Horizon Scanning

In the world of online learning the landscape is continually changing, often ideas conceived and developed for the classroom are evolved for the online environment. However, things are changing and innovations are now being designed specifically for the online environment and then adapted for the classroom, several reports enable us to investigate innovations in HE organisations and their progress towards them, here is a summary of what the reports tell us.  The NMC Horizon Report (Johnson et al, 2014) and the more UK centric NMC Technology Outlook: UK Tertiary Education 2011–2016 (Johnson and Adams, 2011) identify key trends, significant challenges and important developments in educational technology; top of the list for short term implementation are social media, blended learning and learning analytics. The Innovating pedagogies report presents ‘10 innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education’. (Sharples et al, 2013:3), these include, unsurprisingly, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Content) and badges to accredit learning, learning analytics and various collaborative and social learning opportunities including gaming and maker culture.

However, elearning is also developing at a pace within business organisations, these are potential competitors to HE education, particularly when the National Scholarship Programme (NSP) ceases to fund undergraduate students from 2015, creating an open market. The New Learning Agenda:2013-14 Towards Maturity Benchmark Study (Overton and Dixon, 2013) identifies organisational interest in MOOCs and badges; this may indicate a shift in preference from formal to more informal qualification measures, particularly amongst established corporate organisations.

Let’s take a look at 2 technologies that could appear within the online environment within the next couple of years

Collective Intelligence

Although OERs have been slow to take off the idea hasn’t gone away and the MOOC movement is having a profound influence on this practice; reinforcing social constructivist pedagogy. Open Educational Ideas http://www.idea-space.eu/ is an EU Commission supported project that encourages educators to collaborate from the outset on creating OERs rather than repurposing the end result. Although there is still work to be done on creating tool sets and gaining a critical mass of interest for certain projects, the initial concept looks promising.

Relevance for teaching, learning, research or information management

• Collective intelligence promotes peer-to-peer learning through knowledge networks
• Knowledge networks encompass multiple points of view and allow for people to make instant updates to research and topics.
• Implicit knowledge stores provide insight on the learning choices we make by tracking our online searches and activity, and ultimately direct us to the discovery of new information.

Some other examples:

ChemSpider, developed by the Royal Society of Chemistry, is a free database for chemical structures, gathering curated research from across the web into a single search repository:

http://www.chemspider.com.

The Khan Academy is a vast but highly curated collection of videos that supplement school curriculum: http://www.khanacademy.org/.

The Knowledge Web project is designed to explore ways to map human understanding and experience: http://www.k-web.org/.

For Further Reading

Learning Reimagined: Participatory, Peer, Global, Online

http://dmlcentral.net/blog/howard-rheingold/learning-reimagined-participatory-peer-globalonline

(Howard Rheingold, DMLCentral, 22 July 2011.) This article addresses the implications of open educational resources to influence the pedagogy behind self-organizing peer learning groups.

Mahout my Hadoop and Embrace Collective Intelligence

http://blog.readingroom.com/2011/06/30/mahout-my-hadoop-and-embrace-collectiveintelligence/

(Martin Buhr, Reading Room UK, 30 June 2011.) The author breaks down collective intelligence to four stages: recommendation, classification, prediction, and clustering.

3D Telepresence

Although 2D telepresence has been used for some time now, an example being Blackboard Collaborate, 3D telepresence is still in its infancy. However, over the past couple of years students have consistently requested more live classroom sessions with their tutors, reinforcing the notion that visual cues and synchronised engagement is increasing in popularity – at least amongst communities with good broadband services and sharing the same time zone. To make the change to 3D, improvements in broadcast software (360 Degree image capture) will be needed and improved streaming facilities, although this seems as yet a distant dream, several high-profile 3-dimensional demonstrations of the technology have taken place; for instance, CNN made extensive use of the technology six years ago during coverage of the 2008 US presidential election.

Telepresence in Practice

VisiDeck is collaborating with the University of Derby to take an architect’s two dimensional plans to create a virtual 3D world that clients can “walk” through:

http://www.derby.ac.uk/news/games-technology-virtually-advances-architecture.

Pathways to Space is an initiative at the Powerhouse Museum where secondary students are developing space robotics, and searching for life on Mars through video conferencing:

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/pathwaystospace/.

For Further Reading

Holograms Deliver 3-D, Without the Goofy

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/business/05novel.html

(Anne Eisenberg, The New York Times, 4 December 2010.) In recent years, holograms are being actively developed at research centres within universities and private industry.

Holograms have the potential to not only provide realistic 3D imaging of complex objects, but also be a driving force in teleprescence.

Leukaemia Sufferer Stepan Supin Stays Home, Sends Robot to School

http://www.news.com.au/technology/leukaemia-sufferer-stepan-supin-stays-home-sends-robotto–

school/story-e6frfro0-1225992845324

(Herald Sun, 24 January 2011.) A telepresence robot allows a student with leukaemia to participate in the classroom and interact with teachers and other students while he is at home.

Vu Introduces Telepresence System for Remote Offices, SMBs

http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/network/227900432

(Daniel P. Dern, InformationWeek, 21 October 2010.) Vu is offering a new technology that brings down the price of videoconferencing technology in the workplace or in schools. The system brings hi-definition video and better than telephone audio quality.

References

Johnson, L. and Adams, S. (2011) Technology Outlook: UK Tertiary Education 2011–2016, NMC Horizon Report Regional Analysis [e-book] Austin: TX, The New Media Consortium; available at http://www.nmc.org/publications/technology-outlook-uk-tertiary-education [Accessed: 14 Feb 2014].

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition [e-book] Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Available at http://www.nmc.org/publications/2014-horizon-report-higher-ed [Accessed: 14 Feb 2014].

Overton, L. and Dixon, G. (2013) New Learning Agenda:2013-14 Towards Maturity Benchmark Study. [e-book] Towards Maturity. Available through: http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2013/05/07/towards-maturity-2013-benchmark-study/ [Accessed: 14 Feb 2014].

Sharples, M., McAndrew, P., Weller, M., Ferguson, R., FitzGerald, E., Hirst, T., and Gaved, M. (2013).Innovating Pedagogy 2013: Open University Innovation Report 2. [e-book]Milton Keynes: The Open University.

OLnet What is it and how might you use it?

OLnet – the Open Learning network is a website dedicated to Open Educational Resources, so what can it offer educators in relation to their practice?

Firstly, this in not one tool, as the Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme (2013) explains, TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) is complex and is characterised as a bricolage,

a productive and creative innovation process that involves bringing together and adapting technologies and pedagogies, experimentation to generate further insights and a willingness to engage with local communities and practices.

(TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING RESEARCH PROGRAMME, 2013, p7)

Hosted via Moodle, the website acts as a receptacle for numerous devices embedded within it, these support different aspects of practice namely:

• Compendium and Compendium LD. These tools offer frameworks to support practitioners with the learning design element of creating OERs (Open Educational Resources).
• Cloudworks, Evidence Hub and Cohere. These tools assist researchers in their understanding of how OERs are developing; providing examples in practice and using Scoopit, collates a worldwide map of contributors to OER projects.
• Openlearn, Labspace and the Open learning initiative. These searchable resource intensive websites house OERs themselves and offer a wide range of open source learning content in multiple disciplines.

Returning to previous discussions of innovation, could this site be considered innovative? Using the model and criteria applied previously, yes it could be described as innovative. From the discussion above we can see that it contains devices and curricula that are up-to-date and change our perspective of education. Underpinned by study and research it provides a space where educators from different disciplines are able to work together. However, innovation is also defined by process and OLnet provides that too, an example of which is demonstrated using the Compendium tool below.