JISC SSBR Elluminate Meeting 9 July 2009

Notes from the JISC Elluminate all-day meeting 09 July 09: Support, Synthesis
and Benefits Realization, for the Institutional Innovation and Life Long
Learning / Work Force Development programs.

General:
The meeting took most of the day and for the most part proceeded at a comfortable pace. My impression is that this is a viable way of conducting low-cost meetings.

The technical side of the meeting was generally alright, although there were
some glitches with sound. Of the 80-odd participants less than 10 chose to
activate their web cams at any moment and most stayed silent for the whole
day. The breakout groups were divided seamlessly, although they were brought
back together rather abruptly due to lack of experience on the part of moderators.

Morning sessions:
In the first morning session John Cook gave a presentation entitled
"Scaffolding the mobile Wave". His assertion was that new digital media (e.g.,
the mobile phone) can be regarded as cultural resources for learning. The
question he posed was how to bring together informal learning contexts in the
wide world with practices that are valued inside institutions. This must be
done with awareness to the critics who claim that social software and search
engines do not encourage collaborative work.

JISC set a target for 2010 of widespread user-owned technology in learning,
but this is now acknowledged as unlikely. It is a fact that over half of the
world's population owns a personal mobile phone. Nevertheless, Cook quoted
research by Davidson and Goldberg who indicate that while learners use and
adapt to changing technology, the act of teaching remains largely
unchanged. What people tend to use their mobiles for is at best informal
learning, e.g., watching UTube clips on a mobile. This does not replace the
type of learning we do in formal education.

Cook suggests using technology positively by scaffolding the learning, meaning
one more able learner helping a newcomer. "Google wave" is a hosted
conversation that lives in one place (like a live twitter). Some licensing and
privacy issues still need resolving.

Two examples were given of courses using this technology in London: mobile
urban education and mobile cistercian abbeys. In both cases the students could
get information on site thanks to GPS locators, that enhanced their
understanding of the topic. The first example examines urban planning: as you
walk about you get feeds of historical pictures of the area. Schools, for
example, used to look like factories or prisons, becoming flatter in the 60's,
more "humane". When you stand in the street you get images of processions from
the 1930's. Students work in pairs. The second example concerns Cistercian
Abbeys, construction of which started in 1132. A mobile tour was developed
that shows a full structure as it once stood suprimposed on the existing
ruins. between 80% and 90% of students like it.
The big question is how do we go beyond it.

Cook's vision goes beyond the usage of static, pre-defined information. He
would like to see learners "appropriate the mobile wave", e.g., using it for
time tabling, receiving alerts of room changes for lectures, locating fellow
students in their study set, etc. An example is the Contsens project (http://tinyurl.com/klvx6j).

The discussion that follwed concentrated on technological aspects of Google
Wave and on cost. It was also pointed out that there is a divide between
higher education, where such material supports the more traditional teaching
materials, and further education, where this type of material may be the
backbone of a course.


The second morning session was dedicated to Institutional Innovations projects
reporting back from assemblies.

1. The BRII assembly on stakeholder engagement was held in Oxford. Six projects
participated, each giving a short presentation, and in addition a guest
speaker was invited: the head of internal communications at Oxford, Susannah
Wintersgill. After the guest talk and presentations there were several
breakout groups for discussing various aspects of stakeholder engagement.

The overall feeling was that the assembly worked well and since each proejct
faced different stakeholder problems, each came up with a unique solution as
well. This is all summed up on the BRII project blog. They feel that the
results of the discussions could be taken forward, perhaps for Benefits
Realization.

2. Data Centre Exchange Assembly - hosted by University of East Anglia
The participating projects shared information on what has been done so far and
then split up to breakout groups. A successful meeting where each project
could learn from the other.

3. weCAMP and i-Borrow Assembly
i-Borrow is about a large number of netbooks with location tracking data.
weCAMP deliver a 3-d package of learning on campus.
The feeling is that there was scope for cooperation between the project as
each was more advanced in one common area and a little behind in another.

4. Academic Networks: Laura briefly described the upcoming assembly.


We then had a general presentation about Synthesizing the programme.
- The strategic environment is complex.
- The context of institutional innovation is wider than the physical location of the university, it is about commonly conected activities that pervade many institutions.
- universities can see themselves as global change agents, or an institutional improvement facilitator, for businesses, NGOs, other universities and government agencies.

Data collection from phase 2 projects:
- create a 3d "matrix" featuring the projects, the bottom up emergent themes from them and the top-down themes from JISC and HEFCE. Looking for common themes.
- bottom up themes are derived from popular key words.
- elicited themes: open educational dialogue, ...
- top down themes: learning, teaching and assessment; research and development; business and community engagement; learning resources, e-Admin,...

- LLL/WFD projects started 13 April and since then the team has been collecting key words and themes.
- analysed with wordle (www.wordle.net).
- many areas where projects can support each other.
- challenge: making the model practical, defining a scope for the innovation programme.


Afternoon Sessions:
After lunch we split into breakout groups. At 2:30 we were all
brought back (rather abruptly) into the main room for concluding comments by
George Roberts and the meeting formally ended at 3pm. Several workshops
followed after the official end of the meeting.

Breakout group 3: Tech practices
The general feeling was that this group had very little time to discuss a lot
of questions. The questions are brought below, but there was almost no
discussion due to time pressure.
1. Where is the buy in?
- Is your project about technology, practice or innovation?
- Are you planning change or replacement?
- Who initiates change?
- Where are you embedding? e.g. financial systems, staff practice (takes time)
- How do you rate your institution’s ability to change? This may depend on the nature of the institution - devolved or centralized - and its’ ethos.
- Change agents - who drives change? Are you targeting the correct stakeholders?

It was suggested to approach stake holders in a "divide and conquer" manner:
get senior people in or at least people who can nag them, and through them get
a wedge into the organisation and promote your targets. Another comment was
that change is seen as a managerial activity in the UK while in Spain and
Portugal (for example) it is seen more as a student-driven modification to
institution culture.

2. When does embedding work?
- How are you getting buy-in? Sell the argument - give the tools for the need to change to be passed on
- How have you planned for user engagement: user and provider
- Are you embedding solutions, not enhancements?
- Can you create patronage?
- Do you have a user-friendly presentation?
- Can you leverage institutional reputation - what are the competitors using?

3. What are the drivers for embracing technology?
- Are you addressing students and incoming staff?
- Have you taken into account relevant institutional strategic agendas?
- Will your results be credible?
- Do you have access to technology-wise institutional managers?
- Can you argue that risky times call for risky solutions?
- Do you know you key change agents - they will be the implementers? Or are you depending on middle managers when you should be going more senior – e.g. see it as staff development.

4. How do I convince my stakeholders?
- What is your strapline?
- Are you solving non-existent problems? Do you have a good definition of the problems you are solving?
- Why would I support you?
- What problem do you solve for you me?
- What do managers want to hear - the management discourse? This is not the same as Web2.0 discourse.


Workshop: Second Life
This short workshop introduced the concept and basics of Second Life. It is
clear that some people will find it an entertaining environment, and learning
could take place in groups that are physically separated, but it is not clear
how significant a component this can be as part of the studies towards an
academic goal, such as completing a course on time.