Keep juggling

How many balls can you keep in the air at one time? One of the most interesting stands at the World of Learning Exhibition and Conference in Birmingham this week was the Blue Beetle Training stand, which among other rolling performances featured a 10 minute tuition on three ball juggling. Reminiscent of Simon Finch's finest Pelecon 2012 keynote moment, the presenter - Graham David - worked manfully to convince passing, reluctant delegates to stop for a while, and engaging them by showing them how easy it was to learn to keep three balls in the air continuously. It was great audience participation, and quite entertaining to watch, too. Yet there was a serious underlying message to be received, too.

Juggling is not easy, and takes a lot of practice. But in one sense we are all jugglers, because many of us regularly keep many 'balls in the air' including a full-time job, childcare and family duties, voluntary work, and so on. How many of us would like tuition in how to do that successfully? Take the job of teaching - how many things do we need to do simultaneously to be an effective teacher? What skills do we need to not only keep our heads above water in our jobs, but also to excel, to become the best we can possibly be in our chosen areas?

Blue Beetle Training is one of a number of companies popping up in the learning and skills sector that focus on developing creative and innovative new ways to learn. We certainly need more of that. Creative learning is going to be a growth area in Learning and Development, because many are tired of the old ways of training in rows. We have the technology, but that is not enough. We also need a sea change in the way learning and development are conceptualised. Learning by doing, particularly if that 'doing' is situated in work practices, is arguably one of the most effective ways of training employees effectively. Problem based leaning, simulations, learning by making (constuctionism) and experiential approaches to personal development have all been shown to be highly effective. Couple these with social learning mediated through the personal tools and devices that most employees carry around in their pockets (but many employers currently ban), and you have a very powerful, sustainable and lifelong method to be workers skilled and productive. Exactly what will your organisation be doing in the coming years to teach your employees how to juggle?

This week the World of Learning Conference and Exhibition celebrated its 20th anniversary at the NEC, Birmingham, UK.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Keep juggling by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Libraries without walls

I recently wrote about how libraries are adapting to the digital age. The traditional library is viewed by many as a place for stacks of books to gather dust, and where stern librarians in tweed jackets tell you to keep quiet. Libraries are shaking off this image, and embracing new technologies and approaches to support learning in the 21st Century.

In Library 2.0 I outlined some of the changes that are taking place in libraries as they align their services toward technological developments such as the digitisation of content, social media and the widespread use of mobile devices. To extend this discussion, I recently sat down for a conversation with some of my colleagues in Plymouth University's library and resources centre to ascertain their views on how libraries are changing in the digital age.

I firstly wanted to find out what the contemporary library had to offer today's 'tech savvy students'. The answer was four-fold - libraries provide content, services, spaces and skills. My library colleagues then proceeded to elaborate on these four key areas of provision.

Content

Content has been the mainstay of libraries throughout the ages, whether in paper form or in the form of other media. However, the nature of this content is changing radically. One of the first questions I asked our library staff related to some news that had broken the previous day, when Encyclopedia Britanica announced that after 224 years in print it was finally going exclusively digital. This came on the back of reports late in 2011 that the online store Amazon was now selling more Kindle and e-book versions than paper based. Was this a trend that was a threat to the library? The library staff told me they actually welcomed these developments, pointing out that digital content could more easily be updated when errors were discovered. It is better, I was told, to have up to date digital Britanica, than out of date text books on the shelves. Britannica has admitted that it has more content in its database than would comfortably fit into a print set, so digitisation is a prudent step forward. The conversation around online encyclopedias inevitably led us to discuss Wikipedia and its relevance in academic study. Wikipedia is good as a starting point, but students need to be aware that there is more in-depth knowledge available elsewhere in journals and books.

Services

Many libraries are now exploiting the power of social media to expand their reach, beyond the traditional walls of the institution. Although still in its infancy, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools can be strategically employed to issue alerts and news updates, whilst SMS text can be sent to individual users to remind them that their loans are about to become overdue, or that a new service has been introduced. Students want personalised SMS alerts, direct to their mobile devices - 'push' for personalised content, 'pull' for everything else as and when they require it. However, this can be expensive for the average campus library to implement. Libraries now need to make services available at any time and any place, because students and academics are increasingly mobile.

Many libraries are also offering services which reach out to the local community, providing them with opportunities they would not be able to access anywhere else.

Spaces

Users of libraries need to be aware that the model of management of the physical space is changing. Learning is now much more social, and students tend to gravitate to areas that are conducive to study in groups. The on campus library is in a strategic place to offer such social spaces and specialist services.

As a study space, the Plymouth University library is a busier physical space than it has ever been, despite the reduction of physical content on shelves. The library encourages flexible learning spaces where furniture and other items can be moved around to suit the needs of students. Many of the traditional constraints are being relaxed, and the library space is becoming more agile. It is clear that Plymouth University students are looking for spaces where there are few (or no) distractions, and the library is able to offer these environments. Whether it is quiet study space or group space for collaborative project work, today's academic libraries have to respond in a flexible manner. As is the case with most university libraries in the UK, every part of the Plymouth University library is wireless enabled and students can bring their own devices to support their learning. The library space is a haven in the midst of a bustling campus that supports over 30,000 students. It is a dedicated space for independent study, and students will not be ejected to make way for a lecture, but can stay as long as they wish.

Skills

One of the key development areas of learning in the 21st Century is the ability to use technology to support study in a variety of modes. Often referred to as digital literacies, the ability to harness the power of new technology to enhance, extend and enrich learning is becoming a key graduate attribute. Libraries are in a unique position to offer students training in digital literacy, whether it be searching for academic content, systematic retrieval of library resources, or simple making the very best use of what is available.

The web is 'the wild west' of learning, I was told, and students need to have savvy to survive it. Students need to know the provenance of content - who wrote it and in what context. What students need to discover is how to drill deeper and triangulate content in a wider knowledge context. Sourcing content for reference purposes is more involved than Google searching.

Consumption of content on the web is not the only area for skills development. Students need to be aware that they leave a digital footprint wherever they go in online space. This digital trail What they say, do and search, may do them out of an interview in later life. Another skill is media literacy - the ability to creatively use a wide variety of formats of content, including gaming, video, text and images - is a new literacy students and researchers need to learn. Learners have to be confident in how they collaborate with others and how they collate and apply content in academic contexts.

The future

What will the future hold for the library? Libraries will become increasingly disaggregated from the publishing world, and will become highly specialised in serving their academic community. They will continue to extend services beyond their walls to serve students everywhere, ragardless of geographical location. It is also clear that libraries will continue to develop their digital collections, and increase their connections to share this content. The future of the academic library will be to act as the intermediary and enabler that connects learners and knowledge.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Libraries without walls by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Learning and performance

Learning is performance. No matter what we learn, our knowledge, skills (and also our attitudes) are usually externalised in some kind of outward expression. Some are obvious: Learning a language will lead to conversation. Acquiring dexterity in art results in the production of artifacts. Learning to play an instrument ultimately results in some form of musical performance. Such performances don't have to be public, but often they are. Some are less obvious - learning complex mathematical formulae will result in applying these to mathematical problems. Learning engineering will result in the construction of engines, bridges, walls, buildings, etc. The image above, taken in Melbourne, Australia, is a performance of learning that includes several disciplines, including engineering, design, construction and mathematics. We talk about 'becoming'. Becoming a nurse, carpenter, doctor, lawyer, technician, accountant, teacher. On our journey of becoming, we engage in a great deal of performance.

Some of our earliest performances, particularly in formal learning contexts (school, college, university), are under the scrutiny of subject experts who award grades, and ultimately, some form of accreditation. This kind of performance is commonly referred to as formal assessment. Sadly, it is often the case that the measure of performance is not fit for purpose, as we have all witnessed recently in the universal failure of standardised testing, or the exam paper fiascos that continually assail our senses via the media. Some forms of assessment are ill suited because they are not designed to measure important aspects of learning, or more commonly, are too narrow to consider the entire performance. Inappropriate assessment methods can be a disaster.

'Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.' - Albert Einstein

Yet the externalisation of learning - knowledge performance - is a vitally important part of the learning process, not only for the student, but also for the entire community they live within. It is important for the student's motivation and also, if done properly, will provide the student with feedback on how to improve the performance next time. It is important for the community, because the community needs skilled and knowledgeable members, and some form of check is required to ensure that the skill or knowledge is up to date, safe to use, and is relevant for the needs of society. If we get assessment wrong, we fail the student, and ultimately we fail society.

But what of those who have already become? Do they stop becoming? The answer of course, is no - we continue to become, because we do not stop learning and we continue to perform our knowledge. For performers, there have never been more channels, stages and platforms upon which we can perform our knowledge than there are in today's media rich and internet aware society. More and more people are performing their knowledge online to a potentially worldwide audience, through blogs, through YouTube and on other popular social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr. Blogging and other user generated content practices enable us to focus our performance of knowledge and project it toward relevant peer groups. These are powerful practices because of their immediacy and accessibility; and having an audience raises your game. Some performances provoke comments from the community - a form of peer review that works as a professional assessment of thoughts and ideas, invention, ways of articulating, strength of argument, contribution to debate, illustration of points and reflective criticality. This represents the conversation as curriculum I wrote about in a recent post. But this curriculum extends beyond conversation into community. Knowledge performance is at the centre of community as curriculum.  From the sharing of knowledge comes the discourse that adds to everyone's collective knowledge within the community of practice, and extends its boundaries. It is this sharing of experience, new ideas, contention and support that advances the community of practice exponentially. The tools are here to achieve it. Performance of knowledge through social media will be one of the vital components of education and training in the coming years.


Learning and performance by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Getting the bloggers to write

We've been concerned for some time about the quality of essay writing here at the University of Plymouth. Last week my colleague Mark Townsend and I got together to talk, and we came up with the idea to combine blogs and wikis as an experiment to explore essay writing, and hopefully raise skill levels amongst our students. Here's the plan:

Mark and I are going to create a blogalogue (blog dialogue, get it?) about academic writing, including all the do's and don't's, common errors, and good things that we see in essays. Students will be invited to comment on our dialogue and ask questions, raise issues, or even tell us that we are completely barking. Whilst the dialogue is ongoing, Mark and I will actually create a live document within a wiki space, which students can also comment on, criticise and make recommendations about. On the wiki Mark will be writing in black text and I will be writing in blue and with the roll back facility, everyone will be able to track the progress of the paper as it evolves. (We may even publish it along with our commentary about the experiment). Using these two social tools, we hope to generate enough dialogue across the entire student groups to be useful for everyone who reads it.

If anyone has similar projects they are developing, or would like to try this idea out too, please send a comment to us. The blog, which we have called 'Black and Blue' is already up and running.