Category: CPD

#DigitalScholar week 2: course structure v a trail of breadcrumbs

I’ve been working on my course outline as part of the #DigitalScholar course I’m participating in. The deadline is on Friday and I have been catching up on the guidance and help provided to get my submission ready. The topic of my course is using reflection as a CPD tool in Learning Technology.

As I mentioned previously, the course is run on Scholar, a new platform for me, and I feel we are gradually making friends. The ‘creator’ tool we are using took some getting used to – but it soon becomes easy to use. I’ve still drafted most of the text in a Google doc in the first instance, but translating the draft into the creator interface was straight forward and I really like the fact that you are creating content in a format which can then be used in different ways, basically working in something like a publishing interface meets back-end content management. Anyway, one of the most useful pieces of guidance provided by the course team is a rubric which sets out what sections you need to include in the outline for your future online course, what kinds of things to consider, what potential participants might need to know and so forth. It’s very helpful as well as thought provoking – in particular when it comes to thinking about possible business models for future courses. My experience on courses like ocTEL for example, was all about delivering an open course without any financial contribution from participants. The #DigitalScholar process makes you reflect on that and what sustainable alternatives might look like. It’s useful and valuable to be challenged to think about this during the initial course design phase I think.

But… yes, there is a but. I think the more I work on my course outline, the more I think about course activities, learning outcomes, accreditation or peer-review or indeed the underlying business model, the more I realise that the kind of course I’d really like to design would be quite different. Only by trying to create something new within a given structure, using the platform provided, have I started to realise what it is that I am actually curious about. It’s still a bit blurry, but some elements are starting to become clear. Here is what I have so far (and keep in mind that this is professional/personal development for me, so I am focused and what I am interested in rather than what I need to deliver at work):

Minimal content. A little like various “thoughts for the day” or “image of the day” creative approaches already happening. Maybe via email or Twitter – but no learning objects as such, mostly just a prompt. Or a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.

One way to curate contributions. That’s probably inspired by what we did with ocTEL, creating a way to use hashtags to collate contributions from across different platforms so that participants can stay within their native environments. It would probably be much harder to balance out the bias of any chosen platform in practice than I imagine, but this is all in my head anyway.

No video. Just words. This is where the story element I am after comes in. Like reading a story, participants should be able to imagine things for themselves rather than being shown.

Any pace. I think my ideal course would have no set pace, no fixed end date. A little like my experience of participating in Dave Cormier’s #rhizo15 course, there would be a no constraints.

Reflect. The main focus of the course would be on reflection. Whether you do that in your head, draw it, write it down or share it wouldn’t matter. Reflection is a personal undertaking and the course wouldn’t need to measure that. It would be up to people participating to decide whether they reflect or how well it worked for them.

Hmmmm. All in all I am not sure what I am thinking about is a course at all. Maybe it’s more an activity others could join in with.

So, that’s my progress report from week 2 of the #DigitalScholar course. Thus far I have made a lot of useful connections, met a new platform, participated in a couple of inspiring online meetings, created a draft course outline and – well, come up with a completely different idea as well. Well worth it, I think!

13/07/2016
My first week as a #DigitalScholar: the adventure begins

It’s been a busy week taking part in the new Digital Scholar course and in this second post I’ll share my initial impressions and experience over the past few days. This online course is run on the Scholar platform, which I am new to.

Saying hello: One of the really fun aspects of the first week on the course has been getting to know the other participants. It’s been great to see greetings from a global group of participants from a pletora of different backgrounds, professions and sectors. I’ve been enjoying hearing about what others’ are aiming to get out of the course and what they are looking to achieve.

Finding my way around: that’s been more of a challenge given that I am new to the platform, the course structure etc. The course team provides a lot of guidance, including video tutorials and overviews/lists of things to do. Some aspects of the Scholar platform haven’t felt intuitive to me – e.g. the process of adding others’ as peers – but all in all I have found what I am looking for.

Noise or nice: Like other courses of this kind I have participated in, there is A LOT of activity in the first few days. Figuring out what to concentrate on and what to filter out is a key learning process. For me, adjusting email settings and finding ways of checking on updates without getting lost in hundreds of personal messages has been a learning curve. I’ve tried the Slack channels as well, although at the moment I haven’t found a use for it yet. I have tried to participate in the conversation #DigitalScholar on Twitter instead. I am not sure to what extent I am going to engage with the informal networking instead of the formal peer review process – I suspect it’ll depend on how much time I have.

Independence: One aspect of the course I really like is that it allows you to be fairly independent in how you organise and approach your work. There is a strong emphasis on figuring out how to make this work for yourself and that helps increase my engagement. I also enjoy having a new online space in which to start creating a project. There are key deadlines to work towards, so that helps keep me focused and paced through the week.

Up next: I have just over a week to finish the outline of the online course I am using as my course project. It’s a course about using reflection for CPD in Learning Technology (yes, for some of you that may sound familiar from my CMALT portfolio…;) .

07/07/2016
Starting a new course #DigitalScholar and discovering a new platform

This evening was my first introduction (or ‘live learning moment’) to the new #DigitalScholar course. If you want to take a look at what this course run by the Geneva Learning Foundation is all about, have a look at the course announcement (course starts on Monday, 4th July 2016).

This course is a new adventure for me, a new opportunity for CPD but also a chance to discover a new platform: Scholar. I haven’t tried this one before – but the course community will also be using Slack, a tool I’ve only recently started using and found quite useful even for a complete novice.

My aim is to make the most of this course by designing a new course outline in Scholar, hopefully focusing on reflection as part of CPD and aligned to the CMALT framework that I help develop in my day job for ALT. I like the idea of starting a course with a clear aim in mind already – that works for where I am in my thinking just now. Also, the organisers are very clear about me, as a participant, making a clear commitment to spend time actually working on the course. It feels very transparent and engaging and I really want to try and support this kind of peer-based learning as a participant.

So, I am at the brink of jumping into this new community. I’ve set up my account, signed up for the platform and started making a few connections – but largely this is a leap into the unknown. I can’t wait for Monday 🙂

30/06/2016
1, 2, 3, 4… 5 years as CEO: a new series of posts begins here
Part of my focus in this blog is on sharing my approach to leadership as an open practice. This is my fifth year as chief executive of ALT, the Association for Learning Technology (if you want to find out more about ALT, visit the website) and over the next few months I will be writing a series of posts – each one reflecting on one particular aspect on my experience and work.

I’ve been wanting to do this for some time and indeed I do write on this more frequently in a less open forum. But my fifth year in this role seems like a good time to do this and to use this series of posts not just as a tool for reflection but also to provide some insights for others. When I applied for this role in 2012 I would have liked to read something like this and I hope it might be of use to you.

There is a lot I could write about and I have been thinking for a while on what topics might be best suited for these posts. For now, these are the themes I have settled on:
- being a woman makes a difference;
- I am where the buck stops. That can be a lonely place;
- change is a good;
- learning new things all the time is a must;
- what motivates me.
So, that’s what’s coming up. I haven’t written it yet, but this post is a bit of a road map for where I want to get to with this series of posts. Thanks for reading and look out for post number one, coming soon.
20/06/2016
Open CPD, Visual Thinkery, art school: my week made me think

This post is inspired by two things I did this week: first, taking part in Wednesday’s @LTHEchat on the topic of Open CPD with Chris Rowell and second, reading my weekly delivery of Visual Thinkery in Saturday’s newsletter. Both are highly enjoyable, interesting and rewarding so if you haven’t already I strongly recommend you take a look.

CC-BY-ND @bryanMMathers http://bryanmmathers.com/

Both of these activities made me think about being online and what I do when I am online. Is it part of a process, a place or a platform? How do I do what I do and why? It’s useful to step back at times and take a look at what I do and the reasons behind it.
In my case a lot of how I work and think was shaped during my years at art school. For six years fine art and specifically making sculptures was what I spent most of my time doing. It was where I first developed a creative process, learnt to do research, gained critical thinking skills and so forth. In practical terms being in a sculptor’s workshop is not at all like being online: it’s all about physical materials, sensual perception, working with your hands and a lot of messiness. Making something has its own pace, too. Some days go by fast and productive, on others nothing happens and sometimes you spent all your time doing something that turns out to be a disaster. In my last year at art school I learnt how to carve marble. Or rather I attempted to.

Marble…. largely unchanged

I learnt the technique – but then discovered how LONG it would take to actually carve something. I ended up making a single mosaic over two terms and had a small block of marble still sitting on my table largely unchanged. While I don’t make a lot of things anymore the skills and processes I learnt serve me well in my work now, especially online.
One thing I learnt was to be comfortable sharing a process, rather than a result. Like many people, I think of most of what I do as a process and some of the formal output is just a by product. It’s necessary, but it’s not the main aim. Similarly, place is important. Whether it’s physical or virtual doesn’t really matter, it’s equally important to me. Both in the chat, when we talked about making time for CPD and creating safe spaces in which to share/experiment/fail, and in the drawing Bryan included in the newsletter (which I have included also in this post), I thought about having control over your own places and spaces. It might be a desk or a domain, an office or an open course, a train compartment or a tweet chat. Different places for different times and activities depending on what you want to do. What’s important is to make use of it effectively. A sculptor’s studio is usually a growing collection of inspiration, sketchbooks, materials, models and more. It’s a place which you can use to think, talk, create – but it doesn’t dictate what you do.
In a university setting I shared the space with others, had my tutorials in it or gave presentations. My place became the platform from which I launched my handiwork into the realm of critical evaluation by others. My work became my platform later on, when it sat on the floor of a gallery or in a portfolio. In many ways what I do now is the same. This blog for example acts both as a workshop and a platform, it’s about process and being part of a community of peers.
The Visual Thinkery newsletter and the tweet chat alike made me reflect on how I use technology, how I engage in online activities and spaces. Am I doing it on my own terms? Or am I letting technology dictate the pace and mode of interaction? Is being connected overriding other aspects? Jaron Lanier’s you are not a gadget comes to to mind here and on that note I think I have found some inspiration for the week ahead.

12/06/2016
#ilta2016: Two #edtech days in Dublin

Law Society, conference venue

Last week I took part in EdTech2016, the annual conference organised by the Irish Learning Technology Association. It’s definitely worth visiting the conference platform for a wealth of resources and presentations and reading some of the Twitter conversation #ilta2016 or viewing the TAGS Explorer archive. While I was invited to attend the event on behalf of ALT (and you can access the slides from the talk I gave jointly with Martin Hawksey on Slideshare) it was also a great opportunity for some CPD for me and this is what this blog post is about.

Over the two days the programme had a lot to offer, including sessions about the 12 Apps of Chri stmas 2015 from the Dublin Institute of Technology, Mapping Digital Technology Teaching Practices from Glasgow Caledonian University and building a MOOC on a budget from an institutional consortium.

#ilta2016

Alongside a lively social programme and the annual Jennifer Burke Award there were three stand-out keynote speakers: Mike Feerick opened the second day, Rhona Sharpe closed the first and the opening keynote was given by Audrey Waters (again, more info about all of them is available on the conference site).

What I was particularly interested in is thinking about what the future may hold, what forces may shape Learning Technology over the next decade or two and to get a sense of what major developments will determine the shape of things to come. In that respect you could hardly have chosen a keynote line up better suited. However, after mulling over the three thought-provoking presentations that were delivered I feel they have left me with more questions and less certainty. And that is not because innovation is so disruptive or the geo-political climate uncertain. Instead, I think the questions that arose from the presentations for me were all about inevitability. What’s inevitable and why and who makes it so? To be more specific, here are three questions that help sum up what I am thinking of:

Dublin, day 2

First, how do we conceptualise learners? As customers, as users, as people? Is the dominance of one of these perspectives inevitable? Why? What difference does it make when we think about others or ourselves in that way? How would we want to be thought about?
Second, why do we feel technological development and the proliferation of new technologies is inevitable? Who are the capitalists, engineers and marketeers that make it so?
Third, who do we think of as being in control of the future of educational technology? Many narratives I read or hear seem to be about making the most of what opportunities we can grasp, coping with limited choices or under difficult conditions – succeeding in the face of adversity. But if not us, then who is empowered to shape the future?

For me these questions are worth thinking about, worth taking time to reflect on.

But… if I had to find answers based solely on the two days I spent in Dublin, that would be simple: I am grateful to experience the kindness and openness that can be built in such a community of practitioners and researchers. Their connections hold great value and power. It’s that which should shape our future in (learning) technology.

31/05/2016