Social Media 101

Great presentation from Matthew Draycott providing an introduction to Social Media.

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:

The Social Media Garden

The rapid growth of social media is creating new and complex challenges for organisations. As classic examples of disruptive innovation, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter are forcing individuals and organisations to re-examine their methods of working and communication.

And they're not about to disappear overnight. So what are some of the challenges that social media presents for organisations? An informative piece of research - called the Social Media Garden - provides a valuable contribution to this debate. Here is a Slideshare of the final report:

The Social Media Garden Report from The Denovati Group

The research puts forward some interesting concepts such as 'Leadership 2.0', the qualities of which include "embracing change, being open to experimenting, demonstrating transparency, fostering a culture of innovation, open to the voice of the people, stimulating sharing, acknowledgment of expertise, working collaboratively and creating dialogue". And the researchers go on to suggest that "use of Web 2.0 will only be successful in an organisation if Leadership 2.0 is in place". I'm inclined to agree.

I particularly like the method of data collection. As the researcher states at the start of the report, it makes sense to conduct a study on social media using a more 'social' methodology than the traditional survey. This short video explains how the Social Media Garden, developed by Hybrid Wisdom Labs, works:

And all of the above is testament to the power of the open community - thank you to Tracy Gravesande and Robin Heyden for sharing the above resources!

My top 10 learning tools for 2012

I've made use of some fantastic learning tools in 2012, and it's only July! Although it's highly likely that a whole range of ridiculously clever tools will be invented before the end of the year here are my top ten learning tools to date:

1. Google Docs - the ease with which Google Docs enables online collaboration continues to amaze me. Collaborative editing of the same document in real-time? Incredible. And so easy to take for granted. The video Google Docs in Plain English provides a great overview.

2. Google Forms - I've only scratched the surface with these but Google Forms are superb. Especially when embedded n a VLE to obtain student feedback.

3. Screenflow - an excellent screencasting application for Mac users. Having just spent the last four days editing videos with it I dread to think what I would do without it. Version 3 has some great new features including annotations which make it even more of a one-stop-shop.

4. Mentormob - I came across this tool during one of Jane Hart's excellent online courses (more info available at her Social Learning Centre). I find the concept of a 'learning playlist' innovative and intriguing, and although my colleagues have some doubts over the appearance of the tool I suspect that it will evolve into something very useful.

5. Yammer - an awesome social networking application for organisations. The potential for Yammer and other social intranet tools to revolutionise communication in large organisations is enormous, and Yammer is such an easy-to-use yet powerful tool that I wonder if it will soon become as ubiquitous as Word and Powerpoint. Bit worried about its recent acquisition by Microsoft though...

6. Wordpress / Buddypress - a killer combination of blogs and social networking, but so flexible that this description doesn't really do it justice. Jane Hart's Social Learning Centre is but one excellent example of the ways in which Wordpress and Buddypress can support learning and collaboration.

7. Campus Pack - blogging and wiki application. Some may find this a surprising inclusion on this list, but the improvements made by the Campus Pack team with version 4 have turned it into a powerful learning tool. Great for setting up group blog/wiki activities, and their incorporation of an activity stream bodes well for the increasing 'socialisation' of this product.

8. Xerte - open source learning object creator from Nottingham University. A powerful learning object creator that is a useful tool for presenting information interactively.

9. Slideshare - great resource for sharing Powerpoint presentations. I must confess that a guilty pleasure is spending my lunchbreak browsing Slideshare - there are so many fantastic presentations! A real cornerstone of the Open Educational Resources movement, you should always check Slideshare before spending hours creating a presentation as someone may well have already done all the work!

10. Vimeo - video sharing made easy. Vimeo is a powerful tool for sharing videos and puts the user (and their rights) first. An excellent site for hosting and sharing video content.

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...

Collaboration by Difference - avoiding 'groupthink'

I just came across an interesting post on collaboration by Duke professor Cathy Davidson:

Collaboration by Difference - Video - Harvard Business Review

In this short video, Prof. Davidson suggests that in a collaborative group it is very often the non-expert or the person who is not in charge who has the most interesting thing to say. It is therefore important to structure ways to hear that person to avoid them being drowned out by the more vocal members of the group. She calls this 'collaboration by difference', a way of hearing the disrputive or dissident voice.

Prof. Davidson presents three useful strategies for avoiding what she terms 'groupthink' when working in groups:

1. Air out differences democratically. When working with two international groups, this can be done by giving each member of each group two cards. On the first they are asked to write a perceived opportunity and challenge of working with the other group. On the second they write a perceived opportunity and challenge about what they themselves can offer. All cards are collected, shuffled and then read out by a facilitator without identifying who wrote which card. This often helps reveal that all participants are worried and excited about the same things. Rather than focusing on the differences, this helps participants focus on the opportunities nd challenges of working together.
2. Let non-experts talk first. For example, staff and students are participating in a two-hour workshop on Learning in the Digital Age. By asking staff to sit and listen to the students for the first hour, this helps them to understand and appreciate that the students know much more than staff might think. By flipping the relationship between the expert and the novice it enables everyone to hear suggestions and ideas that might otherwise have been suppressed.
3. Ask what you're missing. One person will have the responsibility of identifying what has been missed in the discussion, but no-one knows who that person will be. The person running the meeting will choose a participant at random - this makes everyone pay attention because they don't know if they will be chosen. Doing this helps indicate that participants might not be as clear on something as they thought they were. This often derails the conversation, but it also often turns out that participants were heading in the wrong direction and it was therefore beneficial for the conversation to be derailed.