The Ed Techie

Chips ahoy for MOOCs

In a post some time back I mentioned that academics now have to compete in an attention economy, and this isn't something we're used to doing (or very good at). It means making your slideshare attractive, or making your blog post punchy, or giving your paper a snappy title. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems awkward and artificial.

MOOCs/Open courses will be the next in this line. I've heard more than one commentator say you have yo grab learner's interest in the first 5 minutes of a MOOC (maybe that's too long). That probably isn't true of formal education, where you have a captive audience. It may be a good tactic for a lecture, but it isn't a necessity. 

There are lots of lists of great opening lines to novels - this list puts "Call me Ishmael" at no 1, but I have to say I'd disagree, given the criteria I'm about to set out (Pride and Prejudice at number 2 is a better example I think, and Clavino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller at 14 is probably the best - how can you resist that?).

For me, opening lines (or shots in cinema) need to achieve three things:

1) Quality - you need to know you're in the hands of a gifted artist and it's worth investing the next few hours/days/months of your life in their work.

2) Content - is this something I am going to be interested in? Good opening lines will let you know what type of subject matter, or genre this is, although very good ones may well subvert this expectation too.

3) Direction - you don't have to give the ending away in the opening lines, but a tease about the direction pulls the reader in.

So, armed with my three criteria I thought I'd look at my favourite opening lines of a song (for this month anyway). It's not as lofty as the books in the list, it's The Hold Steady's "Chips Ahoy". The opening lines go:

"She put $900 on the fifth horse in the sixth race
i think its name is "chips ahoy!"
it came in six lengths ahead, we spent the whole next week getting high"

I make no pretensions that's poetry, but it's a good opening to a rock song. And it meets my criteria I think:

• Quality - that number motif is carefully crafted, and the choice of the horse's name (after a biscuit) instead of some fancy name like Beauregard, sets the tone perfectly
• Content - you pretty much immediately know what sort of life this is depicting, and the type of tale it will tell. This is not a story of middle class alienation in the suburbs. 
• Direction - anything that starts with this positive note, you know won't maintain it, so it gives a good hint at the direction it will take (unusually, the song has a sequel too, called The Weekenders, which contains the great lyric "It's not gonna be like in those romantic comedies/ I bet no-one learns a lesson")

Now, I've just created a MOOC open course and it certainly doesn't start off with a carefully crafted opening line or snappy 2 minutes. It starts off with a course description, learning outcomes and an overview. All very worthy and useful stuff. I think it does meet my 3 criteria, but it does it too slowly. A question then for those developing and studying open courses is the extent to which we should deliberately craft these big bang openings? Do learners need them to decide or do they come with a different set of priorities? You may be prepared for the slow build in learning. Or is the attention economy online just too strong a force?

Just asking the questions. Oh, here's a video of Chips Ahoy while you ponder the answers.

MOOC disco

So just before Christmas I finally managed to air a slot on DS106 Radio (thanks to Alan for being patient with the most needy DJ in DS106 history). It was remarkably easy to do, so I'd recommend it to anyone.

My idea was to create a set where each song reflected on some aspects of MOOCs. On reflection I don't think this came across without me doing some talking inbetween. I opted for film clips instead, but I think the "music connected by a theme we can discuss" approach has merits which I'd like to revisit. I know from compiling the set that even if it's an issue you've thought about a lot, adding music to it gives it a vibrancy or nuance that wasn't there previously. It would be a fun way to explore some issues without having to reference French philosophers (yes, I'm looking at you Cormier).

For the record, here are the tracks:

I'll let you make the connections to the topic.

And here is the (probably illegal) archive of the broadcast. It starts a bit quiet but cranks up halfway through the first song. See how many film clips you can get.

MOOC disco archive

 

 

Treading the integrity line

I had some media training last week, as part of the OU's REF build up. I've authored one of our impact case studies (on Open Education). The idea is that should we be asked to appear on radio then we're prepared to deal with the four minute interview on our subject.

I was a bit cynical going in to it, but it was a useful and fun session, practising being interviewed and getting your point across to a general audience. It's probably good practice for all academics to do, regardless of whether they'll ever be on the radio (and with a voice like mine, I hope not for everyone's sake). 

I made the point that academics often come across awkwardly in interviews because they are caught in a somewhat schizophrenic situation. They are trying to speak simultaneously to two audiences. There is the general audience who doesn't want to know the subtle details, doesn't care about the history and framing work and hasn't got time to consider the complications - they want to know the key details and what's relevant to them. But at the same time the academic is aware that their peers may well be listening. They could come across as trying to claim more for themselves than is the case, of overstating the implication of their research and of grossly simplifying the complexity of the situation. 

The media advisers said that the best academics in the mass media tended to ignore this second audience and just focus on the mass one. This is indeed a skill, and there are academics who do it well, making their subject interesting without sacrificing too much. And then there are academics who clearly become enamoured of the mass media attention and trade in all intergrity in order to become the person who makes a media friendly statement. For instance there's Dr Cliff Arnall who every year does the rounds with the Blue Monday nonsense. 

I think it would be easy to eschew all mass media, but it can be done right - I just don't know that I could do it right. Which is why this blogging and online stuff suits me better - you get to explain it when you want to, and on your terms. Plus, here everyone's friendly, right?

The key I guess is in maintaining an integrity you feel comfortable with. And integrity always brings to mind the story I heard about Nick Cave who turned down a substantial sum from Gap for his music to be used in an advert. He reasoned:

"I get letters from people telling me they got married to The Ship Song, or that they buried their best friend to a Into My Arms, and I don't want them to look at the TV and see that they buried their friend to Cornetto or something. I feel some sense of responsibility about that, even though they wave enormous sums of money at you."

So here's some Nick Cave:

My Sandinista

I'm generally a forward looking chap when it comes to music, and don't dwell too much in the past. But every couple of years I revisit a band that was important in my youth, not as a matter of policy, that's just what seems to happen.

I've been doing this with The Clash recently, after reading Pat Gilbert's Passion is a Fashion. I always liked Sandinista - as an impressionable teenager it was a good exposure to different music styles and some of the awkward rebel politics of the Clash. It was panned when it came out, after the success of London Calling, largely because it was a triple album and seemed confused and messy. It's often said that it would have been a good double album. I think part of its problem was not just the rather rubbishy tracks that got included but also the ordering of the album. So, feeling a bit bored last night I created my good double album Sandinista. This is embedded as a spotify playlist below. It has twenty tracks, and is a bit longer than London Calling in length, but roughly comparable. 

The order is important here, I tried to envisage it as four sides of vinyl, as it would have been then. Each side has 4-5 tracks in my version and has a distinct personality. It starts of with what you might think of standard Clash. These are probably all tracks that could have been on London Calling. It then moves into a 'funk' side, with the excellent Magnificent Seven and Lightning Strikes. The best side would be side 3, the reggae side. I've slightly cheated here and added Armagideon Times (I wanted a live version but Spotify couldn't find it) and also Bank Robber. I know these weren't on Sandinista and came out earlier, but they fit much better with (my favourite Sandanista track) One More Time and The Equaliser. This really makes reggae/dub a strong theme of the album. The last side is the 'reflective' side, ended with the excellent Broadway.

I think if this had been the Sandinista that had been released, we'd be talking about it now in the same way as London Calling. 

I've been thinking about it too much haven't I?

 

The vinyl lesson

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/fensterbme/102458936/>

There has been a bit of a buzz recently that the sales of vinyl records are on the increase, and what does this mean. This isn't a 'the joy of vinyl' post, but rather that the rise of vinyl has some interesting lessons for what happens to an industry or artefact after the arrival of the digital, networked version. I think there are three main lessons:

1) The arrival of digital highlights the real value in the analogue version - in this case the vinyl wasn't about being a music distribution platform, but rather a complete art object. Its physical presence was its value. People now say that they value the limitations vinyl puts on the listener, so you have to listen to a whole album and don't simply shuffle. These are qualities that are brought into focus by the presence of the digital alternative.

2) It is more complex than simply digital replaces analogue - let's make no mistake here, although vinyl is on the increase, it is dwarfed by digital downloads. The monopoly of the old system is nearly always overthrown by the arrival of the digital, networked version. But it oversimplifies matters to say "X is dead" now.

3) The analogue becomes a specialist, hobbyist pursuit - digital and networked nearly always trumps analogue in terms of convenience. But the new values we've come to appreciate in 1) mean the analogue version moves to becoming a monority interest, but of great value to that group. It increases in (maybe financial, but certainly emotional) value, but decreases in reach.

The same has happened with nearly all analogue artefacts where a digital, networked version has come into existence. Think paper and online newspapers, maps & GPS, digital and film photography, and so on - books are in a similar transformation process now.

What's perhaps more interesting is whether the same applies to activities as well as artefacts. Shopping has seen some of this, although not to the same extent - the activity of shopping has often moved online (see reports about the death of the high street), but it hasn't quite become a hobbyist pursuit. But the convenience of online shopping has meant it has lost its monopoly and people have become to realise what it is they like about 'real' shopping (for me, nothing by the way), which is the social side. So city centres have become a greater mix of coffee shops, restaurants alongside shops.

Now here's a couple of activities to consider in the light of the three vinyl lessons:

• Academic conferences
• Teaching

Maybe that's for another post...

Punk, Queen & New Romantics in digital scholarship

It may be tired after the whole edupunk thing (curses to you Groom!), and has more than a whiff of old men reliving their youth about it, but nevertheless I'd like to revisit punk music as an analogy for current changes in ed tech. This time it is nothing to do with the approach or the values, but rather the lesson of what a revolution actually look like.

In his book From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, John Naughton makes the point that we are living through the midst of a revolution, and it's very difficult to see what the outcome will be. While I think that digital, networked and open approaches to scholarship do represent a revolution, I think we also tend to over simplify what this means. John makes this point also.

There is a tendency to think of revolutions as absolutes: pre and post. Everything that has gone before is swept away and everything that happens since is cast in the new light.

But for many revolutions this isn't the case. The actual picture is far more subtle, and interesting. I was reflecting on this the other day with regards to my own musical tastes and history. My musical tastes really started emerging in the immediate post-punk era, and this coloured everything for me. So my early album purchases were The Jam, Clash and later Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes. I inherited a completely dismissive attitude towards anything pre-1976. I scoffed at prog rock, folk and metal.

This wasn't actually a bad attitude to have as a teenager, you're meant to have strong tastes. But it did mean it took me longer than it should have done to come round to bands like Led Zeppelin, or Nick Drake.

But the lesson is, for many people my age punk was a defining revolution in music. But it wasn't as all encompassing as history may have painted it. I had plenty of friends whose musical tastes remained largely untouched. Queen, Iron Maiden, Luther Vandross - punk had no impact here.

And I had yet other friends who didn't think they liked punk, but went on to become new romantics (it was a confused time). And while that music had different values, it was a 'scene' that was undoubtedly influenced by the possibilities that punk had awoken in people.

Now this isn't just a nostalgia trip - there is an analogy here with digital scholarship, and what revolutions feel like. There are scholars for whom the digital aspect is nearly all consuming - I'm one of them, I simply can't imagine what it's like without working in a networked manner. There are those for whom it is largely irrelevant. Think of them as the Queen fans of scholarship - they have been successful and have a preference for an established way of working. Then there is probably a middle group, whose tastes and practices are touched by the existence of digital scholarship, even if they are not particularly strong advocates. These are the new romantics.

I guess the point is, a revolution changes some things completely, alters some, and has no impact on others, but we tend to focus only on the first of these.

Digital Scholarship - the DJ set

I have a vague idea of maybe one day doing a keynote as a DJ set (I think Brian Lamb did this once), but of course, I have never done a DJ set, and it would be a painful affair. So in lieu of that, I decided to create a DJ set to accompany my book. I used Soundcloud, to produce the set below. Lots of tracks were disallowed because they had restricted rights, so my 30 odd track set came down to 12. I've added in a little explanation in between. My mic started dodgy and then packed up altogether, so the quality of these (both in technical and content terms) isn't great, and I don't think I have a career as a late night DJ in the offing, but you get the point. All the songs seem to have been truncated at 3 minutes too, so it's not ideal. 

Of course, the main point is not the content of the set, but the existence of the set itself. I mentioned previously about the boundaries of the book being blurred and this is a further example. I can create a DJ set and share it globally, to accompany a book (about digital scholarship for chrissakes, hardly the funkiest subject!). I mean, come on, that is kinda cool isn't it?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, I'll maybe try and find an alternative means of doing it later and get a better mic. Look upon this as a first draft. Maybe a DS106radio set beckons...

 

Digital Scholarship by mweller

Eduflow

I recently signed up for the new music service Mflow. It works like this: You find people to follow, like in any social network, you can play 30 seconds of a track, and you then flow it, which means it will turn up in your followers' inboxes. They can play the full track, but only once. If they choose to purchase it, then as the person who flowed it (I guess we can't use the term 'flower') you get a percentage in revenue.

As a music service I found it a bit frustrating - only being able to play 30 seconds of a track, and then only play those in your inbox once seems limiting. This would have been a good idea before the arrival of Spotify, but not now. But like many new services it maybe takes a time to realise how to use it. If one has a good set of people you are following, then it isn't about hearing the same track again, but have a continual stream of music - a sort of friend-filtered radio. Whether there is sufficient incentive for people to be continually flowing music though is another matter.

Their model is interesting on a couple of fronts I think, and also relevant to education. Some time ago I posted how Last.FM could be applied to an educational setting and you can see the same with Mflow. 

The first point of interest is the manner in which they have tried to formalise, or seperate out, the social filter function into a specific app. Having your network as a filter for music is something many of us already do with Twitter/Facebook combined with other services such as Blip.fm. But a continual flow of music recommendations in these general social spaces can be annoying. So for areas of particular interest, we might see more specific social recommendation/filtering services. We will have a default, general social network, and then a set of specialist ones for areas of interest. And education/learning might well be one such area. I suppose you could argue that delicious, or tumblr, or digg are already 'Flows' for content, but a more specialised educational one around subject areas with an OER focus might work.

The second point is the business model one - by getting a cut of purchases from items you have recommended Mflow hopes to incentivise some of the social recommending many of us do anyway. This will be interesting to watch - does have money attached mean that people try to get as many followers as possible, but this in turn devalues their relevance, meaning people will unfollow. Does it allow for very specialised recommenders, who spend more time finding music and are therefore worth following (in the same way that people play others to build up their avatars in virtual worlds). In an educational context, what might the impact of financial incentives be on a social learning model? Could you effectively recompense people for finding stuff, or is it just support and bespoke guidance that people pay for?

In conclusion then, I'm not convinced by Mflow as a music channel, but I am always intrigued when companies attempt to construct new business models and approaches which seem to take the internet and social media as their starting point, rather than a nuisance they wish would disappear.

Ownership ain't what it used to be

I recently signed up for Spotify, a music service that allows you to find, and listen to, whole tracks and albums. It's less social than LastFM, say, but more focused around the specific music you want - whereas LastFM uses the artist you like as a springboard for finding other artists, Spotify uses it just to give you that artist's music.

It brought back to me some considerations I'd had about the nature of ownership. My generation will have a distinctly different concept of ownership to that of my daughter's generation. For my generation you partly constructed your identity around what you owned - your bookshelf, record collection and DVD archive were important aspects of who you were (as anyone who has read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity will appreciate). But for the digital generation this strong link with ownership has been broken.

It took time and money to build up any of those collections. Therefore they demonstrated a commitment which was worth exhibiting. In a digital world this effort is greatly reduced, and as a result so is the emotional attachment one feels towards them. How often would people say that their book collection or record collection would be the things they would want to save from a burning house? This simply doesn't apply anymore - you can just download again (iTunes keeps a record of what you've purchased or you just download ahem, free, versions from BitTorrent).

But even more than this, the need to own anything is reduced. Imagine a service like Spotify greatly increased so you could find any artist, and with mobile devices, get access anywhere. Why do I need to own any of these tracks then? I can get them whenever I want, and isn't that the point of ownership, to have access under your control?

Obviously there are some things you still need to own (clothes, cars, phones, etc), but if so many previously coveted items move to cloud services, what will the next generation cherish? I think the answer is evident already in where they spend their time - it's in their identity. This was one of the functions of owning these items in the first place after all. For the digital generation things that cannot be easily duplicated will be important - this will be the MySpace or Facebook page they have generated over a long time, the network they have created. These represent the 'things I'd save from a fire' in an online world.

As for us? Ownership is a hard habit to break.

Why 'will Radiohead make money?' is the wrong question

Ed Felten has a good piece on how the Radiohead experiment can mean they make more money by selling more at a lower price. While I agree with his analysis I think this focus on how the  'you choose the price' model will work misses the point. This is a step along the path to free content so all those who think it's a failure if some people don't pay are looking at it the wrong way - some might pay this time, but next time? Or the time after? Radiohead have a reasonably devoted fanbase who will opt to pay, but for lots of artists that isn't the case - they'll make the choice between fame over fortune. Better to have 1000 people download it for free and generate some buzz than 10 people pay for it.

So the question isn't will Radiohead make money from this release, but rather 'how else might Radiohead make money?' They are offering a proper CD release box set for around £40. This is one model - release for free something that 90% of people will take, and something special for the remaining 10%. This is the sort of thing Gran can buy them for Christmas - 'What does Kevin like?' 'Radiohead' 'Okay, I'll get him the special release'. I would expect to see lots of variations on this - most of an album free and then some special DRM locked bonus tracks you pay for, bundled with some video, interviews, etc. People will crack these and release them free, but for the fan who really wants them they'll be prepared to pay and the rest of us will just take the free stuff.

PS - you may be thinking I am contractually obliged to mention Radiohead in every post at the moment. This is the last one. Probably.