I haven’t posted one of these for a while but the work has been rolling along. In the last month I’ve written ~25k words of analysis on two questions (two big questions) in my pilot survey.
After all that, something hit me just now. I was writing about my surprise that academic developers and learning designers downplay project management activities and knowledge among education technologists, suggesting that they see this work more as reactive, 1:1 support focused. Now for me, knowing how involved big projects relating to implementation or analysis/evaluation of education technologies can be, this seemed to be a clear example of lacking awareness of what is happening in your backyard. (And there are big blind spots between all role types)
But these big projects are generally something that occurs in central teams, at an institutional level. Perhaps also among Ed Techs at more senior levels. If ADs and LDs are reflecting on what the ETs they interact with the most are doing (and knowing) on a daily basis, and these are the ETs in their faculties, it makes sense that they may have quite a different perspective.
In hindsight, this all seems painfully obvious but whoa.
One of the common concerns raised (or benefits posited) around online and technology enhanced learning is that it is cheaper than face-to-face teaching and is introduced to cut costs rather than raise standards. People working in the space have argued for years that this isn’t the case (in either instance) but there has been something of a dearth of reliable data about the costs of teaching in HE. This working paper from UniMelb’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, in partnership with the Pilbara Group, suggests in proud academic tradition that ‘it depends’ – based on degree level and mode. The paper also delves into a range of other factors including discipline, campus location and funding clusters.
When I started working in the learning design space, the ADDIE model (Analysis – Design – Development – Implementation – Evaluation) was somewhat considered the be-all and end-all. It offers a useful set of steps for thinking about the creation of a learning resource or activity but also seemed as much a linear project management system as anything else. This article outlines the history of this model and what has come to replace it as development has moved to more iterative AGILE-oriented approaches like SAM (Successive Approximation Model). As with many things, it still has its place.
This article examines the use of education technologies starting out from a position that vendors overhype their products but it eventually comes to the conclusion commonly held by people working in the sector that this doesn’t actually matter and a judicious combination of technology, pedagogy and capability building can in fact make a difference in education. Laufer et al. interview and survey Higher Ed leaders from 24 countries for their perspectives on the impact of education technologies in the last two years, covering opportunities and barriers for both individuals and institutions. Well worth a read for the big picture overview.
ASCILITE’s TELedvisors Network wraps up the 2021 webinar series with a bang, with Prof. Michael Sankey (CDU) and Jack Sage (JCU) sharing the findings of research they undertook this year into what it takes for people to enter the growing profession of Learning Design (and adjacent roles) in Australian Higher Ed and what the future looks like for these kinds of roles.
Respected author in the tech ethics and society space, Cory Doctorow, makes some valuable connections between the Luddite movement of the early 1800s and some key tenets of science fiction – namely that it is generally all about the meaning of the impact of technology on the world than the tools themselves.
Lines of thought: the emergence of meaning through collaborations and remix – Wendy Taleo and Sarah Honeychurch
First up for #ascilite2021 today is @wentale and @NomadWarMachine presenting on #ds106 and meaning making in digital collaboration. Particularly interesting for longer term twitter peeps who’ve seen #ds106 unfold over the years.
Looking at learning with technology through the lens of creative projects
Remixed into representation in colours
Remixing the collaborative poem into music
Other remixes included wordclouds, designs of words as colours, videos, music, crochet and papier-mache bowls – amazing to see the different ways people interpret and represent the same contet #ascilite2021
Sustainable learning design in large transformational teaching and learning initiatives – Courtney Shalavin and Elaine Huber
Next up is @loch_b and colleagues presenting on building a culture of innovation in edtech and the challenges of overcoming risk aversion #ascilite2021
Birgit acknowledges that describing the spread of innovation as a virus probably isn’t the best thing to do these days 🙂
Interesting observation from the @loch_b and co session about the educator led innovators network at La Trobe that they kept at arms length from the Central L&T team (still with some interaction) because academics tend to steer clear of centrally driven initiatives #ascilite2021
One of my key areas of focus this year has been disrupting this narrative and developing an integrated model of learning design that breaks down the us vs them continuum – we need to think beyond dichotomies #ascilite2021https://t.co/tgaGvJPpes
Exploring industry-university partnerships in the creation of short courses and micro-credentials – Rachel Fitzgerald and Henk Huijser
This feels like another one of these discussions that haven’t changed for a decade. I’m glad that it is still on the agenda but is this a fundamental flaw of research – a hesitancy to take a position and move forward?
I asked Henk why movement has been so slow in this space – he feels it comes down to a lack of shared understanding and challenges for unis in dealing with the business models needed
Lots of rich discussion – this is clearly something that still has relevance to a lot of people.
Creating presence, currency and connection in digital learning with video blogs – Jo Elliott and Chie Adachi
Vlogging established a ritual – rituals are a key aspect of connection and community – and created a space for @Dr_JoElliott and @chieadachi to learn out loud #ascilite2021
The panel discussion about the future at #ascilite2021 is interesting but am I the only person feeling like we have been saying these things for a long time. 'oh we need to be willing to accept failure', 'will microcredentials have an impact' 'we need end to end eportfolios'…
Another handy tweet about some of the conference posters
Some great posters to check out if you haven't already, #ascilite2021 tweeps: https://t.co/gcc1FfiTNH My particular favourites are @Puvaaru and Amanda Bellaby's CMP work on 3rd space professionals well-being and @DigMedEd on Indigenous Voices in learning design
Back to what? What STEM and Health teaching academics learnt from COVID – Christopher Bridge, Birgit Loch, Dell Horey, Brianna Julien, Belinda Thompson and Julia Agolli
Wide range of practices under consideration post – COVID
Deakin Launch Network: an employability network that improves engagement, graduate outcomes and wellbeing by connecting and leveraging the expertise of diverse students and alumni – Trina Jorre de St Jorre
Nice presentation about students that meaningfully included student voices
Well that was a diverse Day 2
We also had a big discussion in the TELedvisors community around our aims and some future possibilities – more on that in time
Opening keynote – Prof Sarah Pearson, Uni of Queensland
Oh joy – we are looking at Education Technology through the lens of venture capital.
Oh – not even ed tech from what I can see.
Holistic ecosystems – probably the most valuable part of the session.
Oh Jesus Christ – someone refers to themself as a Netflix for education. (I am pretty sure I have heard the same thing from senior leaders – now I know where that came from, I guess)
There’s some other stuff about needing more women in STEM – sure, obviously.
A systematic approach to learning design for supervisor training in a specialist medical college – Jorge Reyna, Santosh Khanal, Victoria Baker-Smith and Ellen Cooper
Common issues coming up – resistance from educators to spending time in actually working on their learning design
That session finished and I’m just jumping from one session to the next like I’m flicking through tv channels.
Ok, so this presenter of a short paper has 80 slides and is showing them in Presenter view. Bless.
Powerpoint slides with text about insitutional claims
I like that he has a bow tie
I haven’t completely tuned into this but I think I need to read this paper. Benchmarking educational quality – an independent analysis and alternative approach – Stanislaw Paul Maj
One session to go now before mine – feeling nervous
Implementing Learning Analytics: The Journey To Improve Teaching and Learning at five Australian Universities – Jo-Anne Clark and David Tuffley
Factors associated with edvisor perceptions of their work being understood and valued are not what they seem – Colin Simpson and Jessica Frawley
Huh, that title actually is kind of clunky. I wanted to have a Twin Peaks reference. I should probably listen to people more. 🙂
Ok, me now.
Ok, I got through that – I have a VERY unacademic style – but folksy?
Managing Career Transitions into post-secondary Learning Designer Jobs: An Australasian Perspective – Michael Sankey and Jack Sage
(This is kind of a reboot of the webinar they ran for us last week)
I have my doubts about this next session but lets see how we go
Well, the TELedvisors Network hosted a group to identify technology themes. We agreed that “Increased use of learning technologies” is so vague as to be ridiculous. And also, just, duh.
The latest issue of AJET (Australasian Journal of Educational Technology) opens with an editorial from two people whose work in the space of TEL I’ve found of interest over the years – Kate Thompson (QUT) and Jason Lodge (UQ).
My entry to this editorial was via a local Higher Ed daily newsletter, the Campus Morning Mail. The title of the entry for it was “For on-line to work, ask the ed-tech experts“. Leaving aside the strange hyphenation of online, this headline led me down the page to see exactly who these ‘ed-tech experts’ are. Apparently the only experts are ed tech researchers. (There is a passing reference to education technologists in the abstract but just one).
I tweeted a few first glance responses – looking back I think they were relatively innocuous:
I agree with a significant amount of what is in here but I think there are some key elements relating to meaningful practical implementation that ed tech focused researchers consistently overlook. I feel a blog post coming on https://t.co/Hgma1ImJXz
I would love to see much greater awareness of the big picture when it comes to this kind of research. It seems that so much occurs in essentially abstract lab conditions. Learning designers, ed techs etc should be a much more significant part of the conversation and at the table
This was enough to spark some wide-ranging discussions. I think the main issue ultimately was my suggestion that researchers often don’t take a wide or holistic enough view of ed tech and the ed tech ecosystem in institutions (as far as practical implementation goes) and that much of this research is relatively abstract and lab based. Maybe this is slightly unfair but, as someone whose job it is to stay current on ed tech and TEL, I stand by this overall but recognise that it may lack the nuance that was intended.
So let me explain what my concerns are and what I mean.
I believe that discussions and decisions around technologies with a pedagogical focus need to address practical questions of how it can actually get done in a contemporary institution in a way that has significance and meaningful impact.
This is often (not always but frequently) where the thought about the intervention ends. We end up with conclusions along the lines of ‘within the confines of the theoretical framework and recognising that further research is necessary, it appears that ePortfolios benefit learning because of x, y and z. More institutions should implement ePortfolios in context a, b and c’. This, to me, is abstract because while it is important to have this understanding, it almost never offers a path towards this imagined implementation. There’s a big gap between “should” and will.
The process of making meaningful change happen at scale in a Higher Education institution can be an arduous one, shaped by many valid and real factors, that seem to be waved away as the domain of uninformed “decision-makers”, “policymakers”, “economists”, “self-promoters” and “aspiring international keynoters”. The lack of regard in this editorial for anyone who is not an educational researcher clangs loudly against the repeated question about why education researchers don’t play a larger part of the decision making process.
As an education technologist, I recognise myself as one of these ‘others’. My colleagues in learning (etc) design and academic development areas I would suggest are the same. We possess significant expertise that comes from the varied pathways we took into this field, as well as from the practical work we do day in and day out relating to supporting teaching and learning in practice across many educators, disciplines and situations. We are frequently the bridge between many parts of the organisation – teaching and non-teaching – which gives us rare insights into the bigger picture. As professional staff however, we tend to be excluded from undertaking research and contributing to the literature.
What I’d love to see are three things:
Meaningful, respectful conversations between education researchers and edvisors to foster understanding of each other does and contributes
Genuine research collaborations between education researchers and edvisors
Greater use of relevant, evidence based research in institutional operations.
I bump into the frustrations of people in institutions about the pace of change or progress on implementations on a daily basis. I know how easy it can be to attribute these to personal motives rather than deal with the reality of complex systems – I’ve done it myself in the past, to my embarrassment now. The best way forward in my view is with more mutual understanding and respect.
Those who know me will know that the edvisor community is a big deal for me. (If you don’t, I mean, collectively, education technologists, learning designers, academic developers and people in those kinds of Third Space roles) .
We face a number of challenges on a daily basis in being heard and having our experience and expertise recognised by those people that we try to help to do teaching and learning better. I caught up with a number of colleagues for a semi-informal chat recently about ways that we might collaborate more effectively in terms of the resources and training that we provide in our different faculties and centrally.
I’d like to make clear that individually I like and respect the people that were in the conversation. It was a combination of learning/education designers (instructional designers, whatever – insert your preferred term here) and education technologists. Mostly learning designers though. And that’s where the fun started.
Now these are some of my theories about how universities work and their problems. They are a bit untested and hopefully some of that will come out of my PhD research. I don’t actually think they are particularly controversial. Essentially there is a prestige hierarchy of knowledge in higher ed: Discipline > Pedagogy > Technology. People may downplay this but at times there can be a deep seated belief amongst learning/education designers that people on the technology side only ever talk about which buttons to push. This can occasionally come across as an attitude that unless you are a real education/learning designer, your pedagogical understanding is minimal. And if an academic should happen to come to you with a technological question rather than a purely pedagogical one, they might as well have defiled the graves of your ancestors*.
Let me divert for a moment to my primitive understanding of practice theory, where a practice is composed of three elements – the material (the things you need to do the practice), competencies (the knowledge you need) and cultural (the social context in which it occurs). These may not be the official terms but lets roll with the broad concept because that is more important right now. I would argue that if you don’t have an understanding of all three, you probably don’t know enough about the practice to advise others about it well.
My second theory about higher ed is that many academics feel that they are expected to have pedagogical expertise (alongside their discipline knowledge) because they are working in a role where they are expected (usually) to be able to teach. One of our challenges then as edvisors is that we, as people who are not working in teaching roles, are not seen as people to go to for pedagogical advice. (Also, asking for pedagogical advice is to admit to a lack of knowledge and higher ed is a place where your knowledge is your power and your currency). This does vary between disciplines, depending on how confident people feel in their identity as a discipline expert. (Medical educators seem to be more open than many academics to receiving advice about pedagogy). This isn’t a universal rule and some academics are perfectly comfortable trying to develop themselves as educators but, anecdotally at least, the many academics engaging in pedagogically oriented professional development will do so mostly because it is a mandated part of promotion or career progression.
Asking for technological advice however is easier because nobody will judge you for that. My personal experience is that academics are more open and honest about their skill gaps in these kinds of workshops, even their pedagogical gaps, because expectations of them are lower. Maybe this is just my approach but as an educational technologist, I see an opportunity then to bundle pedagogical thinking with discussion of the technology. They are all part of the one practice, after all.
What works for me doesn’t work for everyone, of course and might not even be the right solution. (Assuming there is only one right answer to the question of how edvisors can lead educators to the water of better learning and teaching and get them to drink).
I mentioned the word ‘training’ earlier. In our wide-ranging discussion about how we (education technologists and learning designers) collectively educate educators, I referred to this as training. One of the learning designers leapt upon this to point out that the work that I do is basically a behaviorist, push-this-button push-that-button pedagogy-free zone whereas their ‘workshops’ are richer. Rather than focus on the idea, they fixated on the semantics, the specific presentation of a form of the idea. (I have a separate post coming about form vs content). When I pointed out that I felt there was a certain amount of snobbishness in the way technology vs pedagogy was seen and discussed in our work, there was a defensive bustle of ‘no, we love technology’ but I don’t think I got my point across.
I do also recognise that sometimes we have emotional reactions alongside rational ones. Both are a part of life but it can take a bit of sifting to know whether you are in the right. Then again, being factually right isn’t always the only thing that matters. As a community of practitioners who struggle to be heard and recognised, it’s important that we can also hear and recognise our colleagues in the different roles of our discipline. Feeling disrespected I believe underpins many of the dumb, unproductive tensions and simmering conflicts in our environment.
Ultimately, I would say that collectively our job is to improve learning and teaching, by whatever means necessary. Putting ourselves into tiny silos and refusing to engage with an educator when they come to us with a question because ‘that’s not my job’ is bad practice, IMHO. If you legitimately can’t answer the question, sure, help them by directing them to someone that can but don’t miss the opportunity to build a relationship of trust with someone because you feel that they didn’t respect your primary focus. Also, for the love of God, let’s not set up an ‘us and them’ culture between pedagogists and technologists – that doesn’t help anybody.
Anyway, maybe we need to start by considering what our common ground is and working our way out from there. Remembering that we are all messy and complex and see a range of paths to the promised land is probably a good first step.
Thank you for indulging in my therapy session.
* I do want to acknowledge that I think it is more of a philosophical approach than anything else. There can be valid reasons, it’s just not my personal style.
While I’m waiting for faculty approval to submit to university ethics, I have time to consider some of my bigger questions sitting in the ‘later pile’. A big one relates to how (if?) my theoretical framework relates to my methodology in a meaningful way. There are a couple of theories that I’m drawing on for this research, though to be honest I’m not sure how officially ‘theoretical’ they are.
There’s work by Whitchurch and others about the Third Space as it relates to Higher Education, the liminal space between admin and academic that edvisors occupy. And there’s work relating to Social Practice theory by Shove and others that I feel may be helpful in defining the different kinds of edvisors by the work edvisors they do. It may also reveal something about how we/they work with academics and management in terms of the ways practices are disseminated and evolve. This seems to crossover into the realms of change management, which I seem to be hearing a lot about recently in this space and which perhaps seems like a useful angle to take, strategically. (Truth be told though, I think that too much weight is probably given to change and not enough to maintenance and sustainability of existing good learning and teaching practices, so who knows where I’ll land on that)
There are a couple of concerns that I have – are the theories that I’m looking at robust enough to inform the research that I’m doing? Are they even really theories, as such? Shouldn’t they be providing me with some ideas about how I should be designing my research data collection? To date, I’ve been largely assuming that they will come to the fore when I eventually get onto data analysis and trying to make some meaning from the things I’ve collected.
Nobody seems to be jumping up and down about this though – which has become my default indicator of whether I’m going horribly wrong – so I guess I’ll just keep meandering along. I have reached out to a couple of academics in business faculties now though, with an interest in the way organisations work because I have a strong feeling that this is an important factor in successful edvisor/academic/management collaboration but I have no idea what the language is that I need to describe this or what models or frameworks will best help to understand it. I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I like about doing this PhD study is the opportunities that it creates to reach out to people who have done interesting work, who, for the most part seem willing to share their expertise.
It draws into sharp contrast a comment yesterday from one of the academics on my progress review panel. I asked whether my blogging here, as a way of getting my ideas straight, might prove problematic down the road with my thesis – i.e. are there risks of being pinged for self plagiarism or something? I’m pretty sure that my writing style here is far more casual than my academic writing style but we do also have go-to turns of phrase and words that we favour. (I know I really overuse ‘particularly’, ‘however’, ‘interesting’, and a few others but I struggle to find replacements that feel as much like me). Anyway, the academic seemed just as concerned about people stealing my ideas. Which I guess it was nice that someone thinks I might have ideas worth stealing but, given that my entire aim with this research (as far as I know currently) is to improve and change practices and relationships with edvisors, I’m mostly of the opinion that I want my ideas to circulate and evolve. But maybe I’m naive.
I mean, I guess I am anyway. After a great deal of panic and uncertainty about my methodology (particularly), I flew through my thesis proposal review/confirmation thing a few weeks ago and it was signed off by the panel with no changes, there and then.
All that remains now is to actually do the research, analyse it, make sense of it and write it up. (Oh and get ethics approval and maintain a healthy work/life/study balance and…)
While I was feeling pretty good about my review of the current literature and ideas about what I’d like to achieve in this space, my lack of research training and experience and my incredibly scatter-shot approach to what I actually plan to capture as data (and how) had me deeply concerned that I was going to be sent away to do major revisions before resubmitting my thesis proposal. (Also the fact that it weighed in at 15,000 words – a lazy 5,000 over the recommended word count).
I’ll save the full description of my methodology for another post – suffice to say that I’ve counted 17 different sources of data that I want to collect and a good 4 or 5 of them I find I’m completely unable to link them to my research questions. (Also I think my research questions are not quite what I want to do but I was damned if I was going to mention that. I mean, they’re close but the wording isn’t quite right.)
Getting this thesis proposal accepted has been my only real goal for the last 2.5 years, with everything else largely sent to the carpark to deal with later.
But I guess later is now. On with it, I suppose.
I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have helped me to get this far and been generous with their time, support and advice – Peter, Lina, Kerrie, Mischa, Carol, David, Kate, Chie, Kym, Pam and anyone I’ve missed.
Well I probably said all that I needed to say on my general feelings about this MOOC in my last post so this is largely for the sake of completion. The final week of this course is a peer assessed piece of writing analysing the methods used in a sample paper. Turns out that I missed the deadline to write that – I may even have been working on my Week 7 post when that deadline fell – so this appears to be the end of the road for me. I could still go through and do the work but I found the supplied paper unrelated to my research and using methodologies that I have little interest in. The overall questions raised and things to be mindful of in the assessment instructions are enough.
What method of analysis was used?
How was the chosen method of analysis appropriate to the data?
What other kinds of analysis might have been used?
How was the analysed designed? Is the design clearly described? What were its strengths and weaknesses?
What kind of issues or problems might one identify with the analysis?
What are the key findings and conclusions, and how are they justified through the chosen analysis techniques?
And so with that, I guess I’m done with SOCRMx. In spite of my disengagement with the community, the resources and the structure really have been of a high standard and, more importantly, incredibly timely for me. As someone returning to study after some time who has not ever really had a formal research focus, there seems to be a lot of assumed knowledge about research methodology and having this opportunity to get a birds-eye view of the various options was ideal. I know I still have a long way to go but this has been a nice push in the right direction.
