Three plenary talks nicely framed this year’s Educause conference and, in their own ways, called for the involvement of students in designing and building their learning experiences and outcomes.

Clay Shirky (author of ‘Here Comes Everybody’ and ‘Cognitive Surplus’) opened the conference by talking about the way in which technology (especially social media) is enabling us to use our collective cognitive surplus to do increasingly creative and productive things in our spare time; we still like to consume, but we also like to create and share. This socially mediated approach to creativity has unexpected benefits for society and from education.  Shirky argued that the interesting thing about MOOCs is not their massiveness, but their openness and potential for sharing.

In the keynote ‘blueprint for change’ talk Christine Flanagan (Student Experience Director from the  Business Innovation Factory) talked about a ‘student experience lab‘ which had travelled the US and found that many are unprepared for student life and want more from higher education, some questioning the importance of a degree.  In the same session Elliot Masie (expert in workplace learning – see Masie.com) had pointed out that in many subjects the half life of what people learn is less than four years and so the ability to update knowledge and skills is essential – we all need to be lifelong learners and our campuses need to accommodate multi-generational learners.   Both argued that we need to take risks and accept failure in developing new approaches to teaching and learning.

Flanagan argued that students are less immersed in their studies than in previous generations which means that there needs to be better incorporation of extracurricular achievements into their HE outcomes. She claimed that competency-based learning, in which students demonstrate mastery of a series of tasks which can be rolled up into a degree, is an effective approach.  In contrast Ed Ayers, in the closing plenary, focused on the need for students to be able to deal with the kinds of complex and contested subjects in which complexity is accepted; knowledge is not just learned but must be created, aggregated and synthesised.  He bemoaned the focus of much e-learning on teaching procedural and processural topics (especially in STEM subjects) that can be taught in chunks and called for its development to help aggregate and visualise information to create new knowledge and understanding – digital scholarship or generative scholarship.   Ayers’ insitution – the University of Richmond – has a Digital Scholarship Lab which involves computer scientists working with humanities academics and students.  Ayers showed wonderful examples of animated maps telling some of the human and political stories behind the emancipation of slaves during the American civil war in very direct and graphical ways. He argued that by focusing on the use of technology to drill and grill, we are missing its potential to create and transform understanding.

Ed Ayers on stage at Educause

It seems to me that although Ayers appeared to be have a very different perspective from Flanagan and Masie, the two could be reconciled if we can involve students in designing and developing new ways to use technology to go beyond knowledge consumption and find new ways to create, present, aggregate and synthesise information to allow new understandings to emerge.  Flanagan had suggested that if you want new models you could talk to innovators, look to industry, or talk to students, and that student involvement can help break down silos within an institution and promote experimentation.

For some academics who already have the necessary imagination, skills and access to technologies (which are probably not those traditionally viewed as ‘learning technologies’), and who are willing to work collaboratively with students, this may be relatively straightforward; for many though it may involve partnerships with learning technologists, and experimentation with unfamiliar technologies with help from research support staff. And of course the involvement of students in design and implementation needs to be carefully managed. But in all won’t this support both deeper learning whilst also providing the kinds of practical experience that will enhance students’ wider skills and employability? And, going back to Shirky’s opening remarks, make good use of some of our collective cognitive surplus.

This is the second blog post in a series of unknown length! Part 1 can be found here. 

In this post I will summarise [ramble] my next steps into the world of learning via a MOOC (massive online open course to you) from Harvard.

First of all, I am so typical. I came onto edX in a view to being excited, interested and wrapped up in the idea of going back to do computer science. So obviously the next thing that happened was that I went back to my life, and didn’t put enough into my online course. This instantly highlights a few things:

1. Motivation is key to [my] learning
2. Time on task is crucial
3. Procrastination is easy

So, with that said, I’d like to spend a little time working out why I’m struggling to put ‘effort’ into my learning for CS50x…

(tiny update: Problem Set 1  -finished & submitted)

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The term Active Learning Classroom seems to be quite well established in the US and Canada but I have to say isn’t something I’ve consciously encountered at home. I attended a great workshop at the Educause conference on active learning classrooms – and specifically on the kinds of activities that can take place in them – led by the very energetic Adam Finkelstein of McGill University in Montreal.

What are they? 
Simply spaces designed for students to learn together in groups – with or without technology. Typically there are tables for 6-9 students, with one or two (or no) screens per table for them to use with their own devices,  writable surfaces around the room, acoustics that can cope with multiple conversations, and  space for the teacher to move freely amongst the students.  There is no front podium for the teachers – they are normally in the middle of the room. The idea is that they promote collaborative learning experiences and provide more interaction between students and staff. There are some terrific videos from McGill showing classes and academics’ perspectives on them.

Some examples:

• MIT technology enhanced active learning classrooms (TEAL) classrooms
• University of Queensland Axon learning lab
• University of Minnesota ALCs
• McGill ALCs –
• Berkeley  ALCs

Learning in an ALC
A strength of the session was that it employed active learning strategies in an ALC – the workshop was in a space with all of the main ingredients of an ALC, and Adam modelled an active learning approach in which we had no option but to collaborate and learn together.

We were given a brief presentation on active learning and classroom designs, and then set to work with a short paper to read individually and a warning that we’d be tested on it – this definitely focused the mind.  After the test (multiple choice & short answer) on paper which we had to hand in (quite unnerving) we had to discuss our answers with our table mates and come to an agreement. This activity was a ‘readiness assurance process’, so called because it checks that participants are ready to move on in their learning.

Apparently we passed as Adam then moved on.  He outlined a framework for an active learning class which has four elements:

1. You start by introducing the approach and orienting the learners
2. There will be some informing or instruction – whether through presentation, reading, watching a video – whatever is most appropriate
3. Next comes the active learning bit – time for learners to work
4. The closing part involves reflection on what was learned and next steps.

He then set us off on another activity – this time a ‘four corners’ activity – in which we were split into four groups and given a couple of minutes to fill each of four whiteboards in turn on each of the four elements we’d heard about; each group built on the ideas of the previous one.  At the end of this he closed this activity by visiting each board and summarising – and challenging where necessary – our work.

Adam circulated a comprehensive list of 26 active learning strategies from brainstorming and buzz groups to interviews, simulations and one minute papers.

The session was backed up by other good online resources which I’d recommend a close look at – start at the resources section for each of the following:

• Active learning classroom resources
• Active learning strategies resources

Lots of food for thought and ideas for supporting learning in different sorts of learning spaces. Now we just need those spaces…

I spent the morning of the first day of the Educause conference in a workshop on the future of the cluster room (or computer lab) led by Keith Boswell from North Carolina State University and Beth Schaefer from the Uni of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.   It was well attended – I reckon 60 folk in the room – and we spent over an hour going around the room sharing tales of cluster-related challenges – increasing pressure on space, patchy usage, challenges of keeping up with students’ needs and expectations in terms of software and hardware, problems with the balance between open access (wanted by students) and teaching clusters (wanted by staff), with some institutions wondering whether to wait for the next generation of tablet-pc hybrids or to replace old pcs like for like. It’s clear that the challenges that we face at UCL are shared across the pond.  However I’d say that for most of those in the workshop the cluster room remains an important part of their university’s IT provision – the death of the cluster room has been exaggerated.

I did find out about a couple of nice approaches to power management used at North Carolina State – one was setting PCs to hibernate after a few minutes of inactivity can save a lot of money and energy. Another was the use of ‘lab stats’ data which logs which PCs are used most, and for how long – we saw some hot spot maps of cluster rooms showing that students tend to favour certain locations in a room for quick turnaround activities (email/printing/Facebook check) but will sit in different seats for extended work – this allows different power management regimes to be applied for different PCs. Thinking about it, perhaps we might even use this to zone open access spaces with different spec workstations, furniture etc for different patterns of use…

I also heard about the ‘Un Lab’ – again at North Carolina – where the university had looked carefully at what was needed in terms of connectivity, power, space, file storage, software deployment, lockers etc in order to allow students to use their own computers and so reduce the need for institutional workstations. They had focused on Engineering students and called the resulting computing environment EoS.   All useful stuff, though I still predict that the more that students use smaller devices liken iPads the less likely they are to want to bring in laptops and – as I can testify writing this on a iPad (as I don’t have a laptop) – they are not ideal for writing extended prose! So we might want some decent Un Clusters at UCL but we do also need to keep providing hardware…

Printing is a big issue with lots of institutions planning ‘follow-me’ printing and printing from student owned devices although few seemed to have implemented these as yet. The other source of shared pain is weaning students – but more critically staff – off printing and encouraging more reading on screen. A particular gripe is requirement to print coursework for submission even when it is also submitted online.

A couple of leads to follow up :

• Griffith University in Australia have done some work on innovative technology-enhanced teaching spaces, and have set up a pinterest site with a bunch of images – pinterest.com/learningspaces
• The University of New Mexico have a number of space-related initiatives including large ‘active learning classrooms’, interactive lecture theatres (set up to allow students to swivel round and work with those behind/in front), wireless projection (which made their network group unhappy…) and mirroring technology (allowing devices like iPads to be mirrored on PCs).
• And more than one institution cited the University of Minnesota as a source of inspiration (see their active learning classroom site)…

Finally I was surprised to hear that many US institutions levy an ‘educational technology fee’ on their students. Bet that goes down well.

My next post will be about active learning classrooms…

The Assessment Design Tips seminar preceding the eAssessment Scotland Conference in 2011 was a hands-on workshop that revealed these valuable assessment design tips.

Assessment design: where to start?

1. Start by writing the assessment’s overall learning objectives and let the student know what these are.
2. For each question determine what it is you want students to demonstrate knowing.
3. When writing distractors (wrong answers) think back to common misconceptions your students have demonstrated in the past and see if you can capture these in the incorrect answers. You can then point them in the right direction in the feedback (if it’s a formative assessment).
4. Once you have finished writing, give the questions to someone who doesn’t know the topic and see if they can guess the correct answers. If they can you have probably made one of the mistakes mentioned below.

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To mark the launch of edX (Harvard and MIT’s joint initiative into the world of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) I am attempting to live blog my journey. Every time I do something (yes, like a real person I’ll be inconsistent) I’ll blog about it here. One of the main reasons for doing this is to show what it’s like to be on one of these courses as a real student. I don’t know much about Computer Science, despite just finishing an MSc so I’ll be sure to cover what and how I’m learning. If I fail, or succeed, I’ll blog about it.

If you’re interested in finding out how I get on, click through the link and read more…

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