Tag Archives: higher education

Higher Ambitions for whom?


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 4 November 2009

Having just listened to David Lammy’s interview about the new HE Framework, Higher Ambitions, set out by Lord Mandelson yesterday I’m left wondering how I feel, given that I work in a teaching-focused, research active, employer-engaged HEI that is mid-table, but where the focus is on enhancing learning, empowering teaching and framing social and economic opportunities for all. I felt happier when musing on the revised HEFCE strategic plan back in June but then the impact of the economic crisis on the public sector was possibly less well understood. Now I’m more anxious about the impact of those cuts on the visions and blueprints of our HEIs.

Lammy’s interview with the JISC mentioned “vision” for HE, but was very strong on “public sector cuts” and the impact on the public sector as a whole. “Scarcity” was closely tied to a prioritisation of STEM research, scientific research, a need for private investment, and the demand to demonstrate “effectiveness”. Lammy was clear that “a diverse set of funding streams is important if the quality of higher education is to be maintained and improved” as the public funding climate worsens.

Sadly, this focus on the private, on the scientific and on research doesn’t quite connect into the Edgeless University report that Lammy launched back in the summer. In particular, that report focused on affiliations between HEIs and the private, public and voluntary sectors that in-turn might open-up spaces for conversations around social enterprise. These types of affiliations beyond the private sector are missing from the rhetoric around Higher Ambitions, and in the swell of an apparent Governmental, economic agenda [ideology?] for HE.

Lammy focused upon student [not learners – see below] as consumers of information about Universities and programmes, but this demands that they, and other end-users, are able to “read” that information in context. The very real risk is that the consumer-model elides into all institutional services like technology-enhanced learning, without a proper appreciation of what this means for both the offer and actuality of what students get? Would a systems-based approach that focused on the human be more valid and reliable in socio-economic growth than one that is targets-based?

Mary Beard in the TimesOnline highlighted some of the problems with the fact that “The model for this is apparently the new ‘food-labelling system’” She notes the tension between prioritising information about contact hours that suggests a specific pedagogic approach, and the role of independent learning and thinking in HE, which may realise many different and co-existing approaches. Moreover, learners need to transition into and understand these learning cultures over time.

Whilst Lammy does argue that the “challenge… is to develop pedagogy” he doesn’t develop this and nor does the Framework document, so I am left wondering how it then connects into the raft of recent reports and policies. These include: DEMOS Edgeless University Report; Digital Britain; the JISC Report: Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age; the Report of an independent Committee of Inquiry into the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies; and the Revised HEFCE Strategy. How and where do these all converge? How is any of this joined up? I guess the answer is at University-level, and maybe the key is a clear, autonomous and grounded vision within HEIs. In that case surely support and academic staff are central? Yet they are the main HE stakeholder missing throughout the reports of the last 24 hours and beyond. Overcoming their neglect is critical.

Lammy prioritises the challenge “to lead in the marketplace, to grow what has begun with the Open University and extend that out there to the world”. Note the mention again of the Open University – he focused on this at the Edgeless University launch, and as he mentioned his work with Microsoft in Seattle I also note that Martin Bean, the VC of the OU is a former Microsoft employee. With the cloud, outsourcing, big business and efficiencies being front-and-centre in HE TEL discourses, this is important.

So the focus is international; it is private and not social enterprise; it is on employers being “more involved in course design and funding of the degrees they want”. Mandelson reiterated a focus on linking science to research in his statement to the Lords: “We have a disproportionate share of the world’s leading research universities. With just 1 per cent of the world’s population, we achieve 12 per cent of the world’s scientific citations.” For others in the sector the key apparently is on training rather than education: “The challenge for the next decade is to offer a wider range of new study opportunities – part-time, work-based, foundation degrees and studying whilst at home – to a greater range of people.”

Whilst Mandelson focused primarily on his perception of the elite universities, it seems apparent that all HEIs are to be asked to help bail out the economy, whilst as Mary Beard notes facing a “bottom line in all this [that] is budget cutting.” Mandelson’s duality of an elite focus and public sector cut is seen throughout: “public expenditure inevitably more constrained. Attracting the best students and researchers will become more competitive. Above all it will be a decade when our top priority is to restore economic growth and our universities need to make an even stronger contribution to this goal” [my emphasis].

So what of social inclusion? What of social enterprise? What of new social and economic ideas rather than restoring those that have failed? Some essence of this shows up in Mandelson’s speech to the Lords as his 5th and last objective: “Universities provide employment, enhance cultural life and offer many amenities to their surrounding communities. They shape and communicate our shared values, including tolerance, freedom of expression and civic engagement. We will support universities in safeguarding these values.”

The only time that the terms “learn” or “learning” or “learner” were mentioned was in terms of “e-learning”. The mentions of “students” was generally [although not in every case] in an economic or consumer-related context. The wordle cloud of Mandelson’s oral statement to the Lords demonstrates his focus: Learning and teaching and teachers are noticeably small or missing. In the word-cloud of the full paper research, students, skills, business, education, funding, skills, Government are my stand-out terms.

So what of technology-enhanced learning? Lammy argued that digital technologies are vital, and then framed that by mention of the cloud, empowering communities and giving global scope. But that was it. The clear focus was on the economy, scarcity and value-for-money. What this means for the provision of institutional resources for technologies, for TEL teams, for pedagogic development, for moving beyond transmissive pedagogies needs addressing. So does the impact of energy costs that are likely to rise and our commitment to green ICT. This work has to be done locally, within HEIs and with partners, but also within the EdTech community.

The full Framework paper mentions “e-learning” four times. On p. 20 it argues that “We will empower our universities to be world leaders in the growing market in transnational education based on e-learning” and the link is to the private sector, “Through HEFCE, we will be prepared to provide seedcorn funding on a competitive basis for university-private sector partnerships”, that may include “The potential to develop international education through partnerships with broadcasters and internet service providers”. Is this for content? For communication? What of pedagogy? What of services that surround learning and teaching? What of work with voluntary organisations or the public sector? Where will the power lie?

On p. 80, “Continuing to strengthen the UK’s reputation as one of the world’s best providers of e-learning, both for those who study here and students based outside the UK” is seen to be a priority. This is picked up on p. 92 in “The continuing development of e-learning is a vital element in supporting improvement of teaching and the student experience and in enabling the personalisation and flexibility that students and employers expect.” So again we see a focus on the global and the private sector, with a limited mention of public sector and none of social enterprise.

On p. 100, Recommendation 31 is that “The Government, working with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, should prioritise investment in e-learning infrastructure to extend the possibilities of remote and online learning.” So I’m left wondering, as someone who works in a teaching-focused, research active, employer-engaged HEI that is mid-table, where the focus is here on enhancing learning, empowering teaching and framing social and economic opportunities for all. Perhaps this is a time for clear leadership within the EdTech community, within institutions, and within communities.


Towards a resilient higher education?


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 25 November 2009

Preamble: energy and education

Joss Winn at the University of Lincoln recently blogged on What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world? In this post he raises issues of climate change and the need to reduce emissions, linked to what higher education will look like in a world that needs to reduce its energy use. Some of the key thinking in this area is focused upon consumption of energy rather than the production of carbon. This is important for two reasons: the growing threat of peak oil and the impact that will have on our ability to consume/produce, and on our energy security and availability; and the need to own the carbon and energy we emit/use, in order to combat climate change.

A recent JISC Tech Watch Report on Low Carbon Computing begins to engage with some of these issues, but is very heavily focused upon emissions and more intelligent institutional/outsourced technology, rather than the threats of peak oil or a need to reduce consumption by end users. One gap that it flags is our shared, disaster scenario planning for climate change, consumption and peak oil within education. Given the holistic, ecological nature and impact of these issues, we need ecological solutions that involve us all. I touch on this below, in terms of resilience.

The report highlights the impact of ICT on global emissions – this is said to be 2% globally, but in developed countries it is higher. As other nations develop, we need to consider the impact of globalisation and our approach to internationalisation, and education’s role in that. The Tech Watch report rightly notes that the use of carbon and energy is a complex issue, with embodied carbon throughout the supply and service chain difficult to monitor. With evidence of carbon sinks beginning to buckle consumption becomes much more important and yet education is predicated on productivity, as the Government’s Higher Ambitions framework suggests.

One of the key themes noted throughout the Tech Watch report is a focus on better technology, rather than restricted use. This has a tendency to reinforce a view that science will save us and that we can carry on producing/consuming technology and education at an increasing rate. So, whilst the report focuses upon: efficiency in technologies, use and services; renewable sources; and carbon capture; it is important for educators to address the growing realisation that consumption is an issue. As a result, it may be time to address issues of energy efficiency and energy use within higher education. As Warren Pearce notes about the discourse over cloud-computing in his posting Do you feel lucky? Over-reliance on tech in a finite world “What the Chrome OS story does is illuminate our wider reliance on an ‘always on’ energy supply, rather than the Fordist method of embedding a finite amount of energy in a ‘thing’. Something old-fashioned like, say, a ‘book’”. The key then is addressing Joss Winn’s issue of beginning to think about how to develop ‘resilient education’.

What do you do if your knowledge and networks are global and the global is shut down?

This question provides an interesting stating-point for any discussion about the responsibilities of higher education, in a world where always-on energy use is not a given. If our ever-expanding use of energy is under threat then we will need much bigger plans for our long-term future. We need to integrate the very necessary, but prosaic, thinking about:

  • improved, intelligent infrastructures;
  • data centre/enterprise architectures;
  • the need for thin or slim clients, and the use of shared PCs;
  • forced upgrades versus open source;
  • out-sourcing and migration to the cloud;
  • data and information storage (up to 35% of energy in data centres is simply storage);

to our view of what higher education stands for and how we, as actors, engage with or challenge it. For example, will our approach to technological intelligence and adaptation be driven by social inclusion/justice, energy security/availability, the environment or the economy?

These issues may shake-down when we wrestle with issues like carbon allowances, which may operate at departmental or Faculty-levels, and may impact resources available for learning and teaching. So, if the cost of carbon/electricity is in devolved budgets, how will those teams or groups manage issues like cooling capacity in data centres, electricity supply and the use of AC, renewing old kit and the need for high performance? Staff and students may have to evaluate when and which tasks have to be timetabled. How will this impact our developed view of anytime, anyplace, anywhere access and consumption? It may be that task and service optimisation impacts the personalisation agenda, from a requirement to power-down, rather than leave machines on-idle, to addressing renewal and embodied carbon/energy in our hardware, and re-evaluating the software functions/Operating Systems that we think we need. Will these be institutional impositions or locally negotiated and owned solutions?

Such integration of the prosaic with the meaning of higher education demands deliberation around what HE stands for. One example of why this is important is the embedded energy in the educational supply chain, especially where that chain is in a high-energy-use area [large conurbations] or is international. Can we guarantee efficient supply for core, local services and production? Have we risk-assessed or developed contingencies where access to outsourced information/data/networks may be impacted by access to power off-site? The vulnerabilities of that chain mean that educators need to think about risk and agency, and a curriculum of resilience. This is more so when we consider the resilience of the services we supply to staff/students, and whether those actors can serve themselves through resilient communities.

Towards a curriculum for resilience

Peak oil, climate change and energy consumption issues (framed by a global financial crisis that impacts funding for the public sector) radically change the ways in which we need to define the purpose of education. In his keynote at the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2009 conference, Charles Leadbeater prompted me to think about the need for educators to develop disruptive approaches to the curriculum before they are themselves disrupted. This involves new ways to work/serve or to live. He spoke about the need for relationships, and the development of social enterprise with education as a catalyst. One aim is to move education away from simply improving formal experiences, to re-form them. This highlights issues of relationships and power, of anxiety and hope, of social enterprise and community-up provision, rather than centre-down imposition.

This view of the interactions between peers in a community/socially-focused range of settings is central to a view of resilience, where global over-reliance may lead to fragility. This opportunity for the social/community connects to a number of other emancipatory arguments.

  1. The DEMOS Edgeless University report demands responsive, local missions for institutions that are then cast as focused upon renewal. Such a renewal might include engagement with informal opportunities for supplementing and then transforming the overall life experience. We can’t rely on schools/HEIs to change local cultures on their own but as part of broader community-focused agents they might win-out.
  2. Illich’s work on de-professionalising and de-schooling society offers opportunities to engage with a choice architecture of experience, where people chose where to act, make decisions and receive feedback. The context for choices is defined by the individual actor, not defined for her/him.
  3. Enquiry-based pedagogies (for example see recent Futurelab work on enquiring minds) enable opportunities for communities to come together to work for local solutions to recognised issues.
  4. Informal learning opportunities are central to a social democratic model. In part, this is about the development of consciousness about issues like peak oil and climate change that promotes an identity of interests between individuals. These associations and their consciousness about issues are key in enabling what Gramsci would call organic intellectuals who can develop ideas for a community.

Each of these areas hints at a curriculum for resilience. Resilience is social/environmentally-situated. It denotes the ability of individuals and communities to learn and adapt, to mitigate risks, prepare for solutions to problems, respond to risks that are realised, and to recover from dislocations. The recent DEMOS pamphlet, Resilient Nation highlighted that we live in brittle societies. Over 80 per cent of Britons live in urban areas relying on dense networks of public and private sector organisations to provide them with essential services. But our everyday lives and the national infrastructure work in a fragile union, vulnerable to even the smallest disturbances in the network, and both are part of a global ecosystem that is damaged and unpredictable.

The report argues that we have a choice between reliance on government and its resources, and its approach to command and control, or developing an empowering day-to-day community resilience. Such resilience develops engagement, education, empowerment and encouragement. The good news for those in EdTech is that social media offer reach, usability, accessibility and timely feedback, and may be a key to developing resilience.

Rob Hopkins, in his “Transition to a world without oil” TED talk, highlights the work of the transition movement. This focuses upon defining local problems and framing local solutions that are contextual, and not technology-driven. He argues for framing resilience around our ability to develop adaptability, to work virally and in ways that are open source, rather than reliant on 3rd parties. Resilience is “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks”. He focuses upon the local and the historic, and demands that we empower people to become self-organising. The key for Hopkins is that resilience is more crucial than sustainability – we need to be able to manage shock or disruption or vulnerability, and to find alternatives. This means that the local is as vital as the global. It also means that civil action rather than political action is the key to enfranchisement.

Hopkins suggests that social/community actors need to work in a context that promotes:

  1. Diversity: through a broader base of livelihoods, resource use, enterprise and energy systems than at present;
  2. Modularity: he is not advocating self-sufficiency, but rather an increased self-reliance; with ‘surge protectors’ for the local economy, such as local food production and decentralised energy systems
  3. Tightness of feedback: bringing the results of our actions closer to home, so that we cannot ignore them.

He states:

For many years, those writing and campaigning on relocalisation have argued that it is a good idea because it produces a better, more equitable economy. Now, as the potential impacts of peak oil and climate change become clearer, an additional and very strong argument has emerged: that as the net energy underpinning society inevitably contracts, so the focus of our economies and our daily lives will inexorably shift, at least in terms of manufacturing and trade, from the global to the local.

Rather than communities meeting each other as unskilled, unproductive, dependent and vulnerable settlements, they would meet as skilled, abundantly productive, self-reliant and resilient communities.

What’s more he is hopeful that:

By seeing resilience as a key ingredient of the economic strategies that will enable communities to thrive beyond the current economic turmoil the world is seeing, huge creativity, reskilling and entrepreneurship are unleashed.

Can we forge a curriculum for resilience?

In an excellent paper on the limits of partnership Jonathan Davis argues that empowerment may depend less on enhanced network democracy, which is managerial and driven by the power of specific cultures, than on strong independent community organisations capable of acting coercively [i.e. through lawful, direct action] against elites. He terms this an exit-action strategy that is developed and owned by communities, and which helps to overcome the colonisation of problems, resources and contexts by elites. The key for any debate on resilience is that defining a curriculum that is community-focused, may require institutions to become less managerial and more open to the formation of devolved social enterprises. This will need spaces for what Gramsci has called organic intellectuals, who can emerge from and facilitate community action that leads to political influence and overcomes agenda gatekeeping.

Learners and tutors may be just such organic intellectuals. In light of peak oil and climate change our learners and staff capabilities are key – what power do they have to develop resilience in an era of risk and threat, and also of communitarian opportunity? A key element here is what Davis terms “democratic ‘co-governance’” within civil action, but which might usefully be applied to education. How might this impact stakeholder roles within higher education?

The role of learner: this may become the ability to be, to co-exist, to survive and to thrive, within a range of communities, many of which will be locally-focused. In this context Habermas’ “lifeworld”, or those informal, unmarketised domains of life, that are social, voluntary, and truly participatory are important in situating the individual within a curriculum for resilience. The key facets are the ability to work with a range of peers to define problems and solutions, to make decisions and take action, and to receive feedback [for instance, journalists working with engineers to develop a communication plan for a flood-threatened town]. In this way the current focus on the learner-voice may need to be revisited to focus upon resilient community voices, which can co-produce civil society.

The role of tutor is as a more experienced other, able to provide good-enough support in context. The key is mentoring, modelling and nurturing co-production, co-governance and possibly [lawful] coercion. The key here is lobbying for new modes of curricula design and delivery that lever social enterprise and resilience. This is an activist role and focuses upon the voice of the community and proper democratic engagement in that community. This might include working with those, and in contexts, well beyond the institution. It will also shake up subject-specific working to catalyse new curricula and problem-solving.

The role of institution may be to facilitate social enterprise, affiliation, preparation, and resourcing for transformation within communities. To create a space within which a resilient curriculum is welcomed and actively encouraged. This may mean that the 360-credit undergraduate degree becomes ever-more redundant in a world where we need skill-matching, sharing and problem-solving for complex issues.

One area that frames this will be in energy usage. The Tech Watch report highlights that on a 2005 baseline, by 2020 we will only see 13% reductions in desktop energy consumption due to the impact of peripherals, laptops, iphones, netbooks etc. There is a desperate need for both dematerialisation and adding intelligence to performance/systems/services. This means changing cultures around approaches to information management, decentralised, local, micro-generation of energy that is DC, and more devolved energy management, especially for pervasive computing.

The role of the curriculum will be to frame socio-cultural opportunities for agency, community, decision-making, building relationships, and producing. As Hopkins argues, an energy crisis may be hopeful if it leads to emancipation. At issue is framing a curriculum that enables transformation through celebrating and validating the application of intelligence at the edges of networks that can in turn lead to creation and adaptation.

Postscript

There is a very real danger that we risk disenfranchising ourselves through a techno-determinist approach to peak oil and climate change. The more we wed people to technology and the perception that efficient technology will save us from a future of energy scarcity the less we focus upon the radical pedagogical changes that are needed. How do we develop the skills in social enterprise and community-working? How do we enable people to learning at a local scale? How do we build trust and dialogue, sharing and co-operation? It may be that we need to move away from reliance on the institution to self-reliance and local, voluntary responsibility.


Towards a resilient curriculum for HE


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 8 December 2009

Preamble

In his recent blog posting on Oil and the story of energy, Joss Winn highlighted the work of David Mackay and his Five Energy Plans for Britain. Joss argued that two factors will squeeze our society as we manage the transition from oil to other energy sources, in any peak oil scenario.

  1. How long it will take to replace our current oil-based global energy infrastructure with something we think is a viable alternative. Joss quoted Robert Hirsch, who in 2005 stated “The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem.” Hirsch highlighted price volatility linked to unprecedented economic, social, and political costs, with “Viable mitigation options” needing to be implemented “more than a decade in advance of peaking.” Do we have the will for this?
  2. The net energy that can be extracted from other sources of energy, such as nuclear, solar and wind both as a direct replacement to “keep the home fires burning”, and as a composite used in the manufacture of plastics, fertiliser, medicines, rubber, asphalt and other useful products. As a replacement for oil in products other than fuel, nuclear, wind, solar, etc. are not viable. Can we contemplate this as we frame ourselves around the consumption of more systems, services and technologies?

Disruptions to economic norms, to the climate and our carbon-related consumption and energy security provide a counter-point to the determinism of always-on energy and technology use. So we have a scenario where falling energy supplies exacerbates issues around energy security, availability and cost, but also where availability of oil for manufacturing goods that support services and lifestyles upon which we have based our cultures may not be viable. One impact may be on the availability, use and supply of non-essentials like new technology, especially where hoarding or use only for essential activities becomes the norm.

How soon these issues will impact is a moot point. Whether a peak oil, energy-scarce model, or a techno-determinist, economic-growth position, or a scenario that lies somewhere in between, comes to pass, the lives that we live in 2030 seem likely to be framed by uncertainty. So how does this square with the curriculum in HE and the idea of the University? Can a focus on resilience help?

Towards a resilient curriculum? Determinism and technology

In Searching for a Miracle, Richard Heinberg notes “Over the long run, static or falling energy supplies must be reflected in economic stasis or contraction”. This is critical in thinking about the development of a resilient curriculum in HE. At present the dominant HE ideology is neo-liberal and driven by consumerist models. There have been Ideas of the University proposed that are more socially and culturally constructed, and which focus upon the University as spaces where reflexivity and enlightenment are valued. However, their ability to gain traction in a competitive educational market that is focused less on social enterprise and more on market economics is problematic.

This then impacts on the development of curricula that enable a learner to manage disruption and uncertainty like a transition to a post-peak oil scenario. At present, innovations in curriculum design and delivery are technology-driven and assume that the dominant discourse of energy availability and increased energy use will continue. Other major curriculum development strategies, like employer engagement and workforce development, and widening participation, are also focused on employability and the economy, and upon developing the individual’s economic value. This is echoed in the value attributed to technology-enhanced learning, or on-line learning/training, in the Government’s policy and is amplified through the current HEFCE online learning taskforce.

This deterministic, positivist, progressive approach demands that energy use is not only maintained but increased, if only in order to pay off the UK’s huge national debt. Not increasing energy use, even if we are expected to make significant cuts in carbon emissions, is not an option in economic recovery. However, in the peak oil scenario painted by Joss, it is difficult to see how this focus on always-on energy can remain unchallenged in the medium-term.

The value of “always-on” technology then frames the provision of services, which are increasingly outsourced. As Keri Facer has noted, developmental technological processes have catalysed core functions or services being outsourced away from the individual and towards machines or data-processors. A classic example is the use of SatNavs rather than maps, and the use of search engines for pretty much everything. This is not to say that, for example, the Geographical Information Systems implemented within HE leave GIS students de-skilled, but there may be a reliance or even dependence upon specific forms of technology and on using those technologies for specific tasks. Any dependence on always-on services within our curricula and within life more generally is a risk.

This dependency on tools and services underpinned by oil is possibly the most concerning in any peak oil scenario. A focus upon energy efficiency and intelligent technology moves us away from scenario-planning around the development of a meaningful curriculum for resilience. For instance, the latest JISC Strategy is economically-framed and paints a scenario where energy security and availability, and the increased manufacture of technologies are not at issue:

“The UK is at risk of losing its world-leading reputation for education, unless it continues to invest in digital technologies to meet the ever-changing needs of modern learners, researchers and the academic community… The strategy outlines a vision of the future whereby a robust technological infrastructure is required to meet the shifting needs of the 21st century education community. JISC believes it is crucial that the UKs education system continues to compete on the international stage by investing in innovation, research and increasing the availability of online resources.”

A key statement in this Strategy is “the ever-changing needs of modern learners”. This relentless, restless, dynamic picture is not energy-neutral, it implies constant curriculum re-definition and re-design, and the availability of renewed, always-on technologies. My concern in a world of uncertainties like peak oil is whether we are doing enough to prepare learners for the fact that this may not always be the case, and that they may need to master different tools and skills.

The case of Illich: tools for conviviality

In developing mastery, the Russian thinker Ivan Illich questioned the extent to which institutions, curricula and technologies (de-)humanise. In Tools for Conviviality he prioritised the use of tools for “autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment”. In part this catalyses social learning through the development of learning webs. In part it focuses upon the place and role of the individual in her/his communities. Illich’s view of autonomy and creativity framed a counterpoint to a dominant consumerist paradigm, in which individual relationships are mediated though consumption, and towards a focus upon shared resources and skills and more community-driven interdependence.

This focus upon the use of tools to redefine our approaches to socio-cultural, and economic, engagement, enables meaningful personalisation and a diversification of skills. Illich argued that “A pluralism of limited tools and of convivial commonweals would of necessity encourage a diversity of life styles.” This view of diversity and commonweals or communities defining needs and using shared skills is interesting in light of the types of literacies flagged in the Learning Literacies for the Digital Age project. The project final report (p.3) highlighted the urgency of supporting a differentiation of identities and engagements in multiple spaces:

“there is a tension between recognising an ‘entitlement’ to basic digital literacy, and recognising technology practice as diverse and constitutive of personal identity, including identity in different peer, subject and workplace communities, and individual styles of participation.”

Illich saw this as critical and believed that a “convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others”, in order to overcome regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence. He saw tools as mediating relationships, and as emancipatory where mastery of them in a specific context could be achieved. The LLiDA project report contextualises this for the digital age (p. 7): “Literacies emerge through authentic, well-designed tasks in meaningful contexts”. So the nature of the curriculum and the learner’s engagement with it is key in developing their resilience. The types of literacies involved/developed/modelled involve foundational skills, cultural awareness, communicative practices, practice-based action, self-transformation and self-awareness. In this, authenticity and participation shine through (p. 9). So what might this mean for a curriculum for resilience in HE?

A curriculum for resilience in HE

In an earlier post on the issue of resilience in HE, I wrote that

“The more we wed people to technology and the perception that efficient technology will save us from a future of energy scarcity the less we focus upon the radical pedagogical changes that are needed.”

There is a complex interplay between the theoretical opportunities of social media for personal emancipation through engagement in contexts for narrative and authorship, and our understanding of how those tools are deployed and owned in reality (See the issues raised in the special social media issue of JCAL from January 2009 on social media). One key issue is how technologies are (re)claimed by users and communities within specific contexts and curricula, in-line with personal integration and enquiry, and in an uncertain world.

It is perhaps this focus upon uncertainty that should drive the creation of a resilient curriculum. Barnett argues, in a Will to Learn, for the learner’s engagement with uncertainty and anxiety, and he re-frames this around spaces for an individual’s will to develop, and in which they can be and become in a meaningful way. The key is engendering reflexivity in an authentic context. In light of this, peak oil, climate change, energy scarcity, economic disruption all demand different approaches to existing, surviving and thriving.

So some emergent questions for the curriculum are as follows.

  1. What sorts of literacies of resilience do people as social agents need, and what is HE’s role in framing them?
  2. What sorts of relationships enable these resilient literacies and modes of being to emerge?
  3. What sorts of knowledge/understanding do these learners need to be effective agents in society?
  4. Are our traditional modes of designing and delivering curricula meaningful or relevant?

So we begin to think about how to frame a curriculum that enables individuals-in-communities to learn and adapt, to mitigate risks, to prepare for solutions to problems, to respond to risks that are realised, and to recover from dislocations. This demands curricula that may be:

  • authentic and meaningful, framed by decision-making and agency;
  • enquiry-based, in which skills, approaches, decisions and actions are developed and tested in real-world situations that demonstrate complexity and context;
  • cross-disciplinary, and linked to a guild or craft-style experience rather than a Fordist, factory approach;
  • negotiated in scope, governance and delivery within authentic, rather than false, communities;
  • accredited through the specification of expertise and experience developed within real-world processes and outcomes;
  • framed by mentoring and coaching; and
  • focused upon co-governance, rather than co-creation.

In thinking through the qualities of a resilient, differentiated curriculum, I am minded of the specific outcomes from four curriculum interventions at DMU.

  1. Framing programme, rather than module-level, communities of practice in Game Art Design. Finding spaces and technologies that enable co-governance of projects and co-creation for project deliverables, in negotiation with tutors and a wider, industrial community, supports the implementation of authentic outcomes. It enables innovation and risk and responsibility through mentoring. Personal ownership within a negotiated social space is critical.
  2. The fusion of affective and cognitive approaches to learning in first-year History, where learning logs focus upon the development of the student-as-person, hinging around evaluations of summative performance. The role of learning logs and reflection on action in enabling student to become themselves, as resilient performers and agents is key. This fusion frames the integration of affective and cognitive learning.
  3. The development of story-telling and therapeutic relationships between more experienced peer-mentors and their mentees, re-defines who has power to help and nurture in HE. These relationships demonstrate the power of dialogue in developing motivation, self-efficacy and problem-solving within and beyond the curriculum.
  4. The development of a UCPD in work-based learning for Placement students in Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Sciences begins to value explicitly the reflection on the application of theory-in-practice, within a different learning context. A different approach to accreditation, valuing the affective and the reflective in a hard, experimental, scientific space, using industrial and academic supervisors as coaches is central.

These are not revolutionary in scope. However, I am interested in how a resilient curriculum might focus upon social enterprise, not in a return to localism, but in enabling solutions and responses within specific communities. The Cabinet Office notes that social enterprises are “businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.” This definition enables social enterprises to define and catalyse projects that are community-oriented, inclusive, negotiated, and enquiry-focused.

So I am interested in how a new, first-year Historian at DMU might work with her/his tutors and more experienced peers, and also with students in other disciplines, to define projects within specific communities in Leicester or the East Midlands or nationally or internationally. These projects might focus upon contextualising specific community issues and framing development or renewal projects, in terms of different histories, and might subsequently involve decision-making and negotiation with other agencies [NGOs, Government, business], in order to take authentic action. This may involve work with media production or journalism students on communication, and with those involved in social care on engaging and representing the user voice in decision-making. It prioritises an integrated and social, rather than a subject-drive, approach to processes and solutions, and it respects the different skills and aspirations that individuals-in-communities offer. It also prioritises meaningful and developmental agency.

A key in building resilience is engaging with uncertainty through projects that involve diverse voices in civil action. Clearly discourses of power will impact the values we place on certain skills, and upon our negotiating positions, and upon the nature of the projects that should be undertaken. A role for HE curricula is framing an understanding of these discourses and the contexts in which they emerge so that they can be challenged, and so that co-governance as well as co-creation is enabled and tested. In a world of increasing uncertainty, where peak oil threatens our approach to always-on technology and connection, engaging the individual in authentic partnerships, mentoring and enquiry, and in the processes of community and social governance is central.

Postscript

@Fulup has blogged about Peak Oil and Digital Preservation, and the hard decision that will need to be made in a world of scarcity. Scarcity of energy will impact availability of: digital resources; always-on services;  capacity for and scheduling of  high-end processes; out-sourced technologies/services. Such availability will impact the skills and capabilities of our learners, and their contextual decisions and actions.

A key question for the HE curriculum in the 21st century is whether it needs to address scarcity, and the possibility that the always-on access to services, networks and technologies that it promises is not viable. Do HE managers have appropriate risk/disaster management plans available? So much of our curriculum infrastructure is tied to oil and plentiful energy. So much of our curriculum design and delivery discourse is about personalisation in an always-on world. Are we helping our learners to exist in authentic, social communities and spaces where the switch may be turned off?


Learning Technology as Tax or Enabler? Reflections on an ALT Policy Board meeting


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 19 June 2010.

I went to the Association for Learning Technology Policy Board meeting at the LSE yesterday. The event was tagged with a focus on “Technology in Learning and Teaching. An Enabler or a Tax”, which was a pragmatic focus given our current fiscal concerns. It was also relevant given the current ideological attack on the public sector. This attack has been fore grounded elsewhere in relation to, for instance, pensions. It can also be seen in the general tenor of the current Administration’s approach to education through privatisation, and the increasing and uncontested role of private business in the delivery of learning opportunities.

The meeting itself left me equally frustrated and hopeful. Frustrated in that the discourse of the presentations was wholly uncritical and techno-determinist, presenting a world in which we could do more-for-less without evidencing how or why, or what the consequences would be for social or economic relations, or for those who are vulnerable. Hopeful in that the discussion at the close of the meeting offered some space for rejection of these deterministic positions.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall kicked off with a focus on the development of the web, and the move towards the semantic web, and she highlighted the profound changes that the social web had made. However, whilst she talked about the web linking people, at no point did she highlight what they were being linked for. It was as if the technology was an uncontested given, an uncritical, apolitical good, divorced from issues of social and political power, or equality of access. Moreover, there was no focus on the impact of technology on carbon emissions, or the impact on technology in HE of public sector cuts, and of peak oil or of projected energy costs.

As I reflected on the fact that we always seem to be chasing the front of the technological curve, a point highlighted by David Harvey as a key thread in the narrative and reality of capitalism, the question “what is it for?” was screaming at me. This was especially the case given the language that was used: “productivity”; “growth”; “doing more with less”;“mission critical strategic operation”;“change the way technology interacts with students in the learning process”;“leverage”;“technology-supported execution”;“growth”;“realign our working practices to maximise efficiency”. The discourse was around consumption, and learning technology being a driver and a realisation of that economic relationship. The focus was always outcome and never process, of commodification and not being.

This discourse of commodification and of uncontextualised redefinition of perceived educational success and failure was pushed to a ludicrous conclusion when one speaker argued that a 50 per cent pass rate at A-C at GCSE signalled systemic educational failure. We were told that “in the world of manufacturing” this would be unacceptable, and that the automated methods of efficiency demonstrated by, for instance, learndirect provided the solution in “driving quality up and driving effectiveness up”, whatever that means. The linking of innovation to outcomes-driven education, taking an automated and materialist approach to learning, with a focus on units of production and no recognition of the complexity of personal and educational backgrounds, was made uncritically. The discourse of the factory, of the taylorisation of education, leaves no space to deliberate what it is for beyond profit through efficiency. So what does do more-for-less actually mean?

The mantra that we were left with was that “more for less means doing things differently”. Differently did not mean asking whether our vision and our construction of what education was for was right or wrong, but that the ideology of economic growth through privatisation and factory-driven approaches was now the only game in town. What “more” actually equates to is never defined. More education? More outcomes? More profit? So the focus is on “the power technology” has for efficiency savings, rather than on the social power and agency of individuals; it is on “tutoring and not teaching”, and the de-skilling of teachers-as-mentors in the educational process; it is on flexibility and “learners as consumers”, with the very real risk that educationalists are complicit in a new reality of economic exploitation.

In a session on strategic leadership in HE, and the impact on technology, we were informed that the sector had to “grasp the opportunity of technology”, and that this would generate capacity for culture change through “smarter businesses”. Again there was no sense of what this change was for or how it would enable our values? The discourse of change was for economic growth in ignorance or in spite of major disruptions, rather than addressing our broader societal needs. Moreover, it is a very narrow view, focused on innovation at the leading-edge of the technology curve, because we are told that we need to “innovate about the business model”, and that in some unevidenced, ahistorical way we can realise a win-win of growth and inclusion.

There was no recognition shown that learning is a difficult and traumatic process, or that education should focus on equality. We were left with the view that technology, and the private sector’s involvement in it, is about equality of opportunity, with no sense that this further alienates and disempowers those who have no access to that opportunity. This then crystallises the objectification of those involved in the educational process through the mantra of “learning as consumption” or “learners as consumers”. The focus on data, on administration, on economic value, on innovation and growth, on efficiency, on more-for-less, amplifies an outcomes-obsessed, object-driven, alienating approach to higher education, with technology as a driver of this economic and determinist agenda.

The level of techno-determinism, of change, innovation, growth, chasing the next technology, efficiency, effectiveness, which apps we can sell, which OERs we can sell for “business gain”, needs to be resisted through a realisation of critical pedagogy focused on social relations. There is a morality at play here that is about more than money. The recent Centre for Alternative Technology report on a Vision for a Zero Carbon Britain by 2030 states clearly the need for us to recognise our “ethical responsibility” towards powering-down and de-carbonisation. With the threat of peak oil and energy costs, and the fact that three million children in the UK are below the poverty line, educationalists have a moral duty to reframe education and to act in society for democratic, inclusive ends. This means recognising the contested and critical nature of learning technology, rather than allowing it to be co-opted unopposed by those who wish to taylorise it.

So we need to ask more critical questions of our use of technology. What is it for? What power does it have to be socially, rather than economically transformative? How do we enact our social values, of generosity, trust, respect, co-operation, fidelity, through technology, rather than simply using it for economic growth and hiding behind the objectification of learners and learning? How do we enact an activist, scholarly society in order to challenge the dominant view of technology as a lever for growth, rather than equality? How do we resist these dominant models in our use of social media? In our development of learning communities? In our framing and delivery of the curriculum? In our actions in our communities and associations? In our contribution to institutional values, policies, practices and technologies?

I was left feeling hopeful because there was a sense that this was a political role for ALT. However, the 10 discussion points flagged as next steps for ALT were again heavy on a neoliberal economic agenda as being the accepted reality for UK HE, rather than seeing a possibility for resistance around a model of social justice. So, terms like “cost-effectively”, “the successful delivery of ‘Higher Ambitions’”; “modern learning”; “leverage”; all featured without any critique. It is this level of critique that must be central to our use of technology in HE. The recognition that this is a political project is critical, and is one that groups like the ALT Policy Board must address.


Educational futures, educational technology and digital social media


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 7 July 2010.

The application of Futures’ planning and thinking in the development of higher education is receiving more attention, and in particular is catalysing researchers and practitioners to discuss frames of reference, methods, and ethics for thinking about futures’ planning. The work of FutureLab on Beyond Current Horizons, was synthesised by Facer and Sandford in addressing technology futures. They critiqued much that was taken-for-granted in the use of educational technology, noting that (p. 75): “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”. As I noted elsewhere in challenging positivist views of technology, Facer and Sandford ‘ask much more critical questions of “the chronological imperialism of accounts of inevitable and universal futures”. This accepts the complexity of the use of technology, of societal development, and of political economy, and asks us to consider some of the ethical imperatives. In addressing these we have a chance to re-think our values.’

Our humane values are critical in defining the theory, methods and ethics of futures-oriented research in education. In the introduction to his latest e-book, The Biggest Wake-Up Call in History, Richard Slaughter highlights the values-driven, hopeful opportunities that underpin an integral approach. An integral approach might enable societies to take a respectful and generous stance to the interpretation of and engagement with the “‘signals’ that are being constantly generated within the global system, [and therefore] as we become aware of their import and actively respond to them, then a deeper, richer, understanding emerges”. Slaughter’s work is important for education, and those who work with technology, because his integral approach highlights the importance of taking a proactive role in critique and action, around transitions to new ways of being and living, in the face of climate change, peak oil and the dominant, neoliberal ideology of political economy. Education has to work with these external issues in planning its possible futures. One strand of this that needs greater critique is technology and digital social media.

Slaughter asks two important questions in addressing these issues.

  1. How can so many contributions fit together within a coherent whole?
  2. How can many different kinds of truth be honoured and adjudicated?

In respecting complexity, pluralism and difference, the onus is on us all to look at ways of planning for transitions rather than waiting to adapt to shock. This may involve taking on-board relevant historical lessons, in order to stand for a position of “Science and technology + foresight + moral courage”. This interrelationship of science and technology, humanism and the liberal arts is critical in any approach to futures’ thinking, in particular because difficult, inclusive, ethical decisions need to be made around the pressures of population, affluence and the environment, and the possibilities of technology.

One of the questions with which I have come away is how are those of us involved in educational technology and digital social media actively engaged in futures work? Is there a sense in which these communities are futures literate? How do these communities of practice enable the critique of technology and the possibilities for the uses of educational technology, in both the process of creating the future and the outcomes of those processes [what is actually done as well as how this happens]? In engaging with social media and in touting personalisation, how are we looking at values and customs in common?

I return to this issue of values because it is important and is one that technologists ought to address, especially in underpinning our activity and what we do in the world. In part, this reflects Holloway’s “power-to”, and his focus on doing as an emancipatory activity, in direct opposition to others’ “power-over” us and our labour. Doing and activity are crucial, but need to be seen in light of our shared humanity. Dowrick reminds us that the ways in which we live our lives should be driven by humane values that can help us overcome disruption, namely: courage; fidelity; restraint; generosity; tolerance; and forgiveness. Those of us who drive forward the use of technology has a duty to foreground these issues in ensuring that we do not contribute to individual alienation, the taylorisation of work, or the fetishisation of tools.

In engaging with technology and social media, I see decisions being made to enact our values. In this way there is space for activism, and the creation of pedagogies of excess, supported by the use of technology and social media. However, we need to ask more often what do “we” want to be and why? Why do we want to do what we do with technology? How does, for example, Twitter enable our shared humane values? How do we allow Facebook’s form and function to (de-)humanise us? Who is marginalised/empowered on-line in a virtual learning environment, and what does this outcome say about us? Do we allow mobile technologies to enable or prevent us from doing and creating? How does our understanding of the present and our work with educational technology in the present enable us to plan for the future? My use of “we” and “our” and “shared” is critical.

Analysing the present is an important issue. Do we properly understand why and how technology and social media are being (ab)used in the present, and how and why they help us to act/react now? Or are we simply accepting dominant hegemonic positions about the use of technology in education? When we make statements about engagement, participation, marginalisation do we critique those statements? How do we use those statements, and our approaches and needs, underwritten by our core, humane values, to help communities of practice to develop their own solutions to problems? I see this as a starting point for enabling a discussion about futures that utilises technology to enhance our humanity, and to move us from the fetishisation of the digital towards communal solutions to significant problems.


How might current and future trends in technology affect educational leadership?


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted on Learning Exchanges on 13 July 2010.

At DMU’s Leadership and Management Conference, Mike Robinson [Director of ISAS] and I ran a workshop on “How might current and future trends in technology affect leadership at DMU?” The purpose of the session was to enable staff to share aspirations, revisit key trends in the strategic development of institutional IT, and to analyse the development of TEL at DMU as a case study, before identifying key short/medium-term priorities for their teams. The key outcomes raised by the mix of academic and support staff are noted below.

What are your aspirations for your use of technology as a leader?

  • Demands effective leadership that is proactive rather than reactive.
  • Enhanced processes/controls [automation and infrastructure].
  • Integrated management information to inform and support decisions, including finance.
  • Enhanced administration/efficiency of teaching tasks, including distance learning.
  • Improve communication of information, document management.
  • Mobility and remote working.
  • Meeting staff/student expectations.
  • Interest in short-term innovation within a long-term view.

Can you define a short and medium-term priority for your team in utilising technology?

  • Aspirational strategy for DMU, which is suitable and sustainable.
  • Having a typology of technology allows for flexibility/innovation and security/comfort factor for some staff.
  • Culture change away from paper towards the use of data repositories, recorded webinars etc..
  • Joined-up systems/thinking – synergy/seamless..
  • Planning; communications; identify support.
  • Engagement with what is currently available – how can it help me?
  • Feedback from team about what works/needs attention.
  • Developing approaches to Open Educational Resources.
  • Matching possibilities with University procurement and decision-making processes.
  • Develop a knowledge base on non-DMU systems, and contextualisation of use.
  • Training and support.
  • Innovation, investment, resourcing.
  • Open mind, agile and flexible.

Can you identify key barriers to this?

  • Culture change. We are in a faster world, with no space to think, where staff need to be subject specialists and technologically aware. What does this mean for relationships between staff/students/university?
  • Need for enhanced collaboration between services/faculties and the use of champions/pioneers.
  • Top-down strategy and cultural bias that impacts staff fears/increases resistance,
  • IT as a distraction; the need to follow the crowd; buy-in; resistance to change. Speed of change, and lack of engagement/awareness.
  • Better communication about reviews/developments.
  • Lack of support [resources for innovation].
  • Lack of testing of new technology; being wedded to certain providers is restrictive.
  • Sourcing everything from the private sector.
  • Security of the environment.
  • Green fingers – work/teach remotely.

The headlines for me from the session were three-fold, and connect into the work we are undertaking around a vision for TEL at DMU.

  1. Staff focused on a vision for joined-up systems, including access to management information, learning technologies and communications tools, which can enable both effective decision-making/controls and curriculum/work innovation.
  2. Developing a joined-up approach requires staff participation in the development and delivery of a longer-term, aspirational strategy for DMU in engaging with technology. This strategy should help staff innovate in their activity/tasks/work with the tools that they already have at hand in the short-term, so that they are ready to innovate with new tools and to manage change in the longer-term.
  3. Sustainability, in terms of: the curriculum; our human relationships; our data; our infrastructures; our use of energy and natural/manufactured resources; is very important. How we develop “green fingers” in our use of IT is a priority and a responsibility for us all, in developing a resilient higher education.

 


Open education: the need for critique


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted on Learning Exchanges on 27 July 2010.

**This post is a set of personal reflections on open education, and the fetishised nature of Open Educational Resources [OERs], and arises from the JISC/HEA-hosted Open Educational Resources International Symposium. It is framed by posts about the Democratic University and the Political Economy of Openness.

Open education is a critique of our formal, institutionalised systems of education. Or it should be. It should help us to critique what we do as educators in a formal system and why. It reflects back to us how our work enables the people who experience our formal systems, to exist, to innovate, to succeed, to be(come). An engagement with the possibilities for open education enables us to examine our “power-to” change our social relations, rather than to exist in a state where some-one or some-thing has “power-over” our work and our selves.

The possibilities of open education include our ability to create spaces for reflecting upon our participation in the activity and labour of (self-) discovery and (self-) invention, and change. However, participation is an often co-opted word, which is de-based to a form of therapeutic engagement between individuals whose power-to govern and create in a situation/activity is markedly different. These differences impact how our work is constructed, and how it is perceived and valued. Our power-to govern a learning situation and the work that is actually done in it, and to re-invent the social relationships that frame it, are based on our agency in the world. There is a balance here between our individual and communal approaches to the process of participation.

Therefore, democratic practices in education are critical in enhancing our broader socio-educational life, and underpin radical re-conceptualisations of educational practice, for example mass intellectuality, a pedagogy of excess and student-as-producer. Marx’s Eighth Thesis on Feuerbach notes that “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.“ One of the cracks in the formal education system that open models of education demonstrate to us is the hope for partnership and co-governance of learning between different actors in shared practices.

A second, co-opted and often de-based word is “revolution”, especially when coupled to “learning”, and tied to the creation of open educational resources. Marx’s oft-quoted Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach states “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Is this what is meant by “learning revolution”? Where we use that term do we mean radically change our social relations, or the ownership and aggregation of the means of production? Or are we reducing the power of the meaning of “revolution”, so that it becomes a change in the method of “participation” or a change in the technological mode of production? Marx notes in his First Thesis on Feuerbach that we need to “grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity”. Revolution implies a process of struggle and transformation in our social relations, towards an entirely different mode of both production and distribution of goods and services, and towards a different form of collective social (or in this case educational) order. To use the term learning revolution demands a critique of the political economics of education, and the social relations that exist therein. This cannot be done in terms of OERs without an engagement with critical pedagogy.

As a result, it is interesting to re-evaluate the ways in which we think about allegedly radical educational projects/arguments, in particular:

In each of these discussions, there are a number of risks.

  1. That the role/importance of individual rather than social empowerment is laid bare, and that within a libertarian educational structure, the focus becomes techno-determinist. The risk here is that, accepting the position of others in meaningful, socially-constructed tasks, technology is the driver for individual emancipation [although we rarely ask “emancipation for or from what?”]. Moreover, we believe that without constant innovation in technology and technological practices we cannot emancipate/empower ever more diverse groups of learners.
  2. That we deliver practices that we claim are radical, but which simply replicate or re-produce a dominant political economy, in-line with the ideology of accepted business models. So that which we claim as innovatory becomes subservient to a dominant mode of production and merely enables institutions to have power-over our products and labour, rather than it being a shared project [witness the desire for HE to become more business-like].
  3. That we fetishise the outcomes/products of our labour as a form of currency. This is especially true in the case of open educations resources, which risk being disconnected from a critique of open education or critical pedagogy, and PLEs which risk being disconnected from a critique of their relationship to our wider social relations.
  4. That we fetishise the learner as an autonomous agent, able to engage in an environment, using specific tools and interacting with specific OERs, so that she becomes an economic actor, rather than seeing her engagement as socially emergent and negotiated.

David Harvey notes that changing the world is more complex than a technological fix, and requires us to recognise and engage in the critique of an assemblage of other activities or practices. Harvey argues that there are seven activity areas that underpin meaningful social change:

  1. technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption;
  2. relations to nature and the environment;
  3. social relations between people;
  4. mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and cultural understandings and beliefs;
  5. labour processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects;
  6. institutional, legal and governmental arrangements; and
  7. the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.

These areas impact the broader projects with which we engage. As a result a number of questions arise, especially around open education and OERs.

  1. How do we prioritise engagement with the broader, open context of learning and education, with trusted peers? How do we raise our own literacy around openness, in order to legitimise sharing as social practice and as social process, and not as a response to a target of OER-production-as-SMART-objective?
  2. Is the production of OERs a means of furthering control over our means of production and our labour? Is there a risk that the alleged transparency of production of OERs is used to further control and power-over, for example, teachers and teaching by impacting contracts of employment?
  3. Though education, how do we enable the types of participatory engagement and re-production of groups like the Autonomous Geographies Collective or Trapese, where the production of OERs is a secondary outcome to the re-fashioning of social relationships that it enables? By so doing, we might just enable groups to engage with the activity-areas that Harvey highlights as a process of production, rather than fetishising the production of things.
  4. How do we resist the increasing discourse of cost-effectiveness, monetisation, economic value, efficiency that afflicts our discussion of open education? How do we move the argument around sustainability and open education away from a focus on economic value? Too often our discussion of open education is reduced to a discussion of OERs and this, in turn, is reduced to a discourse of cost and consumption. As a result, our role in education is commodified and objectified.
  5. Do we ask who is margnalised in the production of OERs or in open education? Are non-Western cultures engaging in open education and the production of OERs through the languages of colonialism or by focusing on native socio-cultural forms? At what point do OERs and open education become part of a post-colonial discourse focused upon new markets?
  6. How do we utilise OERs to open-up trans-disciplinary approaches to global crises, like peak oil and climate change? How do we enable the emerging array of open subject resources to be utilised across boundaries (be they personal, subject, programme, course, institutional or national), in order to challenge sites of power in the University and beyond? These resources enable ways of challenging hegemonic, mental conceptions of the world and framing new social relations. This requires curriculum leadership. These crises require socio-educational leadership.

The production and re-use of artefacts is of secondary importance to the social relationships that are re-defined by us, and the focus on people and values that are in-turn assembled through open education. In overcoming alienation, and in overcoming crisis, open education enables us to critique institutionalised forms of education, and to promote more resilient ways of doing. The challenge is to promote such a critique.