ALTC 2013 Summary – Part 2. A Short Report on each session attended

Welcome Address with Alan Ford

Ford covered the developments that Nottingham had made in producing a “NOOC” – their take on a MOOC but just for all Nottingham students based around sustainability throughout different disicplines.  Nottingham is interesting as it has the “University of Nottingham Ningbo China and University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus offering more than 10,000 students in Asia a Nottingham, campus-based learning experience in English” which this NOOC was also offered to.

A side effect of this was for the need to blitz staff develolpment to ensure enegagement with the NOOC and enable its full potential.

MOOCs have finally put online education on the management’s agenda – although obviously this activity has been going on for quite a while.

Keynote Speech by Rachel Wenstone, NUS, Chaired by Haydn Blackey (901) with Rachel Wenstone

Andy Beggan describes the experience and process of producing OER ebooks and resources for students.  Did students actually want ebooks? Apprehensive before using them.

Found greater engagement with the richer ebooks (currently iTunes Authored ones).  Smashwords very good at enabling publishing to multiple platforms.  OER materials were harder to publish via Amazon on a free basis when compared to iTunes.

Are OER resources just being consumed rather than actually reused?

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Horses for open courses: Making the backend of a MOOC with WordPress – experiences from ocTEL (396)

Martin Hawksey explained how he constructed the backend of the #ocTEL MOOC using a constructivist cMOOC approach, rather than trying to provide a platform-based approach.  Taking a platform approach is running MOOCS as a service… Like outsourcing email. But they are closed clubs… Not so open access.

RSS and WordPress were the glue holding the different elements of the #ocTEL course together.  Learnt quite a few lessons from using this connected approach… i.e. don’t use e-mail to ask 14k people to introduce themselves – use forums!

The Xerte Project : Sustaining Open-Source Innovation (343)

Xerte was developed as open sourced sofware to enable anone to create digital resources, rather than reylying up on a course team.

Acknowledged that different tools come and go – but you have to use what there is at the moment otherwise you never do anything!

Try to enable lovelvity by open sourcing and allowing people to scratch their own itch in terms of needs and functions, therby extending it for others too.

Trying to build a list of connected resources and information.
learningregistry.org from the “same people as the Internet” – Tim Boullough

Thinking that should people create something bespoke or use what’s there – could learningregistry.org have been created using existing tools such as diigio etc?

Engage Students in Creative Multimedia Content Production a New Pedagogic Strategy Using Web 2.0 Learning Technologies (346)

For tech skills to be acquired by students need to be integrated into work.  Is this the same for staff development?

Raising the profile of technology use amongst learners: Taking control of digital literacy development. (375)

Stuart Redhead Talking about the Exeter iTest test which tries to form a snapshot of students digital literacy and competence.  Was originally paper-based (!) but now online. Open sourced and perhaps being adopted by other institutions.

Susanne Wright showcased the Nottingham implementation of MOODLE and how it enabled parity between students as it replaced two customs one wihtin the medical and business school but enabled wider access through the University whilsyt also retaining the indifuality that these two Schools needed.

The implementation was thoughtfully done, rather than imposed and the impacts of this (good and bad) were look at: ‘Maximising Moodle’ project…total of 77-80 students in 28 focus groups in 3 countries.

Also Academics talking to academics were more convincing than the experts brought in.

‘The eLearning Unit, how can we help you..?’ – reflections on the Learning Technologist’s role in the context of a newly-formed, central Learning Technology team (399)

An insight explanation of the journey a central team have been on within a HE institution when their roles and focuses have changed when supporting the implementation of technology.

Multiple ways of conceptulaisaing both how to respond and how people view them:
Flickr ALTC ID399 for elearning team metaphors

I like to think of the learning technologist role as a bridge…Echoing one option that Tunde Varga-Atkins and Philip Walker think #altc2013