Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Trying out new online courses: GDPR and online engagement

    I have been trying out new online courses, starting with a Futurelearn course ‘Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation‘ which many colleagues are also taking part in. I am a Data Controller and responsible for my organisation’s compliance with the GDPR framework when it comes into force, and this course forms part of our way to becoming compliant.

    I have been taking part in the course mostly by reading and absorbing the material rather than discussing/exchanging ideas with other participants – I have plenty of debate around these issues in other contexts.

    The course is clearly structured, easy to follow and has plenty of references and articles to follow up on specific issues further. I found the video component of the course, which is usually more engaging for me, less interesting in this case. I found I prefer to read the more detailed articles and lists.

    After one more week of GDPR, I am really looking forward to starting a completely different kind of course, the upcoming ‘Engagement in a Time of Polarization‘ run on edX led by Delia Deckard and Bonnie Stewart. The course is described as follows:

    How can we work together in a society where our communications channels have become so polarized? Can we engage in active, effective collaboration in a media ecosystem designed to make money from driving us apart?

    This two-week course convenes a conversation on participatory engagement models, and on building understanding and relationships even within the very real limits of contemporary social media. The course will enact the same participatory ideas it explores, and will feature input from leading voices in media literacies, disinformation, and polarization. Participants can engage on their own time and in real time, and if they wish, can build towards action in their local communities.

    The focus of this course closely relates to some of the work I do day to day, in particular around enabling engagement in online communities at scale, supporting effective open, online governance and reflecting on the skills required to participate.

    It’s also a topic I am interested in for my own practice, and I am looking forward to learning more about how debate gets polarized and how we interact online.

  • Re-post #altc: What we have been up to… an update from the Chair and Chief Executive of ALT

    Re-post #altc: What we have been up to… an update from the Chair and Chief Executive of ALT

    Together with the Chair of ALT, Sheila MacNeill, I wrote this update on the work we have been doing and we published this on the #altc blog recently:

    Dear Members

    A year ago we launched ALT’s Strategy 2017-2020 and since then we have made great progress putting our shared values into practice and working together to meet our aims.

    We reported to Members and stakeholders from across sectors in ALT’s Annual Report [PDF] and at the AGM in September. Since then much has happened and so we are are now sharing more of what we have been up to:

    Sharing research & practice

    2017 had a strong programme of events sharing research & practice in Learning Technology and making our independent voice heard in the UK and internationally. The OER17 Conference in London in April, our first Annual Conference to be held in Liverpool in September, the 4th Online Winter Conference in December; and throughout the year local Members Groups meetings brought professionals together to critically discuss topics such as next generation learning environments, micro accreditation and learning analytics.

    Reaching new Member milestones

    As our new strategy clearly states, we are greater than the sum of our parts. In 2017 we celebrated two membership milestones; the 400th CMALT Award and the growth of overall Membership to over 3000. This increase in numbers is making our voice in policy development stronger than ever before. The decision to keep our membership fees frozen for a third year has also paid off as increasing membership allows us to maintain and expand all of our activities. The more members we have, the more we can do for and with our community

    Increasing impact

    We continued to worked hard to increase the impact of Learning Technology for public benefit, establishing a new publishing partnership between ALT and Open Academia for our journal, Research in Learning Technology. Alongside the journal, the #altc blog flourishes and ALT’s Open Access Repository has had a mini renaissance, enabling Members to publish and deposit research and reports, such as the guide to working with startups in Learning Technology. All ALT’s publications continue to be edited by Members and reviewed by Members just like our peer-review for events and awards.

    New pathways to accreditation

    Over the past five months we have led a major consultation, Pathways to CMALT, with Members and the wider community. We want to expand the CMALT accreditation framework to provide new pathways to professional recognition for: Learning Technology professionals in the early stages of their career, for those for whom Learning Technology is only part of their role and also for senior professionals in management, leadership or research positions. Pathways to CMALT is the largest innovation project ALT has undertaken independently since the ground breaking ocTEL online programme. This year will see this exciting new project scaling up to include further mappings beyond the Jisc Digital Capabilities framework, the UKPSF and the Blended Learning curriculum.

    Looking ahead to 2018

    That brings us to what’s coming up in 2018, when we celebrate ALT’s 25th birthday! This is a special year for us as an Association and as well as new accreditation pathways and the first ALT Research Awards we’ll be working together across sectors and countries to achieve greater recognition for and representation of our Members.

    Join us in making this year even more impactful for our community, help spread the word to more Learning Technology professionals and share what we have achieved as a community.

  • Technology Enhanced Learning #IGHETech18

    Technology Enhanced Learning #IGHETech18

    I was invited to participate in an interesting event this week, “Embracing Technology Enhanced Learning”. Lots of very useful resources were shared on Twitter, so I’d encourage you to browse #IGHETech18 to pick up great resources.

    One of the highlights of the day for me was seeing and listen to colleagues whom I work with for ALT, but whom I don’t often get to see on a stage talking about what they do best!

    And both Sheila and Peter as well as Chrissi Nerantzi gave great talks that have really inspired me to follow up on a number of new initiatives.

    We also joined into a brief periscope session as part of this week’s BYOD4L: AN OPEN LEARNING EVENT FOR STUDENTS & TEACHERS, check https://byod4learning.wordpress.com/ for full details and to catch up on what’s been happening.

    The day really inspired me, but it has also left me with some questions: first, it’s reminded me of how unevenly we, as individuals and institutions, take up Learning Technology. There’s a general sense of scaling up, but it feels that there is always a wide distribution across a rather steep curve of adoption – from those who are reluctantly facing change to those who embrace new processes, tools and ways of thinking and empower each other in the process. That is why, I think, we return to talking about the potential, rather than the reality of technology for learning, teaching or assessment. How can we move on?

    Also, Peter really struck a chord with me when he emphasised how the one concern that brings everyone together is for students and the desire to improve things for them. I agree with that and my experience working in any sector proves that time and time again. But how can we actually put that concern first when we are faced with ever more complex technologies? How can we ensure that we can understand, interrogate and shape machine-led processes sufficiently to put students’ benefits first?

    Last, I was left with considering how we can increase the impact of all the work we are doing? There is such a wealth of experience, resources and insight that everything we are already doing seems insufficient to really leveraging its impact fully.

  • Policy making heaven: a look back at Pasi Sahlberg’s OEB keynote

    Policy making heaven: a look back at Pasi Sahlberg’s OEB keynote

    I have been working on some articles about effective education policy this week and that prompted me to look back at Pasi Sahlberg’s contribution (slides available here) to the Opening Plenary at last December’s OEB conference.  It was an inspiring 20 min or so that combined hard hitting policy insight with a global perspective from the Finnish expert and culminated in a sing-a-long that makes the YouTube video worth watching!

    In his talk there was a clear juxtaposition between making “successful education policies for the future we don’t know” (with examples from the UK, US and Australia amongst others) and “shaping the future we want by making successful policies that create equitable public education for all”. Some of the hallmarks of these kinds of policies are that they award trust-based responsibility, encourage professionalisation, reward risk taking and creativity and that they create cooperation. Not a lot to get right, but a stark contrast to the familiar examples of market driven competition we are seeing every day.

    Sahlberg explained how we can get to education policy heaven by achieving the right balance between excellence and equity. Thinking about that made me go back to the call for action for openness in education ALT published late last year. It shows how we could take forward the kind of ‘heavenly’ policy making Sahlberg advocates in all education sectors in the UK in a very practical way.

    With the OER18: Open to All conference only a few months away, there is a lot of work ahead to try and build on the successes of last year, the Year of Open, and make this kind of change happen on a national scale.

  • Better, faster, stronger… why I want to avoid following my digital shadow unquestioningly

    This time of year I come across a lot of statistics, from national to organisational or even personal. Most read articles, number of books read, fastest running times in the last year, furthest travelled, most often cited… and that is not even mentioning the academic insights or administrative dashboards that surround you in Learning Technology. No, there is no limit to how many quantifiable insights or measurable achievements work and life can be expressed as, particularly online.

    Which is why, when I acquainted myself with my ‘digital shadow‘  recently and put it through a ‘digital detox plan’ I felt like the prompts I was getting online, even the well intentioned ones, led me in the wrong direction. From tracking activities to following feeds, this time of year is dominated by what feels like a race to improve, to do more, better… faster… stronger!

    I am not one for new year resolutions, but I think this year I may break with this tradition and resolve not to be seduced by the dashboards, graphs, league tables and charts. This drive to increase, to ensure trends point upwards, is not necessarily where I want to be heading.

    Instead of being prompted by the next badge I can earn if I take a few more steps or the citations I may gain if I publish one more article, I’m going to ask myself “why?” first.

    If I don’t have a strong reason for doing something, I am going to save my energy for other things. Saying no is a healthy habit I do my best to cultivate and making sure I don’t commit to anything without a good reason should help with that.

    I found myself using very few of the hints and tips that the data detox plan suggested. The shadows I cast online are more or less what I expected, manage and largely try to control already. Obsessively updating privacy settings, even the most laborious ones, is probably a good foundation for this kind of process and I am fortunate that I have been doing that for years. Unlike many other professionals I know, I don’t delete old posts from most networks, but I try and ‘clean’ what remains as far as I care to. I am sure I could do better in this respect, but at least I have thought about what I am not doing.

    In order to avoid following my online shadow and the myriad of ways in which all kinds of measurements are trying to encourage me to improve, do more etc, my resolution is to take a step back, and start with why.

    • If I track something, does it serve my purpose?
    • Do I need to quantify what I am doing in order to achieve my aims?
    • Do I need to work harder (better, faster, stronger…) to achieve my aims?
    • Even if I can measure it, why am I?

    In Anthropology there is an interesting discourse on different cultural understandings of numbers, or the concept of numbers. How we arrive at an understanding of numbers and their values, how this is shared across different cultures and periods in history and so forth. One idea that you come across again and again is that our sense of self, of being an individual, is fundamental to our understanding of ‘oneness’, of there being one thing different from others and that we start counting at one. We take our understanding of being a human being as a starting point for making sense of the world.

    My online shadows, particularly if I can track or analyse the traces they, I, leave, can make me feel that my sense of self is becoming more distributed. Having too many opportunities to focus on different things, too many different goals to achieve or milestones to hit can distribute or lessen my sense of why I am doing something, of what is actually important. So this is the direction in which I intend to develop my own critical literacy and skills, this is what I hope my new year resolution will help me achieve – to not follow all the different directions into why my shadows get pulled online without thought or question.

  • Welcome 2018

    Welcome 2018

    Before the year gets properly underway, I’ve had a bit of a tidy on this site:

    As it’s the start of a new year, I’ve also been reading about and following some of the advice provided in Mozilla’s helpful data detox kit.

    I’m looking forward to a year of sharing practice and reflections as a Learning Technologist in a leadership role.

    A good New Year 2018 to you!