Celebrating Continuing Development and Open Practice

It took me a while but I finally got there… I can know consider myself a Chartered Librarian!

Celebrating the completion of my Chartership came as a surprise to me; I hadn’t thought it would give me such joy! Possibly because I tend to take as granted the fact that learning is a lifelong process and it makes sense when we spent some time to critically reflect on it.

Click on the image to download the portfolio.

Peter Elbow (1998) worked on the concept of “free writing” as a technique to overcome the writing block, as well as capturing an idea as it occurs without worrying about the rules of good/bad writing. Especially during my Chartership process, it was worth engaging in a 5min activity of reflecting on new ideas which enabled me to observe my growth when new meaning was becoming part of me.

The good habit of taking action on my learning and see it via a reflective lens was perhaps the most valuable outcome of my Chartership.

I also seized the opportunity to engage with Open practices and therefore I licensed my portfolio with a Creative Commons Licence making it public in case other candidates can benefit from relevant examples the way I did.  Moreover, I wanted to reinforce the idea that everything on the web may be public but not free to use unless the creator has stated so.

Finally, having heard of the outcome of my application, it dawned on me how significant the mentor is to the mentee’s achievement.

I would like to thank my mentor, David Clover who helped me see the Chartership through and for his immense patience, as well as Elizabeth Charles and Maria Cotera for the rich conversations and multi-level support and guidance throughout the past three years.

References:

Elbow, P., 1998. Writing without teachers 25th ed., New York: Oxford University Press.

Zazani, E. 2013. CILIP Chartership Portfolio. [CC BY NC-ND]

The 3D model of the portfolio was created with the 3D-box maker [http://www.3d-pack.com/]

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Librarians and Open Educational Resources

In one of my previous posts, I had mentioned the work that has been undertaken by the Open Educational Resources Research Hub  (for short, OER Research Hub or OERRH) and their ongoing research on “What the impact of OER on learning and teaching practices is”.

The COPILOT (Community of Practice for Information Literacy Online Teaching) collaborated with the researchers of the OERRH to develop a questionnaire and investigate how Librarians think about and use different types of online resources. 

The research data produced by the project will help people around the world make more informed decisions about online teaching and learning.

The COPILOT and the OER Research Hub would greatly value your participation in our research. To find out more about the project, and to take part in the questionnaire, please visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OERRH_Librarian

If you have questions regarding this study, you may contact the OER Research Hub by email: oer-research-hub@open.ac.uk

MOOCs and Librarians: Join the new #MOOCLib Mendeley Group

I set up a Mendeley group for librarians across all sectors to share literature and resources about the evolving nature of MOOCs and the role of the librarian. You don’t need to be directly involved with MOOCs to join. All are welcome! Members are also encouraged to share their experiences of participating in the MOOC provision in their Institutions. If you have any questions please add them in the comments below or send me a message via twitter to @EleniZazani

There is an ever-growing literature about MOOCs but which is this piece that influenced your thinking most? Let’s start adding content with the most influential for you text.

Click on the image to visit the group.

MOOCs & Librarians is a group in Computer and Information Science, Education on Mendeley

MOOCs and Librarians: Keep the conversation live

Twitter escultura de arena – Twitter Sand sculpture by Rosaura Ochoa CC BY

On Twitter:

This is the second of the MOOCs and Librarians series of posts, following the one on opportunities for discussions via virtual forums and past conferences. Today’s post is focused on Twitter conversations including a poll on setting up a Twitter chat.

If you post MOOC-related news, comments, blog posts etc. try to use the #mooclib tag. I archive the tweets and have enabled open access to everyone who want to keep track of the conversation or see the raw data.

The archive starts from the 13th of March 2013, from the first announcements of the Pennsylvania event,  to date. (21 Aug 2013). So far the discussion has generated 3,605 tweets and we have Shared 955 links.

Forthcoming Twitter Chat:

Would you like to chat on Twitter and share concerns? Take the quick poll.

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to Martin Hawksey for creating the Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet (TAGS) and keeps developing it for us to aggregate tweets. If you want to set up your own archive, start from Martin’s MESHe Blog.

Image credits:

“Twitter escultura de arena” by Rosaura Ochoa is shared under a CC BY

“#moocLib Pie chart” by Eleni Zazani is shared under CC BY

MOOCs and Librarians: Join the #MOOCLib conversation

Derivative work from Ed’s Diary of a teaching machine shared with CC BY-NC-SA (see image credits)

This is the first of a series of posts that explore and propose communication channels for librarians who are involved or interested in MOOCs.

A few months ago, in March to be exact, a new group was formed, namely, MOOCs and Librarianship, following the first event, “MOOCs and Libraries:
Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?”, that took place in the University of Pennsylvania to explore challenges and opportunities that arise for Librarians as a result of MOOC provisions within their Institutions.

During this two-day meeting it became apparent that Librarians involved or to-be-involved in MOOCs enter an unexplored area and realised that communication on how to deal with challenges is vital.

Do you want to be part of the dialogue? See below some ways you can get involved.

Through Discussion Groups:

Google Group: MOOCs and Librarianship   – Free to join. Unlike its name the activity is not massive at the moment and therefore you will not be overwhelmed by the stream of conversations.

ACRL Group Discussion Group: Library Support for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Non-Librarian specific group

Association for Learning Technology. Special Interest Group on MOOCs.

Twitter account: @altmoocsig

Follow the outputs of two major Librarian-related Past MOOC events

18 & 19 March 2013
Title: MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?
Organisers: OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Download the presentations, watch the recorded talks and follow the outputs of the meeting.
Twitter conversations: #mooclib

 

Friday 12 July, 2013, First European MOOCs and Libraries Conference.
Title: MOOCs and Libraries: the good, the bad and the ugly.
Organisers: Open University Library, OCLC Research and JISC
Download the presentations.
Note: [Internet Explorer may cause you difficulty in downloading the presentations. In this case try Firefox or Chrome]
Twitter conversations: #mooclib

Image credits: Derivative work of the “Diary of a teaching machine” by Ed shared under CC BY NC-SA

A fun new start!

Our life would be really boring if year after year we repeated ourselves in condensed slots during our contact time with students.

This is certainly not happening to me. Every so often I review all the learning materials, reflect and move on to change my approach.

In preparation of the forthcoming orientation a multi-fold question born in mind:

How can I explain in 10 minutes the library services across three sites and two Universities to either a big audience (in a lecture theatre) or to speed-dating-format of smaller groups, early in the evening and make the information stick to my students’ minds at the end of a tiring for them day?

So, I came up with a game that could address the above question very neatly;

The idea: The infolit* Die

“The die has been cast” – alea jacta est (Suetonius, Vita Divi Iuli, 121 CE, 33)

A cube resembling a die will bear on every side a question that relates to our services, including a number at each top corner. The number corresponds to a PowerPoint slide number that includes a visual representation of the answer.

A volunteer from the audience will be asked to roll the die.

At the moment, we refine the die and the corresponding questions before going to the printer services to create a sturdier cube.

When the cube is ready to roll, I will post images of the die and instructions in case you want to use a similar approach to your orientations.

Before closing this post, it’s worth acknowledging the source of my inspiration.

As a learner myself, one of the things I value the most is the opportunities given to events for unanticipated learning outcomes that come as a surprise.

In the middle of June, I participated in the Digital pedagogies: E-learning and digital humanities unconference, at UCL where Rodd Digges during his pitch was holding a cube and promised to initiate a discussion that would “provoke dialogue and debate around current issues in HE and FE.” At that very moment, his “prompt cube” sparked the idea in my mind and although I opted for attending another session on collaborative writing and didn’t have the opportunity to see the cube in action, I would like to thank Rodd for generating the surprising and unintended, creative learning outcome!

*Infolit for short stands for Information Literacy

__________________

Image Credits: “Dice” by Daniel Dionne shared under CC BY-SA

Assess and be assessed as a Scholar

Last month I was invited to participate in a workshop organised by the London Knowledge Lab (LKL).  Justin Olmanson, postdoctoral fellow of the Institute of Education Sciences and member of Dr. Bill Cope’s research team from the University of Illinois, visited the Institute Of Education (IOE) and the LKL and introduced to us the assessment tool called “Scholar” and its conceptual framework. We then had the opportunity to experience the environment from either a student’s or a teacher’s point of view with hands-on activities.

Scholar is

a ‘cloud computing’, web-based writing and learning environment for learners which brings together formative assessment (diagnosis and feedback) and summative assessment (measuring student progress over time and in comparison with other learners).(Kalantzis & Cope, 2012)[1].

What I liked most:

Its name and analogy

The tool is divided into three modules, namely Community, Creator and Publisher, with two more modules currently under development (Conference and Bookstore).

Students can be part of one or more communities created by the teacher, where they interact with each other, learn to operate and be part of a “scholarly” online community.

The teacher sets the assessment activities and the students start creating content. The interface includes a text editor that allows them to easily edit their text but to also incorporate images, tables, links, videos and audios into their assignments.

scholar | Creator Module

The students not only start interacting as scholars but also engage in digital scholarship, familiarise themselves with many different formats and hence the tool prompts the development of skills in a variety of literacies, such as Media, Digital and Information Literacies.

Scholar’s Conceptual Framework

The feedback area promotes peer-assessment; the students start reviewing the assignments of their peers, add annotations in areas of interest and contribute their reviews against the set assessment criteria.

Overall the students are engaged in a holistic scholarly environment, where they are content creators, part of a community, peer-reviewers and publishers of their final assignments.

In hindsight, as students, most of us graduated with minimal knowledge of and without any experience of the scholarly communication cycle.   Even now many new Professionals graduate with many questions around the academic publishing and communication. I feel that the tool nicely embarks students in the aforementioned cycle, making them feel as scholars.

Supporting deep learning

The literature around the diagnostic nature of assessment is vast and continues to generate a vivid academic dialogue especially with the affordances of new learning technologies.

Scholar’s scaffolding allows the assessment activities to become learning activities.  The students are able to go back to the revisions of their work, reflect upon their peers’ annotations and track the development of their thoughts through the course of the assignment from the first draft to the final version.

Source: Deep and Surface Approaches to Learning http://exchange.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching-theory-guide/deep-and-surface-approaches-learning.html

Scholar encourages:

• interaction with both multiple media and peers and facilitates dialogue;
• the formation of groups so that advanced students are able to mentor the ones in earlier stages of study, should the teacher consider it suitable;

Find the printable cards at http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/file/59487220/assessment_feedback_printable_cards.pdf

Scholar:

• allows learning to become social and enables the creation of knowledge within communities;
• enables the development of a blend of Academic and employability skills, such as team-working, analytical thinking, narrative and argumentation skills and digital scholarship;

Find the printable cards at http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/file/59487220/assessment_feedback_printable_cards.pdf

Scholar:

• allows learners to peer and self assess their work against set criteria;
• supports differentiated learning as opposed to the “one size fits all” approach by giving opportunities for a variety of interactions;
• actively involves students in the assessment process rather than their being passive recipients of a grade;

Find the printable cards at http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/file/59487220/assessment_feedback_printable_cards.pdf

• Students’ reviews and annotations reveal threshold concepts, or areas that need attention during the in-class instruction;
• Student responses can provide insight into the classroom dynamics;
• it enables the creation and use of quizzes and surveys that teachers can use to seek feedback, or adjust a similar to Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) to be able to iterate their teaching;
• Quizzes can also be used for Ipsative assessment prior to any instruction and hence teachers can create adaptive learning activities.

From Educators to Educators

The tool is the outcome of the collective work of a research team supported by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences across four grants. Unlike the majority of technologies that have been developed with the commercial domain’s needs in mind, and were later embraced by educators who tried to find innovative ways to use them in the classroom setting,  Scholar is one of  the very few learning technologies that have been created by educators to support the learning process with diagnostic assessment being in its core.

How it would work as part of an Information Literacy Assessment plan

Megan Oakleaf (2009) had pointed early on that Librarians can demonstrate impact in their Institutions’ learning and teaching missions through the deployment of Information Literacy assessment plans. Scholar can facilitate this ambition and become part of the proposed assessment plan.

Even when Librarians cannot be physically embedded within departments, the tool can ease the way towards meaningful collaboration between Academics and Librarians and therefore create a fertile ground for innovation.

Andrew Walsh (2009), in another study reviewing the relevant literature up to 2007 to identify reliability and validity of Information Literacy assessment methods and tools, suggested that during the assessment design it is important to balance our needs with tools that are easy to administer and at the same time can assess what our Information Literacy-related outcomes describe.  From my short experience of Scholar I can see that it provides many opportunities for librarians to administer assessment and export qualitative data that prove whether learning outcomes have been achieved.

Alignment with the Higher Education Academy’s Professional Framework

Assessment affects all the aspects of our practice and the quality-enhanced approaches we take to teaching and students’ learning.

Scholar’s theoretical architecture is underpinned by teaching, learning and assessment theories (Knowledge) and seamlessly supports the core teaching activities and professional values.

The UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) available at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/ukpsf/ukpsf.pdf

Some thoughts on Improvement:

Seamless integration in MOODLE

It would be great if Scholar integrated or were able to communicate with MOODLE. Students are tired of logging in many different platforms, having to remember numerous sets of credentials to engage with isolated Institutional services.  An effortless communication between the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and an assessment tool would help students make conceptual links between course content, activities and assessment. Moreover, it would be easier for platforms to exchange and combine data sources from different areas of the VLE.

Learning Analytics will grow in interest and platforms will need to be able to bridge departmental silos and merge data from many different sources in order to give reliable studies on students’ achievement or under-performance.

Clearer dashboard visualisation of complex data

Scholar can generate a variety of data that report on students’ performance. The visualisation of such a complex data sets is currently following a linear graphical representation. I would personally like to see a less complex data visualisation which is represented in a cycle rather than in an overwhelming number of bars.  Colour annotation of different attributes and values would make it attractive to the eye and easy to follow. A nice example of such a prototype is the visualisation of the learning designer tool which visualises the teacher’s preparation time. [2]

In conclusion:

It was a great pleasure to have been invited to participate in this small hands-on workshop and to have met with educational researchers.  Assessment for Learning (AfL) needs to be one of the main considerations when designing Information Literacy courses, curricula or just stand-alone sessions. I can see a great potential for those who are able to use Scholar in their own settings for their students’ learning.

Ramsden (1992) advocated that the assessment procedures have a major impact in students’ learning and in the way they engage with learning as a whole.  Scholar can give educators a variety of both formative and summative assessment options that fit the kind of knowledge and skills needed in the 21st century.

References:

Biggs, J. (1999). Teaching for Quality Learning at University, SHRE and Open University Press.

Entwistle , N. (1988). Styles of Learning and Teaching, David Fulton.

Higher Education Academy. (2011). The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education. Available online at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/ukpsf/ukpsf.pdf. [Accessed 11 June 2013]

Oakleaf, Megan (2009). “Writing Information Literacy Assessment Plans: A guide to best practice. Communications in Information Literacy no. 3 (2):80-89.

Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education, Routledge.

Scholar website available at http://learning.cgscholar.com

Walsh, Andrew (2009) Information Literacy Assessment: Where do we start? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 41 (1), pp. 19-28 (Open access version available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/2882/)

Notes:

Scholar images were used here with kind permission of Dr. Bill Cope.

Find more about the printable card and the Viewpoints JISC project outputs at http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/29227748/Viewpoints%20project

[1] http://newlearningonline.com/kalantzisandcope/

[2] More about this at https://zazani.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/planning-with-the-learning-designer-tool/

Embedding Digital Literacies and enabling change

This week I participated in the workshop “Influencing Strategy and Change Processes to enable the embedding of Digital literacies“, part of the Changing the Learning Landscape (CLL)¹ series.

The main aim of the event was to:

to focus on how those in development roles (formal or informal) can play a instrumental part in strategy formulation and implementation through working with managers and change agents… through the exploration of the factors that need to be considered, the evidence base, including the ‘right’ people in the process and enabling change to happen.

My expectations were in line with the above,  but I also endeavoured to learn with others and network with like-minded, interdisciplinary professionals that came together to talk about influencing change in the Higher Education setting.

My main takeaways are summarised  in the following points:

Less Strategy more tactics: Shân Wareing‘s point made me think a bit about the etymology of the words and the difference between long documents and the actual steps to achieve the strategy. What influences change is the small, positive, incremental steps rather than the strategic document.

	Strategy	Tactic
Introduction (from Wikipedia):	Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. The word is of military origin, deriving from the Greek word στρατηγός (stratēgos), which roughly translates as “General”.	Tactic(s) may refer to a plan, procedure, or expedient for promoting a desired end or result
Example of this difference:	Improve market share of a brand through various brand building activities.	For this various tactics can be used; like on-line advertising or endorsement of a brand through celebrities
One more example:	Become the market leader	Use low price as a tactic for gaining leadership

Source: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Strategy_vs_Tactic

Running towards; not running away: What does the Higher Education horizon hold for the future? Do we observe the challenges posed by technology and opt for running away or do we seize the opportunity to innovate and become part of the evolution? 

Susannah Quinsee engaged us in a series of reflective activities to think about our personal style in managing change by employing colourful papers with messages, stickers, and postcards;

Change management reflective activities

We need to learn to live with paradoxes, for example building cross-institutional partnerships while we are still competitors.

Risk-averse OR Risk-taker ???

Managing Risk in Social Media

We all agree that this is a very common disclaimer (picture) mostly found on …. Twitter!

The Questions are:

• Why does such a disclaimer become so important in a personal social space?
• What if a tweet communicates a scientific breakthrough, an innovative solution to a problem, etc?
• Does this cultivate a learning culture?
• Does it help the Institutional digital transformation?
• Do Institutions support individuals who engage with technologies?

Listen to the students’ voice

What do students really say about their experiences with technology and digital literacy?

I tend to ask my students at the beginning of the Information Literacy sessions how they start their research although I know that their answer is always “Google”. The follow-up question is how many pages of results they tend to explore and again the overwhelming answer points to the first page of results with the top ones becoming the most valuable and reliable, since Google rates them at the top.

This is a well-known attitude among Librarians that validates the notion that students are not necessarily Information or Digital Literate just because they carry many devices.

How much do we know about our students?

There are ways to know our students better, for instance the IT Departments can tell us what devices students use to access our services.

Work with students

An important question raised was how we make the student involvement sustainable; Some suggestions include:

• Change the Institutional culture of how we listen to students:

Students want opportunities and dialogue where they can make a positive contribution – not just a place to give negative feedback! #cll1213

— Liz Shrives (@Lizzipops) May 21, 2013

• Partner with the Student Union instead of with individual class Representatives

Partnership between SU and library over VLE/ TEL important for change management at Surrey #cll1213

— Neil Ford (@neiljohnford) May 21, 2013

• The more student-led the projects are, the more sustainable the students’ involvement.
• Act upon students’ feedback and let them know about your actions.
• Utilise time outside exam periods.

Collaborate with Librarians

librarians key in embedding digital literacy skills #cll1213

— Ella Mitchell (@meatyloafy) May 21, 2013

Librarians are already teaching Information Literacy skills and they are good at it!

#cll1213#Librarians are very good at it. I’m not biased I’m just quoting @lawrie twitter.com/EleniZazani/st…

— Eleni Zazani (@EleniZazani) May 21, 2013

Engage Senior staff

Engaging senior staff in digital literacies = vital for making change happen @lawrie #cll1213

— Susannah Quinsee (@squinsee) May 21, 2013

• Cultivate Communities of Practice rather than communities of resistance.

Change management should happen through creating Communities of Practice (CoPs) where learning by-doing and by-making (Experiential learning) is encouraged. There was a consensus in our working team that provision of training opportunities for staff can influence change and empower staff.

I liked Lawrie’s suggestion about Involving the Human Resources Department in the provision of training on Digital Literacies. I would add that Librarians are, in many cases, competent with new technologies and they can be a valuable source of providing training.

Support for staff: barriers are direction, time fear. Enablers: quick wins, heroes (modelling best prac), staff groups and hr & CPD #cll1213

— Neil Ford (@neiljohnford) May 21, 2013

Keeping the momentum

#cll1213 @squinsee Keeping change alive- associate with existing initiatives, ban the ‘T’ (technology) word, create advocates, champions

— sue thompson (@susiestraw) May 21, 2013

I tend to believe that the learning experience becomes rich and exciting when it moves beyond what is anticipated to be learnt and provides space for unanticipated learning outcomes; for surprises.

So here are some of my surprises:

I need to admit that I enjoyed Susannah Quinsee’s activities and the whole process of trying to translate my personal attitudes in stickers and fluorescent papers. I would be hesitant to estimate the average age of the participants but it seems that my argument about adults playing with nursery materials is at stake. Susannah asked us to return our cards to her with our address on it so that she can send them back to us in a 6-month period. Obviously, I found it difficult to let go of my card so I took it with me! 🙂

The outcome of the game itself was quite a surprise!

Taking a risk with a smile, playing along with the unexpected and continuing to iterate, staying positive and singing against the odds.

Notes:

1. CLL is a unique partnership between the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, JISC, the National Union of Students, the Association for Learning Technology and the Higher Education Academy (HEA). This professional development element of CLL is being led by the HEA in association with the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA).

Further Resources:

Phipps, Lawrie. (2013). Changing Learning Landscape: Strategy and Change #CLL1213 (21 May) In Lawrie Phipps: Organisational Development & Transformations Programme. [Blog] Available at http://lawrie.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/cll21may/ [accessed 24 May 2013]

Prensky, M. (2012). From digital natives to digital wisdom: Introduction In From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: hopeful essays for 21st century learning. Corwin.

“Strategy vs Tactic”. Diffen contributors. Diffen LLC, 2013.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Strategy_vs_Tactic [accessed 25 May 2013]

All the presentations will be available at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/cll

Image credits:

“Changing the learning Landscape” logo is linked from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2013/03/digitalliteracies.aspx (Many thanks to Lawrie Phipps for giving permission to use it).

“Managing Risk in social Media” was created with the Einstein Image generator www.hetemeel.com, the written message belongs to Lawrie Phipps http://www.jisc.ac.uk/contactus/staff/lawriephipps.

“Change management reflective activities” by Eleni Zazani available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/elenizazani/8824936460/ shared under CC BY-ND

“How much do we know about our students?” photo taken by Eleni Zazani  from Lawrie’s  presentation.

Gamify the online Lecture

Prof. Werbach’s Gamification course on Coursera launched on Monday, and although it coincidentally was April fool’s day, the course is nowhere near fooling around.

I decided to take the course following the Signature track although learning can be verified in so many other ways!

Kevin Werbach opened the course with a series of short video lectures and while he introduced the structure of the course he also presented us with a challenge:

“…if you’re curious about what the things are on the bookcases behind me. Well, you’ll just have to watch the rest of the videos to find out.”

… and I did… not that I needed the challenge to continue watching the videos, but I like puzzles and so I took up the challenge.

Spot the difference!

I found this challenge rather ingenious, and my mind instantly started thinking why the instructor used this element in his teaching and what the purpose of it is.

The course is about Gamification, meaning:

“the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems.” (Zichermann G., Cunningham, C. 2011).

So here are some thoughts:

Why this challenge:

Engage the audience: The course is delivered entirely online on the Coursera platform and intended for a massive audience. The instructor sits in front of his bookcase, records a lecture and the audience, us, need to somehow engage with a talking head, some timezones away and ultimately learn. Kevin uses a game element, in this case “spot the difference”, to catch our attention and

Trigger a response: Is he talking alone or to a real audience? Is this audience an active recipient or does it passively sit on the other end of the cybersphere watching, eating and every so often glancing at the screen. This generates an even more important issue widely discussed in the education discourse;

Get to know the learners and their needs: (Ramsden 2003) Are the distant learners observant, do they gather the skill-set involved in gamification? Are they up to the challenge? If not how are they going to appreciate game-mechanics in a non gaming context and therefore how may this presupposition affect the learning process?

From the learner’s point of view…

I understand that the instructor not only loves his subject but also the act of teaching. It is evident that his lessons are “products” of a design and hence become artefacts (Laurillard 2012).

He cares about his audience: Lecturing is boring not to mention listening to a talking head. On the other end of the MOOC model, a great percentage of the participants tend to be highly educated*. So, how do you make the lecture interesting for a highly-competent professional audience?

It’s Just a Game?

Kevin Werbach’s “spot the difference” challenge poses an excellent example of gamification in the e-teaching context. If Kevin wanted to initiate some thinking about gamification in our own context, he definitely succeeded.

So, what’s the prize?

The learning and lateral thinking of course, although I wouldn’t mind a badge 🙂

References:

Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a design science: Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Zichermann, G., & Cunningham, C. (2011). Gamification by design: Implementing game mechanics in web and mobile apps. Sebastopol, Calif: O’Reilly Media.

_________________

Kevin Werbach (@kwerb) is Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and our lecturer in the Gamification course.

* See the case of the EDC MOOC at https://zazani.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/our-edcmooc-paths-to-finding-information-results/

Open Practice and OER sustainability

It’s really difficult to tell the whole story of a conference such as Cetis 2013, unless you break down its main parts.  I created, therefore, a social story that responds to the main objectives of the first parallel session I attended on “Open Practice and OER sustainability”

View the story “Open Practice and OER sustainability ” on Storify 

More information about the session can be found at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Open_Practice_and_OER_sustainability. CETIS stands for  Centre For Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards, and so far is a JISC service.