mark mcguire: "open strategies in higher education: opportunities and challenges"
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Open Strategies in Higher Education: Opportunities and ChallengesDr Mark McGuireSenior Lecturer, Department of Applied SciencesUniversity of OtagoDEANZ (Distance Education Association NZ) Conference 11-13 April 2012, Wellington, New ZealandAbstract In business, social media, and other aspects of contemporary society, we can trace the shift in models of production, delivery, and consumption from Push (broadcast) to Pull (download) to Share (co-create). Similarly, we are beginning to see new models of provision emerging in higher education. As Curtis Bonk points out in The World is Open: How Technology is Revolutionizing Education, in theory, “[a]nyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime” (2009). Martin Wellers is one of an increasing numbers of academics that are promoting the benefits of open, digital scholarship (2011). However, rather than transforming how courses are designed and delivered, most institutions of higher learning are using information technology in a limited way, to enhance traditional classroom teaching (Bates, A. W. T., Sangra, A. 2011). Although institutional structures and practices may be resistant to change, innovative individuals and institutions have developed “open” strategies that provide models for others to follow. For several years, coordinators of OOCs (Open Online Courses) and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have made use of network technologies to leverage the wisdom of the crowd and to amplify the reach of tertiary courses for both credit and non-credit students (de Waard et al., 2011; Kop, Fornier, & Sui Fai Mak, 2011). More recently, Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) and MIT’s MITx, have demonstrated how traditional, formal learning for a limited number of fee-paying students can support informal learning for a much larger number of off-campus participants for free. In this paper, I discuss recent research relating to open education and report on my experience as a non-credit participant in several open courses. I discuss recent initiatives by Stanford and MIT and reflect on the potential of Open strategies for traditional tertiary institutions. References:Bates, A. W. T., & Sangra, A. (2011). Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning: Jossey-Bass.Bonk, C. J. (2009). The World is Open: How Technology is Revolutionizing Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.de Waard, I., Abajian, S., Gallagher, M. S., Hogue, R., Keskin, N., Koutropoulos, A.,(2011). Using mLearning and MOOCs to understand chaos, emergence, and complexity in education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 94-115.Kop, R., Fournier, H., & Sui Fai Mak, J. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 74-93.Weller, M. (2011). The Digital Scholar: Bloomsbury Academic.TRANSCRIPT
Open Strategies in Higher Education: Opportunities & Challenges CC-BY
DEANZ 11-13 April 2012 http://goo.gl/VfEjmMark McGuire, Applied Sciences, U of OtagoBlog: http://markmcguire.net Twitter: @mark_mcguire
CC-BY (unless otherwise stated) http://goo.gl/c8M84Photo by gotanew1 (CC-BY-NC-SA)http://www.flickr.com/photos/8500230@N03/3592656319
OR
“I sing the body electric”
Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass", 1867. (http://goo.gl/uiEFW)
1. Open and “Open Courses”
“[T]he Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it — at any stage of its development”.Gideon Burton, Academic Evolution Blog (by way of Terry Anderson) http://www.academicevolution.com/2009/08/the-open-scholar.html
Martin Weller. “The Digital Scholar”, 2011.http://goo.gl/gaI9vAccessed 12 April 2012
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html Accessed 9 April, 2012
https://www.ai-class.com/ Accessed 9 April, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkneoNrfadkAccessed 9 April, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkneoNrfadkAccessed 9 April, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkneoNrfadkAccessed 9 April, 2012
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass/all/1Accessed 10 April, 2012
UDACITY.com“Behind every Udacity class will be a production team, not unlike a film crew. The professor will become an actor-producer. Which makes Thrun the studio head”. “In 50 years, he says, there will be only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at being one of them”.Steven Leckart: “The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever” (WIRED 20 March, 2012)http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass/all/1 Accessed 11 April 2012
https://www.coursera.org/ Accessed 9 April, 2012
https://www.coursera.org/ Accessed 9 April, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/07/stanford-professors-spin-company-support-free-online-courses Accessed 12 April 2012
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/03/minerva-gets-25m-from-benchmark/ Accessed 9 April, 2012
Public? Private? For-Profit? Non-Profit?
“It’s the (mixed) economy, stupid”
2. MOOCs and Connectivism
Teaching and Learning ParadigmsLocus, Mode, Temporality, Structure, Objective
PUSH teacher, broadcast, synchronous, hierarchical, knowledge�
PULL resource, download, asynchronous, nodal, individual learning
SHAREsite, co-create, continuous, networked, knowledge network
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc Accessed 12 April 2012Also see: Change MOOC 11 - an introduction and an invitation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc
Change11 Course Facilitators (http://goo.gl/WXipB Accessed 12 April 2012)
Stephen Downeshttp://www.downes.caStephen Downes is a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council and a leading proponent of the use of online media and services in education. As the author of the widely-read OLDaily online newsletter, Downes has earned international recognition for his leading-edge work in the field of online learning.
George Siemenshttp://www.elearnspace.org & www.elearnspace.org/about.htmGeorge Siemens is an internationally known writer, speaker, and researcher on learning, networks, technology and organizational effectiveness in digital environments. He is the author of Knowing Knowledge, an exploration of how the context and characteristics of knowledge have changed and what it means to organizations today, and the recently released Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning. Siemens is currently a researcher and strategist with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University.
Dave Cormierhttp://www.davecormier.comDave Cormier is an independent educational researcher and thinker, an online community manager and the Manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island. He has published on open education, the rhizomatic model of education, and practical classroom uses of virtual worlds.
http://change.mooc.ca/threads.htm Accessed 12 April, 2012
http://www.scoop.it/t/connectivismAccessed 10 April, 2012
http://curation.masternewmedia.org/Accessed 10 April, 2012
http://connectedlearning.tv/infographic/ (CC-BY)Accessed 10 April, 2012
The notion of connectedness:“It's about expertise that's widely distributed in our society and culture, and the fact that anybody can help somebody else get better at something.”Mimi Ito, Cultural Anthropologist, Digital Media & Learning Research Hub (University of California, Irvine) http://www.itofisher.com/mito/
“The product of learning is not knowledge, the product of learning is a transformed learner.” – Stephen Downes http://www.downes.ca/
Institutional? Personal? Formal? Informal?
“It’s life, Jim but not as we know it”+ Just-in-time learning+ Resources & help when-and-where-needed+ Thinking, fast and slow+ Drive-by-assignments+ Collapsing sites, practices, identities
Bora: “We’re what we are”we don’t need no leaders to follow blindwe don’t need no heroes to copy / paste i object! we’re on a wrong wayi reject! plastic sincerity we can break new own grounds, mature own fruitswe can break new own grounds, that fit our needshttp://www.lyricsmania.com/were_what_we_are_lyrics_bora.html Accessed 12 April 2012 ”
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3. Learning Technologies
Change11 Live Presentation by Jon Dron 24 Nov 2011 (Hard & Soft Technologies)
Industries, organizations, and other non-physical, non-tangible “purposed systems” can be considered as technologies .
Whereas one technology might be “adopted” by another technology this process does not work for institutional systems, which are comprised of a collection or “body” of technologies.
The process that takes place when one body of technology comes into contact with a different body of technology is more like an encounter than an adaptation. The result can be a parting of the ways, or a transformation that leads to a new combination of technologies.
W. Brian Arthur “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves”, 2009. http://goo.gl/b9MG9
The dominant perspectives on technology give priority to either the social or the technology side of the equation, and they share what Orlokowski calls an “ontology of separateness”. She argues for a “relational ontology” that focuses on the assemblages, associations, and networks of humans and technologies that occur through “entanglements in practice”.
W. J. Orlokowski“The sociomateriality of organisational life: considering technology in management research” (2009) http://goo.gl/Acm4k
All technologies become invisible through repeated use�- until they fail. Then, we are reminded of the magic, the seeming impossibility of how it works, and the fact that it can stop working. The distortion of a cellphone call, a frozen video frame, and the crackle of a�radio�transmission are all wake-up calls.
*Arthur C. Clarke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws Accessed 12 April 2012 Also see: Kindle screen failure reveals repressed memory of earlier technology http://goo.gl/bWXzK
As Arthur C. Clarke says, “[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”*
The real magic is not the technology, but its�invisibility.
The biggest elephants in the room are the ones we are riding – the technologies (systems, structures, practices) that we have internalized and rendered invisible.
#MyProfessionalDevelopment
Learning to ignore the elephants in the room, and perfecting the increasingly elaborate art of dancing around elephant shit.
“We shape our technologies, and afterwards our technologies shape us”– Winston Churchill (remixed) http://goo.gl/91TRm Accessed 11 April 2012
4. A Clash of Technologies
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html Accessed 12 April 2012
http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanresources/policies/internetusage.php Accessed 12 April 2012
http://www.otago.ac.nz/administration/policies/otago003330.htmlAccessed 12 April 2012
http://video.filestube.com/key/Electricity+[From+Billy+Elliot]Site blocked at University of Otago Accessed off campus 10 April 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShNMmtRcB8g&feature=player_embeddedAccessed 12 April 2012
New Zealand Education Act 1989 Accessed 11 April 2012 http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/DLM183668.html
New Zealand Education Act 1989 Accessed 11 April 2012 http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/DLM183668.html
It’s not the tool, it’s the technique. It’s not the fish, it’s the pond. It’s not the dancers, it’s the dance.
Photo by by thumeco (CC-BY-NC-SA)http://goo.gl/Ngc41
Royal Ontario Museum (2007, Studio Daniel Libeskind) Photo by Eric Mutrie (CC-BY) http://goo.gl/Lqbkm
Federation Square, Melbourne (2001, Lab Architecture Studio + Bates Smart) Photo by Mark McGuire (CC-BY)
Jewish Museum, Berlin (2001, Studio Daniel Libeskind) Photo by Guenter Schneider (CC-BY) http://goo.gl/lZr4P
Tony Bates: “Transforming teaching and learning through technology management” Change11 MOOC Live Session 16 October, 2011Bates, A. W. T., & Sangra, A. (2011). Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning: Jossey-Bass.
5. Opening Up
Question: Why do most university logos have a shield? Who are they protecting themselves from?
http://goo.gl/tAmCg Accessed 11 April, 2012
It’s not about the future of the book, it’s about the future of reading.It’s not about the future of universities, it’s about the future of higher education.It’s not about the future of technologies, it’s about what we want to do in the future.
Police Pepper Spraying Occupy UC Davis students
University academics occupy a privileged position in society. In terms of education, we are part of the 1%. We have the right, and the responsibility, to act in the best interest of the 99%.
that the classroom is surrounded by permeable screens rather than opaque walls with restricted points of entry. These screens are constructed from course
descriptions, aims and objectives, schedules, and assessment criteria that serve as the perimeter that defines and contains a course of study. The screens are flexible and moveable. Imagine that this structure sits in the middle of a public space dotted with other permeable structures. Inside each of them, problems are posed and questions are raised. People work together under the guidance of an expert investigator to find solutions to problems and answers to questions. They call upon others beyond the screen as required, and they access information that passes freely into and out of the structure and between structures and other spaces. They venture out to consult with other experts and to gather new information, which they bring back to the group. People outside the structure can overhear some of their discussions and can peer through small openings to watch some of the activities. An archive of their work, which is created as part of the process of investigation, serves as a shared history that anyone can use and build upon. From "SHIFTING GEAR: Transforming Our Communities of Learning", Report #1 from the CALT Thinktank on ICT, University of Otago, May 2009
Imagine
https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/openotago/ Accessed 12 April 2012
Collaborative, Conversational
Networks
SPACE is created through the act of communication. Co n v e r s a t i o n creates shared space. OPEN c o n v e r s a t i o n creates PUBLIC SPACE.
Innovation is not about changing how we do what we do; innovation is about changing our mind about what we need to do, and then creating technologies that will enable us to do it.�
Can institutions of higher education transform themselves from within?Can elephants learn to dance?It depends on how well we are able to ride them. �First, we have to ask ourselves: “who are they (we) dancing for?”
Let’s dance!