Learning, teaching and research

I have begun to develop a wiki devoted to the discussion and development of ideas about open education (http://terrywassall.org/wiki). As a practical contribution I wish to get involved in open education initiatives exploiting my substantive areas of sociological expertise, including the sociology of the environment and sociological theory and research methods. I think I already have some characteristics of an open scholar, according to Terry Anderson’s definition anyway (which I outlined in a previous post The Open Scholar), but I hope to develop this role while I am still employed by the University of Leeds and continue it as an independent scholar after ‘retirement’.

For the moment  I am trying to work out the practicalities of being a learner and scholar within an open education environment. Most discussions on open education I have found seem to be about open education resources and materials. Although the resources and materials are of obvious importance, the discussion of what it is to be an open learner and the practicalities involved is rather dispersed across a multitude of discussions about personal learning environments, social learning, communities of interest and practice, connectivism, life long learning, digital divides, information literacy, and so on. What has not been addressed, it seems to me,  in an explicit and systematic way, is what does it mean to be an open learner in terms of the practicalities of defining learning needs and objectives, finding and evaluating open learning resources, finding and connecting and working with other open learners and sources of expertise and advice; in short, creating an appropriate and effective personalised learning environment and network based on open platforms and applications, open educational resources and open networks of learners and scholars.  In the wiki I hope to develop a series of scenarios of different sorts of open learning projects and activities to translate the more general and abstract discussions into practical real-world open education applications.

The wiki so far sets out the general open education issues, in draft,  on the main page. Other pages started are on open learning, open scholarship and open educational resources. I would be grateful for any ideas, opinions, or references to documents or similar sites and projects. This would include any blog posts you could recommend that address any aspect of  open education and learning. I would be very happy to turn this into a shared collaborative project or to be involved with any other similar project already underway.

Tags:   open education · open learning · open scholarship2 Comments

One of the most interesting presentations at this year’s ALT-C 2009 in Manchester was the 3rd keynote [slides] given be Terry Anderson. A major theme in his talk was to develop and promote the idea of ‘the Open Scholar’ to complement the accelerating development of both open education content and open learning platforms that potentially add a social and learning network layer to the available content. For me this chimed in very well with Graham Attwell’s impassioned statement of how Web 2.0 platforms and applications could be used to extend education much more broadly outside the confines and silos of formal education institutions during the opening discussion of the FALT09 prgramme. 

I have been thinking for sometime about what sort of useful role I could develop when I retire in a couple of years time that could capitalise on my experience as a teacher and researcher in sociology and who has for a number of years been trying to develop ideas about personal learning environments and networks for students that go beyond the confines of my HE institution and the short length of time they are with us. Both Graham and Terry have provided me with a focus and framework around which to develop my ideas and thoughts. As an experimental way to progress this I have started a Cloud called The Open Scholar where I will collect resources and notes and, hopefully, other colleagues in the open education and edtech community will share any ideas and resources they have or discover. I haven’t yet got my head round how Cloudworks is best used yet but so far it seems to be a sort of social resource aggregation platform with a commenting facility. It can operate as a hub to a network of relevant blog posts and resources where the discussion is dispersed across the listed posts and comments with additional comments on the cloud home page.

To start organising my initial ideas on what is the role of the open scholar I have tried to build on some of the characteristics of a putative open scholar that Terry itemised in his presentations. These are:

1. Open Scholars Create
2. Open Scholars Use and Contribute Open Educational Resources
3. Open Scholars Self Archive
4. Open Scholars Apply their research
5. Open Scholars do Open Research
6. Open Scholars Filter and Share With Others
7. Open Scholars support emerging Open Learning alternatives
8. Open Scholars Publish in Open Access Journals
9. Open Scholars Create Open Access Books
10. Open Scholars comment openly on the works of others
11. Open Scholars Build Networks
12. Open Scholars Lobby for Copyright Reform
13. Open Scholars Assign Open Textbooks
14. Open Scholars Induce Open Students
15. Open Scholars support Open Students
16. Open Scholars Teach Open Courses
17. Open Scholars Research Openness
18. Open Scholars are Change Agents
19. Open Scholars Battle with Time
20. Open Scholars are Involved in the Future

My teaching has been sociology at UG and PG level mostly though I have taught the old GCE ‘O’ level as well as ‘A’ level sociology and on various ‘access’ courses for mature students to gain entry to HE without the normal GCE requirements. In addition I have taught level 1, 2 and 3 courses for the OU. So for me the question is what can I offer as an open scholar who can provide support for learners who are interested in sociological ways of understanding the world they live in? In doing this is would undoubtedly be creating knowledge (1) in collaboration with other users of freely available content and resources (2). This process may well help develop new open educational resources of an informal nature (2). Given the tools I would be using – blogs, wikis, Ning, etc. – and the types of content sharing applications – Flickr, Slideshare, Cloudworks, etc. – I would be self archiving (3). Although it will be unlikely that I will have the resources, facilities or backup to do research I would be available as a resource for other researchers through my subject specific scholarship and experience (5). This experience coupled to reading others’ research may be applied to my own practice as an open scholar (4). As a ‘node’ within overlapping networks of open learners I will find, evaluate and recommend resources including other open scholars and learners (6). The communal filtering of resources and people will help develop the authenticity of materials and the informally accredited reputation of individuals. The support of open learning initiatives, tools and content would be achieved by the use and dissemination as well as their evaluation in practice (7). An open learning community, working in the spirit of mutual respect and support, would comment on each other’s work and ideas and encourage one another although to what extent and how this is done with open learners would have to be handled sympathetically and may require privacy at times (10). Open scholars would actively seek and nourish learning networks in order to develop the reach and relevance of their contribution, and their own continuing learning and development (11). To this extent open scholars need to make themselves visible, findable and approachable via profiles, metadata, and active engagement with potential and actual open learning networks. Extra-institutional open scholars will not have opportunities to use copyrighted materials ‘flexibly’ within the relative invisibility of the silos so will have to use freely available materials and will have a vested interest in promoting the liberalisation of educational and other relevant materials most of which are produced by publicly funded academics and researchers anyway and so should be available freely to the public (12). As with all support of learners, a key objective is to help develop the confidence and skills to become independent learners (14, 15). The skills of open learners are to a great extent those of the open scholar and the role of the learner and scholar become increasingly indistinguishable as the mutual benefits of collaborative learning develop. This suggests an important mentoring role for the open scholar and a ‘master/apprentice’ model, perhaps, that succeeds by making itself obsolete. The practice of the open scholar can promote a cultural change in that the dominant conception of education is challenged through example and effectiveness. This is achieved largely through the changes that open education can produce in the conceptions, values and attitudes of those that become engaged in it as open scholars and students (18).  Inevitably open scholars and learners are involved in the future as they are the harbingers and scouting parties for a sustainable and relevant education system that is becoming increasingly necessary (20).

This is a rapid response to Terry Anderson’s thought provoking outline role spec. for an open scholar. Much more could and no doubt will be said and written by others. The role will be developed in practice in tandem with the changing technologies, educational needs and diversifying student and learner constituencies. It seems clear to me that many edtech practitioners and associated academic staff are already engaged in these activities and already meet many open scholar criteria. There is no ‘Open Scholar’ manual or guidelines and it is up to the creative, imaginative and, to some extent, brave and bolshie, to just get on with it and, once again, reinvent themselves.

Tags:   altc20091 Comment

There is a lively discussion at the moment about the relationship between twitter and blogging in a ‘cloud’ of the same name, is twitter killing the blog?, at Cloud Works. I’m not quite sure where the discussion started but it was the topic of a debate between Josie Fraser and Graham Attwell at a F-ALT09 (ALT-C 2009 fringe conference) session at the Contact Theatre, Manchester on Tuesday 8thSeptember. The answer to the question, for me at least, is no. The evidence suggests that regular and frequent tweeting seems to be associated with a reduction in the frequency of blogging. Although this seems to be the case for me, I was already blogging less often before I became involved with Twitter and tweeting. In fact I am not a regular tweeter and tend to do so in little pulses of activity around conferences and other events, for instance the ALT 2009 conference that took place last week. On the other-hand, my lurking in Twitter is rather more constant. Speaking for myself, I feel that my use of Twitter may well revitalise my blogging, perhaps not so much by increasing the frequency of posts but, hopefully, by stimulating rather more considered and reflective posts. Generally in the past I have posted in order to record and clarify ideas and produce notes and resources for my future reference. This has been done largely for my own benefit but with the notion that it might be of interest and use to others and perhaps even solicit some response by way of comment. If so, this was a bonus rather than the prime motivation. Ideas about developing a ‘digital’ identity and a personal research network came later when I began to ‘listen in’ on conversations round these issues in the edublogosphere.  However, because my posts are beginning to be inspired by conversations in Twitter, they may become of greater interest and relevance to others than before.

Here is the gist of my argument. Twitter produces ideas, thoughts and topics as part of a fairly loose distributed discussion amongst those I follow and engage with on Twitter. As a matter of interest, I enjoy the social banter and seeming trivia as well as finding useful ideas, references, information and relevant focused discussions. All the ‘useful’ content is coming to me filtered by a network of people who in some sense I know, relate to, empathise with, value and trust as more rounded and real (rather than virtual) friends and colleagues, all to some extent sharing a similar(ish) world view and hopes and aspirations. This comes over far more strongly in Twitter than through the more formally written, structured and focused blog posts. This is a big plus for Twitter. So the general picture emerging is as follows. Discussion, banter, information exchange etc. in Twitter leads to the gradual emergence of an idea for a blog post. Some topic and a set of ideas and thoughts coalesces. In this respect discussion and comment precedes and shapes the blog post. The post summarises and clarifies (in the eyes of the author at least) thinking on the tweeted topic and, hopefully, feeds back into the ongoing discussion in Twitter. If this is the case, the relationship between Twitter and blogging is one of mutual enhancement with the bonus that your co-tweeters and bloggers are already contributors to the blog post and are more rounded and human to you as a result of the broader social contact made within Twitter. Blog posts become sites for summary and reflection within the stream of tweets and as such, and to some some extent, may contribute to, create eddies, even divert, the stream itself.

Another quick thought. Some one at ALTC2009 said (was it Alan Cann?) that their use of RSS has diminished somewhat since using Twitter. I think this is true for me. My feed reader only tells me what has been posted. My twitter network tells me what is worth reading – the wisdom of a crowd I have selected and am very happy and priviledged to be some part of. And technology, used in ways that its originators did not intend or foresee, has made this possible.

If anyone doubts the value of Twitter and the people it connects, surely the use of Twitter for the #altc2009 conference has given them pause for thought? What a pity the ALT powers that be did not see fit  to project the #altc2009 Twitter stream in the keynote presentations. A lost opportunity. Perhaps next time.

Tags:   altc2009 · blogging · falt09 · twitter1 Comment

The first meeting of the F-ALT09 group was on what might be meant by ‘postdigital’ led by Dave White. I posted First thoughts on ‘postdigital’  here before the conference. It was a very interesting and lively session and David has posted about it since – Post-digital – an update? I left a couple of comments on the post earlier today but I thought I would post them to my own blog so I can expand on there here more easily in future (and correct the spelling errors).

Pat Parslow has also reponded to David’s post - A technical post on the post-technical.

Noting that on-line platforms do not come with manuals and this doesn’t seem to be an issue for users, David says:

This is not necessarily because they are especially simple to use, but because they are massively multi-user and simply by watching the behaviour of fellow users it is possible to ‘pick up’ not only how to use the platform but also why you might want to use it. This should come as no surprise as we are particularly good at learning by observing fellow members of our own species. (There will be a fancy pedagogic/sociological term for this. If you know it then please insert it here as you read.)

I think this is a useful description of an important aspect of informal learning whatever fancy a name sociologists might give it – mimesis perhaps.

David goes on to consider if the term ‘post-technical’ might be closer to what he is getting at. Personally I don’t think we will ever be post-technical society as technology always evolves and there is always something new – these days often quite awesome. However, post-digital might be possible in the same sense that we are post-literate. That is not to say that we are beyond literacy or it has been abolished. It is just that, in our society, literacy is a given, an unstated assumption of practically all we do. Much of what we do is based on literacy and would be impossible without it. But this is now unremarkable and unremarked. As David says, “For many the term (post-digital) seems to imply a discarding of digital technologies as if they were no longer important” and this isn’t helpful. What may be happening is the emergence of a society where digital technologies and affordances become ubiquitous and will condition all our activities and experience in a way that is as unremarkable and taken for granted as post-Gutenberg literacy is today. We are witnessing the cultural shift that conditions and is conditioned by digital technologies and, like the colonial anthropologists of old, we need to explore and understand it now while it is in transition, visible and still remarkable; before we take it for granted. The best political thinking and sociology is often done when society is changing rapidly and previous ways of thinking and understanding seem to fall short, as in the birth of modern political thought and sociology in the transition from the medieval to the modern industrial world. As Graham Attwell says in his thought provoking impressions of  the ALT-C conference – Thoughts on Alt-C - “The perspectives we are currently using, to come to an understanding of the cultural/educational influence of digital technologies and the opportunities therein, need to be reconsidered”. He made it pretty clear at the post-digital discussion, and with some justification, that social sciences and particularly sociology have not offered us much by way of understanding of the current changes in technology and culture. It pains me to agree with this as sociology is my business mainly. However, my feeling is that there are important sociological theories and concepts around that offer ways into dealing with and understanding current changes more concretely and I hope to expand on these here in due course.

Tags:   altc2009 · falt09 · postdigitalNo Comments.

Home tired after the ALT-C 2009 conference In dreams begins responsibility at Manchester. Thought I’d do a quick post of impressions now with a couple of promises of more detailed posts soon(ish) particularly on the VLE is Dead and the Wordpress and BuddyPress sessions. Random thoughts:

Great to see so many people I have exchanged ideas, information, bad jokes and trivia with on Twitter and spend time with them, especially at the F-ALT09 sessions. Definitely a highlight. I just love pubs where you stick to everything if I’m with the right people.

Never got the hang of the wash/bog/shower cupboardette  which tripped me up everytime I went in and every time I came out.

Take loo paper next time. Manchester Uni accomodation has the cheapest this side of the civilised world.

Never use red to ‘highlight’ text on a black background in Powerpoint slides.

Never admit that you wouldn’t use a blog in a million years if you are giving a paper on how hard it is to get students to blog.

Do not give the impression that you align with the neocons when giving a keynote. Still very impressed with Martin Bean’s keynote. Giz us a job.

I need an iTouch badly. Please ask if you would like my birthday date.

I’d love a dump of James Clay’s brain, suitably filtered of course.

Must try not to be part of the ‘death or retirement’ strategy for overcoming institutional inertia but may have no choice.

That’s it for now. Thanks to all my real and virtual edtech and enlightened teacher chums for making everyday interesting and often inspirational and fun.

Tags:   altc2009 · falt09No Comments.