Digital Students

Today I went to a seminar by Diana Andone about the Virtual Campus for Digital Students (ViCaDiS) Project. It's effectively a Moodle implementation to allow International collaborations between students at different institutions. It was built to extend the research into "digital students" defined as:

Digital students are young adults who have grown up with digital technologies integrated as an everyday feature of their lives. Among the characteristics that define digital students are that they take the availability of email, instant messaging and text messaging for granted, and use unlimited online resources. Characteristics include:

• a strong need for instantaneity,
• a desire to control their environment
• a technology based social life

The example projects carried out in this environment involved American and Romanian students working collaboratively via Skype, email etc to make a presentation in the media of their own choosing. The projects went well, were seen as fun by the students - who had to learn to overcome language and time zone issues - and are being continued year on year.

I like the idea of getting students to work internationally - I'm sure this has all sorts of benefits for the stduents involved outside the subject matter. It saddens me that there is a need to build a new learning environment to do this, when all the participating institutions already have their own learning environments where their students are already registered and are already familiar, but I'm sure with the advent of OpenID etc this could be handled better in the future.

We ran out of time at the end of the session, so I was unable to ask the two burning questions I had:

1. I can see how this works well, and appeals to digital students. But what about the non-digital ones. I refer back to my mature nursing students (see earlier ponderings on how traditional VLE's really do suit these students). In time, do you think these students will become digital students too - or will there always be a split where it is recognised that online social environments do not work for everyone? As with so many exciting elearning technology developments, they're great for the computer science/technology students, but for students with no interest in the delivery mechanism, can it work?

And,

2. What is the role of the expert in this connected social model? Is it purely the setting of an activity to send the students off to do the research, create the presentation and then share their new knowledge with each other? I would hate to see the subject expert spending more time designing delivery mechanisms than interacting with the students.

Why's it so quiet around here? Go find your audience

I can imagine the conversation in the Government Communications Headquarters:

"why aren't we getting many applications from young, quick thinking, problem solving, team players?"

"because they're never heard of us, and they're all too busy playing computer games..."

And then the revelation, let's go to them and tell them about GCHQ - and let's use the gaming platform to do it. And they did:
Government intelligence organisation targets recruits with Xbox Live ads

I love this on lots of levels. As a Government organisation it shows a real effort to connect with their target market in intelligent ways. And for them, it helps them really reach the candidates they want. I almost hope they have the ads rigged so they only appear for people who've reached the right level of the game or completed some secret mission.

Not being an XBOX player, I don't know for sure, but can imagine the problem is that the ads are just as ignored on the XBOX platform as they are everywhere else. But I applaud the effort.

User Generated Content - If you build it, will they contribute?

I went to seminar at lunchtime today, about CloudBank, a JISC project looking to provide a mobile app for language learners (international students in the UK) to crowd source their own vocabulary.

An interesting project - but what got my attention was the presenters observation that when designing the app they had very much thought of an up-steam model - users wanting to contribute as the primary activity, but when in user testing, they discovered most people wanted downstream - to search and browse the content already there.

The following discussion was about whether it was felt students would actually contribute enough content to make this viable. A wise observation from one of the audience was that they won't contribute "unless it's entertainment, or unless it's assessed". This tallies with what I've found from my own experience, and is the reason I think my Never Ending Uni Quiz game works well - it adds the entertainment element to something not intrinsically entertaining.

The model of language learners submitting their own definitions for unfamiliar words also concerned me. Several examples of existing resources were discussed, and it's clear there is a real role for the 'expert'. Particularly when we're talking about language learners in a university - there are experts in that environment - and it's a shame not to use them.

Speaking of experts, I also want to apologise for an earlier post of the future of the VLE where I ponder on what the role of the tutor will be if we move to a Social Networking Model for supporting face-to-face teaching. I do still wonder what the role of the tutor will be in terms of contributions to collaborative discussions, but I know the importance of the tutor as a subject expert. That should not be overlooked.

Women in technology - My Story

Posted in response to: http://gminks.edublogs.org/2009/10/13/women-in-technology-tell-your-story/

So how did I end up working in technology? I don't think I had a choice in the matter. I'm pretty sure I inherited the technology gene from my parents and I've never not had access to technology. Here's some background on computers at home while I was growing up, from my Dad...

"Both Mum and I had been programming computers since 1964. When I went to GCHQ, I was programming big mainframes pretty solidly from 1970-78 (we even had internal e-mail!) That was when I first got my hands on a Commodore PET that I used to bring home at weekends. I built one of the first Sinclair ZX80s at home – I guess before 1980. I actually bought it from Clive himself at an exhibition for £99! You were still only 6! I think we briefly had a ZX81 but then bought the TI (that you blew up by putting the power cable in the audio socket!) We left the US with one called ADAM (made by the same company that made Cabbage Patch dolls!) You may recall that had high speed tape drives for storage. Our first proper computer was the Amstrad XX? bought around 1986. You certainly became quite expert on that. That had a hard drive and we had one of the very earliest modems in the UK (which I bought on a trip to The Hague c 1987.) That’s when I had my first CompuServe account (22 years ago!) You got really keen on computing around about then partly because of your work experience (do you remember Battle Chess?)"

Well until I asked him about it for this story, I had no idea my Dad had met Clive Sinclair. That's quite some claim to fame! I wouldn't have been impressed when I was 6 though.

Maths was always my thing at school (both parents are mathematics graduates). I went on to Uni to get a Maths degree, and recall spending a lot of time at Uni learning C, sending emails to my long distance boyfriend and playing XBattle. Never far from the computer labs.

When the web came along I was doing my Masters Degree (in Video Production, having being bored of maths by now and turned down a PhD in Probability theory) and of course I had a go...tiled backgrounds were big news.

From there I seem to have fallen into a series of jobs graduating from the general; IT support to IT Project Management to the specific; eLearning Development.

I intended to write this story a while ago, but was re-triggered recently by this article: What is Keeping Women out of Technology? Personally, I found this a bit patronising, and would also argue that I tend to prioritise opportunities, and in my case family always comes first - so I don't say yes to many conferences and don't seek new responsibilities, but that doesn't mean I'm either scared or lazy.

In fact I'm happy where I've ended up. In my current role my job is to develop and evaluate new technologies (be that iPhones, HTML5 or Google Wave) and see what the potential for teaching and learning in Higher Education might be. My work/life balance is finely-tuned, and I enjoy both parts of it (perhaps not equally though!).

Will we be using Blackboard in 5 years time?

One of the favoured topics of all eLearning people is debating the future of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The general consensus amongst those who particularly enjoy this topic is that the learning paradigm is changing to a social networking model rather than the current controlled content model as typified by Blackboard.

My thinking on this topic changes regularly, particularly in light of this most recent post on The Future of Learning: LMS or SNS by George Siemens [for those not up on the lingo these are "Learning Management Systems" aka a VLE eg Blackboard vs a Social Networking System eg Facebook or Elgg]

At the University of Brighton we can feel this change coming, so we run Elgg alongside Blackboard. The Elgg service is branded as Community@Brighton and available directly or through a tab in Blackboard. Instructors on Blackboard courses can link through to an Elgg community to provide the range of social tools within the framework of their Blackboard course - you can read more about the way we do things at Brighton in this background post.

Whenever I start thinking about the future I like to think about how all of this will be received by mature nursing students who can be slightly terrified of IT and their tutors who want to make things as easy for them as possible. Forget the 18 year old IT stduents, they'll be fine. At the moment, however, Blackboard is exactly the right solution for our nurses I believe. Everything is clearly structured, they go in, take what they want, contribute nothing. Elgg is still slightly terrifying for them and their tutors.

But Facebook somehow isn't terrifying. There's all those impressive stats about middle-aged mums spending hours on facebook playing complicated games. I guess this applies to my IT-phobic mature nurses too. If thats the case, maybe I shouldn't worry, maybe social will work for everyone.

I'm still not clear what role the tutors have to play in the social model. Do they help guide students through the rich mass of shared resources, or can that happen through user constructed routes without them? Is the tutor just another member, but one with a slightly louder voice who sets assignements from time to time? I think I'll go and ask George what he thinks...

How to Deep Link in Blackboard 9

One thing we do a lot to improve the navigation within Blackboard and to repurpose content to other sites, is to deep link within Blackboard to specific content.

In 7.3 this was relatively easy - and having spend some time trying to figure out how to do it in Bb9, I'd almost given up, but with the help of our technical support manager at Blackboard we have it cracked!

Essentially you need to construct a url using the standard first part and encode the actual address of the content you want to link to. This works beautifully within Blackboard (without getting nested navigation menus) and for links external to Blackboard which prompt as required for authentication before taking you where you wanted to go.

I've written a full user guide here:
http://student.brighton.ac.uk/help/details.php?id=578&keyword=link
[I'm sure you can work out how to contruct your own first part, just switch out "studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk" for your own service]

Hopefully in time I can make this help guide a bit more user friendly, but for now I hope it helps some of you!

The Power of Leaderboards - motivating staff

One of the projects I'm involved with this term is the implementation of an eLearning package from our Health & Safety department to make sure all staff at the University have the necessary fire safety knowledge to meet legislation. That means 100% of staff need to complete a 30 minute package within 12 months. And they have to get over 80% on the final quiz to 'pass'. Everyone. Admin, Management, Lecturers and Cleaners alike.

I'm sure you've all spotted the hard part of this by now! If you're at all familiar with the range of human beings in the world you know that:
1) telling them they have to do it will get 10% to do it
2) telling their managers to tell them they have to do it will get another 10%
3) planning group sessions where their hands are held all the way through it might manage another 10%
4) continual nagging emails...10%
5) bribery with prizes for completing within a timeframe...10%
That makes 50%. If we're lucky.

So my trick, which I've been given the go-ahead to run with is to name-and-shame, or rather as I sold it, name-and-motivate!

I plan on publishing a "leaderboard" on the staff intranet shortly after launch showing what percentage of people for each dept have completed the package. This should work two-fold: 1) people who haven't done it will see that "Personnel" (for example) are doing better than their own department and 2) people who have done it will see that somehow "Personnel" are still beating their dept and might just encourage their colleagues to complete it too. That's the holy grail.

We launch in early Dec...I'll let you know how it goes!

The Process of Play

I went to a seminar this week at Microsoft about Sharepoint, and curiously there was a presentation included from a company called Playgroup, which introduced me to Scott Eberle's Process of Play.

A lot of this overlaps with the work I've been doing with my Educational Games research group on motivation.

I haven't processed all this yet, but it's making me think about designing playful behaviour into online learning materials. I'm starting with 'anticipation' and 'surprise'.

I think the typical model of telling students what the learning outcomes are going to be at the beginning could be easily shaped into 'anticipation' (step 1) if you think carefully about how this is shaped and presented. From there in order to achieve 'surprise' (step 2) we need to not present them with exactly what they would expect next. Perhaps something as simple as an online mini activity rather than a page of text, indirectly related to the topic, perhaps analogous. Completing this gives 'pleasure' (step 3) and while they're pleased we can explain what the point of it was leading to 'understanding' (step 4). Now we have to look to achieve 'strength' (step 5) by reinforcing what they've learned - perhaps another mini-activity which of course seems easy now, and then with this under their belt they have achieved 'poise' (step 6).

That all seems simple enough, and of course matches what a lot of people do instinctively anyway, but I'm hoping that by consciously building in these steps the whole experience might become more engaging.

I'd like to find some keen lecturers and try restructuring materials they already have to fit this model and see what the students think.

On being a female nerd...

Remember my tribute to Marissa Meyer I wrote for Ada Lovelace day?

Well, I was pleased to see this photo published widely today of Marissa maintaining - and breaking - stereotypes. Nice to see someone who openly admits she codes all night, looking gorgeous and modern and sexy.

I find it hard to break the dress code at work of jeans and t-shirts, but in honour of Marissa perhaps I'll go for something that challenges peoples assumptions of what a coder is and what they look like.