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markuos morley

Digital, Networked and Open : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Schol... - 4 views

www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...-9781849666275-chapter-001.xml

martin weller digital scholarship book mooc change11

shared by markuos morley on 27 Sep 11 - No Cached
    • markuos morley
      markuos morley on 27 Sep 11
       
      What is Martin's definition of a social network here?
    • markuos morley
      markuos morley on 27 Sep 11
       
      Surely scholars could use email distribution lists and Usenet Newsgroups for such activities commonly back in the early 1990's?
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 07 Oct 11
       
      They could but it wasn't that common.
  • Are they central or peripheral to practice?
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Blogs are also the epitome of the type of technology that can lead to rapid innovation. They can be free to set up, are easy to use and because they are at the user's control, they represent a liberated form for expression. There is no word limit or publication schedule for a blog
  • ‘Scholarship’ is itself a rather old-fashioned term.
  • How do we recognise quality?
  • Prior to the Internet, but particularly prior to social networks, this kind of network was limited to those with whom you interacted regularly.
  • the advent of social networks that is having an influence on scholarly practice.
  • Should bloggers use institutional systems or separate out their blogging and formal identities?
  • Dunbar's (1992) research on friends and group size suggests that it has a capacity of around 150. It necessitates keeping in touch with a lot of people, often reinforcing that contact with physical interaction.
  • for those who have taken the step to establishing an online identity, these networks are undoubtedly of significant value in their everyday practice.
  • openness
  • Tim O'Reilly (2004) calls ‘an architecture of participation’, an infrastructure and set of tools that allow anyone to contribute.
  • It is this democratisation and removal of previous filters that has characterised the tools which have formed the second wave of web popularity, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, blogs, Facebook and Twitter.
  • Openness then refers not only to the technology but also to the practice of sharing content as a default.
    • markuos morley
      markuos morley on 27 Sep 11
       
      Significant point for me.
    • markuos morley
      markuos morley on 27 Sep 11
       
      The Philosophy is the important thing.
  • Fast – technology that is easy to learn and quick to set up. The academic does not need to attend a training course to use it or submit a request to their central IT services to set it up. This means they can experiment quickly.
  • Cheap – tools that are usually free or at least have a freemium model so the individual can fund any extension themselves. This means that it is not necessary to gain authorisation to use them from a budget holder. It also means the user doesn't need to be concerned about the size of audience or return on investment, which is liberating.
  • Out of control – these technologies are outside of formal institutional control structures, so they have a more personal element and are more flexible. They are also democratised tools, so the control of them is as much in the hands of students as it is that of the educator.
  • Overall, this tends to encourage experimentation and innovation in terms of both what people produce for content services and the uses they put technology to in education.
  • ‘the good enough revolution’
  • This reflects a move away from expensive, sophisticated software and hardware to using tools which are easy to use, lightweight and which tie in with the digital, networked, open culture.
  • there seems to be such an anxiety about being labelled a ‘technological determinist’ that many people in education seek to deny the significance of technology in any discussion. ‘Technology isn't important’, ‘pedagogy comes first’, ‘we should be talking about learning, not the technology’ are all common refrains in conferences and workshops.
  • While there is undoubtedly some truth in these, the suggestion that technology isn't playing a significant role in how people are communicating, working, constructing knowledge and socialising is to ignore a major influencing factor in a complex equation.
  • entirely unpredicted, what is often termed ‘emergent use’, which arises from a community taking a system and using it for purposes the creators never envisaged.
  • markuos morley on 27 Sep 11
     
    I've made some annotations and floating comments here. Possibly Martin would like to respond in situ?
Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen

#change11 or what is a MOOC? « Cathy Anderson - 2 views

www.cathyandersonblog.com/?p=393

shared by Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen on 21 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • MOOCs are boundaryless and test our capacity to learn and absorb informatio
  • Mobile technology is changing not only how we learn but where and whe
  • This new territory has no history upon which to draw from experience to make decisions..we have only the present and we can only speculate about the future and impact upon humans, our knowledge and new technologie
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • This course will allow us the opportunity to collaborate together and experience first hand this new way to learn. In addition to this we can evaluate whether or not this is an effective way to learn
  • Lone Guldbrandt Tønnesen on 21 Sep 11
     
    Blog about MOOC´s
Rob Parsons

A Pedagogy of Abundance : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly... - 0 views

www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...-9781849666275-chapter-008.xml

scholarship

shared by Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • If we use this perspective to examine education we can consider how education may shift as a result of abundance. Traditionally in education expertise is analogous to talent in the music industry – it is the core element of scarcity in the model. In any one subject there are relatively few experts (compared with the level of knowledge in the general population). Learners represent the ‘demand’ in this model, so when access to the experts is via physical interaction, for example, by means of a lecture, then the model of supply and demand necessitates that the learners come to the place where the experts are located. It also makes sense to group these experts together, around other costly resources such as books and laboratories. The modern university is in this sense a solution to the economics of scarcity.
  • As a result, a ‘pedagogy of scarcity’ developed, which is based around a one-to- many model to make the best use of the scarce resource (the expert). This is embodied in the lecture, which despite its detractors is still a very efficient means of conveying certain types of learning content. An instructivist pedagogy then can be seen as a direct consequence of the demands of scarcity.
  • It may be that we do not require new pedagogies to accommodate these assumptions as Conole (2008) points out: Recent thinking in learning theory has shifted to emphasise the benefit of social and situated learning as opposed to behaviourist, outcomes-based, individual learning. What is striking is that a mapping to the technologies shows that recent trends in the use of technologies, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 echoes this; Web 2.0 tools very much emphasise the collective and the network.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Though i think it is true that students learn collaboratively, and always have done, they don't act as if they do (any more than teachers act as if they do, and quite often less). Perhaps our students still come from experiences that value authority and, whatever is said, do not value constructivism and collaboration.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Any pedagogy of abundance would then, I suggest, be based on the following assumptions:
  • Jonassen (1991) describes it thus: Constructivism … claims that reality is constructed by the knower based upon mental activity. Humans are perceivers and interpreters who construct their own reality through engaging in those mental activities … What the mind produces are mental models that explain to the knower what he or she has perceived … We all conceive of the external reality somewhat differently, based on our unique set of experiences with the world.
  • Given that it has a loose definition, it is hard to pin down a constructivist approach exactly. Mayer (2004) suggests that such discovery-based approaches are less effective than guided ones, arguing that the ‘debate about discovery has been replayed many times in education but each time, the evidence has favoured a guided approach to learning’.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Interesting, because my immediate reaction was that there's no contradiction between guided learning and constructivism. Just don't expect that your students will always go where you guide them.
  • When Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) claim, with some justification, that ‘the epistemology of a discipline should not be confused with a pedagogy for teaching/learning it’ that only highlights that the epistemology of a discipline is now being constructed by all, so learning how to participate in this is as significant as learning the subject matter of the discipline itself.
  • However, the number of successful open source communities is relatively small compared with the number of unsuccessful ones, and thus the rather tenuous success factors for generating and sustaining an effective community may prove to be a barrier across all subject areas. Where they thrive, however, it offers a significant model which higher education can learn much from in terms of motivation and retention (Meiszner 2010).
  • Abundance does not apply to all aspects of learning; indeed the opposite may be true, for example, an individual's attention is not abundant and is time limited. The abundance of content puts increasing pressure on this scarce resource, and so finding effective ways of dealing with this may be the key element in any pedagogy. However, I would contend that the abundance of content and connections is as fundamental shift in education as any we are likely to encounter, and there has, to date, been little attempt to really place this at the centre of a model of teaching.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      Agreed. Great conclusion. At the moment, if I had to single out one key point Martin makes, it is this.
Rob Parsons

Public Engagement as Collateral Damage : The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transfo... - 1 views

www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...-9781849666275-chapter-007.xml

scholarship

shared by Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • ‘Public engagement’ involves specialists in higher education listening to, developing their understanding of, and interacting with non-specialists. The ‘public’ includes individuals and groups who do not currently have a formal relationship with an HEI through teaching, research or knowledge transfer.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      As exemplified by the currently difficult area of "public understanding of science", which is a very good example of where academics need to be engaging - not just science academics, but e.g. social science academics.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      While Amazon's long tail is visible, its dimensions ahve been subject to amendment: http://radar.oreilly.com/2005/08/amazons-long-tail-not-so-long.html Looks as if pareto may hold. I'm not aware of more up to date research.
  • This can be realised through specific projects, such as the OER projects many universities are initiating. However, long-tail models only work when there is sufficient content to occupy the tail. In order to achieve this scale of content in a sustainable manner, the outputs listed above need to become a frictionless by-product of the standard practice, rather than the outcomes of isolated projects.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      How does this work with ?increasing? marketisation of universities? Will the long tail contract?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In this chapter I have argued that we can view higher education as a long-tail content production environment. Much of what we currently aim to achieve through specific public engagement projects can be realised by producing digital artefacts as a by-product of typical scholarly activity. My intention is not to suggest that this is the only means of performing public engagement; for example, engaging with local schools works well by providing face-to-face contact with inspiring figures. As with other scholarly functions, some will remain, but the digital alternative not only allows for new ways of realising the same goals but also opens up new possibilities.
    • Rob Parsons
      Rob Parsons on 09 Oct 11
       
      I'm in two minds. I like what Martin says about public engagement as a by product as well as PE as a deliberate activity. But I don't think the long tail metaphor fits it.
Yukon syl

arXiv.org e-Print archive - 4 views

arxiv.org

openaccess open library papers

shared by Yukon syl on 13 Oct 11 - Cached
  • Yukon syl on 13 Oct 11
     
    Cornell University Librarys open access to 707,763 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science
  • Yukon syl on 13 Oct 11
     
    another way that the open content movement has encouraged sharing of knowledge.
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