Archive for the ‘OU2.0’ Category
BBC Question Time “Extra Guest” – On Twitter…
For some time, BBC Question Time has benefitted from an active online live commentariat via SMS/text messages displayed on a lower third ticker, and on on Twitter around the #bbcqt hashtag.
Now, via @federicacocco, I notice that BBC Question Time has a new Twitter account associated with it, @BBCExtraGuest:
.@bbcquestiontime is pleased to announce the introduction of the Extra Guest, the sixth panellist of #bbcqt who tweets during the programme.
—
BBC Extra Guest (@BBCExtraGuest) September 24, 2012Here’s some sort of confirmation, from the official @bbcquestiontime account, that it’s legitimate:
When the OU co-produces a programme or series with the BBC, one or more nominated academics act as advisers to the programme, contributing ideas, checking correctness, providing feedback about how ideas are portrayed and communicated, and so on. Increasingly, academic advisers also contribute one or more related articles to OpenLearn in support of the programme(s). On the odd occasion when I’ve: a) managed to watch a programme during its live broadcast; and b) noticed hashtag activity around it, I’ve tried to chip in by sharing relevant links and additional comments. Where related content has gone up on the OpenLearn site in advance, I’ve also tried to share the odd link to that into the hashtag stream. (Yes, I know, it’s like introducing an ad into the stream…)
The “extra guest” twist that BBC Question Time are introducing is one that maybe we can also adopt at the OU? @OUAcademic, maybe, a rotating “guest” slot in which a nominated academic can tweet along to a live broadcast of an OU/BBC co-pro?
PS to keep track of OU/BBC co-pros, see:
- OU/BBC co-pros currently on iPlayer
- OU/BBC co-pros upcoming…
- OU/BBC co-pro clips currently on iPlayer
PPS for a quick sketch comparing the folk commonly followed by the users of the #bbcqt and #newsnight hashtags, (that is, an approximation of the common and different social interests of the audiences of those two programmes) see Social Media Interest Maps of Newsnight and BBCQT Twitterers.
A Gust of Wind Blows Across HE…
From various sources (@kavubob, @mweller via @peter_scott, @downes and others), I notice:
- edX Announces Option Of Proctored Exam Testing Through Collaboration With Pearson VUE [press release], reported as e.g. Harvard and MIT online courses get ‘real world’ exams. The core of the story is that Pearson VUE test centres will be used to run “proctored” computer based assessments (i.e. supervised assessment of verified candidates) based around edX courses. (It’s maybe also worth noting that Pearson VUE bought the Centiport assessment business earlier this year so they’re expansionist…)
- a Chronicle of HE article reports A First for Udacity: a U.S. University Will Accept Transfer Credit for One of Its Courses, (original Udacity blog post/press release). In particular, Colorado State University’s Global Campus will accept proctored assessment credit as part of a credit transfer agreement. There’s nothing particularly new in this – as with many institutions, OU students can benefit from credit transfer as well as the accreditation of prior learning (APEL) using a variety of course wrappers, such as Make your experience count or the Accreditation of Certificated Practitioners 1 (i.e an academic course wrapper for vendor certificate that helps you convert vendor certificates to academic credit points; hmm… I wonder if these are then transferable in to other UK HEIs?!;-). What I was sensitised to however, was this: “In order to earn the three transfer credits toward their bachelor’s degrees at Colorado State, students will need a “certificate of accomplishment” from Udacity showing they passed the course. Then they have to pass a proctored examination offered by Udacity through a secure testing center. The exam, administered by the Pearson VUE testing group, will cost $89″ [emphasis mine]. As I hinted at in News Corp in K12 Education Play, as the big publishing companies develop a stranglehold over education content, assessment proctering, and assessment setting, should we start thinking about notions of plurality (cf. media plurality) in the way the business of education operates?
A couple more riffs on the above:
- Pearson are playing multiple sides, offering testing for both the upstarts (eg Udacity) and the incumbents’ response (edX). They also have a major stake in school (i.e. K12) and further education content (textbooks, curricula) and assessment (e.g. EdExcel is a Pearson company), and they seem to be testing the waters with their own HE offerings in the form of Pearson College. Start to twitch a bit more if they start offering campus management solutions. Also look out for them bulking up their learning analytics offerings…
- Although the OU has started offering academic wrappers around imported vendor certificates, I don’t think an equivalent course wrapper yet serves as a way of wrapping informal and semi-formal online courses, such as offerings from P2PU, Coursera, Udacity etc etc. There is at least one “officially” offered MOOC on “Learning Design”, though… (One of the models I wanted to explore with the T151 Game Design and Development 10 point short course in its final presentation was a fully open presentation with an additional for credit component based around the submission of a portfolio for credit bearing assessment. The legacy would have been a 10 point wrapper for importing informal online course activity, “proven” using an OU presented course. Maybe there’ll be a similar sort of finesse around the Learning Design MOOC? I’d certainly hope so…
- I note that the OU runs exams at a wide variety of examination centres (often in local colleges), so to an extent the OU already models the behaviour being adopted by edX. There are, however, a couple of notable differences: a) the OU, rather than a commercial operation such as Pearson, manages exams at local centres; b) the OU offers tutor and/or moderated forum based support to students on OU courses. Providing tutor/associate lecturer support (including face to face tutorials at local centres) to students on a 1:
320 ratio or so is expensive though… I’m not sure how the costs associated with providing online moderation at a ratio of 1:100 or so scale up with increasing course sizes (eg when you factor in recruitment and briefing/training costs, as well as the costs of assessment/marking related moderation exercises etc). - I should probably say something about badges here, but don’t have the will to!
See also: Checking HE for Cracks.
PS re: the outsourcing of campus facilities management, I thought I’d better check… and came across this (Sussex Uni tenders for campus services) from May, 2012 (contract notice):
The University of Sussex is seeking bids to manage its estates and facilities services, which are run in-house at an annual cost of £20 million.
The move, to be completed by August next year, “is expected to bring wider market experience and expertise to the university to enable it to meet the increasing demands of a highly competitive environment”, according to a statement.
The story is still running… Unions left ‘in the dark’ over outsource plans. Companies in the ballpark – Carillion, maybe? eg they appear to have been contractors for construction works at UWE, Hertfordshire.
PPS Facilities talk reminds me of this, which relates in part to management of facilities data: Facilities and Equipment Sharing Network.
PPPS via @brlamb, Pearson ‘Education’ — Who Are These People?, which looks at some of the lobbying going around around US teacher performance assessment.
Open Research Data Processes: KMi Crunch – Hosted RStudio Analytics Environment
One of the possible barriers to widespread adoption of open notebook science is knowing where to start. Video reports of lab experiments hosted on Youtube can be easily embedded in a hosted WordPress blog; a MediaWiki wiki can be used to provide one page per experiment, with change tracking/history on each page and a shadow page for commentary and discussion; Github can be used to provide a version control environment for software code, results data, project pages and documentation. For tabulated data, Google Spreadsheets provides a hosting environment and an API that lets you treat the data as a database and also explore it dashboard style via a range of interactive visual filtering and charting components. Alternatively, a CKAN instance (such as is used to run thedatahub.org) offers data management and preview tools.
Keeping track of data analysis in an open way is also getting easier. In An R-chitecture for Reproducible Research/Reporting/Data Journalism, I briefly mentioned RPubs.com, a site that can be used to 1-click publish HTML reports of statistical analyses executed within the RStudio environment (I really need to do a proper post about this). But now there’s an example of another hosted solution from Fridolin Wild of the OU’s KMi: Crunch.
Crunch offers a hosted RStudio environment (so you can access RStudio via a browser) with public and private areas. The public areas allow you to post datasets, run scripts as a service, or publish results (Sweave generated PDFs, or knitr generated HTML reports, for example).
Crunch also incorporates a MySQL database for each user. (Scheduling and pipelining are also on the cards…)
Whilst developed as an application to support learning analytics (I think?), Crunch also provides a great demonstration of a more general open research data workbench. You can store – and publish – data sets, along with analysis scripts and reports generated by executing those scripts over your data set. Version control isn’t available at the moment (I think?) but RSTudio does have git/github support, so that may be coming. The provision of a MySql database means that data collections can be managed within a database environment. (From a data journalism, rather than an open/reproducible research, perspective, I did wonder whether it would be possible to situate something like Scraperwiki on the same platform and replace its SQLite support with MySQL support, so a Scraperwiki scraper could be used to scrape data into a MySQL database that was then accessed from RStudio? Being able to wire MySQL read/write access into Google Refine on the same platform could also be interesting..;-)
I’m not sure about the extent to which the OU LIbrary is taking an interest in the development of Crunch, but providing best practice support and advice in the orchestration of information and data handling tools seems to me to be in-scope for the academic research librarian, in much the same way as advising on the use of bibliography data management tools used to be…? (For a recent take on this, see Dorothea Salo’s recent Ariadne article Retooling Libraries for the Data Challenge.)
The Business of HE Moves On…
A smattering of business-of-education stories from my feeds today:
- Hot on the heels of the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, Publishing firm Pearson announce Pearson College, a private university that will start off by offering a business related degree (BSc (Honours) Business and Enterprise) accredited by Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (hmm… doesn’t that mean “Pearson College” should be a listed body?*). From September 2013, they’re looking to offer BSc(Hons) degrees in Computing as well as Engineering (“with pathways in Electrical, Electronic, Mechanical and Manufacturing”). It seems like work experience/partnering is a key part of the initiative, with programmes being marketed to organisations as much as students (“There are significant benefits to be gained by embedding our Pearson degrees within an organisation’s learning and development, and/or talent development programmes, and in contributing to the design of our programmes.” And if you need help with your talent management process, Pearson can help you out there too…. Hmmm….) This is quite an interesting play, I think – setting up as a provider to industry of embedded degree bearing training/”talent development” programmes. It doesn’t much contribute to the notion of universities as academic playspaces that support open-ended reflection and idea creation though…
Entry is by interview and either 320 UCAS points or success on the Pearson College Aptitude Test, whatever that is… Fees are set at £6500 per year for a 3 year course, £8k a year if you fancy a two year sprint, or £4875 if you take it over 4 years. According to the blurb:“Pearson students have the choice of studying in either central London or central Manchester at our attractive, modern premises. At Pearson you will be studying business from within a business, so your lectures and seminars are held in classrooms within our corporate premises. You’ll be part of a business and an academic community from day one, immersed in the atmosphere of a modern office environment.”
They also offer accommodation in student residences via private hall providers (Liberty Living in Manchester, Opal Property Group in London).
I’m intrigued to see who their engineering partners turn out to be…
- Over in the short course corner, it seems that Coventry University are working with the Intellectual Property Office and the British Library to offer a two and a half day residential IP Masterclass. At £990 + VAT, it offers delegates the “opportunity” to gain 15 credits at Masters level/Level 7 which can then be put towards a range of postgrad qualifications. I’m not sure how this works – at undergrad level, one rule of thumb is 10 hours study per CATS point (split 2 hours teaching and 8 hours private study per point), so with say 20 hours of teaching over two and a half days, you’d also expect to add in another 130 hours of private study to get 15 points. Presumably there’s homework if you want to pick the credit opportunity up?
With MBAs coming in at 180 points, twelve of these courses (6 working weeks if you take them back-to-back) would get you the “opportunity” to claim the required points haul.
- And arising from the ashes of MIT opencourseware, it seems as if some enterprising alumni from an MITx course are using opencourseware to run a follow on course: 6.003z: A Learner-Created MOOC Spins Out of MITx. As more folk start to realise they can self-organise, it’ll be interesting to see how these plays out – and whether there’ll be any institutional backlash, response or opportunistic land grab (eg taking over a community driven course, or stepping in to offer accreditation for it).
* Given that it is up to Recognised Bodies to inform BIS of who their providers are, wouldn’t it be great if each Recognised Body also had to publish this data in a standard form as open public data?
Related: OU Innovating pedagogy report: publisher-led mini-courses, Is Education Working? and Media, Erm, Studies?.
News Corp in K12 Education Play
One of the sections of the OU’s new Innovating Pedagogy report (the first in what is intended to be an ongoing review series), refers to Publisher-led mini courses, a consideration of how news publishers may encroach on or enter the informal HE/lifelong learning or CPD markets through partnerships with HEIs or otherwise.
Whilst the OU’s business interests – and hence the focus of the report – are not on primary or secondary (K12) education (aside from teacher training considerations), today I notice that News Corp has announced an entrance into the K12 market: “News Corp unveils ‘Amplify’ to bring digitial innovation to K12 innovation”:
Today, News Corporation unveiled the brand and business of its Education Division. Amplify is dedicated to reimagining K-12 education by creating digital products and services that empower students, teachers and parents in new ways. Amplify will enhance the potential of students with new curricular experiences, support teachers with new instructional tools and engage parents through extended learning opportunities. Amplify will introduce these unique and pioneering offerings in collaboration with AT&T.
Amplify appears to be offering a tablet based play to compete with the K12 textbook market, offering rich interactive content with value adding learning analytics. Learning analytics and formative assessment are provided by another Amplify (i.e. News Corp) company, wireless generation (News Corp acquired a 90% stake in Wireless Generation in November 2010: FT: News Corp ‘bet’ on education sector). By the by, it seems Wireless Generation has itself been on the acquisition trail recently: Wireless Generation Buys Assessment Company Intel-Assess.
There’s not a lot of substance on the Amplify site yet, so rather than rehash it here, I suggest you poke around the site yourself and see what jumps out (feel free to mention anything interesting you find in the comments;-) If that seems like to much hard work, try this report from GigaOm: How will News Corps’ new ed tech business ‘Amplify’ education?.
From a quick dig around, though, Amplify appears to be focussing on delivery rather than credentialed assessment. I wondered briefly if that might be because it could introduce a conflict of interest if the company provided both content and assessment services, but presumably not, as the OU’s Innovating Pedagogy report noted:
[I]n the UK Pearson operate EdExcel for the assessment of GCSE, GCE (A-level) and BTEC/vocational qualifications. Pearson has recently bought vocational trainers Education Development International and assessment and testing providers Centiport. If education is ripe for disruption, it may be that the assessment of training and the offering of examination services at higher levels of education will provide a route by which publishers can develop credibility in the assessment and award of an ever wider range of qualification products based around their content offerings.
A couple of other things that strike me about the announcement, and that I should really try to ponder further: the extent to which the economics of education are influenced by the content business (maybe Andy Lane will chip in with a comment about the business model of school education..?;-); and the rate at which performance tracking and learning analytics style approaches are going to focus attention on reporting dashboards than human teacher-pupil relationships.
I also wonder about the role of plurality in all this? In the UK, the notion of media plurality “helps to support a democratic society by ensuring citizens are informed by a diverse range of views and by preventing too much influence over political processes by one media owner or outlet”, or at least, that’s what a June 2012 press release announcing an OfCom report on measuring media plurality claims. But how about in education? How about in education where the publishers who control either – or both – the content and the means of certified assessment are also news publishers? How far should the notion of plurality extend then? Across all content businesses, including education?
An R-chitecture for Reproducible Research/Reporting/Data Journalism
It’s all very well publishing a research paper that describes the method for, and results of, analysing a dataset in a particular way, or a news story that contains a visualisation of an open dataset, but how can you do so transparently and reproducibly? Wouldn’t it be handy if you could “View Source” on the report to see how the analysis was actually done, or how the visualisation was actually created from an original dataset? And furthermore, how about if the actual chart or analysis results were created directly as a result of executing the script that “documents” the process used?
As regular readers will know, I’ve been dabbling with R – and the RStudio environment – for some time, so here’s a quick review of how I think it might fit into a reproducible research, data journalism or even enterprise reporting process.
The first thing I want to introduce is one of my favourite apps at the moment, RStudio (source on github). This cross platform application provides a reasonably friendly environment for working with R. More interestingly, it integrates with several other applications:
- RStudio offers support for the git version control system. This means you can save R projects and their associated files to a local, git controlled directory, as well as managing the synchronisation of the local directory with a shared project on Github. Library support also makes it a breeze to load in R libraries directly from github.
- R/RStudio can pull in data from a wide variety of sources, mediated by a variety of community developed R libraries. So for example, CSV and XML files can be sourced from a local directory, or a URL; the RSQLite library provides an interface to SQLite; RJSONIO makes it easy to work with JSON files; wrappers also exist for many online APIs (twitteR for Twitter, for example, RGoogleAnalytics for Google Analytics, and so on).
- RStudio provides built in support for two “literate programming” style workflows. Sweave allows you to embed R scripts in LaTeX documents and then compile the documents so that they include the outputs from/results of executing the embedded scripts to a final PDF format. (So if the script produces a table of statistical results based on an analysis of an imported data set, the results table will appear in the final document. If the script is used to general a visual chart, the chart image will appear in the final document.) The raw script “source code” that is executed by Sweave can also be embedded explicitly in the final PDF, so you can see the exact script that was used to create the reported output (stats tables of results, or chart images, etc). If writing LaTeX is not really your thing, RMarkdown allows you to write Markdown scripts and again embed executable R code, along with any outputs directly derived from executing that code. Using the knitr library, the RMarkdown+embedded R code can be processed to produce an HTML output bundle (HTML page + supporting files (image files, javascript files, etc)). Note that if the R code uses something like the googleVis R library to generate interactive Google Visualisation Charts, knitr will package up the required code into the HTML bundle for you. And if you’d rather generate an HTML5 slidedeck from your Rmarkdown, there’s always Slidify (eg check out Christopher Gandrud’s course “Introduction to Social Science Data Analysis” – Slidify: Things are coming together fast, example slides and “source code”).
- A recent addition, RStudio now integrates with RPubs.com, which means 1-click publishing of RMarkdown/knitr’d HTML to a hosted website is possible. Presumably, it wouldn’t be too hard to extend RStudio so that publication to other online environments could be supported. (Hmm, thinks… could RStudio support publication using Github pages maybe, or something more general, such as SWORD/Atom Publishing?!) Other publication routes have also been demonstrated – for example, here’s a recipe for publishing to WordPress from R).
Oh, and did I mention that as well as running cross-platform on the desktop, RStudio can also be run as a service and accessed via a web browser. So for example, I can log into a version of RStudio running on one of OU/KMi’s server and access it through my browser…
Here’s a quick doodle of how I see some of the pieces hanging together. I had intended to work on this a little more, but I’ve just noticed the day’s nearly over, and I’m starting to flag… But as I might not get a chance to work on this any more for a few days, here it is anyway…
PS I guess I should really have written and rendered the above diagram using R, and done a bit of dogfooding by writing this post in Rmarkdown to demonstrate to the process, but I didn’t… The graph was actually rendered from a .dot source file using Graphviz. Here’s the source, so if you want to change the model, you can… (I’ve also popped the script up as a gist):
digraph G {
subgraph cluster_1 {
Rscript -> localDir;
localDir -> Rscript;
Rscript -> Sweave;
Sweave -> TeX;
TeX -> PDF [ label = "laTeX"]
Rscript -> Rmarkdown;
RCurl -> Rscript;
Rmarkdown -> HTML [ label = "knitr" ];
Rmarkdown -> localDir;
Sweave -> localDir;
label = "Local machine/\nServer";
RJSONIO -> Rscript;
XML -> Rscript;
RSQLite -> Rscript;
SQLite -> RSQLite;
subgraph cluster_2 {
XML;
RJSONIO;
RCurl;
RSQLite;
label = "Data sourcing";
}
}
OnlineCSV -> RCurl;
ThirdPartyAPI -> RJSONIO;
ThirdPartyAPI -> XML;
ThirdPartyAPI -> RCurl;
localDir -> github [ label = "git" ];
github -> localDir;
HTML -> RPubs;
}
PS This is related, and very relevant – Melbourne R user group presentation: Video: knitr, R Markdown, and R Studio: Introduction to Reproducible Analysis. And this: New Tools for Reproducible Research with R
PPS See also: Data Reporting with knitr and Open Research Data Processes: KMi Crunch – Hosted RStudio Analytics Environment
Is Education Working?
Via … someone… (apologies, I forget who…) I notice that [t]he BBC has applied for funding to help launch a series of industrywide, [foundation] degree-level apprenticeships in technology and engineering (Broadcast: BBC lines up apprenticeships).
Digging around a little, it seems that in an Apprenticeships Conference Speech (June 2012), Caroline Thomson, the BBC’s Chief Operating Officer, laid out the plans: “Over five years, our ambition is to grow a new generation of highly skilled technologists and engineers – made up of Level 5 Apprenticeships (that’s equivalent to degree level) and beyond that Traineeships up to Masters level. Once trained, this talent will be available to work either in the BBC or for others in the industry.”
Just imagine, you could be an 18 year old who embarks on this journey and by the age of 23 you come out with a Masters education, no debt, AND you’re highly employable. That doesn’t sound like a bad option in today’s economic climate, and it’s also extremely good for us in terms of growing the new technology talent that we need.
…
More generally, we’re investigating how we can develop ‘career pathways’ in other areas where we have skills gaps. For example, many of us report shortages in Production Management skills – so it would seem sensible to start to ‘grow our own’ rather than keep poaching from one another.Again, apprenticeships are the answer. In this case new, higher level apprenticeship qualification, building on Creative Skillset’s existing Level 3 qualification [this one? Diploma in Creative and Media]. We are proposing to launch a more advanced Level 4 qualification which would allow people to progress.
As you have been hearing the BBC currently has 55 apprentices. They receive their formal training from FE colleges, and that feels right for that intermediary qualification. But as we move into higher level qualifications, we believe it’s really important for the training to become far more industry focused and employer led.
So the BBC Academy plans to take on responsibility for training the BBC’s higher level Apprentices. We’re hoping that this will inject a real sense of added prestige to the Apprenticeships and make them even more highly sought after and highly prized across the industry.
The plans are dependent on a successful outcome to a bid from the BBC into the Employers’ Ownership of Skills Pilot, which “offers all employers in England direct access to up to £250 million of public investment over the next two years to design and deliver their own training solutions. The pilot is jointly overseen by UKCES, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education.”
(By the by, I also belatedly note the recent announcement UfI Trust £50M endowment fund that will be used “to fund projects that can transform vocational adult learning through technology”. The fund is a windfall from the sale of learndirect, which I first picked up on when I saw a learndirect sponsorship logo on the Marussia F1 car.)
The ability to award degrees in the UK is regulated [see David Kernohan's comments below.. it was late, I was tired and being careless/sloppy in my writing, which is to say this part of the post is even more meaningless drivel than the usual unchecked ramblings I post; thank goodness for open peer review;-)]by BIS (I think?), who maintain the official “Recognised Bodies” list (hmm… this could be a handy source of UK “university” homepage URLs?). If the BBC does start running Masters courses, who will be validating them I wonder? Would the BBC be allowed to apply for listed status I wonder?!
(I had a quick look around for a current/”live” list of institutions proposed for inclusion as BIS listed/registered bodies, but could only find a recent-ish “latest proposals” list (Institutions proposed for inclusion as Listed Bodies (March 2012)). This then got me wondering if there’s anything in the Open Data Institute 5 year plan that would seek to get the ODI into a position 5 years or so hence that would allow it to become a listed body? Or whether the plan is to develop it purely, although quietly, as a generously supported University of Southampton enterprise?)
It was also interesting (to me, at least) to see an announcement this week relating to training offerings by our friend that is Google: Google launches new developer education programs in the form of the Google Developers Academy, “a new program that provides training materials on Google technologies”. I’m not sure what makes this new – Google has been offering training courses for ages (eg the Google Qualified Developer programme I noted in 2010) – but maybe it’s more formal now? I need to take a proper look, I think…
The Goog’s also made an announcement about an “open online course” they’re offering in mid-July to support the development of search skills: Power Searching with Google, “a free online, community-based course showcasing search techniques and how to use them to solve real, everyday problems”. Given the stupid numbers that signed up to the Stanford AI course, it’ll be interesting to see how many go for the Google course…
PS It also seems as if the leader of the Stanford open AI course, Sebastien Thrun, made a good call when he set up Udacity, following the success of that course, to run open online courses – it’s just partnered with Pearson’s VUE testing centres (in an undisclosed arrangement? Or are details available somewhere? In particular, how does the money flow?) [commentary]. The partnership will allow learners to take a supervised exam that can contribute towards and “official” Udacity credential. By using a recognised testing centre, it seems that the Udacity folk are pushing ahead at full tilt in their designs to come up with an alternative qualification that is recognised by employers – with properly managed assessment presumably playing an important part in that. (FWIW, it’s maybe also worth noting that recently Pearson acquired IT testing provider Certiport.)
PPS given all this activity around threats to the HE sector from workplace trainers, and, erm, “other”, I note this from four years ago… If Universities Were Companies…. Hmmm… If you acknowledge these rivals as threats and start to feel as if they have to compete with them (or are perceived as behaving as if they are competing with them directly), will that start to legitimise their offerings (using “logic” along the lines of: if universities feel threatened by these alternatives, they must see them as in some way equivalent to their (the university) offerings. Which means the alternatives must be educationally sound or the universities wouldn’t respond, because it wouldn’t be a real threat. Which means we should maybe treat the alternatives as valid alternatives to university qualifications, because the universities do…)
Hmm…
Blimey – is that *really* the time?! Enough…
Why I (Edu)Blog – Questionnaire Response
Alice Bell is “currently working with colleagues at the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology on a small research project exploring communities of education blogging”. She has a questionnaire here. Below are my responses…
—————–
Blog URL: blog.ouseful.info
What do you blog about? My blog is a catch-all searchable notebook, where I tend to post code fragments and tutorials relating to tools and techniques that may be of interest to “digital scholars” and/or relevant to open, online educators. I also posts thoughts, observations and round-up posts on things that interest me (open data policy and data visualisation at the moment, but in the past I’ve also focussed on search engine matters, the role of digital libraries, information skills). The style of writing is at times quite unforgiving – the blog is primarily my working open notebook, and makes heavy use of links to previous posts of my own (eg http://blog.ouseful.info/2010/08/30/the-structure-of-ouseful-info/ ), as well as third party posts. Which is to say, some things I post only make sense if you know what I’ve posted before, or follow the links! I also use blog posts as a hub for linking to other resources I’ve posted on Slideshare, for example, code snippets/gists on Github, data scrapers and UIs on Scraperwiki, bookmarl stacks on delicious, etc. The blog (and blog feed) also syndicates occasional “feedthru” links tagged as such on my delicious account.
Are you paid to blog? I blog in work time and my own free time, but the OUseful.info blog posts are always done with a view that folk may associate them with activities I am engaged with as an OU academic, albeit working to a personal research agenda. I see the OUseful.info blog in part as a knowledge transfer/public engagement activity that tries to demonstrate how to work with information by using and appropriating tools that are freely available ‘in the future that is already around us’. I post several times a week, with posts that typically take anything between 10 mins and an hour or two to put together. For practical write-ups, it often takes longer to write the blog post than to it took to work out how to do the thing I’m blogging about..
What do you do professionally (other than blog)? I am an academic in the Open University’s Department of Communication and Systems. I’ve worked on a variety of courses (Artificial Intelligence, robotics, information skills, game design and development) as well as chipping ideas in a variety of OU projects where my activities and ideas may be, erm, OUseful…
How long have you been blogging at this site? On wordpress.com, since July 2008, but I had a Typepad blog with the OUseful.info name on an OU blog server from 2005 and had been blogging for a while before that using Blogger.
Do you write in other platforms? (e.g. in a print magazine?) My communication activities are based around OUseful.info, the blog, my Twitter account (@psychemedia), and conference/workshop presentations (slides from which get posted to slideshare – psychemedia again). I occasionally post short “blog like” annotations to images/screencaptures posted to flickr (psychemedia again) where I think I may want to point folk to the image their rather than posting about it on the blog, or as annotations to bookmark links on Delicious. I’ve also started pulling together curated Delicious stacks (ordered bundles on bookmarks, account name is… psychemedia) on particular topics. The important thing for me is that: 1) I can rediscover whatever I posted, wherever it is; 2) point to it via a URL.
Can you remember why you started blogging? Searchable, personal notebook. My assumptions were (and still are) that: no-one would read it; only people who were interested would find it; if they were interested they may either find it useful and/or be able to correct something I’d said or answer a question I’d raised. I also believe that the power of the web (at least, in a web dominated by search engines that in part rely on PageRank/link related SERP rankings) is related to its link structure, and that it it part of my *duty* as an open digital scholar to help shape that terrain by linking together content that seems to me to fit together. My PageRank influence may be weak, but it’s there.
What keeps you blogging? If I don’t blog my notes, I don’t have any notes. Having been a blogger for several years, and having been tracking odd bits of technology on a daily basis for years, I’m also finding there is value in the archive, for example as a way of recalling what was current or upcoming two, three, four years ago, or what we thought the future might be in years past… It’s also interesting to see the extent to which weak predictions either play out, or don’t… Some posts I “maintain” with updates that show the progression of a particular idea (eg http://blog.ouseful.info/2008/10/22/amazon-edge-services-digital-manufacturing/ ).
Do you have any idea of the size or character if your audience? How? WordPress blog stats, which are pretty ropey, suggest daily views of about 1000 on the blog.ouseful.info site (it was around 1500 a day a couple of months ago but a Google search engine algorithm change knocked me back) over 950 (in total) or so posts, and 150 or so email subscribers. A handful of posts pull 50-100 views each per day, then there’s a long tail. I was getting about 30-50 views from a single shared link on twitter (~3k followers) but that has dropped off too (I guess more folk are following more folk, so there’s less chance of seeing a particular tweeted link; I don’t tend to try to socially optimise when I tweet a link). Feedburner stats give me syndication stats – 1700 or so subscribers, reach of around 200. My original ouseful blog archive gets about 25 visits a day, according to Google Analytics.
What’s your attitude to/ relationship with people who comment on your blog? I don’t get a lot of comments, but there are some regular folk who either remark on what I have said/challenge claims I have made or point to additional resources. WordPress shows trackbacks and referrer sources, so from my site dashboard I can see something of who else has linked to me. (Links in from third party sites is as low as it ever has been; folk aren’t creating the link structure that helps the web work…)
Do you feel as if you fit into any particular community, network or genre of blogging? (e.g. schools, science, education, museums, technology) Techie notes and rants? I get a better view of where the interests of “my audience” lay from Twitter social positioning maps (eg http://blog.ouseful.info/2011/06/11/a-map-of-my-twitter-follower-network/ ).
If so, what does that community give you? An imagined audience, which means I try to write as if someone else might read it (lots of typos slip through, but as and when I spot them I go back in to posts to correct them). I also occasionally get comments back with useful responses, questions, links to other resources etc. I try to respond to comments… That said, I’m as likely to get personal emails that thank me for the blog then ask a question or howto based around one or more particular posts.
What do you think are the advantages of blogging? What are its disadvantages/ limitations?
Advantages: searchable notebook; increasingly valuable archive; contribution to the structure of the web (if you link); profile raising (possibly); pull model knowledge transfer (folk finding things they need by searching for it); fishing (eg corrections, comments, related resources from comments and trackbacks); community/relationship discovery (eg monitoring trackbacks, referrals).
Disadvantages: it takes time to post (but then, it also saves time wrt looking up things you’ve done before); profile raising (possibly); struggle to find a voice, then potentially feel as if you are locked in to that voice (even if no-one is reading;-) “Formal record” – I have pretty much given up on formal academic communications; folk are often unwilling to reference “informal” blog posts; granular nature of albeit linked posts means there are no comprehensive summary statements of a tool, technique or idea that I have written about. I am starting to explore use of delicious stacks and delicious category/tag feeds as a way of pulling together sets of posts that may (possibly) be used as the basis for longer form formal writings.
Do you tell people you know offline that you’re a blogger? (e.g. your grandmother, your boss) I think my family knows I do things around the web, but it’s way too geeky for them and their interests often don’t extend much past Facebook, if that far… Friends know, ish, but it’s way too geeky for them too… If truth be told, it’s probably way too geeky (and too frequently posted to…) for many of the people I work with/know professionally;-) I do have a couple of other blogs – eg f1datajunkie.blogspot.com – which I use for particular niche interests that I don’t want to swamp OUseful.info with and that tap into other communities. On occasion, I cross link between them. So for example, the F1DataJunkie blog is trying to explore ways of communicating knowledge and techniques about data viz tools into a technical audience via a common “other” interest; so in a sense, it’s an outreach activity, or so I like to claim ;-)
Is there anything else you want to tell me about I haven’t asked?
Do you syndicate your content? Yes: for example, my RStats blog category feed syndicates content to Rbloggers [ http://www.r-bloggers.com ] and my onlinejournalismblog category is also disctributed via the Online Journalism blog [ http://onlinejournalismblog.com/ ]. I post specific items to these feeds knowing that they will be further syndicated to audience groups with very particular interests; they also generate small amounts of traffic back to my blog.
<emTechies stuff – what platform do you blog on? I use a hosted blog on WordPress.com with a custom domain mapping that I pay for personally (I think I may also pay to stop WordPress ads? Maybe?!). I don’t want the grief of administering/updating my own installation, although it would be useful to be able to install plugins, use Google Analytics etc. My employer do offer WordPress blogs that I could add plugins to, but I’m not sure how kindly they’d take to the domain mapping?
Where Course Data Would Help…
Some fragments that possibly make for a useful jigsaw, based on a use case of trying to think up possible projects for an OU Masters course, and wondering what other modules students taking the project course are likely to have – or are required to have – already taken:
- The OU Masters level Computing Project course (T802) is a compulsory course in several qualifications:
I would like a list of other modules associated with those qualifications, and a rank of how many of those qualifications each appears in. A handful of graphs come to mind too: a bipartite graph showing connections between each of those qualifications and their compulsory modules; a bipartite graph showing connections between each of those qualifications and their eligible (“defining, but not compulsory” modules); collapsed versions of the bipartite graphs showing modules with edges between them where they co-occur in a qualification.
- Clicking through on one of the qualification links, eg to the MSc in Information Systems, I see this:
…but no link to the Postgraduate Diploma in Information Systems (E10) (http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/e10.htm). So, first up, I’d like data relating to precursor qualifications required for the Masters. And second up, information about the modules with those qualifications:
I’m not sure if this info is available in either the OU Linked Data store or via the OU XCRI feed but I’m not minded to waste the rest of my Sunday finding out. All I wanted was a list of modules that potential students on T802 might be expected to have taken…
PS fwiw, here’s a qualification entry from the OU XCRI feed:
<course>
<identifier>E08</identifier>
<title>Postgraduate Diploma in Technology Management</title>
<subject>Engineering, Technology and Design</subject>
<subject>Technology</subject>
<description xsi:type="xcri:metadataKeywords">E08,
Postgraduate Diploma in Technology Management,
Postgraduate qualification,
Open University
</description>
<description xsi:type="xcri:abstract">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p>This diploma provides an analytical view of strategic issues in technology management, equipping you for senior technology management roles.</p>
</div>
</description>
<description xsi:type="xcri:aim">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p>This postgraduate diploma course represents the second qualification level in the technology management programme. The diploma builds on the operational focus of the postgraduate certificate by providing you with concepts and tools to support the effective strategic management of technology. The compulsory modules in the diploma link the fields of strategic management and technology strategy. There is also the opportunity to extend your technology management studies by choosing optional modules relevant to your particular interests. The qualification provides an analytical view of strategic issues in technology management, and will equip you for senior technology management roles.</p>
</div>
</description>
<description xsi:type="xcri:learningOutcome">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p>The technology management programme develops analytical skills and provides practically relevant knowledge that will equip you well for a variety of management and leadership roles. The competent technology manager is a highly valued professional, capable of ensuring that the organisation reaps all the potential rewards from its investment in technology of whatever type. You will develop a range of job-related and transferable skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, and the ability to cope with rapid technological change. The capabilities in research and problem-solving developed can be exploited in all professional situations at all management levels. Employers are also impressed by the commitment and determination it takes to succeed with the OU while keeping up family and work commitments. These benefits, together with the opportunities to add value by applying your learning to the workplace as you study, make technology management programmes very attractive vehicles towards success in senior management roles.</p>
<p>There is more information about how OU study can improve your employability in the OU’s Employability Statement from our Careers Advisory Service. You can also read or download our publication OU study and your career and look at our subject pages to find out about career opportunities.</p>
</div>
</description>
<url>http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/E08.htm</url>
<qualification>
<title>Postgraduate Diploma in Technology Management</title>
<level>Postgraduate</level>
<type>The Open University</type>
</qualification>
<credit>
<scheme>The Open University</scheme>
<level />
<value>120</value>
</credit>
<presentation>
<identifier>E08</identifier>
<description>See individual course components for details of presentations of OU courses.</description>
<start>1900-01-01</start>
<duration>Please refer to individual modules or contact the Student Registration & Enquiry Service for details.</duration>
<studyMode>The Open University offers part time distance education - known as supported open learning - which allows students to work at home in their own time, usually with the support of a personal tutor.</studyMode>
<attendanceMode>Self-study</attendanceMode>
<attendancePattern>Part time distance education course</attendancePattern>
<languageOfInstruction>EN</languageOfInstruction>
<languageOfAssessment>EN</languageOfAssessment>
<venue>
<title>Self-study</title>
<description>The Open University offers part time distance education - known as supported open learning - which allows students to work at home in their own time, usually with the support of a personal tutor. </description>
<url>http://www.open.ac.uk/</url>
</venue>
<cost>Costs are paid per unit not per qualification.</cost>
<applyTo>http://www.open.ac.uk/study/</applyTo>
<enquireTo>Contact name: Student Registration & Enquiry Service, Contact phone: 0845 3006090, Contact email: general-enquiries@open.ac.uk</enquireTo>
</presentation>
</course>
So, no information there – let alone data – about what modules are involved…? (I also wonder about the quality of some of the data that is being published (start date of 1900-01-01, for example?) and how/where some of the semantics are defined, such as: what sort of credit points are the 120 unspecificed level points associated with the qualification?)
Of course, the intention behind the XCRI feed is not to provide scaffolding mapping out the module structure of OU offerings (it’s published as a marketing info syndication feed – thoughts on how well it might, does or doesn’t fit that purpose via the comments, please;-), but I was hoping that it might be repurposable/appropriatable as such ;-)
PEERing at Education…
I just had a “doh!” moment in the context of OERs – Open Educational Resources, typically so called because they are Resources produced by an Educator under an Open content license (which to all intents and purposes is a copyright waiver). One of the things that appeals to me about OERs is that there is no reason for them not to be publicly discoverable which makes them the ideal focus for PEER – Public Engagement with Educational Resources. Which is what the OU traditionally offered through 6am TV broadcasts of not-quite-lectures…
Or how about this one?
And which the OU is now doing through iTunesU and several Youtube Channels, such as OU Learn:
(Also check out some of the other OU playlists…or OU/BBC co-pros currently on iPlayer;-)
PS It also seems to me that users tend not to get too hung up about how things are licensed, particularly educational ones, because education is about public benefit and putting constraints on education is just plain stoopid. Discovery is nine tenths of law, as it were. The important thing about having something licensed as an OER is that no-one can stop you from sharing it… (which even if you’re the creator of a resource, you may not b able to do; academics, for example, often hand over the copyright of their teaching materials to their employer, and their employer’s copyright over their research output (similarly transferred as a condition of employment) to commercial publishers who then sell the content back to their employers.
