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Calling OA academic book publishers
Now is the time for you to seize the moment and make a small to modest profit while performing a useful academic function. Okay it's not quite a passionate rallying cry, but I've been thinking about open access book publishing recently for two reasons. The first is that on an almost monthly basis I get emails from colleagues/peers/random people asking me about my experience of publishing with Bloomsbury Academic because they are writing a book proposal and want to go open access. They've either been told no by established publishers or 'yes, but it'll cost you £20,000 – will your university fund it'. To which the answer is no, or…
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Education in ‘not broken’ shock
This is what all education is like – FACT. I've complained about the "education is broken" meme before – my reservations about it have been threefold: i) It's just lazy – saying something is broken (or dead) avoids having to do any subtle analysis and appeals to a simplistic viewpoint. ii) It frames technological change as a crisis and not an opportunity – Mike Caulfield covered this better than me, but once you adopt a 'broken' metaphor then a whole set of language accompanies it which frames it as a negative problem to be fixed. iii) It's suspicious – those who peddle the "education is broken" line usually have something…
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Be the Sat Nav
Our metaphors for human behaviour are often informed by technology, and the metaphors we adopt play an important role in how we see the world. Lakoff and Johnson argue that “If… our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.” But can you consciously choose metaphors to shape your own behaviour? This is part of the argument of talking therapies, that you change your interaction with the world by the way you frame it conceptually. All of which is trying to provide some academic justification for a small idea in a small post… I was pondering…
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A technology extinction event?
(file this post under frivolous banter) In a post the other day I was positing that the declaration of "X is dead" is usually a good indicator of a charlatan/self-promoter. I suggested that technologies rarely die, but find more nuanced, specialist audiences. Some people commented that technologies NEVER die. So, just for discussion – is the typewriter a contender for a technology that will actually die. The last one in Britain was produced yesterday. I know there are some existing users, writers often, who still like to craft their work on a typewriter. But this is a habit, and a declining market. This is very distinct I would suggest, from…
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Treading the integrity line
I had some media training last week, as part of the OU's REF build up. I've authored one of our impact case studies (on Open Education). The idea is that should we be asked to appear on radio then we're prepared to deal with the four minute interview on our subject. I was a bit cynical going in to it, but it was a useful and fun session, practising being interviewed and getting your point across to a general audience. It's probably good practice for all academics to do, regardless of whether they'll ever be on the radio (and with a voice like mine, I hope not for everyone's sake). …
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Hanging with the MOOC boys
Now that MOOCtober has passed, I think it's safe to talk about MOOCs again. As I've mentioned I'm experimenting next year with running my block of the Masters Course in Online and Distance Education as an open course. I've wanted to do this for ages, but always been blocked, but now that MOOCs are on everyone's radar, lots of elements have fallen into place that make it possible. This might be a beneficial consequence of the MOOC hype – they create an environment in which experimentation in open courses is encouraged. My course will run for 6 weeks and is part of the longer 20 week course, H817 Openness and…
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The X is dead test, or why you shouldn’t trust simple answers
Many of you will be familiar with the (itself overhyped) Gartner Hype curve. I'm not going to get into its scientific validity here, but I think it has resonance as people recognise their own relationship with technology in it. There are more sophisticated technology adoption theories, but let's go with this one for now. Back when we used to use the term 'web 2.0' without embarrassment, many of us were hyping it up. I'm guilty of this as much as anyone. At the time, the combination of user generated content, wide connnectivity, social networking, mobile devices seemed to open up possibilities. I still find it amazing that I have such…
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Quality is the best gaming device
[There are some games you shouldn't play – image http://www.flickr.com/photos/whatwhat/8457309/] Gamification comes up a lot in higher education. It's a by-product of a metrics driven economy, as soon as you meaure something, and add value to that measurement, then people will find ways to gamify it. The measurers often know this, and the trick is if you can get people to do the desired behaviour through gaming, then it's worthwhile, for instance good assessment will mean that learners end up acquiring desired skills and knowledge, even if they game the system. But too often, gaming itself becomes the focus. The following are all aspects of gaming for higher education: Assessment…
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The Great Open Access Swindle
In my digital scholarship book, I make two pleas, the first is for open access publishing, and the second is for scholars to own the process of change. I've never been great at a rousing finish, but the book ends thus: "This is a period of transition for scholarship, as significant as any other in its history, from the founding of universities to the establishment of peer review and the scientific method. It is also a period that holds tension and even some paradoxes: it is both business as usual and yet a time of considerable change; individual scholars are being highly innovative and yet the overall picture is one…
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Does your MOOC have penguins?
It turns out that there are no less than three MOOCs on open education coming your way. George and Stephen are running one now, David Wiley's one ran last winter and will run again this winter. And very last, I'm running one next March. My one really arose through logic and not a desire to ape George or David (although I do that often enough). I was writing a block of the new Masters level course on Innovation in education, and my block was on open education. I have a strong 'learning by doing' approach, so it made sense for the students on this block to experience it as an…
