Well, not really a new face! Many of you will remember my previous FE and ITT-focussed work at RSC Wales, and you may have wondered why I’ve been so quiet of late, and why I have not contributed to RSC Wales blogs. The reason is that for the past nine months or so I’ve been working at the University of Glamorgan in an academic role undertaking the main duties of their JISC Building Capacity Project (and wrote several blogs whilst there!). I enjoyed my research activities at CELT at the University of Glamorgan, and learnt some valuable lessons about the ways Universities operate. However, I am now happy to be back at JISC RSC Wales where I currently have the role of ‘Associate HE Co-ordinator’, helping to look after the HE aspects of RSC Wales’ provision whilst Lis is involved with JISC Advance project work.

I’m looking forward to supporting the use of technology in Welsh Higher Education, and learning more about the excellent practice that goes on in many different subject areas across Wales. There are also many JISC projects underway to tell you about, and other initiatives such as HEFCW’s refreshed ELTT strategy and Gwella programme that continue to provide guidance for the effective use of educational technology in HE.

You can contact me at c.p.davies@swansea.ac.uk ; tel: 01792 602511

Key Note by william.neuheisel

Ahead of our forthcoming “Developing Digital Literacies” workshop I recently went along to a version of the event held in Bristol. I hope this summary will give a taster of what to expect if you book onto the workshop on 4 Nov, to be held by videoconference in Wales (book here by 24 October). Although I’m posting this on the HE blog, the event is open to all, and I feel is relevant not just to university practitioners, but to a  leaders and staff responsible for change in any role or sector.

I certainly came away with a feeling that I’d got a much better grip on what developing digital literacies might actually involve for staff and organisations. Perhaps just as importantly, I was able to see that there are a host of people from many backgrounds (academics, librarians, learning technologists, managers and more) who are enthusiastic about learning literacies in the digital age, and what’s more are eager to share knowledge and move things along.

The workshop outline and all materials from the workshops are easy to pick up from the JISC Design Studio. They provide a wealth of resources such as background research, case studies and tools that can be used both at a personal level and at an organisational level.

One definition of digital literacy is “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society”. I must say that I quite like the inclusiveness and brevity of this. A confusing array of terms crops up around ‘learning literacies in a digital age’ (“information literacy”, “media literacy”, “ICT skills” to name but a few), and I tend to agree with a comment made on the JISC-DIGLIT-PUBLIC list:

“…’digital literacy’ is most useful as a kind of shorthand for exchanging ideas in this area, among people from different professional and academic backgrounds. It may be that the term has almost no currency in our ‘home’ professional roles or academic tribes – and it certainly has little with students – but it saves us from all talking a different language when we meet to discuss the challenges.”

In the workshop we started with an ice-breaking activity around the attributes of a digitally literate person. We focussed on “graduates” but I felt the exercise could be readily applied to any learner, employee or citizen. There was a chance to review some of the lessons about “supporting learners in a digital age” that came out of the JISC SLiDA programme (University of Glamorgan was one of the case studies).

After considering learner needs we were tasked with identifying interventions that could be made at different levels to support different aspects of digital literacy. For the activities we used free JISC templates which can be adapted for use in your organisation. These materials are all easily available to download under a Creative Commons licence, but using them in a practical workshop like this means that they become tools to aid the thought process, rather than just blank forms!

After a sociable lunch we had what I think was one of the highlights of the day, a case study by Charl Fregona of London Metropolitan University, who talked about their experience of implementing institutional change around digital literacies and in particular engaging and supporting staff. Charl’s good humour and honesty were inspiring. Her presentation will, I hope, be added to the Design Studio shortly and in the meantime you can look up the London Met SLiDA case study. I particularly liked the London Met idea of having ‘show and tell’ sessions in the library that included not only academics, librarians and other staff but also students. Charl was also passionate in making the case for staff having time to reflect. As others also said, technology should be freeing us up to do the most meaningful human work in education. This reminded me of a comment made at a conference last year, when someone suggested that in future we would focus not so much on ‘technology-enhanced learning’ but ‘human-enhanced learning’. I would suggest digital literacy might be the key that can enable this to happen. (The image by william.neuheisel above, by the way, is of a work by American artist Michael Christian, of which more here).

We finished the day by identifying our own recommendations for things that staff in different roles should be doing develop digital literacies. All the material generated across the workshop series is being collated here (via various collaborative authoring and social media tools) and I look forward to us being able to add our own contributions at the 4 November workshop.

Lastly, to give a flavour of the discussions at Bristol, I captured a selection of tweets from the day in the form of Storify. It was one of those events where Twitter truly added to the learning, with both attendees and facilitators commenting and questioning in a reflective way. The hashtag for the whole workshop series and related discussion is #jiscdiglit and it’s a great way to keep up with the debate (and of course contribute).

One of the main things that struck me about the day was that although the focal point was ‘digital literacies’, it tied into many of today’s burning themes, like employability, learner experience, inclusion and staff development. In fact it’s hard to think of any area in education, be it front-line teaching, services or research, that does not  have something to gain from better approaches to digital literacy, and does not need to be involved in its development.

I look forward to meeting lots of colleagues from Wales and beyond on 4 Nov to explore digital literacies even further, and if you haven’t already booked, do so here before places disappear (deadline 24 Oct)!

 Interesting also to observe that the term 'digital literacy' is most useful as a kind of shorthand for exchanging ideas in this area, among people from different professional and academic backgrounds. It may be that the term has almost no currency in our 'home' professional roles or academic tribes - and it certainly has little with students - but it saves us from all talking a different language when we meet to discuss the challenge'digital literacy' is most useful as a kind of shorthand for exchanging ideas in this area, among people from different professional and academic backgrounds. It may be that the term has almost no currency in our 'home' professional roles or academic tribes - and it certainly has little with students - but it saves us from all talking a different language when we meet to discuss the challenges.s.

Over the summer months a couple of publications have appeared which will be important reading not only for those engaged in technology innovation or the enhancement of learning and teaching in Higher Education, but also for those who need to engage with the HE sector. We’ve also seen the launch of a number of JISC-funded programmes, several of which hold opportunities for direct participation by Wales.

Earlier this year, a review was undertaken into the implementation of Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology: a Strategy for Higher Education in Wales. When HEFCW published the strategy (as circular W08/12HE) back in April 2008, it was realised that the strategy would need to be reviewed at intervals. A consultancy was commissioned to undertake the first review between March and June 2011, and the results are now published on the HEFCW website as HEFCW Enhancing Learning Through Technology (ELTT) Strategy Implementation Review.  The review includes a number of recommendations to which HEFCW are currently responding. In addition, it provides a very useful overview of the current state of play in the Welsh Higher Education sector as regards innovation through technology, together with valuable survey data and citations of relevant research. Many staff in Wales gave their time and expertise to participate in the review and it is pleasing to see the reviewers state, “We encountered a vibrant and enthusiastic community engaged in technology-enhanced learning who, despite all of the challenges they face, were remarkably optimistic about the future.” We look forward to playing our part in assisting the HE sector in Wales as it continues to build on this strong foundation.

Back in June we saw the publication of the final report and briefings resulting from the Gwella project (see the Gwella blog for details) and over the summer it was confirmed that some continuation work would take place during 2011-2012. Again we look forward to working with the Gwella consultancy team and the institutions in the coming year.

Also published on the HEFCW website over the summer was the Building Capacity Wales programme summary report. Building Capacity funding from JISC enabled institutions to identify a key strategic priority and use JISC or other publicly-funded resources to help them address that priority. More detailed information about many of the projects are available on the JISC Building Capacity Programme page, along with many other projects from England. The project reports and case studies on the site provide good examples of how existing research and project outputs can be used to inform better institutional decision-making. Priorities addressed included e.g. assessment and feedback, staff engagement and employability.

Over the summer many HE institutions have been busy considering bids for JISC funding and it is great to hear when bids from Wales have been successful. New projects, for example PADDLE and Digidol in the Developing Digital Literacies programme, have potential in due course to build capacity not only for the lead institutions and partners, but also across the wider education sector. We’ve also heard that there has been success for Welsh HE in the recent round of bids for the Assessment and Feedback Programme – congratulations to those who are starting those projects.

One of the latest rounds of bids has been the Transformations Programme (it closed on 15 September). Welsh Higher Education institutions have been able to bid for this funding (the Welsh colleges will want to look out for announcements later in the coming months about opportunities for FE participation). This programme will operate on a similar principle to the Building Capacity programme in that it aims to “help institutions move towards organisational change through the application of existing JISC and other resources” in order to ” a. Enhance their student experience; b. Improve the efficiency of their business and become agile in a climate of change; c. Enhance their organisational capability for business and community engagement”. This provides yet further opportunity to aid innovation in the Welsh HE sector.

Image by kenfagerdotcom (Flickr Creative Commons)

If you are starting a new project, do let us know as we are always delighted to do what we can to help technology-related projects (JISC funded or otherwise) to maximise their reach across Wales and beyond. Good luck to all projects running this year!

Improving practice through scholarship: raising the bar was the theme of a conference at Coleg Llandrillo on 5 July, attended mainly by the college’s HE lecturers but also by visitors from other colleges as far afield as Bridgend; universities; Colegau Cymru and the Higher Education Academy. RSC Wales contributed a keynote and workshops on ‘Scholarship in the digital age’. Here is a brief report on what we felt was an excellent event.

Orme View Conference Centre

In the beautiful setting of the Orme View Conference Centre at the Rhos-on-Sea campus, we began with an address from Huw Evans, Principal of Coleg Llandrillo. He spoke about the distinctiveness of HE in FE and identified a number of defining characteristics of HE in Wales:

• marketisation
• regionalisation as a principle of planning (regional identity is important)
• widening participation (including employer relations)
• Welsh language
• Employability (which it is felt FE are particularly strong on)

Jackie Doodson, Vice-Principal (Planning and Standards) gave us a very useful update on the current HE fees situation. It was great to see that learning technology is seen as a way for the college to continue to offer wider access to HE.

Keynotes

We had two thought-provoking yet down-to-earth keynotes in the morning, from Dr Phil Bassett (Dean of Education at Glyndwr University) and Dr Fay Short (Lecturer in Psychology at Bangor University). Both did a great job, I thought, of demystifying aspects of the pedagogical research process.

Phil’s talk was entitled The Scholarship of Learning and Teaching: a public or private affair? He reminded us that scholarship included sharing and applying new knowledge, not just reading (though critically studying the literature is important). He spoke of discovery and integration, as well as application, and remarked that we can’t necessarily assume that we all mean the same thing by ‘scholarship’.  Other points I noted:

• pedagogy is the subject lecturer’s ‘second discipline’
• performance and professional development should be closely aligned
• it should be acceptable to say that you encounter problems in your teaching
• we need to learn to make measurable that which we know to be important
• good scholarly teachers try new things

Fay gave a lively talk on Reflective research: improve your teaching through scholarship. Her main theme was that it is possible to ‘kill two birds with one stone” (the two birds in this case being research and teaching). She made her case by referring to efforts she had made to embark on scholarly activity within a largely teaching role, for example by doing book reviews. As she pointed out, you need to keep up to date in your subject in any case, so why not get your work valued as scholarship by writing it up (you may even get a small fee into the bargain). Fay talked about how she had changed her assessment on a science module to provide group feedback, then writing it up as a scholarly paper (publication pending!). Some of her tips for beginners included: give consideration to ethics if publishing (there may be no problems but you need to check); also, be prepared to try several journals and don’t be afraid of the first rejection emails. There are journals which actually want to help new researchers get published. Many disciplines have journals specially devoted to teaching in the subject (including the Academy’s various journals). There are also general peer-reviewed journals geared to HE-in-FE such as Journal of Education and Work and Journal of Further and Higher Education.

Case studies

After coffee we had three short inputs from college staff who told their own story of how they had made progress in undertaking scholarly activity based on their teaching.

Teacher-educator Robin Trangmar‘s advice to the audience was: “Read, communicate, do it, share it!” He gave examples of how he had exploited social media tools, for example to investigate QR codes in education. It was great to hear Robin cite his recent webinar for RSC Wales’ Online Summer Bytes series, as a good way for FE lecturers to disseminate their pedagogical research – thank you for the mention Robin! He’s in the process of delivering various publications on his research under the title Using crowdsourcing and social learning networks in teacher education, in  collaboration with Alec Couros. If you’d like to see the presentation Robin did for the RSC Wales Summer Bytes event you can access the slides here and the recording on the event webpage here.

Graham Hembrough and John Hedley (lecturers respectively in photography and printmaking) gave a really interesting account of how they carried out an Arts Council of Wales-funded project to explore relationships between digital and traditional printmaking techniques. They argued that by extending their creative practice in this way, sharing their work with academic and gallery communities, they maintained their credibility as teachers. What began as a small-scale project now promises to lead onto international links and further research.

Elizabeth Day, lecturer in Psychology, took as her theme Reflecting on learning: effect or artifact? She had investigated structured reflection with her students in an attempt to improve their performance. Points I picked up included:

• a key priority was to help students become independent and develop their critical thinking skills
• she was keen to avoid the trap whereby reflective journals are “fabricated” simply in order to pass an assignment, hence the choice of a structured approach to reflection in class
• her research had found that students differed widely in their responses to structured reflection
• recommended resource: Jenny Moon’s Guide for Busy Academics no. 4: Learning through Reflection

For the rest of the morning staff had opportunities to audit their individual scholarly activity over the past year, identify good practice with others, look at the college’s draft ‘Improving Practice through Scholarship (IPS) Model’, and consider scholarly activity for the coming year.

Scholarship in the digital age

After lunch we focussed on ‘Scholarship in the digital age’: I gave a keynote (available on Slideshare here), focussing on some of the ways that social media might assist the research process (or example in discovering new resources and opportunities, and in dissemination) and the skills that are likely to be required of the digitally literate researcher. In preparing the talk, I found the Research Information Network’s Social Media: a guide for researchers immensely useful, particularly the case studies and the one-page Links and Resources guide (a handy overview of social media for anyone: I discovered quite a few new resources there). JISC’s work on digital literacies and the new Information Literacy Framework for Wales have also been very helpful in updating my knowledge. Paul Richardson, Sharon Crossan and myself then worked with three workshop groups to explore some key questions:

Wordle from Conference #dr10 The Digital Researcher http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/4437163129/

• in what ways do you think digital communication can help or hinder you in developing scholarly activity?
• How could the development of digital scholarly approaches have an impact on other areas of work
• What new skills do you think are needed by the digitally literate researcher?

The 60 or so staff had a great deal to say, so it was difficult to fulfil the requirement to come up with just two priorities and one question per group! We captured as much of the discussion as possible via a combination of the RSC Wales text wall and good old fashioned flipchart, and RSC Wales collated the results speedily via a Google doc for the college to use in developing their HE plans.

Reflected on the discussions later, the following thoughts came to mind:

• in FE, when talking about scholarship, the discussion returns frequently to teaching and to the students. This interplay reflects the nature of HE-in-FE and is an asset to be valued.
• there could be some tension between the technologies which HE-in-FE staff might want to use for research purposes, and the technology needs of their HE students. There are also differences between the technology environment needed for HE, and the particularl needs of younger or vulnerable learners in the college (eg with respect to safeguarding).
• there continues to be debate around the concept of digital immigrants/digital natives, though there is a growing awareness that students are not all expert technology users.
• in research, the choice of digital approaches may be wider and more personal than in teaching, where the supported tools and policies are more likely to be laid down by the provider. Whilst this freedom to choose your own tools/techniques could be seen as liberating, there is a challenge in terms of how staff can be helped to make informed choice (this is true in universities too).

Paul Richardson feeds back from the workshop

We’re very grateful to the staff for their readiness to engage with us in thoughtful and critical reflection on technologies, digital literacies and policies.

At the start of the day, HE Manager Mary Pritchard had defined the purpose of the event as being to:

• offer a spring board to capture scholarly activity
• demystify the research process
• offer some tools to help staff to work smarter
• offer practical ways to improve performance

I hope we were able to offer some suggestions on all these fronts. Congratulations and thanks to Mary and  colleagues for a very successful event. All being well, there should be no shortage of HE-in-FE presenters to talk about their research at our conferences in a couple of years’ time!

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/

Here’s my brief report on some of the sessions I attended on day 1 of Summer Bytes, the RSC Wales webinar extravaganza taking place 21-23 June.

It’s just to give you a flavour of the discussions and encourage you to look into some of the event resources in more detail.

Presentations, recordings and other resources are available here, and if you’re reading this during the event and want to follow it on Twitter, the hashtag is #sbytes.

Niall Sclater (Head of Learning Innovation, The Open University) : Future Scenarios for Blended Learning

We got off to a cracking start with nearly 70 participants for Niall’s session. Niall took as a starting point a business analyst’s view of the Top Ten Strategic Priorities for 2011, strategic technologies being defined as

“an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years”

In the field of educational technology, Niall saw the future as being Interactive (illustrated by a number of examples of how the OU is developing online assessment and feedback); Mobile (some interesting-sounding e-books developments were mentioned); Social (interesting discussion about preferences for keeping study and other life  separate; as well as Facebook, Niall also noted the nature crowdsourcing site iSpot ); and Personal. I was interested in Niall’s comments on the importance of being able to annotate to assist learning and I will have to follow up some of his ideas on his Learning Innovation blog (this ties in with another blog post recently by Donald Clark on the value of note-taking for learning).

The mobile learning topic was probably the one that sparked the most questions in the online chat, but participants also picked up on issues of student preferences and engagement. Clearly there is so much we don’t know about the future, but at least with Niall’s advice we have a few pointers as to where to focus our attention in the next year or so.

Hannah Mathias (ILT Development Manager, St David’s Catholic College) – SharePoint

For the second session of the day we switched our focus to business efficiency: Hannah Mathias shared her experience of introducting SharePoint 2010 to provide an intranet for her college (though as she pointed out, SharePoint 2010 can be used for more than just an intranet). It was interesting to hear the value placed on features such as automatic retention schedules to assist with legal compliance, and graphical reporting to aid decision-making. They haven’t had a chance to explore all the possibilities yet, but so far staff have responded well to the new system. During the session we had some enquiries about sources of training and I came across this forthcoming seminar organised by UCISA which may be of interest (it’s open to non-members too).

It struck me that the webinar format was ideal for the sort of session Hannah presented. It’s the sort of short informal contribution that if we were limited to f2f, might get slotted into a network meeting (but then would only get heard by a few). The webinar format allowed a wide range of people to hear a bang up-to-date experience from someone who has recently tackled some of the challenges others are about to face, and was willing to respond personally and directly to individual questions.

After that I took a short break from #sbytes to attend two more meetings (in other online spaces!) then returned to listen into the last session of the day which I’ll blog about later.

On 7 June Paul Richardson and I were invited along to do some sessions at a joint staff conference organised by Glyndwr University and Yale College Wrexham. About 90 staff from teaching and support roles, as well as some visiting organisations, came together in the Catrin Finch Centre to focus on “Learning and Teaching Excellence in the 21st Century”. We’d been asked to present to three groups on digital literacies, whilst Paul was assisting with a workshop on accessibility and inclusion. Here are some impressions of the event, and I’ll add more links to resources from the event as they become available.

Professor Michael Scott opened the conference, referring to the recent announcement that Glyndwr University had just signed a £5m postgraduate training contract with a Vietnamese media company. A welcome by Yale College principal Paul Croke further highlighted the importance of innovation in teaching, then we were into the keynote by Donald Clark. I’d looked forward to hearing Donald after reading him online, and his presentation was no less provocative than his blog posts, with plenty of humour thrown in. Focused on the question of whether universities are fit for purpose, and whether technologies support learning, it was an intriguing combination: a lecture that denounced the lecture format; many references to theory but largely aimed at debunking the theorists.

Donald’s main theme was the ineffectiveness of the traditional lecture as a teaching tool (though he was careful not to dismiss it entirely). He warned against transferring its weaknesses from the physical to the electronic learning space (electronic whiteboards have cost a fortune but have not been intelligently deployed). Technology trends highlighted positively included: lecture capture (something several Welsh universities have become interested in lately); iPad/tablet devices; and OER (open educational resources). Donald commented out that the newer generation of OER are an improvement on the early attempts: an invitation perhaps for Wales to take more active part in OER innovation?

Paul and I ran three group sessions on digital literacies which attracted a lot of interest and generated a lot of discussion. We offered a short presentation on what digital literacies might include, the main message being (to quote Paul Gilster) that they are about “ideas not keystrokes”. We reported on some of the JISC SLiDA case studies and mentioned some of the digital literacy-related projects underway in Wales, before handing over to staff to talk about their students’ experiences of learning in a digital age. They came up with plenty of ideas and issues which we captured in a Google Doc so we can share them with the institutions and work further on the topics raised. Discussions continued in an afternoon workshop led by Denise Oram and Carys Davies, where staff from both the HE and FE institutions looked at challenges and opportunities, particularly with respect to students transferring into Higher Education. Meanwhile Paul helped out with another workshop on inclusion, where he highlighted the free resources available from EduApps and the new Accessible IT Practice qualification developed by JISC Techdis. Workshop ideas were fed into a text wall loaned by RSC Wales for the occasion.

We found a real enthusiasm on the part of the Glyndwr and Yale staff to take part in professional dialogue across their institutions, accompanied by a realistic acknowledgement that sharing takes some time and effort. There was also clearly a real need and demand for more staff development to support new modes of learning and teaching excellence. The conference was well-run in a great location, and congratulations are due to the organising team, headed by Clive Buckley, who worked hard to make it a success. We look forward to following up the issues discussed with the staff of Glyndwr and Yale, and hope that other institutions will consider organising similar combined HE-FE conferences in future.

Presentations (well, nearly all of them!), headline messages and other resources are now available from the successful Higher Education workshop organised by JISC RSC Wales on 12 April at University of Glamorgan. For full details and resources, go to http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/ffeltt. This post offers a brief round-up of the event.

Altogether around 80 participants from HE institutions, HE-in-FE providers and other invited organisations converged on a sunny University of Glamorgan campus at Trefforest for a busy day of discussion and learning, marked three years of innovation, collaboration and change in learning and teaching.

RSC Wales 'dangles' were a talking point...and kept us organised

The workshop, tagged #ffeltt (“Feeding Forward, Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology”) was organised with a planning team of four organisations as part of the Future Directions programme of events in Wales. It was the third Higher Education event which the RSC has managed in  partnership with HEFCW and the Academy, and early feedback suggests that the organising team managed to set up an event that was useful for the sector, with potential to serve the needs of future students as well as the staff who teach and support them.

Following a welcoming address from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan, Julie Lydon, we heard had overviews from Celia Hunt of HEFCW, Derek Morrison of the Higher Education Academy and Lawrie Phipps of JISC. These provided the context for the event:

• Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology: a Strategy for Higher Education in Wales (HEFCW circular W08/12HE). The ten-year strategy was launched in 2008 and is currently being reviewed.
• A look back at the three-year Gwella programme of enhancement activity (a small amount of additional funding has been made available to extend the programme over the coming year)
• An overview of how JISC, with the Building Capacity Programme and associated services, is supporting Higher Education to manage change, including around learning and teaching innovation. In particular, the Building Capacity Wales programme has enabled institutions, using relatively small sums of money over a short timescale, to identify pre-existing resources (from JISC, Academy and other sources) which can help meet key strategic development needs.

Derek Morrison looking forward

For the rest of the morning, participants split into groups which were designed to ensure a mix of as many institutions as possible. Each group got to hear from projects at two other institutions. These presentations reported, in a refreshingly open, honest and reflective manner, on key lessons learned from participation in Gwella and the Building Capacity Programme. The standard of presentations was pleasingly high and stimulated some good discussion in the groups.

Participants then re-convened with colleagues from their own institution  to ‘pool the knowledge’ gleaned from the morning’s presentations. Feedback suggests that participants valued this opportunity, and it maximised the amount of learning that could take place in a short time. One person from each university was then charged with ‘feeding forward’ key points to a workshop taking place the following day on Learning & Teaching and Widening Access Strategies, as well as feeding forward into their own institution’s strategy development.

During breaks delegates also had the opportunity to view a virtual poster about the HEAT4 projects which have enabled staff and students in Wales to explore technology for inclusion. These small projects, funded by the Higher Education Academy and managed by JISC Techdis, are just completing their work and we look forward to hearing more about their findings in the coming months.

After an delicious buffet lunch and networking time, we kicked off the afternoon with two short keynotes which aimed to set our sights towards new challenges. David Warrender (Welsh Assembly Government) presented on Digital Wales. Whilst this new WAG framework will have been new to many HE staff, it presents a set of priorities which will surely impact on universities as well as create opportunities:

1. Delivering an inclusive, sustainable and prosperous society;
2. Skilled and competent people;
3. A thriving and competitive digital economy;
4. Transformed public services;
5. First class digital infrastructure.

On a contrasting and personal note, Rebecca Davies (Vice Chancellor (Student and Staff Services), Aberystwyth University) used her own often entertaining observations of technology-enhanced learning over the last decade as a starting point to question how well we are really meeting new student needs. Whilst progress has been made, there is still work to be done in areas such as

• delivery of better, faster services at lower cost;
• digital literacy;
• more systematic collaboration;
• partnership with students.

Some clear messages for the future from Rebecca Davies

Thus challenged by our two keynotes, we split into our groups again to address key questions for the sector. Each group had to come up with a set of five “headline messages”. We wanted to avoid the simple re-statement of well-worn bullet points and called instead for “concise, thought-provoking and even provocative” messages. Some powerful ideas duly emerged, and were rapidly recorded and shared electronically in time for HEFCW’s Celia Hunt to disseminate them to a new audience at the following morning’s workshop. This timely “feeding forward” exercise was a test of cooperation and collaboration and it seems to have worked well.

For me, there were many high points to the event. Some of the these were:

• the willingness of colleagues to share information and help each other in practical ways (one good example of this is the Aberystwyth University Nexus wiki of good practice, open for all);
• the active participation of HE providers in the FE sector (thank you to Colleges Wales/Colegau Cymru for their enthusiastic support);
• the presence of many senior learning and teaching staff, heads of library and information services, and others who are leading change;
• the warm reception given to those colleagues who were presenting for the first time at a major conference;
• confirmation that by meeting together in a spirit of openness and common purpose, we can achieve more than the sum of our parts.

Presentations (well nearly all of them – one or two are still to be added shortly), headline messages and other resources from the day can be found at http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/ffeltt . Where additional resources are provided, we will include those as soon as possible.

A warm welcome at Glamorgan Conference Centre

JISC RSC Wales would like to acknowledge the hard work and collaboration of all those who gave their time and effort to this event, in particular our speakers, our partners and colleagues at HEFCW, JISC, the Higher Education Academy/Academy Wales, the University of Glamorgan and numerous critical friends. Thank you all!

Sharing by Andy Woo from Flickr Creative Commons

This week I joined in the first meet-up of a new group in Wales. In case you’re wondering what ELESIG is, it’s a Special Interest Group (SIG) to Evaluate Learners’ Experience of E-learning. It describes itself as “an international community of researchers and practitioners from higher and further education who are involved in investigations of learners’ experiences and uses of technology in learning” and has over 1,200 people signed up.  ELESIG offers small grants for regional groups, and this new Welsh one has grown out of the universities’  Gwella programme to enhance learning and teaching through technology. ELESIG exists as a virtual community but there are also occasional face to face events – the ones I’ve attended in the past have been excellent so I had high hopes for this one.

The ELESIG Wales inaugural event on 21 March was a videoconference between Swansea, Aberystwyth and Glamorgan Universities plus Coleg Harlech, so we were able to enjoy a combination of presentations and feedback from across the country, interspersed with group discussion (and lunch) in our separate studios. This hybrid format has the advantage of being sociable without the need for long-distance travel, and avoids the hassle of a large, expensive venue. Most participants seemed to be from HE, but I noted a few from FE as well as HEFCW and JISC. In our Swansea studio we had about 20 folk from a variety of professional roles: learning technologists, academics and staff working on business engagement projects, to name a few. This mix of people made for lots of different viewpoints and I think we all learned something new.

The event kicked off with an intro from Chris Hall (Swansea University) who with David Lewis (University of Glamorgan) set up the group “to enable the Technology Enhanced Learning Community of Practice that has grown out of Gwella to develop further”. An official write-up will be appearing shortly, so in the meantime here are just a few of my personal reflections.

In the first discussion slot we swapped ideas on our hopes for the group and what it could do for us; key points were captured via a Google Doc and shared across all four venues. In a short time we managed a long wish-list and if the group can tackle even a small number of the issues, it will be doing a good job! Mor myself, one area where I see a “gap in the market” is a forum for sectors to come together to look at effective use of technology to enable and support learning, but which isn’t platform- or sector-specific. Such a forum seems useful given current moves towards the regionalization of HE and the breakup of traditional institutional and sector boundaries. Also on my personal wish-list would be learning literacies (“the range of practices that underpin effective learning in a digital age”), something that I reckon has to be fundamental to a truly Digital Wales and indeed a well-educated Wales.  More than ever, I think, we need good evaluation of new approaches and rapid, effective dissemination of projects, as well as a place to nurture creativity. Whatever our personal interests, the one strong theme coming through during this event was a strong will to collaborate!

After lunch we heard three short presentations, all looking at different types of ‘virtual classroom’: lecture capture; studio-based videoconferencing; and webconferencing. These are all areas which RSC Wales gets asked about, so it was all highly relevant.

Lecture capture

First up was Kate Wright of Aberystwyth University, talking about their experience of introducing lecture capture. They are currently using the Panopto system, mainly using just audio and slides rather than video, and their experience is well documented in a case study on the Panopto website. They’ve also got information on their excellent Nexus site, including a batch of Delicious links which will be useful to complement my own. Some points I picked up from Kate that are particularly worth spreading around (and could apply to other technologies too):

- start from pedagogical need, not what the technology can do

- make things as seamless and self-service as possible for staff

- use surveys and staff focus groups to gather evidence and guide implementation

- contrary to received wisdom, lecture capture doesn’t reduce face to face lecture attendance

Videoconferencing

David Gill of Swansea University was the next speaker, and he spoke entertainingly about the experience of collaborative teaching on a Masters programme in Classics, via studio-based videoconferencing. Points I particularly liked (and which can apply to other technologies too):

- remote delivery changes the class dynamics and can change the way we teach

- those taking part need to learn to communicate differently, and listen more

- the technology means that learners have access to more expertise, including international research

- collaboration through technology allows different organisations to play to their strengths.

Webconferencing

Finally, Mark Pelling at UWIC talked about their use of Adobe Connect webconferencing technology to deliver graduate-level courses to dental technicians. I blogged about this as part of an event report last term. UWIC’s recent JISC project, on which this work was based, has been making waves around the UK, so I was a bit surprised that it’s still not widely known about in Wales. Perhaps there’s a tendency to overlook the good practice on our own doorstep sometimes? I hope a group like ELESIG can help to draw out the expertise we have right under our noses. (By the way if you would like more information on webconferencing there’s a wealth of material on our Moodle resources area).

Back in our groups we reflected on the presentations before a plenary round-up led by David Lewis. It was good to hear that the group have enough funding for a few further face to face events in the coming year, based on suggestions put forward by members.

Judging by the day’s discussions, there’s no shortage of potential topics and a friendly, enthusiastic bunch of people keen to share. If we can ‘grow our own’ community of practice in Wales, that can only be good for the health of our education sector and could help to make our sterling efforts at innovation more sustainable. Admittedly, we already have active forums in Wales for FE (Learntech-Wales, Itsysman and FE-LRC-Wales), CELW (Community E-learning Wales), Moodle-Wales and Blackboard-Wales, but these have their specific remits, and there’s clearly room for a “broad church” that can embrace not just HE but others too.

Simon Wood of Cardiff University has shared some thoughts about the day from a learning technologist’s perspective on his blog . In addition some of us were tweeting using the twin hashtags #gwella #ELESIG if you want to catch some of the comments on Twitter.

I know some of our RSC Wales friends have already joined the new ELESIG for Wales and I hope plenty more follow suit. Anyone can join the ELESIG Ning http://elesig.ning.com: it’s free to register, then look under the Groups tab. There are lots of other ELESIG subgroups for topics such as first-year experience, research students and even one for research on FE/ACL students: some of these have even more cryptic acronyms than Gwella (iLExSIG anyone?*). I think this group has the possibility of a bright future – I look forward to future get-togethers. virtual or otherwise!

*International Learners’ EXperiences of e-learning Special Interest Group in case you hadn’t guessed!

Let's glow together by origami_potato (Flickr Creative Commons)

 “Gathering and Presenting Evidence for Impact and Sustainability” was the theme of an excellent event I attended last week, with tips and lessons for innovators who seek to get the results of their labours embedded in practice. Hosted by UWIC’s JISC project TEL-WFD (Workforce Development) at the new Cardiff School of Management, the event was one in a series of practitioner-led ‘Assemblies’. These are informal clusters of project staff sharing experiences and maximize the benefits of their work. In opening this Assembly, Colleen Connor, UWIC’s Dean of Learning and Teaching, spoke enthusiastically of the value in pooling the learning across the projects on the JISC Institutional Innovation: Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development programme. I certainly got a huge amount from the day, both on the topic of maximizing impact, and also on the latest technology developments in workforce development in three participating institutions. The participating organisations included: UWIC, University of Bradford and the University of Wolverhampton. we also had the benefit of advice from the SSBR team at Oxford Brookes who are providing valuable synthesis and evaluation services for the programme.

Sessions offering general tools and tips to improve a) impact and b) sustainability were interspersed with stories from projects about the things that had helped them achieve both these goals. Below are points I noted from each of the sessions. The Assembly was shared with external participants via the Elluminate webconferencing system, and materials and recordings from the day will be made available at a later date.

 Rachel Harris – Inspire Research

Rachel offered advice on Maximising impact, assembling and leveraging the evidence base, linked to her work with the JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery Programme. She highlighted some effective techniques used by projects to capture and present evidence, some of which are mentioned below. You can find more details of ongoing project work in the excellent Design Studio which has a list of all the projects..

* a wide range of data collection techniques have been used including students as researchers and learner blogs (eg Springboard TV);

* different forms of data analysis eg prospective analysis, videos, Google analytics;

* case studies – Cascade, Springboard-TV

* some projects have been able to focus on the bottom line  to secure backing for further rollout of their work e.g.

• EbioLabs has led to reductions in breakages in the lab, since students are better prepared for practicals
• Cascade has reduced admin time through online registration and payment for continuing education (based on time and motion study)

During Rachel’s session we had a go at devising 10-word elevator pitches and discussed in groups our ideas on how to “convince the cynic”:

* different stakeholders nay need different messages

* MyStudyBar was mentioned as an example of clever marketing: getting your audience’s attention in the first place is vital

* value of “telling a story” (though note that video case studies can be accused of being unrepresentative of the real world!)

Rachel passed on some excellent advice on how busy people access research (some of it may seem obvious, but it’s still worth reminding ourselves I think):

- they have little time (no surprise there!)

- they are most likely to trust information received face to face or from their peers

- they are reluctant to pay for access eg to academic journals (including paying in terms of time to access articles freely available via their library)

- they access new research mostly via the internet

- Institutional processes are very complex (again no surprise there!)

Then came the slightly depressing bit! We were told that project-based evidence plays a small role in senior staff decision-making! There can sometimes be a tension between the aspirations of funders and those of the institution hosting a project. Given these harsh realities, you need some additional skills in order to ‘sell the benefits’ e.g.

-           have a holistic understanding of the operating environment

-           marketing and influencing skills

-           really want to do it!

I was able to highlight the fact that JISC RSCs are able to, and do, assist projects in maximizing impact, for example through our links with diverse sectors.

Evaluation and Reflection I: Compelling reasons

Jeff Lewis of UWIC talked about the experience of introducing web-conferencing in the teaching of dental laboratory technicians, including a demonstration of a typical teaching scenario where we experienced learning through both online tutorial and practical activities with bits of wire, dentures and pliers. More fun that it sounds!

Lots of tools explored at UWIC

Jeff made a host of serious points to explain the success they had had with the introducting of web conferencing. Just some of the compelling reasons for its continuation were:

-       A strong business case; there are few places students can do the courses, and they are scattered from York to Cornwall.

-       Students are already in the workplace (dental labs) so UWIC doesn’t now need to invest in such laboratories on campus.

-       They can offer more flexibility as students no longer tied to the restrictions of the academic year.

-       Students loved the technology, in particular the ease with which they could ask questions more easily than when f2f (they particularly liked private chat, breakout group activities and the ‘virtual bar’ for informal contact)

-       However students still appreciated more traditional support methods e.g. email, and UWIC have retained a measure of face to face attendance

-       Lecturers could use/adapt existing lecture material rather than author new content

-       Web conferencing saves employer time and resources

Less frequent travel means workbased students are not exhausted (saves carbon footprint too!)

-       UWIC incorporated support for workplace mentors

-       In terms of student performance, UWIC are confident that students are performing at least as well with webconferencing

Following the success of the project, there are further uses planned for the use of the technology, including a Masters programme; management meetings; there is interest from other Schools; and online overseas exam boards offer scope for considerable financial savings.

UWIC’s experience offers a valuable case study in an area (webconferencing) where there are not a great many useful examples. However following a tip off at the event, I came across a useful blog post from JISC CETIS covering web conferencing tools in use on the Transforming Teaching and Learning Using Technology programme, e.g. the Open University’s Atelier-D project:

 Features and benefits analysis

Andrew Haldane (UWIC) offered a simple yet effective technique for project staff to rethink the way they present their wares to stakeholders, by shifting perspective. The main points I picked up were:

- when we’re immersed in a project, the features are self evident to us, but when making your case to others, as with a job application, you need to “reorganise your story”

- by all means start by brainstorming your project features (the easy bit!)

- then take an extra step: WHICH MEANS THAT….

- then identify all the benefits, and one or two key overarching benefits

- your features, rather than being the “lead story”, become the evidence to back up your claims. You are offering solutions rather than problems.

So for the UWIC web conferencing project, you might identify “availability of camera close ups’ as a feature WHICH MEANS THAT all students get a much better view than in a face to face session. So there you have your benefit, and you could do the same for all the other features of the project. Key benefits can then be extrapolated such as: providing a valuable service to the profession, or viability of otherwise unsustainable courses.

In discussion, staff with experience of retail and marketing offered additional tips to help ‘sell’ project benefits. Again and again, the point was stressed that it is essential to know the market, understand what your customer is looking for, and be prepared to explore their needs.

 Evaluation and Reflection II: WELL Project

We heard from a Bradford-based project called WELL (Workforce Engagement in Lifelong Learning) which offered further tips, which though they sound obvious at the start, are often forgotten once projects get going:

-       don’t leave thinking about impact to the end

-       you need to be flexible as context changes

Interestingly Bradford had decided to use webconferencing software solely for the purpose of offering prerecorded lectures, since their students were not being able to attend at set time.

Peter Chatterton then spoke about an extension to WELL, known as a Benefits Realisation Project. This is an attempt to transfer the lessons learned from projects to wider problems in other institutions, making sure that project results are “useful, usable and used”. In Bradford’s case, they will distil their learning into a “maturity toolkit” for technology-enhanced learning in work based learning (WBL). The toolkit will be designed for use in conjunction with “CAMEL” groups (communities of institutions sharing experience).

The project are looking for institutions to take part in trials from April 2011, so if you are interested please contact the project, details are available on their website.

Evaluation and Reflection III – E portfolio projects

Alison Felce (University of Wolverhampton) offered some experiences from their ePPSME project, where they’ve looked using E-Portfolios to bring all aspects of a workbased learner’s journey together. Some of the techniques and tips given for enhancing impact and sustainability included:

 -       carrying out a performance needs analysis of employer needs across sectors and using this to identify common themes

-       in the pilot, they offered small chunks of learning (5 credits)

-       they made use of retreats to develop staff skills (in house to save money!)

David Lloyd (UWIC) offered some tips from his experience of leading the Eporfolio strand of UWIC’s JISC project. Success points I noted were:

-       they improved their customer relationship management system to track work placement students

-       they introduced a reflective log for work placements (initially on Blackboard but are now looking at PebblePad). These are short (30 day) non-paid placements, based on a project

-       students achieved good log marks

-       they found that writing in a reflective way is something that needs to be learned, but feedback is very motivating

-       they provide prompt questions at different levels according to the stage students are at i.e. start up of log, maintenance, and drawing conclusions

-       the log gives opportunity for linkage of practice to classroom theory

Capturing lessons learned

Andrew Haldane took the floor once again to describe another technique to assist in identifying project benefits, called SMILE (stands for “Significant Milestones Review”). Essentially you ask the following questions:

-       what went well?

-       why did it succeed?

-       if starting again, what would u do differently?

-       what did you learn that was specific to this project?

-       what could others learn?

It can provide a helpful structure for team discussions, and then converted into a more tailored ‘story’ suitable for external audiences. It has the advantage of being applicable to a whole project, or to individual activities within a project. The SMILE technique, Andrew suggested, is useful when considering project sustainability after the end of funding.

 JISC Guide to Sustaining and Embedding innovations

Peter Chatterton flagged up this very useful guide which draws on the experiences of previous JISC projects and programmes to ensure that maximum benefit is reaped from projects. He stressed how important it is to try and identify benefits that can be transferred easily and quickly. One of the programmes that major lessons can be drawn from is the Open Educational Resources programme and Peter observed that there could be great potential to explore OER in the context of Work Based Learning, with FE, HE and employers working together.

One final point on sustainability: are project staff the best people to write the project’s sustainability plan, or would it be better to bring in someone from outside, who can see things more from the point of view of the outside world?

To sum up, the Assembly reminded me of the huge value in sharing across organizations if we are to get best value for money from our investment. At a time when some commentators are keen to question the value of projects, it is good to see the difference they can make when they enable staff to put ideas and tools to the test in real-world settings. The tips on maximizing impact and sustainability are, however, something we need to really focus on more than ever before. So, I hope we can encourage more innovation projects to broadcast their messages effectively, so we don’t find outselves reinventing the wheel for years to come!

Foundation degrees are becoming highly significant post-18 qualifications in Wales. In a recent written statement Leighton Andrews, Minster for Children, Education and Lifelong Learning in the Welsh Assembly Government, identified Foundation degrees (Fds) as an important outcome of ‘For our Future’, and a way of providing HE that is ‘inclusive, accessible and responsive to the needs of Wales’.  HEFCW (Higher Education Further Funding Council for Wales) subsequently presented its policy on Fds and announced specific funding via the ‘One Wales’ initiative.
Fds are a key aspect of  the provision of the new UHOVI, with Further Education Institutions (FEIs) playing an important role. Fds are certainly a significant component of Coleg Llandrillo’s HE provision as I observed whilst attending their internal Higher Education (HE) conference at which I had been invited to speak. The number of Fds already offered by the college is well into double figures, and expected to rise over the next few years.  Subjects covered range from health to engineering, giving a good illustration of the way in which this type of qualification links scholarly activity to the workplace. The degrees are currently run in collaboration with HEIs, but Coleg Llandrillo is aiming to award its own Fds in the near future.

What is the role of learning technology in the foundation degree programme? As in any other teaching and learning scenario, technology can enhance the learning experience by opening doors to an array of resources and new ways of learning. Technology can also provide solutions to specific problems: for example, the Deaf Studies Fd programme at Coleg Llandrillo successfully bid for funding from the HEAT (Higher Education Assistive Technologies) scheme (funds provided by the HEA and promoted via JISC Techdis and RSC Wales) to explore the use of internet video facilities to aid communication between students and tutors. JISC funding may impact on other Fds in wales, for example withon a UWIC work-based learning project.

From the point of view of a student embarking on a Fd, learning technologies can make a real difference. Good online resources such as e-journals are a key source of subject-specific information, and VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) may be vital for students who need access to both FEI and HEI course information and resources, and who may additionally have limited opportunity to use library resources due to being part-time and/or geographically remote. Information literacy skills are essential to make best use of online resources, and tutorial packages such as Internet Detective (also available in Welsh) may be very helpful for Fd students.
VLEs such as Moodle and Blackboard are not just repositories for information: they can also provide avenues for communication (eg. forums), reflection (eg. blogs), collaboration (eg. wikis) and formative assessment (eg. quizzes). E-portfolios can also be used for these activities, and they can additionally support course schedules, assessment etc. A wide range of evidence types – text, audio, video for example – can be uploaded to e-portfolios, making them potentially much more versatile than traditional paper-based portfolios and giving the option of internal/ external assessment and peer review. Technologies which capture different forms evidence are becoming increasingly cheap and easy to use, and mobile technologies such as digital video cameras can play a worthwhile role in the sort of ‘non-classroom’ situations frequently encountered in Fds.
Social networking tools - whether within VLEs and e-portfolios or used independently – can give learners significant opportunities for communication and collaboration. They can aid inclusion and give learner groups greater coherence. Tools such as forums can also provide opportunities for tutor feedback and communication – a particularly valued aspect of both HE and FE.
Technology can have a highly positive impact on the learning experience, and in the context of HE, can help meet the expectations of learners who need to be confident both within academia and the world of work. JISC RSC Wales can advise on all aspects of technology for teaching and learning, and can also give pointers to funding that may be available for  projects incorporating the use of technology.