The Paradox Plug! Sure you can click on the image, but it don’t do nothin’
Fire safety awareness training time again. A useful refresher, but the content hasn’t changed, and any new learning was constructed from the training’s test unit which consisted of a mix of questions that were either patently obvious or about things that weren’t covered in the training. While that latter group could have been infuriating, I found it the most useful because they made me have to think and work out the correct answer logically. I passed, first time, 90%.
The other thing I “enjoy” about these mandatory online training courses is critiquing the quality of the content and platform. And how we would have done it better. Consider the image I’ve screen-shotted here: “Click image to make it safer”. Well, you can’t. The image isn’t interactive. In fact there is no interactivity in the training at all, despite being referenced like this in many slides; it was just a text-only presentation with next and previous buttons. 4/10.
I would still rather have my Buffy mug. Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
It’s that time of again, the start of a new academic year and change is in the wind. I’ve gone the entire academic year 2020/21 without setting foot on campus other than to clear out my office. We’ve finally had some investment in us, with myself and the team getting new laptops to enable hybrid working, and our offices are in the midst of a major refurbishment to enable hot desking and social distancing, because despite the University’s push to get us all back on campus, this pandemic is not over by a longshot. We expect that to be complete in time for the start of teaching, at which point I’ll get to be back in the office 2 or 3 days a week.
This means I’ll also get to meet my new team! At the start of the pandemic and the switch to online and hybrid teaching, we recruited a number of instructional designers and content developers to help academics with the change, and I’m pleased to say that we’ve been able to make four of them permanent and they have joined my content development team as of today. That’s six folks in my team alone, and will make our Learning Technology team the largest it has ever been, a reflection on how critical our service has become.
Our job titles have been fiddled around with again, and I’m back to being a Senior Learning Technologist – yay! A much more sensible title that is so much clearer than Learning Technology Coordinator for Learning Materials Development, though I regret that I’m no longer going to be able to joke about being so important that I needed ‘learning’ in my job title twice. Our HR system was never actually updated with this, so I’m just going to quietly retcon my profiles to omit this dark period and pretend it never happened.
I must write something about Studiosity, a new student support offering for writing feedback, and a project I’ve led over the past year. It went live today, and all seems to be well. I’ll be continuing to manage that as students start to use the service over the next couple of months, as well as coordinating a revamp of our external and internal web spaces. Then in February, for the start of semester 2, I’ll be taking over as module leader for one of our PG Cert courses and, unlike last time, this isn’t just a technology module, but is on designing learning and assessment. A challenge, to be sure, but a welcome one, and I’m looking forward to getting that module leader role back and being able to do more teaching.
I made a thing! Like, a year ago. But I didn’t show it off at the time because it didn’t feel very show-off worthy, it is, after all, just another WordPress blog (hurr-hurr-hurr). This one a collaborative effort between myself and our academic developer to showcase best practice in teaching and learning from across the University. We’ve had a Practice Hub for a long time, but it was previously hosted on Confluence in what passed for our intranet, whereas one part of my brief in putting the new site together was to make it fully accessible to everyone, both inside and outside of the organisation.
I’m writing about it now for two reasons. First of all because it recently had a little injection of adrenaline as it was used to host the presentation materials of participants in our Digital Learning and Teaching Conference in July. And secondly, because I’ve heard whispers about revamping the site once more to make it more flashy. That’s ‘flashy’ as in fancy, not as in peak noughties internet. (Although that would also be interesting.)
So I suspect that is going to be a piece of work coming my way in the new academic year, and that’s fair enough. The design as it is was the result of many cooks, and with a looser brief I could be able to do something pretty cool with it.
It’s been a long time since I published something about VLE market share, I guess because we’re all happy with Canvas at Sunderland and aren’t looking for a replacement. Nevertheless, it came up in conversation a few days ago and I had a quick DuckDuckGo out of curiosity. Looks like lots of people are pretty happy with Canvas looking at that growth curve! Alas, poor Blackboard, we knew ye well.
The data in EduTechnica’s report pertains to US HE, but from my knowledge of the UK HE community, I wouldn’t expect a UK graph to look much different.
This chap is definitely up to no good. Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
Largely with my charity hat on, I went along to this online event about cyber security for small charities run by the NCC Group.
Very worthwhile session, covering everything from password recommendations to phishing attack methodology to the importance of backup processes. There was nothing particularly revelatory, but it was all packaged up very nicely, and has given me the basis for a structure that I’ll be able to apply to a session I’ll run for our volunteers.
All of the information and recommendations were derived from the National Cyber Security Centre which offers a wealth of resources.
This post is also giving me the opportunity to plug have i been pwned? again, a link I share as widely and often as possible because it is excellent. Pop your email address in here and the site will tell you if it has shown up in any known hacks or data breaches. And if it has, change your damn password for that service, and use a different password for everything! The golden rule.
Screenshot of some support resources from the presentation (in text below)
Attended this awareness-raising session from the University’s EDI network on student sex work. The session covered the four main legal models of sex work, and I was surprised to learn that the UK employs the ‘best’ model, full decriminalisation. Alas, we criminalise literally everything around sex work making it all but impossible, and dangerous. Why students engage in sex work, and this one only depressed rather than surprised me, with half the responses being on the theme of avoiding debt, paying student fees, etc. Neoliberalism strikes again! And finally, most usefully, what universities can do to help students involved in sex work, and signposts to further sources of support. I took a screenshot of those, but to make it easier (and accessible), here they are:
If I could only Command+Q my brain sometimes. Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash
‘Exploring the Experience of Online Learning and Teaching for Neurodiverse Students’ was an excellent session hosted by ALT East England shining a light on some of the issues with online learning and teaching which particularly affect neurodiverse students. I’m going to do this backwards and talk about the second part of the session first, because it was the first part which was more impactful for me, and that’s what I want to focus on.
The second part was a talk by members of Anglia Ruskin University’s Disability and Dyslexia Service, who discussed the challenges of supporting hardware and software platforms they weren’t necessarily familiar with, and the benefits of online working which offered opportunities for engaging with students at times which better suited them, freed from on-campus, 9-5 hours, and for rapport building by sharing intimacies of home environments. I have personally loved pet-bombing during meetings and nosing at people’s book shelves, though I want to insert a note of caution here that many students are living and studying in far from ideal environments; having a suitable home working / studying environment is a privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Returning now to the first part of the session, this was a student-led discussion on some of the issues they have faced with online learning, and their thoughts on what we can do as developers and teachers to make things better for all students.
So for example, some students with anxiety or ADHD reported that they had found the structural changes difficult and, in the case of the many changes we’ve had to lockdown restrictions, frustrating. One student commented that all of their activities – studying, eating, leisure – were all now being done in the same small environment, shared with another student, and that was causing a lot of stress. Another student found online lectures harder as they felt more conspicuous asking questions, though on the flip side they also noted that lectures tended to have more availability at other times.
There was an interesting discussion on the use of cameras during online lectures, whether students should have them on or off. This is something I’ve struggled with when teaching, as there is no feedback for me to gauge students’ engagement and comprehension. One student on the panel commented that they have been in online lectures with up to 500 students, and cameras being on was very distracting for them. Another student commented that they preferred cameras on to get some social interaction with their peers, while another who was hard of hearing said that they benefitted from cameras being on for lip-reading.
On assessment, there was general appreciation for the ‘no detriment’ policy they had last academic year when the pandemic began, but this has been removed in the current academic year in favour of universal extensions granted upon request, which one student said was far worse because it extended the time available for them in which to be anxious about their assessments. There was no love for online proctoring software, with some students saying they had difficulty with suitable space for these, and even having to buy their own webcams.
I got a lot out of listening to students like this, but I found myself wondering about how to draw conclusions. On webcams for example, on or off? That, I think, is a decision that needs to be made with each student cohort individually, and in consultation with them – and with their consent! Far easier with cohorts of 30 rather than 300 of course. One good suggestion from the student group was to build in social time to online teaching sessions, either at the beginning or end of sessions where cameras can be on so that students can see each other and say ‘hi’, and then turned off during the taught component to reduce distractions, unless specifically required.
There are institutional things that could change to help students. Proctoring software is a vile product category that is just needs to get the sea. The whole lot of them. In the Sea. There was maybe an argument to be made at the start of lockdown, but people have had over a year to redesign assessments now, so there’s no excuse. And policies around mitigating circumstances and reasonable adjustments need to be made actually reasonable, and not applied across the board as though they were written on stole tablets. There’s core values stuff here. Should we be looking for reasons to fail students, or doing everything possible to help them to pass? I know how I want to spend my time.
A screenshot of the Padlet board we used to share our experiences
Just when you thought you could escape the OERxDomains conference, they pull you right back in! This was a post-conference workshop on the topic of ‘bring your own device (BYOD), for learning’. Of course students can, will, and have always used personal devices to enable their learning, and so the focus of this discussion wasn’t on technology itself so much, but on how we can facilitate learning using the ‘Five Cs Framework’ of connecting, communicating, curating, collaborating, and creating. For each of these strands we shared our experiences around the use of specific tools and best practices, contributing them to a shared Padlet board.
Now that I have Day 1 sorted, hopefully it isn’t going to take me as long to write up and publish my notes from Day 2! Again, I am going to attempt to keep this relatively brief, just a few key points from each session I attended, but I was conscious that I ended up writing more and more for each session of Day 1. Recordings of all sessions are available on the YouTube playlist or via the interactive TV Guide.
09:30: Nominal Group Technique for Student Feedback in Pandemic Times | Me!
Highlight of the conference, as voted for by 100% of attendees in my house: my ‘Gasta‘ on adapting NGT for online teaching. A little disappointing that I wasn’t able to present live, but the recording was done in one take, and no editing.
Also 09:30: Digital Fluency In A Public Liberal Arts Institution | Jeff McClurken and Lee Skallerup Bessette
As all of the Gasta sessions were pre-recorded, I was able to watch this one about a project to give all students and staff their own domain name to do with whatever they want (largely), as a way of empowering them to develop digital literacy skills.
09:45: Welcome To Day 2 From The Conference Co-Chairs
I didn’t get any bright ideas this time, thankfully! (First image in my gallery, showing remixed conference badges.)
10:00: Wikipedia In The Classroom In The New Normal | Ewan McAndrew
Ewan talked about two projects involving students and Wikipedia, the first getting them to participate in edit-a-thons updating existing pages, and the second about finding something not already on Wikipedia, researching the topic, and then writing the page themselves. This gave students agency and enabled them to see tangible outcomes of their learning. (Second image in my gallery, a quote from a student on what they got out of the Wikipedia project.)
10:20: Open To Diversity: Inclusive Design Insights From The Australian OER Textbook | Sarah Lambert and Habiba Fadel
The purpose of the Australian Open Textbook Project is to audit and improve the diversity of textbooks and reading lists, noting that ‘open’ cannot just be about being free, but must be representative of the student body and society – and this isn’t just about who is shown in pictures, but whose knowledge is represented.
10:40: Moving Your Language Teaching Online Toolkit | Hélène Pulker
This discussion was on the particular challenges faced by students of modern languages learning online, and presented a toolkit of resources that the Open University has created to help address these issues. The toolkit is a highly practical collection of guides and principles.
11:10: Digital (Un)Tethering | Clare Thomson and Kate Molloy
Throughout the conference I was looking for alternative format sessions wherever possible, and this one did not disappoint. Instead of a presentation or video, we had a guided Twitter chat on the topic of self-care and balancing work and personal life while working and studying from home. You can read the chat on Twitter by checking the hashtags #Untether #OER21 #OERxDomains21. It was eye-opening to realise how much time I am spending in front of different screens, and thinking about how it has impacted my life. Hence the need to #Untether.
11:50: The Adventures Of The Writing Process Digitising The Writing Process | Patricia Dennis
I re-tethered for this session on helping students to develop a process for writing, rather than focusing on the content or finished product which is where the emphasis is usually placed.
13:00: Keynote | Jasmine Roberts
A wonderful, passionate, keynote address from Jasmine who explored how open education ideology has its roots in black feminist liberation and, in particular, the work of Bell Hooks. One of the most powerful things said all conference, was that ‘the time needed to care, or to create OERs, is often not institutionally valued, so we do it ‘off desk’ in our own time’. (Third image in my gallery, a quote from Jasmine: ‘We are teaching students, not content’.)
14:00: The Use And Misuse Of Care | Sundi Richard and Autumm Caines
An introduction to CompelU, a fabulous new online proctoring service to catch-out lying, cheating students in their lies and cheating. But no… this was a discussion on the dangers of certain companies that I won’t name co-opting the language of care to sell anti-student services to institutions. Their blog post on this is well worth a read. (Fourth image in my gallery, a meme on how it is easier to put on a webinar about care, rather than addressing structural failures.)
14:20: Open Pedagogies In A Pandemic: Educator Perceptions And Experiences In Diverse Contexts | Leigh-Anne Perryman and Rebecca Ferguson
A theme which emerged from the conference for me was that ‘open’ doesn’t always mean ‘good’. An example from this talk was a case where students were asked to work collaboratively to produce an open textbook, but this was anxiety inducing for some students, and there were worries about the process damaging students’ esteem if their work was rejected. To mitigate these risks you can use universal design for learning which has a principle of providing students with multiple means of engagement. (Fifth image in my gallery, a quote on the dangers of online anonymity.)
14:40: Lessons From The Frontline: Challenges And Strategies For Inspiring A Shift From Surveillance To Open Practices | Emily Carlisle-Johnston
Another talk on the dangers of surveillance software which made the points that this removes students’ autonomy, and burdens staff with extra work. Specifically, in using something like online proctoring, you may ‘solve’ the problem of academic staff not having to redesign traditional essay-style exams, at the expense of labour and cost which is transferred to the technical support teams who must procure, implement and maintain these systems.
15:15: The Joys Of Open Collaboration, Stories From The GO-GN Picture Book Team | Chrissi Nerantzi, Hélène Pulker, Paola Corti, Verena Roberts, Penny Bentley, Gino Fransman, Bryan Mathers and Ody Frank
A presentation on the work of The Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN), which is building a global community of researchers in open education. In the example presented, a group of educators collaboratively created a picture book story about open education during the pandemic.
15:35: Community And Care In The Open: The CUNY Graduate Center’s TLC During The Pandemic | Luke Waltzer and Laurie Hurson
How the CUNY Graduate Center helped to support staff and students of the New York based university cope with the switch to online learning during the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. They were well-placed to do so, having built an open infrastructure, the CUNY Academic Commons, which enabled them to share their archive of online teaching content.
15:55: Trent Online: Trent Extend mOOC Spring 2021 | Christian Metaxas, Kristine Weglarz, Terry Greene and Stephanie Park
A discussion about the pending launch of the Ontario Extend mOOC which is intended to be a place for educators to learn without fear of failure, where we will be able to ‘mess up’ and play while dropping the knowledgeable front we put on for students. However, another important take-away from this session was that ‘Ontario is better than British Columbia’. I… don’t know why, but what the heck? I liked these folks and am happy to get on this bandwagon with them.
16:25: Exploring The Web Monetisation Standard As A Solution For Sustainability In The Creation Of Open Educational Resources | Erica Hargreave, Lori Yearwood and Kevin Ribble
This presentation was about the Web Monetization Standard which offers people an alternative way of being compensated for making content freely available that doesn’t rely on advertisement, affiliate links, freemium models, or paywalls.
16:45: Open Source Technologies For Instructional Design: Hands-On Experience In Teacher Education With H5P | Benjamin Eugster
A couple of case studies of content which had been created with the H5P content authoring tool. Something else I’m taking from this session though, is the concept of explicit and implicit learning objectives.
17:05: Let It Break Or Be Broken: Care, Moral Stress, And The University | Brenna Clarke Gray
This was an excellent talk on how care is being used (abused) to paper over the cracks of institutional failures, the result of neo-liberal models which are extractional by nature – and design. This causes moral injury or stress to those of us providing care, and it should not be on us to repair that damage, but on institutions to change their structural models. I highly recommend the article ‘Moral injury and the COVID-19 pandemic: reframing what it is, who it affects and how care leaders can manage it’ by Suzanne Shale to explore this topic further.
17:40: Keynote | Rajiv Jhangiani
The final keynote speaker began with an impassioned advocacy for openness and why he was drawn to it as a concept – because of the limitless and unknown opportunities for future collaborations. However, Rajiv also posed many difficult questions on the limitations of openness. Consider consent, for example. On Our Backs was a queer, feminist magazine published between 1984 and 2006, which gained some notoriety in 2015/16 when the copyright owner digitised and openly released the entire archive online. Could the writers and models who participated in a niche 80s magazine with a limited audience have given any meaningful consent to their work being available to literally the entire world? Without autonomy, you don’t have any choice in making things open or closed. The archive has since been removed. (Sixth image in my gallery, a quote from a model who was featured in On Our Backs after learning that her photos were now online.)
As I sat down to get comfortable and begin the OERxDomains conference I had the flash of inspiration to ‘live blog‘ the conference instead of hastily scribbling notes that I would type up and organise later. I thought this was a great idea! And would solve my bad habit of writing about things long after they happen and egregiously lying about the date when it comes to publishing on my blog. I managed to keep it up for a couple of hours, but it was completely unsustainable. Two reasons, firstly because the conference was absolutely jam-packed there was little room to catch-up, and secondly because I don’t have it in me to be content with rough notes and found myself obsessing over formatting issues rather than concentrating on the content of sessions.
So here we are, over a month later, and I’m just now getting round to publishing my notes. Because of the huge amount of content, I’m going to try and limit myself to just a sentence or two to recap what I took from each session I attended.
In keeping with the spirit of a conference on open education resources, all sessions recordings are now freely available at either the YouTube page or, better, you can use the excellent TV guide style programme for Day 1 or Day 2.
09:50: Welcome From The Conference Co-Chairs | Jim Groom, Lauren Hanks, Joe Wilson, Lou Mycroft and Louise Drumm
During which I had my ill-fated live blogging epiphany.
10:00: Opening Plenary: Joy And Care In Open Education In Times Of Pandemic | Catherine Stihler, Nicolas Garcia, Tutaleni Asino and Orna Farrell
There were a few highlights from the opening plenary – a reflective question on what has brought joy over the past year, the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous teaching (and the privilege of being able to choose, or not!), and a fabulous observation from Nicolas that ‘Technical issues have an emotional impact on people.’
11:00: Open Reading With Your Eyes Shut: Demystifying Foo-Foo The Snoo | Mark Brown
A session title that will haunt me. Mark was discussing the problem of curating open resources and journals, and attempts to address this by publishing an annual Top 10 list of articles curated by his team at DCU. Also noted the problem of articles about open education being published behind paywalls(!).
11:20: Contemporary Art And Open Learning | Neil Mulholland
Discussed the problem of teaching contemporary arts during the pandemic and the lack of distance / online learning communities for artists – responded by creating a new OER collating relevant peer reviewed resources.
11:40: Encouraging Learner Agency Through Self-Mapped Learning Pathways | Matt Crosslin
Presented a case study on implementing self-mapped learning pathways (SMLP), which seeks to blend traditional instructor-led pathways with learners’ self-directed pathways.
12:10: Familiar Faces And Shared Goals: Evaluating The Impact Of An Open Community During The Covid-19 Pandemic | Kate Molloy
Talked about the timely Enhancing Digital Capacity in Teaching and Learning in Irish Universities (EDTL) project that began in 2019 and the impact the pandemic had upon them – changed focus, added resources relating to Covid specifically, and making all resources openly available. (First image in my gallery, showing the 4 pillars of the project.)
12:30: Links Between Open Education And DEI – Findings From A Latin American Study | Carina Bossu and Viviane Vladimirschi
Posed the problem of the prevalence of English language OER that doesn’t meet the needs and realities of the global south, and asked what we can do to improve the situation. Suggestions included funding for translation services, and linking with networks such as GO-GN.
12:50: Careful Practice: Extending A Framework For Valuing Care In The Open | Caroline Sinkinson and Merinda Mclure
An interactive session on the Care in the Open Framework, which utilised a shared Google doc and Answer Garden to explore the value of care as a moral imperative for society, and how it cannot be limited to private, domestic spheres. Therefore, it must be a consideration in the classroom. (Second image in my gallery, with a sketchnote depicting attributes of care.)
14:00: Interactive Courseware To Connect Discussion To Course Material: So What? | Matt Smith, Tinne De Laet and Howard Scott
An exploration of Nextbook, an interactive textbook that allows students to write questions which staff can respond to, to give just one example. An attempt at getting away from the VLE paradigm of ‘a tool for this’ and ‘a tool for that’, providing a more integrated experience. (Third image in my gallery, showing a sample Nextbook page with inline discussion.)
14:40: Open Education, Data Analytics, And The Future Of Knowledge Infrastructure | Nicole Allen
This was an excellent talk on the problem of institutions attempting to buy solutions to technological problems, which are really sociological problems, and the vulture-like companies who are more than ready and willing to provide ‘easy’ solutions in the form of subscription models for textbooks(!), online proctoring software, learner analytics, and what they are doing with the data they are gathering. This included an example of a US textbook company selling data to ICE, the notorious US agency for enforcing immigration. (Fourth image in my gallery, because while I came for the conference, I stayed for the awesome bookcases in people’s homes!)
15:15: Openlab – Open Infrastructure In Action At CUNY | Charlie Edwards, Jody Rosen and Christopher Stein
Because ‘we don’t break up with students at the end of the semester’, CUNY have been running Commons in a Box for the past 10 years, a WordPress / BuddyPress system which provides continued student and alumni access to content.
15:50: Reflecting On Market Vs Commons Rhetoric: Care And The Professor’s Dilemma | Jim Luke
Another interesting talk, this one on how metaphors shape how we think, and specifically how higher education has been driven by the market and hierarchical thinking for the past 40 years. Jim left us with the thought that the question we should be asking ourselves is ‘Does it improve people’s lives?’, not, ‘Does it generate money?’. (Fifth image in my gallery, depicting some alternative metaphors for education such as ‘weaving a story’.)
16:20: Harmonising National Copyright Exceptions To Build A Global Body Of Open Educational Resources With The Code Of Best Practices In Fair Use For OER | Will Cross, Meredith Jacob, Peter Jaszi and Prue Adler Possible winner of longest session title. This was a positive and reassuring discussion on copyright, in particular fair use rights. They noted that the method of linking out to copyrighted material may seem the legally safer option, but it creates unnecessary barriers for students accessing resources.
17:00: Crystallizing An Academic: Domains For Open Thinking | Helen DeWaard
Helen discussed the process of blogging and what she has gotten out of sharing the messiness inherent in the production of a PhD thesis – a refreshing take when we typically only get to see the finished, polished results! She talked about writing as a way of crystallising her learning, which struck a chord because that’s largely why I write my blog. (Sixth image in my gallery, an example of how Helen uses writing to crystallise her thoughts.)
17:30: 25 Years Of Ed Tech: Giving Voice and Conversation To The Community Or That Open Resource Sure Has Legs! | Clint Lalonde, Laura Pasquini and Martin Weller
This was the ‘most alternative’ session format today, a live chat on Discord while Clint was recording a podcast episode for the series 25 Years of EdTech, based on Martin Wheeler’s book of the same name. This type of remixing of the book has been made possible because Martin chose to publish it under a Creative Commons license.
18:00: Day 1 Keynote | Laura Gibbs
At 6 PM, after a day absolutely full to the brim, we came to the first keynote address! Laura discussed her experiences as an educator over the past 20 years using a randomised slide deck for prompts – a really interesting, not to mention brave approach! Laura teaches on various humanities online courses for the University of Oklahoma, with particular interests in mythology and folklore. Her talk was passionate and inspiring. She discussed how, teaching online courses only, she never gets to meet her students in person, but feels connected to them via the blogs and websites she has them create. Laura also, wonderfully, talked about how and why she has never used a VLE, and never given a student a grade! Much of Laura’s own work, including a teaching guide exploring her methods, can be found on her website: Drabbles.
