After 2 years of keynoting from a comfy chair at home it was lovely to adventure again.
It was fun to be in Limerick, and the CONUL conference was both incredibly friendly and well organised. I was happy to have a chance to wear my space boots and stand up again in front of the slides Gill made for me.
if you were there and you would like a copy of the slides for the links, please email me.
Inspired by a conversation with Lauren today, and some recent announcements, I am updating our timeline of learning technology developments at University of Edinburgh. Are there other things I should include?
2002? WebCT VLE on campus
20003 – ERA- Open access repository in the library
September 2005, Edinburgh Law School launched its first online distance learning programme
September 2006 – Launch of Online MSc Digital Education ( e-learning)
As Professor Sir Tim O’Shea is retiring I am putting together a timeline of learning technology developments at University of Edinburgh. Are there other things I should include?
2002? WebCT VLE on campus
20003 – ERA- Open access repository in the library
September 2005, Edinburgh Law School launched its first online distance learning programme
September 2006 – Launch of Online MSc Digital Education ( e-learning)
I spoke at JISC Digifest 2017. It was lovely to see so many colleagues old and new there.
Jisc had gathered a community of learning technologists and IT specialists and asked us to think about how we might find an evidence base for TEL.
But I do wonder: Should we even try?
There is a real risk to the universities in having the people who are best placed to build and develop excellent new services spending too much of their time of fruitless tasks. I think knowing what kinds of evidence is relevant for which decisions is a leadership skill, and leadership in learning technology is what its all about.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t make evidence-based decisions, or decisions based on data. We need to know the difference between evidence and data. But I think ‘technology enhanced learning‘ might be a red herring. Or possibly a hens tooth. Or may be both.
Even before the Trump era of post-fact and post-truth there were already many people, with strong convictions will not be persuaded by evidence, however well it is presented.
Some times I suspect that people ask for evidence not because they want to make a decision, but because they already have.
Sometimes I suspect that the request for more evidence, and more detail is a stalling or blocking tactic. It is just one approach to resistance. No amount of detail will ever be enough and you’ll spend a long time looking for it.
The evidence-base is not the same as the business-case.
So, In summary: Should we spend more time assembling an evidence base for technology enhanced learning?
I vote No. The opportunity cost is too great. It would have to be so broad, yet so detailed to convince university lecturers it would be quickly unstainable. It would be backward looking and the data unreproducable. It would have little useful link to the real, real-time decisions being made for investment for the future. We should not waste that time, we have more urgent things to do.
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.
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’.