Open Learning and Contextual Diversity

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Graham Attwell

The debate over open learning is still going on through various fora such as the Open Educational Resources discussion currently being hosted by UNESCO and the #PLENK2010 MOOC. And in many ways, it is not technology which is driving the discussion but a more fundamental question about how to provide wider access to learning and access to wider groups of learners.

One post which caught my eye is The ‘Open Mode’ – A Step Toward Completely Online by Tom Prescott (it is interesting to note that even in the days of Twitter;s ascendency blog posts continue to provide the most thoughtful exchanges).

Talking about the trend away from purely online distance learning courses towards blended learning, Tom says:

It’s wrong because most of the time the educators and the students don’t really want to use technology. They’ll do a bit for the administration, but for learning, no way. It’s a face-to-face course. Why tamper with it. I am of the opinion that this is misguided, but it’s not a battle worth fighting (for now). Fighting this resentment is unnecessary.

I think Tom is mixing up a whole series of things here. Firstly the move towards Blended Learning was driven by pedagogy and not by a retreat from Technology Enhanced Learning. And that move towards Blended Learning has led to a period of pedagogic innovation, albeit based on the adoption of social software and social networking for learning. By focusing on the pedagogy of using technology, increasing numbers of teachers have adopted technology as part of their every day practices in tecahing and learning. This is reflected in changes in teachers’ dispositions towards using technology. I would also challenge the idea that students are opposed to technology for learning. Students are opposed to the use of technology which fails to enhance their learning experience, just precisely to the use of technology for managing, rather than learning.

But the major impact of technologies and especially of mobile devices, is to move learning outside the institutional culture and practice, into new contexts. Of course this provides a challenge to existing institutional cultures and to the existing cultures of tecahing and learning practice. And some teachers will be wary of such a challenge. But its is the potentials of using technology for informal learning, for networked and self structured learning (as in PLENK2010) and for workbased learning which can open up learning (or put another way, develop Open Learning).

I remain unconvinced that traditional online courses (as in Open and Distance Learning) have challenged that learning in context. Instead they have tended to reproduce existing pedagogic and cultural forms of learning, at a distance. Thus I think we need to see more diversified and contextual applications of technology to learning, rather than a focus on any particular organisational or institutional format.

Smart technologies will take the classroom into the world

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Graham Attwell

Web 3.0: The way forward?

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

This presentation by Steve Wheeler has been causing some comments around the edubloggers networks. George Siemens responded saying “The development of the semantic web, linked data, and open data, coupled with location-awareness, recommender systems, augmented reality, data overlays, and similar developments is having a dramatic impact on how people interact with information and each other”.

Using linked Data to support Careers Advice, Information and Guidance

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Graham Attwell

For some time, I have been working at developing a Technology Enhanced Boundary Object (TEBO) to help Careers Advisers (PAs) understand Labour Market Information (LMI). But I am increasingly interested in how we can access and visualise live LMI as part of the careers advice process. These are notes I have written about the idea.

What is linked data?

The Web enables us to link related documents (from linkeddata.org). Similarly it enables us to link related data. The term Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing and connecting structured data on the Web. Key technologies that support Linked Data are URIs (a generic means to identify entities or concepts in the world), HTTP (a simple yet universal mechanism for retrieving resources, or descriptions of resources), and RDF (a generic graph-based data model with which to structure and link data that describes things in the world).(Tom Heath, including excerpts from Bizer, Heath and Berners-Lee (in press))

What is the relationship between Linked Data and the Semantic Web?

Opinions on this topic differ somewhat, however a widely held view is that the Semantic Web is made up of Linked Data; i.e. the Semantic Web is the whole, while Linked Data is the parts. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and the person credited with coining the terms Semantic Web and Linked Data has frequently described Linked Data as “the Semantic Web done right.”

Using Linked data with Careers PAs in the UK

Though the MATURE project we have undertaken extensive research and consultation with PAs in different Connexions companies including in England and Wales around the use of Labour Market Information in Careers Advice, Information and Guidance. Work undertaken through the project has aimed to allow research and easy access to documentation around different careers including LMI. We are also aware that all LMI requires interpretation – s stage of knowledge maturing – and one aim has been to allow easy forms of interpretation though tagging etc. A second aim has been to allow the development of an organisational knowledge base through sharing the results of LMI research. LMI is based on various data, collected by different government agencies and by for example the sector skills councils. In the past access to this data has been restricted. Additionally it requires considerable knowledge and skills to be able to manipulate and interpret large data sets. Inevitably much of the interpetation is over generalised and is frequently out of date.

Open Data

In autumn of 2009, a new web site was launched in the UK based on an initiative by Tim Berners Lee and Nick Shadbolt. Data.gov.uk seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data. As highlighted by the Power of Information Taskforce, this means it needs to be:

easy to find;
easy to license; and
easy to re-use.

The aim is to publish government data as RDF – enabling data to be linked together. The web site says their approach is based on:

Working with the web;
Keeping things simple: we aim to make the smallest possible changes that will make the web work better;
Working with the grain: we are not looking to rebuild the world. We appreciate that some things take time; others can be done relatively quickly. Everything has it’s own time and pace;
Using open standards, open source and open data: these are the core elements of a modular, sustainable system; and
Building communities, and working with and through them (both inside government and outside).

The new UK government has committed itself to backing this initiative and increasingly local government organisations are providing open access to data. Many of the key data sets for LMI are available through the data.gov.uk site including time series data on employment in different occupations, average earnings, job centre vacancies (at fine grained local office level and over a 10 year time series), qualifications, graduate destinations etc. along with more generalised but critical data such as post codes. All data can be queried in real time through a SPARQL interface.

Thus there is considerable potential to run queries and provide linked data providing valuable Labour Market and Careers information.

For instance:

A post code or location based query around a particular occupation could reveal:

the average pay for that job
job centre vacancies in that job over the past at a local level

By querying external databases this could be extended to include:

iCould videos about that career (there are something like 1000 high quality videos available)
Job description along with required qualifications

Where xcri course information data is available the app could provide information on local courses related to that career (Note – xcri data standard compliance is patchy in the UK).

Maturing Knowledge – the role of the PA

Whilst this system would be a great advance on anything presently available, it is not perfect. LMI data still requires interpretation. For instance job centre data has a known bias towards public sector employment, lower paid jobs and short term employment. The search only covers past data and may not reveal longer term labour market trends. Thus ideally following such a search the PA would be able to add brief notes before saving the search. These overall results could then be packaged to sent to a client as well as stored within the organisational system. To use the new information and knowledge sources being made available through the Careers Project requires new interpretation skills on behalf of the PAs. Thus the development of a linked data app would also be accompanied by the development of the TEBO which aims to provide informal learning for PAs around using LMI

Visualisations

Although a early version of the system might well be text based, it would enhance data interpretation to provide visualisations of the data.It may be possible to do this dynamically using for instance APIs to the IBM Open Source Many Eyes application.

Basing a PLE on Google Apps?

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Graham Attwell

I’ve just spent some time organising my Google docs into folders. Why? Because I have so many of them.

I used to use a very old version of Microsoft word for mac on my desktop machine. When I found it would not deal with docx formats I moved over to open office and Neo Office J. But at the same time I started using Google docs because of the ability to share documents. In fact I had already been using Wordly before Google bought it. However, it seems that Google sat on Wordly for a long time. Although Docs sort of worked it was still clunky compared to a desktop word processor. But with the latest upgrade to docs it now seems a better working environment than any of my local word processors. And off course I can access it from any of my computers or from my phone.

But what excites me is the casual and simple collaboration that online documents enable. Of course wikis always had that functionality. But somehow most of my experiments with collaboration with wikis didn’t quite work. People were unwilling to change another person’s work. And the mark up code was off putting for many.

Furthermore it is very easy to see who you can build an online portfolio using google apps or even a Personal Learning Environment.

So what is the downside? In one word – Google. Do we want to trust our working environment to a mega large multi national corporation making most of its money out of advertising. I sued to be sure that I did not. But now I guess I am getting more pragmatic. Google apps offers a lot of functionality and is free. Especially in present economic times free is good. Of course Google could disappear or do something I hate so much I do not want to use their software any more. But I am backing up my docs to a local version anyway. In some ways the debate is similar to the issue raised at the PLE conference in Barcelona as to whether institutions should be providing PLE applications for learners. My conclusion was that I do not really care who provides a Personal Learning Environment, as long as it is controlled by the learner. And as long as Google continues to allow that degree of control I can see myself increasingly using their applications. At least they are not Blackboard!

All about Personal Learning Environments (Part 1)

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Graham Attwell

Multi media was very much in evidence at the PLE conference in Barcelona earlier this month. Besides the live streaming and a dazzling array of ipads and other handheld devices, we were able to use CitiLab’s own wonderfully appointed multimedia studio. Joyce Seitzinger interviewed a number of organisers, unkeynote speakers and participants as part of her “What my PLN means to me” project. There is some good stuff here, well worth viewing.