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The MAODE has no exams, it is all done through assignments. The MBA module I am doing, 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' has three two TMAs and ECA and an exam. The exam is the clincher.
An exam obliges you to do things in a very different way. You not only have to be able to tap into your memory banks, but you need to be able to drill deep enough for substance and then wrap this around the exam questions.
With a TMA all you have to do is wrap what you can pick out of the course books, notes and resources (on the basis that you have read the materials and know where it all is).
Surely as a form of assessment the exam is a crucial form of judging how mauch a person has taken in? Whether they have engaged extensively, iteratively and collaboratively with their student cohort and tutor during the module or whether they have confined themselves to a room with the resources and picked their way through them (or a bit of both).
In addition to the exam and assignment I rather like the idea of the viva, though I have never faced one. This suits my mind set and probably my way of learning, I like to hear what I have to say and respond to others. And I write the way I think, as stream of consciousness.
I like to go into an exam with a handful of anagrams, a couple per paper or theme. I've had them 27 letter long, and have pegged 27 facts against these.
I use visualization as well to walk through the house 'seeing' themes and issues.
I use this http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html
COCA DIP
Gives me:
- Creativity
- Organisational Structure
- Cognition
- Analogical Thinking
- Developmental Organisations
- Individual Style
- Perception
Better still 'SPICES' gives me the 'characteristics of a creative organisation':
empowered Staff
integrated Procedures
Idea development
open Climate
External partnerships
flexible Structures
All of these become part of a 'mind dump' I do in the first 5 minutes just to get my head in the right place.
I've got less than two weeks to come up with a few more of these then practice them relentlessly.
VAN BECK CLIMB
For example gives me the 12 precepts of creative problem solving:
- Value of playfulness
- Adopt a set to break sets it is there already,
- Nurture it
- Broad picture, local detail
- Explore the givens
- Connect and be receptive
- Know what you really want
- Cycle often and close late
- Love the looseness
- Involve other people
- Manage the process
- Build up, don't break down
Where I come unstuck here is for the question to include all 12 precepts and say pick ONE to discuss for 45 minutes, whereas all I can deliver is a few minutes in each.
This works for me.
I enjoy the sun, I read, I think, I absorb, I take notes ... and fall asleep.
When I drift into consciousness I will think myself into a topic, recall an anagram or mnemonic I have made up, then pick up my notes and press on.
Does it work? It can.
You have to make and take the time.
Recoverable memories don't sit for long on the surface of the brain, they need to be embedded. Myelination needs to take place.
P.S. You also have to hope the dog doesn't get bored or get into a fight.
On having come up with he anagram 'Van Beck Climb' to remember the 12 precepts of 'Creative Problem Solving' (COS) (see below in this blog) I found I kept forgetting what each letter refered to I therefore visualised entering the house and in turn:
Seeing a set of hockey sticks to represent 'value of play ', while sitting on the stairs there is an adopted girl with a broken chess set to represent 'adopt the set to break sets'. Further up on the wall there really is a framed drawing of my wife 'nurturing ' the children to represent 'nurture the givens' while I imagine a far larger painting on the landing to represent 'broad picture, local detail'.
There are many doors to 'explore' and people with whom I should 'connect and be receptive to' while I must 'know what I really want'.
In a large lounge there are many people. To meet them all I am on a bike so 'cycle often and close late' however my clothes are 'loose' and i fall off so need to 'involve people', there being so many I 'manage the process' and finally 'build up to knock down'. Or some such.
Having got this straight I then hope to add detail, make sense of it all and have a few authors such as Handy and Schon to quote.
Will I get a question on this?
Do I need to? Even sime of it i'd certain to come up as these precepts are vital to the creative problem solving techniques as taught.
Looking at one exam question it said take ONE precept and write about it
These are absent from the Masters is Open & Distsnce Education (MAODE).
This in part is what attracted me to these modules. However, the current elective I opted for (B822) has an exam. The game has changed. This is far more than an assignment that can be molded and grown over weeks, assessed pre-emptively, even shared with others then submitted.
An exam requires the construction of a glacier, through the drip, drip, drip of content.
From this glacier (in my case) three substantial blocks must drop into the ocean, as they melt I must mold them so that the tip above the surface is a landscape I can recreate intimately.
From this landscape, during the examination process, I recreate, as required, a bespoke response to each question.
Stage One
I've punched my way through the three main course books which are named blocks 1, 2 and 3 and could just as well be expressed as some 60 + activities over the 20 or so weeks.
Unusually for me and influenced by seeing what others do (an advantage of a face to face tutorials) I too have 'defaced' my course books with highlighter pens, biro and notes. (A school career in which text books were bought and resold/recycled meant that unitl recently I kept books in a pristine condition. I wonder of being able to diddle about with electronic versions has encouraged me to do this?)
From this I will extract through notes what I consider to be key points and people.
This isn't second guessing the exam questions so much as covering topics that I believe I understand and can write about adequatetly.
This isn't the time to fill in significant gaps unless I feel there are any.
Tapping into the content benefits from some techniques that served me well decades ago and I know discover are taught to revision clases: anagrams and mnemonics.
I once had dozens of these, one in particular, a sentence that gave the key letter into some 27 facts on Elizabethan history which swirls around my head to this day three decades later.
I am learning another to get me through OU MBA Module exam B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'.
We were introduced to 12 precepts in relation to running a creative problem solving exercise or workshop. These I feel are crucial. Unlike a chronology of events in history or the order of the planets from the sun, there is no order to these precepts which makes devising an anagram or mnemonic all the easier. All the easier too now that there is readily availiable software to help.
AEBVBLNICKCM doesn't look promising
I began with 'an early bird values breakfast' which would give me
- Adopt a set to break sets
- Explore the 'givens'
- Broad picture, local detail
- Value Play
- Build up, don't break down
Then I Googled an anagram tool which gave me all the letters in VAN BECK CLIMB
- Value play
- Adopt a set to break sets
- Nurture : it is already there
- Broad picture, local detail
- Explore the givens
- Connect and be receptive
- Know what you really want
- Cycle often and close late
- Live with looseness
- Involve others
- Manage the process
- Build up and break down
All I have to do is test my ability to
- A) match all 12 letters to the phrases above
- B) know what these phrases mean
- C) use this as a 'brain dump' to help answer the question, rather than shoe-horning the above into a question.
- D) Repeat the above in a variety of ways, perhaps 8 - 12 times evenly across all 3 blocks
If techniques on remembering stuff for exams interests you do ask; I have a variety of approaches up my sleeve (that fall short of having a piece of paper up your sleeve).
I was thinking of devising a list around the word
HIGHLAND SPRING
Seems a bit futile though. More ingenous, though cheating of course, would be to reprint the entire HIGHLAND SPRING label with a series of craftily hidden anagrams, mnemonics and other clues with the 'contents' a variety of authors and dates.
Back in 'civvy street' having left the OU after a year in Milton Keynes I got chatting with someone now at the University of Brighton who had 20 years at th OU; he laughed at the degree of truth in my calling it (with love) as 'the priesthood' not least because onarrival for interviews in February 2011 I felt as if I was visiting the Vatican.
There were five others from the University of brighton st this evening event at The Skiff in Brighton's ubber trendy North Lanes.
Phil Jones the MD of Wired Sussex did the introductions.
This was to be a shared conversation on how Brighton and Sussex Universities could work with the 'wired' Brighton sector.
Miltos Petridis, New Head of School, Computing, Maths & Engineering. Brighton University gave the presentation.
I was lucky to spend a goid 15 minutes with him before the presentation and heard some fascinating ideas on how algorithms are used to look at vast quantities of email and social media conversations.
Miltos is from the University of Grenwich where he developed an interest in AI, essentially doing clever things with v. large amounts of data.
He said that Universities tend to thrive in times of recession; I should have asked him why?
More people seing security in a qualification?
There is a desire to hook up with alumni long term, especially as so many choose to stay in the area. I liked what one contributor described as 'fine-grained collisions', sandwhich courses and internships for example where undergraduates with desirable niche skills cab put them to good use' in industry'.
Miltos made the point that 'What we are calling clouds a few years ago used to be mainframes'.
Another contibutor with a music degree said that this taught him the value of collaboration, a skill too many graduates lack. I wonder if proof of collaborating online couldn't be offered in evidence?
- There was talk abput apprenticeships.
- Being mentored.
- Creating a sense of accomplishment over a week.
I plan to attend Wrired Sussex events in Brighton regularly, also IVCA meetings in London; networking online isn't enough, it is relationships made face to face that lead to something. So I've rejoined the Institue of Swimming and in constract, the Royal Academy.
(I have always thought the the sides of swimming pools would make a fantastic gallery for art; has anyone to your knowledge done this outside the private home of the very wealthy?)
I know what it takes but don't feel that the course has prepared me for a written exam.
We need to have been writing an essay a week, not one every six weeks.
Then, armed with your best essays you reduce these down to key themes.
From these themes and a list of must have authors I dream up a few mnemonics and mind maps that I can 'dump' onto a blank sheet in the first 5 to 10 minutes so I have these as an aide memoire.
Recalling distant early summers revising for exams I am doing all of this in the sun, either on the South Downs or today on the shingle beach at Seaford.
There are three course books and three blocks.
I am ploughing through these at the rate of 3 hours per day reducing each to key thoughts and must have ideas. I'll then test myself repeatedly until I can get a good range of ideas and evidence onto a sheet. Whilst I don't like exams I can there is no alternative, that assessments alone sent in electronically are too prone to patchy work even plagiarism, that being galanised to get the right stuff into your head means something, all the better if it is applied.
With Mariella Fostrup
I liked the comment from Professor Maria Nikolajeva when she quoted Leonard Helsing as saying 'all pedagogical art is bad art, but all good art is pedagogical'. So if you write a children's book from the point of view of creating good literature the learning will come naturally.
I have never before photographed a urinal (though the ease of doing this with a smartphone makes the practice possible). I thought these were something special.
They are off the River Room, Millbank. I was at a presentation given by the commercial learning company Epic.
There is, despite their beauty, a design problem. The globule dropping from the bottom of the urinal means they have to be placed higher up the wall. I'm 6ft and found the reach ideal, anyone much shorter would struggle. And might not that globule get smashed off by a careless janitor pushing an industrial cleaner into the gents?
Like a little boy I found my feet raised from the ground.
Great looking, but impractical? Design over form?
They don't have to be toilets, indeed, better that they are not perhaps. But if you've come across a piece of 'urban design' that caught your attention please do share.
What makes an elearning forum tick?
This is the crux of social learning for me, what John Seely Brown calls 'learning at the periphery' or Cox calls 'vicarious' learning and I have dubbed 'learning through serendipity'. As a result of taking part you acquire knowledge, you develop your thinking and underststanind. It was no different for me learning French. The school way was hopeless, what I required was total immersion, which is what I got in my late teens turning up in France on an exchange, making friends and returning ... then wokring a gap year as far from English speakers as possible. This is how I learn, many of us prefer this informal approach. Its something that corporate elearning companies and corporate learning departments have yet to tap into. Perhaps because it lacks measurement, that there appear to be no parameters.
There are many ways to get content noticed. All the traditional tricks of promotion are required here too. Email databases, events, trade promotions, press advertising and business cards; online is not a panacea, neither is it replacement technology. It is part of the world we live in, a choice, something else, that complements other ways of doing things.
The 'long tail' refers to the way content has a life before, during and after being posted. There is a story to tell in its creation and promotion; its release should factor in for a long shelf life, then there is this 'after life', how once posted content may then be picked up by others and developed into different, better and alternative things. Keep tabs on this and content online becomes more like street theatre, or taling from a soap box on Hyde Park Corner, it is an opportunity to engage with an audience.
I like to blog, use Linkedin and Twitter.
Better to be the master of some platforms than a jack of all trades.
Anyone in advertising or marketing will be familiar with the Creative Brief; it is an industry standard. I see this run to two or three pages. The copy going to the creative team (copywriter and art director) was meant to be kept to a single page of A4 (this was a JWT). I go along with this. Didn't Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty send away a lengthy document wanting it back as a single page? I like to quote Jonathan Swift who apologised for writing someone a lengthy letter as he hadn't the time to write a short one. Like this 'stream of consciousness' of mine, it pays to edit, to think through and prioritise your thoughts.
In the context of elearning (indeed everything online), I felt it necessary to add the 'delivery' approach as an important creative consideration. I wonder if this team of two: words and visualiser ought to be a team of three that includes the programmer?
All things being equal what makes a piece of learning stand out? Who brings it alive? Who makes it memorable? I think an idea will stick if it hits the proverbial nail on the head, though it risks isolating some. Controversy works too, bland learning like bland advertising is forgetable. Inspirational educators count. There are those whose lectures you want to attend and those who you avoid.
Why not the professional presenter?
In corporate training we hire the likes of Carol Vorderman, Nick Ross and others to present our story; they know how to get a point across. Why can't the academic stand back and accept the role of author? They still get the credit even if someone else speaks the words.
Ideas Endure
- They make the learning stick.
- Produce multiple ideas and present them.
- Let the audience create and present their own.
Why are corporate video production companies still relevant?
They have the craft skills to tell a story well making the most of the medium through judicious use of the right approach and people.
Anytime, anywhere? Really?
Really. Learning can be delivered anywhere, and not just text on a card, but rich activities and video. It is straightforward to put video on an elearning platform that will run on any mobile device, smartphone or tablet.
Epic have created GoMo that lets you do this.
I saw it demonstrated last Wednesday. In less than 15 minutes a basic elearning piece was created, as easily as writing this blog, including images, text, a survey and video clips.
The skill of a corporate video is to judge what is best for a project, client and thier audience. Feedback may offer some insights and industry awards should be a guide too of the quality of what is produced. Courtesy of the internet you get so much more, not only information on the audience, but on viewing patterns and feedback. You can hear what they think in many ways, not least through messaging or a Twitter feed if the content is streamed during a live event, but from social platforms and activities embedded around the content, from a simple 'rate' or 'like' this to a survey.
Effectiveness is measured as part of the assessment process which is part of the learning design. You want to rest comprehension as part of the learning process, but you also want to know how effect the learning content, of which video is a part, is being. It is an iterative process; you adjust the content as you learn how your audiences respond to the content.
'How' and 'Where' you show your video content has become part of the brief.
It makes a difference in terms of the audiences and potential audiences that can be reached and the way in the which your content could, if you wish, be reversionsed and used in different ways (hopefully, under the right Creative Commons) with links back to you.
On your website, whether on the intranet or for exeternal viewing where it can be shared and discussed.
It can also go out as a channel in its own right. At the broadcast end I recently saw what some of the content going out on Channel Flip. Today you can have your own channel. If you have appeal to an audience and can attract enough viewers advertisers will sponsor your content.
Elearning has become far easier to mange and distribute with platfroms such as present.me for video, but also specialist mobile elearning platforms like GoMo from elearning specialists Epic.
The right content may be used in qualifications too.
Put on YouTube your content can be embedded within other people's content while you can take advantage of detailed analytics, not least viewing behaviours.
What role does video play in elearning? What role does AV or video play in digital communications?
A simple question shared on Linkedin and picked up by a West End Production company led to my joining four producers for what became a two hour conversation yesterday. I based this conversation around a mindmap created in Bubbl.us, something a fellow MAODE student introduced me to over a year ago. (We were comparing tools, such as Compendium, for creating visualisations of learning designs).
I had thought about dripping ink into a glass of water to make a point: that digital content dripped into a digital ocean quickly dilutes, that binary code of text, images, video and sound can be melted down and mashed up in many ways. I wonder if an ice-cube in a G&T would have served the same purpose?
It is of course a metaphor, the suggestion that anything goes and anything can happen.
(I find these mind maps a far easier way to share ideas. It is non-linear. It is an aide-memoir. I'd put it online in Picasa and in a blog rather than printing off. I had expectations of calling it up on a huge boardroom screen, instead we struggled with a slow download in an edit suite. Sometimes only a print out would do. There wasn't an iPad amongst them either).
We discussed the terms 'e-learning' and even 'e-tivities' acknowledging that as digital activity is part of the new reality that online it is just 'learning' and that an 'activity' is best described as such.
Video online can be passive, like sitting back and watching a movie or TV. To become an activity requires engagement, sitting forward, and in most cases tapping away at a keyboard (though increasingly swiping across a touch screen).
'Sit Back' or 'Sit Forward' are phrases I recall from the era of 'web-based learning' a decade ago, even interactive learning on Laser Disc and DVD in the early 1990s.
There is science behind it, that learning requires engagement if stuff is to stick: watching a video, or a teacher/lecture is likely to be too passive for much to meaningful. The crudest activity is to take notes (and subsequently to write essays and be examined of course).
Here I am saying 'anything goes' that a piece of video used in learning may be short or long, with limited production values or 'the full monty', the kind of conference opener or commercial that are cinematic with production values and costs to match. We differentiated between 'User Generated Content' and 'DIY', between the amateur working alone and someone being guided through the craft skills of narrative story telling using video. I cited various examples and our our plans to bring alumni together over a weekend, to introduce TV production skills, hand out cameras and a sound kit (though some would bring their own), then based on responses to a creative brief, a synopsis and treatment, even a simple script, they would go away and shot then edit something. These pieces should have a credibility and authenticity as a result.
The kind of outputs include the video diary and the 'collective' montage with contributions from around the world linked with some device. A recording (with permission) of a web conference may meet the same criteria, embedded on a dashboard to allow for stop, stop, replay. A couple of other forms of 'user generated content' were mentioned, but neither taking notes nor recording the meeting I have forgotten. I use the negative expression 'corporate wedding video' for the clips that can be generated by teams who haven't had the training, or lack the craft skills.
For the presentation I had spun through a dozen video pieces and grabbed screens as I went along, key moments in the presentation or some trick or approach that I liked to illustrate a point: text on screen, humour, slip-ups denoting authenticity and so on. Put online and embedded in a blog these images were a form or mashup. The images could be collated on Flickr. Whilst a piece of video on YouTube can be embedded anywhere a person wants it, this content in various ways can be reincorporated. Not a bad thing if links of some kind are retained. Providing a transcript and stills are ways to facilitate quoting from the piece, for getting the conversation going on a social platform. This depends of course on the client brief, whether there is a wish, let alone permission, supported by the right Creative Commons choices, to see content shared.
We discussed external and interal communications, the difference between content for the Internet or an Intranet.
We also discussed the likelihood of people to participate in this way. I like the simple split between 'Digital Visitors' and 'Digital Residents', between those who look and those who touch, those who observe from time to time, compared to those who take an active role. I quoted Jakob Neilsen and his 95:4:1 ratios between those online who simple browse or observer (what used to be pejoratively called lurking), those who rate, like or comment and the 1% who create the content.
Forrester Research have taken this further though this isn't something I took them through:
- Creator
- Conversationalist
- Critic
- Collector
- Joiner
- Spectator
- Inactive
REFERENCE
Salmon, G (2002) The key to active learning online. (accessed 24th March 2012) https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde8/reviews/etivities.htm
Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading. (2010) Jami Li and Mark Chignell. Science Direct. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 68 (2010) 589-602
Top 10 Most Influential eLearning Bloggers
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