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Prospect theory & the panopticon of debt
Last night, after Nick Clegg's semi-apology over student loans (see comedy version with honesty subtitles below), I got involved with a twitter chat with an economist from Demos. He argued (very intelligently) that the loan scheme would actually save the tax-payer $2.5K per student, and that it should be viewed as a progressive tax, and not debt. I don't know enough about economics to really counter his claim about the savings. It certainly appears that the Coalition were caught out by all universities charging the full fee, which would suggest it isn't being quite the financial success they had envisaged. But the fact/misleading rumour that it was unaffordable was only…
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Digital scholarship, tenure & barometers
I use this blog as well as our university repository system to keep track (and shamelessly publicise) those journal article things that your grandad told you about. I have a new article out in RUSC (the open access journal from the University of Catalonia). It has the snappy title of "Digital scholarship and the tenure process as an indicator of change in universities". You can access the PDF here through our repository, or at RUSC here. It's an extension of some of the stuff I covered in the book, and I'm making the argument that how universities respond to the challenge of recognising digital scholarship can be taken as a…
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Better angels of our edtech nature
Over the summer I finally got around to reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. In case you don't know about it, Pinker makes the argument that violence of all forms has declined – between states, domestic, national and criminal. It's a lengthy book, but he goes through the arguments very carefully and brings a range of research together to make a compelling case. What he does very well is take accepted arguments or facts and challenge them – for instance that the 20th century was the most violent one in history. He demonstrates how these are often based on a combination of a rose-tinted view about the…
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How to dismantle a sector, stage 2.
So last week, London Met university had their licence to act as a sponsor for overseas students revoked, so it can't teach its existing 2,600 non-EU students, or get new ones. This is unprecedented, and as well as being obviously distressing for those students, will send a loud message around the world about the UK's openness to overseas students. I think there are three interpretations as to why it occurred: LMUea culpa – it's all LMU's fault, they've been playing fast and loose with the immigration system and have been caught out. I'm sure there will be evidence of wrongdoing, indeed I would suggest the Government has been waiting for…
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Two OER sites for researchers
I've been involved very peripherally with a project funded through SCORE, and led by my colleague Robin Goodfellow. The aim was to develop two sites, one aimed at overseas postgrads coming to the UK to conduct research study. This site gives advice on matters such as research methods and writing for academic purpose. It is at http://www.readytoresearch.ac.uk/ The other site is aimed more at UK undergraduates and looks at digital literacy, digital scholarship type issues, so addresses topics such as learning with social media, plagiarism, collaborating online. It can be found at: http://www.digitalscholarship.ac.uk/ The interesting thing about the project was that the brief was to build it using only OERs as content.…
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Innovating Pedagogy report
Here at IET in the OU, a bunch of us, led by Mike Sharples, were asked to produce an annual report on how changes in teaching and learning (related to technology) were changing the current landscape. The initial idea was to do this for senior OU management, but I'm pleased to say that everyone involved wanted to make it wider than that and create a publicly available report. Think of it as like a Horizon's report with more focus on pedagogy. We adopted the same methodology as the Horizon report also. It does have a bit of an OU bias, but I think it's a very good read (and I…
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The inclusions & cold flows of the Finch report
In this post I shall attempt to use aluminium pressure die casting as a metaphor for what I perceive as the defects in the recent Finch Report on Open Access publishing. I know what you're thinking, "not another aluminium die-casting as metaphor for open access post, I've read ten of those this week". Here goes then – when making aluminium pressure die casts, molten aluminium is forced into a mould at high velocity and pressure. There are a number of defects that can occur, and two of these are analogous to the problems I see with the Finch report. I should start by saying I think the Finch team did…
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How to dismantle a sector
I'm not an overtly political animal, unlike many of my colleagues, so maybe this post is misguided or misinformed, but increasingly working in Higher Ed in the UK feels like working in a beleagured sector. Many people will feel like this in the current crisis, so higher ed is no different in that respect, but it now feels like it is not only suffering the same fate as all sectors, but is actually the victim of an ongoing campaign. I sit in many meetings with colleagues, in this university and across the sector, where we end up shaking our heads and laughing with a mixture of amazement and hysteria at…
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Comparing the value of education
I've signed up to study the OU's MA in History starting in September. My reasons for this are twofold: it's good to be a student every now and then to remember what it's like to be a 'real' student; and I have this notion that part of what I do on this blog and in my digital scholarship book is to act like a contempary historian. I am trying to document, predict, analyse, and generally make-it-up-as-I-go-along this particular period of change for scholarly practice, because I feel that it's a significant one. But I don't have the real theoretical or methodological underpinning from a historical perspective to do this. I'm…
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My Sandinista
I'm generally a forward looking chap when it comes to music, and don't dwell too much in the past. But every couple of years I revisit a band that was important in my youth, not as a matter of policy, that's just what seems to happen. I've been doing this with The Clash recently, after reading Pat Gilbert's Passion is a Fashion. I always liked Sandinista – as an impressionable teenager it was a good exposure to different music styles and some of the awkward rebel politics of the Clash. It was panned when it came out, after the success of London Calling, largely because it was a triple album…
