Category: Learning, teaching and web services

December 8, 2014

new digital vision for University of Edinburgh

Cornucopia by John Mooney in University of Edinburgh Art Collection http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/949mhd

I am excited to say the University is working with Google to explore and promote innovation in learning and teaching in Higher Education. Edinburgh students and staff will have a unique opportunity to experiment with Google Glass, one of the most talked about developments in wearable technology in recent years. Our reputation as a leader in strategic innovation in digital education is growing worldwide and we have a number of strategic partnerships with the international companies who develop new technology for users.

Wearable technology is exciting for academia because its designed for people being active, moving around and needing to be hands-free. So where we do active field work, sport, performance, complex experiments, medical procedures, explorations, digs or where we move around in large and small spaces (landscapes, city, architecture, public transport, exhibitions, collection, art installations) it can transform the way we work in gathering and using data and information. The technology functionality and usability is still developing and it is exciting to be involved at this early stage to shape how the features and applications can be used for learning, teaching and research.

Learning technologists from LTW, Information Services are working in partnership with students and staff across the whole institution to evaluate the potential for technologies like Glass to support and enhance a wide-range of educational activities and experiences.

Throughout January we will be inviting students in all disciplines to share their innovative ideas by submitting 3-minute video proposals. Some of the best proposals for using Google Glass will go forward to become live projects within the University.

This is an exciting opportunity for students to shape the way new technology is integrated into learning and teaching. We would encourage you to experiment and be inventive, Edinburgh University’s vision for digital education will be shaped by our students’ creative potential. I expect we will see a range of perspectives and discuss many aspects of seeing, light and dark.

You can find further information about the project and how to participate by visiting glass.ed.ac.uk

November 24, 2014

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

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.

November 4, 2014

visitors and residents

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’.

October 23, 2014

diversity via OER

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.

October 12, 2014

emerging technologies

John Playfair’s Transit Theodolite http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/6y5m06

The original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was published 35 years ago today.

According to the Guide* regardless of which world you are in, 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)

October 12, 2014

designing to deliver education for 2025

University of Edinburgh Education for 2025

Vice Principal Professor Jeff Haywood delivered a keynote adress at recent ALT conference. In it he outlined a vision for the University of Edinburgh’s education in 2025. The vision includes digital education, lifelong learning, open educational resources (OER) and a significant growth in online delivery to on- and off-campus students.

To support such a transformational shift we will need to build on recent success, draw upon our values and mission as an institution to find ‘the Edinburgh way’, and plan for investment to support sustainable, scalable growth.

This week the LTW service managers in the many IS academic IT teams will meet as a group to begin to plan a roadmap of serious experiments, projects, support, staff development and infrastructure needed to make this vision a reality. We are looking closely at the many ‘flavours of openness’ in educational practice around the institution and discussing the investment needed in digital skills for teaching, learning and research. In his keynote Jeff stressed the need for the ‘serious experiments’ to be supported, evaluated and evidence based. The reactions from the audience at ALT ( an international association of learning technologists in higher and further education) was that bold moves were needed at institutional and policy level to support a university like ours to adapt, change and maintain our position on the world stage.

If you would like to be part of ongoing discussions and consultations with Learning, Teaching and Web Services about the digital strategy, please contact me. Jeff’s keynote adress at ALT conference can be viewed online in full.

October 8, 2014

free as in freedom

Playground. Linda Gillard (c) University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 ECA Collection

I spent some of last week playing in the trade exhibition and ‘Start-up alley‘ at Educause conference.

For a technology conference which has its keynotes in a main hall for several thousand people, the Educause presentations were charmingly retro and hardly technology-enhanced at all.

Clay Christiansen (62) spoke about distruptive innovation using slides featuring small type, clip art, serif fonts, copyright assertions and some oddly watermarked images. He modelled the Harvard experience in front of an audience of 4000. He asked us to pray for Harvard Business School. Which we did.

Later on, national treasure Doris Kearns Goodwin (71) lectured for an hour reading rapidly from a pre-written paper accompanied by no visual aids. The audience hung on her every word. More proof, were it needed, that learning technology is grounded in the liberal arts.

I went sessions and presentations about the recent shifts in the open source open communities: Apereo, Kauli and Unizin. There was a lot of talk about freedom and control.

I was surprised how many people wanted to discuss the recent Scottish referendum. More talk of freedom and control.

September 22, 2014

space and time

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/students/study-space/interactive-study-space-map

Blended learning is all about breaking free of the restraints of space and time. You can do it any time, any place, any pace. Providing an technology enhanced campus is all about mastering space and time: what can you do in the space and when?

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 whether to use cameras, microphones, audio, video, images, visualisations, Google-earth fly throughs, clips from movies, recorded TV programmes, who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-style voting, virtual worlds, touch screens, simulations, animations, infographics and datasets in their presentations.

For many colleagues it is their fear ( or prior experience) that the technology will not work in the room which exacerbates the stress of presenting. For many colleagues it is a complete mystery as to why the local IT staff who support the presentation machine do not support the data projector too. This situation is not unique to Edinburgh.

The layout of the room (and the number of power sockets) shapes choices with regard to students using laptops, cameras and phones to create learning materials for themselves. The strength of the wireless broadband determines whether video can be watched, shared and downloaded by many students at the same time. The comfiness of the seats, the ability to come and go and the proximity to coffee influences whether student choose to remain in this place while they learn.

When colleagues are asked to show innovation in ‘front of house’ teaching it behooves the colleges and schools to invest well in technology enhanced space for an excellent student experience.

The Learning Spaces Technology Section team work to ensure that teachers and students have the best possible, quality and consistent, choices of technology in centrally managed classrooms and study spaces. Jim and his team ensure that equal access to learning is offered via hearing loops, large projection and recordings for revision or transcription. When the festival comes they take our AV kit out, when the festival goes they put our AV kit back in. They turn around fast and they work to ensure that the kit will work when you poke it with your digit to turn it on. They will also train you how to use it.

If you are interested in knowing more about the kit in the classrooms, or having a practice to become confident in the digital skills needed to master it, do contact us.

September 22, 2014

design-led

‘Have nothing in your library that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’, William Morris might have said. In our library we have a copy of the Decretals of Gratian, printed in 1472, which was reputedly the favourite printed book of its owner, Morris himself.

With a movement towards open practice in higher education the topic of learning design in technology enhanced education seems to have become popular again.

“Learning design is the practice of planning, sequencing and managing learning activities, usually using ICT-based tools to support both design and delivery.”1

Are our online courses useful and beautiful? Much discussion at ALT, helpful JISC guides, toolkits , OER materials and some new tools in the space. It’s time to spend some time looking at the art and craft.

If we can be transparent about what we are doing we can reproduce the elegant elements. If not, it’s curtains for us.

Jisc Learning Design Studio say the benefits of following learning design process are:

It acts as a means of eliciting designs from academics in a format that can be tested and reviewed by others involved in the design process, i.e. a common vocabulary and understanding of learning activities.
It provides a method by which designs can be reused, as opposed to just sharing content.
It can guide individuals through the process of creating new learning activities.
It helps create an audit trail of academic (and production) design decisions.
It can highlight policy implications for staff development, resource allocation, quality, etc.
It has the potential to aid learners and tutors in complex activities by guiding them through the activity sequence.

‘Learning design’ has suffered slightly in the UK, I think, from being used interchangeably with ‘instructional design’ which has US and ‘training’ connotations which seem to make it unattractive to academic colleagues who prefer to think that learning is serendipitous, discovery based and personalised. There is also a difference between ‘designing for learning’, ‘learning by design’ and ‘learning design’. One difference is that learning design comes with its own set of technical standard s which shape tools and platforms.

September 21, 2014

time travellers

There is a steampunk science public engagement event in Edinburgh on Friday* and it is the birthday of HG Wells today. It seems appropriate in that context to let you know that I have discovered a time traveller in the University of Edinburgh Fine Art collection.

I am in the enviable position of being able to choose art from the collection to hang on the walls in my office. It’s a tough gig; choosing between a Blackadder and a Bellany, a Redpath and a Rodger, but I struggled through. It has to be said that much of the fine art collection comprises portraits of dead white men with excellent facial hair, and there’s not many women artists in there.

My favourite picture in the collection is already exhibited ( quite rightly) in the school of Scottish Studies: Women Singing at a Table (Waulking the Cloth) by Keith Henderson is a stunning piece. I was offered a naked Sean Connery from his time as a life model.

The first piece I have chosen however, is this painting by AE Borthwick. It is entitled ‘A Rocky Landscape’ and clearly shows a young woman recklessly using her laptop for virtual fieldwork while perched on a rock by a river. The artist died in 1955.

*Attendees are invited to dress in ‘your finest corsets, spats and gasmasks’.