The ALT Conference Preview - Radio EDUtalk

Radio #EDUtalk 10-07-19 Data, Dialogue, Doing #altc

I was thrilled to be asked by Maren Deepwell to take part in a ALT Annual Conference 2019 Preview  on Radio #EDUtalk, alongside Maren and Martin Hawksey. John Johnston one of the hosts of EDU talk led the interview and the conversation flowed. I couldn't believe how fast the time went!

We talked about the themes of the conference and how these were developed by the conference chairs. I love how they engaged in 'Visual Thinkery' with the very talented Bryan Mathers which led to the beautiful Celtic inspired conference logo below.

The conference themes are:

• Student data and learning analytics
• Creativity across the curriculum
• Critical frames of reference
• Learning Technology for wider impact

We talked about the use of social media and Martin described its use as "turbo charging the power of the event". At last year's conference over 18k tweets were shared during the three days. The use of live streaming and recordings on YouTube of the keynotes and other talks certainly opens the conference up to those that are unable to make it and also presents the opportunity to rewatch. 

The conference programme is very exciting with a great selection of sessions to choose from. I'm really looking forward to learning more about how holograms and chatbots are being used. 

You can listen to the whole interview on Radio #EDUtalk

More about the conference

ALT’s Annual Conference 2019 is seeking to confront and challenge established assumptions, approaches and accepted truths in relation to key dimensions of digital education, and to advancing our practice and thinking through critical dialogue and reflection, closer scrutiny of evidence and theory, and a stronger commitment to values including creativity, community, social good, openness and porosity, and more democratic access to knowledge and learning.

You can read more about the conference themes here.

The conference will be hosted at the University of Edinburgh and co-chaired by:

• Melissa Highton, Assistant Principal and Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services, University of Edinburgh
• Louise Jones, independent
• Keith Smyth, Professor of Pedagogy at the University of the Highlands and Islands. 

The conference venue
If I was a little nervous before, finding out where I will be presenting has sent my heart racing! I am experiencing feelings of both fear and excitement in equal measure. A sneak peak at where the keynotes at this conference will take place!

https://www.edinburghfirst.co.uk/venues/mcewan-hall/

Becoming a Certified Management and Business Educator #CMBE

I am delighted to now be a CMBE! 

The Chartered Institute of Business Schools launched a new scheme called the Certified Management and Business Educator (CMBE). This provides business school educators (and those subjects that include business) with a framework for continuous professional development and a designation recognising their commitment to excellence in teaching. It focuses on ongoing development and complements the HEA Fellowships and the PGCert in HE, giving educators a platform to continuously develop their practice as well as providing a recognised designation when this has been achieved. It also demonstrates a commitment to the quality of learning and teaching. Educators need to commit to 40 hours of CPD a year. 

Like other schemes such as SEDA and HEA there is an option for those who don’t currently meet the criteria. They are able to join the scheme through the Associate Management and Business Educator (AMBE) route. Individuals on the AMBE route can then qualify as CMBE after completing three years’ CPD.

The framework supports educators to develop their practice according to their development needs across enhancing teaching and learning practice; scholarship of teaching and learning; and academic leadership. What I like about this scheme is the need to record your CPD, and that this can be done in a way that suits you. Secondly the very process of doing this will be useful to reflect on at annual appraisals/PDRs. Thirdly and for me most important is that by becoming a Certified Management and Business Educator, I will demonstrate to my students that I value reflecting on my own practice and the need for continuous professional development and lifelong learning. 

Furthermore I hope to connect with other educators in the community who are also involved in the scheme and listed in the CMBE Directory. I have added my certificate to my LinkedIn profile and shared via Twitter tagging @CharteredABS and #CMBE. Having been a member of the SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) and ALT (Association for Learning Technology) for many years, I very much value the learning that can take place within these communities where the open sharing of our practice is so beneficial.   

To find out more about this scheme go to: https://charteredabs.org/cmbe/

Edge Hill University SOLSTICE Conference #SOLSTICE19

One of the highlights of my year as a Visiting Fellow at Edge Hill University is being invited to speak the annual two day SOLSTICE Conference. I feel so priviliged to be speaking alongside the other Visiting Professors and Fellows, as well as other international guests speakers sharing their practice. I can't thank the EHU CLT team enough for the warm welcome we received on arrival.  

2019 Guest Speakers:

• Sue Beckingham – Sheffield Hallam University and Visiting Fellow
• Professor Sally Brown – Visiting Professor
• Dr. Mark Childs – The Open University and Visiting Fellow
• Professor Keith Smyth – University of the Highlands and Islands and Visiting Professor
• Simon Thomson – University of Liverpool and Visiting Fellow
• Professor Peter Hartley – Visiting Professor
• Professor Phil Race – Visiting Professor
• Professor Pauline Kneale – University of Plymouth and Visiting Professor

The Programme

There was a rich and varied programme over the two days which included a great session led by Prof Sally Brown who asked us "Who are you and who do you want to be?" Sally reminded us that professional identity is not a fixed entity: we are likely to have a number over the course of our careers and often hold several simultaneously, so how can we manage these and maintain balance in our lives? It was a both a fun session (which involved designing our identities on a t-shirt) and an opportuity to explore these questions. Keith Smythe presented his work on the Digitally Distributed Curriculum which is based on the values of praxis, participation and public pedagogy, and which is constructed around the four dimensions of co-location, porosity, co-production and open scholarship. 

The wonderfully creative Sarah Wright led an active session on the creative deployment of technologies to enhance the student experience; Dawne Irving-Bell a hands on beginners guide to sketchnoting; Sarah Mersic a session on AR learning; and Suzanne Faulkner on the use of Snapchat for student tutorials. They all got me thinking about new ways to enhance my teaching with alternative approaches. That's why these events bring so much value to educators. It's not just hearing about new or different ways to do things, it is also the time to ask questions, reflect and consider how you might adopt something different. Making conections with people outside of your subject group or immediate teaching team allows you to learn from others, share your own innovations and potential develop new collaborations.  

This year I presented with my colleague Prof Peter Hartley a workshop on 'Communication revisited – new perspectives and their implications for our practice in learning and teaching.' More to come on this topic as we have been accumulating evidence and research findings to inform our revision of a text on interpersonal communication which was published before the avalanche of new technology and social media (Hartley, 1999). 


This is Your Life

A favourite part of the event was surprising Prof Phil Race with a 'This is Your Life' to celebrate his 75th birthday. The tweets during and after the event are captured in this Wakelet.  

Reading habits: how do you bookmark a page?

Scott Ibberson tweeted a table of reading habits a few days ago and it got quite a few of us thinking about our own habits and how we bookmark a page in a book that we are reading. My initial response was also neutral good: uses scrap of paper/shopping list/receipts as bookmark.

I like this on reading habits - I’m neutral good #Reading #LoveBooks #DnDJoke pic.twitter.com/T9aXcLcCwr

— Scott Hibberson (@ScottHibberson) May 16, 2019

I reshared the tweet and it was fascinating seeing how others responded. It also got me thinking about it more deeply and reflecting that I really engaged in a variety of the options depending what I was reading, why I was reading, where I was reading and when I was reading.

When reading academic books, especially when undertaking research, I like to use sticky translucent flags to mark interesting sections. They can be easily re-used and moved around and they don't spoil the book pages.

I tend to buy notebooks with a ribbon bookmark for work. I do like the moleskin notebooks that also have a pocket in the back page to hold extra bits and bobs like a mini ruler. I also use these kind of tabs to mark pages I might have to go back to for a meeting at work. 

When away for a beach holiday I can easily get through 8-9 novels so it's a Kindle is a good space saver. That said I do like to buy 2-3 from charity shops to take with me. Once read I then swop with other books where the hotel has a book corner for guests to do this. My chosen bookmark good be place face down if I decide to go for a dip in the sea or whatever scrap of paper I can find if the book needs to back in my bag. 

So revisiting the table I find I really have a a variety of my reading habits dependent on whether I am reading for leisure, study or work. Here are some of my reflections. 


Lawful good
uses proper leather bookmark embossed with initials
I've never had a personalised bookmark but would love one with gold initials. I do have a couple of 'proper' bookmarks that have been given to me as presents. For some reason (unbeknown to myself!) these have been saved for something special and sit on a bookshelf in my study. I also have some handmade bookmarks given to me as gifts and these are saved too as they are so delicate.  

Neutral good
uses scrap of paper/shopping list/receipts as bookmark
Typically this is what I tend to do as I reach for whatever is to hand. It could be anything from a local takeaway menu to a flyer that came through the letterbox.

Chaotic good
uses finger as bookmark; never actually books book down
Those moments you are gripped with a section of your book and nature calls - the book of course has to go with you and this is the quickest option to bookmark the page you have got to!

Lawful neutral
uses random implement to mark place e.g. pen, phone, fork
When the need arises - a pair of reading glasses, straw, icecream stick, hairpin...

True neutral
reads on ebook, bookmarks digitally
I read a lot of novels on my Kindle. It's light and great to take on holday or long journeys on the train. 

Chaotic neutral
leaves book open, face down, at last page read
Sunday morning reading in bed when I go and make a cuppa, I will leave my book open in this way. 

Lawful evil
dog-ears corners (but smoothes them out again when finished)
Maybe as a teenager...

Neutral evil
dog-ears corners, cracks spine, highlights fav passages
Not intentionally but have lost a few pages reading on holiday as the glue has softened!

Chaotic evil
Rips out each page once its been read 
NEVER!

My 10th Twitter Anniversary

Do you remember when you joined Twitter? I do! #MyTwitterAnniversary pic.twitter.com/9IV5gILz5I

— Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) April 24, 2019

Never in my wildest imagination did I consider what a huge impact Twitter and social media would have on my professional development! Ten years on and I have developed an international personal learning network and 11.6k followers. 

This was my first tweet in 2009 

Learning to twitter in my lunch break

— Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) April 24, 2009

To find your first tweet, you can use Twitter's Advanced Search. Go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced and enter your username into the 'From these accounts' field under 'People'. Then to select the date. I added the date I joined Twitter in the 'From this date' section and the day after in the 'To this date'.  

What will the university look like in 2030?

In April I was invited by James Clay, head of HE and student experience at Jisc to contribute to Networkshop47 where a panel of students, staff and education technology experts offered their visions for the future. The audience was mainly networking and security people.

Panellists included:

• Sue Beckingham, Principal Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University
• Caitlin Bloom, Sector Analyst, Jisc
• Jake Forecast, Jisc Student Partner
• Mark O'Leary, Head of Network Access, Jisc
• Amber Thomas, Head of Academic Technology, University of Warwick
• Andy Powell, Cloud Chief Technology Officer, Jisc
• Simon Wilson, Chief Technology Officer, Aruba

Our brief was to discuss which emerging technologies offer the most promise in helping with the challenges universities and colleges face. The panel session focus was to look at the wider student experience in 2030 and what this means for those who support the student experience through the use of technology.


How an we predict the future? James suggests we start by looking at the past. In 2008 the iPhone had just been out less than a year with 3G connectivity! In the panel disucssion we reflected on what we think will happen in the next 11 years, what the implications will be for universities, what this will mean for the student experience, and also the technical infrastructures that are going to enable this student experience. 


My vision for 2030

My vision of the future student experience is to have a virtual learning hub that is interconnected. All students would be provided with an intelligent device. This would be preloaded with activities: 

• Active learning apps - things we might relate to in today's learning and teaching for example Socrative, Padlet and what ever they are in the future that allow learning inside and outside of the classroom, collaborative andindependent learning. 
• Personal profile - the students would have a profile preloaded and would be able to personalise that, they can put in their interests. It would be searchable and allow students to connect with shared interests. 
• Achievememts - the device would have a profile of their achievements - their marks, feedback and attendance
• Student support -  it would enable chat (text or voice) and connect them to their academic adviser, their tutor, student support, careers adviser, wellbeing
• Learning workspace - this might include a future version of the VLE and spaces like Google Drive for personal and collaborative work.  
• Extracurricular - it would link to acvitivies outside of the taught curriculum so that students know what is available. 
• Conversation - access to peer chat and video chat
• Maps and wayfinding - where to find places (libaray. places to eat, classrooms etc) and linked to the student's timetable
• Self help - utilising Siri or Alexa technology for FAQs, bite sized learning, revision
• Virtual video meetings - connecting to others locally and globally, other students, and businesses and professionals in their field. This would come with subtitiles, translation and auto transcription
• Digital feedback - students can record and save feedback (formative and sumative) from tutors, peers or others using multimedia in a format they choose. This can be tagged with keywords for later recall. 

There would be flexible learning spaces, so not defined as a lab vs a classroom (rows of tables and chairs). Students would take their device into the classroom where there would be charging mats on the tables, the ability to connect their device to a larger screen so if they wanted to work in 2s or 3s, or larger groups they could. Also interactive walls to capture collaborative work that syncs to the students device.

The device is not futurisic. My examples could use the technology that is already here and being used by us in our daily lives. It would need to bring these together in one space. A space that is secure and safe. 


Jisc News summarises my contribution as:  

"Sue Beckingham, principal lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, felt that every student might have an “intelligent device”, which becomes their personal, interconnected virtual learning hub. This will hold a profile of their academic and personal life, syncing all their work to their tutors, connecting to university services, and linking to their extra-curricular life and their peers. Students will also submit work and get feedback on this device, she said." 

You can watch the panel session in the recording below.

#OpenBlog19 What's wrong with education?

The #OpenBlog19 challenge created by David Hopkins is sparking a series of posts where educators go on to challenge others to write a blog in answer to a given question. Steve Wheeler challenged me to write about 'What's wrong with education'.

My initial thought was that I would have much preferred talking about what is good with education! There are so many good examples I'd love to share from the many educators I connect with online through Twitter, that have openly shared with others how they engage their students; how they co-learn together; and how they experiment with innovative and creative approaches using Lego, social media, digital technology, post-its, role play and so much more. 

So back to the question. I'm not the kind of person that can just list what is wrong, as I have the strong desire to consider what we can do about it. I know I may not have all the answers and therefore I think it is so important that we discuss any such issues with our peers and in this context also with our students. So with that said I will still offer a few of my own observations. 



Identifying a purpose for learning

I still remember sitting in maths class challenging the teacher about the maths we were attempting to learn, asking where this would be used. I was always motivated when I could see how it could be applied AND put into useful practice and de-motivated when my questions were brushed aside and told you just need to learn it... 

I think we need to consider more ways in which we create situations where students can apply their learning, re-visit this through reflection and feedback and then have opportunities to re-apply an enhanced version of their learning. There are many examples where students work on authentic projects with a purposeful outcome. When these involve real-life situations to investigate, analyse or solve, this is where I see the sparks and enthusiasm. 

I suggest that we need to:

• reconsider how we can encourage curiosity, intrigue, excitement, the desire to question, and the confidence to critically challenge.
• encourage creativity and reflection on not just what has been learned but identify what could be done to improve
• acknowledge learning is challenging for all of us
• support multiple attempts and endorse FAIL as 'first attempt in learning'
• find more opportunities for students to apply their learning that is meaningful to them and society

Developing our practice through professional development

We know that there are educators who continue to teach as they experienced 'being in the classroom' and this is not always a good thing. That's not to say that what may be called traditional approaches don't equate to a positive learning experience. For example there are many great examples of the lecture being an incredibly engaging experience, but we also know having being on the receiving end of being talked at, that we can quickly disengage. Why would it be different for our students? 

Going to educational conferences, seminars or workshops within or beyond your university, college or school has for many provided great inspiration to enhance practice. When we can hear from peers about innovative practice that is evidenced as being valued by learners, it provides inspiration to re-look at our own practice. It's important to to have those discussions about new interventions that haven't worked too. 

However CPD budgets are being cut and sadly in some cases becoming non existent. It is important that we look for other ways to learn from peers. As already mentioned this is happening across the globe where educators have appropriated social media and digital technology to connect, communicate and collaborate. For me everyday is a learning day and I am constantly learning from peers. As educators we need to fire our enthusiasm for professional development and take responsibility for this. Equally I would argue that this needs to be recognised as well as encouraged by senior leadership in our institutions.  

I am sure you will have come across the quotes below in some form or another. These apply to everyone one of us and not just the students we teach. 

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” wrongly attributed to W. B. Yeats and "The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame" to Alfred North Whitehead (who also is quoted to say "Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.") 

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled"

Plutarch (46 AD - 120 AD) 

As educators we need to lead by example and embrace lifelong learning. We need to reflect on how we teach and get feedback on how we teach; observe how others teach and learn about new ways to enhance our own teaching. 

We need to trust and value those of our peers who have roles for example as educational developers, learning technologists, learning developers, librarians. Professional development needs to be embedded in our practice and time allocated to do this, but not as the odd bolt on. CPD is what is says on the tin - continuous professional development.   
   

A misconception of the purpose of education 

This is an extract from a paper titled the 'Purpose of Learning' by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1947. I think it may suffice to say that we all need to reflect on and learn from history.  

Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

Martin Luther King Jr. 1947

Finding our purpose

A thought to leave you with

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."
- Aristotle pic.twitter.com/NKB9ZjzssI

— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) March 16, 2019

References

Martin Luther King Jr. (1947) The Purpose of Education. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education

Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/


Image credit
Free for commercial use. No attribution required: https://pixabay.com/vectors/pixel-cells-pixel-feedback-learn-3699331/