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
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
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
I’m following the Design Thinking and Creativity for Innovation course on EdX. The initial video with Tim Kastelle [http://timkastelle.org/] draws together creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation in improving ideas to create value whether for individuals or organisations. He quotes a definition of creativity as creating something that is both novel and ‘useful’ which seems to me to … Read more
I’ve been engaged in some discussions around blockcerts as a implementation of blockchain (or distributed ledger) technologies in the field of education. Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) – as a term that’s removed from discussions of currencies and financial instruments associated with blockchain as bitcoin – are seen as a trust based technology that will drive various innovations. … Read more
I attended the Social Informatics Cluster meting to hear Jee Hyun Suh present on: Co evolution of an emerging mobile technology and mobile services: distributed governance of technological innovation through the case of WiBro in S. Korea. These are rough notes taken during the presentation. She presented the story of WiBro and the implications for the governance of … Read more
There’s an interesting series of blogs from Nesta and 100%Open on a joint project on supporting open innovation in charities which can be found here. The main common points emerging for charities to further develop, although these could be applicable for any organisation, are: Breaking down internal siloes Focusing innovation investment on core business concerns such as increasing … Read more
Here’s my attempt at live blogging the IT Futures conference at the University of Edinburgh IT Futures conference on the theme of Disruption. The hashtag for the conference is #itfutures The conference is starting with an address from the Principal, Sir Tim O’Shea on disruptions, predictions and surprises and the need for systematic thinking especially on what … Read more
An interesting report on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) from Open University based academics. The report discusses: 1. what is TEL but in terms of technologies “add value to” (enhancing) teaching and learning rather than being indivisible from or enmeshed in teaching and learning. Can you imagine teaching and learning without any technologies (digital of otherwise)? … Read more
I’m listening now to Tara McPherson on humanities research in a networked world as the opening session of the Digital Scholarship day of ideas. (I’ve started late due to a change in the start-time). Discussing how large data sets can be presented in a variety of interfaces: for schools; researchers; publishers and only now beginning to realise the variety … Read more