I finally managed to get my CMALT (recognition and accreditation for individuals working in the filed of e-learning) application in to what I hope will be an acceptable standard. Rather than submit a word document and supporting appendices, I chose the e-portfolio route. Initially tried to use the CMALT preferred e-portfolio tool Petal – about which I now have very little good to say. Why o why are Jisc funding projects such as this? There are a host of OSS and proprietary options out there have have far more advanced functionality and better usability and have been so for a long time.

Thankfully I understand that CMALT are moving platforms, let’s hope they chose something more intuitive to use. In the meantime, I recommend anyone thinking of following this route to consider carefully unless they have experience of Petal and understand its limitations.

Anyway my effort is here www.stephenp.net/cmalt on WordPress. Like all real world work, much of what I have included was achieved collaboratively and many of my ex-colleagues applications could look very similar. Come to think of it, why don’t CMALT encourage joint applications – that would be very web2.O / connectivism, etc.:^)
Lastly, obvious as it may be I couldn’t of done much of what I claim without the student researchers of Ultraversity. In fact, with a little thought many of them could meet the CMALT criteria and if they have a good reason to do so should apply!

Whether or not it was worth the effort I just don’t know, but I made a start whilst still at ARU and as I committed to it felt I should complete.

Last night we were out comet watching. Unfortunately, I don’t have good enough camera to capture an image of the comet, but just a bunch of us watching it! This link will give you a better idea of how dramatic this was from NZ.

As far as I know, the comet is about 300m across with a tail stretching out over some 2 million miles.

The last comet I remember watching was Hale-Bopp in 1997, from a garden in Bethesda in Wales. However, I seem to remember needing a telescope to see anything at all!

Much is written about the changing way in which emergent Internet technologies will offer opportunities for personalisation of learning. The experience of the Ultraversity project over its 4 year duration illustrates both the challenges faced and some of what might be possible.

At the outset, it was decided that the project would use in-house software solutions. This included a wonderfully quirky piece of software called JellyOS (a rich drag and drop graphical interface based on flash technology) for community conversations and the less technically advanced, although far more dependable, e-portfolio tool for resource delivery and assessment purposes (built by Jonathan).

The use of in-hose software was driven by a desire to offer users a rich set of online tools with with ‘symmetry’ of use. The idea of symmetry was important to us as it embodies a philosophical position around providing ICT as tools for empowering learners, teachers, and course designers alike without a rigid hierarchy of privileges built into most VLE.

In practice, developing JellyOS proved beyond our technical resources and, despite passionate views both in favour and against its continued use, was retired after just one semester and replaced with FirstClass – a proprietary solution that we were very familiar with and offered much of what we wanted.

The e-portfolio tool, however, proved to be far more robust and was successful in proving many of our ideas including the value of:

• empowering teaching staff to create and build their own online resources
• framing of discourse around the ‘hotseat’ concept where ‘experts’ respond to students needs rather than lecture about their professional interests
• an e-portfolio environment that the students are in control of
• electronic submission of work
• a tracking tool to support remotely working staff in the managing of teaching and assessment

In mid 2004, we began to appreciate that the Open Source Community had much to offer a project like ours and started using Drupal. Initially this was to aggregate staff and student blogs on a website and provide a feed, but also to run our informal induction process (original Drupal induction blog no longer available).

At the start of 2005 it became apparent that a replacement for the old e-portfolio and content delivery tool was required. After much discussion, we decided to use Plone open source content management tool. Our purpose was broader as we also wanted functionality more commonly associated with a ‘VLE‘ and e-portfolio. Its attraction to us was that it provided a relative rich set of tools (conversations, web pages creation, RSS aggregation, user groups, etc) that could be made available to all users. Being built on open standards, it also allowed us to integrate other software products like the Gearbox OSS self-evaluation tool. As I write this Ultraversity is still using Plone as its core piece of software alongside FirstClass.

Perhaps the most significant development occurred during 2006 with the use of the KeepToolkit which described as “set of web-based tools that help teachers, students and institutions quickly create compact and engaging knowledge representations on the Web.” The KeepToolkit is built in Plone – presumably the developers were attracted for many of the same reasons as us. It can be described as externally hosted, ‘libre’ software. Clearly there are advantages and issues that arise from using free web service, but it seems to me that whatever the difficulties may be that this is a clear signal of the direction that we are heading.

My interpretation of Personalised Learning Environments (PLE) fits pretty well with this approach – that is a PLE is a collection of tools that is controlled by the user. The tools will change over time, some will be integratared and some will stand alone. What is key is that learners and teachers understand that they are taking control and what the implications of this are – there are rights and responsibilities on both sides.

Now that the Ultraversity research project has ended, it will be interesting to see if the exploration of different Internet Technologies can continue from within the University faculty structure and be part of a University wide growing “Web of Confidence” or whether it will simply go “Back to the Future” (Jay Cross and Jonathan Star – The Edinburgh Scenarios, 2004).

Nothing better to do with life? Why not fritter some of it away at Musicovery.

Chose your starting tune by mood (energetic-calm, dark – positive) along a couple of axis and then browse from there. For the nostalgic amongst you, select a period in time…

As I write this I am listening to Bob Marley – One Love :^)

Some of the thinking behind this conference seems muddled to me, although its aims are also laudable.

Education news & jobs at the Times Higher Education Supplement: “Creativity campaign to attack red tape (Tony Tysome Published: 12 January 2007)

They called on academics to resist feelings of helplessness in the face of overzealous managers and the requirements of audits, performance indicators and the research assessment exercise. Staff should be prepared to ‘push back the boundaries’ of their working environment and take creative risks in teaching and research.”

Cliff Allan, HEA deputy chief executive, said there was ‘a great opportunity to embed creativity into HE policy, institutional portfolios and what academics do’.

He said: ‘Academics need to demonstrate the evidence of how creativity enhances the curriculum. They need to be more proactive and assertive by providing the evidence to back a creativity movement.’

My experience is that:

• University administrators are mostly only interested in the bottom line – income verses expenditure
• Creative approaches to learning and teaching tend to require more effort and resource
• Many academics aren’t all that interested in teaching and learning
• QA processes around learning and teaching and, indeed, the HEA have come about as a means of tackling apathy displayed towards teaching and learning

Don’t pretend that the academics would be able to make a good job of learning and teaching if it weren’t for “overzealous managers and the requirements of audits, performance indicators”. Instead we need to identify good practice in teaching and learning and those who are prepared to take risks and reward them. This will require measurement of some kind or another.

Finally blogging again after my migration to WordPress, hosted by BlueHost for $6.95 per month. I made these two key choices for two reasons. The first was I wanted to use Open Source Software with a vibrant community OSS community, hopefully giving me a reliable, long lived, and developing software.
Secondly I wanted a high degree of control over my blog so that I could install plugins, hack the code from time to time, and not be dependent upon someone else for my blog. However, I certainly didn’t want to run my own server and be responsible for its hardware and configuration.

In addition, BlueHost is “Fantastico Enabled“, which means that there are scripts to auto-install a range of software – Drupal, PhpBB2, phpWiki, etc. This worked first time with only a little knowledge and problem solving on my part, and it was only my subsequent hacking and installing of plugins that caused any real issues. However, a couple of days on and making extensive use of the very good WordPress and BlueHost help FAQ and forums I think I have got over most of the issues I encountered.

Now I juts need to get blogging again!

My old friend Pete Bradshaw (new Blog looking good), knowing that I am seeking a new job told me about a job as Director, Ako Aotearoa: National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. Somewhat above my ambition (thanks for the vote of confidence Pete), but for me the interesting point it illustrates is how quickly ideas are picked up, transported, and developed on the other side of the world.

This particular idea appears to be a version of the the Higher Education Academy – my own application for associate membership is at last submitted!:^) This is a relatively new (May 2004), and not yet proven, initiative for England and Wales “to help institutions, discipline groups and all staff to provide the best possible learning experience for their students.”

In NZ there will be “a new, national organisation dedicated to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning outcomes in tertiary education in New Zealand”- I am sure that like in the UK there is much to do in this direction.

A couple of years ago my friends at CORE-education did some work in this direction with the T4T4T project. This sought to develop communities of Tertiary teachers to help build capacity in institutions around learning and teaching.

None of this is easy but let’s hope that this new body doesn’t simply try to effect change in a top down way, but works with the staff of Tertiary institutions towards a bottom up revolution of learning and teaching!

My old friend Pete Bradshaw (new Blog looking good), knowing that I am seeking a new job told me about a job as Director, Ako Aotearoa: National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. Somewhat above my ambition (thanks for the vote of confidence Pete), but for me the interesting point it illustrates is how quickly ideas are picked up, transported, and developed on the other side of the world.

This particular idea appears to be a version of the the Higher Education Academy – my own application for associate membership is at last submitted!:^) This is a relatively new (May 2004), and not yet proven, initiative for England and Wales “to help institutions, discipline groups and all staff to provide the best possible learning experience for their students.”

In NZ there will be “a new, national organisation dedicated to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning outcomes in tertiary education in New Zealand”- I am sure that like in the UK there is much to do in this direction.

A couple of years ago my friends at CORE-education did some work in this direction with the T4T4T project. This sought to develop communities of Tertiary teachers to help build capacity in institutions around learning and teaching.

None of this is easy but let’s hope that this new body doesn’t simply try to effect change in a top down way, but works with the staff of Tertiary institutions towards a bottom up revolution of learning and teaching!