The second keynote of ALT-C 2009 came from Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor Designate at Open University.

I’m afraid I can’t due justice to the beginning of this Keynote – it’s the most comical opening to a presentation I’ve ever seen. So I strongly recommend those of you who haven’t seen the session, in either its live or recorded form, to go and watch the video. My husband who’s a secondary school teacher is planning to reuse the material as an argument against some of his technology-hostile colleagues. The serious point behind Bean’s comedic interlude is that innovative scepticism is nothing new – it’s always been up to those who can see the exciting innovation and bring them in.

Martin Bean went through the major themes in HE right now – globalisation (there are now 2.5 million people studying abroad), massification, and the privatisation of HE (one in three students are now studying in private institutions). All of these trends have profound consequences for learning technologies. Private Higher Education Institutions, for example, are “riding the wave of online education”, in Bean’s words, and massification means that the bricks and mortar is no longer sustainable.

Bean is also right to point out that for the UK to continue to thrive and prosper, its higher education sector has to equip students with the right sort of skills. To this I would add that it’s impossible to take an overly broad view of this. Martin Bean says that the STEM subjects are critical, and of course that’s true, but in my opinion, one key pre-requisite to the innovative economy is an atmosphere of cerebral creativity, and the arts and humanities are an important part of this. That’s why I’m pleased that the newly-launched Peer to Peer University is offering a course in Cyberpunk literature. This sort of initiative takes us one closer to a vision of higher education ably articulated by Marjorie Scardino in HEFCE’s recent report, Higher Education: achievement, challenges and prospects.

A ‘good’ education may be crucial to a good job; it may make a student with a bright idea into a star entrepreneur. But we should expect even more from it than that. We should expect it to provide every student with the mental tools that heighten the pure joy of a story, a perfectly honed mathematical proof, a lesson of history. We should expect it to provide the essentials of citizenship; to help develop character, wisdom, generosity; to equip people with the enquiring minds and the practical, modern skills to go on learning all their lives.

Demographically, UK is like many countries in the West in not being able to depend on young graduates alone, and Martin believes that learning in the workplace needs to be integrated as a result. We should remove the artificial barriers between informal and formal learners, enabling people to move in and out of the learning environment seamlessly. Technology is, of course, an important part of this vision, facilitating relevant, personalised and engaging learning with agile efficient and connected learning systems.

With all this in mind, Martin spoke passionately about the success of Open University’s OpenLearn initiative, which has received over 4 million visitors since launch and offers over 40 free of charge self-study web units (over 6000 hours). Along very similar lines, Open University on iTunes U is currently attracting an average of 160,000 downloads per week.

Martin Bean’s thoughts around engaging students in learning run along the lines of “meeting them where they live and letting amazing things happen”. He told the audience that their students could be anywhere but definitely aren’t on the VLE. This really underpins the OU’s SocialLearn initiative – described by Martin Bean as a “platform architecture of data and services”, and what may become its tagline, “Education meets social networking.”

Michael Wesch took a similar position in the opening Keynote of the conference. This was a recurrent question at ALT-C this year, but which was perhaps tackled most explicitly in the VLE is Dead debate.

One of the debaters of that session, James Clay questioned Wesch’s approach on his own blog:

… I do wonder and still wonder if all our learners are like his students? Are all our learners using Facebook and other Web 2.0 tools and services on a regular basis and importantly are they using them for learning?

I don’t see a Google Generation or Digital Natives in the learners I work with. Some are using Facebook and other tools, many are not. Those that are, not all are using these tools for learning.

I met many other delegates who took a similar position.

The reality behind this debate is of course changing even as I write this blog. Terry Anderson pointed out in the third Keynote, for example, that there are now 24 Facebook groups about Athabasca University.

Against this shifting backdrop, it’s important to listen to students, retain a sense of what higher learning is about, and to use the right technology at the right time.