Category: People, Place and Work

immersion learning

ilwUniversity of Edinburgh Innovative Learning Week (ILW) 2015 #ILW2015 will take place from 16-20 February. Event booking is now open!

ILW 2015 is our fourth annual festival of creative learning and is a chance for students, staff and alumni to develop skills, meet new people and celebrate innovation in our academic community.

This year’s programme includes a fine spread of events hosted or facilitated by LTW in conjunction with friends and partners across the university.

“Shoot the Uni” – Photography Competition 11:00 – 13:00 Mon 16 Feb

Open Courses with Open Resources 09:30 – 12:30 Tue 17 Feb

Peer-Reviewing Online 13:00 – 14:00 Tue 17 Feb

Driving Seminar Room Technology  Various times Tue – Fri

What no Chalkboard? An Insight into Electronic  Various times Tue – Fri

Extending the Boundaries – Virtual Classroom Spaces 13:00 – 14:00 Wed 18 Feb

Women, Science and Scottish History – Wikipedia Editathon 14:00 – 17:00 Mon – Fri

Smart-data hack with Informatics Various times Mon – Fri

ILW 2015 Fair! 16.30-18.30 Fri 20 Feb

TedX 9.30-18.30 Thurs19 Feb

planning round

Le Notre, Andre 1679-83 Marly : general plan ECA Library Image http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/c8li5i Collection
Le Notre, Andre 1679-83 Marly : general plan ECA Library Image http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/c8li5i Collection

The Learning, Teaching & Web Services Division (LTW) brings together the technology enhanced learning, digital education, website, web services and classroom technology teams to ensure that we offer a service to colleagues and students which meets the needs of Schools and Colleges.
LTW will support and engage with initiatives generated by our staff, students, alumni and those outside the University. I hope that colleagues across the collegiate university will engage with our services, case studies and events, give advice to our projects and invite us into ongoing discussions about how best to make use of the technology on offer.

Engaging with users
Since establishing the Division in August 2014 I have been out and about around the University, discussing the support needed for learning, teaching and outreach, and for an enhanced student experience. I have been delighted to find so many colleagues with enthusiasm for new ways of thinking and working as part of a University-wide conversation on digital innovation. Ongoing investment in this area will enable us to maintain excellent services within the University by providing a robust foundation for the enhancement of learning, teaching and communications. The University is moving towards an increasingly open presence on many digital platforms: open educational resources, open data, open science and open practice. Effective digital communications from the University will ensure that this digital shift benefits society on a national and a global scale. The success of massive online and distance learning courses demonstrates that we have found new audiences and collaborators from across the globe. Your help will be needed to make the most of the new website to ensure that those seeking knowledge about any area of academic activity discover relevant work carried out at Edinburgh.

Technology in the classroom
My conversations with colleagues have highlighted an increasing demand for digital skills training and for support to integrate technology into the classroom. The distinction between IT and AV is becoming increasingly blurred: it’s all digital now. For many colleagues it is the technology context – the technology available in the teaching rooms – which influences their choice of media to use. As you would expect in a research institution, colleagues are using the most up-to-date technologies every day in their research. Our challenge now is to find appropriate ways to model those activities in teaching so that students learn how professional researchers make use of the tools, methods and datasets in their field. The technology on campus should provide a flexible environment that lets students and staff experiment, co-create, build, share and learn from each other.

The digital estate
Digital content and tools which make up the university’s digital footprint, or digital estate are growing. Digital content and tools such as Learn, MyEd, Turnitin, PebblePad, mobile apps and webpages have a key part to play in equality and a consistently excellent student experience. Reviewing support for the digital experience requires us to look across the University at what systems and services we provide. It is important to assess how these are perceived, navigated and experienced by students and staff; what shortcomings and gaps there are; and what will be required of these systems and services in five years’ time. Should we invest as much in our digital estate as we do in our physical one?

I am looking forward to working with groups across the institution to identify the services that will help us to deliver what we need locally, nationally and internationally.

can you tell she is cheating by the way she is dressed?

PERFORMANCE COSTUME 2009, LEILA DEARNESS © Edinburgh College of Art http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/xc5j6y
PERFORMANCE COSTUME 2009, LEILA DEARNESS © Edinburgh College of Art http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/xc5j6y

Any discussion about wearables in higher education quickly progresses to the age-old question: Can you tell by how some-one is dressed that they are cheating?

Would your exam invigilators know if students were wearing google glasses? How long before there is no more need to write formulae on your sleeve, you’ll  be able to just use your cufflink to scroll down?  Can you tell how long there is to go on a cheating watch?

It may be that we have to give up entirely on the idea that closed book exams are done in sealed rooms with no extra help.

Or we could do exams in the nude. Or scrubs. Or in special orange exam survival jumpsuits. Good thing we have a costume design degree.

games changers

0023302c
Japanese Paintings: Children’s Games, 1894 © The University of Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/l60b5l

Did you get bored of games for Christmas?

On the 14th January I will be in Huddersfield speaking as keynote at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Annual Teaching and Learning Conference.  Doing my research, looking at their website I see that they also host a Conference on Serious Games.

It seems to me that games may be about to become seriously important in higher education in various ways. People I know have been researching this for years, and I wonder whether the time has finally come. There are many aspects to this , obviously. There is game design, gamification, serious gaming, research about people who play games, the people who design games, the potential for games to be learning environments, for children, for adults, for problem solving, for social skills, for violence, for misogeny etc. Certainly after #gamergate it seems like it is an area of activity with some dark sides which might beneft from having a bit more light shone upon them before activists are hung out to dry.

Universities, beyond their informatics and design departments, will I think, be paying more attention to games soon, if they are not already, because a generation of people for whom computergames and e-sports are commonplace are heading towards university now.

Several universities host major gaming conferences, Nottingham has declared itself Game City.

Some universities offer e-sport scholarships.

Some games lobby to be part of the Olympics.

E-sports attract enormous audiences.

The British Museum and British Library are using gaming platforms to promote engagement with their collections.

There are many MOOCs about gamification and game design, some about games, some which are games and some which have been gamely gamified.

There’s also a tasty Game Masters* exhibition at our National Museum of Scotland.

 

*Not to be confused with the Scottish Game Fair or seriously good game.

 

exploring new markets

image
Picture taken by me in the street. No rights reserved.

My vision and strategy skills were tested during my trip to Online Educa in Berlin after Lufthansa left my luggage in Frankfurt and I stupidly, left my glasses and contact lenses in that luggage. I found myself taking a very myopic view of MOOC strategy, and trying not to fall foul of any immediate tripping hazards.

Luckily the luggage returned before I began my next leg to London.

At the conference I presented  a high level overview focusing on the role of the public intellectual; the ways in which we can use digital initiatives to develop town and gown relations; the ways in which we add value to online courses; and the importance of research universities in sense-making in a maelstrom.

I used broad strokes to paint a colourful picture, but that may be becasue everything in the distance seemed slightly blurred.

Many friends and partners from the LERU universites were there, and there continues to be a wide interest in our experience at University of Edinburgh of living with MOOCs.

 

fully re-booted

moocThis week I’ll be welcoming all comers to ALT’s  winter wonderland event
‘CPD Rebooted – Creative Professional Development in Learning Technology‘ in Edinburgh on Tuesday, pulling myself up by the bootstraps at Aurora on Wednesday and then briefly, standing furry-booted at the Online Educa Conference in Berlin.

At ALT I’ll explain why peer-review is good for your soul. As an Aurora role model I’ll explain why table manners are important. In Berlin I’ll explain how MOOCs are changing management in higher education.

I have a very varied job and will be packing several pairs of shoes.

female, noun or adjective?

Women Singing at a Table (Waulking the Cloth) by Keith Henderson http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/women-singing-at-a-table-waulking-the-cloth-94160
Women Singing at a Table (Waulking the Cloth)
by Keith Henderson http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/women-singing-at-a-table-waulking-the-cloth-94160

Last night I had dinner with some very clever women of my acquaintance. I mentioned to them that I had been on “unconscious bias’ training.  ‘What does that even mean?’ they asked. Luckily, I was able to clarify as I have now had 3 different men mansplain it to me.

The University is on an equality and diversity kick. I have now been to 2 sessions on the topic. One much better than the other. I’ll be sending my feedback in. In today’s session I asked whether unconscious bias was the new name for prejudice. That didn’t go down well.

Clearly there are no women who can deliver unconscious bias training to senior university managers, which surprises me, since you would think it was a rich area of work. Perhaps all the female presenters and trainers are being kept in reserve for the Aurora sessions and Athena SWAN sessions.

One thing I have noticed though is that colleagues in the sessions seem reluctant to use the word ‘women‘.  I have heard ‘girls’, ‘ladies ‘and ‘females’ repeatedly.

It was the repeated use of the word ‘girls’ and some rather off-colour anecdotes about lesbians which makes me mark down the second set of presenters. That, and some very uninspiring pedagogy. Surely we can do better than this.

 

revisiting Woolf in Virginia

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles © The University of Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/vh1rqf
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles © The University of Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/vh1rqf

Virginia Woolf wrote ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’*.  A room of ones own is a luxury which few could afford at the time without help from husband or family.

As a woman who values enormously the space I have from which to write my blog, I am particularly keen to do what I can to lower the barriers and restrictions which stop any individual or group writing openly.

I was in Virginia this week to hear more about the ‘Domain of One’s Own’ project at the University of Mary Washington. The project provides all incoming freshmen with their own domain names and Web space.  Students have the freedom to create subdomains, install any LAMP-compatible software, setup databases and email addresses, and carve out their own space on the web that they own and control.  The University picks up the cost of paying for the domain as long as the student is a student. When they stop being a UMW student, they can choose to take over paying for the hosting or let it lapse. In the meantime they have learned valuable digital literacy skills and contributed web-based user-created content to all or any of their courses and activities. The university is not afraid of what the students might do in the space.

It seems to me that this approach is very much in line with University of Edinburgh’s recent ‘Digital Footprint’ campaign, and if we chose to follow it, would build on our commitment to developing the student experience. It is certainly one of the more interesting ways to link student use of the web to their time as part of the university community.

Not cheap though, for 30,000 students.

 

*A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is available as OER e-bookvia Project Gutenberg of Australia.

visitors and residents

Unique creation by Sophie of Kellogg. Commercial use by negotiation.
Unique creation by Sophie of Kellogg. Commercial use by negotiation.

Last night I dined at Kellogg again. Now that I am a visiting fellow rather than a resident one I was pleased to be invited to be guest Chamberlaine for the evening.

It was Scholars evening, so we celebrated the many generous gifts of donors to the College, some of whom are alumni, and others who just believe that the work of the College and the work of these individual students is worth supporting. I had lovely company at dinner sitting with social policy champion Amanda and Heather, Desmond Tutu Scholar and Wikipedia researcher.

I chose the importance of voting as the theme for my after dinner speech. We had a number of guests from Somerville College so I was able to make reference to Mary Somerville’s campaigns for women’s suffrage as well as the recent MCR elections, the Scottish independence referendum and the imminent general election.

I was also able to remind the current University of Oxford students that until 1950 as a graduate of that ( and this) university you would actually have had 2 votes in a UK general election. One for the area of the country where you reside, one for the university constituency.

The university constituencies, Oxford, Cambridge, University of London, the ancient Scottish universities and Queens Belfast all sent elected MPs to Westminster.

This was a wheeze started by the Scots and imported to England following the union of the crowns. It went on for a very long time. Several Cromwells, Pitt the Younger, Lord Palmerston, Francis Bacon, Issac Newton, Robert Peel and Ramsay MacDonald benefitted from the arrangement. Needless to say, it did nothing for the town and gown relations in any of the cities and was all ended by the Representation of the Peoples Act in 1948.

In preparing the speech I made use of a very handy OER from University of Cambridge: ‘Dons in the House’.

 

diversity via OER

0070201c
Two Men in an Interior . Sean Watson (c) University of Edinburgh ECA Collection http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/ex3a95

Last weekend I was in a conversation about the dearth of LGBT people in medical teaching cases. This may be because LGBT people never get ill and have no health, family or wellness issues.  Or it might be that our curriculum doesn’t reflect diversity in society.

Never fear, I said,  rather than start from scratch writing our own, lets go out to the OER-web to find materials which have been developed elsewhere that are available and licensed for us to use in our curriculum.

One google search later I found this ‘Preparing Future Physicians to Care for LGBT Patients: A Medical School Curriculum‘ from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. You have to register to use it, but it’s CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike once you’re in.

My colleague Jo quickly pointed out that the need for an ‘upperclassman facilitator’ might be a stumbling point if one were trying to replicate this teaching plan precisely.  Luckily ,derivatives are allowed. We are free to remix, transform, and build upon the material . Phew.