Open, Mobile Online Education

I will be speaking on "Open, Mobile Online Education", at the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG) meeting, at Google Sydney,  7pm, 31 July 2015:

"Tom will give impressions of his travels in July to Hong Kong and Cambridge University. He is attending the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) at Hong Kong Open University and a speaking at the 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education at Cambridge University."

Open as in Education

The word "open" is used in several different contexts in education.  An Open University, is open in the sense of allowing entry to education to a wider range of people than usual for higher education. This can be by having lower fees, by allowing those without formal prerequisites, awarding course credit for prior experience, having classes outside business hours and having distance education.

Open Access is used to describe educational materials which are available free, or at low cost, for use, reuse, modification, directly by students, or by teachers. This is usually with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence (CC BY-SA 3.0).

More Talk Than Action on Mobile and Open Education

My impression from attending a conference on mobile education is that while academics talk about it, there does not appear to be much done in practice. Also there sill does not appear to be a sustainable way to support open education: this is something done as an initiative, sometimes with a one off grant, but which then ends when the money runs out. At the same time universities continue with conventional courses which have on-line components added in an ad-hoc way. Meanwhile the universities nervously look over their shoulders to see if MOOCs from large US universities are going to take away their students. The reality is that MOOCs are mostly used as a form of university extension program, providing introductory courses to promote the real university programs which are not massive, open, on-line or low cost.

Dominance of Moodle for University E-learning

Institutions ranging from Hong Kong Open University to Cambridge University (UK) use Moodle for their Learning Management System. Australia could make more use of this to sell add-on products and services.

Hong Kong

ICOFE 2015

Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) at Hong Kong Open University. HKOU uses Moodle.

Went from Guangzhou to Hong Kong by Train. Just about everyone on the train had a large screen smart phone and a second battery to keep it running on the journey. Seats with mains power are at a premium and USB charing sockets sought after at airports.

Open University of Hong Kong (OUUK) consists of two multistory buildings in Kowloon. There is no "campus" as such. The meeting room where the conference was held doubles as a basketball court (the hoops swing down from the very high ceiling).

Professor Rory McGreal, Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University, on "Why OER are essential in mobile and ubiquitous learning". Dr K S Yuen, the Director of Educational Technology and Publishing at OUKH on "Implementing effective e-Learning in Hong Kong schools through the adoption of Open Textbooks".

Cambridge

ICCSE 2015

10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education at Cambridge University:

1. Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students, Tom Worthington's talk for the Office of Scholarly Communication, University of Cambridge (UK). Also presented at ICCSE 2015. Notes by Danny Kingsley
2. Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning, Tom Worthington, for ICCSE 2015,
3. Denix Dai, Ataturk University is demonstrating a database of computer engineering education in Turkey.  
4. Ben M. Chen, National University of Singapore on "Unmanned Systems Research and Education".
5. Professor Clarence W. de Silva, British Columbia University, on "Sensing Issues in the Automated Monitoring of the Quality of Drinking Water"

Talk for Cambridge University Librarians

Cambridge University uses Moodle. Discussed "Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students" for library staff at Cambridge University (also Notes by Dr Danny Kingsley, Head of the University of Cambridge Office of Scholarly Communication).

Visit to Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning

Talked to  Joanna Mills, Deputy Director,  Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge about emulating the The Cambridge Phenomenon (Silicon Fen) in Canberra.

ps: It is worth attending a free SLUG meeting, to get to see the Google offices.

Focus on Teaching Which Works

Nicholas Hawkins writes "Reduced scope of the Office of Teaching and Learning should focus us on what works" (Online Opinion, 24 July 2015). The OLT has had limited results, due to the small scale of funding and limited time scale of projects. As a result, perhaps the resources of the scaled back OLT should be, as Hawkins suggests, put into communicating what works.

Universities spend considerable amounts of effort on improving teaching, but seem reluctant to take the obvious step and require their teaching staff to be formally qualified to teach. It is very frustrating to see university academics spending time reinventing techniques which have been developed, researched and tested for teaching.

Hawkins' Biomedical Education Skills and Training (BEST) Network sounds interesting. However, the claim that it is a world first has not been substantiated, or how it works explained. This is not the first "teaching network run by academics for academics", as anyone who has studied education as a discipline knows. The Smart Sparrow adaptive e-learning software sounds interesting. But there again, I would like to know exactly what it does.

Any academic looking to apply claimed revolutionary new learning technology first needs to learn the history of their discipline and looks at the techniques which have been proven and the may which failed.

Last week I was giving staff at Cambridge University tips on e-learning, while there to speak at a computer education conference. What I suggested was that they worry about good teaching first.

Private Education and Training Conference

The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) are having their National Conference in Melbourne, 27-28 August 2015. The program includes Former Federal Education Minister John Dawkins, is speaking on "What happened - new learnings". That should provide an interesting perspective on today's education environment, which is still in the shadow of the 1980s "Dawkins Revolution". Christopher Pyne, the current Minister for Education and Training is also speaking at the conference.

e-Learning at Cambridge University

On Wednesday I talked on "Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students" at the Office of Scholarly Communication, University of Cambridge (UK). Danny Kingsley has some notes of the discussion in her blog "Unlocking Research: Tips for preparing and presenting online learning".

Database of Computer Engineering Education in Turkey

Greetings from the 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2015) at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge (UK). Denix Dai from Ataturk University is demonstrating a database of computer engineering education in Turkey. The database has details of facility staff, as well as courses. This has Curriculum Review, Curriculum Statistics, Course Analysis, Course Statistics.

Cloud Around Digital Technologies for Education

Greetings from the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015), at the Open University of Hong Kong, where Prof. Niki Davis (University of Canterbury) is conducting a workshop on " Where are you in the global arena of change with digital technologies in education?"

For this we were provided with a diagram template showing "Davis' Arena" and then worked in groups to adapt this to our own educational environment. We had groups working on Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) and OUUK. There is a video of Prof. Davis speaking on "Why is the arena a metaphor for teaching?". Also there is a recent paper by Davis, Eickelmann and Zaka (2013) showing some of these diagrams.

Reference

Davis, N., Eickelmann, B., & Zaka, P. (2013). Restructuring of educational systems in the digital age from a co‐evolutionary perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(5), 438-450. Retriened from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jcal.12032/

OER for Mobile Ubiquitous Learning

Greetings from the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015), at the Open University of Hong Kong, where Professor Rory McGreal, Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University, is speaking on "Why OER are essential in mobile and ubiquitous learning". He argues that open is essential to mobile education, not optional and mobile is essential to education, due to the rapid adoption: "Educators need to get with it".

Professor McGreal argues we should design educational materials first for mobile devices, not for print on paper, as "That is the way the world is". He pointed out that until the invention of the printing press books were scarce and this was the reason for classes and "lecturers" (readers).


Professor McGreal suggested that MOOCs were of benefit, even where there is a much higher non-completion rate than conventional courses, because many more students can complete. I don't agree with this: even if the MOOC costs little or nothing, being a student is a very time consuming activity. Students who invest their time in study need to complete to get the maximum benefit. Obviously students will learn something even if they do not complete a course, but for maximum personal and economic benefit, need courses which most students can complete.

One point I did agree with is that Professor McGreal noted that universities are already on-line, to a larger extent than many other modern organizations. I get asked regularly about when lectures will be replaced with on-line education, but the reality in Australian universities is that it already has. Typically only a minority of students turn up to lectures.

Mobile Open University Education in Hong Kong

Greetings from the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015), at the Open University of Hong Kong OUUK), Kowloon. In their welcome, Professor Danny S N Wong, VP Academic at OUUK pointed out that as long ago as 2000 university was using PDAs for assessment in nursing courses. He pointed out, for the benefit of the younger delegates, that PDAs "Personal Digital Assistants" were predecessors of smart phones of today. It happens I helped with the "Student Practice Evaluation Form" (SPEF-R) for supervisors to evaluate students on occupational therapy professional practice placements (Turpin, Fitzgerald, and Rodger, 2011). The paper based system was converted to a mobile compatible website.

In the conference workshop "Implementing effective e-Learning in Hong Kong schools through the adoption of Open Textbooks", Dr K S Yuen, the Director of Educational Technology and Publishing at OUKH, gave us a hands-on exercise. One examples was Connexions has content, a repository with version control and a review process. Dr Yuen pointed out that you could use a whole open textbook as is, select chapters for use, or make additions to the material. However, one of the problems I have found is finding suitable material and the complexity of making changes and reformatting the content.  He also pointed out the benefits of ePub versions of e-books, with multimedia and interaction, over over a PDF version. Also he mentioned HTML e-books (I use Moodle's book module to make simple e-books). Dr Yuen showed a reading e-book for school children on a tablet computer. He demonstrated that not only could this be used by individual students, the teacher could plug a tablet into a video projector for the whole class to see. He then showed us work of the OUHK Open Textbooks Project. 

Dr Yuen pointed out the attempts which have been made in making textbooks less expensive and more open. However, I have doubts as to if he has a viable model to make the project self-sustaining. He has rejected the idea of making a modest amount from selling paper copies of books and audio and e-reader versions. They are still considering advertising on the website. There is also the possibility of having government community announcements in the e-books funded by government (this avoids the issue of commercial advertising in textbooks). Dr Yuen  provided an excellent immediately useful overview of the practicalities of open textbooks. 

Open University of Hong Kong (OUUK) consists of two multistory buildings in Kowloon. There is no "campus" as such. The meeting room where the conference was held doubles as a basketball court (the hoops swing down from the viery high ceiling).

ICOFE 2015 ends on Friday and then I am off to Cambridge University to talk on how to use eBooks for teaching postgraduate students and take part in the 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2015).

Global Learning XPRIZE and Apps for Education

Harry Longworth, co-founder of the OATSEA Foundation, will speak on "Educational apps for free education" at a meeting of the ACS e-Learning Special Interest Group, Australian National University, in Canberra, 5:00pm 5th August 2015.

Teachervirus.org is the OATSEA Foundation's Open Source approach to addressing the problem of how do we provide high quality free education to those who can't afford to pay for education; and don't have access to the internet, teachers or schools.  It's also our entry into the Global Learning XPRIZE - an international $15 Million dollar competition to meet this challenge.

They are building a community of like minded educators, developers, teachers, parents and students who want to make the world a better place through the power of education.

Harry Longworth is one of the co-founders of the OATSEA Foundation Ltd - an Australian charitable not for profit based in Canberra dedicated to Open Access To Self Education and Assessment (OATSEA).

Harry has a strong background in innovation, technology, projects, startups and international capacity development and is passionate about solving the big problems. He has spent the last 5 years traveling the Asia Pacific region on behalf of the Australian government providing advice and conducting assessments of IT capacity and capability whilst working on a multi-million dollar technology project delivering capacity in PNG.

Review of ANU Does Not Address E-learning

The report "Review of the Australian NationalUniversity (ANU) Act 1991 and the governance arrangements of the ANU" was prepared for the Australian Department of Education by UK company Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. The report is dated 12 December 2014 but was only released in June 2015. The report gives a positive outlook on the running of ANU and makes only some minor recommendations for improvements in transparency via the web. However, a major deficiency in the report is that it does not address e-learning.
 The report mentions online learning once in the background:

"Online learning is becoming more popular and accepted, particularly with certain cohorts of learners, thereby reducing the relevance of national boundaries." (page 11, Touche Tohmatsu Limited, 2014).

However, there is no further discussion of e-leaning's implications for the running of the ANU and no recommendations for the ANU to address this. Unfortunately this ignoring the implications of e-learning is common to Australian eduction policy makers. Education is a major Australian export industry and that industry is at risk of being made uncompetitive by e-learning in the next five to ten years.

In some respects ANU is well placed to make use of e-learning. Unlike other Australian universities, ANU  has not made a large investment in multiple domestic and international campuses. As a result ANU will not have to write off this investment in campuses, as other Australian universities will have to do.

Also ANU has joined the edX consortium and successfully delivered Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well has offering some more conventional small on-line courses (I run "ICT Sustainability" on-line for the ANU Research School of Computer Science). However, a move to e-learning requires not only different skills from educators but a change in the business operations and governance of an organization.

ANU's emphasis on postgraduate education is an advantage as this is easier to move on-line, than undergraduate educaion. I will be speaking on "Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students" at the the Cambridge University Library, 2pm, 22 July 2015.  However, e-learning for undergraduates requires a change in the teaching, support and business functions.

E-learning requires educators to learn new skills, which takes time. It has taken me about five years, and thousands of hours of training, to become comfortable designing and delivering courses on-line. Australian universities which have not already started on this path may find they do not have time to reequip and re-skill their workforce, before their on-campus courses are rendered obsolete and their students move to off-shore e-learning.