New connections, new challenges

ALT-SURF-ILTA Spring Conference
6 April 2006
Leiden University

altspring2006

Participant notes

Technorati Tags: altspring2006

Will be emerging here

Opening remarks
Professor Dr Ton van Haaften, Vice-Rector, Leiden University
Mentions Blackboard VLE as a communication rather than as a pedagogical medium.

Keynote
Professor Robert-Jan Simons
Utrecht University

Are students changing or aren't they?

He's using us for his research!

The right questions

• Are students changing?
• Are our societies changing?
• Is ICT changing?
• In what ways?
• What can we learn from multiplayer online worlds?
• In what ways is student-learning changing?
• What are the consequences of all of this for education?

Debunks golden ageism. Kids do what kids do. Is there any real difference in 2005?

Popular press popularises the decline of youth: they don't read books, they don't read newspapers; please consider who is worried about this. They are protecting markets. This is said to be backed up by research. Yes, children are reading less. They can finish a university education without reading a book at all.

Carl Rohde (2004) Trend watcher. Game generation, search generation, extended home. Carl and 200 friends over the world are asking people all over the world. They do this "stuff" for Coca-Cola, Nike. They do not publish their research. They sell it.

Children prefer interactive games, interaction with other people using games consoles

Children are the search generation, from "broken" families searching for uncertainty reduction, safety, security, trust, intimacy

Home is where the friends are. Live by the mobile phone. You have to be reachable to your friends 24/7.

90% of the room believes society as a whole for UK and NL has changed over the past years, not just young people

ICT changing

• Mobile
• Data mining and quality judgement
• Digital empowerment, tools expand intelligence
• Multimedia rendering, authentic contacts with whole world?
• World-wide communication
• ICT as commodity

Homo zappiens

Oblinger, "Learners v. Staff" (adapted from Himes, 2004)
6 characteristics of learners

1. multitasking
2. Audio-Visual
3. Random access
4. Interactive
5. Commited
6. Spontaneously

A friend is someone willing to be in your hive. You trust your friends and the friends of your friends. Notices are placed in personal hives (Flickr, etc) and fed to hives of friends (rss, atom, foaf)

Staff

1. One task at a time
2. Textual
3. Linear
4. Independent and individual
5. Disciplined
6. Deliberately

Are students changing?

• What do we know about it?
• What do current students want?

Laurillard: 6 wishes of students

• Why would I learn?

• Analysis of personalised learning needs
• connecting to informal learning
• access to advice and counselling

• What can I learn?

• extended alternatives through partnerships
• Provider flexibility
• Online support

• How can I study?

• flexible courses, ways of learning, locations (but not covert aims of flexibilisation)

• How shall I learn
• How do I know if I know enough
• Education should react!

Robert-Jan Simons concludes there is strong circumstantial evidence that things are changing. There is a real risk of a digital divide
but
we do not know enough about it

• there is no research base
• circumstantial evidence
• not just youth but all ages

What should education do?

• nothing?
• adapt to new learning style?
• Teach students to learn the old way (beat them with books)?
• Do both?
• Differentiate between digital and non digital students
• Increase flexibility (all of the above)

Scott Wilson

The Pope has an i-Pod

Does the queen?
Community features collaborative filtering: rating; people who did this also did that.
Immersed in participatory culture

Personal Learning Tools (PLT) environment accrete through life
Interrelated desktop tools

Our tools accrete themselves to us through life: what works we use. Our tools accrete like barnacles or limpets. Do we need to be defouled from time to time to ensure smooth sailing.

User maturity is an issue. Does this mask a digital-equity issue? Who has the ability/right to issue/assert a digital identity? We need a folksanomic podigogy

Bodil Ask and Harals Haugen

Towards Lisbon 2010, expanding network

Welcome onboard to Lisbon 2010

Want to adopt system of comparable degrees within the Common European Higher Education Area. Student mobility (virtual and real) is encouraged: e.g. ERASMUS bi-lateral exchanges; e-Learning Initiative paves the way. e-Learning Action Plan designing tomorrow's education. Virtual universities, partnerships and collaborative networks discussion tech and pedagog standards: students carry their portfolio with them through life from country to country so standards were required for academic degrees: so 2 cycles were agreed: bachelors (3-year), master (3+2=5), and PhD added (3+2+3=8)

There are traditions around grading systems and tremendous variety, letters, numbers

European Credit Transfer (and Accumulation) Scheme (ECTS) 1 year ful time = 60 credits i.e. 1500 - 1800 hrs

Aim is transparent mobility of students between institutions

Implications: upgrade staff, who find it hard composing degrees according to ECTS standards. Admin systems are even harder to change.

Debate has changed around QA systems. In 1995 that asked do we need a QA system? 1n 2003 they asked what kind?

European Network of Quality Assurance (ENQA)

Variation of academic quality? How do you measure quality?

Hard to implement what was theoretically accepted, i.e a really joint degree across borders.