The Ed Techie

Curriculum Business Models

I rarely blog about the day job anymore, so I thought I'd do a series of posts around 'what I'm up to at the moment', as I'm involved in a lot of projects that are interesting and probably relevant to other places as well. And also, just in case you thought I just sat around all day.

First up is the Curriculum Business Models project. I'm the academic lead on this, having taken over from Grainne. The project grew out of a lot of the learning design work at the OU, particularly the JISC funded OULDI project.

The name is a bit of a misnomer I feel, it isn't really about business models. It is more about trying to scaffold the course design process in a standard manner across the university. We have a number of tools to help this, the two I'm mostly focused on are the pedagogy profiler and the module map.

The pedagogy profiler aims to get course designers to categorise how they aim to teach each subject in their course, using six categories of learner activity. So, for example if I were creating a course around digital scholarship (now there's an idea), I might say 'I want to cover Boyer's work on scholarship, and to do this I'll get students to do some assimilative work (reading a chapter) and also some experiential work (categorising their own work)'. The aim, I feel, of this tool is twofold: firstly, there is a tendency when producing distance education courses to operate in a production mode, to focus on the stuff, and the intention here is to think about student activity first before moving to the actual implementation of this; secondly, by having six categories of activity there is an implicit suggestion that a balanced diet is required. If your pedagogy profile comes out as one massive block of assimilative, then it tends to make you go back and revisit this. It is not the case that a completely even split is always desirable, for example level 1 courses may have more assimilative (ie acquiring info from reading, watching, etc) and level 3 more communication, or vocational courses may have a stronger experiential element, and so on. But it does tend to promote a more pedagogically diverse course design I find, and I think that makes for a more interesting learner experience.

Having done a pedagogy profile you then move to a module map. This has four categories: Content, Guidance, Communication and Demonstration. So now you can start mapping those student activities onto a representation which says how you're going to deliver them. That group activity you decided to do, well now you map out that it will require use of the wiki tool in the VLE, which will hopefully trigger this.

This module map is a common representation that can be shared by different groups, and it can also drive an initial costing, where you can say 'you know that 3 hour video with George Clooney we were planning? It may be a tad expensive, let's revisit that.'

So that's Curriculum Business Models, we're currently in the stage of developing the tools so they look nice and rolling it out across faculties so it becomes part of the course production process. Wish me luck

Tenure, publishing and Tony

As Tony Hirst has blogged, his recent promotion case was unsuccessful. I'm obviously disappointed by this, for his sake, and because it was our first attempt at pushing through a digital scholarship case.

We don't know why it was unsuccessful yet (detailed feedback will follow I suspect), but today I was reading an excellent report from the Center for Higher Education Studies at Berkeley titled "Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Valuesand Needs in Seven Disciplines". There are several points it raises which I think reflect on Tony's experience and others like him. Here are some key quotes with my interpretation of each of them:

"the peerreviewed journal article is the primary mode of scholarly dissemination in the sciences and the quantitative social sciences, while the more interpretive, historical, and qualitative disciplines rely heavily on the university press monograph with a varying mix of journal articles, critical editions, and other publications. These traditions, which rely heavily on various forms of peer review, may override the perceived “opportunities” afforded by new technologies, including those falling into the Web 2.0 category."

So, even if we acknowledge there are benefits to using new technologies, the cultural traditions may prevent us taking advantage of them. This was a theme I explored in my earlier presentation on researchers and new technologies and which I go into detail in for my forthcoming book.

"In most fields, however, a stellar publication record in prestigious peer-reviewed outlets usually counts significantly more in advancement decisions. At some institutions, scholarly contributions such as data curation or multimedia websites are considered to be forms of “service” or “teaching” in a scholar’s academic portfolio, or they may receive credit when presented in a peer-reviewed publication that “discusses” the resource or data set."

Even when other outputs are recognised, the peer-reviewed journal trumps them all to the extent that they may placed in an ill-fitting separate category.

"The degree to which peer review, despite its perceived shortcomings, is considered to be an important filter of academic quality, cannot be overstated."

This stuff is deeply entrenched.

"enthusiasm for the development and adoption of technology should not be conflated with the hard reality of tenure and promotion requirements (including the needs and goals of final archival publication) in highly competitive and complex professional environments. Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core."

This reinforces the point I made in my research talk - the environment we have created works in direct opposition to innovation and adoption of new technologies. This is a dangerous situation.

If we take Tony as an example the way he works raises some interesting questions about what we mean by research. He typically explores new technologies and data visualisation in particular. A random sampling of recent posts include:

• An analysis of twitter connections between UK politicians
• A representation of online communities who use the same hashtag
• An interrogation of the Mendeley software to show users by institution
• Sharing his own promotion case
• A presentation on ‘data driven journalism’

Each of these is intended to promote discussion, and has suggestion for implications, for example in how higher education can make effective use of data. None of the posts arise from a specific research project, and each of them is fairly small in terms of time and resource. The use of a blog though (instead of publications) allows Tony to engage in this ongoing experimentation, as it has an outlet, and it simultaneously encourages it also since discussions will arise on the blog (or in other places such as Twitter). Taken as a whole then, the blog itself represents the research process, and in this context it is difficult to say that it is not demonstrating the REF definition of research: ‘a process of investigation leading to new insights effectively shared.’

A paper on scholarship has recently been approved by the OU Senate and there is undoubtedly a desire to engage with and recognise new forms of scholarly activity. But what the report demonstrates is that cultural practices are almost inextricably bound up with publishing. And when you unpick what publishing means it leads you to some difficult considerations. This is Bellow's Law in action. When a case like Tony's comes across it simply doesn't fit well with the existing framework. This is, I guess, one of the perils with being a pioneer. Not that this is much consolation.

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.

Content may not be king anymore, but it has some influential friends

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a two day staff development workshop here at the OU. It had been very well organised by the Social Sciences Faculty and the aim was to get staff thinking about using new technologies to solve some of their problems in teaching. There had been some good initial work, so the groups came with problems they wanted to address, eg student retention from 1st to 2nd level, encouraging reflection, etc.

I was asked to present on the use of blogs and wikis. I gave a brief whizz through and tried to convey my enthusiasm for them as educational tools (I ended with a half-jesting 'eat my hat challenge' that whatever their issue was, I could solve it with blogs and wikis).

Why use blogs and wikis?

View more presentations from Martin Weller.

There were also presentations on:

• Interactive quizzes
• Screen/slide casting
• Podcasting

The groups then had some hands on sessions and had to choose two technologies and on the second day, set about solving their problem with these technologies.

Can you guess which of the four technologies was most popular? The answer is Screen/slide casting, with every group wanting to create one of these, and the other three all about equal after that. I think this may have been because it was more immediate (blogs take some time to get going and you need students really) and thus suited the workshop format more readily. But I think it is also something to do with educators relation to content.

In the age of the social network, it has become a cliche to say that content is no longer king, but it is something that people can readily engage with, rather than some of the more nebulous and longer-term benefits of blogging. I saw a lot of academics very excited by the liberating effect of being able to produce their own content (this was something I had pushed as a benefit of blogs also, the easy multi-media aspect). One downloaded Camtasia and was off making videos, another used Xtranormal and soon they were producing complex ideas and scripts.

The take-away message for me then was that many people are unaware of how easy it has become to create multi-media content, and that demonstrating this is a good 'way in' to appreciating the potential of a whole range of new(ish) technologies.

The Open University conference is Open

<Image OU Campus by Karen Cropper http://www.flickr.com/photos/dentonpotter/4480661125/in/set-72157623621643665/>

Every year the OU has an internal conference focused around learning and technology. It's a chance for us to share research and projects, broadcast about big initiatives and discuss some interesting ideas. It's usually a two-day event on campus, aimed at OU staff.

This year I have been given responsibility for organising it (I know! Who thought that was a good idea?) and  changing it a bit. So, this year's OU conference is completely online and is open to all (not just OU people). It will have an OU focus, but anyone is welcome to join in.

Theme

The theme for the conference is 'Learning in an open world'. As readers of this blog will know, I am interested in the manner in which the term 'open' has evolved in education since the OU's inception in 1969. With projects such as openlearn, cloudworks, Moodle, iSpot, etc this dialogue around what 'openness' means is important to the OU's sense of identity in a digital age, and this is what the conference will try to explore.

Structure

The conference is the 22nd and 23rd June. There are four sessions, each around a particular area: Open Content, Open Learning, Open Teaching and Open Access. In each session we will have an invited keynote speaker, four or so speakers from the OU who will address the key question of 'how does openness affect this area?', and an opportunity for discussion in breakout rooms. These synchronous sessions will take place in Elluminate.

There is also an asynchronous element hosted in Cloudworks, where each of the elements can be discussed, going on beyond the conference end.

Contributions

The main elluminate sessions will be from invited speakers, but instead of papers we would like people to submit contributions in any acceptable multi-media format: YouTube, Slideshare, Animoto, Xtranormal, etc. These can be embedded in the relevant Cloudworks area. We will then pull these contributions into the discussions in the main sessions and use them for the asynchronous discussion.

What next?

If you are interested in attending (even if it's only one session) pop along to the Cloudworks space and click the 'Mark as attending' button. This doesn't get you anything but it does gives us an idea of numbers and also means we can communicate with those who are coming.

If you want to contribute, please do, otherwise sit back and await further info as we sort out the agenda.

The twitter hashtag is #OUConf10

Here are some movies I've made to encourage contributions:

Why not try Slideshare?

View more presentations from Martin Weller.

OU lifer

 

This month marks 15 years since I joined the Open University, so indulge me in a little reflection (only ten more years and I get a letter and plaque!). 

My potted OU history goes like this:

• Joined 1995 as a Lecturer on a course in Artificial Intelligence, in the Technology Faculty. I had just finished my PhD (in AI) and the OU had a course which was about to launch, when one of its authors left, so needed someone fast. I got lucky here, I don't think you'd walk straight out of a PhD into a lectureship now.
• 1999 chaired T171, the OU's first major online course, working with John Naughton. I'd done some messing about with online tutor groups, and creating web sites. John was keen to try something new for our level 1 course, and with the old course ending we were in the right place at the right time.
• In 2002 I left the Technology Faculty and joined the Institute of Educational Technology, to work with Robin Mason and H806, a masters course which was to be offered through the UK eUniversity (no, it wasn't my fault they failed). 
• In 2004 I was asked by then PVC Paul Clarke, to be Director of the VLE project. We didn't have a VLE then, but did have lots of components of one. I spent 18 months doing stakeholder analysis, competitor review, functional specification, etc (stay awake at the back there). 
• In 2006 I got offered a Chair at another university, and as if by magic, the OU offered me one too. Again, I think I was a bit fortunate here, I hadn't really planned this.
• I took up Directorship of the SocialLearn project in 2008, only to hand it over to Simon Buckingham-Shum when my wife became ill.

In between these formal duties I've worked on lots of internal projects and externally funded research grants, as well as different courses. And most importantly of course, I've become a blogger.

I list this not as a mini-CV touting for business (though if you want to acquire my services...), but to demonstrate what a good place to work the OU is. There has been much talk of the 'job for life' being a thing of the past, and that everyone will have three careers from now on. I'd say it's unlikely I'd leave the OU now (unless they kick me out), but far from stagnating, the reason I would stay is because there is such variety and freedom within my job. This is an advantage of working in a large organisation, there are always different projects coming up. The OU also allows a certain degree of flexibility, and trust. I think the days of 'we haven't seen him in years' approach to academia are gone, and there is a much higher degree of accountability now than there was even 15 years ago. But, for instance, not only was I allowed to start blogging, but I have been able to increasingly make it a key component in my recognised work. 

While, like any large organisation, the OU can be slow, and sometimes frustrating, it is at its heart, a reflective organisation I think. So when you do things like blogging, or creating a large online course, there is a willingness to consider how it should adapt its practices. 

It's also a good will place to work - you're not embarrassed to say you work for the OU, unlike some jobs you might think of, generally when you tell people you get a positive reaction. So feeling like you work somewhere that is well liked and socially beneficial makes getting up in the morning easier.

And it's also an interesting place to work. Not just because there are interesting people there (which of course, there are), but because of all universities the OU is both vulnerable to, and in a good position to take advantage of, new technologies. You therefore get the feeling of being part of an organisation which is living through the zeitgeist (ok, we're not Google, but it's not Cambridge either). As an educational technologist, this goes in the 'good thing' box, unless it means the end of all universities, when it shifts rather rapidly to the 'very bad thing' box.

So, all in all, I think I've rather ridden my luck - I got a good post in the right university just as the digital revolution was hitting and I was interested in it. A few years either side and I'd be writing this blog in-between stacking baked beans tins on the shelves of a well known supermarket.

In ten years time I'll blog what it's like to be a bona fide long server, unless a) I get the sack or b) someone offers me double my salary to just blog. Hey, everyone's got their price. 

To the ghosts who write history blogs

Okay, maybe it's not an Obama moment in history, but, as you may have heard, the OU has adopted Google Apps for education for its students, and I think this may be a significant move in educational technology. Niall announced it and Tony has given his reaction. We're by no means the first to do it, but I think the OU's adoption is significant for a number of reasons:

1. It ain't Microsoft - there will have been strong lobbying to adopt an MS solution, so the move to Google marks a shift in the power base or at least the default assumption that it's MS who do enterprise solutions.
2.  It's the cloud - a lot of other universities use the OU as a benchmark I think. I know that when we adopted Moodle, that made the decision to go with open source easier for other institutions. A kind of 'well, if the OU is doing it, then it has to be reliable' argument can be put forward. So, just as Moodle acted as a seal of approval on open source VLEs, so Google Apps signifies a reliability of cloud based solutions. 
3. It puts powerful collaborative tools in the hands of students - I commented on twitter that Google Docs might end being the most significant educational technology around. Not because it's fantastic, but because it's there and it's easy to use. Or maybe it'll be chat. Or large email storage. Whatever it is, I think students (and tutors) will start to use the technology in ways that we don't predict or demand, but because it makes their lives easier. We have struggled to crack collaborative learning for distance students for ages - maybe Google Apps will do it in one move.
4. They are not education specific tools - although it's packaged as Google Apps for education, it is really just standard Google Apps. Like a lot of ed tech people I have argued that our role is no longer to develop bespoke educational applications, but rather to take existing tools and see how these can be used in education. Google Apps reinforces that view and makes you ask the question, 'why do I need a Virtual Learning Environment, and not just a virtual environment we use for learning?'

So it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. One disappointing aspect is that staff don't get it until later. As I'm already in Google I'm waiting for everyone else to come and join me.

Oh, and the pretentious title is really just an excuse to embed this song from the Low Anthem:

	The Low Anthem - To The Ghosts Who Write History Books
	Found at skreemr.com

OU 40th vids

It was the Open University's 40th Birthday today. Lots of people wished it (us?) happy birthday via Twitter, so I grabbed these, plus some official photos from the image bank (am I allowed to use these?), and put them into Animoto to create a virtual birthday card. Below are two versions, see which one you like best:

Should FLOSS be the only option?

The OU has been taken to task by the Open Source Consortium for supporting Microsoft Office. The OU has sent an official response, but here's my unofficial take on it.

I ought to say upfront that I love open source. Not necessarily the software (I'm pretty agnostic about software), but the fact that it's there and it works, when all conventional thought said it shouldn't. The very existence of open source gives me hope for the world. And I find the manner in which it is created fascinating, and probably the most interesting business, social and technological development of the past twenty years. But even so, this letter causes something of a dilemma for me, which I'll try to articulate.

Firstly, it is worth saying that the OU has done a massive amount to support open source, particularly in the case of Moodle. Adopting this as our VLE was a major boost to the profile of open source in education, and we have contributed a lot to that community. On a smaller scale we have developed a number of open source products (eg Compendium, Cohere, Sled, etc), and use a range on our courses. So our FLOSS credentials are pretty good. And as the letter concedes, we do distribute Star Office to all students.

Let's look at some arguments as to why the OU, and all universities might support non-FLOSS solutions.

The first argument is a pragmatic one.  I don't want to stereotype students, but let's imagine a student of Victorian literature. They don't really like using a computer, but have bought a laptop because the course has a website and they submit assignments online. They just want to be able to use the system they have, which has MS Office installed. Getting this student to install 'OUnix' as the letter suggests (particularly for distance students), is probably not going to fly. I think the OSC don't appreciate the context and range of students we support. For a start, these are not university computers, but the students' own ones, so making them install OU specific software should be limited. Secondly, they are often shared machines, either in a family or at work. Converting the family machine to a unix box may not be popular.

Negative impact on students. The technical bias of open source proponents I think sometimes blinds them to the reality of a normal distribution curve of users. It is no surprise that the OSC letter uses a computing course as an example, and not say, a social sciences one, because these do not appear on their radar. The OU spends a good deal of time and effort in getting students to that first assignment, as we know from experience that if they do this they will probably go on to complete the course. At the start, many students lack confidence and aren't sure if study is for them. It would concern me if the first thing we made a nervous, technophobic student do was to perform a complicated installation and reconfiguration of their family PC, which they don't want to do, and can fail at. We will lose them before we even start the course.

A related argument is that of suitability. As much as we like it ideologically, open source solutions aren't always the best solutions. Particularly for some very specialist software, the OU often strikes very good deals with providers to give students 'free' proprietary software which is best suited to their needs. I feel that pedagogic suitability should be the priority for a university in selecting software, although FLOSS or not may be a significant contributing factor.

The last argument in favour of proprietary solutions is that we could be seen to be providing students in certain subject areas with experience of the commercial applications they will meet in the workplace. The Cisco courses are a specific example of this, although I think it is a weaker argument for generic software, such as Office - if someone can use Star Office they should be able to use MS Office.

I have one further concern about the letter, which is that it has a rather Stalinist resonance. We are more open than you, and we will out anyone who is not open. Comrades, report anyone who does not fully embrace openness to the central committee for openness! Weller has been overheard praising proprietary software - send him to the SourceForge Gulag! I think this is a dangerous route to go down, as arguments are always more nuanced than the simple FLOSS/proprietary binary choice.

Now onto the pro-FLOSS arguments (not in general, they've been done elsewhere, but why universities should promote them):

Positive action is required. The letter makes a good point about the hamster wheel - we support proprietary solutions because they have the biggest user base, so it is a pragmatic decision. Why do they have the biggest user base? Because people support them because they have the biggest user base. If (and the if is a strategic decision for universities to take) you want to move to more widespread FLOSS adoption then you need to take deliberate steps to make this happen. As the letter suggests the OS tools on the Asus has been one such significant breakthrough, and universities could use this as a springboard for further FLOSS uptake.

The role of universities. To what extent should the OU, and indeed, all universities, force students to adopt Open Source solutions? Should universities act as a force for social change? One can see the argument here: if all universities did this, then all students would graduate as a user base for open source, which they'd take in to the workplace, forcing change there. Within a few years, it's all open source, problem solved.

FLOSS as educational process. For me, the process of FLOSS is the most interesting element. In the FLOSScom project we looked at how these approaches could be adapted to education. I think there is a lot of value in this: students as co-creators, being part of a community, engaging in meaningful tasks, etc. To take my own argument, technology can be seen as a metaphor for how universities operate, so you could suggest that in order to adopt FLOSS like practices into general education practice the first step is to adopt FLOSS software.

So there you are - you can see my dilemma. I can see both sides, but ultimately I think the pragmatic and pedagogic suitability arguments are the strongest ones for a university, and so I think the OU probably has it about right in this case. Maybe it comes down to your definition of 'open'. As I've discussed before, for the OU openness primarily means open access. This means being open to students using commonly installed software. For the Open Source Consortium, open primarily means open source. These are often mutually supportive, as the OU's adoption of Moodle demonstrates, but maybe not always?

OU or OpenU

My colleague, Simon Buckingham Shum, raised an interesting idea the other day when he suggested we should start calling ourselves the OpenU, instead of the OU. His argument chimes with something I have been saying in SocialLearn presentations also - namely that 'open' is  a term that has gained much currency lately.

Whether it was extraordinary prescience, or just good luck, on the part of the Open University's founders, choosing 'Open' for the name has served us very well. We could have, for instance, been called something like 'the University of the airwaves' which would have dated very quickly. Back in 1969, Open meant 'Open Access'. This was revolutionary at the time and allowed many different sectors of society to have access to higher education who had previously been excluded because of two main factors: education was full time and you needed to attend a campus. By making it part-time and distance based, the limitations these placed on people were abolished, and suddenly we found there were huge numbers of people who wanted to study, but had previously been unable to.

But 'open' doesn't really mean open access anymore, because open access isn't the big deal it was. Now nearly all universities offer some part-time modes of study and many offer distance/online courses.

But if anything, open now has gained in terms of its semantic and social significance. Here's what open can mean now in education:

• Open Source
• Open educational resources
• Open API
• Open content
• Open courses
• Open participation

In addition there is a general philosophy of openness that pervades much of the online world - blogs, twitter, facebook - they are all about the individual being open, and as a result the social norms are those of democracy, socially oriented, bottom-up, participation, and well, openness.

So, the question I like to ask is 'if we were creating an Open University now, in what ways would it be open?' I won't elaborate on that, but have a think about it.

So back to Simon's argument - 'OU' may not mean much to a lot of people, and it doesn't really make enough significance of the Open part. So we should, at least informally, start referring to ourselves as the OpenU, which chimes with things like iTunesU also. I'm giving it a go (although it takes a huge effort not to write 'OU' out of habit).

PS - don't tell the OU OpenU brand police, they'll be after me, angrily waving several years' stock of headed notepaper.