18 January 2007 we pitched the bid to the JISC. 26 Months later, I am saying farewell to a beautiful project. As ever it is the people who have made it what it has been.

This site will be suspended shortly. For the history, please visit the Emerge Reports site. The Emerge home page will soon redirect here. I would also point you at the Brief valediction to Emerge, which I wrote for NGTiP. Farewell!

We have been consulting widely about whether this site should continue past the funding period. My view is that less is more: it is better to exit on a high, burn out don't fade away. The platform can be available until at least March 2011 and probably until 2013.  If you have an idea for using an Elgg 0.9 environment - it has a lot of good feature, not least the aggregator. We are working to make this available in Elgg 1.nn. Maybe soon. 

You might want to watch a brief video from Online Educa http://blip.tv/file/1931778 (great editing, Dirk!)

So, for me it is over to the Create Support, Synthesis and Benefits Realisation (SSBR) project and the Institutional Innovation Programme.

Thank you everyone, who has made Emerge what it has been.

George
groberts@brookes.ac.uk 

It is sometimes asserted that while students are using web 2 tools extensively there is no evidence that they are using them to do deep learning. I believe this assertion should be questioned.

There is some evidence to suggest that contemporary undergraduates in the normal age cohort (not mature learners) are not particularly critical or reflective and are highly strategic in their approach to learning. This is argued in the JISC’s Google generation report:

“… although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web”.

For another example, see Pascarella (2008, 251):

“As new literacies flourish, teachers face a group of learners who have already engaged in the remaking, remixing, and renaming of their world in virtual reality and in their everyday one. However, although students may enjoy partial or full membership in a participatory culture facilitated by new media environments (i.e. YouTube, MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, ad infinitum) and digital media devices (cell phones that capture still and video images, play MP3s, read and send e-mails, make online purchases, etc.), many learners lack the abilities of critical analyses and evaluation of the social and institutional rules, regulations, and norms embedded in those environments and cultural practices”.

But, on the other hand there is not no evidence on the other side.

There is evidence in two directions:

1. that the question of whether learning and learners have changed as a consequence of ICTs may be improperly conceived.


2. that there is, at least in some places, evidence that new ICTs (Web2.0) are being used to effect deep learning; and, the evidence body is growing.

In respect of the first, e.g. Bawden and Robinson (2009) argue, I think quite wisely, that:

“… new ‘pathologies of information’ will emerge as the information environment changes, primarily under the influence of new technologies: New solutions will always be needed, although it will be vital to be selective in determining which new patterns and modes of information communication and use are truly problems in need of solutions.”

A long way of saying plus ca change…

Also very useful in setting out a definition of critical digital literacy without the anxiety about whether or not young people today are any more or less critical than they ever were is Merchant (2007). Even Prensky seems to be recanting from the Digital Native v Immigrant position.

And, there is some good evidence that learners do use Web2.0 technologies to do deep learning. An example from the undergraduate physics curriculum comes from Higdon and Topaz (2009). Perhaps less weighty, giving they were doing an MA in Information Technology in Education, is Churchill (2009). Less peer reviewed, but I believe credible is the work Alan Cann is doing in biology at Leicester, e.g “Web 2.0 and Information literacy“. There are many good examples from champions that shouldn’t be dismissed just because they are from champions. There does need to be validation of a both the assertions and counter assertions.

Web2.0 in education is a relatively novel phenomenon and only now are research results beginning to appear. There is not much evidence either way regarding participatory media use in education, but some of it is encouraging regarding deep learning.

References

• David Bawden and Lyn Robinson (2009) “The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies”. Journal of Information Science, 35 (2): 180-191


• A J Cann Using Web 2.0 to Cultivate Information Literacy via Construction of Personal Learning Environments: Final Project Report


• Daniel Churchill (2009)”Educational applications of Web 2.0: Using blogs to support teaching and learning”. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (1): 179–183


• Jude Higdon and Guy Topaz (2009), “Blogs and Wikis as Instructional Tools: A Social Software Adaptation of Just-in-Time Teaching”. College Teaching; 57 (2): 105-110


• Guy Merchant (2007), “Writing the future in the digital age”. Literacy 41 (3): 118-128


• John Pascarella (2008) “Confronting the Challenges of Critical Digital Literacy: An Essay Review”. Educational Studies, 43: 246–255

There are many women in technology I admire. My field: learning technology is characterised, in part, by many female leaders. I think of Diana Laurillard, Grainne Conole (jfg them); colleagues: Rhona Sharpe, Patsy Clarke, Frances Deepwell, Judy Lyons in OCSLD; there’s Helen Beetham, Helen Barrett, Rose Luckin, Diana Oblinger; Robin Mason, who defined a practice through Mindweave and the Open University’s H8xx series of courses in the Institute of Educational Technology; my PhD supervisor Jane Seale: all people who have either shaped the field, shaped my view of it, or both. In writing this I realise the risk of naming more than one person; why have I not named every woman who has influenced the development of learning technology and my participation in it? How much have I got wrong already? Who have I forgotten? I won’t go on. You know who you are! Except perhaps a few more.

Joanna Bull shaped the practice of computer aided assessment in the UK. Without the “sisters of CETIS” learning technology standards would be far less accessible. With each name that comes to mind, two more follow it and four more behind them. And, I haven’t even stepped across the North Sea, where in the Netherlands and Germany the picture is replicated. And, in learning technology it is not just on the so-called soft side (what on earth is soft about changing pedagogical practice?) but in application development: coding, and systems integration girl geeks abound. One more: Wendy Hall (OK she’s only head of the British Computer Society, not a proper learning technologist;-). Step over to the US, where the Mozilla Foundation is headed by Mitchell Baker. The leading thinkers of the sociology of the Internet are women. And, all of a sudden I understand the poignancy and power of Ada Lovelace and her contribution to the world: the abstractable instruction set that could be applied to a machine in order to carry out calculations: a program. I am no longer fool enough to think that without so and so something would never have happened. Charles Babbage created the Difference Engine. But, Ada Lovelace showed even him that it could work. Babbage and Lovelace’s work directly underlies the work of Turing and von Neumann. It is not as if men weren’t involved. But there is something about computing: abstracting the universal-virtual essence that removes incidentals. I wouldn’t say sex is incidental in all cases - far from it! But, in most fields of practice, and certainly in the knowledge economy there is, or should be, an incidentality to one’s gendered body when it comes to recognising ability and achievement. It was popular ten or twenty years ago to engage in identity play online: on the internet no one knew you were a dog. Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto defined the richly gendered - and sexualised yet transcendent-of-sex reality of the chimeric creatures of a “post-gender world”. Like the science fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and Doris Lessing incidentals are stripped away by computing leaving us not free but very differently bounded from a world where it is still necessary to legislate for equality and diversity. Step up Kisa Naumova and Sian Bayne two very different women: both “real” one “virtual”, whose understanding of embodyment: its power and fragility is anything but mere jelly. As I sit writing on the eve of the JISC conference I think of the women who direct and manage its development programmes, people who have as much influence over my professional life as anyone. I reflect on the pleasure of this field and I know that it is because learning technology with all its ambiguities is Ada Lovelace’s legacy.

Learning technology R&D projects can appear to focus on outputs rather than outcomes: producing artefacts rather than building capacity; quantitative rather than qualitative measures; easy answers rather than the deep complexity of institutional change. Through the U&I Programme a real effort has been made to transform practice based on the needs of individual users working in institutions.

The Emerge project set out to support the creation of a sustainable community of practice around user engagement for the exploitation of new and emerging social media technologies.

A key component to our approach was to encourage the adoption of a user engagement process and enabling its use by developers of next generation web-based educational services.

Accepting that our research interventions were part of the transformation process we chose appreciative inquiry to promote evidence-led, asset based community developement.

As the programme developed, benefits realisations  activities sought to ensure the outputs and outcomes of the U&I projects reached the wider community.

The web presence of the support project was novel. We put a public stream of voices from the community up front using the Elgg social networking platform.

It has been possible to identify a range of benefits to deploying social media tools to scaffold community emergence.

Your stories provided evidence to suggest that the community did develop into an effective support system for projects. The benefits for individuals and projects included opportunities for professional development, collaboration with others, improved project planning and management, and awareness of the relevance of projects in a wider context.

But these benefits were unevenly distributed, and for some, against visibility, connectivity and discovery we could set obscurity, isolation and at times wandering lost.

The form and patterns of interaction, which develop across a community over time, cannot be predetermined. The use of participatory media is multi-modal. The articulation between people and software is not just a question of interface design (though that is crucial). The effective use of Web2.0 depends essentially on human networks.  This raises questions of inclusion, exclusion and identity.

The first question for institutions becomes: to what extent are they comfortable with ceding certain amounts of control to individuals? The second question for institutions is, then, to what extent are they, as established communities, willing to cede control to new communities? For individuals, the principal issue is to what extent do they subordinate their autonomy and self-direction to any community? And, then, how much do they subordinate and to which communities?

I can't say that these questions will be finally answered here. I hope that they are at least asked with greater rigour and sensitivity than when we started. Institutional change is not a simple task.

I would like to thank the JISC for enabling these questions to be asked at all and for supporting us in looking for answers. I want to thank the support team who spent two years treading down the nettles and looking for ever shifting trails, good naturedly acknowledging that the journey is as important as the destination. I want to thank the people who signed up for the community of practice, not knowing where it would lead. I know this programme appeared to be more demanding that your "usual JISC programme".

I hope that the demands were not simply in the quantitative burden of hours and days spent drawing concept maps and engaging in semi-structured activity. Our aim was to improve the qualitative measures by which success might be understood. That this was not always easy, I accept. We were all, at times, confronted with parts of ourselves we might have rather left in the traditional silos.

One of our sustainability strategies was to have fun. Seriously, we are all busy; there had to be affective advantage to affiliation. Of course there were also those who thought that if it wasn't hurting, it wasn't working.

But, was it worth it? Yes, if these questions continue to be asked. If the spirit of open, asset-based, positive enquiry and evidence-led development continue to be promoted, then yes. For me, it has been an honour - and a pleasure - to have been involved with this programme.

Embedding needs building. Building needs scaffolding.

Gwen van der Velden recognises that change agents operate in networks of influence.

To make change you need:

- buy-in

- user engagement

- institutional solutions

- patronage

- a user-friendly pitch

- reputation-awareness.

Barriers to change include: student data systems, middle managers, staff learning needs.

Drivers for embracing technology: students, resource constraints, employers.

So answer these questions:

- What is your strap-line?

- Why would I support you?

- What problem, which I have, will you solve?

- Tell me what difference it makes.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

The Flourish project:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/flourish.aspx

Flourish, funded by the JISC, looked at eportfolio for HE staff in annual appraisal, accredited PGCert in Teaching in HE course, and CPD/Training. They used PebblePad in a “low-risk” environment running workshops, elearning retreats, staff information sharing channels, and using it with students.

The key message is if you want to use an eP for students you need to use it with staff first.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

I have set up a place to post our stuff from the writing retreat (I know, I know, another b***** site). Bear with me

We do not have a projector but most of us have machines, I thought this might work as a whiteboard. I have not made the site private - yet. But we can.

http://emerge.posterous.com

Suggested schedule

0900-0930 Review: task briefing

1030-1100 coffee: Task 1 feedback

1230-1300 Task 2 feedback

1300-1330 Lunch:

1330-1400 Review balance in light of Tasks 1 & 2

1530-1600 Task 3 feedback

1600-1800 Walk in country

1800-1930 at ease/continue working

1930-late dinner

Task 1

a. Working title of your article

b. What is the central question that your article will pose?

c. Name 3 or 4 intended readers (no profiling) and say why they might be interested in this question.

d. Specific features of specific U&I projects that illustrate or support or otherwise illuminate your central question

e. If you had only one sentence to summarize your paper for your readers (above), what should it be? Focus on the outcomes from the work, not the inputs.

To post to the site email:

post@emerge.posterous.com

Posted via email from Emerge

Interested in how new technologies can impact on the effectiveness of HE and FE staff, students and researchers!
 
Register now at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/ngtip
 
The Next Generation Technologies in Practice conference on 10th and 11th March will be highlighting a range of major developments in multimedia social technologies, social networking and communities, virtual worlds, and next generation skills enabled by the JISC Users and Innovation programme, and explore how these developments can be actively transferred into real learning, teaching and research practice and communications. Come along to find out more - and take part in hands-on benefits realisation workshops on day one, and showcase and debate on day two.
 
Last year's conference focussed on user needs and applying practice;this year's conference moves on a stage further to the theme of 'Evaluation, impact and effect' - how do we get the most out of these developments, and where next?
 
A selection of comments from last year's attendees about the best parts of the event:
 
"The opportunity to immerse myself in the ideas .... Relevant and relaxed .... an excellent and comfortable environment for meeting new people and exchanging ideas.... learning from others ... the networking opportunities....  it was easy to network and people were very friendly and eager to share..."*
The event is free, places are limited and, so sign up today! Subject Centre staff are welcome for either or both days. For further information and to book your place, please go to: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/ngtip  .

The JISC Users & Innovation projects are highly acclaimed by the wider  community, and Benefits Realisation activities have significantly raised their profile.

Day 1 of the Next Generation Technologies in Practice Conference on 10th March celebrates and shares the successes of these projects and their invaluable knowledge and experience. New technological developments promoted by the Benefits Realisation projects will be showcased, and the teams involved will demonstrate to you how easy it is to embed the results of their research via a series of hands-on-how-to workshops, and inspire you to take what you have learned back to your institutions and implement.

The day will conclude with a practical session on sustaining emergent networks that will develop the organisational structures through which the benefits of a community-based approach to JISC programme support might be realised.You will come away from the day being able to do something you couldn't do when you arrived!

(Actually the day will conclude with Latin Dancing)

The 11th March, is a more outward-facing showcase/discussion day predominantly for broader audiences less familiar with the programme. Those who sign up to stay for both days will be automatically signed up for accommodation, dinner and
entertainment on the night of 10th March.

Places are limited and the closing date for early registrations is 13th February 2009, so sign up today! For further information and to book your place, please go to: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/ngtip