Tag Archives: social networks

Blackboard, Review, VLE platforms

What was (and wasn’t) said in Vegas

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BbWorld was different this year, the second with Jay Bhatt at the helm.  This was most obvious during the main keynote/road map presentation. Gone was the rapid pace, regular clapping, the “cult of Chasen”, Bhatt was noticeably lower key, with some of the audience left waiting for some “killer” new announcement that never came. Indeed, some people who should have known better tweeted that the keynote was simply announcing a repackaging of nothing new. Bhatt undersold himself.

The keynote hid several major changes amongst a wide-ranging discussion about modern society, it’s ills and why the current education system won’t fix it. Needless to say this was delivered though the spectacles of technological-determinism and left me and many other members of the audience feeling a little edgy.

Moving on to the hidden changes, the first was a rebuilding of Blackboard’s wide range of products into a series of bundles. These will differ slightly for the K12, Higher Education and possibly the professional education markets. From my hurried notes during the conference these are:

  • Learning Core – essentially Learn plus the Community System, Content System (including xpLor and portfolios) the social/cloud tools and some form of mobile access.
  • Learning  Essentials – adds Collaborate and possibly some more features from Outcomes
  • Learning Insight – adds Analytics for Learn and also Outcomes for Assessment
  • Learning Insight and Student Retention – not the most imaginative name, nor the clearest definition, this seems to add some extra student retention features to complete the bundle.

More details are available Blackboard’s website.

Why is this important? Well Blackboard has just raised the base offering, essentially when this is rolled out, everyone will have at least the traditional academic suite (the ‘deathly hallows’ of learn, community and content). This should make it easier for the company to support the product (effectively by giving the product catalogue a long overdue haircut) but also much easier for users – the help documentation will finally apply to all users and we can get rid of questions such as ‘do I need the community/portal part for this to work?‘ It should also make user experiences more shareable and transferable. Anything that removes divisions between the user community is a good thing.

Secondly, a new user interface was demonstrated. This was a working prototype, accessing a standard learn database (if such a thing truly exists!) but using node.js to render much of the page content client-side. This makes the interface appear much more responsive and allows Blackboard to match the end-user rendering speed of other solutions such as Canvas. By shifting much of the processing work onto the client side, it also helps the core Blackboard product to become more scalable. The use of client-side just in time rendering also offers the possibility for much better reporting/learning analytics. A problem with building web pages in server memory and then sending them out to the end user is that you never know whether they saw the bottom of the page (or even the middle of a long page). If it is rendered on demand – e.g. in response to the user scrolling down – then we can record the fact that the information was at least actually displayed on screen to a person! In conversations I had with Stephanie Weeks she confirmed that this fact had not been lost on Blackboard either.

This is one of several signs that Blackboard may finally be able to lever their market dominance and vast range of products for the better. Hidden in the programme was a ‘State of the Union’ address by SVP Gary Laing. He began by sharing rather too much of his life story and desire to work with Blackboard to reimagine (re-engineer?) education, but then thankfully he talked about key changes that are occurring behind the scenes. Coming in to the company with fresh eyes he has seen the results of Blackboard’s aggressive takeover and merger approach: multiple product lines, often with a degree of overlap, running on different hardware, often based in different parts of the world, written in different languages by individuals in different teams, often with their own definitions of what should be common terms defined (and hopefully stored) only once – users, departments/schools, institutional roles, term dates, etc. Laing showed us how these teams and products should be rearranged so that features like analytics and mobile feel built in rather than bolted on. He challenged us to think about SMAC – social, mobile, analytics and cloud (note this could be re-arranged as SCAM). These are ideas he wants us all to bring back to our home institutions.

Then, a third Blackboard hosting was offered – as well as self-hosted and Blackboard’s current managed-hosting, there is to be a third multi-tenant option currently referred to as a public cloud solution. This looks like an attempt to play catch-up and stem the loss of clients with limited budgets to cheaper cloud-only solutions (particularly Canvas). It is unclear how building blocks will fit into this model and how much freedom individual clients will have to select or write their own.

Indeed there is much still to work out. What will the new pricing structure look like? How will building blocks be able to exploit the new Ajax user interface?  How many clouds can Blackboard manage? There were also some noticeable omissions – both the community and content systems were effectively ignored during the conference. Have they a place on the roadmap?

I think there are many reasons for hope from BbWorld14 and much for both Blackboard and the staff and student users to learn. It was great to see so many students present at the sessions and as ever, their choice of external keynote speakers was excellent. As for number 15, to be held in Washington DC, if they can reintroduce the client voice back into the programme selection, to allow it to become more critical (in a constructive way) then I am cautiously optimistic for the future.  At least they late realised that dropping the developer conference was a mistake 🙂

I’d like to end this review with a challenge for Jay Bhatt and his colleagues at Blackboard. If he really wants to reimagine education and believes that the way to do this is through data-based decisions, then is he willing to move Analytics for Learn into the entry level Learning Core bundle? Giving every Blackboard  user across the world access to powerful, integrated learning analytical tools would be a very strong message. Creating a common platform and millions of users would give the field of learning analytics a real boost, by allowing staff and students to easily exchange interesting questions and patterns. That might just get the slogan off the t-shirts and into our daily teaching and learning…

 

 

Review

When is a cat not just a cat?

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When it is being used as an example of digital literacies.

Digital Literacy is a term that is increasingly being bandied about the web. Whilst not (yet?) as misused as digital natives – it is already beating this term three times over in the google matching game:

Over 17 million matches on google, c.f. only 5,620,000 for digital natives

So what does it mean? On the 27th of June, Doug Belshaw will be launching a book which should help you approach/hone your definition, drawing on his Ed D thesis. The abstract of that is refreshingly short:

Digital literacy has been an increasingly-debated and discussed topic since the publication of Paul Gilster’s seminal Digital Literacy in 1997. It is, however, a complex term predicated on previous work in new literacies such as information literacy and computer literacy. To make sense of this complexity and uncertainty I come up with a ‘continuum of ambiguity’ and employ a Pragmatic methodology. This thesis makes three main contributions to the research area. First, I argue that considering a plurality of digital literacies helps avoid some of the problems of endlessly-redefining ‘digital literacy’. Second, I abstract eight essential elements of digital literacies from the research literature which can lead to positive action. Finally, I argue that co-constructing a definition of digital literacies (using the eight essential elements as a guide) is at least as important as the outcome.

CC0 Public Domain Belshaw, D (2011) What is digital literacy? A Pragmatic investigation. Ed D Thesis shared under a CC0 license

Doug’s book builds on this, but is more than just a distillation of these ideas. It has been several years in the making and benefits from the ongoing reflection this has allowed. Its genesis reflects his commitment to open scholarship and shared scholarship.  Draft chapters of the book have been available in advance of the final release, with comments encouraged. Doug used a tapering cost model – the earlier you got involved the lower the purchase cost. The final edition is DRM-free and sharing is permitted: he includes the line ‘You’re welcome to share it with your friends, but please do encourage them to purchase a copy if they find it useful.’
We all have to eat…

The book comprises nine chapters. The first is an introduction, which explains how the remainder of the book is structured and suggests paths through it. Chapter 2 attempts to define the problem this book addresses. Doug explores the ideas of ‘digital’ and ‘literacy’ (in reverse order) and the reader learns to replace the concept of  literacy with  literacies. Chapter 3 stresses the ambiguous nature of such ideas, arguing that this ambiguity should be actively embraced rather than avoided. Models of digital literacies are critiqued in chapter 4, with an alternative – Doug’s eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies offered in chapter 5. The rest of the book tries to apply this framework. Chapter 6 uses memes as an way to understand digital texts. The next chapter looks at remixes (with a brief nod to copyright) and chapter 8 (perhaps unsurprising given Doug’ s current work at Mozilla) looks at coding the web. The final chapter provides a conclusion and encourages the reader to rip and remix the book.

Doug manages to draw a lot of ideas together in his book – we travel from the invention of the printing press to the World of Warcraft. He blends ideas from academic disciplines – education, linguistics, history, computing, philosophy – with everyday life – gaming, cooking, even furniture.  The result could be a terrible pastiche, but it is not. Doug avoids this by weaving the thread of digital literacies through the book, thus demonstrating the value this lens can provide. Some chapters are flagged as skip this if you like, but I think they are accessible enough and worthy of reading. Some sections  (such as the challenge  to the requirement for linear progress in education) leave you wanting more (note this is not necessarily a criticism).

A real strength of the book are the well-chosen examples used throughout – no technical knowledge is assumed. To  illustrate the potential confusions around copyright Doug uses the concept of recipes (yes, as in cooking) and he derives an enormous amount of meaning from an ugly looking baby* and cheezy cats when analyzing internet memes.

*Apologies to his mother,  flickr user Laney G. Checking her photostream shows said picture to be an uncharacteristic shot. He’s better looking than me, I think I should stop there…

In summary, The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies is a short, informative book written in a clear, often amusing style. If I was being really picky it could probably benefit from one less font, but that is a minor criticism and does not detract from the thoughtfulness of the debate. I think it is one of those books that cannot be read widely enough and I recommend it to anyone. Reading it will not instantly make you  digital literate, but it will give you an understanding of why this is important and offers a framework to help you reflect on your own practice and that of others.

Blended Learning

Blended Interactions

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This week’s #BlendKit2014 session explored how much support and guidance students should get in an online course and posited four models of educators and learners:

  1. Atelier Learning – akin to an art studio, where students can learn from the work of each other as well as the teacher – John Seely Brown (2013)
  2. Educators as network administrators – Clarence Fisher – where learners as well as educators can help construct and plug gaps in our learning/knowledge networks
  3. Educators as concierge – Curtis Bonk (2007) – where the educator provides ‘soft guidance’ directing learners towards resources and ideas that they may not yet be aware of
  4. The educator as curator – George Siemens (2007) – learners are free to explore, but the expert curator helps them to engage with the key concepts of a discipline.

For more information see the full text from which the above references were obtained.

John Seely Brown’s conceptualisation of teachers as artists and architects reminded me of the artisian representations used by Hokanson, Miller and Hooper (2007) in their discreditation of ADDIE.  I didn’t find Fisher’s model very useful, as I find it very hard to really visualise what a learning network would/should look like – even in these days of social network analysis! I was a student on one of Curtis Bonk’s MOOCs and so can claim first hand experience of his concierge approach. A times it felt like a relentless barrage of concepts, where the learner has little time to get to grips with one idea, before they are presented with the next. That may have just been me getting the balance of online and offline wrong, and it was certainly very stimulating. Siemen’s view of the curatorial educator who ‘balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored‘ is very seductive, who wouldn’t want to be taught in that way, or indeed to be able to teach in it? I’ve also been on one of his cMOOCs and it had a very different style.

We were asked to reflect on these four questions:

  1. Is there value in student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in all courses regardless of discipline?
  2. What role does interaction play in courses in which the emphasis is on declarative knowledge (e.g., introductory “survey” courses at the lower-division undergraduate level) or, similarly, in courses that cultivate procedural knowledge (e.g., technical courses requiring the working of problem sets)
  3. As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?
  4. What factors might limit the feasibility of robust interaction face-to-face or online?

Each of these is addressed in turn below:

The value of interaction

I think interaction should be valued in any disciple, in essence a universality. Student-student interaction can be very different to student-teacher interaction. The former may at times be more likely to achieve learning (particularly of threshold concepts), as it may use a common language – that of the novice, rather than the mismatch between the vocabulary of the novice and the practitioner.

The role of interaction

I don’t think interaction should be omitted from declarative or procedural courses. This would imply that there is nothing more to learn, or no better way in which the subject can be taught. Even if the interaction is limited to explaining concepts to your peer group, I think this has the potential to advance understanding of those involved and listening/reading along.

Planning interactions

Deciding which activities are best online and which face-to-face is tricky and is one of the areas that I hope will become clearer through my participation in this course. It would seems sensible if the face to face activities were either designed to help socialise the group, or relate to tasks which students might find difficult – e.g. it is unclear how to begin, where they would benefit from scaffolding and are likely to seek early confirmation from teaching staff (or their peers). Online activities may provide learners with a greater opportunity to reflect and prepare their argument – e.g. finely hone a video presentation before sharing it with the group.

Limits to interaction

Obvious limits to interaction are a lack of time, engagement/motivation. The ‘atmosphere’ of the course is also important – is it acceptable to try and fail, indeed  have these opportunities been designed as part of the course? If students are presented with a ‘course and a half’ then they may react by adopting a strategic approach and only participating in the activities which result in grades.

Also it is unrealistic to expect that all the interaction will occur within the chosen environment and be visible to the educator. There will be face to face discussions in the pub on blended courses, or on non-institutional systems (such as Facebook) for online courses – of value to the learners because they are out of the gaze of their teachers (see this article in the Independent).

by-nc-sa Featured Image by Cobalt123 shared on https://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/2626780211