Association for Learning Technology – ALT-C 2012 Conference

This was my 4^th ALT-C conference over the years; as well as participating in the broader conference I was ‘killing 2 birds with one stone’ (that’s great coming from a vegie!) with 2 presentations to disseminate our JISC-funded OER projects and Dynamic Learning Maps projects.

It was a great conference, with about 500 delegates including people from 30 different countries. As usual, there were many parallel sessions I wish I could have attended – but the use of the CroudVine conference social networking (before, during and after) is really useful to find out about the sessions you couldn’t make.

There were too many good sessions to mention each one but here are some selected personal notes from just a few bits of the conference:

Confrontation with Reality

The overarching conference theme was “confrontation with reality” – in part the changed political/funding climate but most emphasis on the rapidly changing technologies/culture, modes and habits of learning. One of the keynotes; Richard Ross from the Technology Enhanced Learning Research programme made an analogy: 80 years after the invention of the printing press use of that technology was more or less limited to printing the bible. In the same way we are only making limited use of technology in education and most of this is focused on doing the same things in the same way in which we have done previously. I thought we had come on a little more than that, but certainly developments in personal devices; sharing/collaboration, gesture recognition, A.I. and semantic Web technologies may all have big impact on learning and teaching for the future. The good news is that Richard saw the ongoing need for face-to-face teaching for at least 2 more generations and the emotional side of learning would increasingly be supported by technology!

Digital Literacies

Not a conference theme but did come-up a lot in many sessions; particularly as HEIs are increasingly pushing their digital provision as part of their distinctive ‘offer’.

Digital Literacies Symposium (input from 4 projects from JISC DL programme)

• Must go beyond ‘IT skills’ and needs a team approach (academic, library, staff dev, learning technologists, admin and other support staff etc).
• Embedding/contextualisation important (or risk the usual ‘initiative fatigue’ and lack of engagement having gone beyond saturation point for ‘bolt-ons’).
• Ideally practice-based (rather than focused on a specific technology/device) & careful use of terminology/emphasis e.g frame in CDP/RDF for researchers.

• Tie in with other literacies (Cardiff) e.g. information literacies and academic literacies crucial for effective use of technology for T&L.
• Forward looking institutions are supporting and rewarding staff for innovative use of tech. for T&L.
• General state of play:
  • BYOD (and bring your own skills) happening – like it or not! Needs increased personal responsibility for both device and skills.
  • Students typically over confident – but only have narrow skill set
  • Staff  under-confident – but can ‘run with it’ with some encouragement
• Other points of interest:
  • Institutional Audit Tool for DL: http://tinyurl.com/8n2dxjo
  • Online course “professional online presence”
  • WBL – supporting digital literacies of employers
  • Lifting of restrictions on staff use of social media
  • National drivers for DL in  Wales
• JISC DL Programme: http://tinyurl.com/cn8khrf

Open Education

Open education and sharing was one of the conference themes; lots of presentations on OERs and a stall from Open Nottingham; I briefly caught-up with Simon Wilkinson who leads the open-source ROGO assessment system. On the last day I chaired a workshop “Climbing the stairway to OER nirvana” – it was a fun workshop led by Chris Pegler, Suzanne Hardy, Alannah Fitzgerald, Frank Manista, and Joanna Wild .Different institutions are at different stages, but it feels like OER may be close to the ‘pivot point’ for mainstreaming. Ok the stairway our group drew had some flat landings and a trap door as well as stairs, so there is still a long way to go! However, judging from the number of presenters for this workshop and their combined energy and enthusiasm there is a great OER community to drive things forward.

Our presentations

OER in the context of the curriculum

Dynamic Learning Maps

Next years conference:

ALT-C 2013: 10-12^th Sept, Nottingham (20^th anniversary)

http://www.alt.ac.uk/events/alt-c-2013

Call for papers: November 2012

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XCRI project report now available

Our final report for the ‘North of England XCRI Testbed’ (NEXT) project is now available at:
http://www.epics.ac.uk/xcri

This was one of a number of JISC funded projects taking forward the XCRI specification for the eXchange of Course Related Information.

The XCRI specification is becoming an increasingly important way of sharing and advertising course information. It is a step forward in supporting more flexible education, including multiple provider scenarios.