Warning: Constant MAX_INLINE_MENTION_LENGTH already defined in /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/semantic-linkbacks/includes/class-linkbacks-handler.php on line 4

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/semantic-linkbacks/includes/class-linkbacks-handler.php:4) in /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/indieauth/includes/class-indieauth.php on line 257

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/semantic-linkbacks/includes/class-linkbacks-handler.php:4) in /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/indieauth/includes/class-indieauth.php on line 257

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/semantic-linkbacks/includes/class-linkbacks-handler.php:4) in /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/indieauth/includes/class-indieauth.php on line 257
dkernohan – Page 25 – FOLLOWERS OF THE APOCALYPSE
Warning: Attempt to read property "plugins" on null in /home/dkernohan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/styles/classes/styles-customize.php on line 150

Purity * Truth * Beauty

Author: dkernohan

  • The Winning Move Is Not To Play: Game theory and the Willetts funding model.

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Zero (public domain) license.

    The very little I know about the application of game theory on educational policy I learnt from my inspirational former colleague, Professor David Turner at the University of Glamorgan. The bits that I have got wrong are, however, entirely my own fault.

    During a speech at the Universities UK Spring Conference, David Willetts (UK Secretary of State for Universities) reiterated his warnings about the high potential cost to the taxpayer of universities electing to charge fees reflecting the full range of that which is permitted to them. It is now an open secret that the new funding model for universities is certain to cost the taxpayer more within this parliament, and is very likely never to cost any less than the current model. Bearing this in mind, Willetts has warned senior university staff that money may be taken from other university income streams (for instance the research budget) in order to be able to fund the additional loans that would be required to meet these fees.

    Tough talk. But it unfortunately betrays an inability to understand his own policies around competition and an “open market”.

    Unknownname

    The table above outlines my analysis of the situation. The only chance that institutions have of even maintaining their existing funding is to charge above £7,500 and hope that enough of their competitors choose not to in order to avoid triggering the threatened cuts in research funding. Were the expected lower levels a revenue neutral (including inflation and additional costs incurred for the move to the new system) situation, it may be rational to broker a sector-wide compact (or cartel, if you prefer) to ensure that no-one steps over whatever line the government has drawn in the sand.

    But the minimum (and even the implied “normal” maximum) mean that institutions would lose money as against the current system. When you combine this with the decade of incentives encouraging the sector to compete, we are very likely to see a rush to the top. Based on my analysis, above, this is the only rational choice for institutional managers looking to maintain or increase income. 

    This is a “non-zero-sum” game, as there is no way to maintain a position. Institutions will either win or lose – and a lower price than the rest of the sector means that they will lose heavily. The same goes for private institutions, incidentally. What motive have they got not to seek the maximum possible income?

    I’ve said it before (many times), I’ll say it again. This model of university funding is unworkable. 

    You could make your own game theory analysis of the two models of HE. On one side you have the new model, where students, institutions and the tax-payer all lose out. On the other the current model, where they don’t.

  • HE Funding… another thread unravels.

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Zero (public domain) license.
    So, as you do on a cold Thursday evening in February, there I was reading the HEFCE Model Financial Memorandum (as updated July 2010). And it struck me… with HEFCE funding becoming an increasingly rarefied component of institutional funding, how far can HEFCE actually mandate that institutions do stuff?

    The main lever that they’ve had so far is the (partial) withdrawal of funding – they’ve also got the right to request changes in governance structures and personnel. And with these levers, they make institutions do some fairly interesting things. But what I spotted that did surprise me was that:

    It is a condition of grant for an institution in receipt of HEFCE funding to subscribe to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
    It is a condition of grant for an institution in receipt of HEFCE funding to subscribe to the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA).

    No-one ever mentions HESA, which is a shame as it is pretty awesome (and will be more so when they start getting in to releasing more open data). They collect information about the HE sector, which informs HEFCE funding and central planning. But it did merit a passing allocation of new work in the Browne Review, working with OFFA (another quango in a similarly interesting situation). Of course the QAA (who do a damn good job too) was enthusiastically (and implausibly, given that it is a UK wide organisation) mashed into HEFCE by Browne at that point.

    Neither body is unduly expensive – the QAA costs the UK about £12m (£7m from funding councils – mainly HEFCE, £4m from institutions), HESA costs HEFCE around 200k (yes, really!) with institutional subscriptions and data purchase contributing the most of rest of the charitable body’s £4.3m annual income.

    But the point is that both of these organisations are bodies with statutory responsibilities given to them by HEFCE – they are doing jobs that actually need to be done to run HE in the UK. They have to be paid somehow. But with decreasing HEFCE grants (many institutions losing more than 90% of their funding) it will become increasingly difficult to insist that universities and colleges subscribe as a condition of grant – they could just not take the grant, or ignore HEFCE and take the (proportionally tiny) cut. You could make it a condition of fee receipt, but I can’t see BIS insisting that these new private bodies subscribe to the QAA (or jump through any other hoops). And have “Student Finance England” really got the infrastructure or legal clout to do this?

    Given that the overall level of funding coming in to HEFCE is dropping so substantially, it seems unlikely that HEFCE will be able to support the full costs of these bodies directly. Indeed this would mean top-slicing what remains of institutional grants, something unlikely to be politically popular.

    How else can they be supported? BIS are currently doing everything they can not to end up spending more on HE support than they are currently – to the extent of threatening to cut research funding and student number allocation (wasn’t the whole point of Browne not to put limits on institutional growth?) if tuition fees tend too high (can they even do this legally?). 

    The limited appeal of the Browne model and Cable-Willetts adaptions comes only when you consider direct tuition costs as the only requirement of funding. The model ignores indirect costs such as infrastructure on a national and institutional level. Rather than engaging with the ongoing TRAC debate, Browne chose to ignore it and have all funding follow students directly and explicity, with the expectation that other costs would somehow sort themselves out. Already we are seeing discussions about students “paying” for £9,000 worth of services – how do you convince a student that using some of their fees to pay for the QAA, or HESA or another institutional subscription is worthwhile?

    QAA and HESA are not going to disappear, they are too important. Other subscription-supported organisations may be in more trouble. But a new model of funding that appears to forget that any of these organisations need to be actually funded in order to do any good is a worrying development.

  • #ds106 – Followers of the Apocalypse radio show 2

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Zero (public domain) license.

    Released the second mix in this series to DS106 Radio last night. Wise words include those from @daveowhite, Joss Winn, @hallymk1 and @dougald – fine music includes pendulum, 1 speed bike, rammstein, king crimson, and silver mt zion. As far as these things have a theme, the first one was pretty much a general exploration of the way I want to use the apocalypse as a narrative form in this series, this second one is kind of about the place of education in a dying society.

    Available on soundcloud. No, it’s not an OER – sorry. In fact it’s probably illegal, definitely not safe for work (or children) and you probably won’t like it.

  • Declawing OFFA

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Zero (public domain) license.

    Today sees the much trailed publication of the “guidance letter” to the Office of Fair Access regarding institutional access agreements and the right to charge amounts above the basic level of fees. In this post I am comparing this new guidance to the initial guidance offered in October 2004. I’m ignoring the draft letter of last year, and David Lammy’s letter of 2009.

    Many ministers, in particular David Willets, have previously described the process of getting agreement for higher fees as becoming more arduous, with the expectation that the full £9,000 fee will be charged only in exceptional circumstances. In his ministerial statement, today, he says:

    “The guidance to the Director sets out significantly increased expectations for the priority that institutions should be giving to fair access and widening participation, focusing more sharply on the outcomes of outreach and other activities, and less on the inputs and processes. In particular the government believes that progress over the last few years in securing fair access to the most selective universities has been inadequate, and that much more determined action now needs to be taken“

    It is important to remember that the acceptance of an Access Agreement is, and always has been, analogue not digital. By this I mean that either an institution has an approved agreement and can charge up to the higher level of fees (soon to be £9,000), or it does not and can charge only the basic amount (£6,000). There is no middle ground where an institution can only charge up to £7,500 for a less impressive agreement. It’s all or nothing.

    So how are OFFA to keep fees away from the maximum?

    (para 1.7, 2011) “We have consistently said that we believe graduate contributions of £9,000 should apply only in exceptional circumstances. Institutions would need to charge considerably less than this to offset reductions in HEFCE funding, and higher charges impose higher costs for the public purse because of generous subsidies in the loan system. […] It is of course not within your legal powers to impose any quota for how many institutions charge what level of graduate contribution […] But if the sector as a whole appear to be clustering their charges at the upper end of what is legally possible […] we will have to reconsider what powers are available, including changes to legislation, to ensure there is a differentiation in charges. We intend to keep this under very close review for 2012/13.”

    That’s it. If every institution (as they do currently) successfully has their access agreement approved, there is no way they can be prevented from charging the maximum fee level. And the government has said nothing beyond keeping things under review. This is shameful.

    (incidentally – institutions would need to charge about £8,000 to replicate their governmental income with respect to student tuition. This includes the current HEFCE grant and current fees. Lovely little slight of hand there.)

    So given this, you would expect a substantially beefier set of requirements for access agreement approval.

    The 2004 letter handily offers a set of minimum requirements for an access agreement:

    (para 5.1, 2004)
    Unknownname

    The 2011 letter explicitly does not:

    (para 5.1, 2011)
    “Judgements on the details of these requirements in individual circumstances are for you to make as Director of Fair Access. At this stage, and in accordance with current arrangements, we are not proposing any minimum requirement in this area”

    (in accordance with current arrangements they say… hmmm….)

    Okay, so maybe it’s all about the big stick. Surely this new guidance will beef up the sanctions that OFFA can make for institutions that don’t play by the rules (whatever the rules turn out to be). From a 2004 starting point:

    0unknownname
    1unknownname

     

    So, we’ve got a refusal to renew (which would mean that they couldn’t, legally, charge higher fees without some comeback), suspension of the relevant part of the main HEFCE grant, and a small punative fine. For a beefed up measure you would want to maybe look at degree awarding power suspension rather than grant suspension (especially given the grant cut) and a larger fine. You’d also expect that there would be something in the 2011 letter to cover institutions no longer in receipt (or never in receipt) of HEFCE grants. 

    But instead:

    (2011, para 7.1) “The major sanction available to you is not to approve or renew an Access Agreement, when it is reviewed each year. This would remove the institution’s right to charge its students above the basic level. You also have available to you sanctions should an institution breach or fail to deliver its access agreement, viz:

     

    to impose a fine (via the funding body) of a maximum of £500,000

     

    to require restitution if students have been disadvantaged or commitments have not been honoured.”

    At best, this is the same deal as currently – except that they seemingly no longer have the option to reduce a grant from HEFCE.  And the non-approval of an Access Agreement… how would this affect a HE degree-awarding institution that is not in receipt of HEFCE funding, for example an entirely private institution, or an arts college? Such a situation has not been considered in this document, surprisingly as this was one of the hopes around the expansion of the availability of degree awarding powers.

    And has the maximum fine been adjusted for inflation since 2004 – no it has not. 

    You’ve probably guessed by now that this isn’t the document we were hoping for, and it isn’t the document we were promised. But it is worse than that – this document has actually taken away the minimum access standards set out in 2004, and has not updated the sanctions available to OFFA to suit a new model of Higher Education funding.

    Questions should be asked. 

    This is not a document about widening access, it is a document about cutting state funding for Higher Education. And it doesn’t even do that very well.

     

     

  • For a few dollars more? – OER, reuse and value.

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

     

    Allow me to start with a (deliberately) controversial statement: “The resources themselves are the least valuable aspect of OER, and academic reuse is the least valuable aspect of these resources.“

     

    I don’t propose to be able to defend that entirely – but it is indicative of the way my mind is moving after reading a wonderful post by Tony Bates yesterday, and continuing to reflect on David Wiley’s position and the findings of the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis final report.

     

    As someone who is involved in a major funded programme of OER release, I want to be doubly clear that I don’t think that this work has been a waste of time – or that the content created is without merit, or that current investigations into content reuse are worthless. Far from it. I’m more inclined to believe that that what we have gained from our work is not what many people have argue that we have gained. It is far, far, more.

     

    (And the least valuable is still pretty damn valuable.)

     

    (sorry about all the caveats – but I know I am at risk of being taken out of context here. Can you believe that some people read this blog purely to find things to complain about? Yes, really! )

     

     

    OER is interesting – as a concept, as a process, and as an entity.

     

    Unknownname
    (image credit: cybermule [from personal archive] – obvious nod of the hat to Sergio)

     

    As a concept – and as Joss Winn and Richard Hall have argued – it poses serious questions for our understanding of what education is, and what institutions should be doing. Both in grander terms, concerning our understanding of knowledge and the value our society accords to it, and in less radical everyday thoughts about attribution, and how we discover and use material. I think that the volume of critical thought that OER has already created is immensely valuable – it has served as a genuinely new contribution to the age-old “purpose of education” debates, which are becoming increasingly essential in a higher education sector dealing with rapid transformational change.

     

    As a process, OER pushes consideration of intellectual property and pedagogy into the creation of materials for use in teaching. It makes us consider how much effort we put in (or don’t) to ensuring that we have the best possible teaching aids for use with our students. And it engages what used to be the sole academic – working on their own to produce a hand-out, slides or a complex tool – with both the idea and the actuality of a community of practice, doing the same and similar things. This is the theme that I don’t think many have focused on (though the OPAL project is a visible and notable exception) but it is where we are seeing a lot of movement. If you are engaged with OER creation, it becomes a part of your use practice. From properly citing images used on PowerPoint slides, to automatically searching for open resources as a preference, to thinking “could I create this in such a way I could release it openly” – involvement in or engagement with OER “release” fundamentally changes your “use” practices.

     

    As an entity, an OER is available for use and inspiration. It can be modified, it can be altered, it can be used within agglomerations of material from a variety of sources, modified and republished. It can be linked to as part of a course. It can also be read and recreated (partially or fully), or read in order to inspire work in a particular direction. And all these things can be done by everyone, not just academics and students.

     

    And, as David Wiley says – most of the “entity” points are also true of content that is simply visible. Not all (not the ones in the first line), but certainly the most common ones. I’ve been around the loop before concerning the long term (10yr+) goal of the UK government to see academic sharing as common practice, and (outside of a few excellent examples around community based projects like Humbox and Connexions) this has not been a resounding success. I don’t go as far as David does regarding openness being an additional production cost – academics produce resources anyway (which is where the cost is) making these resources OER at this point of creation is trivial – at most a few dollars more for 5 mins checking a license. You could even argue that making resources that are not usable by the whole world is a (substantial) additional production cost!

     

    But I do agree that it is an additional attention cost. And I think that this is entirely a good thing. OER creation focuses attention on IPR and pedagogic choice. Precisely what we want academics to be thinking about when creating resources, and if we are connecting people together as they create (through a community like #ukoer on twitter, Humbox or something else), even better. And if we are contributing to discussions on the future of HE by doing so – fantastic. Note that none of these benefits require the actual availability or find-ability of OER – this is almost like a potential additional benefit. And this potential additional benefit is primarily to people outside academia entirely, or students new to academia – people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to that knowledge or that opportunity for learning. Wikipedia (and similar projects) fulfil a lot of these needs, and the growth of academic input (rather than hostility) is welcome. But sometimes actual academic resources – short paper, annotated diagram, lecture recording – can go further than that.

     

    Academic reuse – it’s long-tail, at best. There is a chance that there will be something useful, but as the needs of educators are so varied, no more than a chance. It’s worth looking – but it’s equally possible that building your own materials is the best option. As Tony Bates concluded: OERs need skill and hard work to make them useful [to others], and selling them as a panacea for education does more harm than good. OER reuse will make some things easier for some academics, some of the time.

     

    But is this our only reason for releasing content openly? The concept and process benefits are already being seen, as are (increasingly) the benefits to independent learners and new students – the entity benefits to academics are too but on a smaller scale, and will take time to become fully understood. Have we got the luxury of the time needed to make that argument, and explain why it may be of lesser impact than many initially suggested?

     

    When the chimes end, pick up your gun.

  • Blogging on blogging on #ukoer #2

    The opinions expressed within this blog post are my own, and not those of my employer, or of projects or programmes I am responsible for. This post is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

    For the purposes of future re-enactments of this post, I would like to confirm that all of the bloggers mentioned here were at all times dressed in the traditional blogger attire of red cape and goggles (especially Richard Hall) and that all posts linked to were (to the best of my knowledge) made from high-altitude hot air balloons.

    This series is rapidly turning in to David Wiley (@opencontent) digest, but – fair play to him – he repeatedly delivers the goods as regards considered and provocative blog posts on “iterating towards openness”.

    This set of drama centres around his post on “Openness, Socialism and Capitalism“, where he suggested that a lot of the appeal of openness was the idea of “buy one, get one” – the end user (runs the argument) has paid for university resources via taxes or fees, so they should be able to use them as they see fit. He sees, through this lens, openness (and by extension OER) as a “the only way to fix a fundamental dysfunction in the market”.

    Now if you’ve been hanging around the more politicised end of the sprawling #ukoer twitter tag, you’ll be aware that this is quite a provocative statement to make, in this context.

    Other thinkers – most notably Stephen Downes, but in the UK Joss Winn and Richard Hall – have been arguing for OER and openness not as a fix for the market but as an alternate structure of value as applied to intellectual work. Joss Winn responded immediately with a post entitled “Misunderstanding capitalism and OER“. This is a superbly argued defence of what is (by most mainstream standards) a very radical position. He suggests that the fundamental dysfunction in the market is – in the argot of the times – a feature, not a bug.

    “The ‘social contract’ refers to our shared understanding of the role of private property in society and an acknowledgement of the laws in place which protect private property. When the enforcement of social order breaks down in society or when someone exists in absolute poverty, this ‘social contract’ is often ignored and we call it looting or theft. In short, the ‘social contract’, although not an explicit written contract at the time of transaction, is underwritten in law and enforced through the role of the police and to a lesser extent other social institutions, such as education.”

    So rather than David Wiley’s “common sense” viewpoint being a shared understanding based on informed consent it is (argued here) an entirely artificial construct. Joss also suggests that:

    “One of the defining features of capitalism is the extraction of ‘surplus value‘ from the work or labour that we are forced to undertake. The basic idea is that I work 8hrs/day but the value of the output of that work is worth more to my employer than the wage I am paid for 8hrs work. This is the basis for exploitation in capitalist society, which most of us participate in.”

    This appeal to Marx’ theories of surplus value is used to emphasise the place of profit even within such “not-for-profit” enterprises as public education… merely by accepting a wage that is  less than the value of the work we perform on behalf of those paying that wage we are participating in a system of value that is actually designed not to benefit most people.

    as he concludes:

    “So, if David and I think it’s unfair that we don’t get a fair return on our taxes, it is no surprise really. It’s just a continuation of the exploitation that most of us are forced into under capitalism, where private property and waged labour are the organising principles of subsistence. In my view, a fair return on our taxes (or BOGO, as David calls it) through openness doesn’t ‘fix a disfunction in the market’; it is completely incompatible with a society where there is an imperative (partly through competition in the markets) to accumulate capital undertaken through the exploitation of working people, be they academics, housewives, students or car mechanics”

    Enter Richard Hall (@hallymk1), with his post, “OERs, capitalism and social totality“. He’s extending on Joss’ argument in two ways: firstly suggesting that OERs and OER practices need to be seen within wider debates about the nature and place of education, secondly pointing to the “cultural export” failings in OER reuse models previously highlighted by Patrick McAndrew (@openpad). The whole post is a great read, but for the purposes of this I want to focus on his first point.

    Increasingly, we are seeing a huge number of organised critiques of Higher Education as it currently exts (I’ve mentioned a few interesting examples at the top of my last post, “Roll Your Own University“). These are linked to, but not a direct part of, the wider movement against HE cuts, as seen in frequent formation dancing police exercises in London and elsewhere. But where these other movements are going further is that they are defending the “idea” of Higher Education, not the system of state-funded quasi-autonomous institutions we currently have. The “idea” of Higher Education is a notoriously slippy one – I’m a huge fan of a lot of Newman‘s ideas on this, but there are many other patterns of thinking current in these circles. Another key text in this debate is Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society“.

    Richard notes:

    “The more radical view is that, in deconstructing one element of education, like the OER, we require a critique of its place in the whole edifice of capitalist education as a functionary of the system of capitalist work. From there we can position the development of radical alternatives, like who owns the value of the outputs of our labour-power.”

    In his conclusion he suggests that OER is one of the tools we can use to reassess the place of education beyond market-based ideas of “value”

    This is the true nature of the struggle for the University and the place of our productive capability in that struggle. It is not the struggle to receive what we think we deserve in a market that alienates and impoverishes and immiserates on a global scale. It is not the struggle to assess how as consumers we recover the value we think we deserve from a commodity. It is the struggle to recover our power-to create our world that is at issue. In this we need to recognise how we critique what is done to us, and the totality of the spaces in which we produce and consume.

    SO: what does all this mean for us, getting on with helping people produce OER. On one level, nothing. On another, everything – concerning why we are doing what we are doing. Think on.

  • Roll your own university

    This post represents my own opinions only and does not represent the views of my employers, or of programmes and projects I am responsible. It is available under a CC-BY license.

    One really positive outcome of the strife and argument around UK HE funding is the development of a number of prospective independent centres of Higher Education, such as the Really Open University and the Lincoln Social Science Centre. Coupling this with detailed cultural critiques of knowledge and education such as the University of Utopia and Dark Mountain  – and the worldwide Alternative University “movement” – we seem to be living through a time when a serious contender to the traditional HE institution is emerging. (Indeed, for those who think an alternative movement is not truly established until it is co-opted by marketing practice, take a look at NotGoingToUni!)

    However, one stumbling block that these otherwise excellent initiatives face is the currency of the degree itself. No matter the criticism that the “degree” is constantly under ( arbitrariness, contentions over value and significance, increasing co-option by consumerist narratives, and over-emphasis on summative assessment as a measure of a formative process), it is still a legitimising agent for what is essentially a sustained focus on radical critique for its own sake.

    Traditional universities discuss and promote radical and subversive ideas (alongside the vocational world-of-work stuff) but the fact that this leads to “a degree” gives students and staff the space and authority to do this.

    So how could an alternative to University access this hegemonic legitimacy whilst not changing one single iota of their academic practice?

    Why – by applying for UK degree awarding powers, of course!

    But there’s no rule to say that you need to teach Business Management to apply. It’s actually fairly easy to apply. The QAA have published some handy guidance to help you, as have BIS.

    What it comes down to is 4 years of teaching to Higher Education levels, a robust system of  management and quality assurance (including external examiner processes), availability of appropriate staff and learning resources and (sorry) £30,000 of cash, £40,000 if you want to award research degrees (MPhil, PhD) too. I can only imagine that the fee exists to deter speculative/poorly prepared applications – but I can appreciate that it will deter a lot of people who may not be able to raise that kind of money. The best one can imagine happening is some foundation or fund being set up to support this process.

    Ignoring the payment requirement, I could imagine a lot of groups being in a position to apply:
    • FE Colleges already delivering HE.
    • Recently-closed (or under threat) departments and faculties from mainstream universities.
    • Established collaborative (cross-institutional) entities.
    • Social (peer) educators – such as School of Everything and P2PU.
    • Global educators, if they can claim to be “based” in England or Wales (though the growth of online learning would suggest that this may need to be changed…)
    • Trade Unions
    • Charities
    And broadly what they need to have in place (appendix A of linked document) is:
    • A good quality system of academic governance
    • Mechanisms of internal and external quality assurance
    • Good staff with relevant experience.
    • Availability of learning and teaching resources/infrastructure
    I want to come back to this in the coming weeks, and try and pick out in detail what would be needed for an application with a fair chance of success, drawing on publicly available and open documentation and resources where possible, and proposing potential alternative models. And I note that new guidance is expected imminently – probably in the forthcoming HE White Paper – so I will comment on these changes as well.

    But the key message is that you don’t have to behave like a mainstream university to have degree awarding powers, you don’t even need to charge students any fees! – and that recent funding changes mean that new models are not only possible but inevitable. Let’s hope that some of these new models are resilient and meaningful enough to do some genuine long-term good for UK society.

  • What is #ds106 ? Why is it the greatest thing ever?

    This post represents my own opinions only and does not represent the views of my employers, or of programmes and projects I am responsible. It is available under a CC-BY license.
    I really didn’t (don’t?) have time to get involved in #ds106 , but it sucked me in through just sheer awesomeness. It’s a MOOC (massively open online course) led in inimitable style by THE BAVA: Jim Groom at Mary Washington U. The course is actually offered to (and is being taken by) a number of Jim’s actual students, but their participation is more than matched by the enthusiasm and anarchy of what I’m going to start calling the EduPunk diaspora.

    The canonical course site is here.

    It has assignments, but these have quickly become sublimated into waves of activity. The first was around animated .GIFs, which I have yet to engage in but need to rectify urgently. The second – which was just so completely up my alley that I couldn’t not was an open access radio station. Adherents have been uploading their own audio work and their own favourite tracks, which are played with a cavalier disregard for public taste and the laws of copyright, all thanks to Jim’s enthusiasm and Grant Potter’s technical wizardry.

    And it is compulsive listening. Occasionally mind-blowing, occasionally irritating, occasionally challenging – never, ever, boring. UK folks, it’s like the second coming of John Peel. 

    This is an amazing example of the ability of the internet to bring people together almost despite themselves – a more concrete example of the phenomena which makes the “misc” section of any discussion board the most interesting and lively, makes mailing lists occasionally veer wonderfully off-topic and does bizarre things to conference back-channels.

    If you provide people with the means to connect and share experiences then they will – on a level that is both more massive and more human than anyone could have anticipated. If you try to constrain the connections and the sharing you kill a community. The internet has taught me (and many others) that, now #ds106 is bringing it home.

    [I’ve contributed a 1hr “Followers Of The Apocalypse” radio show/mixtape, made during odd bits of downtime this week using Audacity and Sonar. Be warned, it’s pretty extreme and definitely not safe for work/children and the IP is just, well, my fault…- but it would make a good workout/deadline/driving mix. Possibly.]

  • 20 potentially great keynote speakers

    This post represents my own opinions only and does not represent the views of my employers, or of programmes and projects I am responsible. It is available under a CC-BY license.

    My last post about elearning experts attracted a lot of interest, a fairly even split between amused recognition and a feeling that I may have been a little harsh. But those of you who follow this blog regularly know that I don’t like to identify problems without suggesting solutions. So here’s a few suggestions for people I’d love to hear give a major conference keynotes – trying to choose people who don’t tend to get these high-profile platforms (often just because they don’t promote themselves as well or as often) but would do a lot of interesting things if offered a chance. Given my background these tend towards the UK, the transformative/open higher education world and tend politically towards the left. And yes, I am honoured to call many of these amazing people friends, fellow-travellers and colleagues. I hope that someone finds this list useful.

    International
    Christine has a long history in both OER and online learning, and is based at Michigan State University. I’m really excited about her AgShare project, which works directly to support farmers in Africa in creating and reusing OER. She’s also a great speaker and an excellent horticulturalist!

    Everyone knows Barbara Chow at Hewlett – she’s been instrumental in driving the new shift to “deep learning” in compulsory ed in the Hewlett Foundation’s funding. But Kathy has had a lot of input into the international OER funded programme, and I’d be fascinated to hear her speak about regional and cultural factors in OER release.

    Catherine is the project manager of OER Africa. I wish everyone who grumbles that OER is all very well but no one ever uses it could hear her speak, at least for a few minutes. OER Africa supports new – often chronically under-resourced – universities in Africa make links and partnerships with OER releasers in the west, often making the difference that means higher education is possible.

    The story of OER in Brazil is an amazing one – there has been genuine governmental buy-in, which has steered the movement in many interesting directions. Carolina has been instrumental in this process, she’s also seriously in to IPR.

    UK people
    Helen is one of the smartest and most thoughtful people I know – a consultant with a deep theoretical and practical understanding of OER and digital literacies, amongst many other topics. She’s a challenging and inspiring speaker, and I’m always glad to see her to present in any fora.

    If you’re not worried about the impact of IPR on the university system, you don’t understand IPR! Naomi can help. She’s an amazingly engaging presenter and particularly enjoys awkward questions. She’s also the IPR brains behind the amazing Web2Rights tool.

    I heard Keri speak recently at the JISC Online Conference and I was completely blown away by her grasp of the wider issues of education, and the social impact of informal online learning. I hear she also impressed at Learning Without Frontiers.

    Another #lwf11 speaker, though I heard her at #bebettr. A stunning and chilling indightment of ICT teaching in the compulsory (and the HE) sector. Learners are still learning about HTML tables in 2011! This critique opens up into a wider consideration of what learning actually is and should be. Oh, and Anna is about the age of an undergraduate, and never went to university herself.

    One of the real stars of JISC, Amber makes the kind of links and connections betweens areas of work that feels like scales lifting from my eyes. She’s from a BECTA background – so knows HE and FE very well – and has been forging links between repositories and educational practice ever since. Her degree was in philosophy, which makes for some fascinating digressions.

    I know Suzanne from OER projects, her journey within these has involved bringing the UK National Health Service on board with the OER agenda, and solving some tricky issues involving patient consent with the General Medical Council. She’s also eLearning lead at the MEDEV HE Academy Subject Centre. And I’ve never seen a bad presentation from her, always interesting, always engaging.

    Dawn was involved with leading the Reusable Learning Object CETL, and was part of the team who developed the GloMaker simple learning object creator. As time progressed, RLO morphed into OER – Dawn led the influential OER10 conference and is working with the SCORE team at the Open University of OER11. She also has a side project which records and rates real ale in local pubs.

    There are some great speakers in HEFCE, and it is often very hard to get to them (they tend just to send senior staff out). Caroline is one of the few who genuinely understands the teaching funding model and hearing her speak over the next year or so (as the new model comes in) will be very interesting. In a sea of speculation and mis-information, she’ll be one of the few people who can tell you exactly what is going on and what it means. She’s perceptive, intelligent and a very approachable speaker.

    HESA collect data on most aspects of the sector, and I’m always surprised that they don’t use this to draw more interesting comparisons and conclusions. If anyone in HESA can do this, it would be Alison, who also has substantial experience working within JISC and at Bristol University.

    There are some people that are just so on top of their specialism that they are a joy to watch. Regarding repositories and metadata, Sarah is one of these people. I always love hearing her speak.

    Lorna has a vivid and wide understanding of the technical issues around OER, and she presents these with flair, consideration, pragmatism and humour. It’s rare to find a technically-slanted speaker who can really engage an audience around interoperability and data quality, but Lorna is certainly one of a handful I am privileged to know.

    What hasn’t Lou done? She’s an ironmonger, a photographer, a home educator, a web2.0 zealot, an ex-librarian and an ex-JISC programme manager, turned consultant. Her main area of elearning interest is around learning resources of all sorts., and she was closely involved with the inception of the UKOER programme along with many other fascinating areas of work.

    Humbox is awesome… like mixing a repository with facebook. Hugely popular, and a growing community around the humanities in the UK with great stuff. Kate is one of the masterminds behind this radical departure from “traditional” OER and she speaks very well.

    Lyn focuses on the use of online resources to support independent learners in a research area that crosses both OER and digital literacies domains. I’m always keen to hear her speak, her focus on the end user is refreshing and very listenable.

    Nicola Wilkinson
    I can’t even find a proper profile page for this amazing woman – but she was (is?) based at Loughborough University and was the lead developer on the award-winning WebPA peer assessment project. If you’ve ever wondered how projects get taken up and become community owned, WebPA is the key and Nicola is the key to WebPA. I always loved talking to her as well. (Nicola – if you read this let me know where you are and I’ll update the link.

    Token male suggestion so I can appear gender-balanced. 
    I never understand how it is possible to plan a conference and *not* want to invite Joss – his mixture of community action, student-led development, OER and environmental and societal engagement is a heady brew, and he presents beautifully.

    Please do suggest other great (and largely unsung) speakers in the comments below.

    Note: this isn’t all just a double reverse ferret to get me loads of keynote gigs. Seriously, I’m not a great public speaker, I do only the minimum I have to because of my job – just let me blog and do the occasional video. Ask one of these people instead for a conference keynote.

    Note 2: This list could have gone on for pages! Seriously, this is just the first 20 people I thought of whom I’ve never seen or heard do a keynote and would very much like to. Don’t read anything in to you not being on it.

    Other additions:
    Several people have recommended Becca Colley at the University of Bradford. Though I’ve known her through twitter and occasionally at conferences as a delegate, it is to my shame that I’ve never actually had chance to hear her speak at length. But based on the comments I’ve had, I’d very much like to.

  • How to be an eLearning Expert (module 2) – How to be Controversial

    This post represents my own thoughts only, not those of my employer or the programmes and projects I am responsible for. It is available under a Creative Commons CC-0 public domain license. It is presented as an OER for personal study.

    Any resemblance to celebrity e-learning experts – living, dead, or horrible flesh-eating zombie – is not intentional and is probably self-perceived due to over-active paranoia. If you *are* a controversial e-learning expert and think any of these steps are specifically aimed at you, please let me assure you that they not. Please leave a blog comment detailing which section you mistakenly think is an attack on you and why, and I will gladly change the text.
    So, you’ve followed Lou McGill’s excellent guide to becoming an elearning expert. And you’ve made it!

    Or have you?

    Sure, you’re seen at all the cool sessions at all the best conferences, but you’re there at the bar listening to Helen Beetham talking to Diana Laurillard, Sheila MacNeill, Grainne Conole and Sarah Knight about evaluating the use of runnable learning designs in educational practice and pretending that you are intellectually capable of following the conversation by occasionally nodding and saying “mmm…mmmm…” – whilst THAT GUY* is being whisked away from his keynote address to speak to puckered-lipped senior mandarins at the Ministry before returning – you imagine – to a hotel suite filled with exotic alcohol, sherbert dips and semi-naked booth babes employed by major e-learning vendors. And gosh, you want to be THAT GUY so hard that it hurts.

    What’s THAT GUY got that you haven’t?

    CONTROVERSY.

    But now, with this simple free 10 point plan, you too can experiment with controversy: the coolest bad-boy substance known to man. Feel the raw power coursing through your fingers. Feel the adrenaline rush of being up against popular opinion with only your wits and a collection of pictures from Google Images used in breach of their license to help you. Because “starting a debate” is exactly the same thing as having 600 people call you a prat on twitter.

    1. IDENTIFY A HIGHER POWER AND SUBMIT TO IT. Choose market capitalism, everyone else does. Of course you wouldn’t talk directly about this to an audience of lefty academic soap-dodgers, but you can carefully structure your argument so you leave them desiring service or technology X, which is available at a very reasonable price from certain commercial suppliers. They *could* set it up and do it themselves, but if you drop in words like “cuts”, “time pressures”, “professional quality” and “advertising” it will soon put them off. If you are canny, you already own or have shares in certain commercial suppliers that provide service or technology X.

    2. BUILD A STRAW MAN. There are some practices in academia that don’t work, some of the time. Hell, there are loads – here’s a few to get you started: exams, libraries, application, feedback, lectures, seminars, contact time, online learning… Pick one and argue that because it is bad sometimes, it must be bad all the time. You could cite your own personal experiences, or if you don’t have any experience (and don’t be ashamed), use a scene from an cheesy 80s film to perfectly reflect reality. In fact, if you are really confident, suggest academia is bad all the time and we should replace it with something where private companies can more easily sell services and thus support student choice.

    3. SEE VISIONS, DREAM DREAMS. There needs to be a simple ideal solution to the problem you have posed under point two. The fact that there actually isn’t shouldn’t stop you getting in to some serious technologo-determinism. All students should have iPhones! All teaching should be filmed in stroboscopic surround-sound 3D! Academics should pay for the development of commercial quality games for teaching! Academics should be available 24/7/365 via a bespoke chat client and brain implant! Don’t worry about implementation, who is going to pay for it all, or whether anyone actually wants it, or even whether it would actually work the way you claim it would. You’ll never have to make it happen.

    4. TILT AT A SACRED COW. Conversely, there are some things in academia that quietly work really well: try autonomy, diversity, micro-specialist subjects, local community and employer links, academic rather than business management, supporting small scale embedded innovation. But as these don’t fit in with your vision and dreams (see point 3) then they obviously don’t work. Just because they have stupid compelling independent evidence to support them does not mean that your theory is wrong. Your theory is obviously right, because you are on the stage expounding it, whilst they are sitting in rows listening. Never forget that.

    5. KICK A DOG WHEN IT IS DOWN. There are some things that people love to hate. If you feel like you are losing the crowd, have a cheap shot at a complaint common among those who don’t really understand the issue in question, like PowerPoint slides, university administrators, lazy apathetic students, moaning academics or useless quangos. There – didn’t that feel good? Now everyone is back on your side again. A good time to do this is immediately before you start selling something, be that an event, a workshop or a new shiny product. Then you sound populist enough to make people think you talk enough sense that they will trust your sales pitch.

    6. POTTY MOUTH. The best way to “keep it real” is to swear like a lady’s front bottom. Because your poo is from the streets and you sexually tell it like it is, incestuous person, you can really fornicate excrement up. You might initially think you sound like a cranially-mounted phallus, but really you are the canine’s gonads. And don’t you coitally forget it, female dog. (of course, if challenged, you always speak like this. Especially to ministers of state and at dinner parties with major elearning vendors.)

    7. TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS FIVE. You know that deeply unpopular and stupid thing that isn’t going to work that the government have announced? Well, they’re right and the consensus of opinion amongst those who actually understand the issue is wrong. It is going to work and it’s just what we need. It may be painful and result in massive job losses/institutional closures/international terrorism/students dropping out/greater expense but really it’s for the greater good of the sector. Only you, the controversial elearning expert, understand this, by refusing to cloud your razor sharp brain with the dull grind of facts and evidence. Why, you could almost be in government yourselves.

    8. GET WITH THE EDUPUNKS. No, I don’t mean proper EduPunk, which is where the likes of Jim Groom use a whole grab-bag of tools for themselves to engage with students on a personal, meaningful level and produce great art like DS106 . You don’t even need to go to the bother of selling out, because to you edupunk only means that the technology that institutions use is rubbish, and you should buy and use better stuff. Punk is simply market capitalism in funny clothes. (and note the best stuff has a logo that looks like a bit of fruit). On a similar tip, always use “disruptive” when you mean “new and probably unwise” – it makes you sound edgy and cool, and makes everyone who disagrees with you sound staid and old-fashioned.

    9. THINK BIG. It’s a waste of time doing stuff on a small scale. Lots of people will never see it, and that’s bad for the ego. The only good things are those that are massive, monolithic and visible from low earth orbit. Forget doing something linked to the identified needs of a small group, forget trials and experiments, ignore building sustainable innovation: let’s mandate, baby, mandate. If everyone *has* to do it then it will definitely be good and it will definitely work. After all, we’ve had so many pilots, why not invest in some nice technical drawing instruments made by Rotring.

    10. NEVER APOLOGISE, NEVER EXPLAIN. Contrition is a sign of weakness. If you turn out to be wrong about something (and you’ve about a 50% chance, statistically, just like any other monkey) the important thing is to keep being wrong, but louder. People will start to suspect that you’ve seen something they haven’t and have a deeper understanding. After this wears off, the career of a professional contrarian is open to you – a life of being THAT GUY on a plenary panel. Any you did want to be THAT GUY, didn’t you?

    ONE FINAL NOTE: PLAYERS BE HATERS. Following this approach, you may find that some people begin to dislike you. If they do it is important that you appear to deal with them civily and politely. Firstly characterise them as “out of touch”. You spend all day talking to delegates at conferences, you obviously know more about what is really happening than them, stuck in their sub-specialism. Secondly, they clearly haven’t understood your argument… best repeat it to them several times in slightly different words. Thirdly, they are probably a fan of one of the things you slagged of in point three, so you can dismiss them as being self-interested. Fourthly, if all else fails, appeal to your authority. You’ve been being an elearning expert for, ooh, ages now, you even started an elearning company and got some contracts. How dare they know more than you about higher education? How very dare they?

    —

    * and THAT GUY is (almost) always a guy.