Sue started her presentation with this fascinating video and infographic (below) about how social media is changing the world around us, albeit from a particulalry american viewpoint. But also a plea for those who understand and are involved in social media "to share this (knowledge) with other people, as there are still a lot of people out there in the dark."

 

The Web in 60 Seconds Infographic

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It’s certainly true that some of my colleagues are still unaware of the potential in using social media, not just for fun but education and employment purposes. It is the skilling up of our students that seems to be the key focus of her talk. Issues of new media literacy and 21st century working skills are highlighted as being essential for young graduates to understand, but also what certain employers want.

The seeking of employment has, she argued, changed with the increase of tools such as LinkedIn. Not having a Linkedin account, it was interesting to find out how this network is being used and how it allows you to connect to other social media tools such as twitter, Wordpress and Slideshare. Allowing you to not just add your CV and work experience, but aggregate and perhaps demonstrate your empoyabilty by allowing access to your presentations, reflections and PLN (personal learning network). With the recent introduction of the LinkedIn Apply button in the USA, it may be that I need to revisit this.

“Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is” (Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine Editor in Chief, 2007)

Maybe it's the British reserve, but the practice of branding yourself in the same way a company would do a product, sits a little uneasily with me. Perhaps it's the conscious act of constructing yourself a digital brand, rather than allowing it to organically evolve, that I find strange. Should I have a detailed LinkedIn profile? What would happen if it got hacked? Am I a 90s Generation X’er occupationally slumming it by not engaging in this practice? A digital refusenik? I have lots of questions, but few answers so far. Anyway, we are treated to a couple of examples where students have used social media to make themselves stand out, sell their skills and get that job. Successfully so, in the case of wannabe Krispy Kreme employee, Braden Young, less so in Mathew Epstien’s case.

This stimulating talk ended by reinforcing that these spaces can be public and can that there are risks as well as benefits of being active there. For me, this comes back to the benefits of having a VLE as part of your blended learning approach in Higher Education. Walled gardens of safety, that won’t remember your mistakes, expose you to spoofers or spammers, but will allow you to get support from an intimate group of peers and tutors. Necessary for effective learning I feel.

The University in your pocket: Opening access to learning and support. Julie Usher Northampton University

This presentation from Julie Usher was very timely, honest and extremely useful. Northampton signed up to the Blackboard Learn and Central applications. The adoption of this tool came from senior levels within the institution, so due care was taken to ensure that a variety of stakeholders were involved and engaged in the process. This included investments in the Wi-Fi coverage across the university, the retranslating of data from institutional resources such as timetables, the library catalogue, creating maps to scale and even rationalising the universities YouTube presence. It took a multidisciplinary team 5 months to get from purchase to deployment.

Significantly, Northampton were very proactive in recognising and attending to issues concerning accessibility. They invested in loanable devices such as iPod touches and mi-fi units, but also developed a close relationship with their student disability teams. This uncovered that personalised mobile devices can, in some cases, be more beneficial for students with learning. This flexibility and personalisation dispenses with the need to visit the ‘ghettoised’ specialist computing areas within the library. Mobile device ownership and use provides the student with opportunities of choice, are highly personal and allow a greater deal of control over their learning. Although Android and iOS have some accessibility features such as screen reading, there is still some development to be done.

How did they measure success? The app has received 6575 downloads to date, with 3000 of those coming in the first month. The most popular link was timetable in the Central app, which received an impressive 21,686 hits in the first month of it being live. In addition, they received a number of unsolicited positive comments from staff and students via their blog and twitter accounts. Julie commented that this was “unusual”.

Overall, the majority of issues they encountered were people and data issues, mostly related to the Central app. The issues we are concerned with are:

• Tricky to create support resources. There are no training videos and capturing of collating screenshots is a challenge
• Blackberry App and its limited functionality 
• Working with BB Mobile team across time zones 
• VTBE content not displaying consistently (There is a user guide for best practice)

LJMU have just signed up to Blackboard Mobile on a trial basis for a year. However, we have only the Learn app which gives you access to the VLE. Released on 26th January, early feedback has been wholly positive and downloads have been healthy (3000 by the end of week two). We have already begun the staff awareness raising and training, in particular focussing on course and content best practices. We are moving into a mobile future.

“These pages are now open for comment” – Guy Pursey, Reading University

This presentation details the latest updates in the on-going enhancement of the Blackboard e-portfolio at Reading University. The project has recently been funded by JISC to explore the possibilities in extending the tool. These iLearn developments are undertaken by a small support team, rather than this being in-house Blackboard progress. Essentially these have been generated as a response to the deficiencies of the tool, of which there are a few. Over the years they have extended the tool by adding contextual help guides, simplifying the interface and adding self-assessment templates.

At LJMU, we also use this eportfolio tool. It’s used on a range of courses from Pharmacology to Construction, supporting students on placements, with Personal Development Planning and assessment. I consider its benefits to be its very simple to use, it’s in a safe ‘walled garden’, it supports multimedia content and is well integrated into the VLE. However, we too have also encountered some issues, mainly with a lack of features that staff and students would like. At this time we have not implemented any of these features.

Latest developments include the ability to create a fully structured portfolio in a few clicks, addition of metadata for content searching and the Blackboard eportfolio ‘Holy Grail’, feedback comments on individual pages of the eportfolio. Guy commented that this Feedback widget appeared to solve one of the key criticisms of the tool, as staff generally want to comment on individual pages, rather than on the portfolio as a whole. In addition the ability to notify the student by email that feedback has been added.

While it is impressive to see the tool adapted to meet the needs of an ever demanding user base, I do have some reservations about the scalability of this approach. One key issue we would encounter is that all our subject areas use the eportfolio in different ways. As I understand it would be challenging to have an “out the box” eportfolio set up for each programme. That said, it certainly meets some of the criticism, and barriers to uptake we hear from our academic staff. It would be useful for Blackboard to consider implementing some of these creative solutions as part of the basic tool.

Original URL - http://www.flickr.com/27777329@N06/6780011293/
Kara NewhouseCC BY-NC-SA 2.0

 

Dear oh dear oh dear. Has it really been a year since I last used this blog?

Yes, it has. This will change in 2012.

The title of this post is meant to be a humorous reference to a video my kids love: The annoying orange. Have look at it below. However, the feeling of annoyance also extends to our previously orange friends at Wimba (see what I did there!), now part of Blackboard Collaborate. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Wimba Voice email, I truly do. I’ve written and talked about it often enough in the past year. As any learning technologist will tell you, teaching staff how to use some technologies can be very challenging. This isn’t the case with voice email; it’s one of those technologies that people just understand, and get excited about.

Here are 12 things I love about Wimba Voice email:

1. The tool is simple to understand and easy to use
2. Allows staff to record and send in the one place
3. No software installation needed
4. No requirement to attach an audio file to an email
5. No opportunity for editing = no difficult training on editing and file types
6. Allows feedback to be more detailed and personal (1)
7. Greater opportunity to conform to  formative assessment  best practices ( 2)
8. Audio files can be downloaded in mp3, allowing it to be played back on a variety of mobile devices.
9. Students like it and tend to listen to it more than once (3, 4)
10. In some cases, time savings have been reported in comparison to other approaches. (3)
11. All voice emails sent are automatically archived and can be shared
12. If you like to talk and can use email, then this is the tool for you!

In the spirit of giving feedback to improve things, here are some comments and ideas for features that I’d love Blackboard / Wimba to consider, as they begin to merge the systems.

1. Voicemail Outbox.  Having an area like this for voicemail would be really helpful. It would allow staff to gauge the levelness of their feedback across the course, before sending it to the students.  Also, it could improve the levels of equality in the student experience, by allowing staff to send individual feedback for all students simultaneously.
2. Statistics and Reporting.   Yes, Wimba does have an administration and reporting area. Yes, it does provide you with some basic usage information, but this would be very useful if it was enhanced to include such features as ‘Has voice email been played?” , “How many times?” “Has it been downloaded”.  Information like this is invaluable to academic staff, learning technologists and university administrators alike. While it is very useful to have “comments from those using the tool’, it is even more powerful to have this backed up with quantative data. If there are any budding elearning developers out there, my one tip would be to ensure there is the capacity to get meaningful statistical data about the how your tool is being used.
3. User interface It would be useful if it could be made more obvious on the player, where you can download and save the file as an mp3 or wav.
4. Ultimately, wouldn’t it be practical to have Wimba voice tools as an integral part of the forthcoming Blackboard systems?

The current turmoil in HE may bring the existing issues of timeliness and quality of student feedback into sharper focus. As the costs rise, the students demands will increase and will undoubtedly exert increased pressure on already overworked staff. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying this, but it seems to me that a straightforward solution like Voice email, embedded, within the VLE, archived, with usable and reliable reporting system, could provide noticeable pedagogical benefits, as well as time efficiencies for academic staff and, ultimately their students.  That’s got to be a good thing.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts if you are using the Voice email tool this way.

 1. Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004). Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning? Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, 3–31.
 2. Macfarlane-Dick, D. & Nicol, D. J. (2006). Formative Assessment and Self-Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31, 2, 199-218.
 3. EXaEF Project http://www.staff.ljmu.ac.uk/bsngmacg/exaef/index.html
 4. Sounds Good Project http://sites.google.com/site/soundsgooduk/Home

The theme for this year’s conference was location, location, location. Not the telly show, rather the learning opportunities afforded by augmented reality, mobile technologies, QR codes, and other tools. As financial constraints in the sector throw online conferences into sharper relief, the organiser, Malcolm Murray, turns this on its head. He introduced the conference by celebrating the fact this was a live only event – nothing is recorded, there is no online provision – it’s a one chance only deal. At the time I thought that this approach was quite limiting. However, as I reflect on the aspects that I appreciate about the conference, I recognise that this is a compelling approach. For me, the impact of actual attendance is enhanced by the connections you make with like minded individuals from different institutions, both here and abroad. Also, the opportunities to share ideas, experiences, concerns, gossip, and current issues are invaluable.  Related to this, and perhaps more important is the reality that Durham BBU is about speaking plainly about the bad, as well as the good in technology enhanced learning. Remember last year’s panel on upgrade to 9.0?  I feel this is very important and the recording or live streaming would inhibit this candour and openness.

Luckily, the Learning Technology community are good at recording events like this. For a broader understanding of what happened look at these blog posts from Julie Usher, Andy Turner and Matt Carnock. I have set up an archive of the hash tagged tweets using TwapperKeeper. You can also geek out on stats via Summerizer here

Here are some of my notes from the conference.

The title for the keynote was “Designing augmented spaces to ensure effective information visualisation and critical knowledge Formation”.  I should have guessed that this was not going to be any ordinary presentation. Carl Davis, a fellow History of Art graduate from Glasgow University, now at London Met, proceeded to take us through a tour of his current research interests. Some of these included:

• BMW augmented reality mechanic training
• Brain controlled technologies –  (interesting suggestion that by understanding brain activity more, this could change assessment practices. Suggesting that you could be graded on effort rather than completion.
• Context sensitive learning for Urban Planners
• Face recognition apps – his comment that “privacy as an outdated notion” was worrying, but consistent with the rise of twitter, foursquare, and other location
• 3D modelling of objects and overlaying them with information - using the world and its contents as the interface.

He also shared a video of a future nightmare scenario of augmented reality, once the advertisers get hold of it.

 

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

 

John Traxler expanded on some of these themes in his fascinating presentation. He shared with us great examples of how location can be an enabling, supportive technology within teaching and learning. For students in the midlands, the introduction of learning via the technology they are familiar with ie the mobile phone,was an important first step in access to further education. The opportunities afforded learning on placements and "in between" times were demonstrated also.  Interestingly, he used the analogy of mobility as being like the ownership of a car. In the past, the idea of car has been a symbol of freedom; go anywhere and do anything. He countered this idea that your freedom becomes compromised by a reality. This reality in London being, congestion – so you are free to travel but only slowly, and will have to deal with parking tickets and congestion charges - which limit you freedom experience. These constraints are also inherent in the mobile device usage. We are free to access the web wherever and whenever we are, yet we become trapped by lack of power supply, data costs and network coverage. He did also highlight some other potentially negative aspects of mobile learning. The notion of the 'absent present' where a person is in a space physically, but their attention is elsewhere. There is evidence of this everywhere we look already, and arguably its been present historically as well. Perhaps it just that mobile technologies allow you to escape elsewhere more effectively?

Finally, he voiced concerns about learning technology research by suggesting that many studies are 'doomed to success'. He called for greater awareness and transparency on the failures of studies, and what happens when the money goes away. Is the project still effective? Is the money and resource the reason for success? Food for thought.

The cumulative effect of both these presentations was, for me, akin to having a third eye opened. What was breathtaking was the bringing together of all these technological realities, and how advanced they appeared when placed next to setting up a blog, or posting a discussion comment in Blackboard. However, it did also stir lots of concerns and questions about this.

I'll make note of some of them here, in the hope that this may generate discussion but also as a memory aid for me!

• As educators, Does this new technology change pedagogy? If so how, and how do we adapt to that change?
• As a staff trainer, how will I be able to help prepare and train staff to these levels of proficiency, and do I need to?
• As a student, Do I want to use my phone, my data rate and my text message allocation? What happens if my phone or mobile device isn't supported?

I mused on some of the accessibility issues when I visited Blackboard Mobile event last year.

Plenty of complex issues to consider!

 

LJMU have been using the Blackboard eportfolio housed inside the content system, since 2006. I was originally employed to develop and support the implementation of the e-portfolio to the institution. At that time there were very few e-portfolios solutions for Higher Education available. So it’s timely to revisit this area and see what’s been happening. I travelled north to my homeland to attend the ePortfolio Scotland conference. The themes and topics discussed were a mix of the new and the all too familiar.

The presentation with most impact on me was undoubtedly Derrin Kent, the development manager for TDM His talk was about using  Mahara, which is an open source eportfolio. He describes it as a personal earning environment, making the distinction that it is not a teaching system (VLE) but a learning system. His definitions borne out of the personalisation and control the user would have over the system. From a technical point of view, I was very impressed by the features it had. Staff and students had a large range of functionality at their disposal.  This demo presented us with the latest release of open source tool Mahara 1.3, which hasn’t been fully tested.  As well as covering current Blackboard ePortfolio functionality, it also included:

• Upload multiple files quickly and efficiently
• Private and public feedback options
• RSS subscription and notification options on views and content
• Configure whether or not Comments may be received on their blog
• Group support for students and staff for assessment
• Safe, educational focussed social networking options
• Personalisation with Profile Icons images
• A range of Language packages and themes
• Mahara includes an Import/Export system with Leap2A support, and static HTML export.
• Users can place their views under any of the Creative Commons licenses

He also mentioned that there was a mobile application for students that allowed them to record and upload content wherever they are.  Could an everyday device with this app on it tackle some of the difficulties associated with Personal Development Planning? One to ponder.

Speaking from his knowledge of large scale eportfolio implementation, Gordon Joyes noted that eportfolios are ‘disruptive and they don’t’ always fit…they itch and that makes it uncomfortable”. This description is apt and is certainly familiar to our experience at LJMU. In acknowledging the complexity of approaches and uses of eportfolios, he also states that for many institutions that have embarked on this process there needs to be this ‘experiential learning process’ in regard to implementation. Clear ideas about what the systems and tools are going to be used for – from staff and students points of view.  Also, he accepted there is difficulty in getting students and staff to engage with Personal Development Planning. He used the theory Meyer and Lands describe as Threshold Concepts to help explain this 'troublesome knowledge'.

Other presentations of note came from Simon Grant, who is leading the charge to ensure eportfolio systems recognise standards and provide interoperability, which would make possible the lifelong learning aspect of ePortfolios. It is notable that Pebble Pad and Mahara both provide the user with opportunity to export your data using the LEAP2a standard.  Margaret Faulkner from the University of Southern Australia shared their recent experiences of implementing PebblePad.  Familiar themes emerged once again, as they experienced issues with integration, mixed student response, staff understanding and engagement, as well as the competing views over assessed versus personalised areas.  Interestingly, the students involved in evaluating the user experience of the tool were unconvinced of employer recognition of eportfolios.

There were a greater number of work related eportfolio tools, none of which seemed to use the LEAP2a standard, and some didn’t have any private areas for reflection. I can understand task driven, competency based systems but these seem to cut against the notion of lifelong learning and I would suggest inhibit deeper engagement with the tool.

The final presentations of the day came from QMU staff, Judith Lane (Physiotherapy) & John Dean (Drama and Theatre), who were using audio to give feedback on eportfolios. It was useful to listen to the experiences from two very different subject areas, and the views of staff and students towards this method.

In summary, this was a really useful event and one I would recommend colleagues to attend. For me, it confirms the LJMU experience in that there is still a great deal of activity and purpose for eportfolio systems within higher education. It also points out the increasing role these types of systems have in the workplace.  The existence of workplace tools such as Calibrand, Taskstream, OneFile  and eCom Scotland is a testament to that. What was also intestesting was to see the growth in usage and development of Pebble Pad and Mahara platforms, in comparison to the relative stasis of the Blackboard eportfolio.   So what now? Time  for reflection….

Access the presentations here

View the tweets from the event onTwapperkeeper

Thunder and lightning in Manchester created an atmospheric setting for the demonstration of Blackboard’s venture into the Mobile Technologies. This isn’t their first time attempt at using mobile devices: anyone remember Blackboard Sync? I’m sure we would all like to forget that experience. Thankfully, this product has come from a new team.(grown from 4 to 52 in a year) and has an entirely new interface and approach.  So what can Blackboard Mobile do?

The Mobile experience is centred on two apps: Mobile Central is an aggregation service of information, notifications, maps etc. and Mobile Learn is a mobile version of your existing Blackboard environment.  I’m not going to talk much about Mobile Central, mainly because we have already launched into the mobile world with Campus M, which covers similar areas to the Central.app.  

There was a healthy turnout and we were treated to a very slick presentation of the app by Kayvon Beykpour , using the iPhone platform. You can view a similar demo here. The key functionality areas were

• Access to announcements – Staff can create announcements
• Course List – course and community –course map – useful View in Browser without having to re-authenticate
• Access to Discussion boards – Staff and Students can write and reply to these discussions. The threads look neater, and simpler to understand than the native discussion boards. (Not demonstrated, but the assumption would be that you could post to your journal and course blog as well?)
• Access to learning materials. This has a useful “open in browser” and “open with..” (Available in version 1.1) option to view content in its native software or in the browser..
• Access to course list – with this you have the option to ‘View in browser’ without having to re-authenticate.
• Tasks:  An underused facility at LJMU. Potential for a productivity tool. Would students use it?

Staff and students gain access to these apps in the usual places such as iTunes. Usefully, once you have downloaded the app to your device, you search for your institution and check and see if the service has been made available. This was one of the issues with BB Sync.

The Blackboard Mobile Learn app on the iPad http://www.youtube.com/user/BlackboardTV

Is anything missing?

These things are always evolving, but if we look at Apple devices there will be issues with the following:

• No SCORM Support.
• No Third party building blocks.  The View in Browser option provides an alternative route to access some of them.
• No Java or Flash support for Apple devices. This doesn’t seem like it will change anytime in the near future.

Things to think about 

What is your institutional mobile strategy? Does it exist?  Who should be leading it and who should be involved? These were questions posed to the attendees by Blackboard to get the group thinking. I'm fairly sure we do have a mobile strategy, the acquisition and implementation of Campus M is evidence of that. However, do we have a mobile learning strategy? This may need some further investigation.

How do we provide equity of access using these tools? Not every student will own a smart phone, or tablet device. So how do we ensure that those who have do not gain an advantage over those who don’t? This seems to be one of the key factors in the design and implementation of a mobile strategy.

To Portal or not to Portal? The relevancy of having a portal of aggregated information was called into question, as students using the Learn app would essentially bypass the main page and jump straight to content within their modules and communities. However, there seems to be potential in setting up and use the community areas so that it mimics some of the functionality of the Mobile Central/Campus M experience.

It will be interesting to watch the development of this app, as it grows alongside smart phone and tablet usage. Will it become the main way students access Blackboard or other learning systems? It was interesting to hear that some US students wanted their Blackboard interface to look like the apps! It’s fascinating to watch this area develop at such a rapid pace, and I’m cautiously optimistic that this app has many potential pedagogical benefits but also could enhance the student experience.

I attended this presentation with a colleague; John Townsend. You can read his thoughts here