Category: Learning, teaching and web services

September 13, 2015

set in stone

Two weeks ago I presented the story of our Women in Science and Scottish History editathon at the Wikipedia Science conference in London at the Wellcome Trust*.

This week Surgeon’s Hall unveiled a plaque to commemorate the Edinburgh Seven and the Surgeon’s Hall riot. I am very pleased to be able to draw a direct line from the fun we had on the web at our wikipedia editahon to the fixing of a permanent plaque. it’s nice when the physical and the virtual keep up with each other.

The Wikipedia Science conference was a good place to discuss the contribution of women to the telling of science stories and disseminating research. Peter Murray-Rust described Wikipedia as our greatest achievement in the 21st Century. I reminded the audience that less that 15% of the people who edit Wikipedia are women and we discussed whether or not this was a problem. One delegate suggested that women aren’t interested in facts and another that women have ‘other’ things to do. We wondered how Wikipedia would be different, and Wikipedia science would be different, if more women contributed. We wondered what might be done to find out.

The Edinburgh Seven had a tough time when they tried to break into the male world of university medicine, but they were working within historical, established structures. Surely Wikipedia is designed from the start to be more open, more democratic, more participatory? Wikipedia is only 15 years old. It seems like it is work worth doing to try to recruit more editors and a good place to start would be amongst information professionals and women in tech.

It seems to me that the kinds of initiative we may need to get more women using wikipedia for science, are very much in the same vein as those more generally for women in STEM workplaces. We need women to want to join, and want to stay.

The presentation I gave described the research I am involved in with the Open University to identify the workplace learning outcomes for university staff and students in developing digital skills, information literacy skills and understanding of copyright in an open knowledge environment. The research team have surveyed and interviewed. Interviewees describe rich learning experiences, learning a range of skills and knowledge, for example:

technical knowledge (how to create a Wikipedia page, how to edit, how to cite other sources etc),
factual knowledge around the topic (names, dates, locations of historical events),
relational knowledge (how to interact with archivists and materials, how and where to source information, how to plan work with others),
socio-cultural knowledge (how to operate within a network of people with a common purpose).

Which all seem like good skills worth investing in. I am particularly interested in how editathons, if run well, can develop not just tech knowledge but also workplace cultural capital and networks. These are the things women need in STEM workplaces.

Watch this space for further research results, and for the next Edinburgh editathon.

The hashtag for the conference was #wikisci . I recommend the conference as a top value for money event. Less than 30 quid for access to the most up to date thinking in wikiscience.

*great venue

August 18, 2015

phd internship placements

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

If you are doing a Phd at University of Edinburgh and you need a job, please feel free to apply to these two splendid vacancies. Work based learning guaranteed. Applications by 31 August.

Digital Skills for Research Intern (Employ.ed for PhDs)

The work of this internship will be to review research skills frameworks, map digital skills to the research life cycle, identify existing training resources locally and in other universities, identify good practice for researcher training programmes, highlight any differences in digital skills needs in specific discipline areas and make recommendations to Information Services senior management to shape their plans going forward.

Equality, Gender and Change PhD Intern (Employ.ed for PhDs)
Information Services has more than 600 staff. Earlier this year more than 300 of them replied to a gender equality survey. The results of this survey are providing a starting place for the IS senior management to promote equality in the workplace and implement proactive plans for change. This internship coincides with an exciting time for Information Services as we make plans to move to a new building and find new ways of working.

August 6, 2015

teachers do nothing in August

Picture taken by me in the street in Mons, Belgium. No rights reserved by me.

If you are an experienced teaching or training manager, and you do one thing this August, please make it looking at this job advert. We need you.

Head of Digital Skills & Training
University of Edinburgh £48,743 to £54,841 per annum (pay award pending)

Which digital skills do you think teachers, learners, researchers and managers need? What staff and student development programmes will give our organisation an edge?

We are looking for an experienced training or teaching manager to lead our Digital Skills Training Service. The University of Edinburgh is a centre of academic excellence, committed to the development of digital skills throughout the organisation. You will lead the service, directing and developing its team, strategy and contribution to the University’s digital skills and IT training offering. You will strive to promote best practice in the delivery of training services and meeting of user expectations.

With proven experience of running IT training services in a large and complex organisation, you will have a talent for designing engaging training programmes, and the management experience to deliver high quality services with planned budgets and resources.

This is a full time open ended position.

July 15, 2015

time for a change?

Rachel Clark. 2013 Untitled. (c) University of Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/sgmas4

You don’t want to go back to your same boring job after the summer. You want to come to work in LTW.

Luckily for you we have three vacancies to attract the funnest people who know that life is too short to do it the way it’s always been done before.

Head of Learning Spaces Technology Salary: £48,743 to £54,841 per annum

Web Interfaces Team Manager Salary: £38,511 to £45,954 per annum

Media Team Manager Salary: £38,511 to £45,954 per annum

July 12, 2015

here’s looking at Euclid

Oliver Byrne. The Elements of Euclid, 1847 (c) University of Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/0524y8

Lots of discussions this week about the student digital experience and how our services support students. As you know, the name of the Student Information System at University of Edinburgh is EUCLID. As time goes by it needs looking at again.

We also have some elements of euclid in our library.

In this version of Euclid elements held in the university research collections coloured diagrams and shapes are used instead of letters for the greater EASE of learners. Its all about the interface.

If you are in to interfaces, we are recruiting a web interfaces service manager for our team right now:

Could you lead and develop our university web portal? Are you a creative enthusiast for interface design? Do you understand what learners and teachers want? It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We are looking for an experienced web manager to join us and contribute to our digital student experience. You will have proven skills in interface design, web and mobile technologies, and user experience.

You will lead a small team delivering a mixture of central and consulting services including responsibility for managing the University’s web portal, MyEd, and overseeing a bespoke website development service. You will understand the need for continuous improvement for services and be confident in delivering IT projects with high quality solutions that meet both strategic objectives and customer requirements.

Full time, open-ended contract. Apply today: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ALN479/web-interfaces-team-manager/

It’s a crazy world. Anything can happen.

May 25, 2015

don’t panic

According to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy there are rules which determine the reaction of most life forms to emerging technologies:

Anything which is in your world when you are born is normal, ordinary and just a natural part of the way things work.
Anything which is invented in the first third of your lifespan is new and exciting and revolutionary and you could probably get a career in it.
Anything which is invented once you are middle aged is just against the natural order of things.

Episode 8/8 Quintessential Phase 4 ( broadcast BBC Radio 4 23/6/05)

May 19, 2015

Events, dear boy, events

The advance of allied forces sorry, MOOCs across Europe.

This week I am mostly at EMOOCs conference in Mons. Although I’m supposed to be talking about MOOCs I keep getting slightly sidetracked into history conversations.

I’m thinking of The Europeana project 1914-18: untold stories & official histories of WW1. Europeana enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe’s galleries, museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual collections. With such a resource at our fingertips (much of it OER) it is very tempting to keep mentioning the War.

May 5, 2015

sweeping the common

Image copyright: Peter Stubbs peter.stubbs@edinphoto.org.uk Used with permission.

Our staff and students experience our physical estate and our digital estate. In the city of Edinburgh much of the housing stock is flats. Flats in a common stair. Some of these flats are large, grand and very elegant. Nevertheless they have equal shares and responsibility in common.

The experience of communal living in a shared common stair relies on a shared commitment to hygiene: knowing when and where to put out your rubbish and taking turns to wash and clean the common. Taking the time makes the place better for all. Each year, all across the city- notably in Marchmont and the southside- new households of students move into flats and the permanent residents begin again educating them on the mores of communal living.

Universities have large transient populations: new students and new staff each year. If it weren’t for the local community taking care of each other the whole place would fall into disrepair.

I expect you can see where I am going with this…. <whispers> it’s abit like that with OER.

April 24, 2015

OER16

Open shelving, University of Edinburgh Main Library.

I spent some of last week in sunny Cardiff at OER15. The conference was very good. Lorna and I have agreed to host it in Edinburgh next year. It’ll be a wonderful chance to gather like-minded folks together in our own town to discuss open culture and cultures of openness.

Edinburgh will be hosting a veritable festival of digital education conferences around that time since the international learning analytics conference (LAK16) and Learning@Scale will be here too!

Put ‘Edinburgh in April’ in your diary now.

April 23, 2015

It’s not ok

Martha Lane Fox By The Cabinet Office [OGL (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/1/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Baroness Martha Lane-Fox delivered the 39th annual Dimbleby Lecture from London’s Science Museum on March 30, 2015. I delivered a short welcome speech at Elearing@ed forum at Edinburgh University on April 23. I took the opportunity to quote her.

In her lecture she quoted Aaron Swartz “It’s not ok not to understand the Internet anymore.”*

I talked about Creative Commons.

Creative Commons has changed the way the Internet works in higher education.

Therefore, it is not ok not to understand Creative Commons anymore.

As it happens, the day before , on April 22, I saw Baroness Oona King of Bow speak. Baroness Lane Fox name-checked Ada Lovelace, who was of course, Countess King in her own day, but I think that is just co-incidence.

*She also said “get more women involved in technology.”