The Ed Techie

Academic publishing - a rant

As I mentioned I had an article (The Distance from Isolation) accepted for publication in Computers and Education. It has now been 'in press' for over a year now, with no indication as to when it will actually be published. By the time it is, it will be out of date. I'm sure it's not the case but it reminds me of Chelsea FC - they buy the best players not with an intention of playing them but simply to stop other teams having them.

This is but one example of the very strange world of academic publishing. For those who don't engage in it, the deal goes something like this:

• Academics provide the content
• Academics do the reviewing
• Academics often do the editing
• Publishers print it and sell it back to academics
• Authors are often restricted from making their own work publicly available
• Authors receive no payment for the published work

Not an entirely fair system one would have thought, but because journal publication is tied up with academic esteem, promotion and the rather pernicious RAE, it is a process many of us feel compelled to go along with.

Thankfully the tide is turning and there are a number of different models for publishing now, including online journals, open content and err, blogs I guess.

Decentralisation of Higher Ed

John Naughton's inaugural lecture last week reminded me of a paper I wrote about online communities Download distance_ho.doc (this is not a coincidence as some of the ideas in the paper were informed by a conversation I had with John once about the differences between broadcast media and the Net, and much of the knowledge of the net's technical structure is derived from John's book A Brief History of the Future). In it I argue that the key technological features of the internet are openness, decentralisation and robustness. These in turn became the social values of the internet also. If you want to know what technologies or approaches will succeed on the net then compare how well they score against these three features.

I go on to argue that online communities are therefore a natural end point in education. This part is maybe less so well argued, but I think the technology/social features part does carry some truth. The key point for higher education is in decentralisation. Higher education is all about centralisation. Universities acted as an information store, which students needed to come to in order to gain that knowledge. Now that information is decentralised this role is undermined. Of course it reveals what is in fact a more substantial role, and that is sensemaking of information. But in essence I think universities are based on a centralisation model and the next generation of students are accustomed to decentralisation. This raises big issues for universities which impact upon the content they provide, the technologies they use, the support they offer, the type of accreditation they approve and their partnerships with other institutions.

I also like this paper because its title (the distance from isolation) is from a Larkin poem, Talking in Bed. I like to think there aren't that many Larkin/e-learning cross-overs. The paper itself was accepted for the journal Computers and Education (see next posting for a rant on this).

The enthusiasm of the new convert

I was at the University of West England yesterday for a validation event. They are creating an online software engineering course. I was struck by the enthusiasm they had for e-learning in general. I forget that it can strike people this way. Back in 1999 I came across like some e-learning Billy Graham, but now I tend to think everyone knows it, or am wary of over-hyping it. But it was nice to be reminded of this. They were excited about how e-learning allowed them to do things they had always wanted to do, but the lecture format didn't allow, for example getting students to do an activity immediately after giving them the knowledge or an example, or staggering lots of smaller assessments throughout a course.

I (verb) therefore I am (annoying/important)

A friend of mine was commenting on the way in which verbs seem to hold more sway than any other catagory of word. People don't mind if you invent a new noun, and will chuckle politely if you coin a new adjective, but to create a new verb is to invite the wrath of language purists everywhere. And related to this, you know a technology has become significant when you can use it as a verb and both be understood and escape physical abuse. So in any one day I may blog, google or skype. As yet I would hesitate in public to say I flickr or wiki, and I can't see the day when I would ever utter 'I delicioused it', but you get the idea. Probably a warning to companies or developers - try using your product/technology name as a verb - if you wince at it then try a different one.

Social social software

My friend and colleague John Naughton gave his inaugural lecture yesterday. Afterwards a few of us were invited to the Vice Chancellor's house for dinner. There I met some people who I hadn't seen for a while (such as Quentin Stafford-Fraser), and some I hadn't met before. What struck me was that because I subscribe to John's Blog I feel that I know a lot of these people already, or have maintained contact with them through their blogs or Flickr photostreams.

This reminded me that when I was in Como last week, I often found myself thinking about the situation in terms of a prospective blog post, or taking photos with Flickr in mind. I think this social life of social software, ie the social impact it has in actuall face to face situations, as opposed to the more obvious online community, is less appreciated. It is also an antidote to the grumpy old men/women who claim that the internet is ruining real social skills. On the contrary, I had an interesting conversation last night based on having viewed someone's Flickr photostream, which wouldn't have been possible had it not been public. Similarly, I think that many people take up, or increase their interest in photography because of the presence of Flickr, far more than any photographic exhibition. There is a direct push back in to the real world from the virtual one that makes people more engaged with it, not less.

The constraint of choice (and a dodgy football analogy)

Watching England play on Saturday made me think about VLEs (that is not a sentence many people will write I expect). Whether that was an indication of my current VLE monomania as I complete the book, or an indictment of the quality of the game, I'm not sure. All football fans suffer from the 'football as a metaphor for anything' complaint, and here is another. I appreciate that to actually understand the analogy you need to have a good grasp of both VLEs and football, so it fails the first test of being a useful means of explaining one topic by mapping to another, but hey, how often do you get to talk about service oriented architectures and Steven Gerrard in the same post?

One of England's problems has been an embarrassment of riches in midfield (VLE people stick with me for a bit). They have both Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, both of who are attacking midfielders. But when they are placed together they curb their natural appetite to go forward with the result that neither plays as well as they do for their clubs. Eriksson has been paralysed by his options here and always plays both (one feels that if he had been the England manager in the early 80s he would have played Shilton in goal and Clemence at right back to avoid choosing between the two). The tough decision would be to play a holding midfielder, who isn't as good as either, and allow the remaining one full scope. The argument being that it's better to have 100% of either than 50% of both. It would probably be a blessing for England if one of them got injured and thus forced this change.

And now, onto the VLE bit. Well, not just VLEs, but any software, and maybe even strategic decision. What the England situation demonstrates is that choice is not always liberating. When we were considering VLE options for the OU, we knew that a full service oriented architecture was the most appropriate, but were concerned that such an implementation would get mired in debate as to the best way to achieve it. Choosing an open source option, in our case Moodle, is a good compromise here, since it overcomes much of that debate - you have to do things the Moodle way. One loses some choice, because you are constrained to doing things the Moodle way, but that actually saves you a lot of time. It is akin to one of Gerrard/Lampard being injured but the balance of the team benefiting as a result.

There, I'm glad I've got that out of my system. Tomorrow - the link between Ronaldinho and social bookmarking....

Notte Bianca

Tonight was the Notte Bianca (white night) festival in Como. Let it not be said that they don't know how to party. Unfortunately I had to be up at 6 to get my flight home. I managed to get some sleep around 2.30 but was awoken by bed-rattling fireworks half an hour later. Still it was a lot of fun, and I have enjoyed Como - I think I'll come back with my family when I don't have any of that work stuff to do (although maybe I won't stay on the main square during festival night next time).

Houses in Como remind me of children trying to peak over each others shoulders in order to gain a better view of a playground fight.

Watching england abroad

Today England play their first game in the world cup. I was determined to find a bar in Como to watch the game. Being a footballing country I thought this would be easy, but after an hour of trudging round Como I began to suspect their passion in this region. I asked in every bar if they would be showing the football and they greeted the request politely, but with an element of confusion, as if I'd gone into a hairdressers and asked for a bacon sandwich.

It's interesting how you take so many things for granted. Yesterday I was thinking Como represented some type of apogee of civilisation - quiet, sedate, polite and cultured. As my search today grew more frantic as kick-off approached I could be heard muttering indignantly as if watching football on TV were some kind of right that no person should be denied.

Eventually I found one bar that was showing the game. I was ushered upstairs to watch it. Initially I only had an edgy alcoholic of indeterminate origins for company, but gradually a few English supporters made their way upstairs, blinking as they too stumbled across this oasis in the desert of sporting television. We shared experiences and for the coming two hours were bonded together, our enjoyment increased by the struggle that had preceded it - well, we nodded politely to each other, but I like to think that's what we conveyed.

As it turned out the game was rubbish, England dull, and the whole thing forgettable.

A reluctant traveller

Travelling to Como made me reflect that as I have got older, and particularly since becoming a father, I have become more reluctant to travel alone. I have begun to resemble Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist - I want to fly direct, get a taxi from the airport to the hotel, conduct business and get home. I also have the monoglots slight anxiety about travel in foreign countries. So having to get two planes and two trains to get to to Como was akin to a New world expedition for me. It all went smoothly, and like all Brits abroad, I sighed with admiration at the clinical operation of their train system.

Como is a lovely place. One aspect of travel I do enjoy is running in a new setting. It's a good way to see a place - five or six miles actually covers quite a bit of a tourist area. And what better place to run than alongside the lake? Maybe I could take to this travelling lark again...

Open Source conference

I am in Como for a conference on open source learning environments (FOSLET). The paper I am giving tries to set out three things: (Download wellerd2.pdf)

i) The process of technology succession, which is analagous to plant succession. I argue that far from being detrimental many commercial VLEs have been beneficial because they have acted as primary colonizers, and have thus changed the environment so that other e-learning systems can now move in, e.g. portals and open source VLEs.

ii) That open source VLEs represent a good compromise for the two groups of educators who are forced to co-exist in VLEs, what von Hippel terms lead and conventional users and I have called revolutionaries and democrats. These groups want different things from their software, but an OS VLE can probably satisfy both now.

iii) The future direction of VLEs, based around the web 2.0 principles which I have dubbed VLE 2.0. I thought I was all smart coming up with this term only to discover that Stephen Downes had already coined e-learning 2.0. Never mind, I'll carry on using it with regards to VLEs as I think it represents a useful way of thinking about both the technical construction of VLEs and how they will be used.