Camus said of Mersault in L'Etranger that he was the 'Christ we deserve'. This phrase has been used many times, usually to indicate that if a society has a problem, then the reasons can be found within the society itself, eg 'we get the Government we deserve.'
In the digital world though, maybe we can reclaim it to mean we really do get the X we deserve and want. This came to mind when Tech journalist Mike Butcher of Techcrunch, 'stole' (or kidnapped, hijacked?) the twitter id of the UK culture minister Andy Burnham. He hasn't stolen anything of course, just claimed that twitter id. He did it part in jest, and part in protest to Burnham's proposal to further regulate web content.
But it set me thinking - we should engage with @andyburnham as if he really was the culture minister we always wanted, ie one who actually understands culture (and they lump in sport as well). So here's my suggestion - follow andyburnham and send him (non-rude, reasonably sensible) suggestions as to what a culture minister should do. That way if the real Andy Burnham ever wants his id he can see what he should be doing.
Oh, and if you're interested the twitter ID tessajowell is still free, if anyone wanted to get us the Olympics we deserve.
[Update, Twitter have suspended the anyburnham account! Booooo!]
I think I was rather muddled in my last post, as all three comments interpreted it as saying 'I want to be more famous'. This wasn't my intention, so let me clarify what I meant.
Firstly, let's place my blog in its role to me as an academic. One of the joys of blogging is that there are no restrictions - blog posts can be long or short, text or multimedia, blogs can be about a subject or an individual, they can be serious or fun. If I was a research student, say, then the role of my blog would perhaps be much more as a tool of self-reflection. As a Professor of Ed Tech at a distance education university, who has a kind of new technology remit, my blog is central both to my academic output and my identity. As such I need to be a little harder on myself about it, than say, a leisure blog about films. I regard my blog as equally important as academic publications, research, teaching, university projects (actually, probably more so, but don't tell the bosses).
Therefore, as a professional it's only right to be reflective on your performance. That's what my last post was meant to be, although in a humourous fashion (okay, not that humourous I confess).
Secondly, when I mentioned technorati ratings, links, comments and number of subscribers, it wasn't because I was interested in these as an end point. Rather that, as in any professional practice, one seeks feedback. If I am teaching I want to know that a) students are learning, b) I'm doing a decent job and c) what I'm saying is interesting. The same goes for publishing an academic article - you want someone to read it and find it useful. So, as part of the reflective practice, you seek external verification that you are communicating effectively, and do not rely solely on your own judgement.
In the blogosphere therefore comments, links, technorati ratings and subscribers act as a very rough proxy that you are communicating effectively and what you are saying is interesting. They are far from perfect, but for the way I perceive my blog, they have some role.
Thirdly, it's not about fame and ego - it's about feedback and conversation. It's nice to know if what you are saying is of any interest, but much more importantly it becomes much more interesting, motivating, deeper and better informed when it becomes part of a wider conversation.
So, that's what I was getting at. My conclusion was that I was doing okay as a blogger, but I could be better. The reason I chose the example of other actors (De Niro etc) wasn't because they were more famous than Affleck, but because they had produced better work (if we ignore late De Niro and Hoffman anyway). I think it's important to take stock and seek to improve. For instance, reflection has led me to conclude that my practice of linking has slipped, usually because I'm rushing to get a post out. The reason I don't link enough is because I don't read as many blogs as I used to. So, my first resolution (blogolution?) is to read, and respond, more.
I was reflecting on this blogging lark the other day. It is something I enjoy doing, but in terms of academic return it's been hit and miss. The big hit is that it has connected with a global network of peers, who I wouldn't be able to engage with if I didn't have a blog. It's like being able to talk the same language.
The miss part is that I feel occasionally like I am shouting into the void, or typing eruditely into the void more likely. I write what I think are interesting, well crafted posts - not a link, not a comment. I write a mindless, quick review and it gets link-love. I don't get it, and maybe that doesn't matter. It is like a child - you can have all these great ideas about what you can do and how they should react, but they remain their own person, and that unpredictability is the joy.
There's a bit of fragile ego in here I suspect, when I set out I probably had in mind being an edu-blog heavyweight. I've done okay, I get a reasonable number of subscribers, my Technorati (if it wasn't so broken) authority is okay, I get a decent range of comments, etc. But I feel my blogging career hasn't quite panned out as I'd hoped. If Downes is the De Niro of edublogging, Warlick the Hoffman and Ewan McIntosh the Di Caprio, then I've gone a bit Ben Affleck: I've done okay, my output is popular enough, but you know, it's not quite what I had in mind when I was started out full of artistic dreams and lofty ambitions.
So, maybe this year is the time to push on and reclaim those ambitions. Or should I just be happy with my Affleck status? It could be worse after all, I could be the Ewan McGregor...
"After years of waiting
After years of waiting nothing came
And you realize you're looking,
Looking in the wrong place
I'm a reasonable man
Get off my case"
The results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) were announced last week. As readers may know, I'm not keen on it, so this isn't an objective view, but I thought I'd explore the motivation behind it, and the problems with it.
I have three main objections to the RAE:
It is overly complex
It is expensive
It is fundamentally flawed
Complexity
What is the justification for the RAE? There are two main reasons put forward:
1) It allows transparent and objective allocation of research funding to universities
2) It provides UK academics with a recognised standard for their research, which is transferrable between universities.
Let's take this second argument first - I guess the idea is that academics can easily move between jobs and have their research recognised. Except, this year the results are so confusing that no-one knows what they mean, and there isn't an individual rating. So from an individual's perspective it's not much use - except maybe to say 'I work in a 4* unit', or 'I want to join a 4* unit'. But as this year's results can be interpreted in a variety of ways, that doesn't mean much anyway. For instance, my own unit is either 3rd, 9th or 24th in the UK, depending on which way you tweak the figures. That's quite some margin of interpretation.
Expense
The main justification is so that the government can easily allocate research funding. Now there is probably something in this, but the system they have produced is so complex that it defeats the object. I asked on Twitter the other day if anyone had done a return on investment analysis for the RAE. For the unit I was involved with (Education), there has been full time staff appointed to it for over a year, a number of high level staff working on it part-time, an administrative and database system created, and plus each academic has to work on their own individual submission.
When we submit bids for research grants we are required to give a full costing of time, plus there is usually 40% overheads added in, and increasingly we are asked to estimate 'opportunity costs', ie what we lose by doing this when we could have been doing something else. For the massive, distributed work of the RAE, which requires often your best researchers to help coordinate, these costs must be considerable, and yet no such return on investment is required. And that is just one unit of assessment - there are many others across the university.
Why? Because as Simon Caulkin in the Guardian puts it:
"the RAE is a potent symbol and vehicle for the bullying top-down
managerial culture that has steadily eroded both the quality of working
life and results in much of the public sector."
The RAE is an agreed con - it has value because we say it has value. A university has to participate because it would not be able to attract some funding, it wouldn't be able to get new academics if it didn't, and it needs to allow current academics to get a rating. Academics need to participate because it forms part of the agreed career and promotion profile. A few academics might be able to say no, but it's only if universities stop playing the game that threatens the system, and as money is involved, that won't happen. Added into the mix is the academic publishing
business – this exists largely because of formal assessment exercises like the
RAE. Because the RAE recognises this type of output, academics are forced to
publish through this means
But, because it's so expensive to participate in fully, any notion that it creates a level playing field is a nonsense - the better universities can afford to put the administrative effort into it, to release people from teaching to concentrate full time on preparing the narrative, and so on.
Fundamentally flawed
The RAE won’t be the RAE anymore, partly in recognition of the problems
above, but there will be some assessment exercise. These first two issues can
potentially be addressed by modifications. More damning though is that the
whole attempt to quantify research outputs and link these to funding is at its
heart, flawed. Here are the main flaws:
The experimenter effect
It is ironic, to say the least, that a research assessment exercise fails to
understand a basic of research, namely the experimenter effect. The very act of
measuring changes behaviour, and doubly so when it is linked to money.
Academics have to play the RAE game – and this inevitably means a focus away
from teaching, or even doing research that won’t directly or obviously link
into the RAE. John Naughton relates this anecdote:
“In one major academic department I know, the most creative
and original member of the department was excluded from the RAE by his
colleagues because his pathbreaking work “didn’t fit the narrative”
The categorisation error
I work in educational technology, which was grouped (or lumped
might better describe it) in with more general education. Actually there is
little in common between the two in terms of what they value, what they deem
serious outputs, what are the major research questions, etc. Educational
Technology felt very much like a poor cousin and often one had the feeling of
trying to twist your research to fit ‘their’ criteria. And this is repeated
across many domains. The point is not that they may have the categorisations
wrong, but that no categorisation can be correct. This is particularly true of
the highly innovative research, which by its very nature won’t fit into a
pre-existing category.
Measuring the unmeasurable
The RAE is very New Labour, with their almost Stalinesque
obsession with quotas and direct measurement. The problem is that research is
rarely like that. One fantastic paper is not worth two good papers. And the
more the system tries to accommodate these various factors (e.g. with factors
of esteem as it did this time), then the more convoluted and cumbersome it
becomes. And if we add in blogging, online activity, creating software, youtube
videos, etc then it becomes even more complex. How would we measure Michael
Wesch’s output? By his research publications or his YouTube views? Again, there
is talk of addressing this next time round, but it will always be chasing the
game.
And this leaves academics with an unenviable choice – do
they play the game and concentrate on RAE type outputs or do they work on
creating new forms of identity and communication, which may be more relevant
(not to say interesting), but run the risk of being ‘invisible’ to any official
view?
What alternative is there?
So maybe the RAE is inevitable. We need to allocate money to
universities for research and as soon as we do this, a complex, unsatisfying
system will always follow.
Here are my alternatives:
Don’t
allocate research money – instead make it very easy and quick to bid for.
Allocate
a set amount to all universities, based on their agreed research rank (eg from
the last RAE), and then have another set which can be ‘won’. This has the
advantage of at least allowing universities to know how much they will be
receiving, whilst still allowing them some ability to develop.
Allocate
an amount based on some very easy to measure unit – eg number of publications
drawn from a database. It’s flawed, but we all know what it is and can get on
with the rest of it easily.
Abandon
categories and allow these to flow from the actual tags writers use.
Universities ignore whatever comes next and instead promote their own research and concentrate on getting funding.
None of these solutions is perfect, but they have the virtue of being
cheaper and less pointless than the current system. After all, I’m a reasonable
man…
Whilst watching one of my favourite films last night, John Carpenter's The Thing, I took the top 250 films from IMDB and ran them through Wordle, using English translations of titles where appropriate, and setting it to ignore commonly used words. Here is the result. I'm not sure it tells you much, except that sequels will bump you up a bit, and feminists might like to note the prominence of 'man', 'men' and 'Lord' (the last one all from the Lord of the Rings) while the only female terms that arise are Princess and Bride. In truth though it shows that in the top 250 there is little commonality in titles.
I hypothesised that this would not be the case for a genre, where you would see greater use of similar terms, so not to let a half-baked hypothesis sit idle, I took the top 100 horror films from Best Horror Movies and put them through Wordle. And yes, look at the size of 'Dead'!
Which sure proves something. I think.
Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh and assorted British film people wrote an open letter to the Times warning that piracy is undermining the creative industries. On the radio yesterday I heard the producer of Quantum of Solace stating how in the far east they don't make any money on DVD sales because everyone watches illegal copies. He bemoaned all the promotion and distribution costs they have to bear.
Sigh. They still really don't get it do they? They have one model which they keep returning to, again and again. They're supposed to be creative, so get creative about your own industry. Interestingly, they put forward the opposite argument back in the 1980s when home video first came on the scene. Then the argument was that it would detract from cinema revenue and result in the collapse of the film industry. Then they realised that they could make as much, if not more, money from video rentals and sales and now they see it as some hallowed right to retain. Just as they were slow to understand the potential for home video so they are being slow to appreciate what the online world offers. Their only response to the internet at the moment is to think of it as another distribution medium - DVD online, for the same fee.
So, if any executives want to hire me on an expensive consultancy, here is my seven stage plan for what they should do.
Accept the inevitable, don't fight it. When content becomes digital it will be freely distributed online. It's not as if they haven't had enough advance warning from the music industry about this. So don't waste your energy in trying to invent ever more restrictive DRM (which some teenager will hack the following week), or more aggressive legislation (which alienates your audience and can never be fully effective), or putting political pressure on Governments (who understand the issue even less than you do). Instead put your effort into finding a workable solution in the new landscape.
Look at some of those costs. Distribution? Packaging? They're going to disappear. Marketing? Will need to be redirected. Actors? Well, maybe they are demanding $20million per picture because they know the profits you are making. If you're making less, they'll get less. A lot of your current costs are based on your current model - the model shouldn't exist just to justify these costs.
Be the iTunes of film. Develop a super- cool, massive bandwidth, good social interaction site with a huge database.
Make downloads or streaming cheap enough that some people will pay over downloading pirates eg. $1 a film.
Use advertising. Make downloads free, but with some obligatory, can't be skipped adverts at the start.
Offer subscription service which gives extra functionality - commentaries, webcasts from the crew, sneak previews, invites to pre-screening, etc.
Make the cinema the experience - films still have the cinema as their main source of revenue. This is not a zero-sum game: A lot of people who download a film have either already seen it in the cinema, or wouldn't go and see it there anyway. Not every download is a cinema seat lost. Cinema going is still a social activity (what else would teenagers do on first dates?), and they should utilise this even more than they do currently.
Yesterday AJ Cann posted about his frustration with Seesmic, which he felt was going backwards in terms of usability. This led to an exchange in his comments via Seesmic (and cool, Seesmic founder Loic LeMuir joined in). If you haven't used it, Seesmic offers threaded video dialogue, much like the threaded text-based forums we have been so accustomed to in VLEs.
Seesmic has had some financial problems recently, it'd be a shame to see it go under. The outcome might be that this type of functionality ends up as a YouTube add-on. Personally I think Seesmic should pitch themselves much more as a direct educational tool, rather than general use. But then Loic LeMuir probably knows more about running web businesses than me.
What it did get me thinking about was 'the video threshold'. AJ related his experience with trying to get students to use Seesmic (they didn't, preferring Twitter instead). There is a resistance to using video in a casual, informal manner I think that has two causes:
1) Parsimony - for those of us older than 30, my suspicion is that we have grown accustomed to regarding video as 'expensive' in some sense - video tapes, DVD, broadband requirements - it's always video that costs. It costs in terms of storage and it costs in terms of effort. We used to have clunky VHS cameras, and complex editing suites to produce anything on video. The idea that you use it casually for a half-formed idea takes a bit of getting used to. This I think is a hangover from pre-digital, or expensive storage days. We'll get over it.
2) The Nabakov equation. Nabakov said "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child". Many of us suffer a similar degradation in terms of communication quality. Me? I think like a distinguished author, write like a blogger, speak like an X-Factor reject. So, there is a reluctance to use video in a casual, unscripted manner because it exposes this rambling incoherent self (you only need to look at the exchange I had with AJ to see this in action on my part). I wonder if this is a generational factor too - teenagers now are used to videoing everything.
So why should you use Seesmic? My feeling is that although the initial threshold may be higher, once it is reached, you get greater buy-in. You make a slightly stronger connection when you are engaged in a video dialogue, which makes the motivation to respond greater.
Here's some research we should do - give one student cohort standard structured text forums and another set Seesmic and compare usage. My bet is that more people would use the text forums, but those who used Seesmic would use it more intensively and derive greater benefit from it.
So, below is a quick Seesmic vid from me to start the conversation, please respond via Seesmic, particularly if you haven't used it before.
Seesmic and the Nabakov equationAs part of a blog post at edtechie.net, where I am discussing the pyschological barrier people have to using video.
Okay,
it's not going to win me any popularity points, but I thought I'd take
a look at the fairly standard Powerpoint bashing that takes place. This
article features John Sweller,
saying that Powerpoint is counter productive because, according to his
cognitive load theory, it is more difficult to process information that
is coming audibly and visually simultaneously. Garr Reynolds (via Downes) picks up on this, and makes the distinction between Powerpoint as method and as a tool, arguing:
"I am assuming that what Professor Sweller means is that the way
PowerPoint is used should be ditched, not the tool itself. Suggesting
we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused and abused
to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the
idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish."
I
know it is common to complain of death by powerpoint, and I have sat
through enough dull, bullet-listed, tiny fonted, montonously delivered
presentations to make watching the entire DVD box set of Sex and the
City seem like an interesting alternative. But, I want to know what
these complaints are measuring against? Did I miss some public-speaking
Camelot, when every lecture was given with such insight, focus and wit
as to make it seem like an evening with Peter Ustinov? As I recall my
(pre-Powerpoint) university lectures they were largely dull, mostly
incoherent and almost deliberately lacking in humour.
The
complaints about Powerpoint often come from people who are good public
speakers. This is just not the case for most of us. Sure, we can make
improvements (I'll return to this), but in the same way many people are
not gifted comedians, or actors, most people are not talented orators.
I am to public speaking what George W Bush is to free form jazz - it's
just not my thing.
But, Powerpoint saves me here - by using
Powerpoint (and I'm using Powerpoint as a shorthand for all
presentation software, I accept that Keynote is a nicer tool), I can
structure, practice and improve my presentation skills. Yes, it's a
crutch, but if you need help walking, crutches are good. Powerpoint provides a framework for developing presentation skills.
Over the past couple of years I have abandoned bulleted lists, moved to
use of images with one message per slide and greater use of (YouTube)
videos. My presentations have improved (I think) as a result. I did
this by thinking through not only how I could give better presentations
in a general sense, but specifically, how I could improve my Powerpoint
slides.
In this sense, Powerpoint is a valuable tool. Like any
technology that democratises a skill, it means that most of what you
get is poor, but it also allows a mechanism to explore and develop.
After all, we don't complain that most of what gets written in blogs is
rubbish, we accept that is the price we pay for mass democratisation.
The difference with Powerpoint is that it is delivered to a captive
audience, they can't look elsewhere.
Okay, I've not convinced you to go easy on Powerpoint have I? Tomorrow: In defence of Clippy ;)
My tag cloud for this blog is a bit rubbish, I don't create enough categories, and when I think of adding a new one, I've already blogged about it a few times and so I face the dilemma, do I now go back and republish those posts with a more appropriate tag, or do I carry on with a more general one?
Anyway, most of the blogs I read make a better job at tagging than I do, often using delicious as the means by which they categorise both their own, and others posts. It seems to me that your tag cloud becomes a sort of shorthand for your online identity. In the future we won't swap business cards (even cool Moo ones), but rather tag clouds. Perhaps dating, and recruitment services will be run by matching the compatibility between tag clouds?
So here is a quick Christmas game to test my theory. Below are the tag clouds taken from the following people:
There was some fuss at the weekend that Arsenal fans booed one of their own players, Eboue, to the point where he had to be substituted. Most of the pundits have been outraged, and the common complaint is that it is counter-productive, as well as vicious. Not being an Arsenal fan, I don't really know the history, but my guess is there is some background as to why they booed Eboue, and it wasn't just a random attack. Football fans may have a mob mentality but it is a highly contextualised mob mentality.
A few months ago, a similar event occurred during an England game when fans booed Ashley Cole after his error led to a goal. There was again a lot of self-righteous indignation from players and pundits, here is Graeme Le Saux in The Telegraph:
Their behaviour was nothing short of a disgrace. Treating one of your
own like that doesn't benefit anyone. Not only will it affect Ashley,
but that feeling will spread to the rest of the team. The mistake he
made with his lobbed back-pass was a bad one and nobody will have been
more painfully aware of that than Ashley.
What these commentators fail to mention is that this is probably a result of the way footballers have distanced themselves from fans. In his autobiography, Cole famously said that when a new offer of £60,000 per week came in from his agent to stay at Arsenal he pulled over to the side of the road and yelled in the phone:
"60 grand a week, they're taking the p**s
Jonathan."
And what is particularly telling is that he relates this tale, expecting sympathy. In this context they have effectively severed the relationship with fans, and thus the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Graeme Le Saux have no legitimate claim on fans' loyalty. The behaviour of the fans is not as stupid as they like to paint it - they are trying to send you a very clear warning: Lose the community that creates you, and even when things appear great, you will have to pay in the long run.
I personally wouldn't boo, and feel it shouldn't be used lightly, but I'll make this prediction: Booing at matches will become increasingly common, and commentators will continue to dismiss it as the action of a small-minded minority. They should instead interpret it as a siren warning - football fans are trapped, you can't change allegiance, but you can fall out of love, and it is this love that pays those wages ultimately.
What has this got to do with education? Well, maybe not much, I can verify that Professors do not earn football player type salaries, nor do they have the adulation of thousands. While we may not see booing in lectures, we should be conscious of the equivalent signals in higher education. We do not have the same relationship with students as football teams do with fans, but higher education is generally tolerated, indulged and often viewed affectionately and respectfully by society (not by all sectors I agree). The dangers of failing to be relevant, of sticking to traditional methods, of refusing to listen and being aloof are the same as those that face footballers - we will undermine the foundation of our existence. Listen for those sirens...
