The Ed Techie

Views on a book

I have been completing the index for my digital scholarship book and thought I'd share some thoughts on different views of the book. I put the entire text through Wordle to produce the following tag cloud:

I then restricted this view to only 50 words:

And by way of comparison, here is a draft of the index in Scribd:

The Digital Scholar - Index

Two questions arise for me: do these representations reveal anything to me, as author? And do any of them provide useful insight or make you as potential reader, interested?

The word clouds contain some pretty obvious terms (if digital, open or scholarship weren't in big letters, we'd all be surprised). But there may be some subtlety in there too. The qualifiers and adjectives may be revealing, for example the prominence of 'may' and 'might' indicates that I am hedging a lot of terms, so maybe (there I go again) suggests it is a considered, balanced approach and not a mainfesto. Also the presence of 'significant', 'change' and 'new' demonstrates that I am trying to grapple with a transition in 'practice'. It also highlights which words I overuse. So I think you could glean some idea both about content and approach from the word cloud. I'm just not sure it's the best way to do it.

The index is probably more revealing about content as it shows what I think are the main concepts and also the significant names. But it doesn't show as much about approach, and as an author doesn't reveal much as I compiled it. An index created by someone else would be interesting.

Online rep manager = American cheese loaf

This is all the way wrong...

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John Naughton pointed me at this article in Nature about academics managing their online reputation. In a loose sense we all manage our identities, particularly online where it has the possibility of going beyond the current context. But the tale of people employing online reputation management companies made me sigh/smile/rant in equal measure (not a pretty facial contorsion I can tell you).

If you need to _employ_ a company to manage your online identity then you really haven't grasped it at all. It is exactly about connecting with you, and not some media company. Rather like 'white pop reggae' and 'American cheese loaf', 'online reputation management' are three words you never want to see used together. 

On the plus side I thought it demonstrated a good case for why academics should engage in social media sooner, rather than later. If you have established a good online network already then people may be more forgiving of an indescretion. It will depend on what it is, for example if I was found guilty of torturing puppies, I wouldn't get much sympathy, but maybe if it was revealed that I had bought my PhD with tokens from cereal packets then that doesn't really impact on any value I may have provided online (I didn't - it was tokens from biscuits). In social media you establish your own currency and value, and that is hard to fake or buy, so people will value that, or at least weight it against, other reputation damage.

 

Social networks and education

(This is a bit of blog tidying, and trying to make sure I gather my publications through my blog, but it's a good read, honest).

I mentioned a while back that I edited a special edition of RUSC with George Siemens, on the use of social networks in education. We wrote an introductory piece, which can be found here.

Abstract:

The last decade has produced tremendous innovation in how people connect with one another online. Social networks have experienced a rapid increase in popularity, producing both concerns (privacy, content ownership) and opportunities. The articles in this journal can be viewed as attempts to answer the question: What should educators do about social networks?

 

Ed tech & the new academic reality

In my last post I tried to set out some new(ish) realities for academics in the UK. In this post I want to think about what these might mean for educational technology. I am not going to discuss the broader implications for higher education and research as a whole, as there has been lots written about that. Again, I am going to attempt a neutral tone, my aim in this post is not to bemoan the state of affairs (I do that enough in other posts), but to think through what it means to operate in this context.

So in terms of ed tech, here are some thoughts:

Less time for play - if greater accountability is key, and there is a focus on cost and return, then exploring technology is likely to need greater justification. That isn't to say it will be cut (see next point, it may even increase), but rather that it will need to be set out in clear terms. So for example, taking some study time to develop a blog will be justified because once established it will eliminate the need to conduct face to face update briefings, or it will meet the public engagement profile of a unit. But exploring technology with no direct, or clear goal, is likely to be frowned upon.

Technology as efficiency driver - one of the strong justifications for the adoption of technology is likely to be around efficiency. When a case can be made that adoption of technology will lead to greater efficiency, then it is likely to meet with approval. This can be fairly cynical, but it may also be fruitful, for example if learning analytics leads to intervention which helps keep a student on a course then it's beneficial for both the university and the student.

Technology to replace campus expansion - in DIY-U Anya Kamanetz sets out a good case of how tuition fees have increased to rise in the US, often to fund the building of more extravagent campus facilities to attract more students. A kind of arms race has been created, except with sports facilities and cafeterias instead of nuclear weapons. A possible impact of the new academic context is that the online status, reputation and facilities of a university become significant, particularly as estate enhancement becomes prohibitively expensive. This may not mean building your own social platform, but it may mean making sure you have a good Facebook presence with people monitoring it, have actively engaged online academic staff, create online content for people other than students, etc.

Interest in cheap or free technology - higher education has often set about creating its own versions of technology, or buying in enterprise versions to be run in-house. As course and IT budgets get slashed, then encouraging staff to adopt existing third party tools is likely to be seen as a means of keeping courses vibrant.

Research as hobby - I've argued elsewhere that the granularity of research can be seen to be shifting. As data becomes open, free tools become available and dissemination routes democratised, much of the research that used to require a project fund can be performed by the individual now. As more of the day job focuses on managed work, academics will find the type of online environment the best place to conduct their discourse and research, extending into their personal lives.

Rise of online versions - it is likely that online conferences, remote participation, virtual project meetings, online open journals, etc all become more prevalent as the costs associated with travel, time away, and physical artefacts place pressure on the traditional formats.

Increased significance of online identity - if academics are travelling to fewer conferences, and doing less of the general scholarly activity that brings them into contact with others in their field, then establishing an online identity and cultivating an online network of peers will become increasingly significant. This will be if not the main route, then a very significant one, through which they share ideas, find collaborators for research projects, and establish reputation in their field. This may link back to the efficiency argument.

Lack of new blood & reliance on outsourcing - the increasingly commercial-like atmosphere in higher education may mean that many smart young people (particularly in the ed tech area) who might have come into higher ed because of the freedom it offers will go into industry, perhaps in start-ups that offer services to higher ed. This may result in a skill gap between higher ed and industry in the use and development of new technology.

So these are both the challenges and opportunities for educational technology in our new context, as I see them. I'm sure I've missed some, so let me have it...

The new academic context

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/nualabugeye/2636448990/>

My starting point for this post is that the financial crisis and changes in funding are going to radically alter the higher education environment within the UK. In this post I want to set out the context within which academics will have to work from now on.

There are two things to point out: the current climate may see these changes become a reality, but they are also the culmination of a number of trends that have been occurring over the past twenty years or so; I want to set out the new context in an objective manner, and to avoid ascribing value to these changes. This is the way I think it will be, for good or ill. In the next post I'll try and explore the implications of these changes from an ed tech perspective.

The following list is based on watching discussions in the mainstream media, blog posts, twitter conversations and my own work. It could be I'm wrong about these, or indeed for many people they have been the reality for a long time anyway, but I feel it's worth setting them out to get a clear picture of the environment which we will need to operate within.

Greater accountability - this is really the over-arching one. When academics are largely being funded by students debt, and when universities have to cope with smaller budgets, then they academic activity needs to be accounted for and linked to some funding.

Funded research only - following on from the above research activity is likely to be on allocated, externally funded (or internal strategic) projects only. Time for individual, autonomous research that is not directly funded or related to teaching will largely disappear.

Limited general scholarly activity - there is a form of unwritten agreement of reciprocal activity in higher education that is largely uncosted. Reviewing articles, examining students, giving presentations, giving feedback on project proposals - all of these are essential for the functioning of the current system. But they are not evenly distributed and some people can find themselves in almost constant demand from other institutions. While a certain level of this activity will be permitted, and encouraged even, my guess is that it will be limited, as universities come to view every day an individual is doing a staff development talk at another uni as one where they are paying their salary and getting no direct return.

Cost as primary deciding factor - this is one that has definitely been around for a while but is likely to reach its apotheosis now. Cost has always been one of a number of factors to consider, for example when putting on a new course or conducting some research. Other factors such as academic credibility, long term potential, variation in offering and academic freedom have also come into the mix. Increasingly only proposals that demonstrate a reasonable return on investment will be countenanced.

Institutional focus - 30 years or so ago it was possible to view the function of universities as employing academics. Smart people needed a job, but they were pretty much left to their own devices, researching what they wanted, teaching occasionally and often being absent from their institution for long periods. Their affiliation could be seen as being to their discipline. This has been changing for a long time (and was never true for all academics anyway) and we will now see a much closer alliance to the host institution. 

As I mentioned, these have been trends over recent years anyway, and what we will see now is their culmination. It is also the case that there will be some variation between universities and individuals as to the degree to which they are experienced, but in general this is the context within which academics will operate. In the next post I'll explore what this means from an educational technology perspective.