Sailing against the trade winds?

8 September 2010

DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATIONTECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED LIFELONG LEARNING

Sailing against the trade winds?

ALT-C 2010

David WhiteTechnology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL)Department for Continuing EducationUniversity of Oxfordhttp://www.tall.ox.ac.uk

Online Learning Task Force

“…to help UK higher education remain a ‘world leader’ in online learning, growing its international market share by 2015.”

Chaired by Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library.

Reports to government this autumn.

The task force is “trying to dispel some of the myths that online learning is a second-rate alternative” Dame Lynne Brindley

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2009/taskforce.htm

Money

HM Treasury

HEFCE Study of Online Distance Learning

Published mid September Written Jan – March 2010

Current provision of ODL in the UK Case study profiles of 9 institutions Institutional experiences of ODL

Improve discoverability Promote successful business models Provide advice on institutional infrastructure

“Any course, at any HE academic level, which has a significant portion delivered to students online”

Subject areas: directly provided

HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning

Discoverabilityhttp://xkcd.com/773/

“…discovering what is on offer is ‘ridiculously difficult’, with information often buried on websites”

Dame Lynne Brindley, Times Higher, July 2010

Subject areas: in partnership


Digital diploma mills?

llamnudds

PPPs “require some culture change”

Expectation of engagement

“I think one of the clear things that we see among a lot of students is the desire to connect with other students, and that’s something that technologies can clearly facilitate.”

“…the model that we’ve got to support the pedagogy that we use with the online programmes means that we never have more than 20 to a class.”


“We have a bank of student support advisors who, on the whole, are young graduates. …whether it be by phone, by text, by Skype, by email, they’re in touch with these students all of the time. As soon as their engagement is dipping a little bit they’re in touch with them. It’s like having a mother.”

Contact

Eventedness - Fellowship

Cormier and Siemens: Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement. EDUCAUSE Review, July/August 2010. http://bit.ly/cmHqqb

The myth of the f2f student?

Richard James et al: The First Year Experience in Australian Universities:

Findings from 1994 to 2009 (Uni of Melbourne & Griffith Uni)

First year Australian Undergraduates:

• Number of hours a week studying online: 2004: 4.2 - 2009: 6.5

• Number who believe they are known by at least one lecturer: 2004: 66% - 2009: 58%

“Technology is vital but not central”

“…by far the biggest pressure I think is the cultural change in not having academics sitting in their offices doing their lectures waiting for students to come to them, but doing that whole engagement process of going out and chasing and the different way that you have to manage distance students and keep their motivation going. And I think that’s a big cultural shift, and that’s where we’d need to put the investment.” HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning

add1sun

Technological determinism?

“…today's students live and breathe Web 2.0”

“students' technological expectations were broadly being met, but …there were concerns about ‘a gap between the ability of students to use these technologies and the ability and willingness of (academics) to use them’”

Visitors and Residents: http://bit.ly/pi2qv

Who would like one of these?

HandyFlash.de

iPhone 5

Against techno-utopianism

“the ‘imaginary’ upon which future-oriented projects are premised often takes for granted the contemporary existence of and continued progress towards a universal, technologically-rich, global ‘knowledge economy’, the so-called ‘flat world’ of neo-liberal rhetoric”.

Facer and Sandford, The next 25 years?: future scenarios and future directions for education and technology, JCAL Feb 2010

The future isn’t always as we expect

à voir etc...

World Economic Forum

Theory and philosophy of law (Jurisprudence), Oxford

World Economic Forum

pasokphotos

History, Edinburgh

pasokphotos

Paul Clarke Liberal Democrats

PPE, Oxford Social Anthropology, Cambridge

Paul Clarke Liberal Democrats

"All in all, it's how the class system works.“

Geoffrey Evans, fellow in politics, Nuffield College, Times Higher, Sept 2010

Chemistry, Oxford

BBC Radio 4

Widening the STEM / MBA – humanities divide

numberstumperFireFawkes

Social mobility?

“…unless we think about the issues now as we imagine the new system, we might end up with a clear social dividing line between the two forms of receiving

higher education." Prof Geoffrey Crossick

Widening access

Fully online courses in English from level 1 (pre GCSE) through to an eCommunications BA.

Social Return on Investment

My thoughts

Professional post-grad courses should largely operate within market forces

Non STEM/Business courses should be supported

Role of the Edtech needs to evolve

The expanding divide between the arts/humanities and those courses with a direct vocational/economic benefit does not have to be replicated online

What is the ‘Digital Identity’ of UK Higher Education?

Matt Gorecki ‘Field for the British Isles’ Anthony Gormley

http://bit.ly/brd4QY

“…exceed pure techno-scientific knowledge in the pledge of responsibility” Jacques Derrida, The University Without Condition

Thanks

• [email protected] - www.tall.ox.ac.uk

• twitter.com/daveowhite

• Special thanks to Dr Richard Hall

Study of UK Online Learning will be available on the HEFCE website mid September

http://bit.ly/brd4QY

Sailing against the trade winds?

Education

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