The Ed Techie

Web 2.0 - even if we're wrong, we're right

Brian Kelly has a good slidecast talking about exploiting the social aspects of web 2.0.  He gave a similar talk with the title 'Web 2.0 - what if we're wrong?' and in Twitter I tried to argue that even if we're wrong, we're right, but struggled with the 140 character limit, so I'll put my argument here.

Brian makes a good case about avoiding the Gartner Hype Curve where you have rising expectations, which are not met, and then a trough of despair (I can't embed the actual slide direct, but it's slide 19). He is right about this, and the possible risks. Many web 2.0 companies don't have a sustainable business model, and there is undoubtedly some hype amongst all of this. Brian gives a good account of how these risks can be overcome without retreating from the brave new world. His angle is from IT services, but I want to broaden out his argument.

Just as with the initial dot com bubble, the fact that there is hype doesn't mean that the overall direction isn't correct. It may not completely change the world in the next 18 months, but it will significantly change the world in the next 5 years. Ewan McIntosh digs up a great quote from Clifford Stoll in 1995 saying (amongst much pooh-poohing of this internet stuff):

"Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping - just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?”

Few would doubt we do all of those things online now, and much more. So even if the e-commerce enthusiasts were wrong about the speed and extent of change back then, they were more right than Stoll was in dismissing it.

And that's the case with social networking, web 2.0, user generated content, liberation of content, etc. Even if it doesn't turn out as some enthusiasts predict there is one key point that the detractors always miss - it will never go back to how it was. After wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, iTunes, etc the idea that consumers of newspapers, books, music, television, and yes, education, will realise it was all just a silly mistake and go back to how it was may be what the industry leaders dream of, but is unlikely, to say the least.

Which brings me on to my even if we're wrong, we're right argument. Sure things won't be the utopian vision of free services, open education and democratisation that some talk of, but whatever comes after the current trends will build on top of them. Just as web 2.0 built on what had happened in the first wave of web development. And the people who got it, the founders and the visionaries weren't people who had dismissed the web and insisted it would go away. They were people who engaged with it, and could see how to take it forward. So, whatever comes after web 2.0 (don't say web 3.0), the people best placed to understand it and adapt to it will be those who have immersed themselves in the current technological climate, and not those who have sat waiting for it to fail so they can say 'told you so.'

When Reorgs strike

Chairs in boats by Stuck in Customs http://flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/216810101/

I work in the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU, where we've recently had a review. The result is something of a reorganisation. There are good and bad elements to it, as always. I'm not going to go into the review itself, but rather reorganisations in general. Reorgs were a feature of the early PC industry, partly I think to demonstrate that these type of companies were more fluid and dynamic than the highly structured, rigid companies that had come before them, e.g. Apple vs IBM.

Reorgs weren't always productive though. In his book, 'Insanely Great' about the development of the Mac, Steven Levy argues that the constant reorgs at Apple were one of the reasons Apple struggled to follow up on the initial success of the Mac (this was back in the 80s). One could take a 'Social Life of Information' perspective and argue that through reorgs a lot of that informal, socially bound knowledge that is required for organisations to function is lost, or at least disrupted.

So, at one extreme excessive reorganisation destroys some of social fabric that holds an organisation together. But I wonder if in higher education we are too much at the opposite end. I remember a colleague arguing that far from have too many reorgs, we don't have enough. This allows people to think that the way things are structured now is the only way it can be. Artificial divides build up between disciplines, people tend to work with the same crowd, and there is sedimentation around process and ideas. I accept that there are a host of other issues that surround reorgs, for instance job security, identity, the time and cost involved and one's sense of professionalism, but if these are satisfied, then I think there may be something in what my colleague was saying.

So maybe a reorg every 5 years or so should be standard, and we could have faculties such as 'Social Sciences and Mechanical Engineering', 'Computing and History' and 'Sports Science and Mathematics'.

Actually, I think that with new ways of connecting, it's not that the reorg should be more prevalent, but rather that organisational structures, which are often physical organisational structures, are increasingly irrelevant. My OU network is as much to do with my OU Twitter network as it is to do with my 'formal' placement in a group, which is in an Institute. I think it is addressing how we nurture, manage and support these kinds of structures that will be the next challenge rather than finding ways of slicing the cake differently.

Or put another way, in Weinberger's term reorgs are about filtering on the way in, we need to find ways of filtering on the way out.

Technorati as scholarly metric

The other day my technorati authority finally nudged past 100. This is significant for me because in my annual staff appraisal meeting last year one of the goals I set myself was to achieve this. I did this because I wanted to test the whole staff appraisal system, and as part of my campaign to get blogging recognised as a scholarly activity, in the Open University at least. Having measurable outputs then is a means of bringing blogging in to the fold - like publishing a number of journal articles, or delivering a number of presentations. It's measurable, therefore it's real in the eyes of official processes.

Having achieved my goal (and ahead of schedule too!) I thought I'd reflect on it, in case anyone is attempting something similar. There are a number of questions one should ask about this use of Technorati as one measure of academic performance.

Firstly, is it reliable? This itself breaks down in to two parts: Is Technorati itself working reliably, and then is it a reliable measure of academic output. Taking the Technorati element first, I'd say - sort of. In my experience it sometimes gives odd results - my authority dropped when In posted two new items. Why would it decrease with new posts? It also hasn't picked up some people I know have linked to me, this may be because they are not listed on Technorati themselves. And it also takes ages to update sometimes. For some reason my blog is shown twice, with two different authorities. So, there may be some glitches, but overall it acts as a reasonable proxy to blogging reputation.

The second element was whether it is a good measure of academic output. Clearly Technorati itself doesn't care what I blog about. I could have increased my authority by blogging about Paris Hilton, or by indulging in blog wars and linkbaiting. That doesn't make it a good educational blog, so clearly your Technorati authority needs to be only one component.

After reliability we come on to desirability. Would it be good to have your Technorati authority (or any such measure) used as part of your scholarly output? There are two viewpoints to take on this, firstly from the educational establishment, and secondly from the blogging community. In terms of the establishment I'd argue that although there are issues around reliability, the same is true of traditional measures also. It is relatively easy to get publications out in some journals, to publish lots of papers from the same basic idea/research by only changing a small element between each and to get research students to do all the work. To combat this we end up with the convoluted and tortuous measures of esteem that are found in the RAE.

From the blogger's perspective the reaction might be 'please don't ruin blogging by making it one of your measurable factors.' Having seen what this has done to research publications (ie transformed them from a genuine activity to a game to be played for points), the last thing you'd want as a blogger is to have this area of creativity, engagement and enjoyment trampled over by herds of bean-counters. One can imagine what it would be like - points for rate of blogging, for your ranking, for the number of subscribers, etc. All of which would transform behaviour and ruin it. But, having said that if we bloggers truly think it is the best place for academic discourse, then getting it recognised as such may be important for encouraging new academics who need to keep an eye on their career path.

Overall then? For me it's been worthwhile having a specific target, and having some form of measurement I can feed into the system to have that activity recognised. Perhaps the thing to remember is that it doesn't matter what it means, after all is an authority of 100 good? Should it be 200, 700, or some other number? What does it mean in terms of reach? But there is a measurement in the system, and the system likes measurements, so it can rest easy.

The Economist debate - my 2p worth

As most people have blogged, there is a debate on social networking in higher education over at the Economist. Ewan Macintosh takes the pro side.

For what it's worth here was the comment I posted:

In some ways the argument is irrelevant - it's like asking 'is alcohol beneficial to study?' You could argue either way, but regardless of what we think students are going to use it anyway.

But, that aside, let's look at what SNS offer - a sense of community, peer support, enthusiastic users, engagement with technology, resource sharing, democratic participation - hmm, these are all things we've been desperate to have in higher education for years. We've largely failed in many of these (as anyone who uses a VLE can attest), so why wouldn't we look at what happens in SNs? It would be remiss of us not to do so.

However, there are some big cultural issues that higher ed will need to get over - in particular HE is based on a very hierarchical model, and is often obsessed with controlling the student experience. In a social network you have to let go. In short you have to accept bottom up over top down - and that will be tough, as it goes against 3000 years of educational instinct.

So, my conclusion - of course higher education should try and adopt principles of social networks and 2.0, but the question is whether it can.

ELQ funding and the Brown psyche

As many in the UK will know the Government has decided to stop funding ELQ students (Equal or lower qualification), so if you are a student who is studying for a qualification equal or lower to one you already possess you have to pay the full fee. This is obviously vexing for a university such as the OU, which specialises in such qualifications.

It's also completely at odds with any agenda on lifelong learning, which the Government, and Gordon Brown in particular, claims to support. There has been some suggestion that lifelong learning will be funded in other ways, but just in case any Labour MPs are in any doubt, let's be clear - it is impossible to hold both concepts in your head simultaneously without conflict. It would be like a minister declaring they wished to increase atheistic thought in society by opening up a set of faith schools (or vice versa). The two actions are mutually exclusive.

And this is where we see the strangeness of Gordon Brown's personality come to the fore again. I accept that all politicians want to have their cake and eat it, but Brown seems peculiarly afflicted on this front, wanting to have his cake and eat it and then be admired by cake-eaters and cake-keepers alike (cf. being present or not to sign the European treaty). I ought to say that in case anyone interprets this as a Tory political broadcast, it isn't - I remember how education fared under them last time round.

This is what psychologists call a double-bind and used to think was a cause of schizophrenia (before they admitted that genetics might have a role to play, and double-bind seemed to be a load of old tosh in the causation stakes).

Anyway, the e-petition against the ELQ cuts is here if you feel like tightening the bind.