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.
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.
The Custody is as Barbarous as the Crime. Francisco de Goya. ECA Library Image Collection http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/n25sfo
I was in a discussion to day where the suggestion was made that licensing materials as Creative Commons for re-use would promote plagiarism. I was able to refer to the online papers from the BIS 2013 consultation about open access which explains:
At least one commenter suggested that the adoption of CC BY “[(a)] offers virtually no protection against plagiarism … [and (b)] unfettered creative commons licensing would constitute a serious infringement of intellectual property rights and pose a threat to UK intellectual capital.”
As to (a), plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own. Plagiarism is a completely orthogonal issue to copyright infringement, and there is simply no evidence to support a claim that CC BY would promote or encourage plagiarism in a way any other solution would not as well.
As to (b), CC licensing does not infringe IP rights; rather, it is a conditional permission for the public to exercise some rights on specific terms that can only enhance UK intellectual capital by making it more readily available for wide distribution and innovative use.
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)
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.
Teviot Row House, Edinburgh, pen drawing, c1888.By Sydney Mitchell (Life time: 1930) [Public domain or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsTeviot Row house is celebrating its 125th birthday this year and alumni are being welcomed back to share stories.
It is the oldest purpose built student union building in the world and it is stunning. It was designed to be fit for purpose, politics, power and community: ‘And with a house furnished as our Union is, our fellow-students may rest assured that they have much in their power to promote their own welfare.’
If you have ever tried to navigate your way around inside Teviot you might wonder what the original architect* imagined would be going on in there, and there is something of Hogwarts about its staircases, turrets and towers**.
It is a slightly disconcerting space and it takes you a few tries to get where you are going. But if you persist there are rich environments, private spaces and favourite nooks to be found.
My memories of Teviot stem from my time as a student here, but also from the many summers it served as the Fringe Club during the Edinburgh Festivals. In recent years I have been lucky to spend time in there again as a trustee on the EUSA Board.
25th Oct 1889 description of Teviot’s opening, The Student
To assist in helping Teviot to celebrate, Claire found this snippet in the archives of The Student newspaper from 1889 when the Union first opened for all.
‘It remains with the students themselves to make the Union what it ought to be, and if they join it as they ought they will be the gainers from it.The want is now supplied, and we shall look with interest on the progress of the new factor in our University life.’
The funding for the building was generated through an early ‘crowdsourcing-initiative’ 1 from amongst the students themselves. It would be fascinating to see if there is any record of that in the archives.
There was a book written for the 100th anniversary, it’s probably in the Library, called ‘No spirits and precious few women‘, a reference to the fact that neither spirits nor women were included in Teviot until the early 1970s, which makes it sound like a rather dull place to me. Nowadays, however, it is lively and buzzing with student councils, ceilidhs and tasty snacks.
*The architect, Sydney Mitchell was an alumnus of Edinburgh too.
** The creator of Hogwarts, J.K Rowling, is an alumna of Edinburgh too.
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.
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.
(c) University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
‘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
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 standards which shape tools and platforms.
(c) The University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
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’.
Charting the Nation Collection. University of Edinburgh Digital Images Collection
Last night I dreamt I went to Clackmannanshire again. It’s hard to know what to write the morning after. Last week we had a workplace debate about the referendum. Colleagues for Yes were a clear majority. There’s a lot of hurt being felt today. In the past I have granted compassionate leave following the loss of a loved one or the death of a pet. What should we give for mourning a dream?
The office is very quiet, one of the big topics of discussion is gone for a generation.
