Personal Blogs

1. I will only publish in open access journals.

I would have no objection publishing in in other journals but I do consider publishing in professional journals to be a bit of a racket.  If I were to publish I would rather publish in open journals.

1. I will share all learning material that I create and own openly online.

Some learning materials I feel more proud of than others.  Therefore some I would be reluctant to share openly.  On the other hand, materials that I have put considerable effort into I would be somewhat reluctant to share; I have a sense of ownership and proprietary rights over them.

1. I maintain an online social media identity as a core part of my professional identity.

No, I don’t I have proactively avoided such until now.  This is starting to change as I am seeing the benefits of networking following OU modules.

1. I take a pragmatic approach and release some resources openly if it’s not too much extra work.

It is not so much a matter of the amount of work involved it is more a sense of feeling that I would have little to offer.

1. I have concerns about intellectual property and releasing my content openly.

I can’t say that I am too concerned about this but it is a slight issue in relation to teaching materials that I am particularly proud of.  By nature I am very reluctant to brag and therefore I tend to keep myself to myself.

1. I will share all material that I create and own openly online, as soon as I create it.

I have certainly not done this so far.

It is hard to argue with Salas 'big 5' of teamwork (2005).  In some ways they all seem too obvious to warrant being recognised and commented on.  And yet, when one or more is not present it cn certainly affect teamwork negatively.  I have recently been involved in the re-validation of a programme that I lead.  This required me to liaise with a number of academic staff, and also a couple of senior figures within the School.  As is the case with such activities we were up against a deadline and needed the support and commitent of all team members.  Unfortunately one senior member of staff did not really have full ownership of our task and dropped out of the loop as far as communication was concerned.   We found it difficult to accurately monitor mutual performance as a result of the lack of communication and we ended up without the required documentation ready by our deadine.

In addition to the above example of a failing in mutual performance monitoring I know from my experiences with problem based learning that it is etremely important for a team to possess a shared mental model of exctly what the task is.  I would suggest that the definition given by Kay (2006) does not adequately identify the importance of a shared understanding of exactly what the task is.  I have seen such shared understanding referred to as a superordinate goal.

In attempting to implement these concepts in this design studio activity we might ask each team member to define exactly what they understand the task to be.  We could then write up some sorrt of learning contract that we can all agree to.  In order to ensure that we work to the standards expresed in the big 5 it is important that we continually communicate with each other.  Where we are in a distribute environment this is particularly important  It might be interesting to see if we can use something such as twitter to more towards a slightly more synchronous form of communication. I think I might suggest that as a bit of an experiment.

I am with Weller fully and completely, until we get to connectivisim.  I had originally swallowed that 'pedagogy' but I now feel that it is actually a cop-out, an attempt to wrap a social, behavioural phenomenon up as a pedagogy.  I don't think it is.

As to the question of how educators can take advantage of abundance, that is of course a loaded question because it assumes that educators wish to do so.  If we assume that they do wish to, then there are a number of aspects.  One of the first should surely be training.  If we are trained to utilise abundance, we might stand a chance of surviving.

But then, how should that training be delivered?  Through  a connectivist pedagogy?  I would rather not.  Personally I like structure, direction, clear learning objectives, formative assessment points along the way.

So I would be looking for training that is more strategically structured, probably using a problem based learning approach.  I also want to be 'told' some things rather than just let alone to discover.  I want advice, recommendations by people that have travelled this path before.

As for equilling students to take advantage of abundance, I feel that again training is very important.  Again, structure, again, advice, guidance, plus opportunities to experiment with alternative approaches.  I again see problem based learning as a good choice for designing a training programme around.

DS106

No thanks.  Not for me.  Perhaps a great example of a cMOOC at is worst?  Not only would I not be at all interested in the topic I could not stand the structure (if there is one).  Perhaps more appropriate for the artistic and creatives amongst us, but not the suits.  From a technological perpsective it appears to want to make use of much of what is available, just for the 'fun' of it.  Pedagogy; what's that?  Perhaps in the case of DS106 it is simply about trying to keep the ball rolling and plates spinning.  Certainly it is a cMOOC.  I expect some would class it as a great example of one.  Others (and I wold be in that group) would perhaps say "yes, and that should tell you something about cMOOCs". Is there a business model?  I can't see it, though I must admit that I didn't look too deep.  Perhaps it is about brand building. "Look how quirky (strange) we are!"

Change Mooc

More organized and far more structured than DS106.  But this is still a cMOOC.  The technology and platform are more conventional, appearing to be based either around static web pages or a vle.  It is interesting that the course is about the course, that is, a cMOOC course about cMOOCs.  I suppose it is a tautology, but I don't think many people not already devotees would be interested enough to engage for long with this.  Perhaps in the tradition of cMOOCs there does not appear to be a sustainable business model.  With fairly simple materials the course was probably cheap to produce, at least once it had ran for a session or two, and so there is perhaps little or not maintenance costs.  Just as well.  There is a clear structure and many materials available.  Therefore it would be feasible to work through this course on your own, without the need for the connectivity that the course is promoting.

Udacity

This is more me.  A clear gui and a pleasant structure to it.  Probably a good example of an xMOOC and something that I would be comforatble to sign up to.  That is of course because it is similar to courses that I/we have taken elsewhere.  But hey, what's wrong with that?  The technology and pedagogy are relatively conventional, if we can call developments of the last five + years as conventional, now.  It appears that although there is structure to the courses there is a relatively relaxed feel to that structure and one is not likely to be pushed at an uncomfortable pace.  I would say that the business model is probably one based on driving traffic to the more conventional, paid for courses of participating institutions.

Coursera

Even more of an xMOOC than Udacity.  Courses are almost a replacement, or transpant of a on-ground offering.  The technology is straight from a distance or blended learning offering.  Clearly structured and will far less interaction with tutors in evidence.  Pedagogy is not readily apparent.  That is what I would expect form a course that is more of less cut and paste from an in house vle; the emphasis is more related to content transmission than anything else, perhaps.  If we had to label this, it would be classed as a behaviourist pedagogy.  In terms of business model I cannot see where the income streams are, and I would log it as brand building, which I feel fits many of the initiatives that we are seeing evidenced; large institutions wanting to avoid missing out on where this MOOC train is heading even though they currently have no idea where that may be.<

The first thing that occurred to me reading the assigned chapter is that these small elements of OER materials are just like learning objects, without the formality of form, such as SCORM.  Anyway, to the task…

Small OERs

Benefits of small:

Cost effective, being an off-shoot of something created for an existing, funded and resourced, purpose.  ‘frictionless’, and by product of normal operations.

Can avoid unpredictability of the internet.

Ideal for addressing the long tail aspect of online education, i.e. tapping into niche markets.

More likely to get buy-in from staff and less likely to require institutional support.

More likely to encourage creativity and risk taking by authors.

Less likely to require expensive technology and software.

Drawbacks of small:

Not likely to conform to any specific format, therefore not likely to fit with any ‘plug and play’ requirements.

Likely to have been produced for a specific context and therefore likely to require re-working to fit with specific needs.

Likely to be too small to utilise as a stand alone course.  More like an individual component, as with a learning object.

More likely to require institutional permission due to contractual issues related to intellectual property ownership.

BIG OERs

Benefits of big:

Likely to be able to use as stand alone, complete courses.

Because of their size, perhaps more likely to have a longer life cycle.

More likely to conform to standards, such as SCORM, copyright, Creative Commons.

Possibly greater credibility due to size or the brand behind the MOOC.

Drawbacks of big:

They can cost a lot of money to produce and maintain.

No sustainable business model has so far been proven.

Not suitable for niche applications.

More likely to need institutional support in terms of resources.

Less likely to engage a large number of authors at any given institution.

The context for my creative commons license choice is on some materials to support dissertation supervision with distance learning students on an MBA.  There are a large number of OER materials already available in this area that support the delivery of resarch methods.  I am intersted in developing materials more specifically related to supporting the supervision process during the dissertation phase.

Attribution – giving me credit.I suppose this is simply to give ma a pat on the back.

No derivative works – to prevent changes being made.  The dsign of materials would be specific to the context of the course and therefore I would not want the materials manipulated or modified, applied out of context of the MBA.

I feel that this activity is a little confused in that it asks us to consider issues to do with OERs and yet many of the suggested readings are about Open Education and that is not synonymous with Open Educational Resources.  This activity is claimed to build in a previous activity in which we identified three priorities for Open Education.  In the earlier activity I identified pedagogy, accessibility and sustainability as three key issues for applying concepts of Open Education in an HE environment.  These will be used here.

Pedagogy:
Comment based on; Attwell, G. & Pumilia, P.M. (2007) The New Pedagogy of Open Content: Bringing Together Production, Knowledge, Development, and Learning. Data Science Journal, 6, 211- 219

Attwell and Pumilia suggest that one of the biggest threats of the open content movement is the possible commodification of knowledge; the tendency for knowledge to be thought of as a product or set of products that can be bought or sold.   I found this very interesting and thought provoking, largely because the predominant philosophy is that openness increases accessibility, breaks down barriers, etc etc.  The authors move on to discuss the juxtaposition of the move towards a tightening of copyright laws whilst at the same time we are witnessing a proliferation of freely available Open resources.  They then consider how quality of such open resources can be assured (hence the connection to pedagogy).  Perhaps we might see a move towards a rating system of OERs, whereby those created by ‘professionals’ are valued more highly?

Accessibility:
Comment based on; Caswell, T. et al., (2008) Open educational resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1), 1–4.

Caswell compares traditional distance learning with the new era of open resources whereby digital technologies have led to an elimination of distribution costs.  This, in turn has led to the role of distance education shifting towards a tool for social transformation, not merely an alternative to classroom teaching.  Once the capacity to offer free educational materials has been achieved it can even be considered a moral obligation to do so, in order to satisfy the basic human right to education.  This paper does not consider the practical aspects of facilitating accessibility in terms of access to broadband, necessary software, etc.

Sustainability:
Comment based on: Downes, Stephen (2007), 'Models for sustainable open educational resources', Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, vol. 3. Available from: http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf

The widening access as a result of lowered costs brings with it a problem; sustainability. Downes examines sustainability from the perspective of three models; funding, technology and content.  He also suggests that we need to consider OERs as part of a bigger context to include volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, etc.  Downes suggests that the definition of “Open” must include an assumption of “free”, and that free should apply not only to free access, but also freedom to copy, modify, redistribute.  But such notion of free and accompanying freedoms do not mean that the production and or maintenance of such resources are cost free.  The per-unit cost can be reduced by increasing the number of downloads or users but this does not reduce the cost of production.  Other costs relate to investments in technology, organization and policy.  Notions of sustainability may not relate to covering costs or making money but also to achieving some particular, wider objective.  In such cases the deadweight cost may be carried due to the wider potential benefits. 

In terms of funding models, a number are identified; endowment, membership, donations, conversion, contribution, sponsorship, institutional, government, partnership and exchange.  I was not familiar with all of these models, so found this aspect of the paper very interesting, and useful.

Part One.

There is a difference between pedagogy and theories of learning.  Simon (1981) suggests that pedagogy is the act and discourse of teaching.  That is, it is about the processes and actions that are engaged in when teaching or learning is taking place.  From a teaching perspective the design of the stages of learning that the learner is intended to engage in can perhaps be viewed as either an art or a science but either way, there is intend to present to the learner some sort of structural process of engagement with opportunities to learn.  On the other hand, theories of learning are about the cognitive processes that individuals go through when acquiring knowledge, attitude and behaviour that will inform or change the individual in some way.  These two elements of learning, pedagogy and theory are of course related, they are not mutually independent.  Indeed it might easily be argued that learning cannot take place without a measure of both; some sort of cognitive change that is brought about by some sort of process or event, either formally or informally and either intentionally structured or not.

Some of the developments that Sharples (2012) forecasts can be related to not only pedagogy (self-evident in the title of the paper) but also to theories of learning.  For example, in predicting an increase in personal inquiry learning Sharples describes a structure of activities around a process of enquiry.  This is clearly a statement of a pedagogy and is an example of how Nichols (2003) describes elearning; a means of implementing education using various models and philosophies.  It should be noted, however that Nichols does not only talk about a means of implementing (pedagogy) but includes specific mention of models and philosophies of learning.  I see this as suggesting that the pedagogy must relate to, indeed be founded on, some theory of learning if it is to be innovative.

We can test the above by considering Sharples personal inquiry learning prediction.  What is important here is not the use of technology per-se, but how the technology supports, or works with the underlying theory of learning.  In this case we might claim that the predominant theory of learning is that of constructivism.  Piaget (1957) and Vygotsky (1988) were both interested in how we each construct knowledge.  Sharples model of personal inquiry learning, whereby students are guided towards problem solving via enquiry appears to be founded on Piaget’s ideas of the creation of knowledge by the individual and also to lend itself to Vygotsky’s  interest in the social construction of knowledge, given that this enquiry could be carried out as a group activity.  There is, of course also a strong element of cognitivism embedded in this pedagogy.  Whether the inquiry activities are very loosely structured, leaving the learners to create meaning for themselves (Bruner, 1966) or consist of more clearly structured activities and materials (Ausubel, 1960) we are still looking at an example of cognitivism in action.

The above example perhaps suggests that in order to be successful and innovative, elearning must present a pedagogy that clearly makes use of one or more of the tried and tested theories of learning.  Incidentally, we could also use the example of badges in elearning.  This clearly can be linked to behaviourism and the work of Skinner (1968) and Thorndike (1928) on influencing behaviour with the use of rewards.

Ausubel, D.P. (1960) ‘Use of advance organisers in the learning and retention of meaningful material’, Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 51, pp. 267–72.

Bruner, J.S. (1966) Toward a Theory of Instruction, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Nichols, M. (2003) ‘A theory for elearning’, Educational Technology & Society, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1–10; also available online at http://ifets.ieee.org/ discussions/discuss_march2003.html (accessed 18 June 2012).

Piaget, J. (1957) ‘The child and modern physics’, Scientific American, vol. 196, no. 3, pp. 46–51.

Simon, B. (1981) Why no pedagogy in England? in: B. Simon & W. Taylor (Eds) Education in the eighties: the central issues (London, Batsford), 124–145.

Sharples, M., McAndrew, P., Weller, M., Ferguson, R., FitzGerald, E., Hirst, T., Mor, Y., Gaved, M. and Whitelock, D. (2012) Innovating Pedagogy 2012: Open University Innovation Report No. 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University; also available online.

Skinner, B.F. (1968) The Technology of Teaching, New York, NY, Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Thorndike, E.L., Bregman, E.O., Tilton, J.W. and Woodyard, E. (1928) Adult Learning, New York, NY, Macmillan.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1988) Thought and Language (trans. from Russian and revised and edited by Alex Kozulin), Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Part Two.

Partly because there is evidence that my University does support problem based learning I would pick personal enquiry learning as the primary innovation to explore. I would also like to build in to any course design some elements of badges to accredit learning and also assessment for learning.

In practice I could probably start designing some personal enquiry activities right away and I would not need to gain any permission from anyone, I don’t think.  The only question on that front would be around the requirement for students to have certain social media accounts in order to engage in the course.  The most obvious one to spring to mind is Twitter.  I may meet some opposition to that; I have met opposition to using Google Docs due to privacy issues.  In terms of both badges and assessment I would need to talk to my Faculty Distance Learning co-ordinator and to our IT department because I have no idea what software we already have access to and that I would be permitted to use.  The assessment for learning innovations are related to summative assessment and therefore I don’t think that I would get into any hot water with our quality standards people.  Indeed, I think that the extra level of feedback would be welcomed and encouraged.

I can see huge potential benefits of Personal inquiry learning.  Not only do I subscribe to the theory of cognitivism but I see the enquiry model working very well as a group activity.  Using technology to enhance group cohesiveness will be a further, major benefit.  One significant risk, and one that I have experienced this year with my use of twitter is that the communications medium can be abused and hi-jacked for personal use by students.  Whilst that is acceptable, we have found that one or two individuals need some education in social media etiquette!  A further risk is that there is a possibility that learning outcomes may not be met if group problem solving is not ‘controlled’.

I've been stimulated to respond by posting something to my blog, so here it is.

How might I sum up connectivism?  Well, it appears that my grandmother was almost right when she said "it isn't what you know but who you know".  Almost.  What we can now say is that it isn't who you know but who you know that know's.

But there is nothing new in that, is there?

I mean, doesn't the 'old boys club' rely on that?  Are not academics immersed in a culture of narrow minded people sharing narrow knowledge in narrow ways?  Of course, keen eyed readers will spot the use of the word 'narrow'.  I would suggest that is what has changed.  Networks and connections have always been important.  Professional bodies depend on knowledge networks, as do conferences, etc.  But now we have got a broader range of means by which to contact and stay in contact with people in our networks.  That's all.

I tend to agree with Simon Carrie when he says that connectivism is really about describing practice rather than a theory of learning.  Indeed, one could even suggest that connectivism implies that no learning is actually necessary, so long as we are connected to machines, databases, groups, blogs etc.

Siemens appears to suggest that there is new ground to be broken and that connectivism concepts can be applied to entities such as businesses and other organisations.  Welcome to the party, George.  A few that got here early have started without you.  To help you catch up I suggest you take a look at the extensive work done by people such a Professor Geoff Easton into network theory in businesses.  In his line of enquiry Easton has gone beyond the concept of networks and their connections to consider the various roles of actors and nodes within the network in generating, maniupulating and influencing personal and organisational learning.  Perhhaps if these ideas, models, concepts and theories become re-invented by educational researchers then connectivism may start to look more like a theory of learning and less like a statement of the fairly obvious.

I usually like to make a very early start on the week's activities but a weekend away prevented that this week.  I did start on Sunday evening, however. On looking at the activities I thoguht they would be quite large and require a significant amount of work.  So I got on with the mechanics of doing the reading first, and making some preliminary notes in a Word document about my thoughts on the activity questions.

I feel that I should perhaps have done more reading on the subject, but I have found that I ahve got my own opinions on most of the topics, so I have tended to engage in the forum discussions on that basis, this week.  I am aware that I will have to do some more reading before long, however, as I start to structure my TMA01.

I was just running through my mind this word "reflection".  A relfection, as in the mirror, is the opposite view.  Not exactly reality, but not fiction either.  It is about an alternative perspective.  Maybe that is what I should be looking for when I reflect.

I'll reflect on that for a while and get back to you.

Well, back to me, really, I suppose....

Dear Blog,

It has been so easy to get out of the habit of having to spend evenings and weekends working on the OU web site, or reading paper after paper.  It was okay in my first module (H800) because everything was new.  I wonder if I will be able to maintain my enthusiasm through H817.  As always, time will tell.