The midden

A doorway to something new.

These 2 posts (Part 1 and Part 2) by Tony Bates, consider the need for change in Higher Education and the role that technology has in supporting that change.

In reading Part 1, the current 19th Century industrial model of education that universities still cling on to is all too familiar.  While many will see what Bates is proposing as being too radical and unlikely to be achieved, it is exactly what many of us are working to achieve in our roles as teachers and educators within the HE system. The idea that a model designed for an era of elite education, when around 8% of 18 year olds entered university, can still be effective in an age of mass education, when around 40% now take up university places, is one that is difficult to fathom. Over the past 20 years or so,  universities have spent increasing amounts of their budgets kitting out their teaching and learning spaces with technology. However, this has brought about little or no change in the way we educate. The technology has been used to do what we always have done, rather than to bring about change ( see an earlier posting on this subject). What has been missing is the vision and leadership needed to bring about transformative change.

In Part 2, Bates goes on to describe the “visions” that are required from the various stakeholders in HE., e.g. government, academics, students, administrators, IT managers, in order to bring about change. While technology can support this change, it requires structural and cultural changes before the current model can be dismantled and a new one put in place. In describing the implications of such change for institutions, Bates outlines 10 things that will change as a result of his own vision. I think that the most significant one relates to the changes that would take place in the way we assess learning. At present, we insist on a one-size-fits-all model, usually in the form of an end-of-course exam or a set essay. For me, I don’t believe we can realistically expect any change until this model is replaced by one that involves student choice and negotiation in how they demonstrate to us, not only what they have learnt, but also to what level of understanding they have learned it.

While I agree pretty much with everything Bates puts forward, I think that he misses the point that, within his vision of universities of the future there will still be a place for the niche institution – one that continues to offer a traditional, 19th Century industrial educational experience.

One of the highlights of ALT-C this year.

One of the characteristics of HE teaching is that lecturers tend to teach in the way they were taught when they were undergraduates.  So if they were taught by inspirational teachers who saw the value of teaching, they are more likely to focus on inspiring their own students. If they were taught by lecturers who were teaching under duress and saw it as a distraction from their research, they are more likely to inflict the same on their own students. Moving this latter group into the former is a major challenge for those involved in teaching the teachers.

Richard Felder’s web site is aimed at providing help to HE lecturers who find themselves in a teaching role, but without any training. Although aimed specifically at Science and Engineering lecturers, many of the resources are applicable to a wider audience.

In his “Random Thoughts,” column on educational methods and issues for the quarterly journal Chemical Engineering Education he writes on a whole range of issues facing today’s HE lectures and provides valuable guidance on how to deal with them.

His two papers on the Top 10 worst teaching mistakes is a good starting point. This is a useful list as it not only identifies bad practice in HE teaching but also puts forward some helpful suggestions for avoiding these.

Billed as “a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities”, this handbook written by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger at the University of Manitoba,  is a lot more than this. It starts from the premise that Higher Education, whether individual institutions know it or not, is in the midst of fundamental and large-scale change that will see the transformation of teaching and learning on a scale that we haven’t experienced since the Industrial Revolution.

At the heart of this change is the fragmentation of information. No longer does information only exist in a pre-packaged format, such as books, CDs, newspapers or even as a course. Information is now available in a whole range of formats, and this information can be “personalised” by editing, adding, re-designing so the user ends up with information in a format that makes sense to him.This creation of  “personal frameworks of coherence” by users is one of the most important drivers for transformative change within the HE sector. No longer is the creation, delivery, validation and dissemination of information under the control of the lecturer, expert or university. The growth of user-generated content, Google, Wikipedia,  Open Educational Resources, Web 2.0 technologies, social software and mobile technologies means that the individual is now in control.

Information Fragmentation and Coherence

The Handbook gives a good overview of the pressures bringing about change and how these impact on the learning process. The discussion on the role of technology in teaching and learning goes a long way to summarising where we are at at the moment and provides some useful guidelines on its effective use. The use of technology by lecturers and departments can help bridge the gap between the traditional and the, as yet undefined, role of education in the future.

The final paragraph really brings home what we in HE are all trying to grapple with:

“Through a process of active experimentation, the academy’s role in society will emerge as a prominent sensemaking and knowledge expansion institution, reflecting of the needs of learners and society while maintaining its role as a transformative agent in pursuit of humanity’s highest ideals.”

Educause have produced a useful guide to QR codes as part of their “7 Things You Should Know….” series. It provides a good overview on what QR codes are and how they are being used. It also includes a mention of Andy Ramsden’s work at Bath, and also offers the opportunity to contribute your ideas on how QR codes could be used in the classroom and on campus. You can download details of this here:

Creating and reading QR codes on the iPhone is quick and easy with the Optiscan app from Airsource. This app will automatically scan and read a code when you point your camera’s phone at it. It reads equally well from a computer or iPhone screen as it does from paper. Once it has read the code it presents you with the information, e.g. a website, someone’s contact details or some text information.

The software also allows you to generate a QR code for a url, contact or a piece of text. This is very simple to do. For example, to generate a QR code for a website simply select the  URL icon on the share tab, and then type in the URL. After you have finished press the “Done” key on the keyboard and the QR code will be shown. There is no need to type in “http://” in front of the URL.

Here is the QR code for a picture of my beautiful partner on the beach in Mingulay.

Here is the url to one of my favourite TED talks.

I can see many educational uses for these QR codes, e.g.

1. Course information such as exam timetables, assessment schedules, lecture notes, powerpoint slides, videos …..etc could be made available via the course website so students could download the information directly to their phones.

2. QR codes could be used in combination with some Web 2.0 tools such as Netvibes or Facebook to give student access to course materials.

3. In museums and art galleries, information about an exhibit could be made available through a QR code.

I’m sure there are loads more examples.

This is a useful article by Olivia Mitchell, posted on the Slideshare blog, describing 4 multimedia learning principles that can be applied to improve the learning value of presentations. She distinguishes between graphic design and instructional design and explains why the latter is the most important if you want to help your audience to learn.

The latest Horizon Report, that looks at the likely impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning and research, features six examples of tools, applications and devices that will change the way we operate. Two of these technologies, i.e. mobile devices and cloud computing, are already with us and used extensively. With the advent of the 3-G iphone and Google’s Android phone the potential for new and innovative forms of learning, assessment and collaboration is huge. Anyone who uses Google Docs, Flickr, YouTube and Mobile Me  is already linked into a “cloud”.  Educational institutions, certainly in HE, probably don’t yet realise the extent to which their students and, indeed, their workforce are making using of cloud computing.

The other four technologies covered in this report are:

• geolocation technology
• the personal web
• semantic aware applications
• smart objects (see recent post on QR codes)

The report describes the relevance of each of these technologies to teaching and learning, as well as providing some useful links to examples of educational applications.

This article in ZDNet Technology News looks at some of the claims being made about Cloud Computing and also gives a good update on where this technology is up to.

There is also a good review of MobileMe, Apple’s successor to .Mac, for those considering Apple’s cloud offering.

Just been listening to an interesting presentation by Andy Ramsden from Bath University on QR codes – Quick Response codes. These are like bar codes in that they contain information that can be read by a scanner, but they are different in that they have information in 2-dimensions so can store a lot more than a bar code

Developed by Denso Wave in 1994, they are used in industry to store customer and shipping details on products and are now starting to appear around us on various consumer products as more devices have QR code scanners. Some Nokia phones have had barcode readers for a while now and it can’t be long before they also include QR code readers.

Andy had us discuss the educational potential of QR codes. Examples from the audience included:

• attaching a QR code to electronic feedback, e.g. Word doc,  so a student can scan their phone over the code and have it sent direct to their phone
• marketing of courses
• multiple choice tests allowing student to do it on their phone and then send their answers via text.

Further information on this can be found on Andy’s blog.