8 September 2010
DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATIONTECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED LIFELONG LEARNING
Sailing against the trade winds?
ALT-C 2010
David WhiteTechnology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL)Department for Continuing EducationUniversity of Oxfordhttp://www.tall.ox.ac.uk
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Online Learning Task Force
“…to help UK higher education remain a ‘world leader’ in online learning, growing its international market share by 2015.”
Chaired by Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library.
Reports to government this autumn.
The task force is “trying to dispel some of the myths that online learning is a second-rate alternative” Dame Lynne Brindley
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2009/taskforce.htm
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Money
HM Treasury
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HEFCE Study of Online Distance Learning
Published mid September Written Jan – March 2010
Current provision of ODL in the UK Case study profiles of 9 institutions Institutional experiences of ODL
Improve discoverability Promote successful business models Provide advice on institutional infrastructure
“Any course, at any HE academic level, which has a significant portion delivered to students online”
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Subject areas: directly provided
HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning
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Discoverabilityhttp://xkcd.com/773/
“…discovering what is on offer is ‘ridiculously difficult’, with information often buried on websites”
Dame Lynne Brindley, Times Higher, July 2010
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Subject areas: in partnership
HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning
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Digital diploma mills?
llamnudds
PPPs “require some culture change”
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Expectation of engagement
“I think one of the clear things that we see among a lot of students is the desire to connect with other students, and that’s something that technologies can clearly facilitate.”
“…the model that we’ve got to support the pedagogy that we use with the online programmes means that we never have more than 20 to a class.”
HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning
“We have a bank of student support advisors who, on the whole, are young graduates. …whether it be by phone, by text, by Skype, by email, they’re in touch with these students all of the time. As soon as their engagement is dipping a little bit they’re in touch with them. It’s like having a mother.”
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Contact
Eventedness - Fellowship
Cormier and Siemens: Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement. EDUCAUSE Review, July/August 2010. http://bit.ly/cmHqqb
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The myth of the f2f student?
Richard James et al: The First Year Experience in Australian Universities:
Findings from 1994 to 2009 (Uni of Melbourne & Griffith Uni)
First year Australian Undergraduates:
• Number of hours a week studying online: 2004: 4.2 - 2009: 6.5
• Number who believe they are known by at least one lecturer: 2004: 66% - 2009: 58%
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“Technology is vital but not central”
“…by far the biggest pressure I think is the cultural change in not having academics sitting in their offices doing their lectures waiting for students to come to them, but doing that whole engagement process of going out and chasing and the different way that you have to manage distance students and keep their motivation going. And I think that’s a big cultural shift, and that’s where we’d need to put the investment.” HEFCE Study of UK Online Learning
add1sun
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Technological determinism?
“…today's students live and breathe Web 2.0”
“students' technological expectations were broadly being met, but …there were concerns about ‘a gap between the ability of students to use these technologies and the ability and willingness of (academics) to use them’”
Visitors and Residents: http://bit.ly/pi2qv
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Who would like one of these?
HandyFlash.de
iPhone 5
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Against techno-utopianism
“the ‘imaginary’ upon which future-oriented projects are premised often takes for granted the contemporary existence of and continued progress towards a universal, technologically-rich, global ‘knowledge economy’, the so-called ‘flat world’ of neo-liberal rhetoric”.
Facer and Sandford, The next 25 years?: future scenarios and future directions for education and technology, JCAL Feb 2010
The future isn’t always as we expect
à voir etc...
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World Economic Forum
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Theory and philosophy of law (Jurisprudence), Oxford
World Economic Forum
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pasokphotos
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History, Edinburgh
pasokphotos
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Paul Clarke Liberal Democrats
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PPE, Oxford Social Anthropology, Cambridge
Paul Clarke Liberal Democrats
"All in all, it's how the class system works.“
Geoffrey Evans, fellow in politics, Nuffield College, Times Higher, Sept 2010
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Chemistry, Oxford
BBC Radio 4
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Widening the STEM / MBA – humanities divide
numberstumperFireFawkes
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Social mobility?
“…unless we think about the issues now as we imagine the new system, we might end up with a clear social dividing line between the two forms of receiving
higher education." Prof Geoffrey Crossick
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Widening access
Fully online courses in English from level 1 (pre GCSE) through to an eCommunications BA.
Social Return on Investment
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My thoughts
Professional post-grad courses should largely operate within market forces
Non STEM/Business courses should be supported
Role of the Edtech needs to evolve
The expanding divide between the arts/humanities and those courses with a direct vocational/economic benefit does not have to be replicated online
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What is the ‘Digital Identity’ of UK Higher Education?
Matt Gorecki ‘Field for the British Isles’ Anthony Gormley
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“…exceed pure techno-scientific knowledge in the pledge of responsibility” Jacques Derrida, The University Without Condition
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Thanks
• [email protected] - www.tall.ox.ac.uk
• twitter.com/daveowhite
• Special thanks to Dr Richard Hall
Study of UK Online Learning will be available on the HEFCE website mid September
http://bit.ly/brd4QY