OU blog

Personal Blogs

David Alcock

Activity 16

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by David Alcock, Saturday, 2 Mar 2013, 20:07

In this activity I am assuming that the activity is asking me to identify how long the institution has been using the technology with students, rather than for any staff support or for any internal administrative purpose.  In terms of my own use, I shall consider how long I have used the technology in a personal as well as academic context because I am assuming that we are looking for a time lag here and so I feel that personal familiarity is also significant.

Technology

How long used for educational purposes

by my organisation

by me

Cloud computing

At the moment it is frowned upon due to potential security issues.

Personally: mostly as a storage platform, for about 2 years.

Teaching: not at all.

*Mobile/cell phone

Only used for administrative support only; inform of changes, updates to courses, etc.

Personally: 7 years.

Teaching: 1 year – using twitter.

Open content

About 1 year

Personally: 1 year

Teaching: not yet

Tablet computing

Not specifically

Personally: no

Teaching: no

*Game-based learning

In one or two areas

Personally: no

Teaching: not at all

Learning analytics

Twelve months

Personally: no

Teaching: 1 year

New scholarship

I don’t know

Personally: 1 year for accessing research

Teaching: 2 years for guiding students towards useful research not published

Semantic applications

I’m not sure.  Our library certainly uses something like a smart search facility but  don’t know that it would take this label.

Personally: No.

Teaching: No.

Augmented reality

No.

Personally: No

Teaching: No

*Collective intelligence

Not as explained in the paper

Personally: No

Teaching: No

Smart objects

Only for course promotion purposes.

Personally: No

Teaching: No

Telepresence

No.  The closest we come is talking head videos of lectures

Personally: No

Teaching: No

The three technologies that I would like to see us do more with are mobile phones, game based learning and collective intelligence.  The reasons are as follows:

Over the past academic year I have trialled using mobile phones with students to increase the level of communication both between themselves and also with me.  We have used twitter on one module and it has been quite successful.  It has certainly broken down the barriers of classroom walls and has generated a strong sense of belonging and cohesion within the group.  I would like to develop this further and use twitter to encourage students to post, or tweet when they see concepts of marketing (my subject) in evidence in adverts, the high street, internet web sites, etc.

If I can extend game based learning to problem based learning, then this area is of interest to me.  I have used problem based learning in one module for the last four years and I am fairly pleased with the result.  That module is a class based module currently but I would like to add in an elearning element to it and move the ‘problem’ towards the game end of the spectrum.

I am interested in developing courses to teach digital marketing to practicing marketers and I therefore see a role for collaborative learning and, as part of that model, developing a collective intelligence amongst participants.  This isn’t exactly what the paper is classing as collective intelligence but it is surely a cousin to it.  The idea here is that I would be working within the paradigm of professional communities of practice.

Permalink
Share post