Social media and CPD

I was invited to spend a few months working on the #LTHEchat organising team early in Spring this year, if you have not yet joined one of the Wednesday evening chats you might find this information about the project useful.

Once fairly sceptical about the value of Twitter chats the experience has had an increasing impact on me during and beyond my time on the organising team. I don't really feel like I left I still feel part of the project team and I think that is partly due to the open and warm attitude of Sue and Chrissi who have been making this happen but do not take ownership in the traditional way - it is a thing that runs and runs with a different organising team every few months with minimal management by Sue and Chrissi who are keen to see it sustain but also keen to let others evolve it during their time at the helm - a great example of distributing and sharing ownership.

Some of the organising team, past and present, have been working on a short paper for the #SocMedHE16 The Empowered Learner? Conference on16th December 2016. We are due to have a Skype meeting this afternoon to discuss the peer review revisions and make some progress on revising the paper by collaborative writing in Google docs hence I woke in reflective mode this morning and need to put my thoughts down on e-paper to bring some coherence to them.

#LTHEchat has undeniably extended my professional network, one example of that is new contact between myself and Martina we were both in the 08 June LTHE chat which was on open CPD  The Storify of that chat can be found here. Martina read my latest ramblings on my blog and suggested we meet to discuss our research ideas. I had read Martina's profile and was contemplating making contact when she suggested this - we planned to meet in Skype and had a fascinating discussion about approaches to learning, in particular Deleuze and rhizomatic learning. Our  meeting prompted me to rethink about the nature of CPD - a question that is at the heart of the paper we are working on.

 I put this question to Martina in Skype this morning - 'Are we doing networking, are we doing autonomous CPD, are we disseminating and evaluating our research ideas - are we doing all three?'.

In my opinion CPD does not need to be a formal 'training', 'conference' or 'seminar' type event, it can be any opportunity to learn new information or to gain insights into others ideas that are of value to my professional practice and research activity. Twitter is currently my most important portal to CPD opportunities.

There is plenty of evidence that participants value the LTHE chat but in Twitter the limited characters are also a limit on how much info people feedback.

 Unless you use Twitter a lot the tiny micro snippets of participation can seem a bit limiting but that can also be stimulating too - gathering feedback via questionnaires is notorious for low returns, the task can be onerous whereas a quick tweet takes only moments to do.

When I first started using Twitter I was not impressed, aware of the need to immerse in, and play with, new things before value becomes clear I persevered but it was not until I had sent around 700 tweets / retweets that it really started to feel like a homey and valuable experience. Tweets do limit what can be said, OK you can link a series of Tweets to build a paragraph of contribution but it is still a set of bytes of info. The micro nature of contributions are also empowering as they force succinct and concise conversations, I now find that most times I rattle off a Tweet I am within a few characters of the limit by the time I have said what I want to say. I am looking forward to the day when Twitter start excluding links and images from the character count though as that does currently reduce some tweets to just a few words.

I had participated in a few chats, such as the #Edenchat prior to joining the LTHE organising team  but mostly as what Wenger called a 'lurker' or legitimate peripheral participant'. The micro contributions tend to prompt a rapid fire discussion, can be hard to keep up with and often require an intuitive interpretation of input in a way that sometimes feels not unlike when I was learning Spanish and to gain the fuller meaning had to fill in beyond the few words of each sentence that I could decode in a f2f conversation. If I pause to think about and write a contribution 30 or more posts can be added by time my two-penneth makes it to the chat but the Storify is always available afterwards so I can catch up later.

 I can see how it could be difficult convincing a peer reviewer who is not a Tweeter that such comments as the one from David above are sufficient endorsement of the value of what we do but to a Twitter user that kind of post is a strong endorsement.

This post has focused mostly on Twitter but my reason for writing it was also to help me understand why I blog - who am I writing for? My first attempt at blogging was way back when WordPress was first released when Stephen Powell and Pete Bradshaw and I had a little play with the new thing that was interesting but did not go far. My second and third blogs were about my transition to living in Galicia and that made more sense to me - it was a record of a period in my family's history.

This blog was started as a reflective research journal, I had attempted to create an offline private to me research journal long ago but never managed to sustain it. Myself as audience did not seem of much value, after all research has little value unless shared. Some of my posts have been directly addressed to my students so its purpose evolved but they were still also me articulating things I had found out through inquiry based practice. I have not looked too far into my audience but do notice spikes where usually around 60-120 hits across America or Europe or the far East happen in maybe 30 minutes which suggests people somewhere are pointing students at it. That initially tempted me to develop it for an audience but I decided to keep it as a research journal so I would not lose sight of my aims. As such I feel free to ramble my thoughts as I am doing in this post, that helps me consolidate them without feeling I need to formalise structure as for a journal article.

The first online community I belonged to was the OU PGCE course back in 1996 which was a closed community, then I joined Leonie Ramondt's 'Online Learning Network' community which was her MPhil research focus. That led to an invite to join the Ultralab where most of my first forays into designing and facilitating online community work was in closed communities. The diagram below is from a recent presentation about the Talking Heads / NPQH project run by The Ultralab for the National College of School Leadership. A double click on the next two images should open them in original and sharp size.

CPD for existing and new headteachers was at the heart of that project which was way back 2001/2 when open social media was not a big thing. The importance of knowing the audience was felt to be high at that time partly to give users confidence to contribute and also as protection when potentially sensitive info might be discussed. The CPD communities were carefully structured and facilitated.

That was so different to the open CPD that social media provides via blogs, Tweets, video talks, live streams etc. One of the threads in the LTHEchat on open CPD shows the value of closed is still appreciated. A few posts are shown below the whole can be seen in the Storify linked earlier on this page. There were more than a few posts about the positive aspects of open although only one is shown here.

The last one by Martina is exactly what we found in the Talking heads project and in several other Ultralab projects such as the British Thoracic society SpRIte project, the notschool project and the Ultraversity project although the latter does draw on both closed and open communities of practice. 

So back to what to do to respond to the peer review on our paper proposal. IMO we need a more systematic approach such as an analysis with an a priori coding being applied to understand the chat process and what participants get out of it or we could use a process where chat organisers reflect on their own experiences and then we systematically analyse those reflections. In both approaches the use of theoretical deduction to understand empirical data and derive some themes that could be illustrated by tweet chat extracts in the paper would add rigour to out proposal. I also suggest an extract of a video screen capture of a live chat as a means of conveying the experience to the conference audience.

Time to stop rambling, I have to get on with teaching. Even though there is no conclusion to pull this together yet I feel I am more prepared for inputting ideas into the paper proposal.

Literature safari

Some thoughts on reading for Anglia Ruskin BA LTR students. 

Critical engagement with sources and reading beyond the provided list is essential for good marks. Spending an hour on a literature hunt safari trip round the web can throw up all sorts of useful gems. 

The Anglia Ruskin Library has an excellent search engine, I find plenty of sources via the quick search, the advanced search can also be useful in helping to define finer filters for your searches.

I am finding a lot of good sources via Google Scholar - it is way better than a straight Google search. You should all read up on the Hawthorne effect, you need to be aware of the influence of presence during interviews or other practical aspects of research you are doing this year. Compare the results from a  standard Google search, which is useful for basic introduction to the Hawthorne effect, with those from a Google Scholar search that brings up sources you can use for a deeper level critical engagement.

If you come across a publisher's page where they are asking for money to view a paper there will often also be an option to log in via your institution and a drop down menu or two through which you can select Anglia Ruskin if they subscribe to that publisher. That will then take you to the Anglia online library where you log in with your usual student details then get to see or download the whole paper. You can also change your settings in Google Scholar to show direct links for articles by publishers that the library subscribe to - there is a link to screenshots and video guide on that here http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/ebooks/scholar.htm

I have also found some gems via Twitter, don't forget you can use blogs and websites as citeable sources. A link to a diagram from this one was posted on Twitter recently, it is a good example of an academic blog and the rest of that page is really useful for my study as it links pattern language to cognitive rich learning culture and has hints of variety analysis. I noticed some interesting​ stuff in the right hand navigation, there is a link to a post on classifying communities of practice that you might be able to use. On blogs like that you will find thoughts about other authors ideas, thoughts about concepts being assembled towards formal publications, sometimes reflections on daily practice or eureka moments being shared. As with any social media you do need to be careful to filter out misleading or weak sources.

Citing references should be fairly pervasive in your assignments although with a patchwork text and media approach you might not do that in every patch. The stitching is a good place to bring in concepts like learning cycles, reflective practice, critical incident theory, online communities, collaborative and collective learning, organisational learning, people like Schon, Argyris, Senge, Wenger, Talbot. Don't forget you have accumulated a significant range of literature over the last 2 1/2 years and should make good use of any that appears relevant to your current modules. 

Deconstructive analysis and the comparing and contrasting  of ideas from a range of sources is one aspect of critical review, you should also remember to consider currency and relevance. Sources published more than 5 years ago can be a little out of date by now depending on their topic and context. Technologies have evolved rapidly and that has prompted all sorts of new ideas about learning and pedagogy. It is not so long ago since we were living in a pre tablet era, a little further back and there were no smart phones, no Facebook or Twitter. 15 years back domestic ownership of digital devices was a small fraction of what it is today, many parents only had access to computers at work and many children only met them via the one class computer and maybe a shared computer suite if they were lucky. Many computers back then would have been fairly primitive and useable online connections were just starting to have a presence - sources 5-15 years old can still have relevance but take care to consider their temporal context. 

Many older sources pre 2000 or even going back 50 or more years can also still have relevance, the best of these may be seminal works that were highly influential in their day and whose influence continues today. Again the temporal context needs to be considered, approaches to research have changed, some seminal works are based on methods that would be seen as weak today. Assumptions about good teaching practice could be way out of date - instructivist show and tell lectures or classroom strategies have long since been superseded as mainstream strategies but can still have a place as part of a rich and diverse set of teaching strategies. Conversely 'new' concepts such as the 'flipped classroom' may only be new takes on old stalwarts. Technologies have enabled new ways of achieving that flip but the strategy of pupils or students doing learning at home and then applying it in practical activities in the class or lecture room is far from new. 

Notes from a 2009 presentation on Ultraversity.

Notes from a workshop presented to Anglia Ruskin Faculty of Education in 2009 on the Ultraversity approach to Personalised Learning.

 Personalised Learning is a tricky beast to talk about as it means very different things to different people. For the purposes of this workshop the term 'personalisation' will be used to indicate the process through which individuals learning together in a diverse group adapt their approaches within the constraints of their work context to achieve the same learning outcomes. This discussion describes aspects of the Ultraversity approach to designing a cohesive curriculum that enables this process.

 Since 2003 we have used a cohort team delivery model where a team of facilitators take the lead role in supporting the development of a cohort throughout the three years they are with us. The implications of this for our practice are that each and every one on the pathway has to become adept at delivering every module and assessing every module. The benefits we hoped this would provide for the students and the facilitators include the development of deep and trusting relationships and a sense of continuity and stability for the students while providing richness through the range of skills and perspectives of exposure from the contrasting viewpoints of a team of academic researchers.  Many of the students keep in touch with their facilitators after graduation and this provides an opportunity for long term data collection and the evaluation of impact beyond delivery. A few days prior to this workshop I received an unexpected mail from a recent graduate who shared her experiences of a potentially stressful interview for a place on a Masters course.....
 Hi Ian, hope you are enjoying the spanish sun.
Just thought I'd drop you a post to say my Speech and language masters interview went really well on the 1st. We had a short written piece, role play, critical reflection on a video clip and individual interviews.
I got so carried away talking about theory Dr. Wilson (lecturer) lent me a book which he thought I'd enjoy! I just hope they didn't have a headache post interview.The knowledge and understanding I'd acquired through my degree was so relevant that I was "singing" all the way through. It didn't feel like an interview at all! I didn't want to leave!
In the second year there is a research project to be undertaken and action research is an option. I nearly fell off my chair with happiness: )
I was so better prepared than some of the other applicants and I needed to be as there were nearly 400 applicants, 100 got interviews and only 22 places. So I've done pretty well already.
Keeping everything crossed now, should find out my fate in a couple of weeks.
I think the reality of what I can achieve is really kicking in now, especially the habit of picking apart every experience I encounter. I never fully realised how infinately relevant these modules were. I now realise why our facilitators made us work for the answers.
Wishing you and your family well.Love Kate x
"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not".  ~Author Unknown
PS. My last thought on leaving the Uni. was "I wish my Clanger mates ( Kate's learning set ) were with me now...they would love this".
Lifelong learning and lifelong friends! 

Kate was a support teacher working with autistic spectrum 5-7 year olds, and was interested in work focused learning she studied in an online community alongside:

 A handful of TAs
1 University administrator
1 building projects manager in Spain
1 swimming instructor
 Several librarians
Several other students in a range of equally diverse work contexts.

What did Kate say to these people; what was their common ground; what did they learn together - how did they learn together?

 

The Ultraversity project provides access to formal accreditation through a BA honours pathway that is delivered fully online with no face-to-face contact between staff and students or between students and students. Everything they said to each other was communicated through internet enabled technologies. The dominant approach to communication is one where students have high visibility in online conferences that are presented as communal mail boxes. Messages are threaded and personalised fonts and colours enable voices to be easily discerned. Voice recordings are integrated into the communications system.
The curriculum design locates a significant proportion of study in work-focused experiences so enabling students to remain in full time employment while they study.
 Learners are required to act together to support each other in an online community of inquiry exhibiting the characteristics of a Community of Practice (COP); see Wenger (1999). This is not just another online space where students can talk to each other and the course tutors; it is a carefully facilitated scholarly community. Tutors encourage socialising as a means of bonding and developing trust, we also model and encourage high level dialogue – particularly critical reflection amongst peers on each others' work in progress. Many of the modules require evidence of participation in this process to meet learning outcomes. 

Like the other students, at the start of each module Kate discussed her own ideas for how she would approach the module, she then presented an individual learning plan to her learning facilitator who reviewed, negotiated and validated the plan. Kate went on to discuss what she found in her literature search and strategies for reviewing and writing up her literature review. Locating these discussions in a COP exposes all students to a wealth of literature and encourages autonomous searching for contemporary and seminal sources. Kate provided regular updates as to her experiential learning and what she was discovering by applying theory to practice. The students compared and commented on each others' experiences. They offered new ideas, collaborated on problem solving, argued about meaning, agreed or agreed to differ and consolidated personal epistemological understanding. They explored methodologies and associated methods, reviewed each others' interpretation of data and discussed validity of findings in the light of the small-scale and contextualised nature of their research. They supported each other when life work or study presented unexpected difficulties. They worked and studied together to develop the personal and professional characteristics that the project aims set out.

Initial project aims (taken from validation documentation)Develop the student as a critically reflective problem solver who is able to take effective action for improvement within their work-context as a part of their ongoing studies:

1.  To develop a personal philosophy of learning that includes the use of technology and research and relates to their own work setting
2.  To acquire the ability to analyse and synthesise knowledge of practice so as to solve practical problems and situations
3.  To maintain a flexible approach to change as a participant, and awareness of their own power to influence change
4.  To appreciate the enriching nature of working collaboratively in communities of inquiry that share insights and perspectives
5.  To develop a continuing concern for their own professional development and the appropriate strategies to achieve this
6.  To provide an appropriate foundation in professional and technical understanding, and knowledge and skills on which they can build through continuous professional development
7.  To develop the skills of action inquiry as an enduring capacity for lifelong learning and improvement in the workplace

 (Ultralab, 2003)

The 2008  HEA report into Workforce Development highlights a potential difficulty for higher educational institutions (HEI's) when working on employer-led learning initiatives by drawing a distinction between professional training and professional education where:
  "There will be an emphasis upon higher level skills that embody the essence of higher education - for example, reflection, analysis, problem solving, creativity, evaluation, and an open-endedness about what emerges from the learning" (HEA, 2008)
There is a strong alignment between the HEA statement and the Ultraversity initial project aims above - although this presentation does not have the scope to explore how we build in opportunities for creative expression, creative use of technology, creative approaches to action planning and to constructing assessment products I can confirm that we do do creativity too and open-endedness is an intrinsic concept - as Kate indicated in her email she perceives herself as a lifetime learner with life-time friends - we also see that the inquiries used for module work go on and on beyond the closure of the module.  It seems to us that we have captured the essence of HE and that we instil in many of our students a zest for lifetime learning and key skills for their life beyond the course.

Kate mailed me a week later...They have offered me a place so I'm well and truly "in". One of the lecturers made the journey into my school and told me I was "top of the pile" and I gave her a big hug and promptly burst into tears.

I am so pleased and relieved I can't tell you. I owe you guys so much.

My dear headmaster said that when I finish in 2011 the first thing I must do is pick up the phone as he wants me back. We shook on it and it is the first thing I shall do.

The curriculum requires graduates to have:

1. Developed a deep understanding of their work place and their role.
2. Become adept at applying theoretical knowledge to solve problems and improve practice.
3. Become competent and self-confident contributors to the organisation.
What kind of problems do they solve ?

in the voice of the students -  Third sector – Project leader in New Media Design and Development Unit
    I wanted to carry out an inquiry that would have some impact and benefit on the work that I do, and also involve my blind and partially sighted colleagues...it was designed to investigate how I could improve the product evaluation process for blind and partially sighted colleagues."

Nursery School - Manager 
 My aim was to look into how I could implement a better system of working with parents, using accessible homemade activities, which would not only help and reinforce their role as the baby`s prime educator but also create working links between home and Nursery”

School - Office Manger
The aim of the project centred on finding out whether the process of two-way communication flow between classroom-based staff and office staff is efficient, and if not, to investigate ways and means to effect an improvement.

Primary School  Administrator     ...existing culture in school for Teaching Assistants seemed to me to be that of the underdog... there was an underlying theme of being undervalued. As a consequence morale was low... from previous research I found that Teaching Assistants on the whole felt undervalued and not part of the ‘team’. Lack of communication seemed to be a recurring gripe, almost a feeling of being excluded"

Analysis of final project foci 

Table 1.
Final project submissions of 325 students (the first 6 cohorts) were examined to identify the focus of their inquiries. What we see is 9 broad areas of work context and 18 inquiry topic areas. 261students worked in schools or college; these include roles such as librarians, TAs, administrators and  lunchtime supervisors so still very different roles within the organisation. 
A brief insight into how one student approached action for improvement.
This student works as an administrator in a primary school setting with expanding staff numbers.

1. Reconnaissance and reflection

An evaluation of the workplace uncovered a range of potential inquiry contexts.

“Lack of information regarding – staff structure and responsibilities, school policies and resource areas”

2. Identifying an inquiry focus and research questions

Further evaluation focusing on the Teaching Assistants uncovered an area in need of improvement suitable as a focus for an action inquiry.

The key area identified though was the lack of communication between the rest of the school and the Teaching Assistants…
…The existing culture in school for Teaching Assistants seemed to me to be that of the underdog... there was an underlying theme of being undervalued. As a consequence morale was low – this had become more apparent with an increase in staff from just 2 Teaching Assistants 4 years ago to a total of 11 Teaching Assistants now. From my research I found that Teaching Assistants on the whole felt undervalued and not part of the ‘team’. Lack of communication seemed to be a recurring gripe, almost a feeling of being excluded.

3. Identify learning/research activities that lead to the development, implementation, and evaluation of an action for improvement


An inclusive and iterative approach was used to explore the impact of change.

I used the cyclical process of action research (Kemmis and Wilkinson 1998) plan – do – review. This provided me with scope to conduct my research over 3 cycles…Improvement and involvement are central to action research. Collaboration between researchers and those who are the focus of the research, and their participation in the process, are seen as central to action research. This relationship fits well with the approach of flexible, qualitative design.

4. Implement the plan and take action

The cycles of inquiry focused on investigating how communication within the school could be developed for Teaching Assistants. A set of strategies for improvement was introduced and a positive impact was provoked.

 By introducing a point of contact, holding regular weekly meetings, passing on information about school events, having a proper induction process for new employees, even giving Teaching Assistants the opportunity to all hold First Aid certificates has empowered them enough to feel more useful. They now feel more valued by the school which has gone some way to raising morale.

5. Share selected parts of the inquiry with fellow learners for critical feedback
The student shared plans and invited critical feedback…

I chose to present activity 3 to my fellow researchers  whose critical feedback forced me to rethink my impact study. Had I only considered the evaluation issue in my defence? I struggled during this module to put my ideas into the correct ‘category’, and subsequently had included my thoughts on reliability of data into activity 1 and now see that this is part of my defence and should be incorporated here. I defended the reason for exhibiting twice and included this because it has impacted on me and other people’s attitudes towards me in school. By including criticism from my exhibition this led me to reflect on changes that had happened to me in school, I think, as a result of my heightened profile.

6. Construct a final account that identifies learning in relation to module intended learning outcomes

In the final account the student describes how her research has introduced significant change and developed her role within her workplace.

In the past I have felt that I am only a small cog in this great wheel that is this educational establishment, but my efforts so far have changed procedures, developed communication, raised morale and formed a cohesive group which offers support to each other. What began as a small idea has now become a set order where the Headteacher does not want to ‘lose the impetus’. My research area has developed my school role beyond what was first perceived as my role as school administrator.
The research activity has also resulted in new responsibilities being offered and professional recognition by the workplace.
As a consequence of my research the Headteacher has asked me to look into co-ordinating the Investors in People project for our school this year. He has seen the value of my research and how successfully and professionally I have approached it and I think that this has had an impact on him in that he feels I will be able to successfully steer the school through the Investors in People programme.

The whole experience provoked a significant level of personal satisfaction for the student.

I now have extra responsibility for the Teaching Assistants and I see the cohesion of this group as my doing, which gives me a lot of satisfaction. By empowering Teaching Assistants with knowledge, they feel more valued, indeed one member of teaching staff has said that the Teaching Assistants seems to know more about school events than she does.

BA LTR course aims, elements and impact.

The BA LTR course arose out of the Ultraversity project in 2003. It places the workplace as the key context of study, students focus on developing professional expertise relevant to their current workplace role and acquiring further skills that provide a platform from which to achieve career progression and / or access to post-graduate learning.

 Students learn about research strategies and apply them in the workplace to evaluate and enhance their practice. They explore entrepreneurship by prototyping new uses of technologies and exploring the design and management of innovations to personal and workplace practice. The course aims to develop students as adept 'knowledge workers', effective practitioners who are also critically reflective agents of change, able to manage their own learning and professional development, to generate new knowledge and contribute to organisational development within and beyond their own workplace. See Kamtsiou et al. (2007, pp, 7-12).


Summary of key aims of the BA LTR course:

1. To develop a personal philosophy of learning, the use of technology and research which relates to their own work setting
2. To acquire the ability to analyse and synthesise knowledge of practice so as to solve practical problems and situations
3. To maintain a flexible approach to change as a participant, and awareness of their own power to influence change
4. To appreciate the enriching nature of working collaboratively in communities of inquiry that share insights and perspectives
5. To develop a continuing concern for their own professional development and the appropriate strategies to achieve this
6. To provide an appropriate foundation in professional and technical understanding, and knowledge and skills on which they can build through continuous professional development
7. To develop the skills of action inquiry as an enduring capacity for lifelong learning and improvement in the workplace
8. Develop the capacity to communicate to a wider audience.

Key components include:

Learning that is process rather than topic driven. This places the acquisition and application of strategies for research and professional development at the heart of the course so allowing significant personalisation of learning by individuals. Typically in each module, theory is initially explored through a critical review of literature, then by practical application of the theory in the workplace followed by further review of the effectiveness and impact of this experiential learning. This provides students with significant expertise in applying professional processes for personal and organisational development; key skills that have proved attractive to employees when students start looking for employment progression. The approach also maximises the diversity of workplaces the course is relevant to and consequently the potential range of students that might be attracted to it.

Reflective Practice and Action Inquiry are core approaches that students find valuable and adopt as life-long and life-wide strategies as implied in this comment from a student:

"BA LTR has opened up a spirit of inquiry within the cohort and made individuals challenge their use of technology. It is curiosity and a willingness to experiment that will lead to change. If teachers do not experiment with, or try and work with, technology then they will never ever get close to being in a position to grasp its fitness for purpose and therefore the potential to add value to learning using technology in and outside the classroom.”

Professional Development Planning. A review of workplace competences in the first semester enables students to identify appropriate professional development targets that can be met through personalising course study foci. Professional development progression is reviewed annually using a reflective process to ensure effective integration of work-based learning needs into the individual program of study. This key theme culminates with a focused module in the final semester where students develop a systematic approach to preparing for future employment and further learning. They review their progress and create a graduate skills portfolio that evidences achievement and shows how they plan to further develop their work-based and academic skills. During this final module they also develop an evidence based impact study that shows how their activity had impacted on self, colleagues and the wider workplace. 

Flexible learning design. This is achieved in part by placing variety / flexibility within one fixed set of modules rather than achieving it via students selecting from a bank of modules. This requires negotiation of study focus between student and tutor to ensure personalisation of study is appropriate to meet the learning outcomes of any one module. This is achieved via module specific individual learning contracts or research proposals. The approach emerged from a cybernetic analysis of traditional learning design using Beer's (1985) viable systems analysis. The distribution of variety is shown in this diagram taken from a recent EdD paper:

This variety analysis approach was also applied to reduce complexity of module resources by breaking down the activities into a range of smaller patches that accumulate over the semester. These patches are 'stitched' together via a concluding self assessment of meta-learning in the form of a retrospective analytical commentary on the learning activities carried out in each patch. With work based study courses it is also important to allow some flexibility in the pace of study within a module as students may be faced with unexpected changes to their workflow that interrupt study. An insight into strategies for this can be read here.

Technology enhanced learning. Developing significant expertise in using current and emerging digital technologies is a key theme that is integrated throughout the course. Students learn how to locate, filter and retrieve online information - a key skill for today's learners and one that is critical to developing a professional knowledge base. The ability to 'locate, learn from and contribute to' relevant professional networks is another essential skill they develop; this enables them to participate in the knowledge society. 

Digital technologies are progressing at a rate that many workplaces find difficult to keep up with; they have become an essential professional tool and the progression is likely to continue with technologies becoming more ambient and all pervasive, figure 13 on this post summarises some potential medium and longer term developments as identified by the TELMap group at a meeting in Brussels 2013. 

Prestridge (2012), Wastiau et al. (2013), Donohue (2015) and Wheeler (2015), show there is a pressing need to deal with this complexity and discuss the value of integrating ICT skills development into learning systems. They and many others point out the need for adequate teacher competence, in particular the need for teachers to be able to make appropriate decisions about what, when and how to use ICT. Beetham, McGill and Littlejohn (2009) and Beetham and Sharpe (2010) argue that in the modern digital or knowledge society there is a need for all of society to develop strategies to handle the complexity of information and to incorporate emerging technologies into both life and learning. Over recent decades the provision of free at source social media has resulted in students and the wider public being able to progress from consuming media to creating and publishing their own media, Carneiro (2010) suggested that ICT enhanced learning requires new theories as the learning possibilities are more complex than those encapsulated by traditional theories such as behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism. He offered the term ‘Generativism’ the ongoing derivation of new meaning through sense-making from experience and a shared body of knowledge. Students on the BA LTR course will recognise all of these concepts as part of their learning landscape.

Social learning and communities of practice.  The one-to-many and many-to-many opportunities provided by structured social discourse in online community software is critical to the success of this model. This evolved from the traditional distance learning model where a tutor would speak separately, but less frequently, to each individual and so often end up repeating the same message many times. 
The course deploys a largely asynchronous approach to course discussion, this is initially located in institutionally provided software but students often go on to self organise supplemental communities in a range of social media. The core communities are collaborative online communities of practice and inquiry with the module foci as the practice at the heart of the community and facilitated discussion as the glue that bonds the communities. The integration of community of Inquiry and Community of Practice concepts (Wenger )is discussed here.

Constructive alignment in review and feedback. In order to attain high level marks it is important that students are able to use constructive alignment strategies to self assess their work in progress against module expectations, module specific assessment criteria and generic standards of scholarly practice. The development of self assessment skills is supported by the facilitated peer review process where students are encouraged to offer objective and constructive commentary of draft work in the spirit of critical friendship. Although this is often done in text tutors model use of other approaches that can encourage students to develop more advanced strategies. 

Student comment on tutor use of audio feedback:

"I think it is fantastic that you use voice recordings as well as written feedback, it really enabled me to understand the context in which you were giving the information. It also gave me the ability to 'sense' whether I was on the right track or not."

Student comment on their own experience of peer review via audio:

“…we inadvertently stumbled upon gold when we decided to do it [peer assessment] using audio because immediately you could sense the hesitation in the voice of your critic, 'the humanness of the medium' was the phrase that I used whereas text can be very harsh because it has no tone no intonation its not organic. I think one of the reasons why video wasn't used for me is self consciousness, its nothing more not even vanity, you can see a lot in a voice…”

 As students progress through the course the peer feedback approach becomes a critical feedback loop with detailed discussions emerging via review and response to review. Tutors model and monitor this process and ensure that review comments are aligned with relevant criteria. The same criteria referenced constructive alignment is used by tutors when providing formative feedback on draft work and along with end of module summative feedback. The final module requires the construction of an impact study which is critically reviewed by peers. In this there is an element of presentation and defence of learning that is akin to the viva that concludes doctoral studies.

Assessment by online portfolio. Assessment of media rich portfolios amplifies the potential for students to express themselves creatively by using a range of digital literacies. Although a proportion of formal writing is required, students are encouraged to use alternative genre and range of appropriate media to present aspects of their assessment products. A portfolio will typically contain Word or PDF documents, PowerPoint, Prezi or other presentation files, academic posters, video and/or animations. Students are encouraged to explore the potential of hardware and software that is in use in their own workplace as well as emerging technologies that could be of use to support their study needs and may have future relevance in the workplace. All work for assessment has to be uploaded to the student's secure and private portfolio. It has to be made available in formats that can be readily accessed by the assessors, appropriate choice of file types is discussed and agreed during semester; compatibility testing of recently emerged technologies is also done during semester if needed. Given the university requirement for date stamping the submission, any work hosted live on the internet, such as on personal web-sites, is not accepted for assessment. 

Dissemination of learning processes and research findings in the workplace. The course embraces the concept of individuals being able to contribute to organisational learning no matter what level they are at within the organisational hierarchy. Students learn how to design small-scale practical research projects using action inquiry, Reflective practice or case study approaches to identify and implement changes for improvement of personal and/or organisational practice. Others in the workplace are often involved in this aspect of study via consultation, participation, as mentors or via workplace advocacy. Many students have found that they gain increased recognition and respect in their workplace quite early in the course. it is not unusual for this to result in increased responsibilities or even internal promotion during the first or second year of study.

 It can be argued that the research process is not completed until it is shared with a critical audience. In their final year students plan a dissemination event where the process and findings of their major project are shared with a small and carefully selected workplace audience who are invited to provide critical feedback. This event can lead to significant impact both on the recognition of the professional abilities of the student and in contributing to learning and change within the organisation. It is also not unusual for students to report that they have been subsequently asked to demonstrate and share their media skills with colleagues, line managers or even organisational leaders. This comment came from a Teaching Assistant:

 “My Deputy Head delivers several training courses at a School training centre. Following my dissemination event she asked me to look at her presentation on ‘Visual Supports.’ She stated that my PowerPoint had made a powerful impact and that the images were strong. I worked with my Deputy Head showing her how to adapt slides according to the theory I had learned and applied to my presentation. She then finished the presentation and forwarded to me for my thoughts.”

An insight into student perspectives on the impact of the course can be gained via this selection of student comments that have been aggregated here.

References.

Beer, S., 1985. Diagnosing The System for Organisations. John Wiley, London and New York, NY.

Bradshaw, P., Powell, S. and Terrell, I., 2005. Developing engagement in online community of inquiry: lessons for higher education. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 205-15.

Carneiro, R., 2010. Spotlight Topic 3. Open Educational Practices and Generativism. Universidade Catolica Portuguesa. Slideshow Available at: [http:// cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/3827] 

Donohue, C., 2014. Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years: Tools for Teaching and Learning. Routledge, e-book

Millwood, R., Powell, S. and Tindal, I., 2008a. Personalised learning and the Ultraversity experience. Interactive Learning Environments, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 63-81.

Millwood, R., Powell, S. and Tindal, I., 2008b. Developing technology-enhanced, work-focused learning – a pattern language approach. Proceedings for TSSOL 2008, Technology Support for Self-Organised Learners. Austria. pp. 84-105.

Prestridge, S., 2012. The beliefs behind the teacher that influences their ICT practices. Computers & Education, 58, pp.449–458.

Wastiau, P., Blamire, R., Kearney, C., Quittre, V., Van de Gaer, E. and Monseur, C. 2013. The Use of ICT in Education: a survey of schools in Europe. European Journal of Education.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. and Snyder, W., 2006. Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. 

Wheeler, S., 2015. Learning with ‘e’s: educational theory and practice in the digital age. Crown House Publishing.

Minecraft imagination and collaboration.

I have seen a few tweets about use of Minecraft in school some people seemed less that keen, here is why I would use it.

I had a lovely insight into collaboration via Minecraft not long ago there were four children in the house and not sure how many elsewhere connected online maybe 4-6 others. Aged 8-13 ish as far as I could tell. They were using desktops, tablets and a range of smaller smart devices. They were communicating via f2f, text chats and VOIP.  It was a Saturday and I was working but kept being drawn into their dialogue and being shown what was going on. They played for several hours journeying in and out of each other's worlds. 

To me it seemed like a great opportunity for them to show off / enthuse about / explain what they had made. It is important for self-esteem to display to others the things you are proud of creating. There is a lot of trust involved if you decide to unlock a world for collaboration as friends can then destroy anything you have made. To them that offer of trust was no big deal, it was just a thing they do. A great demonstration of friendship and trust with an undercurrent of adherence to moral values. All characteristics we want children to absorb via life in school.

I saw impressive self organisation of teamwork / use of informal democratic processes for deciding what to make, what to destroy, how to improve what exists, praise was offered where praise was due and there was occasionally a sort of humorous ragging along with helpful suggestions about things that were seen as less than good. Defences were mounted as to why those things were the way they were and the rationale was then understood and often agreed by peers or they joined in developing improvements. From my perspective it had all of the characteristics of an outstanding community of inquiry in action.

Amongst what I saw was a towering tree that appeared to be hundreds of meters high with a very imaginative and well kitted out multi-story treehouse. Peers were impressed, one went off to build one in his world, another suggested "What about we make a roller-coaster to get down from it?" A cantilevered extension was built, a roller-coaster with loops and twists was constructed, it became a sightseeing tour with a negotiated route that included several passes round a massive castle, a jungle treetop excursion and a 360 degree horizontal loop round a farm full or cubic animals. The castle was extended to include an arch over the roller-coaster track that turned into a tunnel. A sightseeing trip through the castle included what appeared to be hundreds of rooms, some full of treasures or massive feasting tables. Long dark steps led down to what I expected to be the dungeons but was a 'man den' that included a 'secret' cinema and gaming complex and an underground lake.

Most seemed to have built castles, forests, lakes, islands, farms, there were partially constructed places they would like in the real world - the inside and outside of "a brilliant school", a variation on our local park, ideal homes and great little villages, the detail and imaginative thinking was quite spectacular. Many had added logos such as giant Batman or Superman symbols, there were 3D constructions or bass reliefs of characters from shows like Sponge Bob, or their favourite superheroes/villains, giant King Kong like gateways and imaginative follies. There were several worlds with pyramids and one pretty good Sphinx. There were no cities, skyscrapers, motorways or other things that belong in the densely populated areas of our real world but then they live in a tiny rural village in Cornwall and Minecraft seems to have no limits on space so there was no need or interest in creating overcrowded places. I am sure city children could have fun imagining improvements to the environment they are used to inhabiting.

I could go on and on and on about what was there but hopefully that is enough of an idea. If I were still working in KS2 I would want a class world in which to let their imaginations run free, in which to develop sharing and caring and collaboration and all the other rich and positive characteristics that define a wonderful class team.  Lego is a wonderful tool but unless you have unlimited budget and space it has to be dismantled and put away. Minecraft offers the opportunity to create a long term world with huge dimensions, possible and impossible creations and deep engagement in independent or social construction. As yet there is no shoot em up element and that is a big plus as far as online gaming goes. 

Digital Lego may look a bit weird to an adult who has not lived in its world and it will not appeal to every child or teacher but that could be said of many other activities and resources used regularly in schools. 

Why wouldn't you?

Posters

BA LTR will help you develop creative technology skills, the process of making many kinds of media has become a lot less complex over the last decade and digital photography has become the norm where it once was a rarity. Making a poster using a photograph, and overlaying a text message on it, is something you can do even in the most basic graphics software. At the start of this semester  our new year 1 LTR students will create a poster at the start of their journey.

The first image below might not go so well on touch screen devices as it is a Flash .swf file but the same effect could be done using animated gifs or a slide show file. The aim was to identify and add an appropriate image to go with the text message. This is a skill that is often very useful when working in PowerPoint. It is not unusual to see PowerPoint presentations where clip art or even a seemingly random set of images has been used. This activity is the start of the journey towards developing good media design skills, BA LTR students will study this theme over the three years of the degree by working in a wide range of digital literacies. We always get very positive comments from the external examiners about the standard of digital literacies achieved by our students.   Throughout this post if you click on any image it will open in a larger size. This first is a set of related images that might take a few moments to start rolling through.

This next one was to promote a new course, the course director wanted a simple message along with an image that projected the sense of starting a journey. I have taken the contact details off it as they have changed since it was made.

In each example the images and text relate to each other to reinforce the message. The link between boats setting out at sunrise on a voyage obviously parallels the idea of students setting out on their journey of discovery. The course also had a strong technology theme, the other perhaps less obvious link is to the technology of the boats. When this design of boats was first used  they were a cutting edge technology ideal for purpose and local conditions. To achieve this, innovative solutions were developed to refine technologies that have been around for thousands of years. Every student has access to a range of modern technologies, they are the vehicles that enables the fully online learning journey. Every student finds their own collection of technologies that work for them, they develop creative and sometimes very innovative ways of building their own boat to steer their own course towards the future. It took a fair few words to describe all of that, I could have written many more, maybe even a thousand, far too many to put on a poster. The imagery of a poster is important, it may not always replace a thousand words, but it can be the thing that embeds in memory and provides a hook for retention of the wider message. 

In this one I have tried to link between tangible reality and the reflective world, I though about post processing the holiday snap to bring out the texture and colour of the corner of the pier but I sort of like the reference to black and white against the colourful depths and my shadow down there in reflection world. Are you seeing the world as black and white; immerse yourself in reflection. 

The next snapshot is from a meeting of the TEL MAP cluster in Manchester this September. The aim was mapping the future direction of Technology Enhanced Learning. Vana Kamtsiou is explaining concepts put together by Debbie Holley using sticky notes and Richard Millwood is adding them to the Cmap map. Aesthetically it is not a prime poster image but the content has relevance to the Technology for Dissemination module (T4D) where students will make preparations for a dissemination event that is held in the following semester. The findings from their Work Based Major Project will be shared via a presentation in their workplace.

The image shows two presentation technologies used in parallel, neither is PowerPoint :-)

The students will explore a range of potential technologies and decide on which one or combination will best suit; their competence level; the material they need to show and the needs of their audience.

There are some good examples of using images with text amongst Hamish Scott Brown's introduction sequence on his web site. Hamish worked at the Ultralab and had a lot of input into the Ultraversity learning design as well as being a key part of the facilitation team for many years. He has won prestigious awards as a result of his MA work and in his current work as a professional photographer. The web, TV the outdoor world are good sources of using image and text to convey or promote a message. Look around you for influences, pause and look deeply into the images, think about the elements that have been brought together on posters, banners, on the packaging of products, adorning vehicles, buildings, in shop windows, magazines etc.

This one was for our Wallwisher (now Padlet) wall, the photo was taken from the little ferry that takes people over to St Michael's Mount at Penzance. Hopefully the notion of a journey and of creating solid foundations/building something wonderful are conveyed:

What message will you put on your poster? The process of designing a poster can also be a valuable one for the designer. Immersion in the task helps to deepen engagement with the subject and that can lead to new insights. When you are in the final semester of year 3 and heading towards graduation you will look back at your learning and reflect on the journey. It might be useful to have an initial poster that conveys your future aspirations, you could also reflect on your current skills or any aspect of who you are. Another approach would be to promote a local service or an event in your workplace. Choose a theme and see if you can find a photograph you have taken, or go out and take one, that relates to your message.  If, like Julian, Toby and many other of our students, you decide to try a blog as a learning journal, you could add your poster and share it with others. If you do post it somewhere public please post a comment on the bottom of this post with a link to the location. You might want to keep it less visible in which case it would be a good opening image for a more private reflective learning journal in a Word document.

If you enjoy the activity or can't decide on one theme to focus on your could always do a set of posters, there are many questions you could ask - here is one group:

How am I feeling...
What skills do I have…

What are my choices…

Where do I want to go…