Develop a digital me

I have not posted in a while (mainly cos in order to more easily link my blog to the #ccourses blog roll and RSS Feed I had to dedicate Last Refuge to Connected Courses  [http://connectedcourses.net/thecourse/]…and then I lost my Broadband for seven weeks… oh – you know how it goes!!) – but hey it’s a new year – so let’s start over…

Develop a digital me

In January 2013 I enrolled on Edinburgh’s #edcmooc and my life changed. I had long been a sceptic in terms of Government and Institutional e-learning POLICY (see if you wish Burns, Sinfield & Holley (2009) ‘A journey into silence: a textual analysis of the government’s “Harnessing Technology” document – exploring the relationship between policy, pedagogy and the student experience’ in: Social Responsibility Journal Vol 5 No 4 2009 pp 566-574). It’s not just that I found the policy document itself reductionist in the extreme (though it was!) – I found that the way it appeared to be militated and implemented within institutions wrung out all the joy and potential of that which technology could bring: Hey – this time students really could produce their own multi-modal messages – they could harness a form that facilitated a multiplicity of ways to understand – to communicate – to be creative – to think – to explore… It could be so much more than that which is squeezed into a VLE or an MLE. It is so much more than surveillance and analytics… or it could be.

But, typically, it appeared that staff were not given the space and time to play with the new technology – they were definitely not brought into collegiate groups to have the space and time to play together – to explore and experiment – to build and break – to make mistakes and learn from them.

Instead the experiences I heard from discipline staff across the HE spectrum was that they were under-resourced in time and technology – and continually told that they were not good enough – they were failing – they were not *e*-enough - they had not done enough… they were bad!

Now whilst this might have been interesting in terms of discipline academics experiencing for themselves what University felt like for many of their students (especially what are deemed non-traditional students) – it did not feel like a great way to develop an approach to ‘blended learning’ that would nurture their or their students’ positive development. And it definitely did not feel like joyful learning.

So – I did #edcmooc and it was brilliant. It was collegiate – there was play – there was fun – there was trial and error (oh you should have seen my first digital artefact!! So bad!!) … and then there were some great #artmoocs – and then #rhizo14 – and #ccourses… and I have tried to bring some of that back for my students – to see if the passion and the play could happen in our classrooms as well.

Initially we got our students ‘blogging to learn’ – as we did in #edcmooc and beyond. And they blogged – and they were funny and human – and occasionally outraged and human – and they narrated themselves – all of themselves – as they became academic – and they found their voices – and their essays were great – because they had something to say – and they knew we wanted them to say it… (and - whisper it – not a plagiarised word in sight!).

Then this year we launched ‘Develop a Digital Me’ – and booked the students into an ICT suite for one-hour per week for ten weeks – and with their Peer Mentors. The first weeks were designed to help them set up their blogs… and then the hope was that something creative and digital and personal would emerge – with a Poster Exhibition and demonstrations set for week 12 – the last week of term.

There was some confusion and self-doubt – but we seeded their thinking with some #edcmooc artefacts and Terry Elliot’s zeega on learning – and then left them to it (see https://becomingeducational.wordpress.com/ ) – and boy were we impressed with the results! Our friend Chris O’Reilly came along for the session – and he liked it so much he went and built a website for us – and he captured some pix of the day – and pix of the Posters – and we are trying to get all the Digital things there too – do have a look and tell me what you think!

Develop a Digital Me: http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/posters-digital/

#ccourses - Leveraging our ‘why’ – reaching out to the #ccourses community

#ccourses has suggested that we ‘leverage our why’ – and Jonathan Worth said we ask others to help with the HOW.

So - HOW?!

We are lecturers in an institution that reaches out into our local communities. Our students are often described as ‘fish out of water’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992),  swimming in educational currents composed of regimes of inspection and the over-riding narratives of assessment, SATs, League Tables, OFSTED, moral panics about plagiarism – and the ‘dumbing down’ of education:

There are Mickey Mouse students for whom Mickey Mouse degrees are quite appropriate (Starkey in Brockes ‘Taking the mick’ The Guardian, [online] 15 January 2003).

They are re-territorialising tricky academic space (Deleuze & Guattari1987/2005) – and do not get an easy ride. More than ever they need to experience connection – engagement – inspiration – creativity and joy…

We’re sustained by our communities (of Practice, of Inquiry, of Engagement): ALDinHE, (#loveld, #studychat) - and #edcmooc, #rhizo14, #ccourses … BUT we know that many staff in HE generally are feeling pretty battered and bruised right now. As with the students, they, too, experience regimes of control and surveillance: targets and strategies; Performance Review; Academic Work Allocation Model. Every hour is mapped and measured and there is no time to ‘be with’ students. Overworked and under-valued, they do not feel trusted – they may not feel trust. How can we celebrate and sustain creative emancipatory practices …in this cold HE climate (Sinfield, Burns and Holley 2003)?

So we are experimenting with Take 5:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/take5/index.html

Take5 includes some tips on:

Role playing and simulations

Creative and visual learning strategies – using:

Drawing, collage, performance, poetry, prose

Object and Inquiry-based learning

Project Based Learning

Real research projects – from the first year

Academic & empowering literacies – with a positive twist!

Using the MOOCs - #edcmooc, #ccourses, #ds106, #rhizo14

Resource and artefact production.

At the moment we are planning to write fortnightly blog posts speaking of things that we have done in our classrooms and our MOOCs – in the hope of seeding conversations and re-engaging people in their own love of teaching and learning.

What do you think?

What should we do next?

Who wants to join in?

Tinkering to Learn #ccourses14

Boom! Another academic year – another load of too much to do and too little time – Soooooo... started another course – #ccourses14! (I have the feeling that *course* is an oxymoron in this context – but that is a good thing!) and for the next few weeks the focus of this blog will be co-learning and the co-creation of knowledge in a connected world.

‘Dear Reader’ alert!

Dear Reader,

If you are completely new to online courses and blogging to learn – don’t be put off by not knowing anyone else on the course yet. It is very easy to make friends in these spaces. The trick is to *like*, *Comment*, *re-tweet* and *favourite* the messages that people start to post on and about the course. This is the way that we touch base with each other and build connections, trust and dialogue. The knowledge emerges and develops through these very connections.

I am lucky because many people that I’ve seen on other happy courses (you know who you are #edcmooc and #rhizo14!!) are here – as are people that I have spotted on the almost mythical #ds106. I am looking forward to co-learning with these peeps.

The course proper starts next week, Monday 15^th September. If you are still in the process of joining – here’s the link to the one-hour video on the blogging part of this connected courses thing: http://connectedcourses.net/thecourse/pre-course/

To RSS Feed

My big first task is to try to connect this blog to the course list – with the appropriate RSS feed. I have never managed that before! I listened to the instructions on adding the RSS feed – and decided immediately to do the simple link this first time, that is, I will *only* cover #ccourses14 in this blog cos if you cover the course in a multi-topic blog the instructions were WAY too complicated for me!

#rhizo14: W3: Embracing Uncertainty

I’m really setting my own curriculum this week - too busy yet to engage with much of the course - except reading a few blogposts - and wrestling with my own version of uncertainty. So we co-developed and hosted ALDinHE’s Look-Make-Learn Visual Transformations in Learning, Teaching and Assessment Conference - and that was us embracing uncertainty. 

I couldn’t quite believe how nervous I was at co-running an event that was supposed to be *fun*… but perhaps that was the point. In these target-driven, league-table-orientated times; the notion of running an event designed to be enjoyable and inspirational – with spaces for participants to set their own goals, define their own learning, take away their own messages…suddenly seemed not only uncertain but quite literally foolhardy. Oh good grief – are we ready for that!!

So on Tuesday 28^th January we transformed our teaching room: tables were covered with sugar paper, there was plasticene, fat colourful felt tips, multi-coloured paper, collage materials – and beautiful golden toffees… The space was joyous, the people willing… the activities engaging (and – dare to say it – jolly good fun) … The day was joyful.

Prof Digby Warren opened the event making a pithy case for the value of the creative arts across the disciplines; to encourage deep inquiry and alternative modes of thinking and being. Pauline Ridley had us drawing on the table – and inspired me all over again with her arguments for visual practices. I especially love the account of the Community Arts Project where the overalls were the embodied Learning Logs – instantaneous and alive – and when mounted on mannequins a bizarre but beautiful exhibition of the learning that had taken place.

Debbie Holley and Phillip Howlett from Anglia Ruskin’s Education Dept. demonstrated a project they ran with trainees science teachers – where they made stop-frame animations of scientific topics… and had us making our own stop-frame animations to boot. I have never before seen so many adults having such meaningful fun with plasticene!

Tom Burns and I (Sandra Sinfield, that’s me) celebrated the cool MOOC learning (you know who you are #edcmooc, #artmooc, #artinquiry, #ds106 – and, yes, #rhizo14) that we’ve embedded in the deleuzian module (oh yes!) Becoming an Educationalist. Fun was hopefully had exploring the role of Collage, Cabinets of curiosities, Memory envelopes, Installations and Digital art - for teaching, learning and as creative research methods – especially when everybody got cutting, sticking, making, doing, looking and learning.

Chris O’Reilly introduced some of his reflective animations before prompting everybody to produce their group animation of the day – and Visual Scribe Raquel Duran in a coup de theatre recorded the whole event on the wall!

But as I’ve said before - those are just words! Check out Chris’s website of the day:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/look_make_learn/ It’s chock full of the animations, the wall art, the voices, resources, PowerPoints and PDFs… and links to a host of pictures that just burst with the energy that was there – and no – that wasn’t a kids’ party – that was what happens when academics do it with colour!

I started the day literally shaking with uncertainty: would there be confusion – revulsion – revolt – hostility? Worse – would there be laughter – derision – shame? I don’t know – may be somewhere there was – but you know what – it looked like a great day – it sounded like a great day – and I experienced an uncertain joy!

#EDCMOOC2: Week 3: Rubbing Hume’s big toe: philosophical and technological questions about being human

So what is an online course – and what should a course entitling itself ‘E-learning and Digital Culture’ look like? I have been somewhat frustrated by discussions breaking out across the Forums about whether this can even be considered a course about E-learning; that surely ‘all’ we’re doing is exploring culture... I know that every course needs to also be interrogated and challenged – but it seems to me that this becomes a form of pedantry that misses the point about the course as created – and as it can be experienced. 

So, ‘E-learning and Digital Cultures’, I thought the *e* bit was a great hook to draw people into the course - and then the course itself exploded concepts around e-learning, digital cultures... Instead of idea-definition-discussion… we were encouraged to understand or at least explore *e* issues through the lens of popular culture and its metaphors for education, teaching, learning and humanity.

This enabled creative and lateral and connected thought about humans learning in an inter-connected, digital culture. No other approach to this topic that I have encountered has come anywhere near allowing these sorts of thoughts! Definitely government and institutional policy documents do not encourage or allow it. They only offer metaphors of control, remediation and constraint.
In our institution we are supposed to have a blended learning ethos - and everybody seems to focus on the *e* part of the blend... usually in negative or self-punishing ways: I am not doing enough of this e stuff... I cannot do the e bit... the technology that I have does not support my e work ... I have no time to develop the e aspects of my work ... I will fail my appraisal because I am not e enough.

A terrible overarching narrative has been created that distracts staff from their students, from their humanity, from the love that they had of their subject and from any thought about creative approached to LTA.
I feel that #edcmooc by its form and content engages creatively in a fight with this very negative discourse – and that is why it is so exhilarating, so refreshing – and, dare I say it, so brilliant!

It is in this context that a colleague and I are fighting also for a more nuanced and extensive definition of blended learning itself:
"Learning is social, collective, embodied… Learning is active and interactive. Learning can happen through talking, writing, reading, playing, drawing, researching and making – including making digital artefacts.  Learning can be fast and furious. Learning can also be slow and embodied. Learning can be face-to-face, it can happen on-line – and it can happen in some blend of the two. 

We propose the notion of  a blend that is not just a mix of face to face and online learning, but includes blending direct teaching with student active learning and problem-solving – and blending a range of different methods and multimodal activities around the learning of a particular topic: role playing and simulations; creative and art-based strategies; Inquiry-, Problem- and Project Based Learning; Reflective learning; Visual practices development; Poetry, Prose and Policy analysis; Image-, Object- and Topic Mediated Dialogue; Real research; Digital artefact and resource development; Blogging and other Social Network activities; Peer-to-peer learning..."

We know that we have a real struggle on our hands – not just in terms of extending notions of e- and blended learning – but also because in these outcomes-targets-measurement driven times, even people of good will would prefer it if all we really did *was* to inculcate literacy, numeracy and the ‘ICT skills necessary for business’ (Harnessing Technology, 2008 – government policy on technology enhanced learning – read it and weep!).

As I said in a Forum thread – I would model my practice on this MOOC in a heartbeat.

Moving swiftly on: So – week three and discussions:

1. How do we define ‘being human’ or ‘human’?
2. Does and online course need a human presence?

Resources Week 3 – We’re all post-human now…

Film 1: Toyota GT86: the ‘real deal’ advert (1:01): Watch on YouTube

Film 2: BT: heart to heart advert (0:40): Watch on YouTube

Film 3: World builder (9:16): Watch on YouTube 

Film 4: They’re made out of meat (7:20): Watch on YouTube

Personally I *love* the ‘real deal’ advert for all the wrong reasons. It does work – it seduces me – I believe the message – I want to drive through that glass wall and be free – if only I could afford that car … and if I could drive – and if the roads were safe and empty – if the planet wasn’t dying… You know the stuff!

‘They’re made out of meat’ is a stunning film. In a few minutes and with just a perfectly pitched script, camera and acting (oh – is that all) – a completely surreal alternative world view is created. We believe those aliens – and we know we are just meat. Absolutely stunning. All theatre and film studies students should see this. I have shown it to my students and will again… Brilliant.

The Readings

Core: Humanity 2.0: defining humanity - Steve Fuller’s TEDx Warwick talk (24:08),http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/tedx?podcastItem=steve_fuller.mp4  View the presentation slides here 
In this lecture, Professor Steve Fuller (University of Warwick) takes us on a rapid ride through the history of how ‘humanity’ has been defined and made. By asking the question ‘have we always, sometimes or never been human?’, he draws our attention to the ways in which ‘humanity’ as a social category has been defined from ancient to medieval to modern times. ‘Let me tell you’, he says, ‘it is very difficult to define what it is to be human’

Advanced: Nimrod Aloni. (1999). Humanistic Education. In The Encyclopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, M. Peters, P. Ghiraldelli, B. Žarnić, A. Gibbons (eds.).http://marul.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/doku.php?id=humanistic_education 
Where Professor Fuller’s lecture gives an historical account of the social construction of the idea of the human, this useful entry in The Encylopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory is very helpful to us in starting to understand how philosophical humanism has informed many of our ideas about education and its purpose.

Perspectives on education

Kolowich, S (2010) The Human Element. Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/29/lms
This article attempts to make a case for the inclusion of more video and audio in online teaching, in order to increase the sense of presence and ‘human-touch’ for distance learners … If we accept that ‘humanity’ is an ambiguous category at best, where does that leave claims like the ones made here for ‘the human element’ as a touchstone for good course design?
Monke, L (2004) The Human Touch, EducationNext: http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/
Monke’s article is a plea for a re-thinking of education policy prioritising technological ‘literacy’ in schools from the earliest years of education. It is intriguing to read this in the context of some of the thinking we’ve been exploring in this and previous weeks.

The Hangout

Loved the discussion about whether an online course should need a human presence … And as video and audio are just representations, can we represent the tutor with an image or a drawing… and if we do that – is the effect different depending on whether we draw a robot or a human being?

And so it goes!

#edcmooc: W2: Metaphors of the future

As humans we are metaphor. Language is the metaphors that we speak: our clothes are the metaphors that we display to tell the world about ourselves...  This week #edcmooc introduced us to metaphors that inform and inflame us about the web. The web itself is an initiating metaphor that I have seen used in contexts other than the WWW. Margo Blythman, then of the University of The Arts, London at a time of the closing down of university Learning Development Units used the web metaphor for learning development: we are there, ubiquitous and supportive; every new broom sweeps us away; but we reform… What does the web metaphor mean to #edcmoocers?

The course

In the film show we saw terrifying utopian (sic) visions of teaching with students still being constructed as passively as possible by the shiny shiny education system with all its goodies… (‘A Day Made of Glass’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkHpNnXLB0 and ‘Bridging our Future’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMd-7Ng9Y8) – and we saw the virtual as infuriating (‘A digital tomorrow’ https://vimeo.com/48204264) or rapacious (‘Sight’ https://vimeo.com/46304267).

Readings
Core: Johnston, R (2009) Salvation or destruction: metaphors of the internet. First Monday,14(4).http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2370/2158 

Extension: Bleecker, J. (2006). A manifesto for networked objects — Cohabiting with pigeons, arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14748019/Why-Things-Matter 

Education: Balfour, S., 2013. Assessing Writing in MOOCs: Automated Essay Scoring and Calibrated Peer ReviewTM. Research and Practice in Assessment, 8, pp.40–48. http://www.rpajournal.com/assessing-writing-in-moocs-automated-essay-scoring-and-calibrated-peer-review/ 
Stewart, B., 2013. Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? Journal of Online Learning and Teaching,9(2).

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm 

On metaphors

It was fascinating to read about the metaphors that have been and are deployed about the Web. My colleagues and I have also been interested in the metaphors deployed in Government Policy documents on Digital Education. When we investigated a UK document entitled 'Harnessing Technology' we were unhappily surprised to find that references to education itself - real or metaphorical - were exceedingly rare. Instead there was constant reference to ‘skills’ (a contested term in itself), calls for IT training and multiple references to gaining the IT Skills necessary for business. 

If you are interested in taking metaphorical research further, I would suggest that you find your institution's policy documents on Technology Enhanced Education or E-learning or Blended Learning. Look for the metaphors used about education itself, about teaching and learning – and about the technology. See what your metaphor and/or discourse analysis reveals – and share it with us.
(https://www.academia.edu/3433954/A_Journey_into_silence_analysis_of_government_e-learning_policy_in_Social_Responsibility_Journal_V5_N4_2009)

More metaphors

So, as human beings re-presenting ourselves in the world, we are metaphor, we speak metaphor, we enact metaphor… And recently we have explored student avatars as metaphors: how are our students constructing themselves in virtual worlds? Do these representations position them (more) powerfully with respect to education itself?

In our small study we constructed a (SecondLife) seashore with sussurating sea as a learning space – and our students constructed themselves as ship captains, as bees and Klingons. So we felt that if handled well then yes the virtual allows a more powerful student to emerge. (https://www.academia.edu/3434045/The_shipwrecked_shore_and_other_metaphors_in_Investigations_in_University_Teaching_and_Learning_V8_2012)

And for education?

In http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm Stewart argues convincingly that MOOCs are neither the alpha nor omega of education - but that they can be a Trojan Horse ushering in a new age of distributed, participatory education. The Trojan Horse metaphor, as was pointed out in the Hangout, evokes annihilation and destruction - but if we put that swiftly aside - we can share the positive, creative and inspiring ways that MOOCs have influenced our own practice.

My colleagues and I have used our MOOC experiences to argue for truly blended learning – a blend that not only includes virtual and actual teaching and assessment strategies - but that offers much more active and student-initiated learning.

Our new module incorporates creative and visual activities (collage, drawing, animation); problem and project based learning (real research projects, students as partners in conferences and bids, students producing installations and Cabinets of Curiosities)... and the production of Digital Artefacts as part of the assessment offer - no matter what the course.

If you are participating in #edcmooc, please post examples of how MOOCs have influenced your practice here: https://class.coursera.org/edc-002/forum/thread?thread_id=216 If not in #edcmooc – please post some examples as Comments below.

#artmooc week 5: Inside the space: installation art

The task this week was to get out of the room, house, flat, cottage - and make an installation that interacted or communicated with the space in which we wanted to set it. Our instructions were:

This week’s content is quite different from the movements and styles that were addressed in the previous weeks. This week you will be working three-dimensionally and engaging space. Creating a site-specific environmental installation is a very unique experience (especially if you have never attempted it before). Your goal will be to find a meaningful outdoor site and produce an installation specifically for that area. Considering the site and its relationship to your installation will be one of your most important objectives.

# 10: Get out of that classroom - and really see your space

It has been a wonderful challenge - and a completely different way of enjoying a walk in the countryside... Though it could have been just as exciting to create an installation in an urban landscape. This week's lesson for practice would definitely be to get students out of the classroom - and into the spaces outside. I would set them the task of creating mini-installations - and reflecting on them the way we have been asked to reflect on ours. Here are some pictures of my installation - and my answers to those contextualising, reflective, creative questions.

1.  Explain your process (medium and technique).  How was it made?  Which art materials and approaches did you use and why?

This assignment was all about the process for me – the process of truly inhabiting the landscape near where I now live – and playing with it – photographing it – making small installations here and there – and of eventually choosing the installation that I liked the best.

I spent three hours slowly walking around the area – up hills, down tree-shaded paths, near large fields, beside trickling springs… I wound wool-like rope into trees, I placed my shoes in puddles, I placed shoes walking in to and out of various forms of greenery… I floated my shoes in water, I created caches of stones and leaves in bole holes in trees, I shaped wheat from broken wheat stems, I photographed a knotty root as if it were itself a tree – and added a twig with leaves… but in the end the installation that I loved the most was installing a strip of blue-plastic-covered wiring into the most beautiful bush/tree – where it complemented the green of the leaves, the white of the flowers and the yellow of the lichen. It was a false damsel fly in a verdant bush – and I loved it.

The point of this installation is the close up – and it is very much captured in the very first photograph – but I have uploaded a picture of me making the installation as the ‘long shot’ to give a sense of scale and place. 

2.  Describe the idea behind your artwork.  What story or message does it get across?  What does it mean to you?

This installation was about looking really closely and intensely at a very small piece of the countryside – and seeing the wealth of detail, colour, intrigue and beauty in that small piece. Juxtaposing a false damsel fly was designed to catch and draw the eye – to draw attention to the place that held the 'damsel fly'. The colours were held in harmony – the shapes also complement and frame each other. This was a small but perfect installation. The message was that the very small can be as breathtaking and beautiful as the very large.

3.  Why did you create it?  What are your reasons for creating that specific art piece?  What do you want your audience to feel and think while observing it?  

I wanted to capture something intensely beautiful – but small – and that epitomised where I now live. I moved to the countryside from London, England. When in my twenties I could never ever imagine NOT LIVING IN LONDON. It was everything to me – pulsing with energy and life and happening… It was impossible to not live in London. As Samuel Johnson (I think) said: ‘He who tires of London tires of life.’ I absolutely believed that… Now – I see the life and beauty of the countryside – not just in the breadth and depth and height of it – but in the very small spaces as well. I have changed. This installation reflects that the wonder and beauty of everything can be in that very small thing – if we take the time to pause, to look and to see. I hope this is a beautiful Zen moment for the onlooker.

#Artmooc: Introduction to art: concepts and techniques

So despite all sensible thoughts to the contrary (too busy, too exhausted, too stretched, too near my physical limits, too old…), I’ve signed up for another MOOC. This time I’m on Coursera’s ‘Introduction to art: concepts and techniques’  and I will be following the practical, Studio, route through. This means that as well as studying art, artists and art movements, I will also be attempting at least one art assignment per week – and engaging in peer review of other pieces.

You can find out more here: https://class.coursera.org/art-001/class/index 

I am doing this for fun – but I am also looking for creative ways to improve teaching, learning and assessment at my University.

Lesson #1: The role of the social in studying

My first MOOC was also from Coursera: Edinburgh University’s 'E-learning and Digital Cultures', a brilliant six-week course, tagged and tweeted as #edcmooc.

As a student of that course I was really lucky that a friend got ‘in there’ before me and invited me into the Google+ groups that were attached to it (one with thousands of people – one with just 16 members) and also into the FaceBook group. This meant that I very quickly found the size and shape of the social space that I needed to help me feel like I belonged  - and that ‘held’ me in that course.

Fraingers (virtual friends and strangers) from the smaller Google+ group have already written on the experience of collaborating in informal spaces – and of how this helps to tame the otherwise potentially overwhelming experience of a MOOC:

http://elearningeuropa.info/en/article/Realising-the-Potential-of-Peer-to-Peer-Learning%3A-Taming-a-MOOC-with-Social-Media

http://elearningeuropa.info/en/article/Quad-blogging%3A-Promoting-Peer-to--Peer-Learning-in-a-MOOC

It is ironic that this very human lesson occurred in virtual or cyberspace – and I’d argue that this is a lesson that we need to bring very quickly back to our physical, human teaching and learning spaces.

Humanising the education marketplace

If we want to keep and nurture our students – especially our non-traditional students – we need to re-humanise higher education. Our students are experiencing rapid educational change; for them university is highly marketised and impersonal: not so much a stroll across the quad – but a sense of pile ‘em high and teach ‘em cheap. Not hallowed halls, but commodified courses sold like toothpaste. So we should not be surprised when students notice and internalize this - or get switched off and drop out! But if we want to do something about it , we need to help students to find friends on and off their courses – get them actually into those Clubs and Societies - hook them up with Peer Mentors – make it human and they will feel humanized and they will stay and blossom.

Lesson #2: Assignments can be fun

So as said, I was wobbling as to whether I could stay on this MOOC when SO BUSY… so I checked out the assignments for the course to see if they'd be so awful I could legitimately sigh and go. They looked brilliant. I wanted to do each and every one of them. So here’s another lesson for us in HE who teach anything but art: assignments CAN BE FUN. Yes, we are serious academics, intellectual gatekeepers of the academy; maintaining high standards and blah blah blah… But that does not mean that we have to set tasks that are boring, dull, re-gurgitative – we can challenge and extend our students.

I have written about this in posts below – most recently reflecting on a 'Becoming an educationalist' module that was paired with a second year 'Peer Mentoring in Practice' module. Here both sets of students were taught a creative curriculum – and the first year students were also set primary research as one of their assignments. With our modules, we regularly set the design and making of teaching and learning resources or digital artefacts as assessment alternatives to the academic essay…

This #artmooc is setting some wonderful assignments that will oh so easily translate into activities to enrich any module.

The assignments

So this week we looked at line, shape, value, texture, colour and collage and for our first assignment we had to construct and post a self-portrait that captured the essence of who and what we were. We had to post an image of our picture in an online Forum, with a brief  account of the what, why and how of it. We will move on to explore fantasy and the bizarre; correspondence, memory and mail art; photography, portraiture and collage; installation, space and the artwork; the world of wonder and cabinets of curiosities. I can see each of these as art – but also as reflective learning and multi-modal communications… I cannot wait to embed them in next year’s practice.

Here’s my effort:

This is a drawing of me, on the left, and my colleagues Chris O’Reilly and Tom Burns with whom I am doing a lot of work at the moment – especially with digital artefacts. I have done this as a ‘blind drawing’ and watercolour. Blind drawing is where you look at what you are drawing – but not at the picture developing on the paper – and you try to keep your pen on the paper as well. What I like about blind drawing is that it cannot be a realistic representation of the object that you are drawing. You are released from accuracy and into exploration. You never know what the piece is going to look like… You may not even like the picture that emerges – at first. So I find that blind drawing becomes a lesson in patience and joy.

This picture is deliberately not on good quality paper: there is nothing arty or iconic about it. I produced it to illustrate a conference presentation. I wanted to capture the sense of a moment, snatched and dashed down; a contingent, passing and ephemeral moment. I wanted it to be our Team – but also to illustrate that anyone can draw something. I love the freedom of blind drawing - and the child-like quality of 'colouring in' the drawing once I have done it. When I do this I am that child again, totally absorbed, lost in the moment of fierce and purposeful play. I am definitely hoping for more of this fierce play through this course.

Writing Development - New Media - Digital Artefacts - Trialling Vocaroo

Today I am attempting to produce an audio blog.
I have talked about writing development and the use of new media.
I have recorded this using the open source recording facility: Vocaroo.
The eight minute recording can be accessed here (I hope!):

http://s1.vocaroo.com/media/download_temp/Vocaroo_s1fpjASJDCp7.mp3

The recording covers:

My job and tile:
I used to be the Coordinator for Development - but on the deletion of our Learning Development Unit, I was absorbed in to the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). I have a brief to work with staff and students: improving the chances of student success at University - and working with staff to embed good practice within the curriculum.

Where writing happens at University:
Writing happens everywhere at the University - learning/writing/academic development is embedded in and across the curriculum. At the same time, we in CELT offer:

• Preparation for HE programme: We run a pre-sessional: where students rehearse notemaking, reading, presentations, positive thinking - and academic writing. with the writing, we explore attitudes to writing - and engage in writing. I like to demonstrate that writing happens when we make it happen (and writing as a learning process)
• The Study Hub. We have built a supportive website for students...
• 'Studying at University', on the Hub, has information on studying and writing - with video clips, information, activities - and the recommendation that students tweet, FB or blog about their learning experiences.
• Writing Clinics: whilst rejecting the medical model - we use this shorthand to offer one-to-one support for students. We offer feedback on their writing and push them to do better. Whilst resource intensive, such one-to-one work can be especially transformative.
• Stuff support: We work with subject academics to embed good practice - and hopefully elements of our Study Hub - within their own teaching.

The use of new media
We do use new media to support the development of student writing - with many staff building in wikis and blogs as part of the student learning and engagement process. At least one member of staff has won a National Teaching Fellowship based upon the development and impact of his student blog writing practice.

Alternative assignments
At the same time, I think that we can use new media to develop alternative assignments for students. There will always be the settng of essays, reports and exams - but I am lobbying to get more staff setting the design and development of a teaching/learning resource or the production and critique of a digital artefact as the assignment.

To support this:
I can deliver Draw to Learn sessions with students - helping them conceptualise  and communicate ideas visually. I have also delivered Digital Artefacts workshops with colleagues Chris O'Reilly and Tom Burns - and students have produced some wonderful work from these. The next step is to run these workshops for staff such that they can have the confidence and joy of embedding alternative assessments.

#edcmooc
Alongside this - I would like to embed practice gained from the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) delivered through Coursera by Edinburgh University - where the assignment was to produce a Digital Artefact - and to peer review three other artefacts. That is, the peer review was seen as part of the learning process.  I would recommend a MOOC like this to anyone interested in exploring new media for teaching, learning and assessment: the best way to learn the digital is to do the digital.

What I forgot to say...
... in the audio-blog was that we have several other strategies in place for supporting the development of writing. We have also developed a Peer Mentoring in Practice accredited module where second year students support the transition of a specific cohort of first year students - and we support the Mentors in developing supportive writing strategies with their mentees.


We also run Writing Groups for staff and students creating a space in which writing can happen. My colleague John Hilsdon from Plymouth University and the Association for Learning Development in HE has run Virtual Writing retreats for academic writers. Other colleagues - Sally Mitchell, Julian Ingle and others from Queen Marys University of London - run Writing Retreats for students - including STEM students...
  And finally
It has been interesting using new media - especially Vocaroo - to produce this blog on using new media to support student writing. Be kind - it is frightening to cast my very first audio-blog out there into the ether. (That's a north London accept - by the way.). Finally, I am always interested in working with other people interested in developing these ideas - so do get in contact.

#edcmooc & #aldcon: creative teaching, learning and assessment

For a long time we have been advocating creative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment. We have built active and creative learning strategies into our teaching – and share those with other members of staff as part of our CPD work in the University. The #edcmooc has been the final piece of the jigsaw showing how to really scaffold the production of teaching and learning resources or digital artefacts – and #aldcon was where we showcased the work.

Teaching, learning… and assessment

In practice, developing creative approaches has meant advocating the teaching of visual, key word notemaking and scaffolding reading for students in ways that foreground the active and interactive nature of reading and the ‘point’ of the task.

We teach drawing and writing as thinking and exploratory processes and encourage students to keep visually stimulating and useful learning journals. At every stage we  emphasise the ‘what, why and how’ of activities – for if people can understand these – they can decide for themselves what to do and how.

In the last few years we have been setting as an assessment the production of a teaching and learning resource as an alternative to a traditional essay – though we still offer the essay as an option for those who can express themselves well in this academic form. We like to set the artefact option for those who either do not particularly enjoy essays or who want to stretch themselves in other ways. We feel that at this moment the teaching and learning resource option allows for more creativity and originality.

The essay is a long-established academic assessment engine with a heavy load of expectations and assumptions. Whilst we know that students gain more marks when they successfully take risks – taking risks with form and style in the essay is generally a mistake! However, if we as staff can let go of some of our assumptions and expectations, we can allow students to take risks in the design of a resource – and this can stimulate their engagement and pleasure in an assignment.

The design of an artefact can involve more than regurgitating what students have learned – it can be a thoughtful condensation of what they see as the key aspects of a course or part of a course and a multimodal expression of how to get others to engage with the ideas.

Of course as the whole of teaching becomes more digitally literate this sort of work will be introduced in primary schools and the academy will colonise and corral it. However, at this moment and at this time – this has not yet happened. So this is an exciting time to be introducing this new form of assessment (and I am loving it).

#aldcon: A creative approach to producing empowered students

With colleagues Tom Burns and Chris O’Reilly, we brought this to the Association of Learning Development Conference, Plymouth, March 2013. In our presentation we explored our take on a creative approach to teaching, learning and assessment. This included a creative way for academic staff and learning technologists to work together in ways that allowed everybody to bring their whole person and all their expertise to the table – rather than, say, for the academics to assume all the pedagogic and curriculum expertise and to ‘use’ the ‘technologist’ to ‘only’ contribute the ‘e’ bit of the equation.

In our case, Tom Burns and I as Education and Learning Developers worked with Chris O’Reilly as the Information and Systems Services person as a Team. As resources get more and more constrained, it has never been more necessary to stress the real value of all the people in a University who contribute to the students’ learning experiences and to the richness of their learning journeys. We wanted people to see the complex nature of the work that we had undertaken together – and how this had happened over time – and that it worked both within and outwith the curriculum.

Picture 1: The Team: Sandra, Chris and Tom.

Over the last two years we have worked together to build resources, to shape new modules and to develop interactive workshops to support staff and students.

Specifically, we have:

* Built our ‘metaphor maker’, the AniMet Challenge – as an OER online resource designed to support students in the research and development of learning strategies and resources:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/animation/

Picture 2: ‘Blind drawing’ of the AniMet Challenge website. NB: We use blind drawing to show that *everyone* really can draw something!

* Built and extended our Study Hub – our student-facing website that has resources and activities designed to stimulate student thinking about studying – and that this year we have started populating with student voices about approaches to study:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/studyhub/index.html 

Picture 3: The Study Hub

* Produced our ‘New to Uni’ video to showcase student experiences of those first few weeks – and to link to the Study Hub. Scroll down to see video:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/studyhub/chat.html

* Produced a 30-week, 30-credit first year module, Becoming an Educationalist’, that actively teaches creative and emancipatory practice, that uses this to seed real student research in to study strategies – and that supports students in the building of digital artefacts informed by their own research.

Picture 4: Becoming an Educationalist (blind drawing of my nephew – shh – don’t tell him – he looks nothing like this – but he is a student on that programme).

* Produced a complementary 15-week, 15-credit second year module: Peer Mentoring in Practice – whose students mentored the first year ‘Becoming’ students – and who received a shadow creative curriculum alongside their mentoring training such that they could reinforce creative practices if they chose with the first year students.

Picture 5: Peer Mentoring in Practice

* Encouraged those first and second year students to be videoed for the Study Hub – so that their voices were heard in the University and that they did start to feel that they were in partnership with us in this meaningful project. Check out ‘Studying at University: http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/studyhub/studying.html

* Developed Digital Artefacts workshops showcasing the ‘Creativity’ animation that Chris made and #edcmooc artefacts to reveal to students many different ways of producing their own artefacts.  Specifically, Chris made this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phn9I40fWxg&feature=youtu.be

And recommends this:

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/

And now we’ve done these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHh4xN9QS7s&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvbXdxv4u08&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQkCbXHGWtI&feature=youtu.be

* The Artefacts workshops as well as building on Chris’ excellent work - are all supported by active reflection on – and using – the digital artefacts produced on the #edcmooc – and I really cannot think of a better way of preparing myself to support his new phase in my own teaching development. As I said in the blog post below (which also links to some really useful online resources with which to make digital artefacts):

The Conference Workshop

At the conference we discussed how we worked together – and what we think that we have achieved and why we did what we did… We pre-saged the final the activity by asking people at the beginning to make creative, visual, dialogic and heteroglossic notes upon the following:

What is creativity in teaching, learning and assessment?

What are the benefits of …

What are the potential risks…

What next?

Picture 6: #aldcon: workshop participants drawing their reflections.

For the activity, we asked people in their groups to use their visual notes and collectively draw their answers to any or all of the questions. We then filmed participants drawing their thoughts on the whiteboard – and recorded the participant’s commentary.

Picture 7: Drawing on the board – Chris filming – the story begins.

The film itself will be speeded up – and the voiceover put upon the final version. As I write this, Chris is still editing the films – and very soon we should be able to add them in the Comments below.

By jove – we’ve got it!

Hopefully everybody can see just how do-able is the making of a digital artefact. I hope it also demonstrates how at this moment if at no other, just how engaging and creative this process can be.

Picture 7: Connecting the pictures – telling a story

Picture 8: It all gets very dialogic and heteroglossic

Picture 9: Plusses and minuses of creative approaches

Here’s some #edcmooc stuff reprised 

Here is my artefact:

#EDCMOOC – in YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX282KWbesg

And a short one Andy made in GoAnimate of some of my text:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfx1_fVZbyI

And here are some cool examples from my classmates:

With apologies to all the other brilliant ones out there that I have not seen – or that I did see and forgot to copy and paste here…

Two-minute video: Log In: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akQl-e1Awk

Angela’s Thinglink:

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/360982057624535042#tlsite

Ary’s_stunner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=II_1nwaTZBQ

David Hopkins’ one: http://prezi.com/e9y6ipsovanb/digital-artefact-edcmooc/ 

(And his whole blog on the topic: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/digital-artefact-for-edcmooc-wk-5/ )

Fran Monaghan’s VoiceThread:

http://voicethread.com/?#q.b4186028.i21377601

And June B’s blog plus vimeo artefact: http://www.jubo.co.uk/blog/2013/02/edcmooc-digital-artefact/  

And Ess Garland’s timeline: 

http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/101035/Edmooc-Digital-Artifact/#vars!date=2013-02-28_06:07:26

Kevin Eagan’s unique take http://digitalmarginalia.tumblr.com/post/44112018112/why-digital-marginalia-matters  

Theo Kuechel’s PinBoard:

https://pinterest.com/theok2/education-and-digital-culture/

The University Bog’s post and artefact:

http://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2013/02/25/digital-interactions/  

Cathleen Nardi’s, Change your thoughts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jOC_BDhdMM&feature=youtu.be

Amy’s Digital Life artefacts:

The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0-7YAxxDY

The process: http://amysmooc.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/digital-life-an-augmented-music-video-parody-edcmooc-final-artifact/

And finally…

If you have been engaged or intrigued or interested by any of these topics – please leave a comment with your contact details – or email us at London Met – and we are more than happy to discuss our work and share our resources with you – and even more delighted if you wish to discuss your approach and share your resources with us.

And do check out #aldcon for posts on the Conference – and the ALDinHE website – for the Conference resource will be available from there very soon.