Achieving Our Potential #1

This is the first in a series of blog posts on a few topics which are still unravelling in my mind.

During the last couple of weeks I've had various interactions including conversations with academic colleagues, discussions within our Teaching Circle, listening to debate from the JISC Digital Festival (#digifest15) and talking to colleagues about future developments. All of which have me thinking about various aspects of how technology enhanced learning is embedded within our faculty (and or institution) and more importantly what approach do we take in supporting our staff and students.

Last week I attended our faculty Teaching Circle. The theme of which was What is Quality in Learning and Teaching? This led to some interesting discussion around the various fundamentals of quality teaching, areas for focus and problems. My group consisted of three academics, two of which teach on distance learning programmes so naturally conversations led to support for embedding technology into teaching, developing blended learning and some of the barriers in providing quality teaching. It will be of no surprise those barriers include academic digital skills and confidence in using technology to deliver teaching. Other areas that emerged were:

• What are our student's expectations/ perceptions of quality teaching?
• How do we measure quality?
• Variation in teaching experience can impact quality, as can personal traits and motivations
• Organisational factors influence quality i.e. strategy, leadership and support

Personally I took away two questions from the morning,

1. How do we support our academic staff in harnessing the potential of tools and technologies to draw out the student attributes that we would associate with quality learning and teaching? (critical thinking, curiosity, analytical, creativity etc)

2. How do we develop quality blended learning that provides extended learning opportunities for those students that want to engage above the 'baseline'. 

My mind's screaming open web, open education resources, opportunities for learning networks and social learning. But in reality, it's not quite so straightforward.

During this weeks DigiFest, David White and Donna Lanclos took part in a healthy debate on 'are learning technologies fit for purpose?' A really interesting debate and both had valid arguments. Donna's main argument was that learning technologies aren't fit for purpose and tools such as VLEs are too locked down and we are forcing staff to use systems that are content driven and not education driven. And we should be directing students to open resources for their learning.

David's argument was that VLEs provide a structure for students and to throw them out into the open web we wouldn't be providing them with a pedagogical structure.  I'm not going to summarise this to much detail because you can watch the debate online, but if I'm going to chip my two pennies worth in I think we as educators need to be in a position where we prepare and educate our learners in using the open web. However if our educators aren't comfortable in this area then we are going to face a bit of a brick wall. In addition to this I can see Donna's point of view, sometimes we're faced with rather restrictive system that we buy into institutionally and then we find ourselves fudging our way around them and tweaking them to fit with other systems and and teaching. I can see the need from an organisational point of view but VLEs are often used as content repositories which is why we're seeing this move away to other open tools, new platforms and new ways of learning which offer more flexibility and creativity. At the University of Sheffield we use Google and we're seeing an increase in the use of Google apps for education. If i'm honest I don't think institutionally people are ready to do away with the VLE just yet and one of the reasons for that is that there is a varying degree of skills  and knowledge in using other technologies for teaching, using the web for researching, using open apps and social media.  So some structure seems to be needed it's just a case of how flexible you can be within that structure.

To take a step back, we also need to understand our learners. As David White highlighted, just because students are comfortable in using the web socially doesn't mean they have the digital skills or knowledge to use it appropriately for learning. I think without understanding this we're really not in a position to make assumptions about our learners or to design learning. This is an area we'll be exploring more this year within my faculty. So, thinking about questions 1 & 2 this brings me to a third question:

3. Are we doing enough? 

I'll leave you on that note because this area is huge. But I am going to come back to these questions and pick at them a little further in my next post.

The Art of Communication - CMALT

OK, I'm not actually going to write a guide on the art of communication, but I did want to talk about the importance of 'effective' communication within our roles. Last week I was asked to join the Faculty of Social Sciences at one of their regular CMALT sessions to discuss my 'journey' as a learning technologists and the factors that led me complete my CMALT. The Faculty of Social Sciences have around 12 members of staff that are currently in the midst of compiling their CMALT portfolio. Organised by their faculty learning technologist, Ros Walker they have been coming together regularly looking at each aspect of the CMALT portfolio with an invited speaker for each session. An approach that I think has worked very well!

The last session looked at 'communication'. I shared my own experiences interfacing between many different colleagues as this hybrid technological and pedagogical communicator. This got me thinking about the various teams I've been alined to as a learning technologist. In my time as an LT I've sat within:

• a multimedia team within technical services (Business School at Sheffield Hallam)
• a Unit for Enhancement in Learning and Teaching as part of curriculum development team (UeLT at University of Kent)
• a Centre for Learning and Teaching (CeLT at Manchester Metropolitan University)
• a strand of Learning and Research Technologies (LRT) called Learning Innovation (Manchester Metropolitan University)
• and now a Faculty role withing The University of Sheffield's Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health

During my time I've worked on a varying scale of projects including small scale innovations through to large institutional change through out all of which I've been required to adapt my communication skills to the appropriate audience. It really is incredible when you think about the different kinds of roles that a learning technologist has to communicate with, last week alone I met with/or had contact with fellow learning technologists, central IT, faculty IT, administrators, academics, students, members of senior exec and learning and teaching services. Some of those interactions involved an informal coffee, attending and feeding back at an event, a presentation and using social media!

Working in such a dynamic field requires the skill to adapt communications methods and techniques to the right setting and colleague. As communicators of sometimes seemingly complex technological ideas to teaching problems it's really important that we can do so in a way that is clear to our audience. It's also really important that we listen, sounds obvious right? I'll draw upon an example from a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to attend a programme committee to talk about e-learning. Now, I can chew the e-learning fat till the cows come home but what we see time and time again are colleagues jumping on top of learning technology as an answer to their prayers. After some questioning and listening it became obvious there was no issue for me to address as such so a different approach on my part was needed in this case but it's sometimes this kind of dialogue and the approach that is important with colleagues when being asked to address certain problems.

We are exposed to many different situations which require a variety of communicative skills, this can range from written reports, presentations, staff development sessions, presenting at conferences, reporting to strategic groups, communicating institutionally, dealing with students and primarily being the connection between technology and pedagogy.

Quite often we can find ourselves in the firing line as the 'bringers of change' when it comes to implementation of new new learning technologies and approaches. This can always be tricky and the wrong approach here can lead to upset and frustrated staff and really set things back. In this case I always flip things the other way and start with the pedagogy, the students and the approach and leave the technology to one side. But it's very hard sometimes to control the way in which colleagues perceive our roles which of course will impact on the way in which they choose to communicate back.... or not communicate back! This means we have to be adaptable, confident and above all think on our feet.

What I've also found in my time is that in many situations we seem to be the missing connection between many streams of broken communication between various pockets of the institution. I think this comes down to the wide spanning nature of our roles and quite often I find myself informing colleagues such as academics, IT and professional services of the latest goings on. I guess this comes down to the nature of our role being plugged into so many areas of the systems, the student cycle and teaching and learning.

Although Ros had asked me to share my own journey at this particular session, I have been attending some of them already as an exisiting CMALT holder, a great opportunity to hear from other LT professionals and share experiences. Looking forward to the next!