e-learning
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What’s in a name? Early internet metaphors
My friend and all round good chap, Rajiv Jhangiani, dropped me a message asking for my favourite current metaphor about the web for a talk he is giving. This set me thinking about some of the early labels we used for the internet and the web, and what they tried to convey. If you are old enough, cast your mind back to the late 90s when the web (and wider awareness of the internet more generally) was still new, and we were trying to understand what it was, and what it could do. Metaphors are very powerful in this respect as they provide a bridge from the familiar to the…
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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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Oh no, it’s another metaverse hot take
via GIPHY Following on from my late to the party Twitter hot take, here is my even later to the party one on the metaverse (next week – learning objects). I think for many of us who have been in and around educational technology for a while, the idea of a shared 3D virtual world brings back memories of SecondLife and even earlier excitement about MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented). And while it easy to dismiss another attempt at the virtual world as universal education platform, it’s probably worth revisiting why SecondLife failed and evaluating if those reasons hold true for the Metaverse. Firstly, we are seeing very similar over-hyping of…
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Revenge of the kid’s art
As a (mainly) home worker, I’ve been tweaking my home office set up over the past few years until I’ve made it an ideal working space for me. I’ve been thinking about this in relation to online learning also, so here is an attempt to tease out some of that (probably unsuccessfully). First, I should stress that I know having a good space of my own at home is a privilege – I don’t have children at home, live in an area where I can afford a house with spare rooms, have a decent job, etc. This post is not to celebrate how awesome my office is (although it is…
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Good online learning – group work
Like many of you I’ve been getting rather exasperated by the “online = bad, face to face = good” narrative that seems to have arisen post-pandemic (Tim Fawns has a good thread on this by the way). So I thought I’d try a series on some of the ways in which online learning can be done effectively. I mean, I know it won’t make any difference, but shouting into the void can be therapeutic. They’ll be a mix of research and my own experience. First up, every student’s favourite way of working – group work! Going right back to the early days of e-learning, group work has always been a…
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Virtual working as the new online learning
via GIPHY Now that everyone shifted to virtual working, we are seeing lots of the same queries raised about that as we have seen for the past 20 odd years regarding online working: Is it as good? Can it really work? Is it cheaper? Is it just the same thing but online? Can I do it in my pyjamas? Maren Deepwell (disclosure: my partner so what you’re getting in these posts are the off-cuts of ranty dog walking conversations) is writing a book on Virtual Teams, as she’s been doing it since before it was trendy, in the same way you liked that band before they were mainstream. She addresses…
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Elitism is not innovation
via GIPHY Like a few of you I exercised my eye rolling technique at this Guardian feature on Minerva, breathlessly titled: “The future of education or just hype? The rise of Minerva, the world’s most selective university“. I’m not going to talk about their model (it looks ok, but isn’t nearly as innovative as they think), but rather the futility of any model that is based in exclusivity. The article states that: This year Minerva received 25,000 applications from 180 countries for undergraduate entry in 2020 and admitted just 2% of them, making it the most selective degree programme in the developed world. This is portrayed as good thing. But…
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25 Years of OU – 1998: “I have an online course”
By 1998 I had experimented with an online tutor group, worked at summer school sessions on HTML and produced some web pages for courses and personal use. There was a lot of interest in the use of the web for distance learning, and elearning was gathering a good head of steam. I started going to educational technology conferences at this time (they were fun back then!). I wanted to experiment and see if it was possible to develop an OU undergrad course delivered entirely online. So using MS FrontPage HTML editor (for which, I plead forgiveness), I created a dummy. I chatted with John Naughton about it – he was…
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It’s forever 1999 for online learning critics
via GIPHY One of the (many) things to surprise and disappoint me over the past couple of months has been the resurrection of so many bad takes on online learning that I had encountered in 1999 and thought we had moved on from. There was a piece in Wonkhe that argued online worked against widening participation. Online, with assistive technologies, where the student can learn in their own environment and at their own pace was somehow much worse for WP than making people come to one physical location at set times and study in real time. Apparently only f2f can realise WP goals, which was certainly news to all the…
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Online pivot & the absence of a magic button
via GIPHY Now we’re getting into the online pivot more substantially, higher education institutions are coming to terms that it may not be a short-term emergency shift. It looks like the first semester of the 2020-21 year may be online, and if Covid-19 flares up again, who knows how long it may continue. While you could get away with “sticking classes on Zoom” for the immediate emergency, that won’t cut it in the medium term. More long-term, the pandemic will make many HEIs review the overall robustness of their offering, and seek to move portions online as a possible response to any future crisis. In a lot of senior management…
