concerns for HE(A)

Quango man has your cash!

In a recent House of Commons report entitled Students and Universities the Higher Education Academy effectivley receive a vote of no confidence, as do the QAA!! Testing times ahead for both Quangos me thinks?

"We remain concerned that the Academy could not demonstrate what value it added for the
money supplied by the taxpayer or show that it was providing good value for money."

The Times Higher has summarised the report here. And also pulls out some very interesting bullet points, among them is this old chestnut:

Plagiarism by students is a “serious problem”, and there needs to be further investigation into why UK students appear to spend less time studying than their peers elsewhere in Europe.

So it looks like the QAA need to improve/regroup/disappear, etc, and try and reduce the fraudulent claims by some top Universities claiming for students who had left courses early. The Guardian also report on how they intend to keep closer tabs on the QAA to try and abate these poor management practices by public funded Universities.

And while were at revamping the entire education sector, 800 Quangos (like the Academy, JISC, Becta, fDf, LSC, etc, etc) are all in for severe pruning if the Tories get in next, or indeed when the recession bites harder after the next election.

I'll get me coat :O/ ....... Time for a holiday :oD

Research based eportfolios. Or are they?

Following a link from Twitterfall lead me to the 2009 award pages for the Warwickshire University research based eportfolios. Congrats to all winners, and to Warwickshire Uni for promoting the importance of eportfolios for research.

I was looking forward to some rich threaded engaging accounts of the trials and tribulations of conducting PHd level research. But all I saw was a series of personal static type websites? Now, I'm not claiming that there has been a lot of effort involved in these "eportfolios" but they seemed very, erm, well, clinical? In most apsects they could be construed as a glorified CV, which I spose most people would call an eportfolio? I guess I was looking forward to some rambling narratives peppered with snippets videos and podcasts, gradually unfolding over time - with some rich reflective prose + comments from others. but alas. Then again if you think about how important research is to swelling the coffers of UK Univerisites Ltd, it's a clever marketing exercise in itself?

This also re-opens the debate about just what is an eportfolio ( again), which was swilling around the net a week or so ago - neatly summarised in a couple of blog posts and by Stepehen Downes who has been discussing the International Development of ePortfolio Model created by Helen Barrett (seee image above) and a related Spanish blog post expanding upon the model. It's all pointing to personal learning spaces, or is that personal learning environments? Who knows, and indeed who cares? Can we all just move on a little? Or does someone want to restart the debate about dropping the "e" from elearning.... again :O(

visual tweeterings

I have recently become aware of some excellent tools that allows us to follow the tweetings of others without the need to sign up for anythng. :O)

And......... these tools also allow us to filter out the twitter wheat from the twatter chaff> Which in my view is using the web more intelligently. The first has been out for a year or more called tweetdeck. It allows you to filter and download tweets onto UR phone or PC. People who've used it report it being very good as a way at managing the avalanche of twitterings. But it requires an install- FAIL!

The next one I was told about at an online webinar with Elliot Maise recently. During the hour webinar someone told me he was using twitter to tweet about sed webinar - and I could catch them on Twitterfall. It's a website, that essentially aggreagtes tweets. Simple & effective. And agian you can apply all sort of filters to only receive the info you want. Neat.

The third one I stumbled across yesterday from a link of Paul Andrews who has an excellent wiki covering all sorts of elearning technologies, including this informative page on all things tweetery. Back to the plot >> that twitter visualiser is called http://visibletweets.com/ and looks visually stunning, with tweets updating realtime on a plain screen. Again filters can be applied to narrow the search down. Neater, like this list of other twitter apps. Some good.

Somehow Paul Andrews has managed to emebed this visable tweet into his wiki page. Looks impressive.

a student-centered ePortfolio space?

Image originally created by Kathleen Willbanks

• I stumbled across a few blog postings today that referred to different "models". The first exclaimed proudly that we should all go and build an ePortfolio culture in our schools now! . Good idea, I'm with you on that one. Any ideas please !O)
  

• The second blog post referred to another complex roadmap, based upon the continental e-framework initiative. More convaluted - but worth a read, to gain an insight into others thought processes when trying to tame the eportfolio beast (in terms of what can it do!)
  

• I must admit I still prefer the simple model by Elizabeth Harnell Young that was used by the JISC eportfolios infokit. Nice and simple, which reminds me of the excellent Australian ePortfolio Toolkit thats has been heavily influenced by the infokit. Ray Tolleys explanations of what an eportfolio should/could be are also worth following, as he has a wealth of experience in this field. Take a while looking at his efolio offering as well, it may be what you are after?
  

• Whilst on the topic of eportfolios I have just wandered over to the eportoflio page at Queen Margaret Universitywhich is choc full of case studies and a wealth of supporting resources to help staff and students use eportfolios effectively. This page really exemplifies best practice in terms of support for all users.

• And finally I thought you'd like to peruse the presentations for our speakers last week. We ran a webinar covering local eportfolio pilot projects, attempting to glean effective practice. Access the resources here, and don't foget our wiki page here covering everything you need to know about eportfolios.

Capital funding for directly funded further education colleges

Capital funding for directly funded further education colleges for 2009-10: allocations for the period August 2009 to March 2010.

Just caught wind of this,


The allocations for 2009-10 are to help raise the quality of higher education (HE) learning and teaching facilities in FECs, in order to enhance the learning experience of their HE students. We expect colleges to use the funds in ways that will support their strategy for HE most effectively. The funds may be used to contribute towards:

• investment in equipment, particularly IT-related equipment, used in learning and teaching, and in e-learning
• replacement of premises for learning and teaching
• refurbishment of existing teaching spaces, particularly with regard to IT-related enhancements, including improvements to internal IT networks or supporting infrastructure.

The funds should be used for HE provision and may be subject to audit in the normal way. We recognise, however, that it may be neither feasible nor desirable to construct ring-fenced boundaries between higher and further education (FE). For example, equipment may be used by both HE and FE students. So we look to colleges to adopt a pragmatic approach, whereby the primary focus of the projects is on HE even if there are links with, and spin-off benefits at the margin for, FE.

Read more > http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/circlets/2009/cl13_09/

I've taken a screen shot of the West Midlands providers whom are directly affected. Download the spreadsheet for yourself (annex A)

Harness Power of the Crowd

The recent Times essay about the silent Chinese revolt by bloggers and millions of other online activists, who have collectively managed to scupper the flaky plans by the Chinese government to implement Green Dam, really highlights the power of social/Web2.0 tools.

Green Dam was supposed to be the latest in the long line of draconian internet censorship methods instigated by the Chinese government. It was going to take the shape of essentially a piece of spyware installed on every new PC shipped. If you want an idea just how much effort and money the Chinese government has been spending on censoring the interweb , read last year's WIRED article on the great firewall of China. It's truly shocking.

So the online masses of China issued forth, and forced a change, by using blogs, forums, youtube, twitter, facebook ,etc, etc. In a similar manner to the recent uprisings in Iran, where by video footage of crowd protests were being posted up to youtube for the whole world to witness another heavy handed state, trample over its citizens bodies and opinions. This use of online networks to allow like minded people to join up, collaborate and become bigger than the sum of it's parts is very exciting. We are witnessing the use of technologies in disruptive methods we never envisaged.

When we as trainers and educators talk about the collaborative potential of Web 2.0 we cite exemplars such as Wikipedia, and the thousands of active discussion fora we visit to harness the power of those whose experience and knowledge we want to tap into.

This new "Open Source" business model sharing and outsourcing of ideas to the "crowd" has been reported in two seminal text in recent years, the first called crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe looks at this from a new business model perspective. Read more about his book and blog, and watch the trailer below:

The other recent book that discusses this use of mass collaboration and sharing is the book and wiki, Wikinomics. I've read bits of this book, and it's very interesting from a perspective of how big business are looking to use the Open Source model to research and bring new products to market using a collaborative approach. The wiki link above is the whole book, which was the platform used to edit the book. Watch one of the editors talk about the ethos that underpins wikinomics:

A California (pipe) Dream

Two big Californian Universities are attempting to put forward plans to create a cyber-campus. Allowing online students to recieve the same level of education as F2F delivery. Tho' the article starts off with a dramatic statement about the USA's credit crisis, and how some of the most prestigious learning organsiations can hope to stay "open". So the main driver appears to be a totally misguided comprehension that online/distance learning is very much cheaper than F2F delivery!! Oh how wrong that assumption is. Just take a look at our abismal attempt in recent years in the shape of the UK EU that fell apart before it began.

If the intention was to make flexible, engaging, acessible, and collaborative learning a reality to all of us working and wanting to up skill. Or saving teenagers the daunting propsect of a a 20K debt , by allowing them to study flexibly online, then a strong business case could be made. If it's all about the money, you'll end up with excessivly poor micro chunked "courses" of a drill and practice nature. We might as well bring Dorling Kinderlsey back, and pay them to create multimedia "learning objects" for HE! Without a trace of a collaborative/active web 2.0 tool in sight. NoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOO

Visit the link & take a time reading the comments, it's interesting stuff. Especially the comments about the impending spectre (for some) of corporate Higher Education. It wll happen.

this comment sums it up for me:

"If the primary intent is to make money, then UC is following the same path as many other failed and/or failing online programs. If the primary intent is to provide more flexibility and options to students, then the money will follow."