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TMA 2 of H818 is proving to be a challenge! So much so that I pursued my time-honoured transition of pretending it wasn't happening for a slightly too long. I suddenly found that I should have done more and that I really hadn't got any clear idea of what I was supposed to do, let alone what I was expected to achieve!

I knew I was doing my overall project - essentially the whole of H818 - on the use of the blog tool with OU students. I knew that the main two benefits of blogging reported in most of the literature was reflection and collaboration so my initial poster simply reflected that:

I liked this poster but, upon seeing the lengths my colleagues were going to, became sure it was too simple. I couldn't see how I could add additional media such as audio or animation as the point of the poster was its simplicity and the room it allowed the viewer to make their own interpretation.

I remembered the TED talk by Amanda Palmer which we viewed a few weeks ago. The point we were supposed to get was about open access models but what most struck me was the power of story telling. The reason I find blogging helpful and one of the reasons I believe blogging is so popular is because of the power of stories. It therefore made sense to give my poster an element of story telling too.

With this in mind I created a narrative path of two people - one of whom blogged for reflection and the other who blogged for collaboration. I wanted to underline that both paths were both theoretical and actual uses and benefits of blogging, and that both augmented and enhanced learning.

Using PowerPoint I have added an audio track which are also on the slide and viewable to anyone not able to hear the audio.

This has been very 'out of the comfort zone' for me... but I guess that's the point! I also having to write an accessibility statement, an abstract and an essay detailing the progress of my project! Argh!

My H818 project is to do with blogging. Blogging seems to have become a separate category but it's significant to remember than it's a technologically enabled version of the traditional diary or journal.

The TED Talk by Amanda Palmer was supposed to get me thinking about open source and open access but it actually go me thinking about how powerful stories are. Amanda could have simply told us that she had chosen to change the financing method for her music but instead she told us a compelling and satisfying story. I daresay I will remember a story long after I have forgotten a lecture.

Diaries are deliciously private which is why (maybe!) we love to read them. The Diary of Anne Frank is a world changing book. Other books have been deliberately styled as diaries (think Adrian Mole, Bridget Jones) because, as a species, it seems that we are interested in the mundane lives of other people. The blog simply takes this model online. And opens it up to a much bigger potential audience. Some stories capture the imagination more than others, but each is valid. Some people are more willing to share their stories than others but every story told is a moment in time captured.

I have started to consider how I can present my Blog Project findings in a story format. It could be quite possible to make the point and give the information within this model whilst keeping the readers / audience engaged and entertained.

As for open access and different methods of monetizing creativity - I have to battle again with the ingrained pragmatic assumptions my 46 years have left me with. Another way should be possible - I just find it hard to envision.

TMA01 had specific word limits - part 1 was to be no longer than 1500 words and part 2 was to be no longer than 1000 words.

I've taken quite a lot of pride in writing essays of exactly the right length in previous modules - sometimes adding a single adjective or contracting two words to arrive at the satisfyingly even figure!

So - it was 44 hours before submission deadline and I had a part 1 which was 1494 words and a part 2 which was 998 words.... would those crucial eights words be significant? Could they form the sentence which may push the assignment through a grade boundary? Would my tutor roll his eyes at my having handed in an incomplete piece of work?

I ruminated (on social media) and my 22 year old son posted 'Submit it you nerd' - which was nice! You see - he's one of the more relaxed in the human race. He did the last 6,000 words of his dissertation (that is to say all of it) in the last few days before it was due. He didn't set any records but he did pass!

I am sure that somewhere, on the continuum between me and him, is a sensible approach!

This TMA is the foundational document for our conference presentation and subsequent EMA. Which means that getting it right will be very beneficial and getting it wrong will create lots of additional work!

I have decided on a few things:

1. I am doing the blog project. I will investigate the OU blog tool for who uses it, for what and why. I will conduct some primary research for this - both in the form of surveys, questionnaires and interviews and also by analysing a sample of the public OU blog posts which are handily displayed in reverse chronological order on the website!
   
2. I will be looking at this through the overall theme of implementation. I am going to assume that blogs are useful both for student reflection and student collaboration (this is not a wild assumption - there is a lot of data) and consider why they aren't used as often or as much as they could be. Where and what are the barriers? How can the barriers be addressed?
   
3. My project will be essentially a research project which will be presented as a paper. I hope to create an interesting and attractive poster in TMA02 and an engaging presentation for the conference but the project does not lend itself to the other two formats as naturally

H818 is different to my previous modules. It requires the ongoing development of a single idea / project which is mooted in TMA01, developed in TMA02, presented in the conference and reflected on for the EMA.

The project must have something to do with Openness and also fall under one of the subject areas of inclusion, innovation of implementation.

I have two ideas - neither of which seem ideal but both of which kind of interest me. I am awaiting specific tutor feedback to see which one I should pursue:

1. OU Blogs - who uses them for what

The OU blog has been a revelation for me. I have found it exceptionally useful in a reflective capacity but also for expanding ideas which have piqued my interest and about which I have wanted to explore further. I didn't expect to gain a lot of traction but I have had over 30,000 views of this blog (although far fewer comments and interactions than you might expect). I am really interested to see if other students have found their blogs similarly, or differently, useful and whether the tool is working the way envisaged by the OU initially.

I can imagine getting data from my current and previous OU student groups but also being able to source further OU students through Twitter, Facebook and simply by searching existing blogs for comments and interactions.

I would speak to a small number first to develop good survey questions based on their experiences and comments. Once I had developed a good survey I would place this online and invite as many people as possible to respond. I would include an option to engage in a deeper email conversation for people willing and able to share their experiences more deeply.

Although the OU blogs are not entirely open unless the student allows this they are an example of students producing work which is available to others to reference, discuss and consider. The blog system can promote collaboration and networking as well as promoting reflective practice.

I think that the umbrella here would be implementation and that the presentation of a paper detailing research and findings would be most obvious.

2. Facebook Groups - who uses them for what

My employer administers a number of Facebook groups. A company page, a closed resource page and a private study group page. In total there are over 22,000 members (though obviously many individuals are part of more than one of the groups). The different pages operate slightly differently and garner different levels, and different kinds of engagement. I would be interested to analyse and measure this to see how the groups are being used to distribute educational resources, facilitate collaboration and encourage networking.

It would be difficult to gain consent to use individual's data in the specific report about these groups but as I will be mostly classifying and analysing posts (rather than the people who make those posts) I wonder if this is a less important consideration. I suspect there may be a fine line to tread here and the importance of developing a robust ethical position could not be overstated.

The advantage to this project is that it could enable my employer to better administer and utilise the groups to commercial and educational advantage. This may mean that I am free to use work time to do some of the research!

I think this also most comfortably sits within the 'implementation' area as it is a tool being used to implement many good learning habits and resources. This could be presented as a paper or possibly a workshop on how to best engage people using Facebook.

The vision of an open studio within which individuals pursue their creative projects in full view of their peers offers, as John Seely Brown explains, opportunities for critique, feedback, individual progress and group progress. I can immediately see how various individuals with special skills or experiences could help those with different skills and experience (and vice versa) to enable improvement in the outcomes for all.

I cannot think of an example where I have been in this kind of environment but I did immediately picture the Great British Bake Off tent! (The analogy would also work with the Sewing Bee, Throw Down and all similar talent shows!). The Bake Off is a competition so participants should not really help one another but they do! (I know it's generous editing but bear with me!) You periodically hear someone ask a question and, from benches around the tent, people call out their knowledge based on their own experiences. Bakers will sometimes look around the tent and see that their competitors are doing something different from them and it makes them second guess or review their own timetable and process. Imagine if all of those participants were not in competition but working in concert with one another - maybe to cater for a huge posh garden party! If all of that skill were pooled then the sum total of, the quality, of the ensuing product would be so much better than it would be when individuals work alone.

I love the theory. However - I am not very good at receiving criticism however constructive! This aspect of H818 may be a challenge!

"open scholarship has a strong ideological basis rooted in an ethical pursuit for democratization, fundamental human rights, equality, and justice."

Ideological or idealistic? My OU studies have continually challenged the commercial setting from which I operate! As part of the capitalist system we provide learning to people who pay! I can personally get on board with the idea of education and learning being a sacred and privilege which should be considered an end in itself with no thought to the means by which it is achieved.... but that's not something I have experienced.

"open scholarship emphasizes the importance of digital participation for enhanced scholarly outcomes."

I can see how the concept of open education has become conflated with digital participation as the latter enables the former. I think this is serendipity and that the theory of open education need not rely on digital participation.

"open scholarship is treated as an emergent scholarly phenomenon that is co-evolutionary with technological advancements in the larger culture."

See comments above!

"open scholarship is seen as a practical and effective means for achieving scholarly aims that are socially valuable."

Practical and effective means of achieving aims? That sounds more familiar to me that the more idealistic vision spelled out in the first assumption. I wonder if this more pragmatic approach may end up achieving more than the more idealistic one simply by being more palatable.

What will all of this mean for me?

Human nature is essentially self-centred. Any new project, innovation, change or progress will be assessed by individuals by how it will affect them. However successful learning analytics promises to be in terms of creating better environments and activities to foster better learning - the individuals who will need to change their practices to accommodate change will, at least initially, think about what will change for them. Educators may have concerns about increased workload, they may have concerns about their own ability to manage the newly complex world of blended learning and fear that their inability to grasp and engage with it may have consequences for their own careers, they may not really understand what is being asked of them or why change is being implemented which will compromise their engagement.

Why are we doing this?

Changes in LMS or VLE in any institution is likely to be made at a high level but working out the nuts and bolts of the new technology and process falls to the educators at the 'coal face'. The coal face workers may have less understanding of the 'big picture' or long term aims and objectives but will have to make significant, time consuming and difficult changes to their own daily practice, Without a good understanding of the strategic aims it is hard to enthusiastically participate in the strategy.

Our ancient traditions must endure!

Universities have a 'model' which has endured for many centuries in some cases (and even in new universities the 'model' is often older than the institution). The accepted model determines the selection of students, the learning activities, the curriculum, the assessment methods. Any effort to radically change any part of the model meets resistance. University leaders are expected to inspire but not actually make any changes!

The opening paragraph of this paper by Dawson et al. neatly summarises a major weakness with learning analytics - that the data gathered is gathered incidentally rather than with pedagogical intent.

The obvious question to ask is 'what data would be more useful?' and then 'how can we collect that data?'

Social Learning Analytics is based on the premise that the answer to the first question is 'information about the interactions between learners' based on the observation that knowledge is increasingly distributed and learning has become less about learning knowledge from a 'wise sage' and more about connections and collectively held knowledge.

The second question - how can we collect that data? - presents a problem. It is not difficult to track forum contributions or similar within an institutions VLE. The interactions can be automatically tracked and the length, time of and words within those posts can be classified and codified but the assessing the quality of engagement requires human input. This is merely the first issue: most interactions between students don't happen within the VLE. However slick an institutions VLE is it is unlikely to be as intuitive, familiar and easy as platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. Students will opt for easy for them over helpful for the institution.

The idea of any institution monitoring and analysing my Facebook and WhatsApp conversations is creepy!

I got stuck this weekend.

I grasped the concept that Lockyer et al. were communication. The checkpoint vs process comparison is simple but beautifully so. A major criticism of learning analytics, as we have studied to date, is that it necessarily uses the available data (which has not been collected with pedagogical advances in mind) rather than data being collected specifically with analytics in mind, Checkpoint data is the main data we have and shows us the easy to measure metrics - who clicked on the link? When and where? On what device? How long were they logged in to the VLE? How often did they post in the forum? When did they submit their assignment? How good was their assignment? How does any of this correlate with the socio-demographic data we hold about them?

The process data is more difficult to measure being more nuanced and essentially qualitative. Questions which might generate process data could include:

• What was the quality of the forum postings? Did they demonstrate real understanding and engagement with the materials?
  
• Did the individual make thoughtful comments about other people's work? Did those comments lead to a fruitful discussion about differences in perspective?
  
• Has the learner managed to apply any of their learning into a new context such as their own workplace? What were the results of this?
• Is there evidence of meaningful collaboration, knowledge sharing, discussion and debate between learners?

I know that we use Google Analytics at work but not for Elearning. I have never been involved in the discussions about Google Analytics nor have I seen the data. However - as a data junkie I now carry a strong urge to demand access to all the data sets because I can see how interesting this could be.

With regard to applying Google Analytics to learning I am initially struck by how this model is clearly designed with commercial applications in mind. The services which might be of benefit to a learner or an educator are only useful insomuch as they may enable better, more targeted and more appropriate, learning opportunities to be developed.

Google Analytics is, I believe, a commercial enterprise. As with all such enterprises - the principle aim is profit and other gains are incidental. Gains associated with learning are, therefore, mainly for the aspect of learning which is most associated with profit - the institution.

However - this data *could* be used to help the learner and the educator, The issues with using it that was are not only due to a profit motive of a private company but the way that big data may have to become much more specific to be useful in individual circumstances. I would, for example, be very interested to see how well I am doing in H817 compared to other students on the course, compared to students in previous cohorts. I'd be fascinated to know what expectations the OU may have had for me based on my simple socio-demographic information. I would like to see where I rank in terms of engagement with the material and I would be interested to learn of any aspects of H817 I had simply failed to grasp properly. I would love it if the curriculum I followed in H817 would shift and sway according to my interests, the pace I was most comfortable with and even my personal schedule. If I were to know all of this though it may be at the expense of the privacy of other students, it may be at the expense of the integrity of the course and it may be at the expense of my own work ethic!

Learning analytics is clearly a term which is used to describe a particular phenomena which can happen on a wide range of scales.

Personally I am interested in how my individual socio-demographic circumstances can predict my success (or otherwise) in any aspect of learning and how interventions can be targeted to assist me. I am not entirely selfish - I am also interested in how this can be applied to other people!

Professionally part of my role is to tutor aspiring medics and dentists for the UCAT exam (formerly UKCAT) which is an aptitude test which must be taken as part of an application to most medical / dental schools. Upon registration the UCAT consortium ask each applicant to complete a series of socio-demographic questions - racial group, gender, level of education reached by parents (the vast majority of applicants are 17 years old) and the job title of their parents (presumably used, alongside education, as a proxy for social class). They already have the applicants post code and know if the applicant lives in a household with low enough income to qualify for a bursary. This information is not supplied to universities but is reportedly used to improve the UCAT for future cohorts. Pilot questions are trialed with a view to ensuring they are as equitable as possible. I imagine that groups of statisticians gather around data sets and assess why various questions performed better with people who had parents with higher educational qualifications, or who shared a similar ethnic group. (Incidentally - I teacher friend of mine got very frustrated one year when the disadvantaged children who attended her inner city primary school were faced with SATS questions about going to the theatre, and using a honey dipper - two activities which were entirely unknown to most of the children she taught. A huge failing in learning analytics or a cynical attempt to maintain existing privilege? Who knows!)

The articles we read in this activity looked at early learning analytics on a national scale. I also find this very interesting. The variation between educational styles and ethos between different countries is driven by many factors including culture, politics, and resources and comparisons can be meaningful and meaningless depending on how well the complexities of the issues are understood.

The first paper compares the USA to other countries - noting not only a lack of progress when compared to nations of similar levels of development and wealth - but also an up and coming threat from developing nations with very large populations.

The second paper introduces the idea of using analytics to shape future US educational policy at the national level with a coherent and unified plan. Affordability and value are key values but a need to match education to likely economic requirements is also significant.

The basic premise of these discussions assumes that there is a direct correlation between graduate level education and national prosperity. There is, at least in these papers in this time, little discussion about what is being studied and to what end - merely that high levels of education are necessary for continued improvement.

As is pointed out - both papers were written before 'learning analytics' was a phrase and though they clearly are referring to a similar process the absence of 'big data' on quite the scale as it is available today means that it's not exactly the same thing being discussed. However - the idea of analytics is clearly here with a vision to use data to improve polcy.