JISC CETIS Conference 2012 (#cetis12)
by Doug Belshaw • February 24, 2012 • Conferences • 1 Comment
I was involved in a session at this conference.
(the audio is also at archive.org and the slides can be found on Slideshare)
This was my first JISC CETIS Conference. It had all of the elements of a great gathering: a fantastic venue (the National College in Nottingham), a well-designed programme, and informal sessions. Not to mention, of course, very committed delegates.
I was there having been invited to provide some input to a session being run by Phil Barker and Simon Grant (both from JISC CETIS) around the topic of Open Badges. I was delighted to be involved – you can see my slides and listen to the audio above. It was good to catch up with some JISC folk and others in the sector with very much a technical bent. It did make me realise, however, just how different the mindsets of educators and developers are. The former camp want technical solutions to well-defined problems. The latter are mostly concerned with successfully-realised technical solutions – even if there’s not a well-defined problem to be solved. An assumption that’s prevalent in all sectors is that if you’re interested in learning technologies then you must be a techie. Whilst I may be slightly technically-minded, I’m actually not that interested in how to get from A to B. I kind of just want it to work – preferably using open standards. I suppose the upshot of this is that I pitched my input into the Open Badges session for those interested in how they could change education. In hindsight, this was a mistake as I don’t think most developers are actually that interested in the problem; they’re interested in the technologies. As one person who came along to the session told me during a coffee break, “We’re sick to death of hearing that X, Y or Z is going to change the world. Accept that it isn’t and move on.” Oops. It seems to me that most development and innovation in learning technologies (from the developer side) comes from neat, pragmatic solutions to existing (perceived) problems, or ways of combining data streams to get interesting mashups. And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course. That’s absolutely what we need. The final keynote, for example, from Prof. Mark Stubbs (Head of Learning and Research Technologies at Manchester Metropolitan University) showed how his institution had gone about a curriculum design process for over 50,000 students. I can’t remember pedagogy being mentioned once. I’m not being critical of the conference or the community in my comments above. What it really brought home to me, however, is the need for educators to engage more with things that are technologically possible – and for learning technologists to engage more with pedagogy. We talk about ‘mainstreaming innovation’ but, in all honesty, just getting techies to talk to teachers (and vice versa) seems to me to be the whole barrier.
Hi DougYes, it’s an age old problem getting techies and teachers to talk more. The good news is it’s something we are going to address head on with an event (the first of a series we hope) in May. Building on the Dev8D model we hope to provide an informal space where we can bring together techies, learning technologists and teachers to share their ideas, needs etc and hopefully come up with some innovative and/or alternative solutions to new and existing “stuff”. There will be more details on the event (#DevEd) in the next few weeks once we’ve recovered from the conference.The CETIS conference has an unashamedly technical focus which is why Mark’s keynote focused on the technical and not pedagogical and process innovations the work he was describing is bringing about. I’d just like to assure you (and your readers) that there are many of us (in fact probably all of us) who do care about pedagogy and fostering meaningful conversations and developments between the various communities involved in using technology effectively in teaching and learning.Sheila