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The pandemic response and the OU
I’ve just had an article published in the OTESSA Journal, entitled “The UK Open University COVID Response: A Sector Case Study“. I wrote it last year as I was interested in the various actions the OU took during the pandemic. Lots of people in other unis came to us formally and informally seeking advice as they were required to shift their teaching online. You may remember I ran some drop-in sessions on different topics back in 2020. The OU also set up a research fund, developed teaching content and gathered resources on openLearn (most notably, the Take your Teaching Online free course). In the paper I categorised the different responses…
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The Haunted Lecture Hall
A ghost story… (not really, it’s about higher ed) As I mentioned in my last post, one of my favourite book genres is the haunted house. There are many variations on this, but at some point the authors of all such books face a dilemma – how do they keep the narrative moving towards the scary finale, when all sensible people would leave? This calls on a literary or plot device of some sort that keeps our protagonists in situ, while ratcheting up the horror. It can be that they simply are not allowed to leave (for example, the old escaping and after hours walking ending up back at the…
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A year in horror
No, it’s not a review of the news this year, but rather looking back over what I’ve read over the past 12 months. I am a horror film fan, but since my late teens I haven’t really read much horror. I’m not sure why, there was probably some genre-snobbery applied to books that I didn’t hold for movies. Maybe I associated it with youth and now I was a Grown Up Adult, I should read literary fiction. And, to be fair to my past self, I wanted to expand reading tastes, understand the appeal (or otherwise) of classics, struggle with some ‘difficult’ books and generally develop those reading muscles. But…
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My ten (work-related) highlights of 2022
via GIPHY Maren has done a Ten Milestones of 22 post, so I thought I’d tag along and think back on my highlights on what was not always an easy year. So in no particular order: Publishing Metaphors of Ed Tech – I think that of the books I’ve written, this is the most ‘me’. It was great to get it out this year, through Athabasca University Press. It’s obviously brilliantly written and insightful (ahem), but what I like most about it is that I think it’s also playful and kind of fun. Not many books on ed tech meet those criteria. A new Masters in Online Education from IET…
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Vinyl of the year
Yes, it’s time for the least anticipated post of the year. I’ve been doing this daily countdown over on Instagram (pity my followers) so here it is all gathered into one self-indulgent post. I’ve gone for a top 15 this year, with the caveat the entries and order would probably change if I did it all again tomorrow. My criteria for inclusion is albums I think I listen to a lot over the next few years. This isn’t always the same as critically interesting albums. So, here goes pop pickers: No 15 – First Aid Kit: Palomino.First Aid Kit’s release this year is a good case in point. It doesn’t…
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Give me an M! Give me an A!
via GIPHY One of the things I have enjoyed working on the most during my 375 year career at the OU, is the Masters in Online and Distance Education (MAODE). I’ve blogged previously about how I was saddened when this was closed down at the OU. Since then we have continued to produce curriculum in IET, most notably very successful microcredentials, under the leadership of my colleague Leigh Anne Perryman. We have also been working on developing a new Masters in Online Teaching (MAOT). This will comprise of the existing course H880 Technology Enhanced Futures, then 60 points chosen from the array of microcredentials (or a module from the appropriate…
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25+ Years of Ed Tech: 2022 – AI Generated Content
via GIPHY Despite the book 25 Years of Ed tech finishing with 2018, I’ve kept it going with one entry for each year since. The criteria for selection was the year I think they became significant, in that people talked about them a lot. And your annual reminder that inclusion does not denote approval (some people struggle with this). So, AI generated content eh? The year started with fun AI generated images and ended with ChatGPT promising the end for humanity as we know it. This can produce genuinely decent outputs, and so the phase of just dismissing it as inferior is not a valid approach. The obvious potential victim of decent AI…
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MOOCs and the Upside Down
You will have no doubt seen that the Open University has sold its share in FutureLearn, and found a buyer in Global University Systems. This has followed a few years of difficulties and strategic redirections in the MOOC world generally, but happening a decade on from the year of the MOOC definitely prompts some reflection. MOOCs were going to destroy higher education, remember that? Others will do more detailed analysis, but here is a small anecdote which I think reflects some of the strange logic that underpinned the whole MOOC saga. Around 2015 (I think) the Open University went through a process of closing many of its regional offices. One…
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Analogue micro-rebellions
It was Spotify Wrapped week last week, when those of us who didn’t do the honourable thing and decamp to Tidal following the Joe Rogan fiasco, had some data on our listening habits summarised in a nicely shareable format. It’s kind of fun of course, but it was interesting to look at mine as it was largely unrepresentative. I buy vinyl, so most of my music listening is in that format. It seems I mainly use Spotify to listen to Songs:Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co (top 1% of listeners worldwide folks), when I’m driving on my own or feeling a bit sad. I buy my vinyl in a physical record shop (Spillers!)…
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Wake up, time to die
via GIPHY Another Twitter demise post, sorry. I can’t even say I’m enjoying the spectacle of Musk making a public arse of himself like it’s a performance art piece. Every day on that site is now filled with posts from him, and about him, even if you try to avoid it. I don’t want to think about Musk. I don’t want to know what other people think about Musk. Like a cryptocurrency convention in Vegas, it’s just not a place I want to spend any time in. This will be the cause of decline far more than any usability or moral stance – there are a lot of spaces to…
