The activities of the team behind Project Xiphos have been rolled up into a brand new operating division – Talis Education – which launched this week, including a shiny new site and blog.

We’ve migrated all the posts from this blog over to the new site, including the podcasts, so we’ll no longer be posting over here at Project Xiphos. We’ll leave the blog here for a couple of months, after which we’ll be 301-ing requests to the relevant pages on the Talis Education site.

Thanks for all your comments on this blog over the last 12 months – we’ve copied those over to the new site too. Finally, don’t forget to update your feed to that of the new site.

I do love a nice trip to London with work, and rarely more so than when I’m covering an event that has a solid line-up of auspicious individuals who are destined not to agree on the theme of the day. Today was the launch of Demos’ report The edgeless University: why higher education must embrace technology. Not that there was a stand-up row or anything dramatic like that. But it’s a contentious area and to have achieved complete consensus would have signalled a lack of representation of the UK higher education sector as a whole.

Due to the presence of David Lammy, new minister for Higher Education here in the UK, the overview of the report came second rather than first. But that was fine. David Lammy always provides a robust defence of self-learning and cultural values, and spoke eloquently today about the rise of the trade union movement, when working men and women came together to share ideas as well as ways of working. If only all New Labour politicians were as sensitive to the need for learning for learning’s sake. He extended his gaze to technologies, pointing out that where the Open University used a democratic mechanism – television – to broadcast learning material, the internet now gives us the possibility of many-to-many participation (elaborated recently in a TED video from Clay Shirky).

It was down to Peter Bradwell from Demos to provide an overview of the report, the gist of which is that Higher Education is in a fix despite its successes. So some of our aspirations for higher education – notably excellence and widening participation – are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, technology can offer some solutions. A few weeks ago, UCL announced its Open Access mandate, for example. There are good exemplars out there of social networks and collaborative working across institutional and national boundaries, as well as innovative student – lecturer communication channels. He also outlined the recommendations of the report. The recommendations of the report were summarised as being a commitment to openness of content, and to normalising the process of making content freely available, investment into stores of shared content, a review of business models, and new forms of provision of content. What rings in my ears now, is a comment from my neighbour at the event that the recommendations were far too centred around content.

If there was consensus today, it was that the current model of higher education in the UK is not sustainable. All speakers made statements to this effect. Ann Mroz from Times Higher Education, for example, said that universities are changing at a rapid pace but on a fragile financial basis, although she did make the point that universities have always been asked to deliver more than the funding allowed. Ann was not alone in pleading for thoughtful and strategic approaches to change generally and technological adoption generally. Ed Smith from HEFCE expressed his hope that short-termism and cost pressures don’t lead to disinvestment. Well he’s in a better position than most to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Peter Bradwell also asked whether we are in the midst of a “perfect storm”. The funding crisis, the threat to UK’s world-class status, increased demand (especially this year as a record number of applicants seek shelter from the recession) from diverse demographic groups. Could this be an exciting moment of rebirth, he asked? Meanwhile, Ann Mroz emphasised that with the economic downturn, the value of a degree is being questioned as never before.

So if we’re in the eye of a perfect storm, what can be done?

The beginning of an answer to that question seems to lie in how we define the Edgeless University. David Lammy referred to a “global senior common room” i.e. opening up scholarly materials and experiences to wider society. Peter Bradwell used the city as quite a powerful analogy, arguing that cities have become a locus of function rather than form – sprawling outwards with increasingly blurred boundaries. Technology is clearly a big part of this, in terms of pedagogical and collaborative tools / environments, and Open Access and Open Educational Resources each attracted favourable references. David Lammy called for academics to get out there in the community and tune into societal debates.

The university is losing its edges, but not its existence, the speakers argued. Academic guidance was still needed to help students navigate through the information landscape. Malcolm Read from JISC argued that the Google generation is hopeless at critical analysis of materials, although he did precede that by saying that information literacy needs to be improved among both staff and students, so I’m not sure where that leaves the role of academic guidance. Ann Mroz believed that universities had to remain at the heart of validating information, in a world of knowledge that can only grow with the internet and Open Access. More broadly, Ed Smith foresaw that the university had to accept some loss of control in order to move to a more sustainable model.

Like most higher education thought leaders in the UK at least, Ann Mroz continues to believe in the importance of face-to-face contact. This is backed up by study after study highlighting a continuing demand from students for this, and we’ve found that to be the case in focus groups with students. I think that’s why it came as such a surprise to me to hear Ed Smith from HEFCE arguing that learning relationships, so often enhanced by a physical presence, will have to be re-created in the virtual world. It may well have been the first time I’ve heard a policy-maker put forward this bold argument, and might be why Ed emphasised that he would be articulating his personal views on higher education rather than formal HEFCE positions. Interesting turn of events, anyway.

Like Brian Kelly, I haven’t yet had time to read the 90 page report. But as a contributor, Brian is in a better position than me to provide an early summation of its main strands, which he has done on his blog.

In this podcast I talk with Alma Swan from Key Perspectives. Over the past 5 years in which Open Access publishing has undergone considerable growth, Alma has been a reference point, providing useful and authoritative research and analysis into the progress of the Open Access movement, drawing upon her experience in both scholarly communications and the natural sciences. We begin by talking about trends in the core area of Open Access publishing – namely journal articles – and then extend our view to the potential growth of Open Access e-Books. We also look at the emerging area of open research data, examining both the potential benefits to research and to society as a whole, as well as considering the significant challenges to be overcome. This podcast provides a useful snapshot of the Open Access movement as well as insights into its future.
See also Alma’s blog, OptimalScholarship.

In my latest podcast I talk with John Baker, CEO of Desire2Learn. We discuss the company’s attitude to designing software applications, and consider some of the changes in the Higher Education sector since their first products appeared a decade ago.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

• Commonwealth of Learning
• IEEE
• IMS
• JISC and my podcast with Executive Secretary Malcolm Read
• LORENet
• Moodle
• OAI-PMH and my podcast with Herbert van de Sompel
• Sakai and my podcast with Executive Director Mike Korcuska

This conversation was recorded on Friday 12 June 2009.

For other podcasts in the Xiphos series of Education podcasts see here. To subscribe to updates from all of Talis’ podcast series, see here.

In my latest podcast I talk with John Wilbanks, Creative Commons‘ Vice President with responsibility for the Science Commons project. We discuss Science Commons and efforts to make data created from the conduct of science more widely available.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

• Berkman Center
• Tim Berners-Lee speaks at TED
• Bio2RDF
• CC0 license
• Free Software Foundation
• Linked Data
• Merck’s Human Disease Biology Programme, Sage
• Peter Murray-Rust (and my podcast)
• NCBI
• Neurocommons
• Cameron Neylon
• Open Data Commons
• Open Knowledge Foundation
• OpenStreetMap
• Public Domain Dedication and License (and my podcast with Leigh Dodds)
• PubMed Central
• Science Collaboration Framework
• Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data
• Richard Stallman
• Talis blog coverage as Springer acquires BioMed Central
• World Wide Web Consortium

This conversation was recorded on Friday 29 May 2009.

For other podcasts in the Xiphos series of Education podcasts see here. To subscribe to updates from all of Talis’ podcast series, see here.

Yesterday I travelled over to the beautiful city of Oxford to mark International Academic Freedom Day at a special meeting organised by Academics for Academic Freedom, chaired by Ann Mroz, Editor of Times Higher Education Supplement.

I found out about both the group and the event on Facebook, and this started me thinking about the potential impact of the social web on academic freedom. I’ve now realised, however, that I got it the wrong way round, and it’s more about academic freedom impacting the social web. In fact, it seems from the meeting that academic freedom underpins most if not all of what we’re trying to achieve in the combined areas of networked learning and Open Education. Not only is it about facilitating the free flow of information and discussion, the currency of the social web, but at a fundamental level, the production of high quality scholarly content is largely dependent on the ability of academics to engage freely in the realm of ideas.

Steve Fuller from University of Warwick spoke inspiringly about Lehrenfreiheit – what the Germans call the freedom to learn. What if, he asked, a university student, trying to get an enlightened view of a subject, finds that issues important to him are not being addressed? And what if, as a result, students organise their own study groups for areas not being covered by the curriculum, and then these study groups get some sort of credit? This is, in fact, how some academic disciplines have been formed in the past and then formally recognised. This seems to be saying that without fully extended freedoms in academia, eventually ideas simply stand still and there’s little of any real meaning to share or discuss.

There were interesting disagreements in the meeting about how discussions should be conducted in academia, including those with undergraduates. Steve Fuller argued initially that if the person at the lectern merely proclaims something without backing it up with reasoned argument or evidence, then that’s not academic freedom but an abuse of it.

However Dennis Hayes, visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University, disagreed, asking what is wrong with asserting something without evidence? It just means that nobody will follow you. Dennis consistently argued that academia needs a completely free environment in which to engage intellectually, saying that he would rather students opined everything than have them silenced. The freedom to make a mistake must be in place.

Dennis counterposed this view with a recent book written by Stanley Fish called Save the World on Your Own Time, who advocates a “Be quiet until you’ve learnt how to research” approach to student engagement. And without freedom, the value of people from diverse backgrounds in higher education, their perspectives and past experiences, would not be fully released.

Roy Harris, Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at University of Oxford, identified a number of barriers to academic freedom in UK higher education. Current peer review arrangements came in for criticism on the grounds that “judge and jury are on the same side”. As one academic said, as he backed away from challenging orthodox positions of his own department, “Every year these guys fix my salary”. But Harris perceived the biggest cause of curtailed academic freedoms to be the incumbent funding arrangements. Last year a Nobel Laureate, Robert B. Laughlin, published
The Crime of Reason, which documented the rate at which areas of research are becoming illegal for the independent researcher because of IP issues such as patents. That’s not the only funding-related problem though. Dennis Hayes pointed out that after researchers have presented their own papers to the RAE, they no longer read anyone else’s papers. And that’s because those papers were only written for the RAE process in the first place. That’s what I meant when I said that the quality of scholarly content is dependent on freedom of inquiry, as opposed to having to chase funding constantly, to the point that many academics today struggle to articulate their own area of specialisation in a coherent manner – their careers are becoming a patchwork quilt of disjointed research activities driven by funding availability.

The Open Education Movement and the learning technology community has every interest in joining the fight for academic freedom. It goes to the very heart of what we’re trying to achieve.

Brian Lamb from University of British Columbia facilitated last night’s Educause Live session Where is the Open Education Movement Going, consisting of interviews with Brian’s co-organisers of the Open Education Conference to be held in Vancouver in August.

David Wiley looked back over the 11 years since he first coined the term Open Education, particularly at the significant shifts in attitude among content producers, but the conference itself is an acknowledgement that the Open Education is currently on a plateau in terms of growth, and that ideas are needed on how to cross the chasm from early adopter to early majority adoption.

A parallel with Flickr emerged in the discussion. There are now over 1 million shared photos on Flickr, supported by Creative Commons licensing. However, one attendee pointed out that the rate of upload of photos to Flickr is slowing. So was Flickr just a fad? Has it now reached equilibrium? Flickr in its early days was promoted within the in-crowd, i.e. early adopters who readily understood what Flickr was about. But today, the percentage of people aware of open licensing is still low, even among people who are aware of the political dimension of the content they produce.

So the conference will be a place for Open Education leaders to try to find a way forward out of the current stasis.

With this in mind, should efforts at this stage be channelled into formulating some kind of dominant design that will be transformative and maybe disruptive to existing education models? Or is the Open Education movement still not ready for that? Scott Leslie seemed to veer towards the latter – stating that what matters now is what students and academics are doing, rather than large-scale initiatives – whilst acknowledging the institutional challenges that lie ahead. But he argued cogently that top-down institutional support for OER (open education resources) can co-exist harmoniously with bottom-up initiatives by individual academics driven by learning and teaching. For example, institutions could give consent and empower people to navigate their own journey to Open Education.

However, Chris Lott later alerted us to the power that still resides with the institution that doesn’t necessarily see a value in supporting Open Education. He is currently putting together a new course using Blackboard but staged on Wordpress Multi-User. But although this “working from within” approach does assuage institutional fears, it hasn’t been trouble-free.

Nevertheless, David Wiley argued that it’s important for enlightened individuals not to wait for the university to do something. They can and should go ahead making their content available, using the Creative Commons wizard and then Google can understand that their stuff is available under an open licence, for example. Then we can all move onto the next phase of interesting stuff. Probably for the first time in history individuals don’t have to wait for permission.

Not all academics are engaged with the Open Education movement, of course, and this was acknowledged in a gracious way that recognised how many of us have benefited from Old School lecturers. The idea of capturing some of the great things they bring to the table was put forward. A laissez-faire approach of working with those who want to work with us and letting the rest go their own way was advocated.

The problem, as I see it, is that a good deal of the benefit of Open Education will not be unleashed without large-scale adoption. By way of example, the webinar touched briefly on issues around Open Content and its possible consequences for transferrable study credits. Recently, about 1000 people dipped their toes into a course offered by University of Manitoba. Because it was pitched as a graduate level course, people from other institutions could follow as a course of independent study, then get a grade at the end, and some then wanted credit for this. For this sort of arrangement to take hold, reciprocity needs to be offered by significant numbers of institutions.

This would also require the move to open courses as opposed to open courseware, as Scott Leslie discussed, meaning the delivery and not just the materials of the course being open to people outside the formal registration process (one contributor talked about “sharing wisdom with the great unwashed outside the gates”). We’re seeing this happen more and more. Examples cited included the Murder, Mayhem and Madness Wikipedia Project at University of British Columbia. Chris Lott noted, on a similar vein, that informal learners are taking more control, and there are increasing numbers of assemblages of learning outside the institution. However, he doubted whether we’re ready for a world without courses just yet; something will evolve beyond courses, he felt, we just don’t know what it is yet.

So all in all, it was a great webinar. Well attended and well received, it gave a balanced, honest and sanguine account of the current status of the Open Education Movement, as well as making some good proposals on how to move forward. Talis is planning to be in Vancouver in August to help shape ideas with the Open Education community as the movement prepares to cross the chasm into the early adopter phase of its journey.

Published yesterday, the long-awaited Higher education in a Web 2.0 world has encountered mixed responses from an expectant readership. First of all, I’d say that it’s a committee report – from The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience, to be specific. You really have to keep that in mind if you choose to read this report on the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Unlike a number of recent reports in UK higher education, then, Higher education in a Web 2.0 world isn’t presenting findings from consultations with or surveys on students or lecturers. This might well be why a number of commentators have already questioned the validity of some of the observations made. Andy Powell, for example, on Twitter, has questioned whether today’s students really are “happy to share” their coursework, and has demanded evidence for that.

The report actually arose from a growing realisation of the exponential increase in use of Web 2.0 technologies, and because this had resonance right across higher education, the study was able to count on the participation of individuals from “an eclectic mix of backgrounds with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise”.

Without any rigorous consultation with students or lecturers – as far as I can work out – or defined research methodology, then, at the very least I’d expect a robust set of ideas and arguments to be put forward.

There was consensus in the preparation of the report that the focus should be on excellence and relevance in higher education, together with the challenges it faces in its development. That much is good. Technology is seen in the context of Dearing’s 1997 definition of the aim of higher education as being “to sustain a learning society”. That much is worth applauding – technology as a means to a highly laudable end.

I think what I struggled most with when reading this report was identifying what the Committee perceived to be the catalyst of change. It doesn’t seem to be the student, for example – the report clearly states that students are still looking for traditional approaches – especially in terms of face-to-face contact with academic staff – but in a modern web-supported setting. Their technological expectations as they arrive at university for the first time seem far from challenging – just the basics, really, like internet access and technical support. Web 2.0 technologies don’t really figure in their thinking at this point.

So if adoption in an educational setting is not driven by student expectation, what exactly is the driver? The report suggests that the students are the catalyst for change, but in the future not in the present. This isn’t because their familiarity with Web 2.0 technologies will spill over into their educational expectations though – the report makes the tired old argument that students are uncomfortable with their tutors invading their space in social sites such as Facebook. Instead, the report argues, as the school / college experience changes, so will expectations of higher education, on the basis that it is the school experience, more than any other factor, that shapes the scholarly behaviour of undergraduates.

This would seem to be a very important point. And that’s why I feel so frustrated that the report fails again and again to elaborate on how, why and when the school and college is changing, especially in its adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. I need more information!
An understanding of the forces acting upon higher education is crucial in working out to what extent we can expect the size and shape of higher education to change over the coming period. The report certainly flirts with this question, for example in a section entitled “Open source [sic] materials and online universities” where we find the following tantalising passage:

At least one respected commentator to whom we spoke could foresee very substantial upheaval in the UK HE system if it did not begin to take steps that would confirm its distinctiveness, and distinctiveness on the basis of excellence and relevance rather than on say, speed and economy where other providers would be likely to score more highly. Young people, including – and maybe especially – the brightest and most enterprising, might otherwise go overseas for some or all of their HE and / or into learning in the workplace, which would be cohort based, practice focused and built on action or inquiry. In these circumstances it was possible that no more than a handful or so of universities would survive in their present form, with a similar number of others reinventing themselves in a subject or area niche.

But we’re then left high and dry. As visions of the future go, this one’s more than slightly depressing. So to my mind, the report is a missed opportunity. I would have liked to have seen the author, as well as the committee of leaders and luminaries, move forward from this argument to look at what we can do, and how shifts in technology and scholarly publishing can help to deliver a new model of higher education that may be disruptive initially, but which will nevertheless continue “to sustain a learning society”.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) today published its report The Academic Experience of Students in English Universities 2009. I was lucky enough to be present yesterday at HEPI’s conference The Student Experience – What’s the Deal? where Bahram Bekhradnia, HEPI’s Director, took us through key findings and issues raised in the report.

Bekhradnia explained that three years ago HEPI was urged to look at the question of what students do and get at university. There was a lack of data around this at the time.

So surveys of the student experience in higher education took place in 2006 and 2007. Areas explored included contact time with academics, amount of private study, student group sizes in lectures and seminars, use of facilities, and at a more qualitative level, satisfaction with the experience and value for money considerations. These findings are usefully summarised in the report Diversity in the student learning experience and time devoted to study, published by HEFCE last month which I blogged about here. The 2006 and 2007 data now serves as a baseline against which change can be measured.

The 2009 survey is more limited in its aims than the previous two. It set out to investigate if there have been improvements since 2006 in student-lecturer contact time or in group sizes (of lectures, seminars etc.) or whether students are now working harder. HEPI is now able to report that yes, they have found that students are working harder, but that there are few significant differences in terms of either contact time or group size. The timespan is significant because in that time student fees have been raised which has increased revenue into the sector.

The report considers the 2009 findings, but also revisits the 2006 and 2007 data. As I’ve already said, this stuff is summarised in April’s HEFCE report, but the gist of previous findings is that students in UK HEIs were found to be spending significantly less time studying (by which the study means the total time spent studying, encompassing taught time and study). This raises important questions around the quality of higher education in the UK and in my opinion Bekhradnia has correctly and responsibly thrown the issues open to the sector for consideration, it being beyond his remit to resolve them.

The report also examines the differences in workload by subject, confirming what we already knew. Anyone who’s ever had a university education is aware that certain subject areas were far more demanding than others. But interestingly, we now find large differences within the same subject area but between institutions. The report cites the example of historical and philosophical studies, for which the weekly workload can range from 39.5 hours to 14 hours depending on the institution.
There may be perfectly good pedagogical reasons behind these disparities, although the differences between institutions within the same subject area would seem to indicate some sort of problem. If it turns out to be easier to get a degree in one subject / institution than another, then that really does need looking at.

A good deal of Bekhradnia’s attention is given over to responses within the sector to these findings. He believes that many sector leaders have found them so uncomfortable that they’ve failed to engage and as a result, important issues are being avoided. He’s quite clear how damaging this could be.
On a more positive note, Bekhradnia was delighted to report that many individual institutions have requested the research data for their own purposes and are acting on their findings, even adjusting the offer where it is found to be out of step with other institutions.

I’m in complete agreement with Bekhradnia in terms of how the sector as a whole should be responding to these reports. We need a robust and honest debate about the real student experience. Without that we can’t develop a suitable HE for the 21st century. It’s encouraging that Phil Willis’s Select Committee is picking up issues such as degree equivalence. More research is also needed, and sector bodies need to be clear on what will really help the UK HE brand in the long term – more research such as this and deep engagement with these issues.

HEFCE has published a report of commissioned research entitled Diversity in the student learning experience and time devoted to study. The principal aim of the report is to examine differences in student experiences across Europe. Overall, it finds that there is increasing diversity of the student experience both within and between national borders.

I would note personally that some longitudinal data would be useful, to see the rate of change and in qualitative terms, to identify the elements of the student experience that are particularly susceptible to change over time.

This blog isn’t a summary the main findings of the report, but instead attempts to highlight those findings that may be of particular interest to learning technologists: