[There are a heap of typos and grammatical errors in this post, which I'll clean up as soon as I can.]

Yesterday was a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of day.  The Learning and Teaching Forum brought roughly 150 staff together for the purposes of discussing the theme of “Engaging the Learner, Recognising the Teacher.”

My hat goes off to the organisers of the event – of which I was only a marginal contributor. The event ran quite smoothly and everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves, with a fair amount of lively discussion taking place during the formal sessions, as well as informal chats between them.

My part in the day was as technical consultant for the interactive session that took place just before lunch.  The question that was brought to me was how to add an innovative element to group work in a way that would help streamline and collate the discussion.

Choosing the Tool

Initially the organisers suggested Twitter the option they were considering, but at the time I advised against it because I felt it was out of step with the rest of the day and didn’t particularly suit the outcomes they were trying to address.

Looking back I’m not sure if I still feel that way or not, but the idea of throwing Twitter out to 16 tables and 150 people – most of whom did not include computers as a core component of their teaching, let alone are experienced Twitter users, or have even heard the term hashtags – felt entirely too risky.  So instead I suggested EtherPad; my logic being it was similar to technologies they would have been familiar with already (e.g. the humble word processor).

In hindsight the synchronous aspect of EtherPad and the size of the collaborating cohort  made this a fairly daring tool to use – though that thought didn’t occur to me at the time.  The notion of using a single document that we all edited made perfect sense to me, with the added element that you could actually SEE everyone’s edits appear as they were writing them, thus yielding an even greater sense of collaboration and interactivity.

There were no version control issues, and all the data was immediately collated.  Plus EtherPad lets you export the resulting document into a variety of formats, including Word, PDF, TXT, HTML, and OpenOffice.

Misjudging the Audience

And yet I also wholeheartedly failed to appreciate the perspective that most of the room was coming from when it came to technology.  Most of the people were long time academics, who preferred tried and tested means of working and some of whom had an incredible aversion to technology that bordered on sheer antagonism.  On more than one occasion I heard term “eLearning” used in a completely derogatory context, while others questioning why were weren’t using butcher’s paper and texters.

If this were a courtroom, I’d have to classify at least a few of the attendees as “hostile witnesses” for the defendant, educational technology.  So my role as technical consultant began to feel more and more like a trial by fire in the court of public opinion.

The relative lack of technical expertise and discomfort with computers caused some stress from a practical standpoint as well.  Thankfully I had an army of helper ants, one at each table, to translate the consensus of the group to the EtherPad.  However with 16 tables, 150 people, limited time, a local wireless network that wasn’t accustomed to that heavy a load, and only a handful of helpers I was running around like a crazy person the whole time.

But really there will always be vocal opponents to the use of educational technology, and I was pleased to have at least a few people approach me after the session was over to thank me for my efforts, saying they thought it went ok.

The Session

The aim of the session was to facilitate the age old activity of group discussion.  There were a total of three questions posed to the room.  After each question the tables would break up to discuss what they thought about the topic, and come to an agreement about 3 or 4 points they wanted to included in their response.  These points would then be added to the EtherPad by one of the L&T helpers seated at the table.

To try to establish some structure in the document, rather than start with a blank page I entered the questions into the document one by one just before the group discussion began, along with a list of the tables and 3 bullet-points per table where they could include their responses.  I also added the new questions to the top, rather than the bottom, to make it easier for people to know where to look.

The Result

From my perspective, the interactive session was a mostly positive experience.  Yes there were technical issues that arose in the form of network access dropping off on a few computers, people getting kicked out of the document temporarily, browsers freezing up, and the fact we had more computers that were allowed to view or edit the document at once (EtherPad has a 16 person cap).  However all of these issues were temporary and quickly over come with some attention and creative thinking.

What I’m most interested in hearing though is the perspectives of the participants.  Yes there were some vocal critics of the use of technology in the session (as always), however they’re views aren’t necessarily indicative of overall opinion.

The organisers plan on circulating a survey next week to gather feedback on the event and have said I can include a few questions there.  So the final decision of the court of public opinion remains to be handed down.

Final Thoughts

There’s a great deal more I want to consider and reflect on about this event, because the implications are important.  For one thing, this forum is in some ways representative of the realities of the spectrum public opinion.  There were a select few individuals who are extremely comfortable and confident with technology, a silent majority who are somewhere in the middle, and a selection of highly vocal critics, for whom all technology is suspect.

The latter point is very important to spend time unpacking and thinking about; but that’s another post.