In light of the innaugural meeting of the SENG network (formal name STILL being discussed) yesterday, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to reflect on what took place, what was discussed, and throw in a few words on my interpretations and opinions .
We dropped the ball on recording the event
I’m very sorry to say that we largely dropped the ball on recording and broadcasting the event. I’m hoping to catch up with Robyn (and anyone else who’s interested) to determine the most effective ways of capturing and distributing the discussion more widely, and thus making it more accessible.
In my view this network should be open to anyone interested in participating – regardless of their location. My hope is the fairly comprehensive notes outlined in this post will help provide an overview of what took place. We’ll try to having something set-up next time that will cater to remote participants. My apologies for anyone affected by this.
A fairly diverse turnout
Despite some last minute changes in the list of attendees we still had a fairly strong turn out of 14 to 15 people. Near as I can tell the sectors we represented included TAFE, university, and one or two people who work across all levels of formal education. So all things considered the range was fairly broad.
That said, UNSW had the highest percentage of participants – there were 7 of us, including 3 from Learning & Teaching (Belinda, Giedre, myself), 3 from the faculties (Andrew, John Paul and Emma), and 1 from the L&T portfolio in central IT (Robyn).
It was expressed and fairly unanimously agreed that the group’s planning spaces should sit outside the domain (DNS) of any one institution – thus encouraging a feeling of independence, equity and equal opportunity & representation. So the current planning page on the UNSW TELT Wiki is seen as temporary only, pending the finalisation of the group name, which perhaps not surprisingly hasn’t yet been agreed upon.
What’s in a name?
The topic of naming the organisation has proven a pretty tricky business, due to a number of factors I think. These including the fact the overarching mission, objectives and common philosophy of the group hasn’t been clearly articulated yet, and ultimately finding an acronym that you can say, hasn’t already been taken, and doesn’t carry mixed or even negative connotations tends to rule out many of the choices.
Given we’d nearly run out of time I suggested we continue the discussion online in order to finalise, using the tag/hashtag SENG as the identifier for the time being. It was pointed out that the more you use a “temporary” identifier, the less temporary it becomes – so I think getting the formal name established soon is pretty important.
Preliminary Discussions
One of the particularly nice things for me to see was how much participation there was in the discussion. Virtually everyone, I think, contributed to the conversation throughout the day – so there was a distinct atmosphere of inclusiveness to the network that I’d hoped would emerge.
A list of discussion topics is being compiled on the TELT Wiki (to be moved to its final location later), so I won’t attempt to reiterate them all here. However there are a couple of notable points that resonated with me that I think are worth mentioning:
The future of the LMS
To the chagrin of some, the topic of the learning management system came up on several different occassions – this included LMS use as a whole, rather than one specific platform or company. In most cases the context was how prevalent and disproportional the consideration for and usage of the LMS really was in policy and practice.
Interestingly (and refreshingly) I don’t recall the LMS ever being referred to in a positive light; the emphasis was on the reality of the landscape, how some institutions were in fact reverting to a primary focus on the LMS as a central or even singular educational technology.
The team who looks after Moodle at the University of Sydney, for example, appears to be under pressure to stop their use of the open course LMS/CMS and instead adopt the central “official” service.
A few people expressed interest in looking past the LMS to the more individually empowering technologies – frequently aggregated under the umbrella term, “Personal Learning Environment.” The argument was effectively that we need to be thinking in innovative ways using empowering technologies, rather than focusing on the LMS, as is commonly the case at many of our institutions.
I definitely see the logic in this and wholeheartedly advocate the exploration of distributed learner empowerment and a movement away from centralised systems. However to be both objective, I think engaging in discussions about the possibilities and exploration of PLE’s and PLNs without addressing, or at least recognising the complex, sometimes disappointing reality of the LMS monopoly in institutional policy and defacto practice is unwise. Yet so too is straining the point and focusing exclusively on the LMS.
The key for the network, and for education in general too I think, is to advocate change and innovation based on an informed awareness of the existing challenges and obstacles. We’re far more likely to make a difference if we know what (or even whom) we face – and as a group/network we’ll be far more capable of supporting each other if we’re aware of each other’s circumstances.
UNSW as an example
The big surprise for me was how innovative UNSW was seen in the scheme of things. Our current exploration of a distributed platform for Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching (TELT) – containing wikis, blogs, Moodle, Blackboard, and cloud services outside the university domain – was seen to be of tremendous interest to staff from several other institutions – especially in light of the decisions by some to restrict access to these technologies, rather than explore them.
Of equal interest were the experiences of the New South Blogs publishing platform being run by Andrew Murphie and Mat Wall-Smith. Andrew spoke of their experiences, and in particular how much credit goes to Mat for his tireless efforts to keep the connection of 550 blogs going in its innaugural session.
Creative Commons, Openness, Sharing and Policy
The topic of blogs quickly evolved into a wider discussion on the nature of the medium, and in particular the implications and risks they have – at least insomuch as policymakers perceive them. The discussion spanned a number of broad topics, including Copyright and IP, Creative Commons and sharing, quality assurance, open versus closed systems as well as the (in my view, appalling and counterproductive) firewalls and site filtering policies in place at certain levels of education
Perhaps not surprisingly the views expressed during the discussion were particularly diverse. Some participants expressing concern about operating without policy in place to expressly permit certain activies (aka Strict Constructionist); while others argued there is nothing wrong with acting on these ideas because innovation emerges far faster than policy, and it’s only after an activity is expressly forbidden (or otherwise incorporated into policy) that it can become an issues (aka Loose Constructionist).
My view on the matter is that policy should not be seen as etched in stone, and therefore untouchable or unchangeable. It’s not something that should go unquestioned. Bad policy or policy that caters to the few at the expense of the many should be spoken out against, if not rallied against outright. Policy should exist to help and benefit The People; people shouldn’t exist to serve policy.
Policy can change and should be aligned with what is most valuable to learners and the facilitation and empowering of the learning experience. If this isn’t happening then something’s wrong, and the matter should be discussed and questioned openly. That’s one key way that change happens – by recognising faults or deficiencies and activily seeking to make them right – in both words and deeds.
The activities we engage in as researchers are especially important here, because they can help establish and provide evidence for why these changes are important and indeed necessary.
An Unconference?
As a medium-term goal, we also broached the topic of “organising” an unconference in which we were able to explore many of the common themes in more depth and amongst a wider network of participants. This topic was not discussed in depth, but it did appear that many thought the idea was worth exploring further.
Robyn and my preliminary thoughts on the format were that we could use the BarCamp or WordCamp model in which participation by everyone is strongly encouraged, and that the process of coming together for a vibrant interactive discussion is as important as the outcomes of the unconference itself.
Future Activities and Details
It was fairly unanimously recognised that continuing to interact with one another is a very desirable thing, however many indicated that they weren’t sure how many future events they’d be able to attend due to time and work constraints. This lead to discussions about implementing a flexible model in which we alternated between synchronous online discussion and physical face-to-face meetings.
It was also suggested that the nature and general topic if the meeting be established and circulated prior to the event. This would enable people to determine whether the topic was of interest or relevance to them.
I think it’s pretty much expected that people will pick and choose what they attend, and engage with – that’s the nature of a network.
What have I missed?
Thanks for the write up Mike.
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