Digital learner experiences and the future of higher education – notes for a Friday [7]

This report from JISC is of FE college students’ experiences of digital education. The survey was conducted between October 2019 and May 2020 so covers the emergency shift to remote teaching. About two-thirds of the 19,137 responses are from the pre-pandemic and one-third form the pandemic periods. Learners and their technology Access to digital devices … Read more

What works for students in digital education

This article on student perceptions of ‘useful’ digital technologies identifies the gap between the potential of digital technologies for teaching and learning in higher education and the realities seen to date. The study presents the findings of a survey of students at two research-intensive universities in Australia. I think there are some important insights here … Read more

Notes for a Friday [4]

This week has been a lot of ‘heads down’ course designing and building type work. I did find the following of interest: Fostering online learning “research into online learning almost univocally agrees that…well-designed courses with interactive content..continuous educator involvement..timely, and formative feedback are the most promising approaches to fostering learning in online environments” https://t.co/JfHeTd1BsT— Neil … Read more

Notes for a Friday [2]

Three bits of news and content that caught my eye this week: Accreditation and lifelong learning A new post from www.wonkhe.com at on the relations between accreditation, digital education and lifelong learning. The post is mainly concerned with access to education and social mobility in the context of Covid and so makes the case for … Read more

The Pivot to online learning? Supporting students as communities of learners

Avatars in second life sitting around a campfire

This useful Twitter thread from Kate Symons on advice students to engage in online learning. This is an important aspect of successful online learning and too often neglected. This neglect may be as a result of the lazy assumptions regarding the digital native. While the idea of a generational break in digital capabilities has clearly … Read more

Unbundling Higher Education

Returning to the topic of unbundling universities, this sketchnote is based on some of my notes from the Unbundling Higher Education Coursera course that I discussed here. The analytic approaches undertaken by the research project that underpins this MOOC gives a really useful starting point for studying the unbundling of universities. The study focused on … Read more

The gatherings of a ‘smart’ university

Ben Williamson has written a great post here on the concept and realities of a smart, quantified and data driven university. The post outlines the increasingly overt positioning of universities as conduits for data collection, analysis and exploitation. The datafication of universities as the ‘smart university’ or ‘intelligent campus’ provides a clear pathway for the … Read more

Goals for technology in education

This looks like a really interesting conference in Aarhus University from where this tweet on goals for technology in education caught my eye.   Three ambitious goals for how to further expand the productive use of technology in education. #educationdisrupted pic.twitter.com/a1vIEEN3Br — Nicki Brøchner (@Brochner) November 21, 2018 While there’s much to agree with here, there … Read more

Social Media Analytics – research question

My topic is mapping a controversy in higher education in the UK. The controversy centres on the Open University (but does have wider implications) and the particular challenges around financial sustainability it faces and related to the appointment of Peter Horrocks as Vice Chancellor back in 2015. This all came to a head in early … Read more