Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting Contact : [email protected] Michael Begg Learning Technology Section College of Medicine and Veterinary.

Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Contact : [email protected]

Michael BeggLearning Technology SectionCollege of Medicine and Veterinary MedicineUniversity of Edinburgh

Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Jumping through round holes with square pegs

Scene Setting with mixed metaphors

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Local Evidence

• Teachers negotiating contracts with mobile device vendors to avoid having to deal with institutional systems

• Teachers regularly pointing students to external resources of their own making; sites, repositories, blogs…

• Students now able to aggregate learning environments of their own

• Developers using development and staging servers to host collaborative environments not supported by centralised resources

• Institutions remain keener to submerge costs into management process than either teaching or learning

The suggestion being…

• There is rich activity, there is innovation, there is excitement

– Ungoverned by central process

• Our CoPs are becoming increasingly partisan in nature

Is this happening?

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Getting under the skin…

Let us consider the issues within the environmental frameworks of political alignment and personal construction…

Under the skin

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Institutions…

• eLearning increasingly embedded, but open to individual interpretation

• Institutions now reliant upon technocracy for increased activity, increased numbers, increased distances

• Growth of “managerialist” “top down” “centralist” processes

• Often overbearing - and largely unsubstantiated - caution over committed implementation of user-centred technologies

Positions

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Positions

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Web 2.0

• Definition open to interpretation, few standards

• Powerful corporations steer the democratisation of content

• Implementation “hype-cycle”… but a lot of good work out there!

Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Personal Constructs

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : VLE (www.politicalcompass.org)

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : VLE & Institution

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : Institution & Blog

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : Institution & Wiki

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : Students and Facebook

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Political alignment : eLearning

Alignment and Orientation - personal and political

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Leveraging within CMVM Edinburgh

• The quiet dissolving of the VLE

– Its actually becoming a VLE!

• Wikis formally assessed in teaching, offered as personal and collaborative repositories for students, deployed as research sandpits

• Blogs for every user

• Wiki / Labyrinth as dynamic knowledgebase with context enforcement

• Flexible Vocabularies

Local Leverage

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

Process and flexibility

• Web 2.0 has brought a lot of people together - some of us are here!

• Few standards - but relative simplicity

– The joined up thinking can be retrospective

– The speed of building (the ease of “editorial inheritance”)

– Service Layers

• The absorption of “e” into teaching, learning and research

– Business models emerging in distance learning

• Political incompatibilities - once exposed - offer a framework for

– Compromise? Reconciliation? Reflection and improvement?

• Educational Informatics

– Professional, informed, pedagogically grounded

• Creative Commons

Leverage

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

A common April

• New democratic tools being offered by multinational corporations

• To institutions who love the idea but cannot get under the skin

• While partisans work beneath the radar to provide “good stuff”

• To a user-base more interested in getting their certificate of attendance than learning anything

• And a teacher base unprepared to engage with students within the students own adopted learning envronments

Possible Worlds

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Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

An uncommon April

• Federated systems, negotiated, licensed, mapped, proximal

• New relationships between local and institutional level provision

• A negotiated environment for mutual feedback and evaluation in learning environments

• An environment of process, as well as content

Possible Worlds

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Thank You!

Contact : [email protected]

Leveraging Web 2.0 within a University Setting

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