Tag Archives: politics

Towards a radical manifesto? The Impact of Web 2.0 on HE


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 15 May 2009

I have finally re-read the Report of an independent Committee of Inquiry into the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies. From the report I am particularly taken by the following statements/outcomes, which have ramifications for our policy, practice[s] and culture[s]. I am especially interested in the connections between these areas as they impact our ability to re-define a radical pedagogy for empowering our learners, wherever they are on a continuum of engagement with technology. The key is making the world a better place.

1.    The impact of pre-HE pedagogies and technologies

This may be the single most important area that will impact HE practitioners. The report notes two key factors:

“Present-day students are heavily influenced by school methods of delivery so that shifts in educational practice there can be expected to impact on expectations of approaches in higher education”

“The digital divide, the division between the digital ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, has not been entirely overcome and persists in several dimensions: in access to, and engagement with, technology; the capability of the technology; and in individual competence.”

Issues of marginalisation, disempowerment and disengagement by accident, status or design are still very real. They connect into Helen Milner’s recent work on social inclusion and digital technologies and her Next step for the digital inclusion manifesto. They are also impacted by the development and extension of the precepts within the Early Years Foundation Stage Strategy, which is in itself a manifesto for: inclusion; child-centred practice; productive, learner-defined and owned personal learning environments; a new politics of praxis within and beyond the classroom. The time is ripe for a reappraisal of the value[s] of Bandura, Dewey, Illich, Rorty, integrated with the work of Ronald Barnett.

As digital identities are developed and better understood, as libraries, community centres, social enterprises and schools extend coverage, and as access via mobiles broadens and depends, HE has a duty to ensure that its practitioners are not playing catch-up. This is especially important in the pedagogic cultures that drive programme teams, both in their definition and scoping of curricula, in their involvement of students-as-mentors, and as a result in the power relationships that exist in the learning space that a learner defines. Enabling learners to manage their place in a set of cultures and ask questions at key moments of transition – to their enrolment or registration, in their modes of assessment, in migrating between levels 1 and 2 or between levels 2 and 3 – are critical for good-enough educators who have to support the student in her/his integration of the disparate facets of HE study for her/his own development.

2.    The impact on staff

The report notes that:

“Staff capability with ICT is a further dimension of the digital divide… Tutors are central to development of approaches to learning and teaching in higher education. They have much to keep up with, their subject for example, and developments in their craft – learning and teaching or pedagogy. To practise effectively, they have also to stay attuned to the disposition of their students. This is being changed demonstrably by the nature of the experience of growing up in a digital world.”

Programme teams are crucial in setting a context and ethos within which students can become themselves and succeed. The academic as lone ranger in embedding technologies helps no-one, least of all the student. The student’s integration of the HE and subject environment into their self-concept as a learner who can achieve, demands that programme teams frame their learning activities and subject context around a cohesive digital environment. Too often this is missing at HE.

3.    Developing information literacy

The committee highlight that:

“providing for the development of web-awareness so that students operate as informed users of web-based services, able to avoid unintended consequences. For staff, the requirement is to maintain the currency of skills in the face of the development of web-based information sources”.

The higher-level speaking and writing skills that Bloom developed in his cognitive taxonomy are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. Flexible pedagogic development, the impact of diagnostic assessment, peer-mentoring and enquiry-based learning are critical here. Equally important is engaging learners in the context and actuality of publishing data and argument for the wider world to utilise and judge. Issues like those raised by JISC Legal are critical in framing such a set of developments, but the reality of information literacy cannot be divorced from the reality of integrating and developing a digital identity. Critically this has to be linked to decision-making and action in the world. Problem-based learning may be a key.

4.    Change in HE

“The world [students] encounter in higher education has been constructed on a wholly different set of norms. Characterised broadly, it is hierarchical, substantially introvert, guarded, careful, precise and measured. The two worlds are currently co-existing, with present-day students effectively occupying a position on the cusp of change. They aren’t demanding different approaches; rather they are making such adaptations as are necessary for the time it takes to gain their qualifications. Effectively, they are managing a disjuncture, and the situation is feeding the natural inertia of any established system. It is, however, unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. The next generation is unlikely to be so accommodating and some rapprochement will be necessary if higher education is to continue to provide a learning experience that is recognised as stimulating, challenging and relevant.”

The last sentence bears rethinking. It should drive all we do in the coming months. At DMU it will certainly shape our re-definition of our e-learning [technology-enhanced learning] strategy and develop a plan its implementation, with our students, and our e-Learning Co-ordinators and Champions. It is critical that we evaluate our professional development approaches and the technologies we support.


What I’d quite like from HEFCE is transformational leadership


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 11 July 2009

Caveat: Before we get started on this I’m not saying that HEFCE don’t lead already. The HEFCE Strategic Plan frames an enabling environment for encouraging devolved institutional approaches, flexibility of mission and dynamism in delivery.

At the Heads of e-Learning Forum meeting at he HEA in York yesterday, HEFCE Policy Officer Alan Palmer, opened up a discussion of what HEFCE should do about the implementation of its Technology-Enhanced Learning Strategy. HEFCE itself, and this was reinforced by other speakers during the morning, highlight efficiency, enhancement and transformation as major outcomes. What was not recognised was that these are also drivers for institutions, as education providers, social enterprises and businesses, when seen as part of a bigger vision and blueprint for change.

Two elephants were *outed* early on. The first was the economic crisis and its impact on funding, with HE likely to be asked for £180 million of savings in 2010-11. The second was the apparent migration of terminology within the relevant departments towards on-line learning, with an implied view that this might be cheaper. In managing the issues that arose around these two elephants Alan used the phrase “What HEFCE won’t do” five times.

The first issue, primed a discussion about detailed stuff that might lead to some efficiencies, and which might catalyse some transformation in educational practices, namely creative commons and copyright, open educational resources, managing student [lack of] mobility etc.. This point ties into the second issue as it appears that there is a view that we can simply do things better or more cheaply on-line. Didn’t I read that in 1997? However, to lever the economic or investment gains that are being mooted does not simply require e-Learning Champions or Educational Developers to see how technology can save the day. In fact the discussion, which is doomed to revolve around issues of revenue and capital rather than social justice, requires a focus on what institutions are for and why.

I recently blogged “Towards a radical manifesto? The Impact of Web 2.0 on HE” and, whilst accepting the damaging impact of digital divides and learning illiteracy, I argued that the most crucial element of the recent Committee of Inquiry’s report was that the “inertia of any established [HE] system [is]… unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. The next generation is unlikely to be so accommodating” about its HE experience. Pre-HE developments like Building Schools for the Future and the EYFS are critical markers for Universities that demand vision, leadership and transformation of how HEIs achieve.

If we are serious about meeting the needs of future learners, and in enacting efficiency, enhancement and transformation as major outcomes, then Universities need a proper reappraisal of their strategic plans, in order to make sense of the bits-and-pieces of change surrounding Web 2.0, OER, personalisation etc.. This requires that strategic managers look at service restructuring, rather than the silos into which Corporate Directorates ossify. This then demands that a vision drives a blueprint for how the organisation will operate in terms of its people [contracts, professional development, workloads etc.], organisation [linked to the management of those primary services], technologies [insourced, outsourced, driven by the cloud, CMS-related] and the information that it needs and manages [from its key current and future stakeholders].

Without this kind of institutional visioning and transformation, asking Heads of e-Learning what should be done to implement HEFCE’s TEL strategy is a redundant operation. At best it buys some time to think about possible restructuring of the curriculum, without ever thinking through how students, staff and local communities can be empowered.

So in answer to Alan’s question of what should HEFCE do, two things are needed. Firstly, demand that institutional strategic managers are serious about transformation as a driver for empowerment. Enhancement is all-well-and-good, but education should empower people and has be written into vision statements and blueprints for change. The Welsh Funding Council’s “Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology: a Strategy for Higher Education in Wales” nudges Welsh HEIs in that direction and HEFCE should be stimulating discussion and leadership on this issue. The TEL strategy offers an opportunity for taking a step back, when evaluating what a blueprint for 21st Century HE might look like.

Secondly, in the face of Universities being tied to Lord Mandelson under the latest reshuffle, there is a desperate need for leadership in the support of teaching across the sector. The Guardian highlighted this in its comment yesterday “Eduction, Education, Education“, with the fear that the Government would focus upon research intensive Universities that are perceived to be captains of industry or drivers of the economy and squeeze those for whom teaching is the thing. Refashioning our collective view of teaching and learning in HE, to promote an agenda for progressive pedagogies that recognises the needs of the range of 21st Century learners, and sees HEIs as social enterprises as much as businesses, demands leadership from us all. In lobbying governments, this demands active leadership from HEFCE.


Social media mores and cultures, and the role of higher education


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 27 August 2009

Two “events” have crossed my radar in the last week that have made me think about educators’ responsibilities for enabling a good-enough socialisation of students as they enter higher education. This is critical given the importance of HE for developing independent, associational and deliberative decision-making and actions by students, and also given the proximity of the start-of-term.

1. @Aggerscricket vs Will Buckley

This summer’s coverage of The Ashes [bear with me – I’ll get to the point] saw a growth in the use of Twitter, either by punters tweeting using the #ashes hashtag or by following commentators like Jonathan Agnew [@Aggerscricket] or David Lloyd [@bumblecricket] or cricketers like Graeme Swann [@swannyg66]. This enabled cricket lovers to keep in-touch with both information, in terms of what was going on at each test match, and expert opinion, alongside framing communication around specific issues.

One outcome was an emerging conversation between songstress Lily Allen and Agnew that ended with a discussion on Test Match Special on Radio 4/5Live Sports Extra during lunch on the Saturday of the final, Oval Test match. At least it would have ended there, had Will Buckley not written a piece in The Observer that stated that Agnew’s relationship with Allen had appeared “pervy”. Agnew subsequently used Twitter to “out” Buckley and to get the apology he wanted, levered through the power of the crowd, which commented on Buckley’s piece [usefully using the fact that “Comment is Free” in The Guardian and The Observer] and used email to pressure The Observer Sports Editor. Agnew declared: “What an eye-opener this has been for all… to the power of new media. It is here and will change the way news is responded to, in particular. This showed what twitter can do.”

The message: firstly, don’t print spiteful things, think about whether what you have to say is kind, true and necessary; secondly, social media is a powerful tool for engaging users – why and how it is used is morphing, and this has implications for socialisation, deliberation and our cultures.

2. Inappropriate use of Facebook and Twitter

A *news* item came across my desk that focused my thinking about privacy issues in social media. It concerned a new sexual relationship between two *friends* on Facebook. Details ended up on each other’s Facebook walls, which was then screen-captured by a mutual *friend* and went viral via Twitter. One of the couple felt ashamed that these statements were public within a localised friendship group, let alone the mortification that would follow when it went worldwide. This person did not understand how the wall worked or how privacy settings in Facebook work.

The item arrived on my Twitter feed, with one of those who re-tweeted it stating to me that “I thought it was funny; and I saw that it had just gone up on Digg ”, the implication being that others were forwarding it anyway so he might as well do so. What a mean, thoughtless and salacious response this was. My discomfort in this approach was matched by a fellow Twitterer who noted “everyone else was doing it? Seriously? You think that’s an excuse? Cliff. Jump. Would. You?”

The message: firstly, do you really have to print or forward spiteful things? Think about whether what you have to say is kind, true and necessary; secondly, how individuals engage with rules and settings, and cultural norms within social media matter. Whether we like it or not some users need and deserve our help and common humanity.

These two issues have implications for our approach to socialisation in HE. New students, many of them unsure of their place in the world, are coming into a very different, independent-yet-networked learning space, from those which they are used to. Part of the role of HE should be to engage these users in a discussion around the ways in which social media can be used and about how they can ensure their own safety. In part, this connects into the broader debate about the death of the VLE and the rise of the PLE. My own take on this is that whilst a radical manifesto that supports personalisation is needed for developing pedagogies for HE that are fit-for-purpose, we need to help our learners make good-enough decisions about tools, rules, signal-processing and approaches. This may involve structuring and closing down some learning in contexts within which they can free-range, but it also involves negotiating with them shared rules of engagement.

Defined environments for learning, built around or including a VLE or PLE, are unique to each learner based on their learning aims. These environments are fused from personal associations that are both formal and informal, and that use social media to process rule-based signals into action. Illich rightly argued that education was owned by an individual when s/he became a self-aware actor, and he also argued that the questions individuals are empowered to ask coupled to the socio-technical tools available to them, supports her/his personal emancipation. Social media, in whatever form, afford tools for encouraging individuals to associate with each other in contexts that support doing, questioning and re-conceptualising. However, this is risky because we have to make decisions about how we and our data are used and represented on-line.

HE ought to be a space in which norms, rules and cultures can be discussed safely, in order that co-operation and emancipation are enabled. This is important because HE has a duty to help make the world a better place.


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.


Taking forward change in technology-enhanced education


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 1 April 2010

I had a great day yesterday in Bolton at a JISC-sponsored Strategy Cascade event for institutional teams, which was focused upon “the wider debate around what technology can offer our institutions, and how to most effectively harness technology in ways that are sensitive to the specific needs of institutions” and their stakeholders. The session, led by Keith Smyth from Edinburgh Napier and Mark Johnson from the University of Bolton, was an excellent example of grounded, deliberative action. It focused upon achieving an institutional understanding of the contested nature of technology-enhanced learning [TEL] as HEIs struggle to review their strategies and plans.

I was asked to kick the event off with some thoughts on the issues that I see as important in this debate. My slides highlight my activist, political position around the highly contested nature of the value of TEL, and against techno-determinism. The key themes I wanted to highlight were as follows.

  1. Values: do we understand the place of TEL in the idea of the University. Do we recognise and debate our institutional or educational or personal or humane values? How do technologies help us to realise or diminish these values? How do technologies impact the social relations that emerge around these values?
  2. Disruption: we are experiencing disruption, the scale of which may prove overwhelming. This is focused upon: massive public sector debt that will impact our spaces for action and activity; the realities of climate change science, which ought to affect our engagement with technology; peak oil and energy prices/security, which will impact our use of technology and our approaches to resource management; the impact of personal technologies on power and control at the centre or the boundaries of formal and informal classroom and curriculum settings, and the concomitant need for critical pedagogies; and the impact of non-institutional technologies on the value, place and space of the institution.
  3. Contestation 1: the policy and implementation landscape demonstrates complexity of use, expectation and delivery of educational technology within competing value-sets and practices. One space in which this is made manifest is the discussion over open educational resources, as a rider for discussions over the openness of higher education and HEIs that are [being set-up to be] competing. This discussion ought to take place against an ideological and political [small ‘p’] backdrop, which looks at what we stand for institutionally and societally.
  4. Planning: in thinking about institutional change Mark Johnson highlighted the work of Richard Gombrich [after Karl Popper] in developing approaches to piecemeal social engineering. I am concerned with how we are able to provide secure core institutional spaces that enable staff and students to position and become themselves, and to act in the world. Mark Stubbs at MMU has blogged about a vision of joined-up systems that is a powerful description of how institutions can support individuals in making sense of their institution [socially, administratively and academically], by aligning key events, data, processes and technologies, and how “mavericks” [an emergent participant-generated term] can be encouraged to innovate around the edges of the HEI within a supportive set of spaces. In taking this forward we need to see change as institutionally-led, and so as more than a project: it is a programme of work focused upon catalysing flexibility, diversity, modularity and feedback, which then delivers benefits aligned to key outcomes. At DMU we are developing a portfolio of projects to engage this approach.
  5. Contestation 2: we need to know more about the interplay between notions of personalisation and models of the curriculum. In thinking about this I highlighted some DMU examples of: mentoring as a key concept in learning design; thinking around technologically-flexible and modular “curriculum learning environments”; and recasting spaces for life-wide learning opportunities, where students can demonstrate activity in the world, and be accredited for it. This is complex and ill-understood, and techno-determinist approaches to its management are problematic.

I ended by focusing upon a series of issues related to power and emerging self-awareness and action. In particular, I was concerned to reflect upon whether institutionalised approaches reclaim and neutralise innovation within traditional, safe paradigms, and whether this neutralises agency. I wondered whether we know enough about the specific strategies that are deployed by learners using social media, as they become resilient learners and citizens. Finally I wondered whether we acknowledge and care for those who are marginalised or who risk marginalisation though our curriculum practices and values.

The activities that the participants undertook were focused upon: realising the value of different perspectives in the change agenda; our aspirations and who sets the agenda for change; the tensions between monolithic approaches and enabling diversity; and whether we do the simple stuff well enough to enable people to undertake meaningful activity. I was left with three key points that I wished to make as a plenary, with one caveat. These are captured in this Strategy Cascade plenary presentation.

However, I also added that we have travelled a long way in the last decade, in terms of developing the tools and communities that can engage with critical pedagogy and challenge the development of educational norms. There is much to hope for in this celebration of the possible.


The political economy of openness in HE: or what is the point of it all?


Posted by hallymk1

*Originally posted at Learning Exchanges on 8 April 2010

I’ve been quite taken with the emerging discussions around openness and transparency in HE, the creation and management of open educational resources, and the concomitant lack of a discourse around open governance in HEIs. In particular I am interested in why there is a focus on the mechanics, rather than the ideologies, cultures and political economics, of openness, and whether this is a function of educators colluding in their own coercion.

This notion of colluding in coercion, in acting in ways that either overtly or unquestioningly maintain dominant power and economic relationships, exists at several levels: the individual, the discipline, the institution and the sector. One example of such collusion was been picked-up by Joss Winn, who highlighted the place of parallelism through which higher education and its programmes of work set agendas that mirror dominant economic models:

“we collude in our own oppression… [even suggesting that] new autonomous spaces needed to be created apart from the agenda of neo-liberal education… [our] parallelism would still serve the interests of the State by removing the responsibility of funding ‘uneconomic’ subjects. In effect, parallelism would act as a form of efficiency under the neo-liberal agenda.”

Economically inefficient courses or items of content or ways of working risk being cut by institutional managers, even in programmes of openness, because they are working to or in parallel with the core economic values of the State. In the same way, we fund projects that are aligned with the view of those who are qualitatively dominant – *our* values are set by those with power, rather than by way of deliberation with the quantitative majority.

This issue of power is important because it speaks of values, inclusion and justice, and is amplified by the traction within society that openness, in terms of data and government, is gaining. Clearly for some HEIs this is subjugated within a dominant economic paradigm. However, openness is also emerging throughout the practice of higher education, and in programmes of work around open education, like the JISC OER programme. Catalysing a culture and set of values around openness offers spaces for cultural reinvention, which offer opportunities to re-fashion social relationships. Thus, whilst at the moment, for example, the Humanities OER project Humbox, with its wealth of open resources, overtly demonstrates a focus on staff, peers and disciplines, and tends to paint learners as objects who have content made for them, or made available for them, it offers a valuable space or catalyst for the socio-cultural re-invention of higher education. The issue is whether we have the will to do this re-invention.

Joss Winn makes this point in his call for a manifesto for sharing, when he eloquently argues that “sharing doesn’t need institutionalising”. In quoting a paper by David Noble, which argues that universities are responsible for “the systematic conversion of intellectual activity into intellectual capital and, hence, intellectual property”, Joss notes “that by institutionalising OERs, we’re producing constraints that go against sharing. Scaling up the production of OERs to an institutional level where sharing is considered in terms of an IP Policy, business case, marketing and ‘best practice’ will kill the potential that already exists to share.” Moreover Joss argues that this is alienating precisely because “[it] is just another way of creating capital out of immaterial labour.” We collude because we legitimise the role of the institution or the discipline in taking surplus value from our own labour, or that of our students when we co-create.

Debating and fighting for the idea of the University, infused with and by a culture of openness, is vital, and that resistance might usefully be centred on deliberating the social relations that enable learners and tutors to manage disruption, rather than situating OERs within “the adoption of appropriate business models” that may ultimately be alienating. In situating openness as a form of cultural production, a recent EDUCAUSE paper, Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!, argues that “Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge“. They state that the value produced for students and the control of the mode of production are central elements of a meaningful experience in Universities. The authors quote Charles Vest’s view that “a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms” is central. However, they then focus upon shared course content and connections, rather than negotiated ownership and co-governance.

It is this notion of co-governance that ought to be central to the development of openness and its value in the idea of the twenty-first century University. One proactive example is the Really Open University’s ideologically-driven stance on the need for praxis, in re-asserting the idea of the University as a site for critical action, resistance and opposition, lead by students. This aligns with the model for organic intellectual endeavour proposed by Gramsci, in challenging institutional or state-legitimised power and hegemonic ideologies, through an engagement with, and challenging of, values and attitudes. What is required in this view is counter-hegemony, a counter-culture in which we deliberate and re-assert the social, rather than economic, obligations that drive us, and through which we focus upon social rather than economic enterprise.

So, is re-invention of the production of content, by enabling the mechanics of re-use, the key issue? Or rather is it more important to re-think and change the rules of the game? It is clear that established corporate and industrial models dominate the discourses around openness. So we see the Open Data and Open Gov movements colonised by corporates, or those seeking to gain from traditional political economic models, which are generally focused upon re-use of content rather than re-invention of models of power. It is necessary then to fight for the prioritisation of people over organisations or business models, and against the use of open agenda for “online opinion research and consultation”.

More important for me are the legitimation of our social obligations and a move towards the commons, catalysed through acts of sharing and underpinned by a deliberative, shared socio-cultural values or co-governance of the means of production. In an excellent article on Twitter and Copyright Shinen argues that “creators needed incentive to create” and generally Copyright Acts frame this incentivisation financially . But what if incentivisation could be re-shaped as social or cultural, and be defined democratically?

One of the positive outcomes of the angst over the Digital Economy Bill (#debill) might to be a renewing of praxis, framed by shared socio-cultural values, with educators acting as conduits for production and in resistance to the alienation that is enforced through a business model that legitimises domination of production. This would truly align with Raymond Williams’ view of the power of the cultures that are publically defined and fought for, and that enabling social transformation. In the debate on openness we are in danger of losing sight of the interaction between political, economic and cultural forces, and the possibilities that openness can be a site of resistance against established norms that have lead us towards crisis, or which at least seek to oppress.

The ideas both of oppression and control of the value of content and the means of producing and sharing it, can be read into the reaction to the #debill farrago. Mike Butcher noted the telling use of the term “likely to be used” in the Amendment to Clause 8 of the Digital Economy Bill: “a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright” will lead to disconnection. The economic model defined by business, rather than one framed by social relations, won out. The language of consumers and industry used by MPs in the Digital Economy Bill, is just the same as the language deployed within HE about the relationships between students and institutions by those in power, which we hope will be socially-constructed but that are increasingly infused with economic determinism.  What hope for co-governance here, especially when the dominant discourse is co-creation or co-production, which risks objectifying students?

In this we should forget the issue of whether access to the internet is a basic human right – this is an incredibly problematic statement and risks diminishing the struggle for true human rights as enshrined in the European Convention and the UN Declaration. However, there is an increasing unease about the possibilities for openness and truly open governance, where societal values clash with those of business, and this stretches beyond #debill. Chris Marsden makes an interesting point around control of the web and net neutrality, arguing that #debill is an affront to that, and when taken with the  recent ruling in favour of Comcast versus the FCC over net neutrality in the US, we might see this as reflecting increasing confrontation over the control of web-based means of production. The Open Rights Group certainly begins to make that case, in arguing for democracy and transparency.

In reclaiming the spaces for openness we might usefully revisit the histories, cultures and values of the Commons. This is important because overcoming disruption and enabling justice lies in shared values, and as Joss Winn argues, we achieve this not through “institutionalising sharing, but by sowing the humanity in sharing; the joy of giving and receiving; the immaterial wealth of knowledge that already exists and the pleasure of creating social relations that resist the organising principle of private property and wage labour.” We need to question continually the extent to which we collude in coercion.

One of the drivers for the emerging discussions around openness and transparency in HE, and the creation and management of open educational resources role, should be the socio-cultural praxis around co-governance. This needs to highlight issues of legitmation and alienation, of value and active participation in practical life. We need to move beyond objectifying the student as co-creator or co-producer to celebrating our shared, subjective deliberation of democratic governance. Through such an approach, the idea of the University might come to be re-framed as active, creative, self-aware and socially-constructed. Moreover it might also tap into the joy and passion of mentoring learners, and of developing truly transformative spaces that change lives. Our approach to openness ought to stand against the production of diminished or controlled spaces, impacted by business models and metrics, which in-turn focus instrumental engagements.

In standing against the economic ideology of openness, and in support of our shared, deliberative democratic values, we might consider and add to the manifesto stared by Joss Winn.

  1. A commitment to transformation and solidarity
  2. Learning our own histories and not his-story
  3. Starting from daily reality
  4. Learning together as equals
  5. Getting out of the classroom
  6. Inspiring social change

The momentum being developed around the idea of openness, through resistance to #debill or threats to net neutrality, or the opportunities of OER programmes, offers us sites for resistance and hope. The question is whether we have the energy to deliberate and then fight for our shared values in the idea of the University.