Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World Reprise

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World: Cover

Following on from Gareth’s earlier post on this subject, here’s my thoughts & questions:

• Information Literacy is a major component of this report – it argues that it is a growing area that students are deficient in. Recommends that it is a high priority for HEIs to train their students in & keep their staff updated on.
• “Information literacies, including searching, retrieving, critically evaluating information from a range of appropriate sources and also attributing it – represent a significant and growing deficit area”
• However, no mention anywhere of how to do this or that libraris have been struggling to get this on the agenda for years.
• Q: What do we do with this report? Take it to VC? Take it to teaching & learning committees? What strategies & solutions do we suggest for training students & staff? Do we take a take roots approach with lecturers? Do all of the above?
• Web 2.0 skills (communication, networking, sharing) are becoming employability skills.
• Students are living in a Web 2.0 world and might expect Web 2.0 solutions in the future – though at present they expect a traditional face to face approahc in HE and do not equate social software with learning. This may change as the next few generations come through the school system.
• Students are currently consumers of content in the Web 2.0 world rather than creators – we need to find hooks i.e. show them how the technology helps them.
• Q: What are the hooks for staff and for students in using Web 2.0 in a learning context?
• Three types of online space: Personal (emails & messaging), Group (social networking sites) and publishing (blogs, wikis, youtube).  Students will not want us in their personal space but there is scope for utilising group and publishing space for learning & teaching.
• Information literacy should incorporate other web awareness issues e.g. plagarism, data protection, personal data on the web and online identities.
• Q: How do we do this? How do we work with others in the institution who teach/train on these issues? How do we update ourselves in all these areas?
• Upskill staff on e-pedagogy: as this will be needed for them to take advantage of using Web 2.0 technologies.
• Q: How skilled are we as librarians in this? What training do we need in order to offer the information literacy teaching the report advocates?
• Report suggests there are already examples out there of good practice in the use of digitised materials and online learning resources at module level. Though no specific examples included. It asks how these can be supported and used on a wider/larger scale.
• Q: What good practice are we already using or aware of with regards Web 2.0? Does it upscale? What opportunities are there for us to work with other colleagues inside & outside the institution to provide services?
• Take into account the prior experience and the expectations of students.
• Q: How do we do this? Do we cultivate more links with school librarians in the UK? What about overseas, distance learning and mature students?
• Digital divide still exists – don’t forget that!
• “Means of access will be multimedia, mobile and pocket-sized”
• Q: Are we prepared for the next wave of multimedia and mobile type resources?

Overall, this report is good for librarians and the information literacy cause as long as we DO something about it. Take action & not just talk about it!

Modelling the Library Domain

JISC have just released a new briefing paper: Modelling the Library Domain, which is part of the TILE Project (Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 & the E-framework).

Here’s some of the key points that I managed to pick out of the JISC Speak:

Library Domain Ecosystem Diagram from Briefing Paper

- Libraries need to look at providing widgets: integrate resources into web environments of the user’s choice.

- Supply value-added services.

- Tailor content to different types of users & encourage user generated content (reviews, ratings, comments).

- Regarding the diagram above: Corporation refers to content providers (Unis, Libraries, Publishers), Channel refers to the means of delivering the content & Clients are users involved in academic work.

- Libraries can either concentrate on managing and delivering their local assets/content, or look at widening their remit to include working with other channels in Higher Ed (e.g. reading lists, feedback, VLEs etc).

- “The wider role empowers libraries to provide a full set of services to meet a rich variety of locally identified user needs, potentially an institutional unique selling point.”

- More must be made of the user activity data available e.g. circulation data, number & types of downloads, which could possibly be linked through to student information (course, subject) without compromising data protection. This could provide the spark needed to engage user communities & encourage user generated content.

- “captured click streams rather than volunteered contributions (eg ratings, reviews, lists) are the surest source of intelligence about ‘users like me’.”

- If Libraries wish to provide more channel type services then the paper suggests encouraging concentration of services/content fro particular user groups & understand how they can become a trusted channel, the way services such as google are.

In a Few Years Time: Digital Library Strategy – slides and mindmaps

Some weeks ago a lot of us attended a Digital Library Strategy workshop here in the library, led by Ken Chad.  I’ve written about the day, but I’ve just been passed Ken’s slides and the mindmaps from the session.

• In a few year’s time: UoL Digital Strategy by Ken Chad [PDF]
• Mindmap from digital strategy workshop[PDF]

The mindmap was generated by small groups talking about the challenges, opportunities and issues around each of the 4 areas of discussion. They reflected back on the presentations from Ken and Richard, but also on the experience and insight of the various group members taking part.  They’re in no way a comprehensive point of view, and as you can see no ranking order is applied to them.  Each one is a comment, idea or concept in its own right.

But these will help the Library in shaping its future Web 2 and digital strategy developments for the next 3 or so years.  More about that in the near future…

Learning Futures 2

So, a little delayed but here’s the rest of my Learning Futures Festival write-up:

Keynote 2: Ralp Schroeder (Oxford Internet Institute)

Focused on virtual environments – which he defined as immersive environments that give a sense of being in another place than you are physically in & have visual & spatial aspects.

Argued there are 2 major versions of the technology that are likely to develop further.

1. Video-capture – e.g. video conferencing, talking heads.

2. Computer generated (CAVE technology), which can be programmed to do all sorts of things.

I’m afraid he lost me a bit after this, so I’m not sure how he saw the technology being used in education.

Workshop: Using narrative structure in projects

The most fun I had on the day, as how can I resist playing around with cartoon strips!? This workshop looked at how thinking about narrative structures (e.g. your hero, villain, story arc) can be used as another project management tool. We took a classical fairytale, in our case Red Riding Hood, and introduced novel learning technologies to see what impact they had on the narrative. We gave Red Riding Hood a mobile phone so she could warn Granny about the Big Bad Wolf, granny got the Wood Cutter to build a “hole in the wall” computer & the wolves used this to learn how to clone food so that they didn’t need to attack people!

Intervention panels

I’m afraid the title intervention panel had me envisioning us all reassuring one another that we weren’t addicted to web2.0 or something. It was actually more like a round table and general discussion. Points I picked up during the day were:

• Will web2.0 make surface learning worse?
• critical/evaluative skills of learners do not seem to be improving
• Has the fundamental nature of learning changed?
• Need pedagogical push & intelligent technological insights to provide best education e.g. use ebook readers flexibly, use virtual environments to improve on reality.
• Change form students having to search our specialist information to having to trawl through huge tracts of information that were not available in the past.
• Should be prepared to admit when we don’t know something – learn alongside our learners!
• Change in locus – from academics telling/teaching to new generation of learners that want to share what they know. Need a more collaborative learning process?
• New learners are multimodal & multimedia – live in a more immediate environment.
• HE systems are very inflexible compared to the outside world.
• We are all learners & we all have something to offer.
• In HE we still need to challenge students in how they learn as well as what they learn.

Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends

Brian Kelly:

Web 2.0 Training Day at the Library

Still fresh from the web 2.0 training day  last Thursday a group of web 2.0 enthusiast subject librarians have decided to cultivate an active blog.  Yes we want people to take part.  UoL Library Blog is intended initially for library staff at the University of Leicester to share news and ideas, but who knows, we may expand.

Back to the web 2 training day, there was lots of positive feedback which is always nice,  and a few interesting points:

• Facebook – should we go beyond the ‘corporate’ page approach?  Probably not, but how do our personal identities / work identities blend together?
• RSS feed readers: should we be writing this into our training (esp Outlook in Windows 07). I expect you are going to tell me you already do / have.
• Twitter – I am trying to sort out getting Thwirl installed (we need administrator access) – if there are no ‘technical’ hitches.

There will be a follow up session in the Autumn.  Any suggestions for things we could include are more than welcome.