What if all of London were a networked University?
What do we do when we gate-keep our spaces?
What if everyone could work in everyone else’s spaces?
What if there were no tiny little islands in London?
Or, in a University?
Digital can be a mechanism for breaking down barriers-learning spaces are digital and physical. Let’s talk about the present, and see what it might tell us about what’s possible in the future of teaching and learning.
Introducing Dr Donna Lanclos
Donna Lanclos is an anthropologist working with ethnographic methods and analysis to inform and change policy in higher education, in particular in and around libraries, learning spaces, and teaching and learning practices. She is Associate Professor for Anthropological Research at the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte.
Her research includes how students and staff engage with the nature of information and knowledge, how ethnography and anthropology can be used as tools in academic development and can influence policy and practice in higher education, physical and virtual spaces in academia, and how technology impacts learning, teaching and research. She collaborates with librarians, engineers, anthropologists, sociologists, education technology professionals, architects, and designers.
Dr. Lanclos has conducted anthropological research on academic practice in libraries not only at UNC Charlotte, but also University College, London. She collaborates with colleagues in the US and the UK investigating the nature of learning landscapes and academic taskscapes, so as to better contextualize the behaviors that take place and problems that erupt in library spaces. She has conducted workshops for professional development at Imperial College, Kingston University, NUI Galway, Parsons the New School (NYC), and Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr Lanclos will be presenting a NetworkED seminar ‘NetworkED 2020: The London University’ which will discuss these themes on Wednesday 16 September at 3pm in Parish Hall, room PAR.2.03. The event is free to attend and places can be reserved on Eventbrite
Tweet your questions and join the debate #LSENetED
‘The role of education in encouraging women to work in technology’
We are delighted to announce that following the success of our NetworkED student entrepreneur panel discussion we will be holding a ‘women in technology’ panel discussion on Wednesday 20th May at 3pm in R01.
The recording from the panel discussion can be viewed on the LTI Youtube channel
Read about the panel members below
Panel Chair, Dr Ellen Helsper is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Media and Communications Department at the LSE. Her current research interests include digital inclusion and literacy; everyday production and consumption of digital media, mediated interpersonal communication; and quantitative and qualitative methodological developments in media research.
Dr. Julia Davies works in The School of Education at The University of Sheffield where she is also the academic lead for Technology Enhanced Learning in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Julia’s research focuses on the intersections between literacy, language, technology and learning. Taking a broad view of literacy her work has included studies of people’s uses of social media, the ways in which technology affects their view of themselves and the world they live in, and the implications of these things for education.
Professor Cornelia Boldyreff lives in Greenwich and is a Visiting Professor and part-time lecturer at the University of Greenwich in the Department of Computing & Information Systems. She was previously the Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London from 2009 – February 2013.
Cornelia gained her PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Durham where she worked from 1992; she was a Reader in the Computer Science Department when she left. In 2004 she moved to the University of Lincoln to become the first Professor of Software Engineering at the university, where she co-founded and directed the Centre for Research in Open Source Software.
She has over 25 years’ experience in software engineering research and has published extensively on her research in the field. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a founding committee member of the BCSWomen Specialist Group, a committee member of theBCS e-Learning Specialist Group, and chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. She has been actively campaigning for more women in STEM throughout her career.
Together with Miriam Joy Morris and Yasmine Arafa, she founded the start-up, ebartex Ltd, and together they are developing a new digital bartering currency, ebarts.
Dr Sue Black is an award-winning computer scientist, radical thinker and passionate social entrepreneur who excels at bringing people together to solve complex issues. She’s a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, an associate at DSRPTN an all female technology and digital consultancy, and a mentor at Google campus for mums. Sue is a champion for women in computing, and founder of BCSWomen and #techmums, a social enterprise which aims to empower mums and their families through technology. Sue is well known for her successful online and offline campaigning and activism around digital social inclusion and Saving Bletchley Park. Sue is a frequent public speaker, a social media-holic, mum of four and soon to be grandmother.
Dr Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta is a Reader in Adaptive Technologies for Learning and an RCUK Academic Fellow at the University College London Institute of Education, London Knowledge Lab. She holds a Joint Honours Masters in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, both from the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on developing adaptive interactive environments for learning and communication that are underpinned with user and context modelling capabilities, especially in relation to users’ affective and motivational states. She has close to 15 years of working with users, including with children and adults with and without special needs, using participatory design methods and of developing intelligent technologies for real world use. She has also first-hand experience of using knowledge elicitation methods, of working with practitioners on finding the best ways in which to embed the new technologies in the existing educational practices and in identifying the added value of digital intelligent technologies in supporting learning in different contexts with diverse user populations. In her research and practice, Kaśka’s key focus is to strike a balance between the needs of learners and pracitioners in real educational contexts and the design and engineering considerations related to creating and deploying Intelligent Learning Environments.
LTI NetworkED Seminar: Student entrepreneurs and innovators: the role of education Wednesday 4th March 5pm in R01
Learning Technology and Innovation run an annual seminar series called NetworkED: technology in education that invites speakers from the field of education, computing and related disciplines to discuss how technology is shaping the world of education.
Next week’s seminar will be a lively debate bringing together LSE students and alumni to discuss the role of education in developing entrepreneurs and innovators of the future on Wednesday 4th March at 5pm. There are a limited number of tickets available and interested students should book a place via the training booking system: https://apps.lse.ac.uk/training-system/userBooking/course/7447291
In addition to the audience at LSE, the seminars are open to participants around the world, who can watch the live event online on our youtube channel and participate using a range of technologies. The seminars are also recorded so you can watch at your convenience.
Student panel members
Maria Carvalho
Whilst undertaking her PhD in green innovation at the LSE, Maria realised that technologies could play a very useful role in transforming the learning experience – as long as both students and teachers actually integrated using these technologies into their working lives. As a Research Student Officer for the LSE Student Union, Maria has worked with the LTI in launching a PhD student networking tool called Piirus, organised the first “Re-imaging Our Education” event which discussed how learning technologies could be used in education. She also co-founded Black Cili, an animation business that makes academic research more engaging.
Arseni Gladkov
Arseni’s background is in software development and management. Having just completed his Master’s degree at the LSE, he is now working on making the university learning experience more seamless, by means of a new kind of e-learning platform that integrates personal notes with online content and services.
Tom Merriman
Tom Merriman is a graduate student at LSE studying information systems and digital innovation. He has a background in financial services having worked with Bloomberg LP as a business manager in both London and New York. During his 8 years with Bloomberg Tom was responsible for a number of existing financial software businesses as well as launching several new ones. In 2013, Tom left Bloomberg, cycled 5,000 miles from his apartment in Brooklyn to his new home in San Francisco where he set up a craft beer export business. He has a MSc in Finance from Cranfield and his current research interests include how cloud computing and big data capabilities are disrupting the financial data industry.
Edvard Nore
Edvard Nore started Europe’s first student-led venture investment fund while an undergrad at UCL, then started a company that went well and subsequently failed spectacularly. He has written about tech for The Nordic Web and Arctic Startup and currently working for the City of Oslo (his hometown) as a community manager at their Oslo Innovation Embassy. He is studying a MSc in Organisational Behaviour at LSE.
Roman Thompson
Originally from Windsor, Roman Thompson is a second year undergraduate studying BSc Geography with Economics. As the son of a technology consultant, this innovative industry is part of his background. However, upon arrival at LSE, it became apparent to him that that LSE could do more to support careers alternative to the ‘traditional’ LSE routes of finance and consultancy. To this end, he is a cofounder and the current Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations for the LSESU Technology Society. He regards the encouragement of innovation and entrepreneurship as a vital part of this process and the global economy as a whole.
Chair of the panel
Farid Ul Haque
Farid is Founder and CEO of ERLY STAGE STUDIOS an Education Venture Studio focused delivering next generation learning solutions and ‘making learning fun’ for the consumer and corporate markets alike (www.erlystagestudios.com).
Farid is also a partner at Connected Labs a content company working across media to deliver brand stories through craft storytelling. Connected Labs is backed by award winning Connected Pictures (www.connectedpictures.com).
Many thanks to everyone who attended our event with Leslie Haddon. For those of you who missed it and want to rewatch it, we are providing a full recording below.
Children’s experience of phones: for better or for worse.
To kick start the LTI NetworkED seminar series for 2015 Dr Leslie Haddon will be reporting on the findings from the Net Children Go Mobile project on children’s use of smartphones and tablets. The seminar will take place on Wednesday 28 January 2015 at 3pm in R01.
NetworkED seminars are free to attend but places are limited so will need to be reserved via the staff training and development system or by emailing imt.admin@lse.ac.uk. All our talks are live streamed and recorded for those who can’t make it and a link to the live stream will be available on the blog shortly.
Ahead of his talk we asked Leslie some questions about the impact of mobile technology on children.
Q: Some argue that smartphones change our experience of the online world because the internet is now ‘always at hand’. Are children also finding this?
While mobile devices, especially tablets and smartphones, are clearly becoming more prevalent among children, that particular claim as well as the one that they can use the devices ‘anytime, anywhere’ is an overstatement, and definitely not so true of younger children. The findings from the Net Children Go Mobile project highlight the fact that children’s use of such devices, even more so than adults, is subject to many social constraints. As dependents there are often limits on how much children and young people can spend on smartphones, be that in terms of paying for downloaded apps or the running costs if their ISP package has limits. In addition, some parents worry about children having too much screen time, some feel that time using the smartphone takes time away from the family, or some simply feel that the smartphone is distracting children from their homework – which it sometimes does. So parents often ration the use of smartphones, for instance, only allowing it after homework has been completed, of ban the use of the device at certain times, for example, at dinner times or after bedtime.
Q: Did the location of access have a significant effect on children’s use of smartphones?
Yes, this was yet another constraint. In the UK many junior schools and for some years in secondary schools smartphones are banned. In this respect there is cultural variation with far less regulation of smartphones in Danish schools. In fact, in many schools Danish children can also use them in conjunction with the school Wi-Fi. Basically, it seems they are seen more negatively, as disruptive or anti-social, in British schools, having little educational merit and that is also a perception in some other countries. At least the Danish case shows that one does not automatically have to take that stance. The other thing to add about location is that as very expensive items one of the key risks for parents and teachers is that the smartphone might be stolen. Hence there is pressure on children not to use these phones in certain public spaces, like when on the way home from school. Small wonder that the main location in which children use smartphone is actually in the home, also making use of the free Wi-Fi there, rather than when they are on the move.
Q: Did the Net Children Go Mobile project find that smartphones changed children’s behaviour in any way?
For better or for worse these devices have the power to enhance experiences. This can be true for the risks we discussed with them in interviews but interestingly one of the key areas commented on in some depth by children was in relation to communication. They noted how It was now far easier to communicate, some felt that it has enabled them to be more sociable with their peers, and there was now a greater sense of always having someone one could talk to because of the greater array of (often ‘free’) channels at their disposal. But the downside of this is in many respects the same as for adults – for many older children especially there is far more incoming communications, which many felt obliged to check, but which many also felt were irrelevant. Even the children sometimes admitted that this overload could be a distraction and it could also, in children’s eyes, be too much of a temptation. So even when they are generally positive about smartphones, as most children are, some ration themselves because of this – they put the phone aside at time or else decide not to engage in certain online options. And they sometimes acknowledge that, especially because it’s easy to respond quickly, there is the danger of sending messages that are interpreted in the wrong way. So while we may ask what is specific to and an issue for children, in many respects it is the more banal communication dilemmas, sometimes similar to those faced by adults, that attract their attention, that provoke comment, more than the risk agenda.
The LTI (learning technology and Innovation) NetworkED seminar next Wednesday 28 January at 3pm in R01 will be from Dr Leslie Haddon on Children’s experience of phones: for better or for worse.
Dr Haddon from the Media and Communications department will be sharing the findings from the Net Children Go Mobile project on children’s use of smartphones and tablets. The two year project carried out quantitative and qualitative research in 7 countries to investigate access and use, risk and opportunities of mobile internet for children in the European context.
Students As Producers projects – students can be asked to work collaboratively to create content. Using technology specifically designed for group collaboration enables students’ to work online and in their own time. LTI have limited numbers kits containing iPads, iPad mini’s, podcasting equipment and Digital SLR camera’s which can be applied for as part of LTI grants projects. You can also ask students to bring in their own laptops/phones/tablets or other devices or to create collaborate documents and platforms such as Padlet and Paperli. More ideas can be found on our Padlet and from the recent NetworkED talk given by the UK National Teaching Fellow Helen Keegan. Building on TLC’s note on introducing more creative forms of assessment the completed content could count towards an assessment (formative or summative) and depending on how far you want to take the project could be combined with peer marking – with students commenting on each other’s projects. For example Social Policy carried out peer assessment using WebPA and Teammates and more details can be found in a video with Dr Irene Papanicolas.
Flipped lectures – Ask your students to prepare for week 6 by watching pre-recorded lecture or alternative resource. The contact time is then used to get students to do something more interactive. LTI run a course on flipping lectures, and places can be booked online
E-Assessment – Use the new academic year structure to rethink how you approach assessment and feedback. LTI are currently running an E-Assessment pilot project with various departments. We would be interested in working with departments to trial new technology for exams in week 0 or in the summer term, and to work on E-Submission and E-Assessment. To hear some ideas from other academics at LSE and elsewhere, watch the Show and Tell event on E-Assessment we hosted in November this year.
LTI Grants – we offer Learning Technology and Innovation Grants to encourage individuals and departments to explore the use of new technologies in teaching and learning. We are seeking applications under the three strands of “E-Assessment”, “Students as Producers” and “Innovation”. We will hold a third run of grants at the start of the Summer term which will invite applications to be planned over the summer for the 2015/16 academic year.
We look forward to discussing your ideas well in advance of next academic year. Email LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk.
Our NetworkED seminar with Marieke Guy on 26 November was on open data in education. Marieke gave a broad overview of the topic of open data, discussing the different ways that open data is currently being used, who is using it and how it could be used in the future. Marieke gave lots of interesting examples of projects that have used open data and pointed out various open data tools such as Histropedia which allows users to timeline and tag data from Wikipedia or equipment.data which allows HE institutions to sharing educational equipment and facilities.
One of the most interesting aspects of the talk for me was the idea that we should be doing more with open data in the classroom. Marieke advocated using real data sets in teaching and learning as a way to engage students and get them to apply concepts, theories and critical thinking to real world issues and to help them develop their digital literacy skills. This leads in nicely to our upcoming NetworkEDGE seminar with Professor Matthew Connelly which will be on ‘hacking the archive’.
Professor Connelly will be talking about his course ‘HY447 – Hacking the archive’, which uses big data from various International History databases and teaches students new tools and techniques to explore various the vast array of material available online. Students are encouraged to rethink historical research in the digital age as older primary sources are increasingly becoming available online alongside newly declassified information and ‘born digital’ electronic records. Interdisciplinary research is becoming more essential with academics collaborating across disciplines and with the broader public in order to mine extensive amounts of online data.
Matthew will be speaking at NetworkEDGE on Wednesday 14 January2015, at 5pm
The event is free to attend but places are limited so will need to be reserved via the staff training and development system or by emailing imt.admin@lse.ac.uk. All our talks are live streamed and recorded for those who can’t make it.
You can watch the video recording of the Marieke Guy NetworkED seminar on our LTI Youtube channel and a Q&A with Marieke can be found below
Marieke Guy from Open Knowledge
Ahead of her NetwokED seminar talk on Wednesday 26 November Marieke Guy answered some questions for LTI on open data in education. Q1. How would you define ‘open data’? How does this relate to ‘open access’ and ‘open education’ ?
We’re very lucky to have an excellent definition of open data from Open Definition, which specifically sets out principles that define “openness” in relation to data and content:
“Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness.”
So we are talking about data that is available for people to access and can be reused and redistributed by everyone. One of the important points to make is that openness does not discriminate against commercizal use. Open data is definitely a friend of open access and open education! Publicly funded research publications should not only be open access but the data behind them should also be shared and openly available. At the Open Education Working Group we see open education as a collective term that is used to refer to many practices and activities that have both openness and education at their core. Open data is an important area, along with open content, open licensing, open tools, open policy and open learning and teaching practices. This is becoming even more the case with the rise in online learning, MOOCs and the use of learning analytics.
Q2. Who typically uses open data and what does it get used for?
Anyone can consume open data as an end-user benefitting from openness, but there are two main groups who have a specific interest in dealing with open data. Data providers (such as the government or your institution) may be interested in releasing and sharing data openly. Data handlers are interested in using the data available, maybe by developing an app or service around the data, or by visualising the data, or by asking questions of the data and mining it in some way. A nice easy example here is the Great British Toilet map,
The Great British Toilet Map
where government data was combined with ordnance survey and open street map data to provide a public service app that helps us find the nearest public convenience. You can also add toilets you find to the map, allowing the data that is available to be improved on.
Obviously people who want to get their hands messy with data will need to be data literate. One of our core projects at Open Knowledge is School of Data. School of Data works to empower civil society organisations, journalists and citizens with the skills they need to use data effectively in their efforts to create more equitable and effective societies.
Q3. What are the pros and cons of open data?
The main benefits for using open data are around transparency (knowing what your government and other public bodies are doing), releasing social and commercial value, and participation and engagement. By opening up data, citizens are enabled to be much more directly informed and involved in decision-making. This is about making a full “read/write” society, not just about knowing what is happening in the process of governance but being able to contribute to it.
Opening anything up makes organisations more vulnerable, especially if they have something to hide, or if their data is inaccurate or incomplete. There is also a cost to releasing and building on data. Often this cost is outweighed by the social or economic benefit generated, but this benefit can develop over time so can be hard to demonstrate. Other challenges include the possible misinterpretion or misrepresention of data, and of course issues around privacy.
I personally see open data as being in the same space as freedom of speech with regard to these challenges. We know that open data is the right way to go but there are still some subtleties that we need to work out. The answer to a ‘bad’ use of open data is not to close the data, just as the answer to a racist rant is not to remove our right to freedom of speech.
Q4. Do you have any examples of projects that have involved using ‘open data’ and if so what advantage did ‘open data’ bring?
Earlier this year Otavio Ritter (Open education data researcher, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil) gave a talk to our Open Education Working Group. He mentioned a case in Brazil where the school census collects data about violence in school area (like drug traffic or other risks to pupils). Based on an open data platform developed to navigate through the census it was possible to see that in a specific Brazilian state 35% of public schools had drug traffic near the schools. This fact put pressure on the local government to create a public policy and a campaign to prevent drug use among students. Since then a collection of initiatives run by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made a huge impact on the drug traffic levels near schools.
Q5. What does Open Knowledge do?
Open Knowledge is a worldwide non-profit network of people who believe in openness. We use advocacy, technology and training to unlock information and enable people to work with it to create and share knowledge. We work on projects, create tools and support an amazing international network of individuals passionate about openness and active in making, training and promoting open knowledge. Our network is global (we have groups in more than 40 countries and 9 local chapters) and cross-domain (we currently have 19 working groups that focus on discussion and activity around a given area of open knowledge).
Marieke Guy will be talking at LSE on Wednesday26 November at 5pm in NAB2.06. To book your place go to the staff training and development system or (for those without access to the system) email imt.admin@lse.ac.uk
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Donna Lanclos is an anthropologist working with ethnographic methods and analysis to inform and change policy in higher education, in particular in and around libraries, learning spaces, and teaching and learning practices. She is Associate Professor for Anthropological Research at the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte.
Arseni Gladkov
