Students don't use email. So why do we keep emailing them?

Students like social media (via Mindshift)

Imagine you were born in 1995. You would have been three years old when Google launched in 1998. You would have been five at that millenium party you went to. Nine when Facebook arrived in February 2004. Eleven when Twitter arrived in March 2006.

Why would you have set up an email account? To activate your social network profiles of course! And how many of your teenage friends would have been sending you excited status updates via email? Probably not very many.

I make this point because I've been having conversations with students recently around their perception of email. As each year goes by, the demographic of students moves on another year - next year most of the new arrivals will have been born in 1996. Then 1997. And they will be even more bewildered by the university's constant attempts to contact them via email.

I accept that 'students don't use email' is a generalisation - of course some students do use email. But the vast majority are more active on social networks than are busily ploughing through their university inboxes, so is it any wonder that tutors and administrators get frustrated when students say 'I don't check my university email' or 'I didn't get your email'?

There is a point to be made about the extent to which universities are responsible for educating students about the conventions of email. After all, after graduating they will be entering a world in which email is still a key means of communicating. But social media is revolutionising the way in which organisations and businesses communicate both internally and externally. So do we not have an equal responsibility to educate students about the ways to use social media effectively and appropriately?

Social media is a democratising form of communication in that it gives anyone a voice. So it's interesting to consider the above argument in the context of the recent video (one of many) about the Future of Higher Education:

 
Many of the points made by participants in this video are not new: "more collaboration", "more accessible", "greater ability to learn at your own pace" etc. If the sector truly believes in 'student-centred learning', a concept which is easy to say yet not so easy to deliver, then communicating with students via social media is an important way to demonstrate that the sector is prepared to embrace the change that is coming. 

Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed proposed a 'new relationship between student, teacher and society' which treats the learner as a 'co-creator of knowledge'. The book was first published in 1968, thirty years before Google, nearly forty before Facebook. And yet much of Higher Education still operates in a very top-down manner with students very much as the 'recipients' of knowledge rather than co-creators.

In the same way as the music industry, Higher Education will experience a revolution. And the more strongly we resist the change that our students demand, the more uncomfortable that revolution will be.

Thanks to David Hopkins for sharing the video on his blog.

What do students think about technology?

Photo credit: Sookie

 
It would be hard to find a student who doesn't use some form of digital device in their learning. But despite the ubiquity of technology in education, how often do we create opportunities for our students to think about how they are actually using these technologies?

I'm preparing a talk for some of our postgraduate Arts students, and am excited by the opportunity to ask them both how they currently use digital technologies and how they expect to use them once they move beyond university. The talk will be based around personal, educational and professional use of technology, and will use the following preliminary readings as a basis for discussion during the session:

Personal use of technology

• In this age of technology is it realistic to assume that we can 'switch off'? Think about this while reading: To connect or not to connect

Educational use of technology

• How do you expect your tutors to use technology in the classroom? Think about this while reading: Is it okay to be a Luddite?

Professional use of technology

• What digital skills and knowledge do you think you will need to succeed in the global arts and culture sector? Think about this while reading: How arts and cultural organisations in England use technology

Please use and adapt these questions for discussion with your own students, and I'd love to hear about the issues that are raised during the session. Also, if you can think of additional questions in these three areas please share them in the comments below.

6 Cs of a Digital Pedagogy

Following on from the Higher Education Academy's excellent Digital Humanities summit, I've been doing some thinking around the digital skills that we expect students to acquire.

The digital age has put more information within our grasp than ever before in History. While in many ways this is hugely empowering for students in Higher Education, it also potentially presents quite a serious challenge to their learning process. The era of ubiquitous content is changing the role of educators too, as we need to help students contextualise and critically evaluate the many sources of information with which they are now presented.

In the distant, pre-internet past, there was less information within easy reach. 'Searching' often meant going to the Library and hunting through the bookshelves. I can't be sure, but I suspect that being less inundated with resources perhaps made it easier for students to critique the sources of information at their disposal.

But in an age where information is so readily available there is a danger that a student will aim to try and find the article or blog post that best represents their own opinion, rather than taking the time to reflect and formulate an opinion. As a PhD student myself I am all too often guilty of this, it's much easier to keep searching for that one article that sums everything up perfectly than to write it yourself.

There is a danger that ease of access to information could create a generation of students who aren't sufficiently inclined or equipped to challenge existing knowledge. This increased passivity is arguably being facilitated by the ability of technology to make all the information we could ever want available on demand. So what can we do about it?

One possible strategy is to place critique and questioning at the centre of the learning process. Creating regular opportunities for students to formulate, share and justify their opinions is increasingly important if they are to survive being drowned in a sea of content.


The above is very much a work in progress, but the 6 C model represents my first attempt at developing a digital pedagogy which responds to the problem of 'information overload'. Students 1) consume information about a topic from multiple sources. They 2) compare these sources, then 3) critique and question them in order to assess their relative worth. Students then 4) curate those sources which they judge to be of value, and 5) create a piece of writing in which they give their own opinion about the topic. Finally, they 6) collaborate with their network by sharing their resource, inviting comments and discussion which oblige them to justify their position.

Does this model work for you? What would you add / remove / change?

Impact of MOOCs on Higher Education

An interesting discussion from the recent TIME conference on the future of Higher Education - this particular clip explores the impact of MOOCs on HE delivery:

The Future of Learning, Networked Society

A thought-provoking video on the new challenges of learning in a networked world, featuring respected marketing blogger Seth Godin:

Why, Blackboard, why?

Our institution (as I suspect do many others) has a love/hate relationship with Blackboard. Two years ago we had almost no engagement, now we have over 75% of courses using it to some degree to support student learning. Tutors have begun to love it a bit more, students have begun hating it a bit less. And just when it's starting to get better the management announce a review of the university's online learning provision which could well end in a move to Moodle.

Life, as they say, is never easy.

But the looming review of Blackboard has obliged me to consider the available technologies for supporting student learning, and I found myself asking the question 'why hasn't Blackboard embraced social learning'? Having participated in the recent change11 MOOC, and as a regular participant in Jane Hart's excellent Social Learning community it is clearly evident that undergraduate students are researching, obtaining and sharing information in a way that has changed significantly in even the last 2 - 3 years. To me, incorporating a social element into any online learning experience appears to be a no-brainer, so why isn't Blackboard evolving to incorporate such features as activity streams to facilitate communication and information-sharing on a university course?

To add insult to injury I recently discovered that their Facebook Sync application is no longer supported. Why? I can only assume one of the following is true:

1. They are so removed from their user base that they genuinely have no idea of the importance of social learning
2. They genuinely believe that social learning is a fad that will pass and the one-way transmission of information between student and tutor will soon make a comeback
3. They are so enormously wealthy that they genuinely don't care about the changing nature of online learning 

So in addition to managing a Blackboard upgrade I'm now faced with the prospect of investigating the potential for a Wordpress/Buddypress VLE to enable tutors and students to explore more collaborative ways of learning.

It's not as if I had any plans for the summer anyway...

Case Studies in technology-enhanced learning

A useful selection of case studies from Aberystwyth University.



And some more case studies from the University of York.

Social Learning: A Future For Learning

A provocative presentation that illustrates how the transition from analogue to digital is revolutionising learning and challenging educators to keep up.

Social Learning

View more presentations from TribalCafe

A New Culture of Learning

An excellent presentation by Judy O-Connell that explores the changing nature of the Web and the ways in which these changes will impact on teaching and learning:

New culture of learning

View more presentations from Judy O'Connell

Many thanks to Jane Hart for bring attention to this presentation.

Students Addicted To Technology: The Good and Bad News [Infographic] | Education Technology and Teacher Tools – Edudemic

Students Addicted To Technology: The Good and Bad News [Infographic] | Education Technology and Teacher Tools – Edudemic

A beautifully constructed infographic courtesy of Edudemic that provides useful statistics on students' addiction to technology.