Category Archives: G8WAY

Back from Berlin

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I am just about recovering from an interesting but hectic five days in Berlin last week.

On Monday and Tuesday we had a meeting of the European funded G8WAY project. Just to recap for new readers this project is looking at the issues involved in educational transitions, particularly between school and university and university and work, and is seeking to develop social software to support such transitions.

Much of the first year of the project has been taken up in researching the issues. Particularly interesting is the stories of young people which have been collected by the partners and posted on the web site. From these stories we have refined down three key persona and in parallel have been looking at the potential for interventions. This in itself raises a series of ethical issues. Do young people want us to intervene? (teacher leave the kids alone!). How much can the ‘collective’ project team claim expertise to intervene? And if we are merely raising opportunities for story telling and peer support is that an intervention?

And of course last week came the hard part. Just what can we expect to achieve in a small funded two year project. How from all the ideas we have do we take this decision? These issues not withstanding, the meeting made progress and I will report further on our next years plan of work in the near future.

On Wednesday, we held an On-line Educa Berlin pre-conference workshop on ‘Careers 2.0 – Supporting educational transitions with Web 2.0 and social software.’ (I have a horrible feeling I wrote the title. I promise I will stop putting 2.0 after everything now – I know it is an annoying habit).

The workshop was a lot of fun, because of the lengthy and detailed planning that had gone into it, the enthusiasm of our guest speakers and the participation of the audience. I am not sure if we videoed it but I thought that Tabea, Magda and myself ‘acting’ or role playing young people telling their transition stories was one hundred times more effective than if we had done the usual powerpoint presentation of our findings. Participants also gave us much useful feedback for the project which once more I will publish here as soon as it is written up.

And then on to Online Educa itself. It was a somewhat hectic three days for me. Besides the pre-conference workshop, we presented two on line radio shows in our Sounds of the Bazaar series, I presented a paper on Vygotsky and Personal Learning Environments, I chaired a session on Open Education Resources and took part in a debate – Is the LMS dead?

This pretty much took up all of my time so my impressions of the conference may be a bit limited. Online Educa is a great social occasion and it was brilliant to catch up with so many friends from many different countries. But to me at least the conference felt a little flat – it was hard to detect any discernible buzz. If there was a meme it was that the future is mobile but that is hardly new! The debate on the Is the LMS Dead? was a little strange. there were four of us in the debate – Larry Johnson, from The New Media Consortium, USA, Roger Larsen, formerly from Fronter and now taken over by Pearson Platforms, Norway, Richard Horton, from Blackboard International, UK and myself.

I was ready for a good bad tempered debate with lots of sneaky point scoring (especially after having consorted with the enemy from Blackboard over a bottle of wine the previous evening). But they never offered any real defence. Roger basically said we need an LMS as an extra layer of software – to enable single sign on and that sort of thing to provide easy access to social software. Indeed he opened up by saying he agreed the LMS was dead! And all Richard could say to defend Blackboard was that institutions needed applications for management and administration. But neither pretended any learning value for their respective platforms – indeed neither really seemed to want to talk about learning. So maybe the LMS is dead – they are simply giving up. And maybe the real debate is not with fronter or Blackboard but with Moodle.

Anyway a big shoutout to everyone I met last week. And many thanks to our ;crew for all their hard work – to Eileen, Judith, Klaus, Dirk and Jen.

The Determined, the Meanderer and the Stagnant

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The European Commission funded G8WAY project is researching educational transitions with he aim of using social software and web 2.0 to assist young people in transitions.

As part of the methodology the project has undertaken some 50 interviews in five countries looking at how young people move from school to university or work, and from university to work.

These provide a rich, of somewhat disturbing, picture of uncertainty in an increasingly complex world. But, in terms of designing social software 50 case studies are hard to handle. The project has developed three personas or archetypes to help in this process. I proudly present to you the determined, the meanderer and the stagnant.

Persona Type 1 – “The Determined”

Key Attributes;

  • Rich resources
  • Passionate
  • Motivated
  • Congruent steps
  • Independent
  • Confident
  • Clear aims
  • No plan B
  • Ambitious

Typical Case Studies: Sara, Eleonora, Störte, Ronny

Motto – “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  (Confucius)

Demographic and biographical Characteristics
The determined person tends to have a very supportive family or peer group who are able to provide encouragement and emotional security to the individual. With this in place the Determined person is able to make bold and confident decisions in their choice of career. These decisions are often made early in the individuals lives allowing them to follow a clearly defined progression towards their objective. The determined person knows where he/she is heading and rarely ventures far from the path.

The truly Determined will always find a way to balance their families’ expectations with their own needs without compromising their goals.

Transitions

Educational and transitional pathways:

Pathways are predetermined and clear. The determined person knows what to do in order to get to the next stage. Career paths are well researched and often, little time is wasted, these are the most efficient of transitions.

Motivations and Strategies:

The Determined are passionate people, they are intrinsically motivated and confident in their own abilities. They have strong friendship groups and take advantage of networking opportunities. They use their initiative and they think things through carefully rather than acting on impulse.

Support Services used

Determined people use support services well, they make use of the internet, social networking, careers guidance services and mentors. They are likely to seek out and take advice from those with more experience.

Information and Communication Technologies

Determineds make good use of the internet by surfing web sites to search for information, using email, participating in online forums and using social networks to keep in touch with friends.

Ways in which Determineds would like G8way to help:

  • at a glance regional and national Job profiles
  • comparison of vocational and e-learning courses throughout Europe
  • blog or forum to exchange experiences and advice

Persona Type 2  – “Meandering”

Key Attributes:

  • Extended/multiple transitions
  • Following a complex pathway
  • Many distractions
  • Aware of the desired outcome but unsure of how to get there
  • Deal with problems as and when they occur
  • Look for appropriate help
  • Motivated
  • Open to suggestions
  • Active, experimenting with different strategies
  • Have less resources than the Determined type

Typical Case Studies – Amleto, Michelle, Marco, Mariaangela

Motto – “I was making good progress” (Anon – in response to a traffic cop)

Demographic and biographical Characteristics

Meanderers tend to have very wide social networks making friends easily with contacts from diverse sections of society. They receive a good level of support from family and peers but lack clear guidance. Family ideals can often be a barrier to their progress. Meanderers may have multiple goals, never being entirely sure which one to pursue, or they may have one fixed goal but be unsure which path to take in order to achieve it. Some meanderers think that their dream is beyond their reach.

Transitions

Educational and transitional pathways:

The direction is uncertain and several different pathways are attempted. There are indirections and distractions along the way such as social or financial pressures. The meanderer tends to eventually reach a satisfying position but often takes the “scenic route”.

Motivations and Strategies:

The meanderer collects qualifications and enjoys learning even though the process may not directly benefit their cause. They tend to have plenty of work experience mostly around their area of interest and may have tried their hand at a number of related jobs.

Support Services used
If meanderers use support services, they make use of the internet, social networking, careers guidance services and mentors but do so without a clearly defined pathway. They have difficulty with filtering out the useful information or deciding what to do when given conflicting advice.

Information and Communication Technologies

ICT is used by this group but more for pleasure, social networking and games than for careers guidance. In the interviews, the young people typical of the group often describe themselves as not being ICT experts suggesting a lack of confidence.

Ways in which Meanderers would like G8way to help;

  • provide a sharing platform for people in transition.
  • report the different experiences for different age groups.
  • reflect the diversity of individual transitions

Persona Type 3 – Stagnant

Key Attributes:

  • Few personal resources
  • Multiple family, social or financial issues
  • Need of support in different life areas
  • Lack of enthusiasm
  • Late decisions for a field of interest
  • Difficulties to prioritise effectively
  • Low self esteem

Typical Case Studies – Sambucca, Daniele and Tillmann

Motto – “We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.” (Brian Tracy)

Demographic and biographical Characteristics

The Stagnant group representatives have low levels of support from family and peers. They have no fixed direction and are often too caught up in the challenges of the here and now to contemplate the future.

Transitions

Educational and transitional pathways:

By definition this group is rather unmoving or moving at pressure (financial, social). They may have some academic background but tend to be early school leavers with little desire to undergo further education.

Motivations and Strategies:

The Stagnant group are not usually actively following a clear path towards a desirable position but are happy to have reach any professional status. If further education is attempted, it is used as an interim solution. Steps taken are by chance rather than design. External proposals are taken up readily. Social and financial pressure is often the motivator to get active. Own professional plans often lack sound reflection against the own abilities and resources. Learning takes place rather accidental and informal.

Support Services used

Individuals typical of this group may attend youth groups or be involved with other community programmes. They also call on known professional services but often struggle to find specific services appropriate to their needs.

Information and Communication Technologies

The group members tend to be familiar with search engines, email and some social web2.0 tools.

Ways in which the Meandering group would like G8way to help:

  • signposting to basic skills qualifications and other training and learning opportunities
  • clear, short job profiles that fit their resources
  • competency assessment
  • way of interacting with more experienced people
  • support in discussing transition issues with parents

Multiple, extended and indirect transitions that are described to be distinct features of the Meandering persona are becoming increasingly characteristic for modern transition pathways. In our case samples, they showed throughout all transition types.

Three dimensions of a Personal Learning Environment

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First a warning. This is the beginning of an idea but by no means fully tho0ught out.It comes from a discussion with Jenny Hughes last week, when we were talking about the future direction of work on Personal Learning Environments.

Jenny came up with three ‘dimensions’ of a PLE – intra-personal, inter-personal and extra personal which I presented at the #TICEDUCA2010 conference in Lisbon

The first – intra-personal – describes the spaces we use to work on our own. This includes the different software we use and the different physical spaces we work in. It is possibel that our intra personal spaces will look quite different – reflecting both our ways of thinking and our preferred ways of working. one interesting aspect of the intra personal learning environment is the importance of aesthetics – including the look and ‘feel’ of the environment. And whilst many of the3 developers I work with undertake usability standards, I do not think they really ever consider aesthetics.

The third dimension – extra personal – refers to the things we do out in the web – to our publications, to blogs like this, to the videos we post – to the things we share with others.

But perhaps the most interesting is dimension is the intra-personal learning environment. This is the shared spaces we use to collaborate and work with others. All too often such spaces are imposed – by teachers or by project coordinators or those responsible for web site development. And all too often they fail – because users have no ownership of those spaces. In other words the spaces are not seen or felt of as part of a PLE. How can this be overcome? Quite simply the inter-personal space needs to be negotiated – to develop spaces and ways of working that everyone can feel comfortable with. Of course this may mean compromises but it is through the process of negotiation that such compromises will emerge.

The problem may be that the PLE has come to be overly associated with personalisation rather than negotiation and ownership and too little attention has been paid to collaboration and social learning. I think it would also be interesting to look at how ideas and knowledge emerge – or as the Mature project would say – how Knowledge matures. In developing ideas and knowledge I suspect we use all three dimensions of our Personal Learning Environment – with new ideas emerging say from reading something in the extra PLE, moving ideas back to the intra PLE for thinking and working and developing and then sharing and working with others in the (negotiated) inter Personal Learning Environment. Of course in practice it will be more complex than this. But i would like to see how these processes work in the real world – although I suspect it would be a methodologically challenging piece of research to carry out. Anyone any ideas?

Lanyrd and designing applications to support Communities of Practice

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Last night I spent a hour or so playing with new social software startup, Lanyrd. And I love it. Why?

Well I logged in or rather pressed a button saying something like login with Twitter and there I was. No filling in forms or making up passwords. And there straight away was a message for me:

Hi there! we have had a look at conferences your friends on twitter are going to, perhaps you might like to go too.

And indeed, apart from the lack of time I might well want to go. So the site is already personalised for me based on the ideas and knowledge of my friends. Pretty good. But more important is the site is useful to me: it contains information and knowledge and links to people which will and already does form an integral and useful part of my work practice. In other words, it makes my work easier. That is because it is based on the artefacts and practice of my community of practice, of the people like me who work in technology enhanced learning, knowledge development and teaching and learning. This isn’t a friends site for everyone – of you do not go to conferences then Lanyrd offers little to you. But this surely has to be the future of social software.of niche sites based on the practices, concerns and artefacts of particular communities of practice.

Other things I liked. The site is very open. Anyone is free to add and edit on the wikipedia shared knowledge principle. And the FA (not a TOSS( says anyone is free to scrape the site and get information out in any way they wish.

Obviously on a roll, developers Simon Willison and Natalie Downe are rapidly adding more features allowing the use of the site to accumulate the outcomes of conferences, be they papers, videos, presentations or other artefacts. Once more they are building the site around the practices and artefacts of the research community.

And finally the site is simple and intuitive to use and attractively designed. A lot of thought (and code) has gone into making it easy to use – for instance the ability to cut and stick from Open Office (or Office)without inserting any horrible formatting code.

What are the drawbacks? The major weakness is base don its very strength. The site relies on your Twitter friends for its recommendations. And by no means all – or even a majority – of the research community are on Twitter, especially outside technology focused subject areas.  Even the Educa Online Berlin conference, for just the kind of people you would think would be attracted to Lanyrd, has only 16 attendees signed up, despite there being some 2000 delegates enrolled for the conference. But it is early days yet. Lanyrd was only launched in August. And I can see that in a few months it will become an essential tool in our community – especially when they launch the API to the site.

This has got me thinking about design – how can we capture the practices of other communities – particularly in relation to work and learning and design social applications around other aspects of their practice. I think one big lesson from Lanyrd is that more is not, always better. Lanyrd does not try to do everything for researchers bu8t takes am (important) part of their practice and does it better.

Student perceptions on technology

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I have just been looking at an interesting report, ‘Student perspectives on technology – demand, perceptions and training needs‘, (PDF) produced by the UK National Union of Students for the Higher Education Funding Council’ (via Josie Fraser on Twitter).

A survey undertaken as part of the research found

  • 72.8% of respondents used ICT for both fun and for their studies, and 43.3% preferred to use a combination of both printed and electronic resources for their work.
  • 90.1% agreed that the internet has benefited their studies. As to whether ICT has improved their learning experiences, 77.7% agree versus only 5.2% in disagreement.
  • ICT skills – 81% agreed that their ICT skills were self-taught, with 88.6% agreeing that they were effective online researchers.
  • Opinion was divided over whether mobile phones or PDAs should be used to assist learning – 37.3% agree, 35.4% disagree and 27.4% remain neutral.
  • 42.9% would like academics and teachers to use ICT more. There was a common request for more skills training, particularly around how to effectively research and reference reliable online resources.
  • Students seem concerned about a perceived lack of formal research skills instruction, which maybe suggests broader concerns with education and accountability beyond the ICT sphere. Training in specific programs is also commonly desired; however, primarily the skills required are not technological, but academic

From the viewpoint of teaching and learning two findings stand out:

  • Students are concerned about the ICT competency of lecturers and academic staff – There are varying levels of ICT competence on the part of lecturers and staff and, whilst some are clearly skilled or at least able to function in an IT setting, others lack even the most rudimentary IT skills; 21% of students thought their lecturers needed additional training.
  • Opinions are fundamentally divided over e-learning, especially taking into consideration course type and exposure to ICT – both significant advantages and disadvantages were raised in all of the qualitative research with the students.

And in terms of the skills and competence of teaching staff the report recommends:

ICT and career development requirements for teaching staff- ICT skills and usage in learning and teaching should be integrated into the UK Professional Standards Framework, institutional promotional criteria and selection for teaching awards. Institutions may also wish to consider whether staff could be paid or given time off to attend ICT training so that it is not seen as an added burden.