Reflecting on the Jisc Cetis conference and trying to distill my key learning I remembered the Gordon Brown Arctic Monkeys gaff.

When in response to a question from a journalist from New Woman magazine, he said of the Arctic Monkeys on his iPod it “really wakes you up in the morning”. Subsequently put on the spot by a mens magazine he failed to name a single track and was forced to admit he was more of Coldplay man really aka middle of the road soft indi-rock.

This takes me onto Universities and Web2.0 and the whole raft of cool social software applications. Do I really want my university to try and be cool by appropriating these technologies or would I rather that they remain somewhat dour but trustworthy and effective in what they do?

The argument is made that teaching staff need to ‘go where the students are’ (YouTube, facebook, etc.) if they want to be relevant and effective educators. However, this somewhat ‘false’ adoption may have just the opposite effect as we in fact appear shallow, fickle, untrustworthy, etc. Back to Mr Brown…

What we really need to do is identify the ‘added value’ that the institution offers to students in this fast changing technological world. This may well require staff to use new and different technologies, but it shouldn’t be characterised by a ‘headless’ rush into the fashionable technologies of the day.

An initial analysis of a recent survey of 10 online facilitators, who are technologically capable and experienced, indicates that the adoption of new technologies at a reasonably steady pace resulted in tremendous pressure for them in integrating it with their teaching practices and reported corresponding difficulties for their students.

Some university staff will feel comfortable using the new technologies and will be readily able to integrate it into their teaching practices, others will not or will take a long time to do so. Very diverse practices will and have emerged.

This doesn’t really matter so long as everyone, students and university staff alike, have a clear understanding about what the added value that the institution brings is and expectations of staff and student responsibilities are aligned.

PLEs and the institution: “Given a lot of recent comments we really have to elaborate the set of connections between what an institution offers and what individuals manage. I’ve tried to put some of how I think this should work in a diagram (as usual).” (Via Scott Wilson’s Workblog).

What I like about the model provided by Scott (see below) is that it offers a practical way forward for risk averse institutions (all of them!) who wish to move towards a model of the learner taking increasing responsibility and control of their learning. The important aspect in this respect is the identification of a “Course coordination space” that is used to ‘glue’ the learner experience together in different units of organisation.

This is, I believe, important for three reasons. The first is that it offers the opportunity for a ‘safe’ place for those who are less confident with learning and the use of technology to support this. Important in the recruitment and retention stakes.

Second, it offers the opportunity for core interactions around which a larger ‘community of learners’ can develop and grow. This is, I believe, an important aspect of a university education. In the foreseeable future, if we place all our faith in the development of the PLE I think we will be disappointed.

Third, it is a space that we can expect course staff can comfortably inhabit (I have high expectations) and offer some level of agreed service to students however this is defined.

Lastly, although it would add another level of complexity, some thinking about how a students workplace fits into the mix is also required.

Scott Wilson, Nov 2007

Estelle Morris: Education should not be based on untested theories: Estelle Morris, the chairwoman of the strategy board of the Institute for Effective Education at the University of York, explains the ethos behind it. (Via Education Guardian).

I remember attending an event at which Marilyn Leask (then head of Effective Practice and Research and Dissemination of the TDA) made the observation that “the big challenge for education is what evidence is there to base changes in practice – a key concern is that changes are based on evidence not anecdote!” She went on to make the case for a “systematic review of the huge body of research evidence out there by the practitioners and researchers working collaboratively to work on projects that are well grounded and substantial. Small scale research does not provide the evidence required on its own, but if co-ordinated and combined with rigorous methodology it can contribute significantly to the knowledge base.”

On the face of it, this announcement about the Institute for Effective Education at the University of York is good news as its focus is on evidence based approaches to learning and teaching.

However, I am not so sure why it takes an American professor to head up the university bearing in mind the gulf in educational philosophy and practice between the two countries. Should we be concerned at the ‘scientific’ approach being adopted?

“The Institute, which will be both international and independent, will create a hub of evidence for education innovation by using innovative approaches and scientific evaluations similar to those in medicine.

Led by Professor Robert Slavin, a distinguished researcher from Johns Hopkins University in the USA. He has an established reputation for conducting rigorous experiments on co-operative learning (where children work in structured teams to help one another to learn), comprehensive school reform, literacy, mathematics, and English as a second language.”