The Ed Techie

Bridge 2 Success

This is the third in the what I'm up to at the OU posts. A while back we were part of a consortium that won a bid in the Next Generation Learning Challenges funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Educause, & The Hewlett Foundation. The partners are us (IET at the OU), MIT, the Anne Arundel Community College and University of Maryland University College (UMUC) - the project is Bridge to Success.

It's aim is to use OERs to help community college students who struggle with study skills, and math(s) in particular. So we've taken some OU courses and these have been adapted in the US, and made available through our OpenLearn labspace. But this is about more than just creating content, so these materials are used in classroom instruction, and we are researching how students and instructors find the process.

My role is to head up the research work programme (Patrick McAndrew is the OU lead and does all the real work). One of the things I'm interested here is in the process of adaptation. We have given our materials to US partners to adapt, and what we are looking at is the type and degree of adaptation that occurs. There are at least four types of adaptation that take place:

1. Simple context - changing £ for $ is a simple way of thinking about this
2. Language adaptation - changing the nature of the instruction that is given in terms of the style used
3. Content adaptation - reworking, deleting or adding content so that it meets the needs of a US maths curriculum
4. Pedagogic adaptation - altering the nature of activities and instruction based on knowledge of the types of students

Now, you probably want to get away with just doing type 1 adaptation as that is fairly straightforward and takes the least time. But you still need subject experts to do this, and it quickly becomes apparent that it bleeds across to the other types of adaptation too. It is all context. 

So what will be interesting to see is just how much adaptation takes place, whether some instructors adapt more than others, and if this has any impact on student performance. There undoubtedly comes a point when you have adapted something so much, it would have taken as much time to create it from scratch. The argument here then is whether the OER approach is worthwhile, if it takes as long to adapt as to create? Even if this is the case (and we haven't found that to be so yet, but it's still early), the use of OER may lead to better material than creating from scratch - this would be a tough thing to test, but maybe for another project.

Those are the kinds of things I'm interested in, beyond the more practical (and worthwhile) outcomes of hopefully improving student performance, confidence and understanding.

Here is a presentation from MIT's Brandon Muramatsu on the project if you want to know more:

Demystifying OER and Bridge to Success

View more presentations from Brandon Muramatsu

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

Comparethejournal.com

A journal comparison site? Simples.

This another post from the stable of 'Martin's great business ideas that never get taken up, and which he never progresses.'

One of the themes in my digital scholarship book is that of alternatives - new technology driven approaches give us alternatives when previously we had none: we can join in a conference remotely, we can choose which medium we wish to convey our message in, we can make our outputs as detailed or as general as we like and we can chat about professional interests, sport, politics, film, or whatever we like all in the same space.

Looking at academic publishing, it strikes me that this rather odd model (as so well parodied by David Wiley in the Trucker's Parable) persists precisely because of the lack of alternatives. In order to disseminate research the only option available was the printed journal. So we had to sign up to it, and then the journal article became a measure of reputation so it became the means by which promotion committees determined an individual's case, meaning there was even less alternative.

The second of these problems, the tie-in with tenure, still persists but the first has been eroded by the advent of the read/write web. The journal's monopoly on research dissemination has been broken. But this doesn't mean we need to discard the academic journal, it is still likely that the peer-review process will be one of the scholarly approaches we wish to retain. It does mean the journal has to adapt though.

And many are doing just this, PLoS being a great example. Here are some of the factors authors might want to bear in mind when looking for a journal to publish in, and if these can't be met, then maybe they should consider going down the blogging or alternative route:

• Open access - does the journal have an open access policy? (If not, ask them why).
• Green or Gold - if it is open access, does it operate a Gold OA policy (the journal is open, and the author pays) or Green (the journal isn't OA, but the author can self-archive).
• Fee - if it is Gold OA, what is the fee?
• Embargo - if it is Green OA, is there an embargo before the author can self-archive
• Rights - does the author or the publisher retain the rights?
• Average publication time - what is the average time between submission and publication?
• Rejection rate - what percentage of submissions are rejected?
• Review policy - is it open, blind, double-blind reviewed?
• Added value - what extras does the journal provide, eg metrics on access, tracking blog references, promotion
• Impact factor - if you must...

When you look at these factors they begin to resemble the choices you select for car insurance or similar. The significance of each might be more or less for any individual, eg. if you have a very current piece, then publication delay becomes very important. 

I don't think all of this data is readily available, but certainly a lot of it is. You could image a site then that allows you to select the broad area of interest, and then work through these various options, allowing you to determine which journal meets your requirements. I would propose that the existence of such a tool would itself make journals begin to compete on some of these factors, and thus improve choice.

Maybe such a tool already exists, if not, who will join/fund me in building one. Come on, let's make these journals work for our publications!

What is the learner responsibility in open education?

I gave a presentation for George Siemens last night as part of CCK11 on, you've guessed it, digital scholarship. It was a bit rambling, but generally well received. I noticed a couple of comments on Twitter along the lines of 'how does this relate to the course content?'

Having done a few such sessions this isn't the first time I've seen such queries. I don't mean to dismiss these, I think they raise an interesting issue for open education.  

Firstly, if a student is getting a course for free do they demand the same type of QA as one they've paid for? I really mean this, if MOOCs are serious then maybe they need to be offering the same quality levels of traditional courses. On the other hand, I haven't been following CCK, I'm willing to do a free presentation, but if I have to link it to course objectives, then I'm less likely to do so.

Secondly, in an open, connected world of abundant content, perhaps the key skill is to learn how to make the connections between a wide range of free content and core principles. This is also a reflection on the changing nature of the educator - the role of the 'lecturer' is not to deliver the content but to find it, structure it and help interpret it.

Lastly, I wonder if, even in this more advanced set of learners, it demonstrates that old learning habits die hard. We are accustomed to signing up for a course, and whether it's free or not, being directed through it very explicitly. If so, then the applicability of the MOOC to all subject areas and levels may be rather limited. Which brings me onto my bigger point - if you are signing up to a MOOC as a learner is there some implicit contract you are agreeing to?

Out of the total numbers of educators there are very few who have run an open course, (I can think of 10 maybe), and there is a slightly larger number of people who have presented on them, but still not many - in my university there are probably only a handful of us. So it's worth sharing our experiences of them as we go, as I expect it will become more common. Generally I like doing them. I think the open aspect means I can explore ideas, and use these sessions as a bit of a test-bed. After all, I'm doing it for free, so I may as well get something from it. I've developed ideas from these sessions and particularly the feedback you get into published work. They also help connect you with good people, and expand your network. The sessions are usually more interactive and encouraging than face to face ones I find. And, perhaps most importantly, I can do them from my home, while having a glass of beer (shhh, don't tell anyone).

So I'd encourage people to have a go at them, but participants should also be aware that these sessions aren't devised specifically for the course in question.

Let's play OER Roulette!

(The academic version of sending your child up a chimney)

This is the last in my trilogy of Open Ed 2010 posts.

For my presentation at Open Ed 2010 I wanted to do something a bit different. I had the last slot on a long second day (ie ‘the graveyard shift’) and I was speaking after David Wiley (who gave an excellent presentation as always), so the odds were stacked against me. In addition my daughter accompanied me so I wanted to include her in some way.

I remember seeing Elvis Costello in concert once and he had a large wheel at the front with a number of songs listed on it, which they would spin to select the next number to play. I wanted to recreate this, but transporting a big wheel was unrealistic, so I got my daughter to get members of the audience to select cards. My talk had the hypothesis that by considering OERs as big and little, it provided a lens on a number of issues around OERs, including:

• Sustainability
• Working methods
• Production time
• Context
• Academic status
• The role of content
• The nature of projects
• Sites vs Portals
• Aggregation vs Adaptation
• Implict messages

This gave the presentation a non-linear structure and because I had more subjects than could be covered in the allotted time, a degree of uncertainty. It also means I can give the same presentation again and it will at least be slightly different.

The presentation is below, which I haven't had time to turn into a slidecast and is now linear, so it loses some of the interactivity. I quite liked using this approach and given my previous post on not doing presentations, it at least allowed me to play with the format to a degree, but I would have preferred it to be more participatory.

OER Roulette

View more presentations from Martin Weller.

The strange case of the unconnected conference

(An unexpected appearance by the Two Ronnies went some way to alleviate frustration about the lack of wifi at OpenEd 2010 - Richard Hall and Joss Winn in full flow).

I was at the Open Ed 2010 conference last week. First off, I want to say that it was great to finally meet Brian Lamb and I really enjoyed presentations from Richard Hall, David Wiley, Erik Duval, Joss Winn and others. So this post is not a comment on the quality of the conference or the discussions I had there.

The conference was held in the science museum CosmoCaixa. This is a great museum and my daughter loved it. It is, sadly, not a great conference venue. Although they had wifi in every room which you could connect to, the bandwidth coming into the museum was so low that in reality no-one could get online (I had visions of a 14K modem in an office somewhere which then got fed into all these lecture halls with great AV facilities and their own routers).

This made me reflect on how connectivity, and the amplified conference has become the norm for me. Being unable to connect had a serious impact on the nature of the conference I think, in the following ways:

1. Loss of archive -  It couldn’t be streamed, or tweeted, or live-blogged, so the more holistic, distributed record of a conference that has become the norm was lost.
2. No backchannel – within the conference itself not being able to chat with other participants and share thoughts meant some of the immediate conversation around a presentation was lost.
3. Stunted presentations – many presenters wanted to at least demonstrate a site. I foolishly wanted to play some YouTube vids (although thankfully an Ethernet connection had been found for presenters by the time I came to present which gave some limited access). Being unable to do so made it seem like we had been sucked into a conference in 1995.
4. No wider participation – at least with those present you could have conversations over coffee, but I am also accustomed to have dialogue with those in my network who aren’t present. There were many time I would have tweeted during a talk and I know I would have had a response from someone in my network who wasn’t present.
5. No amplification – if one of the measures of success for a conference is its impact in its field then to lose connectivity for its duration results in it effectively being isolated. Not to be able to amplify the content and discussion at a conference to a global network severely restricts its significance.

Before someone jumps in and says ‘perhaps you should try talking to the person next to you’, yes I did plenty of that. I’m capable of doing both. And I think there is increasing value in hosting ‘disconnect’ events, where you deliberately don’t have access, such as writing retreats. But these types of events are geared up for this and it’s what you sign up for. What the experience here brought home to me is that amplification is not an interesting extra or a techie nice-to-have – it’s essential.

 

An open Open University course on openness

[Update - see James' comment below, and to clarify this is a course produced as a result of a research project in a collaboration with many others: the Hellenic Management Association, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland, SPI in Portugal, ELIG, and UNU Merit. As such it's not an OU course that has been through the normal course production process, nor does it carry OU credit]

Like Tony I think the OU has been a bit slow to start creating truly open courses - I'm partly to blame since I suggested doing one a couple of years back and then didn't do anything. Before that Ray Corrigan simply released his course as openly, but that was withdrawn to make way for OpenLearn. We've had some good study skills courses from the library and Tony has dabbled with it, but I think those have largely been the release of course material. This is the first time we are running the course in the open I think (please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to undermine someone's else's claim).

So James Aczel and team have put together a course on Business and Management competencies in a web 2.0 world, which is taking registrations now for a 1st Nov start. It says:

"openEd 2.0 is a FREE/OPEN course targeting business students and practitioners alike. The course consists of two strands: an academic and a professional practice based strand, though both strands can be taken together. Furthermore, the openEd 2.0 course is MODULAR, thus learners can also “pick” the individual modules they are interested in."

I think this follows in a long tradition of the groundbreaking courses being about the subject itself - a medium is the message principle. When we ran the first elearning course its subject matter was computers and the internet. This is a good way to start since the technology and delivery are part of the experience. But it shouldn't be confused with it meaning that you can only teach about those subjects this way. Just as we can now use elearning to teach about philosophy or engineering, so open courses can be about any subject, this is just a good way of finding your feet with a sympathetic audience.

Be interesting to see how it goes.

For the last time - open access is not like stealing bread

The Times Higher ran a piece on ceviche cooking edupunk Brian Lamb's keynote at the recent JISC OER event in London. Brian makes his usual good points, but it was some of the comments that were revealing.

In particular, one that states "We should also have 'open access' at Tesco: I should just be able to take from their shelves what I want without paying."

I've heard this a lot in various guises over the years. I can't believe I'm still hearing it. I know that you know this is a dumb argument, but please, can we just put it to bed once and for all.

Open access is not like stealing bread from Tesco for two VERY SIMPLE reasons:

i) If I take a loaf bread from Tesco then it is no longer there. If I read an online article it is still there for everyone else. We knew this back in 1998 when we talked about non-rivalrous goods. Can we stop using this misguided analogy now? Pleeeease?

>ii) You could make the argument that each download of pirated music equals a sale lost (although that is a flawed argument I think). So maybe the argument has some validity for products you want to sell (big maybe for me). But for journal articles it really has no validity - the whole point of research publications is that you want as many people to read it as possible. And we know that open access journals get more citations than closed ones. So closed access defeats the very objective you are trying to realise. 

Let's put this one behind us now shall we? It's not as if digital content is new now is it?

The return on peer review

A while ago I took a decision to only publish in open access journals. I recently received two requests to review articles for journals. Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing. 

So it's something we all do, isn't really recognised and is often performed on the edges of time. It's not entirely altruistic though - it is a good way of staying in touch with your subject (like a sort of reading club), it helps with networking (though we have better ways of doing this now don't we?) and we also hope people will review our own work when the time comes. But generally it is performed for the good of the community (the Peer Review Survey 2009 states that the reason 90% reviewers gave for conducting peer review was "because they believe they are playing an active role in the community")

It's a labour that is unaccounted for. The Peer Review Survey doesn't give a cost estimate (as far as I can see), but we can do some back of the envelope calculations. It says there are 1.3 million peer-reviewed journals published every year, and the average (modal) time for review is 4 hours. Most articles are at least double-reviewed, so that gives us:

Time spent on peer review = 1,300,000 x 2 x 4 = 10.4 million hours

This doesn't take into account editor's time in compiling reviews or chasing them up, we'll just stick with the 'donated' time of academics for now. In terms of cost, we'd need an average salary, which is difficult globally. I'll take the average academic salary in the UK, which is probably a touch on the high side. The Times Higher gives this as £42,000 per annum, before tax, which equates to £20.19 per hour. So the cost with these figures is:

20.19 x 10,400,000 = £209,976,000

[Update - Alan Cann gave me this link, which puts the cost at £1.9Billion a year]

I accept this is subject to lots of objections, it may well be less, but then again, many reviewers are often eminent, and thus further up the pay scale, so it could be more. It seems a reasonable conclusion based on the data we have. So that's over £200million a year that academics are donating of their time to the peer review process. This isn't a large sum when set against things like the budget deficit, but it's not inconsiderable. And it's fine if one views it as generating public good - this is what researchers need to do in order to conduct proper research. But an alternative view is that academics (and ultimately taxpayers) are subsidising the academic publishing to the tune of £200 million a year. That's a lot of unpaid labour.

Now that efficiency and return on investment are the new drivers for research, the question should be asked whether this is the best way to 'spend' this money? I'd suggest that if we are continuing with peer review (and its efficacy is a separate argument), then the least we should expect is that the outputs of this tax-payer funded activity should be freely available to all.

And so, my small step in this was to reply to the requests for reviews stating that I have a policy of only reviewing for open access journals. I'm sure a lot of people do this as a matter of course, but it's worth logging every blow in the revolution. If we all did it....

Project report as coffee table book

I've mentioned before I was part of the Sidecap project, which looked at OER use in Fiji, West Indies and Mauritius. The project has now finished and instead of producing the standard EU report (which, let's face it, no-one ever reads) Frank Rennie from UHI decided to create it as a book in Blurb. We all contributed sections and gathered photos from the duration of the project. My book turned up today:

 

It's a small, and undoubtedly obvious point, but the glossiness of it and the approachability of the layout made me want to read it. In almost exactly opposite to the way I'd approach a normal project report. With almost no shame I am going to mention affordances - a nice glossy book affords you picking it up and looking through it, it extends an invite to you. A project report printed on A4 paper and stuffed in a binder says the opposite, it says 'move on, nothing to see here.'

You can order the book if you want online (no profit goes to us, it just covers the cost of printing). I think all publicly funded projects should mandate this as a deliverable. On my output as collateral damage riff, this is exactly the sort of thing that means a project report destined to be tucked away in the database equivalent of the final scene of Raiders of the Last Ark, becomes a findable, accessible resource.

Or was everyone doing this anyway and I've just caught up?