MOOCs

Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution

 

Last night was the successful launch of the Constitution UK Phase II project, a collaborative platform designed to crowdsource and hack the UK constitution, led by Professor Conor Gearty of the Institute for Public Affairs.  LTI was a partner in the project along with the IPA and supplied significant leadership around the instructional and technological design of the platform and how the engagements and interactions of participants will help achieve the desired outcome and build on the reputation of the LSE as an innovative learning organisation.

For 10 weeks the project invites you to share your views and ideas on what should be in a new modern written UK constitution. You will be able to submit content, vote ideas up or down and question the experts. Your ideas and discussions will count. At the end of March your ideas will feed into a Constitutional Convention where we will put together a written constitution using only the crowdsourced content in time for the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, June 2015. Discussions will include the role of the Head of State, the Prime Minister, how should we elect our representatives?, what is the purpose of Parliament?, what powers should be devolved?, what should be the responsibilities of local government?, what rights do I have in the UK and how may these be affected or maintained by our judicial system and the European Union. Finally what values do we uphold in the UK?  Moderators, all of whom have expertise on different aspects of constitutionalism, will be on hand to assist you with the process of constitution drafting.

On behalf of Learning Technology and Innovation, the team led by Darren Moon and including Chris Fryer and Malte Werner has worked closely with Conor and the team of the IPA to develop innovative methods of engagement, train the facilitators and moderators and work closely with the platform (Crowdicity), social media organisations and special interest groups to ensure a successful integration of learning outcomes and the effective and representative engagement of the community in the platform.

The contribution of LTI was recognised by Professor Conor Gearty  at the launch last night. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the LTI team for their commitment, enthusiasm and effort, above and beyond the call.  They have been instrumental in getting this project running within an extremely tight deadline, to deliver on the innovative approaches that the project demanded and to provide the School with an excellent example of what we can do when we are provided with an engaged academic project, funding that supports non-traditional and learner-led approaches to on-line learning and a wholehearted commitment from an enthusiastic and passionate advocate whose voice and engagement motivate and empower a community to get involved.

We invite all of you to share in this involvement, be part of the process and participate in one of the largest digital civic engagement projects in the UK.  Go to http://constitutionuk.com, sign up and take part.

———

Update > Constitution UK project has been awarded a Campus Technology for Innovation (pg 30).

January 16th, 2015|Constitution UK, innovation, Open Education, Projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution|

Weekly Roundup in Education Technology: Twelve Apps of Christmas, The Quantified Student and More

20 apps and resources that do cool things with your social data – The Next Web

Besides the many concerns about privacy, another frequent criticism of social media is its lack of educational value. Indeed, making sense of the huge amount of data produced through social media can seem to be an almost impossible task. Building on the notion of exploring the potential for learning from and through social media, this is a fascinating list of social data analytics apps.

Twelve apps of christmas – Regent’s University London

In a promising attempt at online learning / MOOCs, Twelve Apps of Christmas aims to provide basic and advanced tips for using 12 educational apps.

Each post will contain instructions on a different app, together with tailored suggestions of how to use it with your students and how it might work effectively for you in your professional context.

The programme runs for 12 days and consists of short daily tasks taking no more than ten minutes of time, making it ideal for all of those too busy to follow a long-term course. While designed for staff at Regent’s University London, the course is free and open to everyone interested.

The quantified student – Marketplace

A day in the data-driven life of the most measured and monitored students in the history of education

Mentioned in Marieke Guy’s NetworkEd lecture last week, this fascinating infographic highlights some of the concerns and challenges of data collection in education. In addition to legitimate concerns around student privacy, we need to address the question of how we can best make use of the data available to enhance learning. Rather than seeing it as a threat, we should seize the opportunity to responsibly use technology and learning analytics to offer a more personalised and effective learning experience.

Sharing research equipment in Higher Ed – equipment.data

Too often universities view themselves as competitors in Higher Education. Focusing on collaboration instead, this laudable initiative seeks to provide a searchable UK-wide database of Higher Education research equipment. Sharing equipment can enable institutions to make more efficient use of the funds available and thus improve their overall research (and, indeed, learning and teaching) capacity.

Open education: a study in disruption – Van Mourik Broekman et al.

Does open education really offer the openness, democracy and cost-effectiveness its supporters promise? Or will it lead to a two-tier system, where those who can’t afford to pay to attend a traditional university, or belong to those groups who prefer not to move away from home, will have to make do with a poor, online, second-rate alternative education produced by a global corporation?

A free book (the full version of which can be downloaded using the link above) that seeks to critically engage with online education and its promised benefits. Especially the analysis of MOOCs in their political context makes for a promising read. We will feature a more detailed blog post on the topic in the coming weeks.

* Education technology is rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in Higher Education. Every week, we share and comment upon a selection of interesting articles, posts and websites relating to education and technology we stumbled upon during the week. Do comment, recommend and share!

December 3rd, 2014|innovation, Roundup, Social Media|Comments Off on Weekly Roundup in Education Technology: Twelve Apps of Christmas, The Quantified Student and More|

Weekly Roundup in Education Technology: #Gamergate, Wearable Technology and More

Education technology is rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in Higher Education. Every week, we share and comment upon a selection of interesting articles, posts and websites relating to education and technology we stumbled upon during the week. Do comment, recommend and share!

Technology’s culture of misogyny is an education technology issue – Audrey Watters

“It’s an education technology issue, in part, because of the expectations that we all are supposed interact online – for profession, personal, and academic purposes. What does that look like for girls and women? You can’t just tell us to “not read the comments” when the threats against us escalate.”

With the #Gamergate scandal getting increased public attention in Britain, Audrey Watters* summarises the #Gamergate issue and its impact on ed-tech in two of her weekly round ups. Trolling impacts on the safety and dignity of users (particularly female users), not just on gamified educational platforms, but also on discussion forums, comment boards and any other communication platform where harrassment can occur and identity can be compromised. This could be a serious issue for the ed-tech community, one which threatens a key tenet of online education; student engagement. We will explore the topic and its implication for education technology further next week.

Technology is not going to fix our education systems – Dr. Madhav Chavan

Dr. Madhav Chavan notes that while technology and the way we use it is non-linear, our education systems are designed in a linear way. While technology may not be able to “fix” education systems, he argues, it can help us to break free from their constraints – if we are willing to rethink education on a larger scale.

Innovating education through wearable technology  – Brad Spirrison for Huffington Post

5 short, inspiring examples of how wearable technology can innovate and improve education

Competency-based learning: The next revolution in online education? – Michelle Weise for Harvard Business Review

This recent contribution compellingly analyses the weaknesses of MOOCs that merely transfer existing content and course design onto the web. However, the claim that the future of online education lies in short, competency-based courses is perhaps more controversial. After all, existing university courses are often (or should be) designed around specific competences and the “skills needed by employers” referred to are hardly clearly and unambiguously defined.

Technology: Cultural resource or slave for our lifestyle?  – Sally Davies for Financial Times (subscription required)

Timely reflections on the future of technology – could “techno-hippies” make us think about using technology as a tool to improve society?

 

*Audrey Watters will be giving a lecture as part of LTI’s NetworkEd series on February 11, 2015. You can subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter to keep informed about LTI’s events.

Weekly Roundup in Education Technology

Education technology is rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in higher education. Every week, we will share helpful, interesting or controversial tweets, websites and articles relating to education and technology. Do comment, recommend and share!

Mediocrity v. innovation – Paul Taylor

“Why do we apply scrutiny to people working in innovation in a way we don’t to other functions like Operations, IT, Communications, HR or Finance?”

Regardless of whether or not the term “innovation” is overused or devoid of meaning, Paul Taylor’s rallying cry against mediocrity deserves some reflection. Perhaps not just the “innovation” sector, but a lack of scrutiny across all sectors deserves our attention.

Learning about learning technology through learning technology – EdX

Talk about practicing what you preach: A MOOC about MOOCs (and other learning technology), so to speak, culminating in a pitch for a new educational technology. The MOOC started last week and we will make sure to have a look at how it progresses.

Getting student privacy right – Adriene Hill

“Like everything else these days, education runs on data. Our kids’ data. Every digital move they make in school, on homework websites, and apps can be tracked. And it’s not always clear where that information is going or how companies are using it.”

A timely reminder that privacy is as (if not more) essential in the field of education technology as elsewhere.

Our brains rewired – Douglas Coupland

Last, but not least: Douglas Coupland’s (Author of Generation X and Microserfs) reflections on his experiences inside Alcatel-Lucent and how the internet has rewired our brains certainly make for an interesting short interview.

October 15th, 2014|Ed-Tech news and issues, Roundup|Comments Off on Weekly Roundup in Education Technology|

Trends in Education Technology II

Education technology is a rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in Higher Education.

Here’s a round-up of some of the articles I found interesting, and thought you might too.

Do comment, recommend and share.

MOOCs

Can the Current Model of Higher Education Survive MOOCs and Online Learning? – Henry C. Lucas, Educause Review

Henry Lucas, Professor of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, analyses the impact MOOCs and other disruptive technologies will have on the Higher Education industry. He concludes that MOOCs offer a great opportunity to engage a new generation of students, and universities need to adapt their business models to incorporate emerging trends to avoid becoming redundant like the companies Lucas uses as case studies.

Let them eat MOOCsGianpiero Petriglieri, Harvard Business Review

Countering Henry Lucas’ article is an interesting argument by Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. Prof. Petriglieri questions whether MOOCs can actually deliver the democratization of higher education, and open up elite institutions to all. Instead, he argues that MOOCs may actually lead to “colonialism” by elite universities and deepen the divide between themselves and smaller institutions.

Report by Faculty Groups Questions Savings from MOOCs – Lawrence Biemiller, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Summary of the latest report by Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. The executive summary to their report can be accessed here. The paper, backed by faculty unions in the US, argues that students are not getting value for money by having to pay for credentials from online courses which are “virtually valueless in the marketplace”. It cites the example of Georgia Tech’s fully online Masters course in Computer Science provided by Udacity as being exploitative of the university’s reputation and course content for their own commercial gain.

Gamification

Infographic – Knewton

A useful little infographic charting the history of gamification in education.

Gamification Infographic

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Mobile Learning

Five Fabulous ways to use Google Apps in the Classroom – Mary Claudia, Edudemic

A useful summary of how Google Apps can be used to organise lessons and allow collaboration between teachers and students.

October 18th, 2013|TEL Trends|Comments Off on Trends in Education Technology II|

Trends in Education Technology I

Education technology is a rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting field of study, especially to us working in Higher Education. Therefore, I will be posting a fortnightly round-up of some of the articles I found interesting, and thought you might too.

Do comment, recommend and share. That’s what blogging is all about after all!

General

40 Future Uses for Educational Technology [Infographic] – EdTech Magazine

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2012/07/40-future-uses-educational-technology-infographic

Whilst aimed at K-12, concepts such as gamification and digitized classrooms also have implications for HE provision.

MOOCs

Moocs: From Mania to Mundanity – Times Higher Education

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/moocs-from-mania-to-mundanity/2007773.article

Written by the author of the recently released BIS report on the impact of MOOCs on HE provision, this article argues that MOOCs have moved beyond hype and hysteria, and are now becoming normalised into the teaching strategies of many universities.

Third-party credentialing

College Diplomas are Meaningless. This is How to Fix Them. Design specs for upgrading the communications device formerly known as the sheepskin – New Republic

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114692/college-diploma-time-upgrade

Whilst quite transparent in suggesting that LinkedIn could be a better alternative to demonstrating skills than a University degree, Reid Hoffmann, co-founder of LinkedIn, does make a point that the way graduates gain skills in future will involve a an unbundled format of course provision, allowing students to tailor skills to their own career aspirations. Central to this would be the ability for third-party course providers to be able to grant recognisable credentials to subscribers, e.g. Mozilla Open Badges.

Online mentoring

Internet mentors could supplant traditional lectures – Times Higher Education

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/internet-mentors-could-supplant-traditional-lecturers/2007676.article#.UkPiDCVB2W8.twitter

One of the findings to come out of the Horizon 2020 report from the Observatory on Borderless Education. As information becomes more freely available via MOOCs and other platforms, support provided by junior-level lecturers at universities may be replaced by Online mentors, who may themselves be professionals in the topic or PhD researchers.

Education technologies

50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About – Edudemic

http://www.edudemic.com/50-education-technology-tools-every-teacher-should-know-about/

A lot of technologies mentioned here will be familiar to many, but this is a useful round-up of the tools available to educators.

October 4th, 2013|TEL Trends|Comments Off on Trends in Education Technology I|