The John Lewis Partnership operates a UK-wide chain of upmarket John Lewis department stores and Waitrose grocery supermarkets. It’s unusual in that the business is owned by its 76,000+ employees, and also unusual in that it seems to be thriving in these very tough economic conditions.

As regular, long-standing readers will know (hello, and how are you both?), I’ve taken an interest in new providers of UK higher education – notably BPP and New College of the Humanities.

In that light, a partnership model for a new university seems very interesting indeed. But I can see some very formidable barriers in the way.

We are all John Lewis now (fsvo ‘we’)

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said this that he wants a John Lewis economy. He seems to be talking about employee share ownership, which is to my mind an entirely different thing to John Lewis. Employee share ownership can be a good thing – e.g. with a small startup. But it’s more problematic for large companies, where it’s easy for employees to end up with all their eggs in one basket financially: if their company goes bust, they’re left without their savings and pension as well as their source of income. This is widely regarded as very imprudent financial management. Also, employee share ownership (outside of small startups) is a tiny fraction of total ownership, so the employees get the risk exposure but little ownership influence. There’s also the question of how to get there from here. If employees are to get more shares, it must mean they get less salary, or are (effectively) paid more. I’m not sure either of those is a particularly easy sell in the current climate.

The difference with John Lewis is that it’s all the way: the business is (effectively) owned by the employees, and nobody else. John Lewis is owned by a trust which exists for the benefit of the partners – which is every single employee after a qualifying period. They control whole thing. No private equity, no shareholders. That gives a very real and substantial sense of ownership and control.

I think it’s a little bit of a hostage to fortune to hold up a single organisation as the solution to all ills, particularly when that organisation is unusual. That applies whether it’s John Lewis or the Open University.

And even  Charlie Mayfield, chair of the John Lewis Partnership, has said [FT] - in response to Nick Clegg – “I don’t believe the John Lewis model is a panacea. It is not right for everybody.” I don’t think it’s right for all universities. But I think it might work for a university.

New funding, new universities?

There have been several waves of ‘new’ universities in the UK, and so far as I can make out they are always regarded with suspicion and hostility on arrival. The first I can think of is New College, Oxford, which was shockingly new in the C14th when it was founded but is rather less so now, and can probably now be safely classed as ancient, along with the flood of half-a-dozen-or-so non-Oxbridge universities (St Andrew’s, Glasgow, Edinburgh etc) that followed in the subsequent two centuries. Then the redbricks (Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds etc) turn up in the early C20th and are regarded as a bit sus until the arrival in the 1960s/70s of the Robbins Report universities (UEA, Sussex, York, etc), who then go on to become ‘pre-1992′ institutions when the polytechnics convert.

Now we have another wave.

The UK – or, more accurately, England – is well underway with another transformation of higher education, where the vast majority of funding will come from students (via Government-arranged loans) rather than via arms-length funding bodies.  David Willetts (Minister of State for Universities and Science) has been banging on about wanting to open up for new providers; this reorganisation is expressly designed to make it possible for this to happen. So new entrants are likely to be showered with Governmental blessing and good wishes (though not cold hard cash).

As I’ve said before, if you can do it, now is a pretty good time to start a business: the technical recession is over, though growth remains sluggish; high and rising unemployment is likely to make it easy to hire people; and there’s time to get an organisation together and in good financial shape before the boom time returns. (If, indeed, it does.)

A John Lewis University

So what about a John Lewis University? Or, less brand-challengingly, a partnership university?

I think there’s a lot to be said for a university that is owned by its employees. The idea of a self-governing community of scholars is not a new one, and is one that many academics like the sound of, but it’s not at all how universities are managed at the moment.

Imagine – as a not-public-sector outfit, regulation would be much lighter. The governing Senate would have real power. There would be serious scrutiny of leadership and management.

Research might be a big issue: opting out of the REF would probably also opt you out of Research Council funding, with all the esteem it attracts, and while charities, foundations and the private sector are freer to fund what research they like from whom they like, they will notice that. Across the sector, teaching subsidises research, largely through academic time. This, of course, could happen with a partnership university, but if the money is all coming from students the community would have to ask very hard questions about how much research, and what sort of research, is justified. That question is being asked in all universities, of course, and the great thing about a partnership university here would be that the community of scholars would be the ones who get to give the answer – for good or ill.

It would, of course, have to de facto buy in to the whole ‘student-as-consumer’ model, since that’s how it would have to be funded.

The major stumbling block is getting started.

Start with the money

As others have noted, converting an existing university to this sort of model is very, very difficult. Not just the legal and administrative stuff, which would be fearsome (amending Charters and Statutes is famously hard). For one thing, it would mean transferring the current assets of a charitable body to its employees, which is rather problematic. I would guess it wouldn’t work, either. You’d need to make sure that the people involved were entirely sold on the idea and committed to it: there’d be a very rough ride to start with, and not everybody wants to be involved in the decisions that affect them.

Where do you get the money to start from? You can’t raise money from outside commercial or mainstream investors – they’d want a share in the business, and the whole point is not to have outside shareholders. Commercial credit or bonds run in to essentially the same problem: they’d require a fair degree of constraint over the organisation – at minimum they could bring things to a grinding halt by calling in the loan if they disagreed with a decision. Paying the bondholders would have to be the main priority, and that would quickly turn the organisation in to an ersatz private for-profit company.

A network of small individual owners – whether shares or bonds – is less instantly unappealing. You could imagine a whip-round of supportive members of the public, academics who like the idea but don’t feel they can join in, parents, even students (not that they tend to have money). That might work as a means of raising funding, and there may well be milage in the idea of a university created by public subscription, but it’s not the idea I’m chasing in this particular post.)

A wealthy philanthropist could work nicely – and is in fact exactly how John Lewis started. John Spedan Lewis, son of the founder, essentially gave it away to the employees.

But absent a fairy godfunder (a term I can’t believe doesn’t exist in search engines at the moment), the only way forward is capital and capital-in-kind from the founding employees.

Academics aren’t, by and large, hugely wealthy, but they’re not – on average – on the breadline. Salaries are fragmented these days, but if we take point 43 on the national spine as a mid-point-average, it’s £44,166 a year, which is close to the top decile of individual incomes.  (There are, of course, many many people teaching in higher education on much lower incomes, paid hourly with negligible job security – that’s rather the antithesis of a partnership-of-employees.) Raising a year’s salary is hard, especially in the current credit climate, and with so many people with very serious housing-related debts. I can just imagine the look on the face of a bank’s Customer Relationship Manager when you try to explain that you want to take out a loan of more than a year’s salary … oh, and you also plan to resign from your job. Any credit would have to be secured on the academic’s personal assets, not the new university (or the ownership model doesn’t work). So I think we could use a figure of £50k as the very top of what a real believer in the project could chip in as founding capital.

New College of the Humanities started with seed capital of £200k, which sounds encouraging … except that it then promptly got £10m of private equity to cover two years’ costs. I don’t know how many employees it has or expects to have, but I’d bet it’s less than the 200 you’d need to raise £10m at £50k a pop.

So at the very least, a partnership university isn’t going to be able to afford to spend as lavishly as NCH on things like ‘star’ academics, premises, and advertising. On the other hand, in the current climate, it could rely on extensive coverage in the press just by existing.

The basic economics should work just fine, once it’s going (if it’s going). There’s no fundamental reason why a partnership university should have a cost structure much greater than a conventional university or private sector outfit, and I’ve not heard any universities saying they can’t afford to supply an education at the price on offer. There are some structural constraints though. There’s getting started, which will require a substantial cushion of cash. (The process of getting money to universities from Student Finance England – who make the loans – is unclear but is already complex and lengthy.) There’s economy of scale. It’s unlikely that a partnership university could offer an OU model at the price point the OU is doing (£5k FTE), since that is built on substantial economies of scale. There’s also the possible challenge of deep-pocketed commercial rivals engaging in predatory underpricing to try force a weakly-capitalised partnership university out of business. But I suspect unmet demand for places is so high, and the commercial sector so small, that this isn’t a serious worry in the short term.

What about the workers?

I’m also not sure there’s a lot of suitably-capable people who are – or could be convinced to be – keen to do this sort of thing.

Most academics aren’t particularly entrepreneurial, or they’d be entrepreneurs, not academics. There are a handful of notable exceptions, of course, but they are very much the exception.

While many if not quite all academics will whinge and moan about bureaucracy gone mad, unaccountable leadership, creeping managerialism, and an overweening commercialisation, I suspect not all would actually like to have to make all the decisions themselves – just the ones they disagree with. The great benefit, of course, is that if they had to make the decisions, they’d be able to own it, and would probably be far more effective in carrying it out. But that’s not how everyone wants to work.

There’s also a time/capital issue. By the time you’ve worked your way to an established academic position, and thus be in a position to raise largish sums of money like £50k, or even just to be in a position to work for a long time without a salary, you’re likely to have acquired substantial costs and/or dependents, and thus be disinclined to take large risks.

Another problem is belief and buy in. It’d need to be a bunch of academics very committed to students, and to public goods and principles – otherwise they’d be better off working in public sector universities. But most academics who think that way are very unhappy about the change in university funding (I know I am), and may well be very ambivalent at best about being perceived as supporting or validating the approach.

Will-ett happen?

There’s also the question of public and wider sector support. A university like this would need substantial approval, or there’d be no point – and no students – in it. A commercial enterprise can appeal to those who are ideologically keen on the private sector; a partnership university that can’t convince those who are ideologically keen on the public sector – including most of those in conventional universities – is going to struggle.

So with all these hurdles, I’m starting to suspect it’s not going to happen. The idea has been kicking around for a while – there was an article in the Times Higher Education floating it over a year ago, and I stumbled on some stuff by Molly Scott Cato of similar vintage – she’s clearly not forgotten as she wrote to The Guardian on the topic this week. According to the logs, I made the first draft of this blog post in April 2011, but didn’t finish or publish it. There’s doubtless many other people who have considered very similar ideas.

But nothing has happened yet – to my knowledge.

It would be extremely interesting and exciting if it did. The whole range of what’s needed to set up a new university – and one with such a special nature – is daunting but would be a fascinating challenge. It’d take a lot to wrench me away from the OU – I very much believe in what we’re doing here. But it’s very far from being the only great social good to be done in higher education, and a partnership university – with the right ethos about student learning, technology, and access – could be a force for good.

I deduce from the fact that I’m not proposing to get on and do it, and neither is anyone else, that it’s not going to happen.

Unless, of course, a fairy godfunder happens to read this and wants to support it. If you’re a wealthy philanthropist, do feel free to get in touch – I’d be happy to discuss this half-baked idea. I’m sure all of my objections can easily be overcome with shedloads of cash.

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This work by Doug Clow is copyright but licenced under a Creative Commons BY Licence.
No further permission needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it’s nice to be notified if you do use it.

‘Losing is fun’ comes from Dwarf Fortress‘s original documentation. Losing can be fun – for the player. But also for the creator? And what are people trying to achieve when they make a game, and what do players want?

Dwarf Fortress is a work of art in a way that’s uncommon. Beautiful to look at – e.g. Myst when it came out – as the typical standard for games as art. But modern art isn’t beautiful to look at – think pickled sharks, not beautiful background.

Tarn Adams, the creator, is the key figure, talks a lotvabout his life including Scamps the cat. Dropped out from successful academic track. First game had small following, modified to make it more and more complicated. So Dwarf Fortress is a sequel, downloadable for free – that was the original intention. Usually ‘free to play’ games are ad based. Dwarf Fortress has none, only developer’s Paypal account, makes about $30k/y. Industry very interested in the game – offered $300k franchise deal, but turned down because he feared it might reduce donations. Also offered developer post at a major dev company, turned down because he wanted to work full time on Dwarf Fortress. Does very little to make it popular.

Minecraft, hugely successful, was developed by a fan of Dwarf Fortress. Magic The Gathering – trading card game – the creator is also interested in Dwarf Fortress.

That strategy wouldn’t look unusual if it was a painting, or a novel. We assume people develop games to be popular, or make money – but not art.

Original inspiration: Nethack! And other Roguelike games. Plot isn’t set, not fixed mazes – generated anew when you play. All based on ASCII characters – @ for humanoids. Move using vi editor keys – hjkl. It’s virtually unplayable – your character very likely to be randomly killed in the first part of the game. Then very boring mid-part of the game, before you finally get to complete it. Cult appeal.

Dwarf Fortress graphics very much inspired by that in visual style, and gameplay. It’s a 3D world, but you only see it in 2D slices. You have to hold the vision in your head. Gameplay all via key presses and navigating a series of menus. ’The only reason Toady [Tarn] gave Dwarf Fortress an interface was so he could test it’. It’s just a side benefit that it means that other people can play too.

World creation is extremely detailed, and complex. It simulates geology, and history – 250-1000 years of history, civilisations and figures who thrive and fall, and so on. Legends that you can encounter. There are three languages, so things have names in those languages, based on the history. You get other people coming to visit – wandering monsters to humans. The megabeast that wanders in will have a whole history, wandering across the whole map. Interacting with a large history.

Looks simple, but is incredibly demanding in processing power. The detail is in terms of the simulation – not rendering polygons. It tracks everything each individual dwarf does, their history, and the influence on their psychology. Romantic and friendship relationships. If they get too unhappy, they get destructive – might smash something up, or go mad. Can get in to a tantrum spirals, where a dwarf getting annoyed triggers a whole cascade of tantrums.

Nobles might turn up, once things get larger, and start demanding things. All at a ‘completely insane level of detail’.

Fan-created tutorial videos. Two modes – fortress (where you build a fortress), and adventure (where you move across the world). The combat is at a similarly silly level of detail.

Tarn Adams wakes up around 4pm, starts coding, at some point goes for his one meal a day, then codes until he crashes out around 6-7am. But the software is still alpha. It’s been ‘being released’ since about 2004. Estimated time for beta is about 20 years. Bits of it are constantly breaking.

A fan has created a 3D graphic visualiser. Also someone’s created Dwarf Therapist – a nicer interface to manipulate what each dwarf is doing. Tarn has (pre)released a game with an almost unusable interface, people loved it, so some have created graphics, and more usable interfaces.

Not released as open source, because Tarn fears losing income, and control – wants just a single vision.

Implications

Being released in a terribly broken state, is terribly boring, gets everything wrong – but has a small number of fanatical fans. (As opposed to a large number of casual fans like Angry Birds.) Works for the creator. His quest for autonomy is driving all this. Not dealing with the bits of the game he doesn’t care about. Bourdieu says this is what’s most important for the art world: rejection of popular, commercial value; art for art’s sake. That’s what we see here. Is fun, on its own terms – losing is fun.

Gets respect from other games producers. Artists want to be appreciated by other artists. Getting some mainstream world recognition. Interviewed by games sites, but this summer by the New York Times. Had Dwarf Fortress as an exhibit in NY Museum of Modern Art.

Questions

The community is really interesting. The relationship between them and Tarn is really important. He often allows things unexpected to happen. E.g. created a Necromancer that could raise the dead. Made rule – as long as the thing was alive, has a head or hands, can be raised. Put a dead body in the world, butchered, Necromancer raises a walking skeleton, and a walking hollow skin. Decided to keep that; it came out of the rules and was interesting. The dwarfs keep getting eaten by carp. Carp are carnivorous and human-sized; discovered that they eat the dwarves. Undead rules – they don’t mind on land or under water. Apply that to zombie fish that can go on land – zombie sharks that come on to the beach, or skeleton sharks, that come on land.

J: Is very open in some parts of the process.

Yes. Takes ideas from forums and implements them. Pays brother small salary to write short stories based in the world. Analyse stories, pick out things that’d be fun to have in the games. All posted online.

S: What does conceiving of it as art buy you?

Partly an explanation of Tarn’s motivations. Pursuit of own vision, creative autonomy, acts in a similar way to modern artists. Rejected commercialisation.

Yishay: Why wouldn’t you see it as art? I find it intuitive to relate to it as art

Jon: The conversational collaboration – with the audience, players, fans, taking account of what they think – is unusual in art.

Depends what you mean. Bordieu says artists produce for each other; talk about each others’ work. In that sense they are having a conversation within a smaller circle. It’s only people who make the investment to engage who have an influence.

J: Very niche community. How many play?

Nobody really knows. Number of downloads is meaningless – most people won’t play it. Two main tutorial producers on YouTube, each has many hits for first tutorial, which then trails off. 40k views, trails off to 10k; other nearly 500k, trails off more slowly to 10k.  Give an idea of size.

Yishay: How does someone become a Dwarf Fortress player? Incredible investment just to play the game.

I’m a casual Dwarf Fortress player. Started when had a lot of time with nothing to do – wife and son were staying with her parents. Requires a lot of time investment.

J: Other player’s stories?

Worth looking in to. Get hints. When most recent version released, May, one person posted saying they live in a trailer but still going to donate.

Rebecca: Do you have to be actively involved or do it in the background?

Have to be quite involved – e.g. while I was talking to you, the traders left before I had time to buy things, so there’s no food and they’ll likely starve. Does require a level of attention. Something Tamagotchi about it.

J: Reminds me of The Sims.

Trying to keep the entities in the games happy. Like when people post blog stories about The Sims – e.g. someone trying to create homeless people in the game. Absurdities from the simulations, where it fails. Like Boatmurdered fortress – a lot of counter-intuitive behaviour. Human interaction with the Sims. Not quite like real people.

Doug: Emergent properties from rules.

Everyone likes it when it surprises you.

Someone: Stories, when things change, evolve; also the game developer’s ideas. Updates that change things, and do you want it.

One effect of new version is the game is less violent, it’s harder to beat the goblins, so focus more on the pacifist elements of the game. So if wanted more fighting, stick with earlier version.

Someone: Autonomy, and how that rubs off on the player.

You can play earlier versions. Possibly a nice introduction.

J: Example of a guy who left the door open so the goblins came in. Is it losing is fun, or the challenge.

Interesting thing is the stories, which tend to end in disaster. Doesn’t matter – like Greek tragedies. The guy did the door to make the story more interesting. The best way to defend your fortress is with traps, but a perfectly defended fortress isn’t very interesting.

The more popular tutorial, I don’t like, he shows you how to beat the game. It’s a walkthrough that almost ruins it. Eventually you dig all the way down to hell and the demons come out. But this guy blocks off hell with an exploit – demons can destroy any object on the same level as them, but he placed a hatch on the floor above (which they couldn’t destroy). So changed story – no longer a vicious end. Then caused millions of tons of rocks to collapse on hell which destroyed all the demons.

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This work by Doug Clow is copyright but licenced under a Creative Commons BY Licence.
No further permission needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it’s nice to be notified if you do use it.

Some history, some progress reports, and some live demos.

Mobile Connections website is the best place for information and updates on what’s happening.

QR code for the Mobile Connections site

For the last 5 years, Rhodri has been coordinating teaching and learning at OU, careful to say we support mobile learners. They’re not the mediated activities you can do face-to-face, with the location-based/classroom stuff that many examples use. We need to apply that to the distance learning context for the OU. More an entitlement for students, than providing mobile learning opportunities. Providing a platform.

The Past: History

Student mobile device usage has shot up over time.

Previous projects, from about 10y ago – IET’s H802, the DEEP project. Ideas about working with documents on small screens.

History: colour screens arrived. Then not just for PIM (contacts, diary), more multimedia capable. Then move to not just standalone, but converge with cameras. Move to create own content on the move, not just consuming content. Connectivity then became a major blockage.

Moving in to work with our own students new at this point (about 2006 or so) – handcrafted ebooks for Palm, packaged elearning resources. Individual loading on to devices. Podcasting was an early activity, which has built up. More staff development, Digilab, more time was spent showing staff what was going on in the wider world – e.g. citizen journalism, citizen science.

Then delivery through the VLE – podcasting. Then making our elearning material more mobile-friendly, or mobile-optimised.

Around 2008, was a switch. Student home let you switch in to mobile view, then became autodetect (with option to change if you wanted). There are students who still want desktop view even on a mobile device. In one month are now getting traffic we got in a quarter last year. Numbers aren’t as high as on the VLE, but still increasing dramatically.

Also tracking what technolgoy they’re using. For October 2011, our web stats for mobile access show iOS is the main use (14k pcm), then Android (7.5k), then BlackBerry (3k), Symbian (1k) then very low (Windows Mobile 100!). Windows 277k, Mac 23k, Mobile 28k, Linux 4k, Tablet 9k.

Conversion rates are about 50% – of those who go to Student Home and then go through to the VLE.

Student survey in 2009 to ask them what they are doing and want to do – after period of getting VLE up and running effectively. Not just dumping PDFs on the website, move to structured content.

Main was keeping up with assessment results, and keeping up with forums. Second, was with tracking tasks – the tick boxes for you to track your own progress, matching mobile and desktop views. Third was using the study planner. Using the actual resources was wanted.

The Present: VLE

Then about 1.5y ago, new mobile view of the VLE, tested. Launchpad view. Wanted students to be able to contribute as well as browsing/reading. Can see a demo view here – stick the course code (including presentation – e.g. TU100-11J) and get a url that shows the demo. May need to add ‘&mobile=1′ to end of url.

Design idea to keep structure similar between desktop and mobile. Some won’t work – e.g. Elluminate synchronous chat. Lots more information in the blog here.

Next stage – new version to last, future-proofed work with L&T systems.

Survey of students again in 2010, N=500. How did they use it? Not just commuting, but on the sofa, multitasking, etc. Mobile phone contracts mostly; touch phones going up, smart phone (keyboards) going down. Device changing slowing down to more like 2y than 18 months, probably contract-driven. Tablet agnostic at the time, but things may have changed. Main driver: assessment! Reported more frequent visits. Most activity was updates and forum posts, getting to the study planner. Some students very concerned not to be railroaded in to a particular view – flexibility very important (so they can switch to full view). Our strategy to be context-aware, but allow them to break out if they want to. Anecdotally, reports with tablets is that they see a desktop style view, so expect same facilities – so Flash often won’t work, complex web technologies won’t work; and some parts work but the submission/completion stage doesn’t! Students didn’t want to be locked in, but use of standard formats so they can use their own stuff.

Students much happier to use an OU app to contribute than using an intermediary like Flickr or Picasa. Even more so for assessment.

Still in unpublicised beta. Early adopters happy with a bit of self-help and FAQ support. Our strategy – we’ll give general advice, but device-specific stuff is unsupportable by the OU’s normal model, so enable peer support through specialist forums.

The Future: VLE2

It’s mobile optimised. Mobile-friendly is we hope it just works. Optimised means taking the feedback, highlighting stuff used a lot.

Desktop and mobile views developed together, navigation informed by each other. Mockups, usability testing. Went live in October 2011!

Desktop – three columns. Can see mobile interface. First course on new VLE is D171.

Mobile – single column. Launchpad. Tab view on higher-end devices: Overview, Planner, Forum, Resources.

Wanted to allow edit of wiki on a mobile device. But had to show plain text version when editing, which is all the HTML code – which makes it far too easy to wreck the whole wiki.  So have to provide read-only view; can only edit from desktop. If you switch to desktop view and edit, it’ll try to do something, but the WYSIWYG editor won’t work and it’ll give you the plain text view. It works Ok if the document isn’t too complex and you are Ok with tags.

Can contribute in forums, and blog comments. More to come in future releases.

Screencast from Rhodri that goes through all the features here. And lots more on the blog.

Demo of an iCMA/Moodle Quiz on an Android phone (emulator). It’ll try to be as faithful as possible. Navigation through questions. Text-based response can be submitted easily. Simple text response is fine. Graphics or multimedia work if it can be shown. Radiobuttons or check boxes work fine. If quesiton type not supported, get a prompt ‘This question is not supported in mobile view’. Fine for formative. But best redirect to desktop if summative and/or time-limited.  Anything involving e.g. OpenMark, or more complex in terms of text analysis, or drag-and-drop – doesn’t work. Yet!

Principles of mobile support

Not just informal word-of-mouth stuff. Online Computing Guide for general how-to stuff on desktop view. Have LTS Helpdesk, Student Services, Tutors, Faculties, all playing a part. Students probably don’t care who the info comes from, just want pragmatic answer at point of need. Even more crucial in mobile.

Transaction cost idea – moving from on site to another, not just the data cost, but greater risk of getting lost in the information architecture. We have up to 7 different sites for advice. Terrible on mobile, so working to a single mobile support structure.

Four key areas – PC4Study (will be replaced soon) – official generic OU guidance. How-to info in Online Computing Guide. Then Self-Help/FAQs through Help system. Finally, for device-specific, peer support through VLE forum. Stitch them together to be navigable. Still work in progress here, some practical issues outstanding.

As soon as we launch officially, we will have the expectation of support.

Coordination

Coordinate it from learner perspective, and institutional. Mobile Connections site is bringing things together – ORO, Cloudworks, OU blogs, eLearning Community, M Tech SIGs, etc. Issue when things break (e.g. Delicious!).

What is our strategy for mobile?

We have principles, convergence but not single strategy statement yet - mobile friendly, to mobile optimised. VLE is optimised. As is Library website, was at previous IET Tech Coffee Morning. Plan to move from single mobile view, to multiple optimisations for three devices – basic phones (low end), smart phones (middle end), touch phones (high end). Mobile service, rather than teaching & learning. Based on Mobile Oxford approach.

Structure is a Drupal site with OUICE styling to deliver in mobile views, should work from end of the month. Autodetection with breakout to desktop view if you want.

Have standard OU header and footer for mobile. OU sign-in has been optimised too. And OUICE has been improved too. Enables OU public sites to be more mobile-friendly. Takes two-panel view, moves navigation to bottom of content. If you shrink window to a certain size (or only have a certain size), it flips to a mobile view.

Mobile apps and third parties

Most of our stuff is the mobile web, is good enough in UK and rest of Europe. Web apps to bridge new things – pull down content in to an app. OU news, study at the OU. Working with Google on Google Docs, Picasa, YouTube. Likely to adopt in 2012, using their stuff for mobile. Have edit capability too, in the pipeline.

Moodle. (And other VLE/CMSs.) They provide a website interface, with an app that connects to the interface. Fine for universities where much is mediated face-to-face. But OU needs more – Study Planner, other narrative stuff to stitch it together. Use device capabilities – phone, audio – using native phone app, then pass info to the OU VLE. Working towards this with new release from Moodle (issue with Apple and making things open source).

Native apps – appstore.open.ac.uk. Largely KMi with Faculties. Mostly iOS, but Android building up.

ePub resources. Tested in OpenLearn. Put OpenLearn eBooks in to ePub format, make available via iTunesU. ePub allows more interactive elements to be put in, not just text/images. Can embed media – file can get big. Was on iBooks. Kindle – Amazon have moved away, aim to do this but interactivity may not be there.

Mobile exposure

Make everything we do online for mobile more visible. Mobile version of home page fine for current students, but less good for showcasing what we can do. Some universities gear mobile portal at enquirers – prospectus. Some design for current students. Others provide app access, fine for services, but very much campus-based services. Plans afoot here.

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This work by Doug Clow is copyright but licenced under a Creative Commons BY Licence.
No further permission needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it’s nice to be notified if you do use it.

Things cloud sync is now in not-very-restricted beta, and seems to work Ok. Not, of course, available on the web.

Toodledo offline still not anywhere in sight, but apparently some third-party apps can provide it.

Omni Sync Server is still in beta, but seems to work Ok. Again, not available on the web.

Midnight Inbox finally released Inbox Touch for iPad v3.0, which has sync with Midnight Inbox 2.0 and Inbox Mobile 1.0 (iPhone) built in … but the latter two still aren’t released, so obviously you can’t actually sync across devices … yet. Website has updated “Coming soon” to “Coming soon – actually”.

Appigo Todo has a desktop mac app fully released, syncs with iPhone/iPad via the cloud using their own service ($20/y), Dropbox, or Toodledo.com. Presumably if via Toodledo.com that gives you a web version, which is cool.

Todo.ly is a new (to me!) web-based service – very nice interface for a web system. Can’t see any way to have it offline though.

I’ve decided, on reflection, that spending time on to-do list software is less of a priority than, you know, actually doing things I needed to do, so I’ve carried on with my current Dropbox/plain RTF system for now.

–
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It’s an interesting premise: what makes for sustainable e-learning? From the workshop flyer:

Financial challenges, market opportunities and technical innovation will drive greater use of e-learning. Some see cost-cutting as the primary driver, and fear that it will diminish the quality of the educational experience through reduced face-to-face contact. Others argue that e-learning creates new learning possibilities, and can strengthen educational quality, e.g. by enabling more rather than less learning contact with fellow students. The sustainability of e-learning is also contentious. Do virtual technologies have a lighter or heavier environmental footprint than traditional methods? And does e-learning create greater social inclusion, both globally and nationally, or will it lead to a ‘second class’ educational system with face-to-face methods reserved for an elite?

The flyer [PDF] teasingly suggests that assessment against best practice criteria “could be ‘light touch’ if the criteria were focused on the distinctive features of e-learning rather than aiming at a comprehensive QAA-style assessment”. I have my doubts – I think the distinctive features of e-learning make it more, not less important to do proper assessement. But the discussion should be interesting.

The presentations are being live-streamed on Stadium, where they’ll be available for posterity (if looking after the event, scroll back through the list of previous presentations to 1 November 2011).

Andy Lane welcomes everyone and introduces himself.

Rob Bristow – JISC

Difficult area to get hold of, but is very important work. Covers teaching, research, and the whole gamut. Sits with JISC’s institutional support area.

Suste-IT project, with Peter James. Year long look at Green ICT in HE and FE. Very useful reports. Carbon footprinting tool, and briefings and case studies. Then two phases of innovation projects.

• Research.
• Technical innovation. (geeky stuff). e.g. Interesting stuff on file storage. Print.
• Directors of Estates work. e.g. Timetabling connection to Building Management System.
• Institutional transformation – changing culture. e.g. Procurement and Scope 3 Emissions. Greening events and academic travel.

Economic Best Practice Criteria – Andy Lane, OU

Greening ICT is very wide-ranging.

Very policy-relevant – Online Learning Task Force, HEFCE. ‘Collaborate to compete‘.

He sets out a series of questions for the economics of educational systems.

Two systems to contrast.

First, traditional campus-based teaching. Producing acetates for lectures used to be complex; much simpler now. These systems are challenged by student demand.

Second, OU-style supported open learning. Mass/industrial scale. Moving from physical texts and face to face tutorials, to more online resources and online teaching.

Economic impacts: increasing VLEs leads to more time spent in preparation/selection of resources. Open Educational Resources (OER) likely to reduce time and effort here. Elearning probably changing time in physical space and travel patterns of students and staff.

Accessibility – in terms of tools, platforms, bandwidth, displaced costs e.g. printing. Logistics of synchronous conferencing is an issue.

Andy bangs the drum for OER here – good stuff. You know it makes economic sense.

Explores business models and sustainability – real question here. One answer: not many people make money by selling educational content. (My thought – Maybe not many, but a few make a lot: What about Pearson – market cap £9bn, Reed Elsevier market cap £6bn, etc?!) Other routes: embed in existing processes, Freemium model, donations, grants, free labour from volunteers. JISC Strategic Content Alliance has looked closely at this sort of thing – a series of Business modelling publications.

Flat World Knowledge – CC licenced textbooks for US market. Newish. Freemium model – printed version paid for. Have $20m VC funding.

Ends with his criteria:

• Use similar staff:student ratios to scale
• Use asynchronous communications to reduce meeting costs
• Use open source software to reduce purchase costs
• Collaborate on resource development to share costs
• Use rich media OER to save on costs
• Use HE wide digital collections of OER

Pedagogical Best Practice Criteria – Doug Clow, OU

My presentation!

Environmental Best Practice Criteria – Peter James, Bradford

Much research around the environmental impact of electronic technologies.

Sustainability of elearning matters – important to stakeholders, required by targets, question of course viability, driver of new business models, – a virtual Oxbridge? (New College of the Humanities?) Comes back at me about personal support – may not be a constraint if you drive out costs so you can have more learning support – one-to-one tutorials, small group teaching.

Question of science students: who’s the most helpful in your learning? Answer was the technical/lab support staff. Direct support is what they value. It’s not always academic who are doing it.

ICT does have a large footprint. In the UK, IT equipment, energy to factories in China – we’re using coal-fired computers, effectively.

Power usage in ICT at Sheffield – desktop PCs were just under half.  Scaled up, that’s a lot – about £100m a year energy bill for the sector’s ICT.

Assessing the shift from traditional model to OU/elearning model. Many of the benefits come from space efficiency. But also travel avoidance, print reduction. Have to ensure these greatly exceed the delivery impacts – personal computing, data centres/networks, equipment production and disposal.

Rebound effects – changing cost structures (students may take more, or more distant providers, travel more). Time is a very important in a time sense. Marchetti’s constant in urban design – extent of a city governed by one-hour one-way travel time. Was walking, now even air commuting. Making cars more efficient – leads to people buying more, using them more – so total impact goes up, not down. Can manage rebound effects, and they don’t absorb all the impact here.

Space energy considerations are important – UK office is 200-240 KWh for naturally vented; for aircon it’s 400-570. Domesting dwellings more like 300, except lower under more recent regs – down to 45 for Sweden.

People tend to exaggerate benefits from telecommunication – hypotheticals always difficult to answer. Range from low case to raw survey results was 10k to 300k tonnes of CO2 saved per year!

Not terribly helpful to come up with a single number – a travesty, too many assumptions embedded. Accept the uncertainties, come out with a range of scenarios.

The IT infrastructure – data centre efficiency is critical.

With videoconferencing, the main energy use is the monitors used, not the equipment.

Big change – development of the cloud, outsourcing. Given cooling is big issue, plan to put infrastructure in to Iceland, Finland, Norway.

Three criteria:

• Understanding of environmental footprint
• Minimising personal computing (and printing) impacts – tablets and ereaders have much lower footprint than laptops and desktops
• Energy efficient data centres – from an average PUE of 1.7 in the sector to best practice 1.2

Small Group Discussions

Task: Go through the criteria. Mix them up. Question them. Varied in any way? Other criteria that should be added? Write on the sheets, capture them later. Come up with master list on which we’ll vote later.

Very interesting discussions. Many focused on the nitty gritty, detailed business of doing good, sustainable elearning in particular contexts.

Out of the plenary discussion, we came up with some extra bits to add to my list of pedagogical criteria:

Evaluation processes (part of Enhancement)

Accessibility – include explicit mention of access considerations like access to devices, connectivity, etc.

Student development as lifelong learners – so that they can sustain themselves as independent learners

Flexibility, lifelong learning

Learning support – absolutely fundamental and critical

There was also consensus that these criteria rather miss important issues of social and cultural sustainability. The focus, fundamentally, should be on the student experience.

Next steps

The criteria will be written up. JISC will take them up and move the ideas on through their activities. Explore embedding this stuff in to things like QAA frameworks.

–
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I liveblogged his address to the OU in January 2009, when he was VC-designate, and also a keynote he gave at ALT-C in September 2009 after he’d taken up the job.

I’ve always found Martin an inspiring speaker. He sends round regular video podcasts for staff (including transcripts, which as a video-skeptic I particularly appreciate – classic example of Access For All principles there). But it’s nice to have a chance to hear him in person. Back in January, he encouraged staff to sign up to attend one of our graduation ceremonies. I always used to do this once a year but had stopped for pressure of time. So I took his advice and went to the Milton Keynes graduation ceremony, and it was as moving as I remembered – and he was a fantastic presence on the stage.

We’re in a situation of enormous uncertainty and pressure, in general (the economic situation), in the HE sector (the economic situation), in the UK HE sector (fees, the rise of the private HE sector – e.g. BPP and NCH, and the economic situation), and at the OU (fees, ELQ, and the economic situation).

I think we could do with listening to an inspiring speaker about now.

These are my liveblog notes from his address. (The talk was also webcast, and should be available for replay shortly afterwards – if you’re coming to this long after 23 September 2011, you’ll need to navigate through the list to talks from that date.)

The address was strictly ticket only … although when I showed up (nice and early to get the best blogging seat) nobody checked. I like the idea that the OU is the sort of place that you can tell people it’s ticket only and only people with tickets will turn up. It was also video linked to many of the OU’s regional offices.

“Absolutely delighted to be with you all this afternoon”, he says. Welcomes the Council members. Will be reviewing our strategic plan. His remarks will be about the OU response to changing conditions in the four nations.

Starts by introducing a student – Jadgett (?) – who comes on stage.

She’s currently studying Early Years, single mum of 2, school leaver only, nothing since (in education terms) because she became a young mum, and didn’t forsee a future in education. Lost her job last year, was in a panic – how will I provide for the children? No family support. Daughter came home with OU taster leaflet and suggested following dream of being a teacher. Didn’t know OU existed at the time. Joined up, took 11-year-old daughter’s advice. Thought she’d have to wait for the kids to leave home, great to learn with them. Has had such an impact, bond in learning with her children. Competition! Is a gift to have inspiration from your kids. Daughter entered young writers’ competition and won. Joy as a parent, taking a step in to HE has wonderful effect on kids. More confidence as a parent, as a student. Does voluntary work towards career, in children’s centres. Couldn’t have done without personal tutorial support from OU. Feels part of family she never had. Wants to give back to OU family. Says thank you for turning her dreams into a reality.

Big applause from the audience. Martin comes back on stage.

This sums up the OU – the power to transform people’s lives. Many like her. Determination. I hear these stories every time I attend a degree ceremony. The enormous pride and sense of achievement that OU graduates feel is palpable. OU is achieving great things – for the nation at large as well as for individuals. Promoting social inclusion, mobility, at scale. This is the result of our open access policy, widening participation, student support. 74k people with one A level or less will study with us. Also workforce development, economic growth, regeneration. 4/5 of FTSE100 sponsor their employees on OU programmes. Also contribution to intellectual life of nation.

Not just about teaching, research and scholarship. OER and social networking brings learning within reach of millions of informal learners.

Was hard work over many years. Present generation of OU staff and supporters, including ALs – can all feel very proud of our achievements. Thank you.

Challenges

Pause to consider challenges.

Not time to rest on our laurels, need to move with the environment. Recent report – Deloitte (2011) – Making the grade 2011 – A study of the top 10 issues facing HEIs. Focus on four of these:

1. Diversify income. Funding, fees. Reduction from governments. Increased contributions from students. They have to decide whether their investment – time, money – will pay off. Employers too. Society at large. Within the UK, different governments are making different decisions.
2. Compete for students. Increased rivalry between universities. Changing demographics. Top-tier Ok. 2nd, 3rd are competing for less-prepared students who may be price sensitive. New entrants to the market too, without the same overheads.
3. Expand vocational programmes. Vocational offerings are outperforming traditional courses in employment rates, salary gains. Demonstrate practical outcomes, economic value. Recent OU proposals on employability will help us.
4. Widen access for disadvantaged groups – accessibility, affordability, diversity. Challenge. Particularly on low incomes, disability, remove communities, disenfranchised ethnic groups. Open learning policies, financial aid, culturally diverse offerings.

Business models changing. Need to differentiate from competition. Align offerings with student needs.

How the OU is organising itself to respond

Biggest challenges are at the top – diversifying income, competing for students – big issues. OU recently completed a UK Market Strategy Project. Three aims: determine key student groups, identify courses and qualifications they want, give steer on prices they’ll accept. Clear pointer to the future was to continue to do what we do best: part time, flexible study for adults, maintain open access policy, continue support for disadvantaged background learners. Focus on traditional heartlands, in four groups:

• Employed adults, under 50, no degree, want HE qualification to improve career/life chances.
• Adults without degree, under 50, not employed, want HE qualification to help gain employment
• Adults who want to enhance knowledge by studying 1 or 2 modules, typically >50, leisure/career mixture
• Employed graduates who want increase employability by postgraduate qualification

Strategy based on assumption that we’ll only be successful if we focus on those students we’re best placed to serve – and exceed their expectations.

Pricing

Public funding under pressure; diversification needed. In England, public expenditure on HE is down, by mechanism of students making a larger contribution once in work and earning >£21k. Universities can charge up to £9,000 from Sep 2012. 70% have said they’ll charge full £9,000. Scotland and Northern Ireland are not cutting HE budgets to the same extent, and not increasing student contributions for home students. Wales are consulting on part-time student support; ministers say may charge different and higher fees to students from elsewhere. Complex, changing environment. Have to adjust our strategy.

We can’t set a uniform fee across the whole of the UK. In England, 80% reduction over 3y of OU income. We will charge £5,000 for the equivalent of a whole year’s full-time study. Existing students can stay on same arrangements. We will look in November at Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and also postgraduate, European and worldwide fees.

Fees to new undergraduates are significantly less than at most other universities. Very distinctive marketplace position. Strong position that OU will continue to provide accessible learning to as many as possible. The situation is changing – twelve universities are planning to bring their rises back below £7,500, and BPP has settled on £5,000 per FTE year, the same as us. We will continue to attract and retain students from our core groups. Transition will be difficult.

This is a significant increase for students in England. Ensuring comprehensive system of financial support for part-time students. We have achieved a lot. PT students can take out a student loan. OU study will be free at point of study, repay after 3y, and only if salary >£21k, will then vary with salary. If earning £25k a year, repayment will be £6.92/week. Disadvantaged backgrounds can get National Scholarship Programme, and other programmes we’re developing. Disabled Students Allowance.

If had set less than £5,000, would have risked economic viability, couldn’t deliver high quality at scale. If had set much higher, might get more income, but alter composition and size of our student body.

This is the optimum balance between educational and financial consideration. Pays due regard to issues of social justice. Good value for money if – if – we can communicate the benefits of new system. Need to emphasise that students in England will get high quality experience, significantly cheaper than other providers.

Hope you’re as proud as I am of the OU results in the National Student Survey. Cannot allow quality of student experience to suffer.

Key priorities

Council will now discuss key priorities to form the basis of a revised strategic plan for 2011-15. Will respect mission and values, build on achievements to date. Respond to challenges. Take account of market research. Operate in new marketplace across the four nations of UK.

There are a series of priorities, in four main groups:

1. Deliver excellent student experience and outcomes. Go to market: generate awareness, new students among our core groups, clarity on price, help find best funding options. Future customer experience. Study experience: major renewal of access programme. Learning experience: comprehensive data to guide improvement in the parts of the learning experience of greatest value.
2. Enhance our reputation and academic standing. Research and scholarship: absolutely vital. Open and informal learning: maintain world-leading position, enhance reputation, and attract and engage new learners.
3. Develop high performance. Agile people, processes and systems. Make sure staff have development opportunities to respond to shifting demands. Update systems to respond more quickly to new opportunities. New student number planning and control system to manage numbers and allocate resources.
4. Ensure long-term sustainability. Secure best possible deal for students and OU by influencing government policy. Managing costs and delivering savings.

These will be developed this weekend, then fully defined by October, presented to Council early 2012.

Summary

We all know the backdrop: economy, tremendous opportunities to support professional and personal development. Aid economic recovery, promote social inclusion. Clear sense of direction, basis of a strategy.

Will have to move quickly to adjust strategy and processes. Will be difficult to change round. We know we’ve done it in the past, confident will do in the future. We are very different to 40y ago, 30, 20, even 10. Will be different again in 10y. Change and innovation is in our bloodstream. We remain open to ideas.

Passion and dedication of staff and supporters – commitment to mission and values. Let’s keep a clear focus on core values, and the needs of our students and prospective students. Let’s continue to use our creativity, innovation and mission-led approach to respond to challenges.

The OU is an incredible agent of change, social mobility, economic development. Transform people’s lives.

Questions and Answers

Lord Chris Haskins (LH) takes to the stage, and joins Martin (MB) in easy chairs.

Someone: Do you think Jagesh (?) will be able to join the OU paying three times as much in fees?

MB: Let’s not put her on the spot. When I get asked that, I look at the external reality, and internal reality. 80% drop in government funding over 3y. We were faced with a decision of survival. I hope I made clear, don’t underestimate what’s going on here – burden shifted on to individual rather than state. Decision made for us. If we hadn’t secured part-time students’ access to loans, it would be a disaster right now. We are doing our best to make lemonade from lemons. Good deal for our students in getting access to those loans – free at point of entry, only repay after 3y, only over £21k income.  We can deliver where people live and work, which helps maintenance and living costs. We are redeveloping our widening access and success programme for our own safety net. Pressure on governments to maintain support for people who slip outside nets. One cohort to pay attention to particularly – ELQ students. For those, these changes are devastating. Will not get access to student loans – will have to pay entire fee up front. Must be respectful of that impact.

Someone: I didn’t hear an answer to my question

MB: There are opportunities. Not fair to put her on the spot to answer.

Marianne, OUSA President: ELQ students. I’ve been warmed to find the number of ELQ students who are extremely worried that after 2012 new students in their situation will not have opportunity to study with the OU. Very many extremely worried.

MB: Congratulations on your ascendancy as President. No doubt. Have spent 2y arguing on behalf of those students. Even those who criticised the ELQ decision before the election have refused to change it. Not going to give up – right at time when nations need to invest in people, why remove funding for people to make those life-changing decisions?

LH: It was the previous government made this commitment. The principle is accepted. If times get better – big if – we will come back to this issue.

Frank Banks, FELS: The focus was on the home market. Interested in the way that diversified income, vocational issues, were part of previous slide. Wondering about internationally looking at what we’re doing with teachers and health workers, and good governance – OU could be doing things there. How much is the focus on UK taking all our energies – can we look elsewhere?

MB: Incredibly proud of TESSA and HEAT and English in Action programmes. Visited Ethiopia for kickoff of HEAT programme. Showed me, made me so proud to be VC, not just focused on domestic viability but addressing some of the world’s big challenges. Tried and true principle – take care of core university business, but compartmentalise for survival. Under Edith Prak’s leadership, investing in continuing to mature and grow those developmental projects, which are remarkable. Delighted to say, I have just announced Steve (Stephen Hill) as our new Commercial Director – strategy outside the UK, funded students. Vast majority of university’s effort needs to be transition in our heartlands, but are investing outside UK to move in appropriate directions. Continue to lead in those other areas.

Jeff Thomas, Science: I am facing happy prospect of retirement. What indicators, measures, will one apply to see whether this vision is realised? What would you recommend to gauge the genuine success of university life?

MB: Fantastic question. (turns to LH) Chris? (laughter) For the OU – I’ll be looking at: staying true to mission and ethos. If you come back to one of our fundraising events, ask is this still about being open to people, places, methods and ideas? Fully committed to social mobility? Second – from a business perspective, more generating stability that it can contribute to broader agendas. Then composition of our student body – is it as reflective of society as it is today? This is a nice one – can benchmark against where we are today and do a direct comparison of who we are as an institution. We’ll continue to see HE as much more than just preparing people for work. Scholarship and research characterise what a university is all about. OU continues from a quality perspective to top the marks. Student experience top of that list. Thank you for what you’ve done for the OU.

LH: OU has revolutionary contribution to issue of education. We’ve opened doors to people who want further education. This country is not dealing with people who fall out of education, never to come back in. The system fails people. At some point,OU commitment should be brought to deal with that in some way. All sorts of questions about it. But we have something to contribute to what is the biggest problem in the country.

MB: Chris just inserted about 17 meetings in to my diary. Very good! (laughter)

Andrew Mason, Science (via email): Mobile technology. With rapid increasing in adoption of mobile, smartphones, and the dramatic impact on educational provision – how do you see OU role in leading this paradigm shift?

MB: Wonderful question, Denise and I spend a lot of time talking about. Add something to report card (from previous question)- intensely proud that we lead in innovation in HE, like to think we’ll continue. Mobility is one part of that. We are about 39m downloads through iTunes U, in 3 years, with 89% outside the UK. Well over 12m users of Open Learn. We’re all over YouTube. Of top 5 titles on iTunes U last week … all were us! We are stretching Apple’s, Google’s imagination on delivering high quality education. Should all feel incredibly proud of that. Two principles: First, not just technology for technology’s sake, has to contribute to learning experience, strengthen personal relationships. Second, it’s not about are we in love with Apple, Google, Facebook – the OU is doing well because we have 42 years of building breathtaking content to work well at a distance. 30m viewings of BBC co-productions just in the UK. No-one better to build content once and syndicate it in to wherever. Not about picking single platforms. Building great content, manifesting in many places. Through IET, KMi, faculties, scholarship and research efforts – rolling it out the right way.

(Denise Kirkpatrick declines to add any more.)

Ian Wright, PSSRI (email): Notwithstanding results of UK market survey, what are we going to do if the economic situation means increased demand from school leavers? What if there’s a disconnect between survey and reality of what happens?

MB: To Ian – why aren’t you here? (laughing) Thank you. Our research, it’s as good as what we can infer from it at the moment. Believe in fact-based decision-making, our best guess at the future. That’s at one moment in time. Underpinning our new planning system, want to be more responsive, keep in touch with changing student patterns of demand. Agility, streamlining. We used to have 1-2y sight over our funding, but new world can change in 6 months. Very different mindset needed. If stuff doesn’t work out how we planned, we need to be able to be more responsive than we’ve had to be in the last decade.

LH: Research is brilliant, but it is only research. (!) Most is about your experience of the past, this is about how you will respond in the future. People say what they will do. I have my doubts. Will be a long period of change. The fees level here are second largest in the world in terms of student debt. Can explain it’s not as bad as it sounds, but people have psychological barriers. Fear of taking on debt. Younger people maybe being more interested, thought might have come through, but may be very different. 5y time will definitely be different.

(Thanks and farewells.)

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The talk is a mash-up of three related research strands:

• First strand is with children in robotics, with Jeff Johnson. Robocup Junior, Robofest – rich research base.
• Second is a long-term observational study of children as end-users at home pursuing their own objectives – children as unwitting programmers.
• Third stream is her primary work – empirical studies of expert software developers.

Children have always appropriated their toys – Papert, Logo. Distinction between programming in the course of play, and programming as a definite activity. Adults’ and kids’ views of the toys can diverge. Construction toys have been around a long time, very compelling for children – kids tinker, build, un-build. Components are almost wilfully tedious individually, so construction is the primary mode of play.

Computing is a routine part of play for kids, hardly away – it’s the milieu Papert was proposing. 14yo: “That wasn’t programming, that was simple.” – the programming-ness went un-noticed. If you called attention to it being programming, he’d turn away from it!

First strand – robotics

Jeff Johnson reckons robotics offers special educational leverage. Appealing combination of factors – only e.g. Meccano and computer games match up. Models of living things kids can experiment on. Incredibly concrete learning. Abstractions they derive are really grounded and very relevant to them and their goals. Open-ended problems, so learn problem-solving techniques. Argument that if you support this work effectively, students can generalise in really powerful ways. Motivates move to project-based learning in science.

Observed and interviewed all teams at RoboFest Robocup Junior in 2001. Clear that they had learned stuff – programming. Even kids as young as 8 understood programming in RCX code or Robolab wasn’t exactly what they did in school but was relevant and transferable. Learned about gearing, hardware, electronics, difficulties of robotics and simulation and complex systems – and working with teams, people, persistence, imagination. One team were from a school for kids excluded from other schools – and had learned about e.g. algebra, gearing – because goal of making it behave the way they wanted to behave was so powerful. Learned improvisation, learning from making mistakes.

Second strand – kids at home

Watched them over 18 months, and friends online, talked to them, observed home settings, co-located interactions. Fundamentally was parental observation – not exactly objective, but naturalistic, and long-term. 11/12/13/14yo, with diverse social group 11-17yo.

Mucking around on the Internet -> complex activities. Starts at level of tweaking parameters (e.g. colour change to dress). Then composing components to make new designs – re-adapting library objects (skins, widgets); built-in infrastructure that rewards cleverness. Authoring tools for interactive simulations, animations, games – e.g. Gamemaker, KPL, Flash – and Minecraft. Minecraft is effectively electronic Lego. Social space with an etiquette to it too.

Lot of stuff with kids is in an educational context. As soon as it smells of formal structure, they lose interest. KPL is a big hit – Kid’s Programming Language. Writing programs to do interesting visual things, picking up working code, experimenting, tweaking (hacking!). Now not as accessible to kids. Games and cheats – nothing is sacred, everything can be altered.

Not really about learning, about them achieving their goals. But fairly complex insight and understanding evident.

Model of programming is very much around assembly of components. Protected from some of the issues of large-scale software development – certainly no full version control! But can reason about modifications and consequences, and potential interaction of components. So spontaneously introduce disciplines – e.g. design for re-use, for readability by others.

But they still don’t think they’re programming – they think they’re playing with toys. Tinkering is the main thing, and the environment scaffolds that. So they tinker even when it’s not explicitly supported. They do generalise from e.g. published game cheats.

Motivations in social interaction, making cool stuff – without adults. Putting it in school is kiss of death, doesn’t matter how cool the environment is – e.g. Gamemaker, Alice – then when teacher picked up on it, they dropped it. They need to preserve idea that they’re just messing around.

Scaffolding – rich libraries of interesting things (so can get good results very quick), good tutorials (last resort), help, access to expertise (key thing – reinforcement for being clever, insightful when e.g. get an answer from the original designer of a game you’re modifying), opportunities to share user-created programs.

Starts with ‘see the cool thing I can do’. Socialising drives the tinkering.

Then ‘intelligent games’. Kids often do things in school to get round Internet controls. The controls don’t pose much of an obstacle, so doing something directly against it is boring. But they invent games, re-appropriating the Internet through play. Using resources to set challenges to each other, interestingly competitive.

Games: ‘Pseudo-friend’ game. Create in Facebook, see how many Friends that fake person attracts – social psychology, experimentation. ‘Simulate my sister’ – program that generates 14yo girl’s phrases (like Eliza/Turing test) – good social observation. ‘Internet collage’ game – meme photograph manipulation – mash up images, sound – kids are not just consumers.

Tend to be creative, inventive, imaginative, conceptual nous, often getting around constraints. Tend to be mischievous, not rebellious – pushing boundaries rather than smashing. Not arbitrary, but not predictable – field of play can expand. Also competitive.

Third strand – expert practice

Compare to expert practice. Experts – super-designers, generalist problem-solvers. People who can hold whole architectures in their minds right down to detailed consideration. Drive high-performing products, on time, budget, spec. Many resonances – use very systematic practices that are socially embedded; they play/tinker/bricolage, always seeking cool opportunities, blue skies; amazing tolerance for error – opportunity, not failure – being surprised by something; reflective practice.

In expert practice, tools support toys. Expert software engineer trying to solve a scheduling problem. Wandered around the building where people bring hobbies to work, including a dismantled racing car strewn across a corridor. Exhaust manifold beautifully shiny, stared at it for a while … and then said ‘ah!’ and went back to fix his problem. The tubes, bent in to shape in a confined space, gave an insight in to the scheduling problem.

Environments that succeed for kids: rich libraries; immediacy of results (effects clear); forum for sharing successes; room for growth and progression.

Less successful: hard to download and install; bad interface; no way to start tinkering by modification of existing things; or are too educationally wrapped.

These are our future students – able to wield tools, in context of social engagement. Doing clever stuff is more fun in the vivid social context of intelligent play. How can we harness that inventive, critical, analytics, mischievous set of properties and bring it in to how we teach. Crosses boundaries, thumbs nose at lesson plan – challenge in how we structure education system.

Final example – the SenseBoard – the toy going in to the new entry-level computing course TU100 My Digital Life. Can connect sensors, inputs, outputs, with plug-and-play functionality. Using programming language that takes away syntax issues. Get people tinkering from the beginning and drive the learning that way.

Questions

Richard: We shouldn’t actually be supporting these activities, we should be trying to prevent them, because otherwise it’ll turn it uncool.

Marian: Not exactly. Design studio – set activities that are open, take photograph, submit. Really interesting – even in that context, very prescribed (about learning to upload) but incredible imagination expressed. Can do some of it, but not all of it. Scaffolding, empowerment, play – are things we can incorporate. Already in some courses.

Mark: Boundary territory. BBC B and A computers, school, and home – also Raspberry Pi at the moment. Would be cool to push out some of the stuff from this course without signing up for it. Can hack around, leverage resources from the courses. Boundary between formal and informal. As kids, we went round a friend’s house to use computer, subverting things from school.

M: Tells us about our roles as educators. Not the same learning in the two types of contexts. E.g. of working with RCX code – doesn’t have variables but does have counters. 8yo, struggling, said what I really need is a place to put things, stuff I can remember, so I can call it back – articulated concept of a variable out of his need. Simultaneously in Uppsala engineering undergrads struggling with concept of variable. Key is, needed adult to say ‘hey, that’s a variable, here’s how you can do it’ – it’s about how we can structure things to segue in to a more structured and complete model. We can’t be replaced. Whole notion of reflective, learning dialogue is fundamental.

Perry: Not just for kids, but adults, academics. Social scaffolding included ‘usable help’. Can you expand?

M: One real issue is kids doing this in context of own goals. Help is useful when it’s relevant to my goals right now. Don’t want some random discourse about a philosophy of programming, or a tool – they want an answer to a question, how do I fix this now. Difference between a traditional error message – highly compacted . Andy Coe (?) version, enables you to point at a line and say why did that happen – debugging assistant would help elucidate. Was highly contextualised response.

Sandra: What children are doing sounds like what we’re doing in our research. We play around. To get here, we had to pass exams. It’s a shame that’s the way the world works. How do you bridge the gap between allowing them to play, and bridge over to the theory so they can take exams.

M: Working with robotics team, mentoring them – already a body of pedagogic literature, project-based learning. How we do that in distance education is a challenge, I don’t have an answer. Lots of different kinds of learning, and that’s cool, but we don’t have to do it directly. We do in the OU appeal to some of this stuff. Looking at how they work in casual settings might help us impose less.

Sandra: Kids as soon as it gets to school they get turned off.

M: Had summer interns, very bright, very systematic engineering, really nice work. Some of their A level results are risible. Why is education system not serving these bright young things? Academic software engineers do a lot of tinkering, very informal – that community has challenge in informal tinkering phase (thought products) to re-usable, robust tools phase.

Someone: Insight for software companies? Programmer’s job often has very little play.

M: High-performing teams already get this. They tolerate racing cars in the corridor! They have slush funds for mucking around. If you have a deliverable coming up, that’s what you do. But in fallow periods, encourage innovation. Disciplines of innovation.

Someone: Definitely not like this in e.g. bank environments.

M: Programming factories don’t get it. But the top-end, producing new concepts.

Liz: Google a good example of this.

M: Friend went to Google, felt like a Grandma because over 50.

Rob: Proximity of play and tinkering. Tinkering, it already does something already. Play isn’t necessarily purposeful, could be e.g. aesthetic. Is play right analogy?

M: They are different. Tinkering can be part of play. Play can be a character of tinkering, at its best. But not the same. For teaching, the tinkering is important, but has to have a playful aspect to it.

Liz: Conference a few years ago about learning and teaching programming, one keynote had CS4FN – computer science for fun.

M: Paul Curzon. Book Computing Without Computers. Really imaginative book, couldn’t publish, but is available online.

Liz: Hole-in-the-wall project. Let kids loose, not adult-directed. Incredible.

M: Alice was an amazing effort (with big investment) oriented to schools, but could create animation in 30 min. CS101 in 30 minutes, getting ice-skater to skate round a hole then fall in. Not mutually exclusive, but interesting tension between contexts.

Liz: 11-13yo girls – noticed particular gender divide. If work in CS Dept, in a university, the joke is that you could go weeks without seeing a girl. Reported biases in e.g. girls not liking sciences. But with playing, social element, may not find that so much.

M: Don’t have a sample representative enough to answer bias definitively. But casually – yeah. Even in robotics, girls’ teams are fabulous, wonderfully imaginative. Feathers were really important to them. Comparable levels of sophistication, but choose a different arena. E.g. storytelling. Had stated aversion, was really pronounced. Are overlaps, but also separations. What they do in sims.

Liz: Competitiveness more pronounced in boys?

M: No, just expressed differently.

Mark: Interests may be different, very intriguing. Social media may change environment. Rich research in there.

M: Not a great fan of gender studies, more interested in individual differences. Concern that may reinforce divisions. I didn’t look at gender issues. There are more boys than girls doing robotics, but there are mixed teams, girls teams, all doing good stuff. Internet may challenge that, talking across boundaries. E.g. age – 8yo talking to 14yo. When talking across, people who won’t talk in school will talk on the Internet.

Liz: Friend did PhD on gender difference in learning programming. Looked at KS3, KS4. Looked at spatial processing, gender differences there lead to difference in how they learn programming, but not in learning. Boys marginally quicker on average. More important to be good role model, not interfere in girls wanting to do that. There are stereotypes that are reinforced e.g. by peer pressure.

M: What we can show statistically across populations … we can still find exceptions. Men are on average stronger than women … but who cares? Can find women stronger than a man. Almost have the whole range of intellectual activity packaged up in to programming.

–
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For students in England studying with us for the first time from 1 September 2012 there will be a standard fee of £5,000 based on 120 credits of study. This is equivalent to a year’s full-time study at traditional universities.

The OU’s fees structure is being radically simplified. At the moment, courses are priced individually. From September 2012, the fees will be simply proportional: if you study 120 credits, it’s £5,000. If you study 60 credits, it’s £2,500; for 30 credits, £1,250.

The other big change is that OU students will be eligible for the new student loans from that point.

There are transitional arrangements for existing students until August 2017. Students in other nations of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – will pay a lot less, thanks to the different funding arrangements there.

On the level of the fee

The fee we’ve announced is the result of thorough research and is the lowest fee we are able to charge while ensuring we can continue to offer the quality, flexibility and accessibility for which the OU is renowned.

I believe this. My back-of-an-envelope calculation last November suggested “our annualised fees might need to jump from £1,800 to £4,700″, which is pretty close given the gross over-simplifications I was using.

But more fundamentally, I know and trust that OU staff at all levels have been working very hard on this. Making this decision can’t have been an easy one. Nobody working at the OU wants to have to put up our fees like this.

Dolphins can sometimes be mistaken for sharks - see http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/surfer.asp

There’s coverage by the BBC (currently top of the Education page), the estimable Mike Baker, and Times Higher Education. But obviously the OU’s own stuff is the reliable original source of information.

The THE tweeted:

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…more fees announcements. Less deadly but more upsetting than sharks. OU: £5k FTE

I’m sure the fee level wasn’t set with predatory intent. We want to keep our fees as low as possible, to keep education as open as possible. That’s the whole point of what we do. If minimising the cost to students (and the taxpayer, via the loan subsidy) while maintaining our uncompromisingly high standards of achievement and teaching quality is upsetting some people in the sector … well, maybe they should be upset a bit more.

I’ll take the THE quote charitably and assume that they, like me, find the level of fees charged to students upsetting across the board.

Update: the THE explain that what they found upsetting was “more the constant announcement of fees rather than the OU’s fees (or even fees in general)”.

–
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Patrick McAndrew is presenting on “Open Educational Resources in the OU: an OLnet update”

He says there are many slides in the presentation – his last version had three slides, this one has 99.

Much activity on Open Educational Resources (OER) in the OU. OLnet in particular is a project looking at the research, drawing it all together. Project site at olnet.org. Has been running for 2 years, one more to go.

Outline

• Research - It is a research project, trying to understand the strange world of OER.
• Fellowships - Two OLnet Fellows in the room – Robyn Muldoon and Susan D’Antoni are here today. We have about 27 Fellows.
• Infrastructure - Third strand, more technical.

Research

Not starting from scratch. Huge foundation in understanding how OER world can operate, because we’ve done it. OpenLearn – we gained experience in how to operate openly. Also flagged up that this is something to worry about: it’s not a straightforward change. We were ‘fairly unique’ – unusual, in having a research strand.

Main output – OpenLearn Research Report 2006-2008 – oro.open.ac.uk/17513

We have a partner in OLnet – Carnegie Mellon. Also unusual, their OpenLearningInitiative. Take a Learning Sciences approach to their operation.

Since then, explosion of interest in the field. Specialist journals, publications. Continuing interest in how OER can have impact.

One task was to look at the field. An analysis of Hewlett funding of other projects, and how their investment in OER happened.

OLnet research map – many different studies.

Technology development to track this – will come back to.

Work in many contexts – in Zambia, many others. Strong relationship with Brazil. Brazil adopted at Governmental level a statement about priority to OER – feedthrough and feed out from the organisations involved.

Several discipline-based studies too – Tina Wilson.

Realised there’s a need to create a simplified version of a complex field.

• Design for openness – understanding how to design to use OER. Explaining people how to use OER was more inspiring and more efficient.
• Elpida’s work on how people engage in social sites – shows OER content as an attractor. Social site design shouldn’t ignore content; but design is important. Crossover between lively rapid updated content, and larger, slower OER material.
• Ways people are adopting OER – OpenLearn, P2PU – supported by volunteers. OpenLearningInitiative – studies on transfering use of OER in to new contexts, like community contexts. Also EU projects, such as OpenSE – project-based courses built around OER.

Pinnacle of these aspects was the impact at policy level: $2bn Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCTG Program). All about addressing credit crunch, employment – US Dept of Education (Hal Plotkin) added a rider saying everything in this program has to be open. Has changed the entire approach.

Had a direct impact on us – Next Generation Learning Challenge funding: Bridge to Success. About community college completion. The angle is scaling, not inventing. B2S is taking OU Openings material, and other OER and CC courses, to create courses to help – gentle, supportive, enabling – sits underneath the enforced testing/retesting approach community colleges have to do. Expecting to reach 750 students in colleges, but several thousand who come across it because it’s in the open.

OER can be split up in to factors – infrastructure/tools, design, use, adoption, policy.

Questions

Karen Kear: About the Openings – are you giving them to the Americans? Open to the world? Exactly the same?

Patrick: At the moment, we have the learning to learn course up there entirely in the LabSpace, anyone can access it and change it. That was the first step. And for the maths course as well. It’s a change – making complete material available. Very efficient way to deliver them to our partners, but actually the world as well. I noticed, that within four days, there was a new version of the course produced by someone with no connection to the course at all. Clearly other people are looking at it. We’re changing a course in to a learning to learn one too. SO yes, we are giving those to the world. This is a very important step. What we do makes us worry about the impact on our own learners. Our record is good so far in terms of e.g. recruitment.

Karen: Still available to OU students in the normal way?

Patrick: Oh yes. Openings courses relatively low cost, mainly paying for the support to get through it. Whether it feels that way if the materials are freely available is another question. Also a route through for motivated students with less support. So experimenting – lab-based approach, light tough; another with more connected, intensive support. SOmeone else could come in here and do something interesting. It is OER gold – a bit attractor.

Karen: What about the assessment?

Patrick: The activities in Openings, a set of tools to enable people to do the activities – what happens on the other side depends on whether anybody gives the feedback, In colleges, they can do it, but in the open not likely. It is a lovely project.

Fellowships

• First fellow was Shiela Neill, who went to OCWC Global 2009 in Mexico.
• Then Yannis Dimitriadis – work on use of patterns to encourage collaboration around OER.
• Engin Kursun – survey on OCW in Turkey;
• Pauline Ngimwa – OER Readiness in Africa. Svetlana Knyazeva – UNESCO in Russia, a study of OER in the CIS, and out to other non-English-speaking countries.
• Jenny Preece – social structures – worked with Elpida – study of social learning in OER.
• Scott Leslie – brought in mash-up expertise, worked to develop a way to mark OER to enable tracking: a DNA marker.
• Agnes Sandor – from Xerox, automated analysis of texts to pick out the messages around OER.
• Jia Yimin – large scale work in China around sharing courses.
• Chuck Severance – highly technical work to integrate standards exchange in to Moodle. Elsebeth Sorensen – creativity and innovation and how it relates to openness.
• Cathy Casserly – worked on approach to mapping the field.
• Four or five joint OLnet/TESSA fellowships, African context, teacher education. Murilo Mendonca, Brazil, work on influence, OER policy contect.
• Marcelo Maina (Catalunya), Jose Vindel (UNED), Spanish work on changed approaches.
• Helen Jelfs, Bristol, collection of resources in Cohere around Deeper Learning – talk next week.
• Here today – Robyn Muldoon (Australia) – assessment and OER – and Susan D’Antoni (Canada) – map to bring together OER work from UNESCO.
• Coming soon – George Siemens (Canada, MOOCs) and David Wiley – initial thinkers around open content and OER.

Infrastructure

There is so much to tell people about: we have a challenge in how to do this. So now the technology bit comes in.

We’re building an Evidence Hub. Explored many different representations – maps, diagrams, concept maps, cartoons, tables, charts, flowcharts. Key point: the map is not the territory. Need to get people involved in sharing evidence.

We did work looking at Hewlett Grantee Reports – greatly increased our knowledge of the field. Enabled us to say something useful to the rest of the field. But how do we involve others?

Simon Buckingham Shum and his team in KMi came up with the Evidence Hub idea. Working on at the moment. First attempt, using Cohere, can gather together a lot of information: a great tool for researchers. Interlinks reports. But less comprehensible in e.g. a presentation.

Characteristics desired: a service that’s needed, for people who care about OER, dynamic (changes with new evidence), flexible, not one answer, and owned by the community. This is a generic answer to how you can get research information out, but has particular application in OER.

OER grantee meeting by the Golden Gate Bridge. Focus – how do we pool our collective intelligence. It’s about letting us listen to lots of signals and draw them together. Don’t want to filter too many things out – preliminary, early, not-entirely-founded views are also important.

Technology produced: ci.olnet.org – a live alpha site, changed yesterday! It does work. Not presented with the complexities of Cohere, but it is there behind it.

In the face-to-face context, simplified activity: gardening around the claims made. Put up a claim in the middle, provided green petals (to support), red petals (to challenge), Very valuable exercise – showed different views. But a little too brief.

Software is designed to help. Live demo of ci.olnet.org.

One part – tracking organisations and projects involved (224 so far). Shows a Google Map geographical view.

Another – challenges – exploring what are the challenges that people want to solve. Working with an advocacy group in the US, who contributed to the OER decision at Governmental level. They want to make quite simple, strong claims – e.g. that OER is a cheaper approach. Need to have behind it the evidence that supports it.

Also – evidence – linked to organisations/projects, themese, and so on.

Proposed solutions – again links out to evidence, and all the other components too.

Many people won’t care about the details, but do care that the evidence exists.

We want to get evidence – positive and negative, nuanced – out as simply as possible.

Four large claims the advocacy group wants to continue to use, but to have evidence behind it. Next steps to gather the evidence, with OER Advocacy group, UNESCO community, OLnet fellowships. Also want to open up the system – will need to tweak, develop different views and lenses. Not all relying on automatic processing.

This is becoming the focus for year 3 in OLNet – getting our own messages out, and connecting to the important things that are happening next in OER.

Questions

Karen Cropper: How do you think we’ll get people who aren’t in our sphere to add to ci.olnet.org – at the moment, we’re doing it.

Patrick: Two-part answer. In the short term, that’s not a vital step. The vital step is to get valuable material and views available In the latest version, is very lightweight input – just flagging things as interesting, setting up paths and people to follow. It acts as an information route for people without them having to become contributors at the same level. Rob provides second part of the answer – to show how to develop approaches to do this. Hard to do this without examples and guidance. We have a few interested people playing with it today to see what it might do – but not providing evidence to us. Which fits with the system as it is. Susan is also giving a problem to solve – once that’s done, it’s solving that organisational/project part, which is not as complex.

Andrew: Examples have claims and counter-claims, not the data itself which might support those. Does this system manage the data, or where is it?

Patrick: The data sits out in the world. It’s a linking system, a metadata system rather than a data system.

Andrew: If someone wanted to test the hypotheses, is that sort of thing going on?

Rob: At the moment, anyone can say, I claim X, and my evidence is Y. It needs tweaking to distinguish your claim, and a claim that might be in the paper you’re using as evidence for your claim. What follows from particular data is debatable. There’s also a values basis too. In the system, the idea is that things are voted up or down, so a dubious claim would get voted down. If users have ability to make those judgements. It’s only as good as the people using it.

Andy Lane: Following on from the previous two questions and responses. A lot of debate now is not about OER, but about open educational practices. OER are a part. This is still seemingly a focus on OER, feels like it is therefore a researcher community. Makes difficulty in getting practitioners to put their data in. Comparison to Cloudworks – a platform for the sharing of thoughts, evidence – not just around OER, OEP, but educational technology per se. It’s not just who it’s for – Cloudworks is for a wider network of practice, more practitioner-focused than researcher-focused. Wondering about the focus of the two, and whether there’s a clear enough distinction about who should use the Evidence Hub.

Patrick: They are good partners. Not just Cloudworks – many spaces out there. We must be careful not to overload this system with the discussion and involvement side of things – there are other systems that do that well, including Cloudworks. This can be a layer above Cloudworks. Have discussed with Simon and team – should we make special effort to make it work well in Cloudworks? Also Wikieducator, UNESCO systems, we might want to plug in to.

Andy: Who’s going to be inputting the data? This is still set up for researchers to input. How do you get the practitioner community who might be able to provide those claims and evidence. Why would they come here when they get more value from elsewhere?

Patrick: Do have a bootstrapping exercise to make this work, for us. Then it has the value to others. Do know we need to have a flower-like interface, to make it really simple – that does get the practitioners to contribute. Each of these has a role to play.So much we need to represent in the system to get it started, I’m not pushing so hard on this being a place for practitioners to come. I don’t like developing a you-must-come-here solution when there’s so many places to go. Rather develop something where the value is clear when you go there. Don’t want to attract people first!

Finally: a parable – stone soup.

Two lessons. OER can act like stone soup: putting things out there gathers lots of great things around it, so hard to say whether it was the stone or the other stuff that makes it wonderful. Also, we do have some magic stones. They’re so good that they transfer in to new circumstances.

In either case, playing in the open world gives you lots of advantages.

–
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“In the next decade, digital scholarship (in open journals, blogs, and social media) will achieve the same status in academic settings as traditional scholarship.”

Martin Weller is presenting the pro argument for 5-10 minutes, followed by Rob Farrow presenting the con argument. Then 5 minutes’ response, open to the floor for 30 minutes, and then the vote. Jude Fransman is chairing.

This is a dress rehearsal for a similar debate planned for ED-MEDIA. There were a little over a dozen members of the audience. There’s a survey monkey poll to vote on the answer.

These are my liveblog notes.

Some argument that having the vote online rather skews the debate! So agreed that we’ll do it by show of hands.

Martin

Powerpoint presentation liberally sprinkled with Flickr/CC images.

Definitions, and Wittgensteinian language games. It’s the intersection between open, networks, and digital. ‘Changes in all aspects of scholarly practice as a result of the application of digital, networked and open technologies and changes in practice’

Ten arguments, overlapping.

1 – Impact – everyone likes it. Citation advantage to open access journals (MacCallum & Parasarathy, 2006); also ORO downloads – top is 110 pageviews a day, but Martin’s own blog has more than that. A slideshare presentation of his has 7000 views – versus a trad keynote to a few hundred.

2. Efficiency. It’s a good way to work.Traveling and conference networking is inefficient – global networking before I’ve had my breakfast. DS106 as an example of open course production – ideas in from others. Getting feedback on work in progress over Twitter – e.g. on his book.

3. Efficacy – the drugs do work! My post on Stephen Fry 50k hits from a Tweet vs small impact from trad news coverage. Nigel Warburton huge podcast audience – more effective than TV/radio broadcast. New ways to reach people, open source.

4. Complementarity – boosts ORO downloads. Social networks leads to keynote invites.

5. Institutional benefit – students don’t just look at the glossy brochure, in social spaces, so need to be there. Can’t just give out standard PR response, need trusted members. ‘Can you tweet about this for us?’ as a request.

6. Alternatives – a book becomes many different forms – videos, audios, slideshare, blog, open courses, DJ set (!).

7. Richness – conference archive – ten years ago was just the papers, now photos on Flickr, Twitter hashtag, streamed presentations, social network, liveblogging.

8. Competition – universities trying to recruit and reward digital scholars, arms race.

9. Exclusion – if can’t partake because not online, and that’s where all the good networks are.

10. Shame (!) – digital scholars quite open and public, they’ll be blog about it, will shame and embarrass them.

11. (!) – It’s cool!

Top-down pressure from institution, bottom-up from individuals getting rewards. In the middle is the awkward stuff about recognition and quality. But pressure makes it inevitable.

It’s not a simple road to utopia, there are problems. But it’s more right than wrong.  Example of dismissing e-commerce as irrelevant in 1995. It’s about the direction of travel, not the absolute position.

Rob

Prezi presentation.

Martin didn’t say much about the motion, he seemed a bit rushed. (Oops, problem with the Prezi.)

Will digital scholarship achieve the same status in the next decade? Hard to decide either way, so should reject it. And other reasons to reject too.

Martin didn’t want to define it – it’s very hard, it’s not quite clear. It’s a compound phrase, but without analytical definition … Lots of people use this already. Needs clarification.

Is this a coherent idea? All academics use digital technologies – word processing, telephones – what’s the qualitative difference?

People use them, but not to establish the validity of their work. Can put a spin on it, but not saying it’s valid because of the technology, it’s the basis of the investigation of itself. Validity is a theme here.

‘the same status’ – problematic. Can say is doing something valid, without saying it’s the same. If it was, we wouldn’t be having the conversation about status. Equal validity? Best way to construe it. Or recognise as valuable in its own right? Only in combination with traditional scholarly values. Or, as a supporting function – so mainly to do with PR, impact. Maybe can support in that way, but not establishing that you’re seeing it as the same.

Contention – this fundamental ambiguity is enough to reject the motion.

‘in the next decade’ – who can say what’ll happen? Maybe ‘it is likely’, ‘is’ is a problem. Outside TEL, academics are often sceptical or even hostile to technologies, feel taking them further from the work they do. Resent pressure (top-down) from institutions. Big barrier to introducing recognition across the board.

Even if you think they will recognise it, chances of it happening across boundaries of discipline and institution in next ten years are slim.  These things – academic cultures – change slowly. Because insular. Maybe, with greater impact and exchange, that may be ameliorated, but we’ve no basis for thinking that. Also, people who make the decisions tend to be older, less likely to use the technologies. Maybe when current 5-year-olds are VCs, but not in next 10 years.

Reasons to vote against: The idea of ‘digital scholarship’ isn’t clear enough. Martin does have a whole book about it. Hasn’t shown that it is coherent. Crucially, the two will never be ‘the same’, even if validity of digital activities is eventually recognised at some level. Validity systems in academic work has taken hundreds of years to establish, grown up organically, reached maturity – true value of social media to scholarship are just not known. We are finding things that might work, but the data is not there.

So either (I) digital scholarship is continuous with traditional scholarship (convergence) – so should reject motion on a flawed premise. If points on same spectrum, motion makes no sense. or (II) digital activities depend on traditional ones for their validity, in which case they’ll never be the same.

Either way, you must reject the motion.

Martin

Response to Rob.

I won’t need five minutes – attacking the definition is pedantic. Like with learning objects. We all know what we mean. We could work away at it, but that’s an old academic game. (!)

Validity – are seeing a real shift. It’s not just the same old stuff. Removal of filters, can publish anything in any format, is a new way of representing an identity. The same status, means equally respected. Not that it is the same.

Disagree that is only justified in supporting traditional scholarship. Can get a digital scholar, will research in different ways, done differently, disseminated differently, public engagement – all will be done differently. Need to have things in place to recognise those.

It’s possible to reject the motion on a pedantic and nit-picking definition, but it’s about the direction of travel.

Rob

Response to Martin and to his response.

Responding to the response, it’s rhetorical sleight of hand to say definitions don’t matter. All of the words are more important. Early or late Wittgenstein! Meaning is in its use (later) – not that definitions are unimportant, but only relative to context. Still a need for a definition.

Interpreting Martin as saying he wants a different motion – isn’t this a nice direction. Maybe, but make that the motion.

Someone may do something in a different way – working in this way is suitable for some areas, especially e.g. being a digital scholar about digital scholarship. Are benefits to networks, dissemination, impact – useful tools. Motion asks, is it the same? And it isn’t. As a whole, is it a fundamental shift? No.

Firstly, impact. The X Factor gets a lot of hits. Lots of traffic doesn’t mean good impact. It’s communicating to the right people. It’s not quantity. Most academics are skeptical of this way of measuring value, that a lot have seen it – not about showing people who don’t care, but about demonstrating to people who can see the value. Research isn’t PR. This pushes research to become a matter of getting hits and that sort of impact – when it should be about finding out new things.

Martin’s presentation is a loose way of thinking. Concentrate on definitions, does this make sense in the first place? IET people already immersed in this; take a step back. Martin hasn’t spoken much about the motion itself.

Audience

Gill: To both speakers. I felt you were both having an argument which wasn’t the question posed. Rob is about whether it’s a good thing, Martin presents it as a good thing. My interest is whether or not it’ll happen, not whether or not it’s good. Initial statement was ‘is this thing happening’, not ‘if it is, is it a good thing’ – want to focus not on value judgement, but can we see this change. Whether we like it or not!

Robin: Not about questions, about debate from the floor.

Jude: Ok, but a question has been answered. Both will respond.

Robin: At the end? They sum up.

Jude: Note questions, you will both have two-minute opportunity to respond in a final closing statement.

Robin: Following on from Gill. Has put her finger on the difference between traditional academic debate, and an internet approach. Whether or not we want something, is the Internet – it’s about wish fulfilment, a buzz, consensus and convergence. The academic is more a step back, reflection tradition, examine it. Gill’s point encapsulates this. Martin wants this to happen, Rob doing the step back. There’s a divide between the two. If our vote made a difference, we’d have to go down Rob’s route.

Linda Price: Want to get to definitions. ‘Will achieve the same status … as traditional scholarship’ – but no clear definition of traditional scholarship. We don’t agree on what traditional scholarship is either. Need some contextual understanding. Definitions are important.

Jan: Validation in with status. Not arguing for or against either position. The route by which new knowledges or practices are validated are changing. How do these arguers see how this plays out in to the situation in ten years, by which there are equivalent statuses?

Adrian: Both speakers talked about impact. Impact upon whom? A major difference. May have many thousands reading a blog, if they’re all fellow-travellers, not a big impact on the community. Or practitioners in HE generally, problems with existing ways of doing e.g. peer review, publication, has very little impact on what goes on. Should the digital scholarship aspire to that level of non-impact? Would it have impact on those who make decisions about status – power is about including or excluding paper. RAE – replace old boy network of funding with one ostensibly using measures, but old boy network decides the ‘objective’ measures. Not in favour or against the motion, but unpacking the definition. Status implies power.

Tim: A lot of what’s talked about are novel technologies – we’ve had digital technologies. A lot of new techs are transitory, fragmentary. Worrying how that might pan out. In ten years, nobody might use Twitter or it’ll have gone like MySpace. Without a stable platform, doesn’t inspire people to stick with it. Novel things that have happened seems to be the focus.

Denise: Coming back to Adrian’s point. Is it going to be the same in ten years? Who’s going to contribute? People who already have their chairs, or people at the lower end who can sustain it for ten years who don’t care about promotion?

Jonathan Vernon: Not sure if for or against, think it’s already occurred. Search for it amongst the 150m blogs, would find scholarship. It’s been happening for a decade, must be examples already. Having blogged since 1999, have worked with online people on to their 3rd, 4th or 5th successful novel. If people writing successful academic stuff – the numbers matter. Andrew Sullivan, writes NY Daily Dish, highly qualified, writes about politics. Because journalism, not considered scholarship, but wouldn’t take much to make him produce scholarship. My argument is that it already exists. It’s not the next decade, it’s the last one.

Jude: Does the digital blur the notion of scholarship?

Jonathan: Not at all. What’s online is as real as us sitting here. Scholarship is the same.

Robin: Taking up point about blurring the distinction. What is likely to happen – the most upheaval will not come in digital or not, but whether publicly engaged or not. Issue of status is central. Whether a scholar can get equivalent recognition for work outside ordinary boundaries is a more fundamental question than the digital question. Just happens that digital is a good way of doing that, so they do come together. But digital scholars being recognised isn’t the main issue, it’s about reaching wider communities.

Gill: Problematise ‘academic settings’ – no stability in what that constitutes. One thing underlying that – commercial drivers changing nature of Internet and teaching. As academics least well qualified to understand it. Issues about changing location of power to define the authority, so much comes through commercial pressures, or commercial funding – we really have to engage in all of this stuff. If we say we’ll protect something that has been special for the last 100 years, we’re a dinosaur. The whole structure of education in the west is changing. What are the Chinese going to do? The balance of power is changing.

Jude: Rethinking academic settings, within changing global knowledge economy.

Tony Hirst via Twitter: Pushing people to think about it (not clear transcription!)

Jan: On Start The Week, raised question of manipulation of gatekeeping in social media. The gatekeepers are dinosaurs in scholarship, but we know them, even if they are the old boys. Is there a lot of manipulation that will go on that comes out with traditional scholars, academics, that we don’t know how to deal with? Was a new book about manipulation of filters in social media.

Linda Price: About issue of status. There’s research drivers, political. Don’t have much control over that. If e.g. REF framework remains the same, given that is unlikely to change since is a reflection of last 30 years. It’s unlikely that digital scholarship will achieve the same status as traditional scholarship.

Linda Wilks: Tweeting and listening. Wonder whether having different platforms dilutes the quality. Missed half the stuff people ahve been saying in an effort to increase my status online!

Doug: Does anyone know of anyone who has succeeded in achieving status (e.g. a chair) through digital media? Know plenty digital scholars without chars, and some who had chairs already and do it, but none who’ve moved on that way.

Summing up

Rob: Reiterating points about the motion. Don’t think distinction is clear enough. Ten years is optimistic if it is going to happen. Whole thing is not clear. There were many questions of clarification. The motion is not about what you want to happen, about how optimistic you are.

Martin: Gill/Robin, positive or negative argument? – I didn’t mean just positive, meant these perceived benefits create pressures which will make it happen. Linda – we don’t know what trad schol is, but we do it! Gets back to definition. Impact – any impact you like – citation counts increase through open access. It’s a richer picture – before, we only had citations. I know views don’t equal impact, but references don’t equal impact either. Camelot comparison – old version was all fantastic, we should avoid. Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it – we’re academics. Tim’s point that Twitter might disappear – some things will, but there’s a general direction of travel. Not motion that it’ll replace. General idea is that digital scholarship will be recognised. Doug’s question – starts where Michael Wesch, Alec Couros tenure case; also someone else included Wikipedia edits in theirs. Plenty universities having dig schol guidelines. Question about relevancy – we could reject this motion, or we should accept and move forward with it.

Jude: Two slightly selective summaries. Will do as show of hands – do it online afterwards.

Motion read out again.

Those in favour: 6

Those against: 7

(Panel not allowed to vote.)

Those against have it!

Robin expects the online audience to reverse the verdict. (Was 3:1 in favour when I checked it on posting this!)

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