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

Online teaching at a time of crisis

This post is just some brief reflections on this article on the Oslo University Faculty of Law’s initial experience in moving their teaching online at very short notice. Two things to note: firstly, that they managed a pivot to online teaching and to produce a research report within a couple of weeks! So the report … Read more

Opportunities for reassembling higher education

During this period of remote working, I’m reminded of Martin Oliver’s (2015) argument for the importance and value for higher education of the co-location of learners, researchers, teachers, spaces, libraries and so on. These bases of values are now being eroded, problematised and reframed in the pivot to remote teaching. Oliver discusses such value creation … Read more

What is unbundling in higher education and why is it happening?

I’m starting the unbundling the university course on Future Learn. This course is an example of a MOOC as research dissemination activity as it based on the findings of the: The Unbundled University: Researching Emerging Models in an Unequal Landscape. The research project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (UK) and National … Read more

Access and education

This is a great talk from Tressie McMillan Cottom at the 26th International Council for Open & Distance Education (2015) on the relationship between increasing access to education and the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalites. Her talk looks beyone simple physical access to examine  questions of equity, equality and social justice. While she acknowledges the physical barriers to … Read more

Digital Education Seminar: Professor Joel Smith, ‘The Eye of the Needle: New Understandings of the Complex Barriers to Instructional Innovation with Technology’

Professor Joel Smith is Distinguished Career Teaching Professor in philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and is currently the co-principal investigator of a research project on barriers and affordances to implementation of instructional innovations titled is currently the co-principal investigator of a research project on barriers and affordances to implementation of instructional innovations titled “Understanding and Overcoming Institutional Roadblocks … Read more