I’ve been participating in the Jisc on-line e-Learning conference this week, based on my video on ‘Do Institutions have a future‘. I’ will post later on the organisation and use of technology at  the conference – although just to say here that I think it a great pity Jisc did not make this an open conference.

Anyway the discussion has swung back and forth looking at such issues as drivers and barriers to change, models of governance and democracy, resilience and change and the design of physical and on-line learning spaces. One interesting feature is the influence of the ecology movement both in raising the issue of energy resources as a driver for change and in borrowing ideas from the wider environmental movement as the basis for change in educational institutions.

I am particularly taken by idea sput forward by Fred Garnett on participatory education in a participatory democracy and the work of London Learning Lab on an Open Context Model of Learning – Transformational Pedagogy.

Here’s a quick contribution I have just made on one of the conference threads on ‘Are the barriers still too high for change?’
“Been in meetings all day so only just catching up on discussions. But issues seem to be a continuation of yesterday. A few thoughts – the student ‘voice’ hasn’t appeared here. and in driving change students will be important. Are the barriers too high. Well – not if we are talking about barriers to learning. those are coming down everyday as more and more high quality learning materials appear on the internet. I was at a friends house lat night where she had to kindness to let me watch the football on television. Being bored herself, she was playing or so I thought on her ipod touch. When I looked at what she was doing she was following a tutorial on Exel. However she was frustrated that Flash videos will not play on the ipod so I showed her ITunes U which has 200000 videos and podcasts freely available on line. That is not counting of course all the OERs appearing daily. And there are increasing numbers of free courses.

The question then is what is the role of the university. Is iTunes U and OERs a barrier to change in universities? A threat?  If we have abundance of free resources how do universities react. Do they promote peer group learning using OERs? Or emphasise their role in accreditation. And if we move towards outcomes based learning will the traditional course model any longer hold sway. Or do we see universities as spaces for learning in the community linked organically to other community learning spaces in the way Fred seems to suggest.”

I have been invited to particpate in a workshop on ‘Technology Enhanced Learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation‘, being sponsored by the EU funded Stellar Network of Excellence at Garnisch in Germany at teh start of December. I am contributing to a session on Work Based Learning and have written a short position paper on the subject, a draft of which is reproduced below. I have to say I am very much impressed with the work of the London Mobile Learning Group and my paper attempts to look at  the idea we have developed for a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE) through the Mature-IP project in the light of their framework for a socio-cultural ecology for mobile learning.

1. A socio-cultural ecology for learning

In his paper, The socio-cultural ecological approach to mobile learning: an overview, Norbert Pachler characterises current changes in the world from a perspective on mobile learning as “akin to social, cultural, media related, technological and semiotic transformation”. The world around us, he says, is “marked by fluidity, provisionality and instability, where responsibilities for meaning making as well as others such as risk-taking have been transferred from the state and institutions to the individual, who has become a consumer of services provided by a global market”. The paper, based on conceptual and theoretical work being undertaken by the London Mobile Learning group, proposes a socio-cultural ecology for learning, based on the “new possibilities for the relationship between learning in and across formal and formal contexts, between the classroom and other sites of learning.” Such an ecology is based on the interplay between agency, cultural practices and structures.

In this short discussion paper, we will consider the possibilities for such an ecology in the context of work-based learning. In particular, we will examine work being undertaken through the EU funded Mature-IP project to research and develop the use of a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble) to support learning and knowledge maturing within organisations.

2. Work-based Learning and Technology

Although it is hard to find reliable quantitative data, it would appear that there has been a steady increase in work-based learning in most countries. This may be due to a number of reasons: probably foremost in this is the pressures for lifelong learning die to technological change and changing products, work processes and occupational profiles. Work-based learning is seen as more efficient and effective and facilitates situated learning. The move towards work-based learning has been accompanied in many countries by a revival in apprenticeship training. It has also been accompanied by a spread of the training function (Attwell and Baumgartl (eds.), 2008), with increasing numbers of workers taking some responsibility for training as part of their job.

The move towards increased work-based training has also been accompanied by the widespread us of Technology Enhanced Learning, at least in larger companies. However, this has not been unproblematic. Technology Enhanced Learning may be very effective where the work processes themselves involve the use of computers. It is also possible to develop advanced simulations of work processes; however such applications are complex and expensive to develop. More commonly, in the classical sense of the dual system, formal Technology Enhanced Learning has been used to support the theoretical side of vocational learning, with practical learning taking place through work-based practice (with greater or lesser face to face support). Given economies of scale, Technology Enhanced Learning has made most impact in vocational learning in those areas with a broad occupational application such as management, sales and ICT. In a previous paper I suggested that the development of technology for learning has been shaped by an educational paradigm, based on an industrial model of schooling developed to meet the needs and forms of a particular phase of capitalist and industrial development and that this paradigm is now becoming dysfunctional. Friesen and Hug argue that “the practices and institutions of education need to be understood in a frame of reference that is mediatic: “as a part of a media-ecological configuration of technologies specific to a particular age or era.” This configuration, they say, is one in which print has been dominant. They quote McLuhan who has described the role of the school specifically as the “custodian of print culture” (1962.) It provides, he says, a socially sanctioned “civil defense against media fallout” — against threatening changes in the mediatic environs.

Research suggests there has been little take up of formal Technology Enhanced Learning in the Small and Medium Enterprises which comprise the greatest growth area in many economies (Attwell (ed.), 2004). However the research, undertaken through an EU funded project into the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises, found the widespread everyday use of internet technologies for informal learning, utilizing a wide range of business and social software applications. This finding is confirmed by a recent study on the adoption of social networking in the workplace and Enterprise 2.0 (Oliver Young G (2009). The study found almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues. 63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that they hadn’t been able to do before

Of course such studies beg the question of the nature and purpose of the use of social software in the workplace. The findings of the ICT and SME project, which was based on 106 case studies in six European countries focused on the use of technologies for informal learning. The study suggested that although social software was used for information seeking and for social and communication purposes it was also being widely used for informal learning. In such a context:

• Learning takes place in response to problems or issues or is driven by the interests of the learner
• Learning is sequenced by the learner
• Learning is episodic
• Learning is controlled by the learner in terms of pace and time
• Learning is heavily contextual in terms of time, place and use
• Learning is cross disciplinary or cross subject
• Learning is interactive with practice
• Learning builds on often idiosyncratic and personal knowledge bases
• Learning takes place in communities of practice

However, it is important to note that the technology was not being used for formal learning, nor in the most part was it for following a traditionally curriculum or academic body of knowledge.

Instead business applications and social and networking software were being used to develop what has been described as Work Process Knowledge (Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. 2002).

The concept of Work Process Knowledge emphasises the relevance of practice in the workplace and is related to concepts of competence and qualification that stress the idea that learning processes not only include cognitive, but also affective, personal and social factors. They include the relevance of such non-cognitive and affective-social factors for the acquisition and use of work process knowledge in practical action. Work often takes place, and is carried out, in different circumstances and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary for the individual to acquire and demonstrate a certain capacity to reflect and act on the task (system) and the wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape it. Such competence is captured in the notion of “developmental competence” (Ellstroem PE, 1997) and includes ‘the idea of social shaping of work and technology as a principle of vocational education and training’ (Heidegger, G., Rauner F., 1997). Work process knowledge embraces ‘developmental competence’, the developmental perspective emphasising that individuals have the capacity to reflect and act upon the environment and thereby forming or shaping it. In using technologies to develop such work process knowledge, individuals are also shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different purposes, for social learning.

3. Knowledge Maturing, Personal Learning Environments and Wombles

MATURE is a large-scale integrating project (IP), co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It runs from April 2008 to March 2012. The Mature-IP aims to research, develop and test Personal Learning and Maturing Environments (PLME) and Organisational Learning and Maturing Environments (OLME) in promote the agility of organisations. Agility requires that companies and their employees together and mutually dependently learn and develop their competencies efficiently in order to improve productivity of knowledge work. The aim is to leverage the intrinsic motivation of employees to engage in collaborative learning activities, and combine it with a new form of organisational guidance. For that purpose, MATURE conceives individual learning processes to be interlinked (the output of a learning process is input to others) in a knowledge-maturing process in which knowledge changes in nature. This knowledge can take the form of classical content in varying degrees of maturity, but also involves tasks and processes or semantic structures. The goal of MATURE is to understand this maturing process better, based on empirical studies, and to build tools and services to reduce maturing barriers.

The Mature-IP project has undertaken a series of studies looking at learning and knowledge maturing processes within organisations. Based on this work, in year 2 of the project, it is undertaking a series of five Design Projects, developing and testing prototypes of technology based applications to support knowledge maturing within these organisations. One of these projects, the Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble), is designed to enable workers to appropriate the mobile phone as a Personal Learning Maturing Environment (PLME) and to support contextualised Work-based Learning, problem-solving, interaction and knowledge maturing via a user owned, mobile PLE.

The design study/demonstrator includes support for structured learning dialogue frameworks, with a social software ‘substrate’ and multi- user / multi-media spaces that will provide workers with the ability to collaborate with co-workers. At the most basic level, Womble services will, for example, allow workers to tag fellow work colleagues (contacts); when a problem arises this service will enable collaborative problem solving. At a more advanced stage a ‘lite’ dialogue game service will be linked to the tagging of personal competencies to scaffold workers in their active collaboration and ‘on the spot’ problem solving.

4. The Womble and a socio-cultural ecology for learning

The conceptual framework proposed by Norbert Pachler and the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG) proposes a non-hierarchal model based on the interaction between agency, cultural practices and structures. In the penultimate section of this discussion document, we examine how the deign of the Womble matches the framework proposed by the LMLG.

4.1 Agency

Agency is seen by Pachler as “the capacity to deal with and to impact on socio cultural structures and established cultural practices” and “to construct one’s life-world and to use media for meaning making…..”

The aim of the Womble is to develop a “participatory culture” in the workplace including ludic forms of problem solving, identity construction, multitasking, “distributed cognition,” and “transmedial navigation” (Jenkins at al, 2006). It is designed to scaffold developmental competence through sense and meaning making in a shared communicative environment, though exploring, questioning and transcending traditional work structures. Situatedness and proximity are key to such an exploration, the ability to seek, capture store, question and reflect on information, in day to day practice. This the use of the Womble for meaning making goes beyond the exploration of formal bodies of expert knowledge to question manifestations of cultural practice within communities.

A further aspect of agency is the ability to shape the form of the Womble as a user configurable and open set of tools. Wild, Mödritscher and Sigurdarson (2008)suggest that “establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition.” They go on to say: “Considering the learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning, moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform which is personalisable or customisable by learners (‘easy to use’) and heading towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process – freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (‘easy to develop’). ”

4.2 Cultural Practices

By cultural practices, Pachler, refers to “routines in stable situations both in terms of media use on everyday life as well as the pedagogical practices around teaching and learning in the context of educational institutions.” He points out that the multimodality of mobile and media technologies names: them more difficult to map onto traditional curricula and puts pressure on established canons.”

One key idea behind the Womble is that Personal Learning Environments are owned by the user.But at the same time, the Womble tools are designed to make it easy to for users to configure their  environment.

Critically, the pedagogy, if it can be described as such is based on shared practice with learners themselves actively developing learning materials and sharing them through reflection on their context. Whilst such materials might be said to be micro learning materials, the semantic aggregation of those materials, together with advanced search capabilities should provide a holistic organisational learning base. As such the Womble is designed to support , the recognition of context as a key factor in work related and social learning processes. Cook (2009) proposes that new digital media can be regarded as cultural resources for learning and can enable the bringing together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution, or in this case the organisation, with those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions. Cook also suggests that informal learning in social networks is not enabling the “critical, creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.” Instead he argues for the scaffolding of learning in a new context for learning through learning activities that take place outside formal institutions and on platforms, such as the Womble, that are selected or configured by learners. Such ‘episodic learning’ is based on Vygotskys idea of ‘zones of proximal development’. However, we would agree with Pachler, that in the need for a departure from the terminology associated with Vygostsky’s work. Rather than viewing developmental zones as mainly temporal within a life course, they should be seen as situative contexts within work practice, which both allow the production of user generated content in response to such a situation and reflection on content generated by other users in such situations.

In this context digital artefacts can assist in sense making through the process of bricolage (Levi Strauss, 1966) The concept of bricolage refers to the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings in fresh contexts. Bricolage involves a process of resignification by which cultural signs with established meanings are re-organised into new codes of meaning.

This approach to work-based learning through the use mobile devices and services such as the Womble is the relation between work-based activities and personal lives. This goes beyond worklife balance, or even digital identities. It involves agreed and shared understandings of what activities and digital practices are acceptable in work time and work spaces, ethical considerations especially in with regard to work practice involving clients and how private use of social media impacts on work relations.

4.3 Socio cultural and technological structures

Of course critical to such an approach to situated learning, is the ability to utilize mobile devices within work situations. However for this to take place requires more than just the appropriation of user owned technologies (indeed our initial studies suggest resistance to user owned mobile devices being used for work purposes unless funded by the employer. More important is the expropriation of work processes and technologies used for monitoring and recording work processes as the basis for learning. Indeed one aim of the mature project is to overcome the divide between the use of technologies of learning and for knowledge management. Without the ability to transcend these technologies sit is unlikely that the Womble or any other PLE based applications will gain traction and usage. The use of such a learning and knowledge sharing platform has to take place without imposing a substantial additional work and attention burden on the user.

5. Organisational and developmental learning

The use of mobile devices to support situated work-based learning is base don the idea that appropriation of both technologies and processes will lead to the formation of developmental competences based on intrinsic motivation. Barry Nyhan (Nyhan et al, 2003) states “one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights. Thus, people are learning from their work – they are learning as they work.”

He goes on to say: “This entails building organisations in which people have what can be termed‘ developmental work tasks’. These are challenging tasks that ‘compel’ people to stretch their potential and muster up new resources to manage demanding situations. In carrying out ‘developmental work tasks’ people are ‘developing themselves’ and are thus engaged in what can be termed ‘developmental learning’.”

This notion of developmental competences and learning, using mobile devices and environments such as the Womble, would appear as a way of building on the conceptual framework for a social cultural ecological approach advanced by the London Mobile Learning group.

6. Questions

• Can developmental competences be acquired in the absence of formal and institutional learning?
• How can developmental competences based on informal learning be recognised?
• How can we develop intrinsic motivation for work-based learning and competence development?
• How can we recognise development zones for reflection and learning?
• Is it possible to appropriate social and business processes and applications for learning?
• Is there a continued role for educational technologies if learning materials are user generated and technologies and applications are appropriated?
• What are the socio – technical competences and literacies required to facilitate learners to appropriate technologies?

References

Attwell G and Baumgartl B. (ed.), 2008, Creating Learning Spaces:Training and Professional Development for Trainers, Vienna, Navreme

Attwell G.(ed) 2007, Searching, Lurking and the Zone of Proximal Development, e-learning in Small and Medium enterprises in Europe, Vienna, Navreme

Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. (2002) Work Process Knowledge, Routledge

Boushel M, Fawcett M, Selwyn J. (2000), Focus on Early Childhood: Principles and Realities, Blackwell Publishing

Cook, J. (2009), Scaffolding the Mobile wave, Presnetation at the Jisc Institutional Impact programme online meeting, 09/07/09, http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook/cook-1697245?src=embed, accessed 10 July 2009

Ellstroem P. E.  (1997) The many meanings of occupational competence and qualifications, In Brown, A (ed.) Promoting Vocational Education and Training: European Perspectives,University of Tampere Press, Tampere

Friesen N and Hug T (2009), The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts for Media Pedagogy

Heidegger, G., Rauner F. (1997): Vocational Education in Need of Reform, Institut Technik und Bildung, Bremen

Jenkins, H., Purushotoma, R., Clinton, K.A., Weigel, M., and Robison, A. J. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. White paper co-written for the MacArthur Foundation. Accessed July 14, 2008 from: http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf

Levi Strauss C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [first published in 1962]

McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nyhan, B et al (2003). Facing up to the learning organisation challenge. Vol. I. Thessaloniki, CEDEFOP,

Oliver Young G (2009), Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013, Forrester

Pachler (forthcoming) The Socio-cultural approach to mobile learning: an overview

Wild F. Mödritscher F. and Sigurdarson S., (2008), Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments, elearning papers, http://www.elearningeuropa.info/out/?doc_id=15055&rsr_id=15972, accessed 2 September, 2008

This is a Pontydysgu video for the Jisc Online Conference 2009 ‘Thriving not Surviving‘. The video discusses the future of educational institutions and discusses different social and political possibilities for their future development.
It was a lot of fun making this video (and a bit of a technical struggle – thanks to Jo for her perseverance). We hope you will enjoy it. And honest, we filmed it a day before the UK government announced its latest plans for the future of universities!

This is a series of three commissioned videos on this topic. You can see Rob Howes contribution here.

And here is Martin Weller’s video.

Jisc have said they will give three free conference places to the best comments on our efforts. So get posting.

We will post further blog entries on the scenarios in the video and a how to on the filming and post production.

This Thursday sees the final session in our autumn series of open on-line seminars run jointly between the Evolve network and Educamp.

The seminar, which takes place on the Elluminate platform, is on Mobile learning and Augmented Reality, with presentations from Mark Kramer and Same Easterby Smith, both of whom are leading developments in the use of this technology for learning.
Mark says: “The application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams on mobile devices, as a way to expand the real-world, is finally available for the masses on an affordable basis. Augmented and mixed-reality scenarios are now a common fixture of our technology arsenal of methods to acquire information about our surroundings. This emergence of augmented reality (AR) also has great potential to support individual and group learning. I will share thoughts and experiences on how AR will change the way we view and experience learning in a situated context.”

The seminar takes place at 19.00 (UK time) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time).
Link to Venue: Elluminate

Link for more information: Seminars

It is Open Access Week and here at Pontydysgu we are committed to doing our bit to support the cause.

We have a large archive of papers and books to which one or another of us has contributed at some time or other. None of it is going to be a best seller but some of the papers and books may be of interest to researchers, teachers, trainers or developers. And form time to time, I receive an email from people asking about where they can get a copy of one paper or another.

We did have a go at it a year and a half or so ago and Dirk spent ages trying to get the system working using bibtext. The problem is the system was just too clunky. Indeed looking at our stub page of journal articles I see the server is feeding up the following error message – Failed to write file/home/pontydysgu.org/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/bib2html/data/pontydysgu.cached.bib – check directory permission according to your Web server privileges – whatever that means.

So we need a better system. We did think about using the University of Bremen;s open access docuemnt service. But once more, on test this also has its drawbacks. This afternoon I tried creating an ebook on the Lulu site. And it is not bad. However all it basically does is makes available a PDF file, albeit with quite a neat presentation.

So if any of you are interested you can download “Creating Learning Spaces: Training and Professional Development for Trainers” from the Pontydysgu page on Lulu (for free of course).

I reckon this is not a bad format for books. And for papers we are thinking of using Scribd which seems to work pretty well with WordPress. But i would be interested in your views. What is the best way for us to publish an archive of perhaps 200 papers, books and book chapters? And what is the best format? Should we try to produce ebooks for devices like the ipod touch? And, if so, what is the best way to do it> Your help will be much appreciated.

I was going to – and still will – write a post celebrating Open Access Week. But it was somewhat ironic on the first day of the week to receive an evaluation report on a project we submitted under the so called valorisation strand of the Lifelong Learning Programme which focused on the use of social networking and social software to provide open access to the results of projects.

I don’t normally complain if an application is turned down – it is a competitive field and I am not convinced all our ideas are always so brilliant 🙂

But the feedback on this project was truly shocking. It was almost impossible to connect the feedback to the project – indeed I double checked the reference number in case they has sent the wrong review. So then the question is raised of why? And I think it is just because the reviewer does not get the idea of open access. In his or her view the job of a project is to assist the European Commission in managing ideas and project outputs – not to empower projects to develop their own networks.

Anyway (in the spirit of open access) here is a sample of what we write and what the reviewer said:

We said: “The dissemination & exploitation of programme and project results at European level are frequently designed in rather traditional models. The use of static content continues to be the main focus which in many cases reduces the impact that projects may have, both sectorally with user groups, but also with stakeholders & policy makers. This project will connect project leaders, partners & members of the European Commission with key networks & communities. The goal of Europe UNLOCK-Ed is to create an innovative & suitable framework for dissemination & exploitation of LLP project results through an Open Access to Knowledge approach.  The project will develop an interactive framework using participatory media, supported by national training, online multimedia resources, an open Social Network Site (SNS) for online discussions and access to resources, synchronous online & face to face events & a handbook (electronic & hard copy) which will inspire a culture of open participation & sharing of knowledge. It aims to facilitate the development of adequate competencies & skills for LLP funded projects regarding the use of web 2.0 tools & raise awareness of Online Copyright & Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) which are issues which many projects struggle with. An e-guide on Online Copyright & IPR will also be developed & published on the project’s SNS for free distribution.  The project will also provide an opportunity for existing projects to disseminate & exploit their own results through the open e-journal for the publication of European LLP project results which will be established.  To summarise, this project is two-fold: it proposes to harness the latest web technologies to promote & develop effective techniques & methodologies for the transfer, dissemination & exploitation of results & it will also create learning opportunities as to capacity build & empower other projects  to apply the same framework to their projects to ensure the greatest impact & sustainability.

Relevance

They say: (…) detail on the actual dissemination activities that are planned are lacking’

We said: Europe UNLOCK-Ed wants to create an open, interactive, user-generated online knowledge database on topics addressed by lifelong learning projects and programmes. A social network site linking key networks will be launched to promote peer participation & offer a diversity of learning opportunities through the use of multiple online environments & web 2.0 tools. An e-guide, related pedagogical training, multimedia resources including e-journal & online events will also derive from this approach.

It will also target the promotion of innovation in terms of dissemination & exploitation methods at a wider scale while bringing together members of the European Commission, the National Agencies and successful projects with an international audience in an open, interactive environment though the use of a multi-litearte approach which will include web seminars, web radio shows & podcasts. Furthermore,  an e-journal for the publication of papers related with LLP projects is also part of the project’s goals (detailed information is then provided on each WP)

They say: The proposal (…) focus upon the use of a webportal.”

They say: Whilst a step in the right direction, there are some areas for improvement, including the issue of access to and acceptance by the target audiences (promoters, etc.)

We said: the project is called: Europe UNLOCK-Ed (Using Network Links to Openly Create Knowledge in Education)

The SNS will be based on Open Source software and will include different areas for peer participation. The site will be open to all visitors and participants willing to engage actively, and will be able to register for a free account. The SNS will also feature group areas and allow interaction in different languages.

Aim: To develop a hands-on training programme on the appropriate use of participatory media for dissemination & exploitation of project & programme results.

A handbook on the use of participatory media for innovative dissemination and exploitation of programmes and project results will be a direct output of the development of the training course carried. The handbook will compile relevant information and practices covered in the training course in the partners’ country languages. It will be published on the project’s SNS for free download.

The open e-Journal platform will be based on open-source software with advanced search facilities through the use of collaborative meta-tagging. It will be open to the wider community and feature international publications focusing on dissemination of results of European programmes and projects. When possible, the e-Journal will be featured in the Directory of Open Access Journals. It will also feature the LOCKSS box as to ensure the preservation of the e-Journal’s content in the long-term.

A WP consisting in exploring the thematic of Online Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights with the help of an expert in this area. An e-guide summarizing the main points concerning this issues will be the main output of this WP. It will be released in the SNS for open access and free use and distribution under a Creative Commons Licence.

A event focusing on the organization of  a face to face event combining the celebration of the Open Access Day with the core purpose of the project. It will aim to encourage the effective use of participatory media for dissemination and exploitation of project results. The event seeks to promote the project, provide hands-on opportunities to learn about the use of web 2.0 , online copyright and IPR to create a culture of open knowledge and sharing at national level .

European Added Value

They Say: (…) focuses on past projects

We said: The project targets at the creation of a framework in the development of innovative strategies for the dissemination and exploitation of European project and programme supported by Erasmus, Leonardo and Grundtvig. It seeks to instigate an open, cooperative environment linking important network and communities together in an open forum for sharing of practice and co-construction of knowledge in relevant topics of different educational sectors.

The project will benefit projects across 3 of the LLP sub-programmes and so will celebrate a diversity of projects, from a diverse range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.  Projects in countries other than those represented in the consortium partnership will be able to access the online resources offered by this project, regardless of cultural and linguistic background.

They say: ‘The proposal needs to consider the responsibility for dissemination in terms of existing actors (project promoters, national agencies, EC)

We said: The project aims at building opportunities to engage and promote intercultural dialogue by linking key existing networks and communities together in an open forum for the dissemination and exploitation of lifelong learning projects and programme results.

(…)

Project will target Erasmus, Leonardo & Gruntvig projects & will link key existing national agencies & international networks & communities in a shared dialogue focusing on practice & research of thematics relevant to the LLP. It will seek to bring different levels of expertise together by connecting younger researchers and practitioners with senior peers across fields. Diverse asynchronous and real-time interaction opportunities will be created for participants to share their projects.

Projects built on networking strategy, to connect existing network & communities in an interactive open forum, where sharing practice & collaboration among projects will be enabled through social media. The project will make use of national agencies to link into existing projects offering them resources and training to give their projects a wider visibility especially at a policy level, ultimately supporting the achievement of wider impact and transference of project results on a larger scale.

Yesterday I spoke at the Taccle project final confernce on the theme of the Future of e-learning. It is a big subject to deal with in twenty minutes and I hope that it at least was coherent. The audience were some 150 teachers – most from Belgium. My main themes were the need to develop open education and break down traditional subject barriers and institutional barriers to access to education plus the need to build on the new pedagogic approaches ot learning that social media and new technologies offer us.

There was time for a few questions and they were hard.

The first (one that I am frequently asked) was about motivation. Did I have any proof that such new approaches would motivate those students who are presently alienated by the schooling system. The answer is that I do not have any proof. We have ‘micro-examples’ of how technology and different pedagogies can inspire students who previously have not engaged with traditional tecahing and learning processes. But not on any large scale. A follow up question was as to whether any governmental, regional or even local districts have implemented my ideas. Again the answer I guess is no. We do not have large scale implementations of open education at present.

And the third question, in a slightly different vein, was if I am right about the future what are we going to do with school buildings – mostly designed for the ‘factory model; of tecahing. And that also is a herd question – although I do think the many examples of factory buildings converted for use as enterprise centres or design centres offers a vision of what could be done, given sufficient money.

The workshop mainly focused on the use of social software for learning, and coincided with the release of the excellent Taccle project handbook on the subject (will post link to PDF version in next couple of days). Many of the teachers had little – if any – experience in using technology for teaching and learning – but were keen to learn more. However, I wonder if we need to refine our approaches to training teachers. Whilst these events are useful, the common response is: “Yes I can see how good this approach is but how could I use it in my subject area.” Teachers tend to relate to other subject teachers as their community of practice. And it may be time that we moved beyond the more general how ot use a computer in tecahing ‘conciousness raising’ to looking precisely at how to use technology within different subject areas (yes – I know this runs at odds with my appeal to break down subject barriers). Of course the problem is that the research community knows little about this and they still tend to run many of the events. We now have a critical mass of teachers who are tech savvy and they should be taking the lead in such things.

This also goes for projects. I am afraid to say that too many of the European funded projects seeking to introduce technology for learning are failing just because the project partners have little expereince in teaching themselves.

An interesting event and thanks to all who helped organise it.

Last weeks video adventure at the European Conference on Educational Research (#ECER2009) – where we interviewed some 40 or 50 participants on video plus more on audio – has provoked quite some discussion on how we can use educational technology to support conferences. First lets provide a little background information.

ECER is a long running and popular conference. It attracted some 2050 enrolled delegates and covers a multitude of themes in educational research, organised by semi autonomous networks and coordinated by the European Educational Research Association (EERA). Whilst interest and participation in ECER is growing fast in terms of size, the conference is probably at its maximum. As ex EERA Secretary General, Martin Lawn explained to us on video, ECER is traditional hosted in university accommodation and few – if any – European universities have space for many more delegates than 2000. And talking to delegates – whilst they appreciated the breadth of the conference and the chance to talk to researchers from different areas of educational research – the very size of the conference was felt to be problematic. With many sessions running in parallel it was difficult to select sessions from the 229 page paper based programme.

ECER has done little with technology in the past. The web site (based on Typo 3) provides access to a PDF version of the programme and to standard information on travel and accommodation but little more. Although the use of technology for learning is obviously a theme in some of the sessions and networks (notably the Vocational Education and Training Network) and there is a relatively small network focused on ICT and learning (Network 16), Technology Enhanced Learning has never been a major theme at ECER.

There are four main arguments for embracing more technology. First is to ease the undoubted difficulties in administration and managing the conference. Second is to provide timely updated information to participants. Thirdly is to make the face to face conference more accessible, for instance through interactive programmes. Fourthly is to facilitate networking between delegates. but perhaps the most compelling argument for the use of technology is the idea of Open Education. Technology could allow the conference to turn itself outwards and to allow participation by those unable to afford either the time to attend or the quite expensive delegate fee. Access is obviously particularly problematic for younger researchers – who possibly might benefit most from a conference of this nature. Rather than being an episodic event on the educational research calendar, ECER could be at the centre of what is called by the European Commission the European Research Area. At the same time this would allow ECER to grow, whilst remaining limited in terms of physical attendance.

So at a practical level what technologies could be used?

First and most important is to set up a social networking site for the conference. Cloudworks, BuddyPress, Ning or Mixxt are all possibilities. However, in my mind CrowdVine is probably the best for the ability to create individual conference programmes. If this was done, I am sure it would encourage more delegates to attend network events, other than those of their own immediate network.

Attention needs to be paid as to how to provide rich information about sessions. I posed this question in a previous blog post about the #AltC conference. Seb Schmoller from ALT put forward a number of interesting suggestions in a comment on the post:

“What is it about a session that you need to know to make a decision about whether to go to it?
Inclusion of a micro-abstract – 140 characters max?
Themes addressed?
Type of session (demo, workshop, symposium, etc)?
Level of experience aimed at?
Where on tech/learning spectrum it lies?
Extent to which it has a strong data or numerical component?
X?
Y?”

Other comments and suggestions included encouraging presenters to make a short video or audio about their contributions. In terms of the participants to ECER (for the most part non-techies), this would require a very simple web based facility to do this – maybe CrowdVine could consider this?

Thirdly stream the keynote sessions and other selected sessions and publicise this in advance. Encouragement and support could also be provided to the different networks to consider streaming some of their sessions. A second screen should be provided in streamed sessions for allowing feedback from those participating remotely.

Fourthly continue what we did this year in producing videos and podcasts from the conference (probably with a little more organisation and preparation than we did this year 🙂 ).

Fifthly, consideration needs to be paid as to how to easily allow presenters to upload their papers and presentations to a central or distributed repository. ECER does not require full papers to be produced and this is a weakness of the conference. However, VETNET has now over 60 of the 90 or so presentations on-line and other networks should be encouraged to follow suit.

One small but key measure would be to adopt a common hashtag and publicise this in advance. As far as I can see only four or five delegates twittered this years conference – but it may be that different people used different tags.

One way of encouraging more use of Twitter – or whatever microblogging service is trending next year – would be to distribute large screens around conference spaces. These could not only be used to show real time aggregated feedback, but also to provide information on upcoming conference sessions.

This is of course only a starting point. But if these steps were taken, they could allow ECER to turn itself outwards, not only to researchers in Europe but to researchers in other continents. With the announcement of the formation of the World Education Research Association at this years ECER, it would be a timely move forward

I don’t often write about software releases. But whilst the latest beta release of Google Wave has dominated the technical press and blogs, for social networks and learning the BuddyPress 1.1 release may prove just as significant.

BuddyPress is a long running project to turn the WordPress blogging software into a social networking application. And very good and powerful it is too. But the earlier releases were quite hard to install and style. The 1.1 release makes setting up and styling BuddyPress almost as easy as WordPress.

Why is Buddypress important for education? Social software is of increasing importance for learning. Unlike the more traditional educational technology approaches through Management Information Systems and Virtual Learning Environments, social software offers far more potential for informal and collaborative learning. And as Jo Turner Attwell wrote in a guest contribution to the Wales Wide Web yesterday students are able to create a virtual space to manage their own learning, whilst using social networking as a support system to scaffold their learning. And this is indeed what many students have done, with or without the support of teachers or educational institutions. Increasingly, educational institutions have begun to establish their own social networking spaces on Facebook, Ning, Google, Twitter or one or more of the myriad of social software services offered by commercial providers.

However, there remains several problems. Firstly such services allow only limited customisation in terms of functionality. Although open APIs may allow mash ups and some extendibility, the core software remains under the control of the provider. Secondly many of these services rely on advertising as their business model, although some will provide advert free sites for educational providers. But more importantly it raises questions of who owns the data. Of course terms of service differ between social software services. But in the most extreme cases *e.g. Facebook) the terms of service basically specify that they own the data. Furthermore it can be very difficult to extract your own personal data from such platforms, making it hard, for example, to develop an personal learning record or e-Portfolio, when access to personal work is restricted.

BuddyPress is open source software, with a growing and vibrant development community. Of course we already have Joomla, Drupal and Elgg. But BuddyPress goes further than these systems in providing support for to easily setting up and support groups and communities. It promises to allow the development of rich social networking services based on locally installed and controlled web sites. It can be freely customised to suit different learning needs. And the data belongs to the user! Pontydysgu are developing two sites for continuing professional development using BuddyPress. We will keep you informed of how this work progresses.

The debates around the themes I talked about in my report on AltC last week have not gone away with a weekend of fantic blogging and twittering. This week I will try to write a series of posts expanding on the ideas being discussed. But first I have to get some administration done.

So here are just a couple of quick catch up points on some of these memes.

As I said last week, Open Educational Resources are hitting the mainstream, raising issues of institutional approaches and strategies. Should publishing as OER be prescribed for academics? What are the business models for supporting OERs? How can resources be discovered and reused? What is an ‘open scholar;?

Tonight is the first of a new series of Evolve / Educamp open online seminars on open content with presentations by Martin Weller and Martin Lindner.  The seminar takes place on the Elluminate platform – just click this link to access it – at 20.00 Central European Time, 1900 UK time.

Martin Weller will “explore the ways in which the term ‘open’ has changed in usage over the years since the founding of the Open University, and consider what ‘open’ principles such a university would be founded on now. The practice of being an ‘open scholar’, and the benefits and issues involved will be examined.”

Martin Lindner’s contribution is entitled ‘Open Content: Non Learners Anonymous;. His abstract says: “More and more, people get frustrated by training and education that is overly formalized, expensive, stealing too much lifetime or simply not producing usable learning results. On the other hand, the Web is presenting a plethora of free and open content for many subjects and fields. And we have new stunningly powerful tools for collaboration and knowledge that cost nearly nothing. But still people are not able to take full advantage of these possibilities, feeling to be left on their own with the ambitious task of “self-learning”. I would like to share and discuss some thoughts from a working group thinking about how we could set up self-organizing groups, where “Non-learners Anonymous” can use Web 2.0 tools and practices to break with the painful habit of non-learning.”

So how can we help creating self-organizing groups that can systematically take advantage of the “open content” in the web? What templates, tools and what rules should we arrange so that they can easily form, set up their project and their goals and then work collaboratively in a given time frame toward some tangible results.”

And for those of you interested in the “Is Twitter killing Blogging?” debate,  there is an interesting dicussion continuing on the Cloudworks site.

Cloudworks also hosts another page bringing together many of the contributions around “The VLE is Dead” debate.