Open University’s free Moodle 2 in UK HE event on Monday 20 June at Milton Keynes.

It may appear to be a minor thing but I’m almost as interested in how information about and signing up for events such as this is moving to the “cloud” – in this case the OU’s use of “sites.google.com” and Google Apps for Universities; a nascent trend in the making? More reasons for fearful sweating etc in some quarters I fear.

P.S. I find Niall Sclater’s blog a good source of information and reflections regarding the use of technologies to support/enhance learning and teaching at the Open University. For example, his xtranormal generated movie Some of the latest learning systems developments at the OU may have the most deliberately excruciatingly naff dialogue ever created but it kept me listening with an almost fascinated horror and fixed the messages more effectively than if two genuine talking heads had done the job. Alternatively, in March 2010 he also offered a useful reflection titled Educational apps or mobile-optimised websites? He has also initiated a number of “clouds” on the OU’s Cloudworks. Niall is Director of Learning Innovation at the OU.

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RSA Animate – synergising animation and speech?

April 10th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 10 April 2011

If you haven’t come across the RSA Animate resources yet then head there post haste; the site offers many items that should be of interest to digital scholars. To me the RSA Animate resources are an excellent example of how further value can be added to what was once POA or POV (plain old audio or video); we’ll call it reuse or repurposing or “adding further value” if you like. A considerable part of the human brain is devoted to image processing and so it’s tempting to speculate that this type of enhanced podcast (or is it enhanced vidcast?) could tap into our inherent visual memory capability which far transcends our normal concept of memory of seven items plus or minus two. I referred to some of the work done on visual memory in my online essay Ebooks in the ‘e-filling station’? (Auricle, 20 May 201) when I said:

But a large proportion of the human brain is dedicated to image processing, albeit at an unconscious level. There is much written about this but a very accessible illustration of the power of visual processing and visual memory has been undertaken by the well known author and academic Richard Wiseman. For example Wiseman states in his book Quirkology “We don’t process verbal information anything like as efficiently, [as images] so associating names and lists with images is probably a good strategy.” The Quirkology web site also shows the live Total Recall experiment he ran to replicate the original studies undertaken by Lionel Standing in the 1970s. See also Think your memory is poor? Forget it (Times, 19 May 2007) or the VizThink blog.

RSA Animate offers some interesting pedagogical research question for someone to investigate perhaps?

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The Secret History of Social Networking

February 23rd, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, first posted 9 February 2011, updated 23 February

The Secret History of Social Networking is a series of three podcasts from the BBC that are well worth downloading by students of all things social media related. I found the whole series interesting but in particular I draw attention to programme three which includes a consideration of privacy,sharing information online, and about what online social networking is doing to our relationships. Sample the following and reflect on the potential consequences of all those smartphone movies, audios and pictures that live on in cyberspace years after the “star ” has moved on to new lives.

“The personal and professional are better kept distinct. It’s a question of how you project yourself and how you actually move in those spaces. Everyone has had the experience of being drunk at a party and it’s not the end of the world, but it is actually a testimony to judgement in terms of how that is being projected. In a modern networked world we are all brands and you want to be attentive to what brands you are creating.” (Reid Hoffman, co-founder, LinkedIn at time ~11:38-12:42 into the third podcast).

Reputation management as a worthy inclusion for the “academic literacies in the digital age” staff and student curriculum?

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UK TV broadcasters coalescing around BBC iPlayer?

February 23rd, 2011 1 Comment

by Derek Morrison, 23 February 2010

Developments in the digital world may have increased choice but sometimes at the cost of increased and unnecessary complexity. Good examples of this unncessary complexity are to be found in the plethora of online “players” offered by each and every broadcaster – each with its own interface, limitations, and quirks. The result? It’s a bit like needing an individual remote controller with its own configuration of keys for every digital broadcaster accessed. Now I’m a technophile and I manage, but I suspect many people of a certain age or – and – non technical inclination, just don’t bother. So it’s good to see that some sense is apparently beginning to prevail with the recent announcement that the BBC iPlayer is starting to offer accesss to digital content from the other terrestial broadcasters in the UK. It’s early days and much of this “other” content still appears to be “not available”. Also this facility is only for the PC version of iPlayer at the moment which limits its usefulness (the big screen is where it needs to be BBC) but this is a big step in the right direction. Even within the iPlayer there are a number of usability issues that really need ironing out (try iPlayer on a television interface to see what I mean*) but it just now makes more sense for the broadcasters to focus on developing and refining one interface and one portal. Because the iPlayer is streets ahead of the rest it’s appropriate that everyone now accepts this and seeks to gain and spread benefit from such co-operation and collaboration. Let’s try and get back to the equivalent of switching something on, pressing a choice button and it just happening with ease.

* For example sometimes actions require an “Ok” button to be pressed and other times actions happen automatically. Also, responsiveness of the interface in comparison to PC versions is very poor – consequently there is a lot of waiting around for something to happen.

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ebook inflation?

February 15th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 11 February 2011 updated 15 Feburary 2011

So there you are! You are the proud owner of a still relatively expensive ebook reader whether than be from Amazon, Sony etc. The reader may be a bit of an indulgence but at least you are gaining on the pricing of the ebooks, right? Such ebooks are certainly going to be cheaper than the paperback and certainly much cheaper than the hardback version, right? Maybe not.

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JISC Review published

February 8th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 8 February 2011

To add the growing pool of impending radical changes in the UK HE landscape we can now add the JISC Review which was published by HEFCE today (8 February 2011). While the full report will undoubtedly be of interest to policy mavens/anthropologists/archaeologists the time poor may welcome the following synopsis of its seven recommendations before embarking on a more detailed analysis of the report.

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Final report of Online Learning Task Force published

January 28th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 28 January 2011

Six recommendations have emerged from the 18 months of deliberations by the OLTF in its final report Collaborate to compete: Seizing the opportunity of online learning for UK higher education (HEFCE, January 2011). You are obviously encouraged to read the full report and the supporting case studies but as a stimulus to the time poor to do so these recommendations are:

  1. Technology needs to enhance student choice and meet or exceed learners’ expectations
  2. Investment is needed to facilitate the development and building of consortia to achieve scale and brand in online learning
  3. More and better market intelligence about international demand and competition is required
  4. Institutions need to take a strategic approach to realign structures and processes in order to embed online learning
  5. Training and development should be realigned to enable the academic community to play a leading role in online learning
  6. Investment is needed for the development and exploitation of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality

In twitter speak: OLTF 2011 > investment; consortia; collaboration; processes; training; intelligence; information; reuse; repurposing.

The message embedded in the report’s title, i.e. “Collaborate to Compete” is challenging stuff in the context of austerity Britain and the considerable adaptative challenges already facing the UK HE sector. One side of the argument will surely assert we can’t afford it. The other side of the argument will surely assert that we cannot not afford it. But apart from the difficult “investment” word (a total of GBP 125 million over five years is proposed – see the report’s narrative for recommendations 2 and 6 for more information) the report indicates that it as much about attitudes and processes as it is money. Similar to introducing problem based learning into a curriculum, however, scalable quality online and – or – distance learning is something that needs to become part of institutional DNA; and that means being accepted as conferring evolutionary benefits rather than over-stimulating the organisational immune system. It will be interesting to see where we are in a year’s time with this – if anywhere.

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Engineering or Ecosystem?

January 19th, 2011 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 19 January 2011

In my 8 April 2010 posting I highlighted Clay Shirky’s online essay The Collapse of Complex Business Models. If Shirky’s essay provided insufficient food for thought then perhaps a recent BBC World Service podcast featuring the views of the management consultant and military historian Stephen Bungay will do the trick.

The BBC WS Business Weeky programme for 14 January 2011 had an interesting item with the unlikely title of “Prussian Management Model” (advance to ~17m 24s if you have downloaded the full podcast). In this item Stephen Bungay argues that, even today in the 21st century, organisational leaders tend to adopt an engineering or scientific model of the organisation, i.e. fundamentalist accolytes of this model would at heart view the organisation as a machine and its personnel as the cogs in said machine. An alternative model, however, Bungay argues is exemplified by the 19th century radical reforms of the previously successful Prussian Army following its resounding defeat by Napoleon Bonaparte. These reformers included Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, Moltke et al who created a model more appropriate to the fast moving unpredictable and sometimes chaotic circumstances of an environment in which technologies and tactics were ever changing; a new and harsh reality which badly needed a non-sclerotic and adaptable approach to decision making rather than a hierarchical “machine” dependent on the flow of orders from the centre.

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