Does technology enhance learning renton
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slides and notes from a presentation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in March 2014 as part of a one day seminar (http://adri.mdx.ac.uk.contentcurator.net/middlesex-ica-symposium-march2014 ) responding to a concurrent exhibition of the Artist Richard Hamilton, and his involvement with the Independent group and Art and Design Pedagogy I was an invited speaker on the Technology and Innovation panel
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Does technology enhance learning renton
- 1. Does Technology Enhance Learning? Lucy Renton l.renton@kingston.ac.uk Faculty Blended Learning Co-ordinator Faculty of Art Design & Architecture
- 2. Challenging Context •Increased student numbers •Cuts in funding and staffing levels •(mounting) student fees and •Investment in schools, technology and new teaching approaches • Leading to increased student expectations •More utilitarian curriculum in schools •Pressures on FE funding threatening Foundation courses •Government policy drive on (digital skills) and employability •Dominance of NSS metrics, issues for Art & Design (Vaughn, Yorke, Blair) • The Open Agenda, Open Educational Resources • New Flexible Pedagogies agenda •Potential introduction of Grade Point Average •MOOCs and other free provision
- 3. 3 things • The institutional Virtual Learning Environment- a problem not a solution for active learning in Art & Design? • the staff experience – innovation and/or denial? • Utopias and Dystopias in TEL – who is in control?
- 4. Just what is it that makes today’s VLE so indifferent, so unappealing?
- 5. Barriers to using Blackboard - some views from our Kingston 2010 Learning Technologies Review • worries that online technologies mean a reduction in teachers or studio space • poor visual appearance, and University branding not suited to needs of Art & Design • tutor-centric, rather than student inclusive • design for content delivery, rather than content creation • out of date in comparison to Web developments and behaviours • creating silos in modules or courses • lack of creative opportunities for students to shape their online environments • lack of personalisation • lack of features needed by studio based courses (good sign-up tools for individual tutorials, etc.) • lack of staff development time or funding to bring about culture change and innovation • lack of vertical integration across levels in disciplines, and across disciplines • lack of integration with Research staff and students • lack of openness impeding professional contacts.
- 6. What’s changed? 2008 Sagan and Candela Learning virtually or virtually learning? : a survey to gauge students’ use and perception of Blackboard and VLEs. Project Report. University of the Arts London. 2014 Powers, Kannara and Marsh
- 7. A better approach? • System designed in collaboration with staff and students • Admin functions necessary for A & D e.g. tutorial sign up • organised as communities of practitioners led by experts • Some closed areas for CLA restricted materials • Personalised experience for students • Staff and Student control over setting up new groupings • Integrated personal and group blogs • Open source technology • More ‘edgeless’ design through externally facing pages • Better visual interface • Online submission, assessment and feedback based on good practice
- 8. What do we want our TEL to do? “it is important to define the pedagogical challenges to technology, if the CSCL community is to drive the technology towards what learners need, rather than simply trying to exploit what business and leisure markets create” Diane Laurillard 2008 CSCL = Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
- 9. Some innovations looking at the Processes of Art and Design Learning and Teaching Process Arts – Chris Follows http://process.arts.ac.uk/ Q Art Sarah Rawles et al http://q-art.org.uk/ Creative Strategies Dr Natasha Mayo http://ceramics.cardiffmet.ac.uk/resources/creati ve-strategies/home-creative-strategies
- 10. Is this Tomorrow? • David Swayne podcast – predictive analytics http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/podcasts/the-podcast-david- swayne-interview/2012143.article • Michael Rosen blog post http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/big-push-to-make-education-next- big.html • Gina Wall – Highlands and Islands, - rethinking the academy • Neil Cummings – Critical Practice wiki
- 12. • Will experimental models of Art & Design Education survive marketisation? • Can online and digital technology be involved in its survival? • How? Questions
Editor's Notes
- Since I’ve been doing this job, there have been a few changes in terminology, we’ve gone from e-learning, Blended Learning, (what I’m stuck with), to the current Technology Enhanced Learning, which I think maybe suggests an assumption that technology does indeed enhance learning. Will experimental models of education survive marketisation? Can online and digital technology be involved in its survival? If so, how? To get this thinking started, today I just want to ask if it does for Art and Design students, at least in relation to the systems provided by HEIs for staff and students. I think that it may be that some of the well rehearsed arguments about the problems of current VLE provision is holding back greater staff engagement with the bigger TEL picture, and that’s really something we can’t afford right now.
- Some familiar territory here, but maybe worth reiterating…. So, tighter budgets and resourcing, but greater expectations. Policies not necessarily favouring Art and Design, and rapid technological change. All in all, it’s a bit of a firestorm for the Art and Design curriculum, a context in which technology enhanced learning seems to be promoted as a solution to multiple constraints. Is TEL part of the problem, or can it help preserve good practice?
- 10 minutes isn’t very long to try and get at some of these questions, so it’s going to have to be pretty broad brush stuff, but here goes…I’m going to restrict myself to talking about institutional VLE provision, so most commonly, Moodle, Blackboard, Desire 2 Learn, Sakai. Sometimes known as course management systems, and this is perhaps a better name for how they are generally used. These are now accepted as the basic level of online provision pretty much everywhere. Unusually for me, I’m not really going to be talking about individual innovation, pockets of good practice, the kind of stuff that I see at conferences such as Designs on E-Learning, GLAD, etc. Secondly, the continuum of staff engagement, from pioneers in new practices, to some who seem to see a minimal engagement as a necessary evil, and how to address this span. And lastly, where are we headed, and are we going to try and influence that direction of travel within our institutions?
- My argument is that as these systems are not built for the pedagogical theories most commonly cited as relevant to practice led Art & Design learning and teaching; Social Constructivism, elements of Communities of Practice, Activity Theory etc, it is not surprising that we haven’t had unalloyed enthusiasm for them from many teaching staff. For example, the ‘adaptive release’ function of Blackboard mimics Friere’s criticism of the ‘banking model’ of teaching. Perhaps some other useful theoretical models we could include in considering more appropriate online environments might be Conversation Theory, (Laurillard, adapted from Pask) Communities of Inquiry or Connectivism. (Seimens and Downes) These VLE systems are designed for the needs of the institution in terms of compliance, copyright, which is important, but can be restrictive. For this reason they tend to be closed, non- porous, failing the model of Bradwell’s Edgeless university.
- I’d also add to this something about the lack of consideration of dyslexic users in the visual design, important if we consider the high proportion of dyslexic students – and staff. More recently, with the push for online submission, marking and feedback, inadequate institutional systems to deal with these, with some notable exceptions, these mainly coming from monoculture institutions with more control over the development of their institutional systems. I’m thinking here about the bespoke system of assessment and project brief archive developed at Edinburgh College of Art by Ian Pirie and his team, recent pilot customisations of the Campus Pack in Blackboard at UCA by MacKie and Tannant, and the OAT system at UAL. Evaluation at UCA suggests that their innovations have indeed improved NSS scores in relation to feedback and assessment. I would suggest that it may be more problematic to introduce or support such systems in a less A & D centred institution.
- Similar discontents of staff and students emerge in the 2008 report by Olivia Sagan and Emily Candela, my survey in 2010 and the recent Huddersfield project, so I would suggest the answer is ‘not much’. A study was published by Blackboard itself in 2010 entitled The Impact of Blackboard software on education globally over the past 10 years which tried to find evidence of increased final grades thorough engagement with this software across many disciplines without noticeable success.
- At Kingston, since 2006 we have worked with a great e-developer to make some bespoke solutions to support studio practice, with the aim of addressing some of those barriers to at least achieve an overall base level of engagement, and set up possibilities for further rethinking for more potential future online engagement. Our latest development is a version of Wordpress and Buddypress, and we’re just beginning to look at the online submission and assessment issue. We’ve had some good responses to these developments over the years, but it’s by no means perfect yet, and in era of continually reducing funding, it gets harder to make the argument for parallel systems in a multi-disciplinary University. We are just coming up to another Learning Technologies Review though, and it seems a good moment to make the case that all subject areas, not just Art & Design need to have systems that are based on pedagogies more likely to promote active and collaborative learning.
- I think this quote gets at the issue of the ‘grey economy’, of staff and students unhappy with VLE provision migrating to a variety of social media, sometimes to great effect. There are however, problems of consistency across courses unless all tutors have the skills to work well in these environments. I have come across many excellent examples of innovation, but at the same time I’m still really aware that this is not an evenly spread picture, or that individual case studies haven’t necessarily spread good practice widely. So, I’m suggesting that if our basic institutional online provision were to be built on appropriate pedagogical design, we would stand a better chance of engaging all staff with the important discussion of where we want to be in 5 years time. What part the right kind of technological intervention might play in that vision, both in supporting local studio based learning and more flexible and international contexts. Staff development in rethinking practices will remain a difficult area, workloads have increased, and there seems little time to stop and reflect. Many of our more experienced studio staff may not have had any experience of being online students themselves. I have a good deal of sympathy with this, and I know that to engage effectively online requires a great deal of rethinking, as the Edinburgh online manifesto suggests, any online courses need to be ‘born digital’ not the online version. I’m also fairly convinced that sharing best practice rather than training is more effective for the most part. I think we still have some way to go in considering TEL properly as part of every module validation.
- Having said that I wasn’t going to mention much about innovations, I’m just going to briefly point to three projects which all try and elucidate something about the processes of Art and Design Education and skills development.
- Ok, so what might be coming along? Let’s get the Dystopian view out of the way first. Today is also a big event for UCISA, the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, down in Brighton. David Swayne the Chief Information Officer at South Bank University will be talking about his new work with IBM and a system of ‘predictive analytics’. I invite you to listen to his recent podcast on the THE site about this and consider the implications. You might also have seen a view from Michael Rosen of what might happen in Schools, particularly Academies, with corporate core curriculum delivery software I fear I have been somewhat downbeat today, but I know that great possibilities are out there, for both staff and students to reclaim and reshape how Art and Design Education is shared and moves forward. Gina Wall from the newly created University of the Highlands and Islands spoke at the GLAD conference last month, about the opportunity afforded by technology to rethink, rather than normalise the Academy. She cited the changing emotional difference in power relationship emerging in tutor/students interaction through video conferencing. At Chelsea, Neil Cummings’ Critical Practice wiki has acted as a locus for an open and distributed community.
- The MSc in Digital Education provides some interesting thoughts on thinking about learning collaboratively online, they have run a couple of MOOCs in the past, worth keeping an eye on if you are interested in developing online provision, in terms of structure and engagement.
- Over to you…..