Category: Learning Technology

2018: The year Learning Technology

Snapshots 2018: ALT Scotland, Glasgow; Blended Learning Symposium, Hong Kong Polytechnic; ILTA Annual Conference, Carlow, Ireland; CMALT Ceremony, Hong Kong; ALT Northern Ireland, Belfast; SEDA Annual Conference, Birmingham; OER18 Open Education Conference, Bristol, ALT’s Annual Conference & Awards Evening, Manchester, UK. Thank you to everyone’s who made my year.

Against a backdrop of much political, social and environmental upheaval I have spent the past year working hard for all things Learning Technology – always on a mission to make better sense of how we relate to technology as we learn, teach and live. Learning Technology is so interesting and challenging because the work we do is happening at the intersection of education and work, constantly negotiating our relationship with technology as a society, as human beings. It brings into focus some of the biggest questions that we face in this age, questions about the role of machines in our world, artificial intelligence, about how knowledge is produced and ultimately the forces that shape our lives.

Day to day the reality of supporting lecturers with a VLE or teaching adult learners how to get online is a little more prosaic than that, but if there is anything we have learnt this year it is that the legal, ethical and moral dimensions of Learning Technology are becoming ever more important. From the role of lecture capture in labour disputes to implementing GDPR and to safeguarding well-being online there is no shortage of examples that Learning Technology has indeed come of age and that we have to face these important questions in a manner that is not only practical, but equitable and fair for generations to come. And although this year has certainly brought with it much to be dismayed about, in Learning Technology there has been a new cause for hope as our work to create a more nuanced, a more critical and reflective discourse has gained momentum. No longer do we focus primarily on advocating for technology as a solution but on a more holistic approach that acknowledges the importance of people, of learners and teachers in every learning context.

So here is my year in Learning Technology in ten highlights for you to share, make use of and be inspired by:

Learning Technology – A Handbook for FE Teachers and Assessors

My favourite part of this handbook (read the review) is that is has a section on evaluating what you are doing and reflecting on it. It’s useful for many beyond Further Education and it’s written by someone who really knows their stuff – Daniel Scott. If you haven’t come across it yet, put it on your reading list for 2019.

Beyond advocacy for change: developing critical & open approaches in Learning Technology #LTHEchat #altc

Extract from the LTHE Twitter chat

This twitter chat, which Martin Hawksey and I worked on together, brings together many of the themes from this year around the role of Learning Technology, how our work is changing and how we can take a more critical, open approach. You can explore the chat itself on Wakelet or read up on the follow up blog post.

Policy Making in Action – A Senior CMALT portfolio by Melissa Highton

Melissa Highton‘s approach to achieving Senior CMALT was particularly inspiring as Melissa describes how she “delivered a session at AltC 2018 exploring the interplay between technology and teaching, and learning technologists and academic colleagues. In it I talked about the importance of working alongside colleagues from different backgrounds and I used a ‘learning from critical incidents’ framework for my reflection.”

The topic of Melissa’s work was “experience of writing, and consulting on, an institution-wide opt-out policy for lecture recording” and the context that “work with technology for teaching and learning… comes into contention during a strike” as was discussed in these blog posts [written during] during the strike can be found here.

When I grow up I want to be a Learning Technologist by Clint Lalonde

Skip to 22.28 min in for Clint‘s talk or even better sit back and watch all of them compered by the inimitable Tom Farrelly.

How and why should Learning Technologists engage with start-ups? A collaborative guide…

Working with industry in Learning Technology is not always easy and one of the collaborations I led this year was to write a guide for Learning Technologists about how to work with start-ups. At the outset of the project, we wanted to find out what makes a successful collaboration between Learning Technology professionals and start-ups, what barriers may get in the way and what experiences we can learn from. We also asked the question why this is important and how it might be useful to the wider community, both individuals and organisations. You can now access the guide http://bit.ly/altcstartupguide and read the related blog post.

25 years of EdTech by Martin Weller

In Learning Technology we have the history, evidence, research to shape a more critical perspective and there are an increasing number of voices that articulate how things are changing. Martin Weller’s inspiring series on ‘25 years of Ed Tech’ is a great example of this (and definitely worth reading if you haven’t come across it yet). Martin emphasises the need for taking a critical approach to our thinking in Learning Technology, to examine the (commercial) interest that influence its development, ‘for example, while learning analytics have gained a good deal of positive coverage regarding their ability to aid learners and educators, others have questioned their role in learner agency and monitoring and their ethics.’

A personal, feminist and critical retrospective of Learning (and) Technology, 1994-2018

…”Our session is based primarily on two perspectives.The first perspective is rooted in our analysis of the past 24 years of ALT’s Annual Conference — as represented in published websites for later conferences, and for earlier conferences, references to the conference in ALT’s Journal (now Research in Learning Technology). The second perspective is our own personal histories that both exist beyond that narrative and intersect with it. Our initial analysis of the conference has identified Open/Active Learning and Community/Communities of Practice as themes that have persisted over several conferences and many years. We will summarise the themes and trajectories, highlighting how these ideas have been represented within ALT’s Annual Conference, how they have evolved, which perspectives have persisted and which have become irrelevant or have fallen out of favour. In addition, we acknowledge that the personal is political. Our respective critical approaches to this work reflect our own varied histories within and beyond HE, IT, and learning technology.”… by Frances Bell and Catherine Cronin.

#CMALT #altc Twitter chat

CMALT Core Principles visualised by Bryan Mathers

This year has seen a lot of work on professional recognition and cpd for Learning Technologists and this twitter chat at ALT’s Online Winter Conference formed part of a broader effort of consultation and development to forge two new accreditation pathways. With input from over a hundred Members, work has progressed so that Associate and Senior CMALT are launching in February 2019 – exciting times ahead.

Openness in education: a call to action for policy makers

Article on Wonke

Together with Lorna Campbell I wrote this article on Wonkhe, which explains how 2018 was a “particularly important [year] for Higher Education as 2017 marked the anniversary of several groundbreaking initiatives that laid the foundations for what we now recognise as the open education movement. 2017 saw the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and the release of the first Creative Commons licence, the 10th anniversary of the Cape Town Declaration, the 5th anniversary of the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, and it was also the year that the new UNESCO OER Action Plan was launched.” Read more.

And finally…. in my own words: who shapes the future of Learning Technology?

This year I have a handy way of letting my work do the talking because much of what I am most interested in and many of the things that I feel are important came together in my keynote talk. This was a very special keynote to me and I was grateful to the Trustees of ALT to invite me to speak at ALT’s 25th Annual Conference. This post shares the slides and some of my notes for the talk and you can also watch a recording from the conference here . Thanks to James Clay for this video sketch note of the talk.

Keynote: Maren Deepwell – Beyond advocacy: Who shapes the future of Learning Technology?

10/12/2018
Senior CMALT: Open Access research & promoting equality in Learning Technology
Part of my professional development for this year was to take part in the pilot schemes for new pathways to CMALT, ALT’s accreditation scheme for Learning Technology professionals. I acted as an assessor for the Associate CMALT pathway and updated and submitted my own portfolio, which was originally accredited in February 2016, for assessment for the pathway for Senior CMALT. Now that the pilot has been concluded, and I have been awarded Senior CMALT alongside colleagues who also took part in the pilot, I am updated the openly shared version of my portfolio here as well as on the official CMALT portfolio register.

In contrast to others, I did not choose to create a new portfolio in order to take part in the pilot, primarily because it is due to be updated in February 2019. Instead, I have added additional sections to my portfolio as follows (the other sections remain unchanged as they are already in line with the requirements of this pathway):
- Specialist option(s): second specialist option added, Open Access research publishing in Learning Technology
- Advanced area: new advanced area added, Promoting equality in Learning Technology
As this is a pilot of the scheme, it remains to be seen what the finalised guidance for this new pathway will say, but my portfolio will help provide a baseline of examples for future candidates.

For the first new section, I drew on an area of my work that I had previously not included in my portfolio:

I have led and worked on a number of Open Access projects supporting research in Learning Technology including establishing the ALT Open Access Repository in 2009 (the wALTer Project), overseeing the transition to Open Access for ALT’s journal Research in Learning Technology (for which I contributed to the report on “The Transition to… Open Access”) and in 2017 the second and third transition of this journal from its Open Access publisher, Co-Action, to be sold to Taylor & Francis and subsequently taking independent ownership of the journal, which is now published by ALT in partnership with Open Academia. Since 2012 I have had responsibility for the journal, working together with its Editors and Editorial Board. In 2018 I led the establishment of a new strategic working group of the journal. The new group will help steer the development of the journal with representatives from other scholarly bodies including ascilite, ILTA and the OLC alongside our Editors. The group is chaired by Prof Neil Morris, who also chairs the Editorial Board.

Over the past 18 months I have negotiated the contracts for both transitions, first from Co-Action to Taylor & Francis and then from Taylor & Francis to ALT in partnership with Open Academia. I have project managed both transitions, supporting Trustees in their decision making as well as the Editorial Team. During this time ALT has had to suspend operations of the journal for several months and I regularly communicated with Members and other stakeholders during this time (including a transition announcement, publisher news, re-launch update and thank you). As part of my work with the working group, I have researched current practice for Open Access journals around journal impact factors and alternatives to these, including altmetrics, h index and Eigenfactor, some of which I have shared in blog posts and at the ILTA Annual Conference, EdTech2018, at IT Carlow, Ireland, in June 2018. Under my leadership, the journal has adopted Open Access best practice and has recently been awarded the DOAJ seal and has also resumed steady operations and is now publishing regularly including a recent themed collection on Playful Learning.

The other new section I have added is the advanced area of practice, and for this I chose to focus on how my practice contributes to promoting equality in Learning Technology. This is something I have written about before and also presented as part of my keynote at ALT’s Annual Conference in September 2018.

From this section, I’d like to share the reflective element in particular – relating how my work addresses the core principles of the CMALT framework:

Reflection

I have not only chosen this advanced area because I think it is really important to the success of my practice, but because in my view it has a particular relevance to Learning Technology professionals. Reflecting on the core principles of CMALT, here is how my area of advanced practice, promoting equality, relates to them:
- A commitment to exploring and understanding the interplay between technology and learning: Learning Technologists are often at the centre of negotiating an organisation’s, or a group’s, relationship to technology, for example students relationship to a social network or staff engagement with a cpd course. We are able to inform the perspective other, less expert, users have of how technology is used, understand how it affects our lives and our identities. How the data or content we create affects our work. At best, Learning Technologists empower staff and students in their relationship with technology, help them gain a more critical, reflective and thus effective long term engagement with the tools and platforms they use – and hopefully shape or create in future. It is a big responsibility and a big opportunity at the same time. If our practice, my practice, is shaped by values that prompt us, me, to promote equality, create greater equity and so forth, then we can make a real difference.
- A commitment to keep up to date with new technologies: for me an important aspect of keeping up to date with new technologies is to understand their context: how they are financed and by whom, who has developed or tested them, or what kind of data sets informed their working, whom are they aimed at and what do they promise? What is their business model and how is it sustained? One piece of work I did this year is to collaborate with startups on a guide about how Learning Technologists can work together with start ups and through that project I had many useful conversations with CEOs of edtech startups. They were all young, white males and invariably the conversation about organisational culture reflected the pressure of moving at the speed they needed to whilst trying to have a more diverse team being in conflict with each other. It was an interesting first hand experience of how keeping up to date with technology and the constant need to catch up and adapt does not foster a culture that promotes equality. It is also an example of how our perception to need to keep pace with innovation, to move ahead, is used an an excuse, either consciously or subconsciously, not to diversify.
- An empathy with and willingness to learn from colleagues from different backgrounds and specialisms: This is the core principles which most closely relates to promoting equality. In my own team I have led to establishing a strong practice of weekly meetings that include a show & tell element for example, enabling everyone in the team to ask questions, share ideas or show each other new tips or tricks from spreadsheet shortcuts to new tools we could use. Together as a team we take part in online cpd courses such as 23Things or a GDPR course on Futurelearn and I value the opportunity to learn alongside my colleagues, gain a sense of their perspective and understanding and to reflect this in my own.
- A commitment to communicate and disseminate effective practice: Lending your voice to raising issues around equality is not a task for women, but for everyone and I am grateful to have many male colleagues who play an important part in this. But I don’t think you need to explicitly reference equality at all to effectively promote it. Simply taking a balanced view in whom you reference, whom you include in your perspective, can have a most powerful effect. For me, the OER Conferences are a good example of how to promote equality in Learning Technology, how to amplify the voices of those less often heard.
There is a lot more I hope to achieve when it comes to promoting equality in Learning Technology. I leverage what I have to make a difference and I do my best to take every opportunity I can to do so, but whilst I have a growing network of inspiring allies to work with, there is a multitude of indifference who will ask “So what?”.

For many, equality is something that doesn’t have anything to do with them. It’s not something they want me or people like me to go on about. It’s not a an issue because…”women can participate if they want”, because “no one is stopping them”, because “I haven’t experienced discrimination so it doesn’t exist”, etc. etc. Insert any number of cliches!

CMALT is a peer-based accreditation framework that retains its value because there is a continuous cycle of developing our understanding of what it means to be a Learning Technologist and what we understand to be good or best practice through being assessors and updating our portfolios. I think promoting equality is a big part of what makes me a good Learning Technologist and I hope that this new section of my portfolio demonstrates that.

If you would like to have a look at the full version of the portfolio I submitted for the pilot, you can access the Google doc version and the evidence folder.
28/10/2018
#altc keynote preview: Beyond Advocacy at ALT’s Annual Conference

I am really looking forward to giving a keynote as part of ALT’s upcoming 25th Annual Conference, and I am even more delighted to do so alongside the inspiring Amber Thomas, whose work I have followed and admired for a long time and also Tressie McMillan Cottom, whom I can’t wait to meet in person.

So, here is a preview of what the keynote is going to be about and also a link to watch it on the day 🙂

Beyond advocacy: Who shapes the future of Learning Technology?

This keynote poses the question ‘who shapes the future of Learning Technology?’. We will explore current thinking about what drives how we use technology in learning and teaching and questions the promise of tech that never quite delivers. For decades, technology has promised solutions to help us learn, teach, assess and care better, and yet these visions of the future are always just beyond the horizon.

But how do we move beyond that promise?

How do get beyond tech advocacy and realise the potential of our professional practice for the benefit of learners and the greater good?

To start answering these questions I will explore how professional practice has developed charted through new research into ALT’s CMALT accreditation scheme and share examples from recent collaborative work promoting equality in Learning Technology.

See the programme page for more details.

31/08/2018
Beyond hype or dystopia: Looking ahead to ALT’s Annual Conference 2043

No, this isn’t a typo, this post is actually about looking ahead to a conference in 2043, 25 years from now…

The prompt for this post is that Members of ALT are celebrating the 25th Annual Conference of the Association, which makes this year a valuable opportunity to reflect on how far we have come, all the things we have learnt and everything that has changed as well as the big challenges that are still ahead. I have been following and hugely enjoying Martin Weller’s series of blog posts “25 years of Ed Tech” so if you have missed it, go and read it now.

But what about looking forward to the next 25 years?

With the most recent Horizon Report being published this week, I have been wanting to look ahead beyond the future that futurists predict. And I enjoyed the post that Audrey Watters published “The Horizon never moves” in which she sets out some key ways in which the hype in the edtech industry is always about what’s just beyond the horizon, what’s ‘almost there’. And then I have seen a (to me) new t-shirt appear on my Twitter feed which bears the slogan “tech won’t save us”. Thus prompted, I want to look ahead at the future in a manner that is free of predictions, free of the promise of technology or the solutions that are on the horizon. Instead this post is about stepping outside of hype and dystopia, instead sharing what I hope ALT’s Annual Conference (or an event like it) will be about in 2043:

First, I hope that there will be an independent Association for Learning Technology in the UK in 2043 and that the voice of its Members will continue to have grown in influence and reach as it has over the past 25 years.

Also, I hope that as a professional body ALT will have as diverse a range of professionals leading it as it has today, continuing to challenge notions of professionalisation, fight for recognition of the value of the work Learning Technologists do and continue to expand our understanding and practice of how technology is used for learning, teaching and assessment. Regardless of what education and training provision will structurally look like by 2043, we will still be using technology to help us learn, develop and accredit.

Long before 2043, I hope that the business model that supports the work ALT or similar professional bodies do will enable every Member to attend its events, with neither time nor cost being a barrier that prevents professionals to come together either in person or virtually to move their work forward.

By 2043 I hope that sharing critical reflection, pose questions and importantly disseminate failures will have become more common place than it is now. That conference sessions are less focused on reporting success or promoting solutions and geared more towards collaboration, debate and forming relationships. For that to be possible, the way in which language and in particular terminology around Learning Technology are used will have to become less divisive across sectors. I hope that we will have overcome the tendency to dismiss what we haven’t created ourselves or in-house, or what is expressed with different words than those we would use ourselves.

From a global perspective, I hope that the conference will have stronger ties with other events in the UK and across the world and contribute to the wider dialogue that addresses the fundamental questions of how we as human beings relate to technology and how we shape our future. My vision of the future is one of empowered professionalism, not one determined solely by the forces of technological determinism.

The most powerful part of the conference in my experience is to get a sense of one’s agency within a community, to hear different voices and see contrasting perspectives that help open up new horizons and stop my professional practice from becoming too focused on internal concerns or limited to being relevant only in a cosy echo chamber.

The last point I want to add is that I hope that the future Learning Technology will be shaped less by the privileged, powerful and established than it is now. That in 2043 it is no longer unusual for people with fewer resources, people of colour, for women, for young people, for learners and others who find it hard to make their voice heard to play a part in determining what their future looks like.

So here is to the next 25 years in Learning Technology.

I’ll see you in 2043. And hopefully in Manchester this September where our work to bring about the kind of future we want to be part of continues https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2018/.

18/08/2018
My CEO’s report to ALT’s Members, August 2018

This is a re-posted from the #altc blog.

Dear Members

As I write this we have just one month to go before the largest event we organise each year, our Annual Conference. This year, as we celebrate 25 year of ALT, there is much to look forward to and this report covers some of the key developments across the Association.

Your voice #altc #altc25

First, I wanted to draw your attention to an ongoing project from ALT’s President, Prof Martin Weller, who has been blogging about the 25 Years of EdTech in this series of posts, counting down to 2018! Members have also started writing posts for publication on the #altc blog and we are inviting contributions tagged #altc #altc25 to add to this growing collection of voices and views from across our membership.

Vote for your choice in the Learning Technologist of the Year Awards 2018

As many of year will be aware, we have launched a new category of Award this year, celebrating outstanding achievements in research in Learning Technology. The judging panel, has reviewed, short-listed and interviewed this year’s entries and after careful deliberation the panel has selected the finalists. Now it’s up to you to vote for your choice for 2018 Community Choice Award. There can only be 1 winner, so you select your front runner from all individual, team and research project entries. Good luck, everyone!

Vote https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2018/awardsvoting/

Conference preparations

With over 100 Members involved in the preparations for this year’s event, we look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible in Manchester and online. Alongside our Members who work hard to review papers, shape the social programme and chair sessions, we are particularly grateful for the support from our sponsors this year: Catalyst, VScene, Blackboard, MeeToo, RMResults and UNIwise.

The Trustees of ALT have also made funds available to support 10 participants to come to the conference in memory of ALT’s former President, Doug Gowan, enabling those otherwise unable to attend to contribute and have a voice at the conference.

With 140+ sessions, the programme this year includes research sessions, poster presentations, workshops and many short presentations.

Register https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2018/registration/

Changes to ALT’s Constitution

At this year’s Annual General Meeting on 12 September Members will be voting on a resolution to adopt an updated version of ALT’s constitution. We will write to all Members to set out the proposed changes in more detail when the papers for the AGM are distributed, but the main changes to the constitution are to ensure ALT’s governance has more long term stability and is in line with best practice recommended by the Charity Commission. Thus the terms of service for the Vice-Chair, Chair and President of ALT, which currently are limited to 1 year and rotate annually, will be brought in line with the terms served by Trustees overall under the update constitution.

Read more about ALT’s next Annual General Meeting.

Staff team

As our activities are growing and in particular the CMALT scheme is now being developed to offer new accreditation pathways to Associate and Senior CMALT, we also require more staffing resource and we have just welcomed Susan Greig as ALT’s new Operations Manager. Susan will support ALT’s operations including taking on the overall management of the CMALT scheme and related CPD activities, work with Special Interest Group and enhance communications.

As senior staff Martin Hawksey and I continue to share our experiences of transitioning ALT’s operations to a fully distributed, virtual model of operations and we have now published 6 monthly blog posts and a podcast in this series on open leadership ‘Sharing our approach to leading a virtual team’.

A note of thanks #CMALT

I’d like to end my report with a note of thanks to all who have contributed to the CMALT consultations. As well as informing the development of the new Associate and Senior CMALT pathways, Certified Members led a ‘visual thinkery’ conversation with Bryan Mathers, resulting in these new visuals for the principles of ALT’s accreditation scheme. Thank you to everyone involved.

session 2 – principles of CMALT

We will be holding the first CMALT Ceremony as part of the AGM on 12th September to further enhance the recognition of the scheme. If you have been accredited or updated your portfolio in the past year, we look forward to congratulating you in Manchester.

10/08/2018
Beyond advocacy for change – developing critical & open approaches in Learning Technology #LTHEchat 116

I’m excited that we have been invited to contribute a topic to the #LTHEchat, the weekly Learning and Teaching in HE chat created by the community for the community – Wednesday 8-9pm. It’s the only tweetchat I regularly participate in, although mostly in “listening mode” and I find it a very useful forum.

Below I have re-posted the description of the topic coming up this week:

#LTHEchat 116: Beyond advocacy for change – developing critical & open approaches in Learning Technology with Maren Deepwell @marendeepwell and Martin Hawksey @mhawksey

The next #LTHEchat on Wednesday 6th June 8-9pm (GMT) will be hosted by Maren Deepwell @marendeepwell and Martin Hawksey @mhawksey on developing critical approaches in Learning Technology.

With the 25th Annual Conference of ALT, the Association for Learning Technology, just around the corner, we have been looking forward as well as back over how things have changed (revisit some of the developments with Prof Martin Weller, President of ALT, in his ongoing blog series “25 years of EdTech”).

We define Learning Technology as the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can be used to support learning, teaching and assessment. ALT’s membership is made up of people who are actively involved in understanding, managing, researching, supporting or enabling learning with the use of Learning Technology. Using technology for learning, teaching and assessment hasn’t been a ‘new’ thing for a long time. But one thing that remains constant is the pace with which innovation moves forward, learner expectations develop and our constant need to evolve our pedagogical approaches. This creates demands/pressures and staff development needs for academics to develop competencies with digital pedagogies/approaches.

Regardless of where we are, or indeed where our institution is, in spreading or scaling up use of technology, we now have research, case studies and practice to move beyond advocacy, beyond enthusiasm for shiny gadgets or dashboards to developing a more critical, nuanced relationship to Learning Technology and to share our work in order to build a stronger, more diverse and robust discourse.

Maren Deepwell @marendeepwell is chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and leads its work on professional recognition and development. Martin Hawksey @mhawksey leads on innovation, community engagement and technology for ALT.

ALT represents individual and organisational Members from all sectors and parts of the UK. Our Membership includes practitioners, researchers and policy makers with an interest in Learning Technology. Our community grows more diverse as Learning Technology has become recognised as a fundamental part of learning, teaching and assessment. ALT aims to increase the impact of Learning Technology for the wider community, strengthen recognition and representation for the Membership at a national level and lead professionalisation for individual Learning Technology professionals in a broad range of roles.

As the senior staff team of ALT Maren & Martin work with Trustee and Members on a diverse range of projects including ALT’s conferences, annual survey, national policy development and professional development. Sharing their approach to open leadership is a monthly blog series on running a virtual organisation and both actively disseminate their independent professional via their personal sites https://mashe.hawksey.info/ and http://marendeepwell.com/

03/06/2018