Ravensbourne
Tomorrow
Miles Metcalfe, Ravensbourne College, @mmetcalfe

About Ravensbourne
• Specialist higher-education College
• Validated by the University of Sussex and
City University
• Around 1,500 students in design and
communication, mainly undergraduate
• In leafy Chislehurst, Kent

Users, learners,
pedagogy, technology

A look into the crystal
ball

Oh
my
!
100% buzzword
compliant

learner-centred user-owned always-on mobile
wireless ubiquitous community-engaged deep-
learning vocational peer-supported research-
informed personalised enterprising inclusive
software-as-a-service utility

User-generated content

Remember Haircut
100?

A revolution in visual
culture?

Not with our
computers

User-owned technology

The usual suspects
• Flexible learning spaces
• Serendipitous commons
• Ubiquitous wireless

What do we offer?
• Some of the money we spend on computer
barns now subsidises personal technology
• Higher-end resources integrate with user-
owned workflows
• Software as a service, open source
alternatives, software loans

The network
• Of course the LAN has enterprise uses
• Many of our users simply want to:
• Use wireless to
• Connect to the internet
• And we block their ports

What is IT for?
• Defender of scarce resource, and arbiter of
fair use?
• Magical enforcer of the VLE as destination?
• Agent of transformation?
• Service provider?
• Support for digital literacy?

Should we really build
Faraday cages?

Learning 2.0

Digital literacy

So you think you want
a revolution?
• New technology creates new opportunities
for creative expression
• Out there, many opportunities are chilled
by the “intellectual property” industry
• An industry safely ignored by learners
• As are new opportunities for creative
expression

What works for us
• A coherent pedagogy that recognises:
• Learners become practitioners
• And negotiate a public identity
• Integrating extra-institutional practice
into their institution-bound learning

A personal learning
environment
• Learners bring a part of their environment
with them
• Augment it through institutional services
• Reintegrate social software through a social
stack
• Won’t work unless it’s practised by us

Education technology
• RSS, OpenID preserve the VLE panopticon
• Bounded systems give way to more open
collaboration
• Think carefully about the technology
• Think critically about its uses and
applications

Final thoughts
• OpenID is far from perfect
• Have you tried using it on a smartphone?
• It’s a better bet than Shibboleth
• Should we trust Google and Web 2.0?
• We should manage the risk
• And what about our staff?

Credits
The JISC elearning capital programme
All at the OUCS
Google: North Greenwich image and map pin
Foreign Office Architects: Ravensbourne building image
“Workhouse” and “Flag” images found on the web, and used without
permission
Apple: iPhone image
Headshift Ltd: Social Stack
Roger Rees and Ruth Catlow – Learning Enhancement at Ravesbourne

Thanks!

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