Among the practices which have emerged through the New Lecturers Programme in 2011-12, there are three that test the limits to online learning: massive open on-line courses (moocs), virtual conferences as a means of assessment, and distributed collaboration as a means of working in learning sets. Taken together, these practices allow us to examine the role of the university and to re-imagine a place for institutions in a world where openness, access and community have come to underpin academic knowledge. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/learn_teach_conf/2012/abstracts/roberts.html

1. Testing the limits of university
teaching
MOOCs, Multimedia and Distributed
Collaboration
George Roberts
26/06/2012

2. Limits of navigation
• MOOCs
• Multimedia for assessment
• Distributed collaboration

3. Audiographic Simulcast
• Blackboard Collaborate in use

6. • It is not that we ignore web-based and
internet technologies at our peril… In truth,
we ignore the traditional university at our
peril. (M Roberts 2012)
Matters affecting UVa

7. Superposition of randomness
• superposition of randomness leading to a
transforming experience

8. Related randomness?
• Identity
• Community
• Literacy
• Three topics:
– MOOCs
– Academic Multimedia
– Distributed Collaboration

9. Old MOOCs, new MOOCs, red
MOOCs blue MOOCs
MOOCs
Massive Open Online Courses

10. Old MOOCs from 2008
• Explicit pedagogical perspective
– Social constructivist, dialogic, actor networks
• Distributed, open source platform components
– Wikis, WordPress, Moodle
• Intentional social media conversations
– Twitter, Facebook, Blogs
• Open challenge to institutions
– Access, environment, IPR, assessment

12. New MOOCs from 2011
• Tacit pedagogical perspective
– Instructivist, pragmatic, realist,
– Authentic: employment oriented
• Consolidated platforms
– Incidental social media
• Institutional counter-position
– Elite, neo-colonial (?)

14. Our MOOC
• First Steps into Learning and Teaching in
Higher Education (FSLT12)

15. MOOC Problematics
• Old MOOC
– Navigation, chaos, disorientation, exposure,
tuition
• New MOOC
– Packaging, automation, two-tier
• All MOOCs
– Motivation

16. MOOC benefits
• Old MOOC
– Autonomy
• New MOOC
– Authority
• All MOOC
– Access, authenticity

17. MOOC Limits
• Identity
– Embodiment
– Preference: introversion extroversion
• Community
– Serendipity
• Literacy
– Genre, paralinguistics

18. Post-Text Problematics: Social Citation
and Valorisation of Knowledge
Multimedia for Assessment

19. Presentations to virtual conferences
• Diverse practice
– Audio enhanced
• Some excellent
– But, some 2000
word essays on
12 ppt slides
• Markers
unfamiliar with
the genre
– What is
scholarship in
this medium?

20. Other Multimedia Assessment
Examples
• Video essays
– Sustained inquiry
• Multimedia learning journals
– Reflective collection
• Audio feedback

21. Valorisation of knowledge

23. Multimedia scholarship
In 2003, Stephen Downes wrote
• multimedia computing … provides scholarly discourse with great
opportunities, but also problematizes that discourse (Ingraham, 2000)
• large bodies of continuous text … are likely to remain the primary medium
for the dissemination of scholarship (Ingraham & Bradburn, 2003)
• the 'electronic book' is likely to become the primary medium … for the
dissemination of text-mediated scholarly discourse (Ingraham & Bradburn,
2003a), [and] disseminating educational multimedia.
But, let’s have a look at Downes 2003

24. Multimedia assessment limits
• Community
– Traditions of the disciplines
• Identity
– Our scholarly selves
• Literacy
– The Genre is new
– The links degrade, coping with transience

25. Being together in the body
Distributed-collaborative learning sets

26. Distributed Learning Sets
• Explicit Intended Outcome
– As a group produce a seminar addressing a
current issue in higher education learning and
teaching
• Tacit Intended Outcome
– Discover ways to work as a group, which allow for
distributed collaboration: across the three Brookes
campuses and several other universities

28. Distribution in two ways
In small groups to collaborate in
production of the seminars
–Forums, email, Google Docs, wiki
In Plenary to attend/review sessions
–Matterhorn Lecture Capture + Podcast
Producer

29. Distribution issues
Small groups
– Defaulted to Face to face
• Disadvantage the minority
Plenary
– Groups focused on own performances
– Low attention/attendance to other groups
seminars
• Substantial curriculum input missed

30. A controlled classroom
environment isn’t a bad thing.
(Krauss 2012)

31. Distributed Collaboration Limits
• Identity
– We know ourselves in the reflection of others
• Community
– Cohesion through diversity
• Literacy
– Paralinguistics

32. Discussion
• Turn to the person beside you – or to the chat
stream in Collaborate
• In light of: MOOCs, Multimedia and
Distributed Collaboration
• Where are your limits of navigation?

33. Disruptive?
Technology

35. QUESTION: If SOPA/PIPA [or the
Digital Economy Act in the UK] had
been passed into U.S. law in 2002,
would Wikipedia exist today? If
either law had passed in 2012, would
Wikipedia exist in 2022? Why or why
not? Discuss.

36. If you cannot answer that
question, you are not literate
nor are you in control of your
life—even if you think you are.

37. Watersheds?
• Narrative ? > 50,000 years
• Writing c. 5,000 years
• Printing c. 500 years
• Perspective c. 500 years
• Steam c. 250 years
• Mass literacy c. 150 years
• Cinema c. 100 years
• Internet c. 35 years

38. Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter, Perugino, 1481

40. Discourses around higher education are:
“… a field of competition for the
legitimate exercise of symbolic
violence,
… an arena of conflict between rival
principles of legitimacy, and
competition for political, economic
and cultural power
(Bourdieu 1993, 121)

42. Literacy - including digital - is
the practice of enunciation in a
community:
“speaking” in the broadest
sense, projecting an identity
with, through and to others
who concur

43. digital literacy cannot be
separated from other
educational - or social, or
economic, or political -
developments.

44. Digital literacy is far more than
skills with keyboard & apps.
It is how we & our students
negotiate the
ICT-mediated frontier between
rival principles.

45. Limits of navigation
• MOOCs
– Radical openness is not for
everyone
• Multimedia for assessment
– Text citation and commentary asserts itself through
every fissure
• Distributed collaboration
– We crave – and are good at – contact

46. Thank you
Dr George Roberts
OCSLD, Oxford Brookes University
June 2012
groberts@brookes.ac.uk