Stephen Powell, thoughts mostly about learning

Hours wasted compiling this spreadsheet and associated Google Gadget, Motion Chart. The data still needs refining and but for many values it works well giving the user the opportunity to view three different parameters (axis of a graph and relative size of the plot) for related items. In my case, measures of different English universities related to the nature of their student populations. To help get the hang of it, set colour to ‘unique colours’; size to ‘total all students’ then play around by choosing data on both axis and select a particular institution you are interested in tracking. Finally, start the timeline…

As a part of my work on the Coeducate project I recently attended a project day with representatives from 11 other UK HE institutions.

As us often the cases at such events the most value to be gained is from the surrounding off topic discussions and in one such conversation with someone from Cambridge University I was struggling with the comments that a big challenge for Cambridge was that they “lose too many students”.

After some time and as the conversation progressed it became apparent that this wasn’t a reference to a problem of retention but to one of not recruiting some of the the brightest and best students who were leaking away to the competition, Oxford, Harvard, etc.

The irony of the conversation wouldn’t be lost on anyone working in a recruiting university.

Work requirements mean that I can no longer resist using Microsoft Office (my convenience not a University of Bolton dictate) and the first step of migration was the relatively simple export and import of contacts. 30 minutes of fiddling with export and import options and the only answer I could find was:
1. export vCard from Mac Mail
2. import vCard into GoogleMail
3. export from GoogleMail as csv
4. copy file from OSX environment into Windows environment that now runs on my Mac in the Parallels environment (complete with the startup and shutdown tune all sane people loath

Next will be my calendar, all very depressing on many levels:^(

A requirement of the Coeducate Jisc funded project is that we have a project Blog. The easiest choice and the one I took was to use wordpress.com with the addition of a sub-domain re-direct (WordPress charge $10 to allow this) so that we can use the URL http://coeducate.bolton.ac.uk thereby assuring a little bit of advantage for the University of Bolton and the project in ‘tying’ them together.

Most adults feel exams failed to gauge real ability:77 per cent of adults believe that exam results should not be used to judge their suitability for jobs

(Via Education Guardian).

The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published today. As many as 77 per cent feel that formal testing fails to measure their real intelligence, yet the exam results are used to scrutinise them through their academic careers and when applying for jobs.

They would be right wouldn’t they?

Amid reports accusing schools of ‘teaching to test’, the CIEA said the survey pointed to the need for a more well-rounded form of assessment.

And who could argue with this?:^)

This has been a well run conference: 11am – 6pm Thursday & 9am Friday until 12.30pm – a sensible schedule that allows for people to attend the whole event.

Richard and I did a uvac-idibl-presentation slot that wnt down well, lots of commanality with the Middlesex Work-based learning approach as described by Alan Durrant Head of Work Based Learning, School of Arts & Education.

The biggest impression that I am taking away is of the development of a two tier market growing up. Numerous examples of large employers working with Universities to develop bespoke courses – lots of resource required for this not to mention the challenge of curriculum set in aspic.

I suppose it takes us back to one of the core ideas behind Ultraversity & now IDIBL and that is trusting in the ability of the learner to negotiate the curriculum (focus of their inquiry) with the University in line with their needs and the needs of their employer.

Perhaps this is the clear blue water between us and other work-based approaches:
- one is high overhead negotiations with individual employers for particular groups of workers developing a prescribed curriculum that matches exactly what an employer defines;
- the other is a generically defined process curriculum that allows for personalisation through the design of individual inquiries focused on improving work-practice.

Some good suggestions in this report by Paul Ramsden, the chief executive of the Higher Education Academy:

Universities should offer ‘pick and mix’ degrees, says report:

- build up qualifications from modules taken at different times in several universities
- make it easier to switch between full-time and part-time study, possibly by making students pay for each module they complete rather than a whole programme of study
- the curriculum they offer must become more flexible and treat part-time students more fairly
- The system as it is at the moment does not give proper credit to people who do part of a degree
- Ramsden recommends more general undergraduate degrees, such as those in the US and Australia, that would help graduates “contribute to the world of the future” rather than prepare them for academia

UK universities should take online lead:

“UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education, ministers will say tomorrow, despite the failure of the UK e-University four years ago.

The universities secretary, John Denham, is likely to call not for a revival of the UKeU, which collapsed in 2004, but to develop a “global Open University in the UK”.”

That seems like an ambitious proposal, however when you read more detail…

“But it lags behind in generating and making available high-quality modern online learning and teaching resources.

The report by Prof Sir Ron Cooke, chairman of the UK universities’ Joint Information Systems Committee, suggests creating centres of expertise in educational technology and e-teaching through clusters of institutions, with comprehensive staff and student training.

Learning resources should be grouped together, coordinated nationally and provided freely, he will say.”

I can’t help but think that it is another naive proposal to spend money (through Sir Ron’s JISC of course) and see no reason why it would work better than the UK e-University, the 74 CETLs, or the Lifelong Learning Networks at making a significant positive sector wide impact.

I thought that the false division between those working in “educational technology and e-teaching” and ‘other’ teaching was a thing of the past. Instead, this proposal appears to further entrench an unhelpful divide rather than see learners as having diverse and changing needs that can’t be pigeonholed simply to meet the world views of others.

Rather than fund a whole army of ‘Plagiarism Consultants’ and associated conferences why not re-engineer towards authentic forms of assessment – deal with the root of the problem rather than tinker with the flawed approach of the essay!

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Universities review plagiarism policies to catch Facebook cheats:

Universities are reviewing their plagiarism policies to clamp down on students who use Facebook to cheat.

Plagiarism experts have warned universities and colleges to be aware of students copying from each other when discussing coursework on social networking sites.

Gill Rowell, from the consultancy Plagiarism Advice, said universities needed to rework their plagiarism policies with “internet working in mind” but insisted institutions were taking cheating seriously enough.

The warning comes after almost one in two Cambridge University students in a poll of 1,000 admitted to cheating in their studies.

Student newspaper, Varsity, found 49% of undergraduates who anonymously took part in their poll confessed to passing off other people’s work as their own.

One anonymous student said: “Sometimes, when I am really fed up, I Google the essay title, copy and throw everything on to a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit. They usually end up being the best essays.”

Just 5% of the students admitted they had been caught.

“It is a depressing set of statistics,” Robert Foley, a professor in Biological Anthropology at King’s College, Cambridge, said.

University plagiarism experts will discuss cheating with Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, on November 19.”

Should e-learning policies be written to empower staff and students to abandon institutional provision?

Two weeks into the semester proper the 7 student researchers recruited for the first cohort are all engaging with the first module.

Forced to work outside of the UoB learning platforms (administrative issues), we have concentrated our communications around our WordPress.com site and Google Docs for formal support (negotiation of learning contracts), with the more informal aspects catered for by blog aggregation through YahooPipes, synchronous text chats & oral communication through skype, and some exploration of twitter and a beta beta IEC Statusometer (developed by Sam) – there are probably also things happening that I don’t know about.

Next week we will finally start our Hotseat with Oleg Liber and that will also use wordpress.com.

Thus far there is no compelling reason to use institutional technology at all. A little more thought on my part on setting-up of the wordpress blogs would, however, have enhanced the experience for student researchers. For example, choosing at the point of making posts visible to allow comments or not as we currently have too many places where these can be left – turning this function off retrospectively hides comments already made.

Another issue is that of privacy as the model of learning we have developed requires the discussion of work issues that it may not be suitable to be aired publicly, but again with a little more thought up-front this could easily be catered for.