My day at ALT-C 2009

What I did at ALT-C 2009…

Short version: I hung around for a bit, chatted to some people, then went to the pub.

Long version – featuring open education resources, debating the value of VLEs, Michael Wesch’s keynote and more…

Despite leaving home incredibly early, I managed to miss the opening of Michael Wesch’s keynote (due to some faffing about at Machester Airport). Wesch’s talk necessarily covered many points that featured in his well known videos, but with more depth and context – and had some fun stuff, such as tracing the evolution of ‘whatever’. From discussion after and reading online comments, reception was mixed – this being (apparently) largely the same keynote he’s delivered elsewhere, and some differing reactions to the talk itself. For me the issue was principally that if you’ve seen Michael’s videos already, and if you’ve read a few articles or posts from him online, the keynote didn’t contain enough surprises. There was a lot of humour there, and enthusiastic presentation. Good but not life changing.

Content wise, Michael mentioned that his group is studying how people ‘flock’ on the internet – they’ve adopted this term in place of ‘group’ as they feel it better reflects how people may come together, travel some way together, and split off at any time. I think it does capture the very informal nature of a lot of web-based groups with loose membership that changes over time – but I don’t think it helps us think about how people may be members of multiple (possibly overlapping, possibly not) groups at any one time. Conceptually, I understand multiple group membership better than multiple flock membership – which brings to my mind images of deadly avian pile-ups. Can anyone suggest a better term? If not, lets just call them groups, and not complicate matters.

I was going to see Richard Noss’ talk on the grand challenges for technology-enhanced learning next – but decided to check in at the halls where I was staying. This turned out to be a waste of time, as check in didn’t open till 2pm… back to the conference, where I caught up with a few folks and chatted networked.

Next session I went to was ‘Technology Enhanced Feed-Forward‘ – this presented results of a study of student reactions to audio (podcast) and video feedback. Quick take home message was that in the trial *many* students disliked getting feedback via mp3, and it was identified that tutors giving feedback via podcast have to be much more careful how they give their feedback. The feedback has to be much more constructive and very supportive in tone otherwise it can be a very negative – harrowing even – experience for the students. There was also some good discussion after.

More chatting networking over lunch.

The VLE is Dead was a deliberately provocative symposium session with a range of speakers defending or attacking the use of VLEs. This was a packed out session, with Josie Taylor valiantly managing to keep control in the face of heated debate with some audience members chipping in their comments out of order (ahem). What started as a debate about institional VLEs vs Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) developed into much wider debate about the role of universities and open vs. closed models of learning. The session was recorded, and you can see the video on James Clay’s blog here – The VLE is Dead: The Movie. Worth watching the opening statements at least – some very astute and  some funny metaphors and allusions thrown in for good measure.

The feeling I got from this overall, and speaking to some of the panellists later, is that students use diverse and individual ranges of technology regardless – so they already have their PLE, with the institutional VLE being but one part of that. Like many others I believe that the VLE brings benefits of providing a known and common ‘base’ for students’ online learning. One which members of staff can easily make the launch pad for a whole load of external Web 2.0 activities if they so wish – and that many faculty already do this. What didn’t make it into the debate, but is a worthy note, is how VLEs are adapting to the social web. Moodle 2.0, for example, is introducing a repositories API for interacting with the external web – where a repository can be Flickr, a blog or somesuch, not just some ‘formal’ or closed institutional repository.

There was a gap on my schedule after that – I hadn’t spotted the ‘Virtual Midwifery’ session. Instead I wandered down for coffee. Where my new laptop bag was spotted and greatly admired. Is it particularly shameless at this point to link to my wife’s Folksy store? Oh well, done it now. She sometimes takes commisions, btw.

Next up I was meaning to catch the HEA presentation – but ended up chatting networking some more instead. I was also hoping to catch up with someone at the TLRP stall, having missed Richard Noss’ invited talk earlier. But when I wandered down there was no one about. From the JISC intute stall I learned that subject specific versions of their online tutorial on evaluating web sources/resources exist. We’ve used their more generic ‘Internet Detective’ web-quest several times in induction sessions for new students before, the ICT-specific web-research tutorial might be even better.

During the final session I managed to make it to 1 1/2 sessions relating to Open Education Resources. First up, the Talis Open Education Incubator – Chris Clark outlined the program whereby Talis will be proving seed funding to a number of (mainly small) OER projects. Its a very moderate amount of funding overall, but hopefully enough to help get some good work off the ground. Then I dashed upstairs for the OER Matters session. Having missed the start, I didn’t realise till afterward that the panellists were each playing a character with a different take on OER. Opinion was divided as to whether this device helped make the views on OER clearer or whether this just made things a little confusing.

Still, as Im hoping to start publishing some of my own materials as OER soon, I took this opportunity to continue the chat about OER over dinner – sat between the OU’s Chris Pegler and Thursday keynoter Terry Anderson. When they weren’t both admiring the afore mentioned laptop bag, we did chat about OERs and some of the barriers to publishing. Chris commented that personal insecurity about the quality of notes was perhaps one of the biggest barriers to OER publication – that tutors are unwilling to publish notes before they are perfect prevents them from ever appearing. I have to agree that if I prepare materials for my own students it does not matter too much if there are mistakes – I am there with the students to discuss and work round any issues.

One solution is to publish materials within a conversational framework – knowing that the notes are not perfect but inviting comment and corrections – Tony Hirst has already provided an example of this, with his Digital Worlds game development ‘uncourse’. I’ll hopefully be able to get my finger out soon and get started on my own…

Finally, the pub with F-Alt and more chatting networking.