...before the ink is dry

Had a great conversation at lunch today with Peps McCrea over at the University of Brighton. We were talking about our common interest in the educational benefits of blogging, and I made a suggestion that digital identity was a significant factor in the way teachers and other professionals use it (I will blog on this idea in a future post). I expanded by talking about my own use of blogging. I had to examine my own motives which I have already reflected on in previous posts such as Why do I bother? So what are my reasons for expending so much of my time on blogging?

Essentially, I blog not just because I want my ideas to be shared as quickly as possible, but also to receive feedback in the form of discussion. Journal articles take so long to publish, they are often out of date long before the ink is dry. This is because they go through a process of peer review and revision, and then they can hit a brickwall if the journal has a significant backlog of accepted papers, and a page count limit (which most do). I know that peer reviewed academic journals are the lifeblood of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which comes around every few years (and by which all participating universities are judged on the quality of their research outputs, and subsequently awarded money for more research). I know that great store is placed on high impact journals in th REF and there is always a mad scramble at this time in the cycle, where everyone is submitting articles in the hope they will be published before the deadline. But how much value is there really to be had in publishing articles in high impact, double blind, peer reviewed academic journals beyond the REF? You have to be in it to win it, but the general rule of thumb is that the best research institutes scoop up the lion's share of the cash each time, and the rest are left to grab for the crumbs. An enormous amount of energy and time is taken up during the submission process, often with little or no reward to show at the end.

Here's something else to consider: How many people actually read your journal article when it's finally published, either in paper format or on the journal's webpages? The journals we are talking about here are almost all paywall journals - if your institution doesn't have a subscription and you are not in the mega-rich academic club (and let's face it, who is?) then you are unlikely to be able to read it, and neither are many others. Will publishing in a high impact journal ensure that you are promoted? Possibly, but not probably, as many academics have discovered. How about some monetary reward? Not a hope of that, sunshine - the publishers have tied that one up at both ends. In some business models, they even get you to pay for the priviledge of publishing in their journal. Nice trick if you can do it. If I was to be cynical, I might suggest that the publishing houses have conspired to convince academics that they should spend inordinate amounts of their time dreaming up research ideas, running their experiments and studies, and sweating and toiling over the write up of the research, before giving it away for free so that the publisher can then make a lot of money out of it.

For me, and for an increasing number of fellow academics, publishing in traditional journals is becoming increasingly anacronistic in the digital age of social media communication. We can be our own publishers now. We can build up audiences and loyal followings that are larger than most journals and publishing houses could ever boast. For me, blogging is now the first place I consider when I want to disseminate my ideas quickly, directly to my own community of practice, and in a form that is considered relevant and accessible to those who are engaged in that particular sphere of activity. Blogging is freely accessible, and it is usually concise enough to be assimilated in a few minutes.

Please don't misundertand me - I am not totally dismissing the place of the academic peer reviewed journal. Heavens, I'm an editor of a major learning technology journal, and if I believed they were totally irrelevant, I would resign immediately. No, journals still have their place. What I am arguing here is that the blog is a more rapid, concise and appropriate medium to disseminate important ideas, and it is also a better environment within which to engage critically with colleagues to discuss, argue and otherwise develop a discourse around the subjects in question. I have seen some journals attempting dialogue between protagonists occasionally, but often the result is a stilted, and seemingly contrived dialogue which is somewhat divorced from real-time, real-world conversations. How is the blog different? For me, the blog is an interactive record of ideas; an open archive of opposing viewpoints; a meeting place for live discussion; a repository of thoughts; a testing ground; a launching pad; a dynamic environment within which disagreement can sit comfortably with accord; a fertile ground for the planting and growing of disparate content.

Image source by Hakan Dahlstrom


...before the ink is dry by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Running a MOOC

Over at the University of Brighton, Peps McCrea is currently blogging about MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courses) and is speculating how they might influence the future of Higher Education. Having taken part in a MOOC run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens a couple of years ago (as a speaker not a student), I can say that it was a very enjoyable experience. I was grilled by Stephen for a sustained period of time about my ideas on Personal Learning Environments, and in true gladiator style, I enjoyed the cut and thrust of my live, widely distributed debate.

I have also presented recently at one of Steve Hargardon's live Elluminate global webinars, and have to say that the experience was very similar to the MOOC. You present your ideas, including slides and audio connection, live to a massive group of participants that span the globe, and then you discuss those ideas for a while. I know that there is more to a MOOC than participating in live webinars. MOOCs also host online discussion, solo and group activities and other learning activities designed to promote critical discourse, reflective actions and discursive learning.

Everyone who participates enjoys the experience, and everyone goes away with more questions than they arrived with. That's learning. That's connectivism too, according to Siemens and Downes. And connectivism is one of the major underpinning theories of the MOOC. It's not so much what you know that matters anymore, but who you can connect to and learn from that is the key principle of learning in a digital age.

That is both the strength and the weakness of the MOOC. You see, you can connect to anyone, anywhere, at any time to learn from each other. But you can also miss those connections, if certain people decline to join in. MOOCs are also at their most successful when there is a critical mass of participants. So what if you gave a party and no-one came? A sparsely populated MOOC is just .... well..... an OOC, isn't it? There is also a debate about whether connectivism is actually a bona fide theory - it has attracted its fair share of critics. Peps is asking whether MOOCs will take off in the UK. Well, in one sense they already have because many people from the UK have already taken part in previous MOOCs. If it comes down to the location of the MOOC, there is none - the MOOC is location agnostic. I actually presented my MOOC talk from a classroom in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. If the question relates to whether British academics and specialists will begin to write, organise and deliver MOOCs, that's another question entirely. Here are some more questions: Is there actually a need for more MOOCs? How much preparation work goes into setting one up? Will individuals in the UK step in to set up and deliver their own MOOCs, or is this going to be the preserve of academic institutions? The question of open, free of cost participation in a MOOC is a given. But what about those who wish to receive some tangible form of accreditation at the end of the programme? Who provides that?

Good luck to anyone who decides to set up and deliver a MOOC this side of the Atlantic. And as to the future of the MOOC? I suppose we shall just have to wait and see...

Image source by SpoiltCat

Running a MOOC by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.