Mobilage

I've been trying to prioritise my thesis... not easy part-time. It does force you to go back in and out of the same thing - a curse but also a crude, if not cruel, way of revisiting and reinitiating myself with this project - I'm trying to do phenomenology afterall... Yesterday I was mangled into doing some more to it having offered to give a presentation of my methods for my school at the monthly lunchtime seminar. One of the comments afterwards suggested that I needed to get the concept/phenomenon that I've coined 'out there'... so, here it is - make of it what you will. The audio is quiet - apologies for that!

Fishbowl Seminar Instructions

Fishbowl seminars. I dont know who thought them up but I like them. I keep having to cook up a description of them, find images of the set-up etc. So I thought I'd put it here, partly to make things easy for myself - not because it necessarily has anything to do with networked learning... except that the first place I encountered it was in the Aalborg NLC.
So I've made this image (yes I am colourblind). 

And these are the instructions for my setting - tweak to suit :)

This is a way of a managing a group conversation. It needs at enough people to form a decent circle, plus three. So 10 is a good number but I have seen it done successfully with many more than this (see https://flic.kr/p/c8iyWj for example).

Preparation:

You will need to rearrange the room so that there is a circle of chairs around three chairs in the middle. In smaller fishbowl seminars, it's good to avoid someone sitting directly behind someone else, especially the 'main speaker'. 

You will need about 20 sheets of A4 paper and lots of post-it notes (the number of members, squared).

Divide the time available by the number of members to find out how long each round will be. Allow for a couple of minutes for 'handover'. 

Method:

Three people are in the middle of a circle of chairs. One is for the 'presenter', the other is a tutor, and  another 3rd person - the latter two kick off with questions.

If anyone wants to speak, they have to take one of the seats in the middle. They do this by rising from their seat and tapping the shoulder of the tutor or 3rd person to replace them in the middle. 

 

Notes: 

It is good to give the people sitting around the centre something significant to do so that they are actively listening and contributing even if they do not enter the centre. For example,

1. Each round, appoint a different person to keep the time. They should announce when 2 minutes are left on the current round. 
2. Ensure that each person around the outside has at least one postit note. They are asked to write some brief (it can only be brief!), anonymised feedback on the postit. Sharing email addresses can happen a different way! At the end of a round, the postits for that round are stuck to a single a4 sheet.

Probably you have suggestions which could enhance the above, if so, please share :)

Reporting back from the Networked Learning Seminar at Cardiff 6th May 2015

On Wednesday 6th May 2015, two friends from Bristol University traveled to Cardiff to head up our networked learning seminar: Dr Sue Timmis and Dr Jane Williams. At just after 1pm, around 30 of us were welcomed by Patricia Price (Pro Vice Chancellor Pro Vice-Chancellor, Student Experience & Academic Standards) who was on hand to open the seminar, kindly sponsored by the recently formed College of Biomedical & Life Sciences. I was personally very thankful to Emma Humphries from the College. Her fulsome help with the administration of the seminar was superb - it was so reassuring all through the surprisingly long run-up to the seminar.

Sue Timmis expertly traced out the tensions in Higher Education that keep the learning and teaching theory-practice gap wide open. For example, that theories of learning are far more contested than those within many disciplines. However, Sue challenged us to seek and engage students in participatory learning activities.  PowerPoint MP3




Jane Williams discussed her work with medical students who elect to develop e-learning materials for their optional module. Unlike the more programmatic materials developed by the department, the students target courseware that directly addresses content areas which they found challenging, thus increasing its value for ensuing cohorts. This was a perfect example of ‘participatory’ collaborative and cooperative learning that Sue had offered as a means of enriching and deepening learning. MP3


After a brief comfort-break, it was the turn of the Cardiff three... 
Karl Luke outlined a small-scale study in which he explored Nina Dohn's critique of the assumptions made in education when Web 2.0 tools (especially wikis) are deployed in hopes that they will succeed unproblematically. He went on to offer practical solutions to Dohn’s points. PowerPoint MP3

  Joe Nicholls used his slot to present long-standing work around 'learning literacies'. He argued that only a fully integrated approach to deploying these literacies could be effective and that, even then, context was key for securing worthwhile outcomes. PowerPoint MP3

Sadly, a few things, not just my relaxed approach to time-keeping, made us run out of time, leaving me with just a few minutes before the close. But even in a very short presentation there were practical and theoretical lessons gleaned from a mini-project carried out last year into aspects of informal learning by staff using an innovative application of blogs for shared academic supervision record-keeping. PowerPoint MP3

I was personally very pleased with the way that the seminar gave a real flavor of the conference. Networked learning does not do 'snake oil' and that can be confusing in learning technology circles... much the same as when my landline rings these days, I expect a sales pitch in broken English. The source of networked learning's 'non-splashy' power is in the humanistic values, transparent evidence and scholarly insight, and that should be good enough for anyone. Concluding comments MP3

Networked Learning Seminar 6th May 2015 1-4pm 2.21 Tŷ Dewi Sant, Heath Park

The Networked Learning Conference runs biennially, and next year is the 10th at Lancaster University. So this year is 'fallow', interregnum, 'writing up' space in time for the 5th October deadline... I thought it might be nice to organise a 'fireside chat' among friends who happened to be doing advanced degrees in learning technology. I wanted us to share some of the good stuff we've learned on our studies that otherwise might never see the light of day. Probably we'd ask if anyone was around and wanted to listen in, probe a bit, etc.
I'm delighted to say that it has turned into a College-sponsored seminar, bringing the networked learning marque and experts Dr Sue Timmis and Dr Jane Williams to Cardiff next Wednesday afternoon (here's a link to their paper from the last conference).

We're dividing the three hours up as follows:

13:00-14:00 Welcome and introductions, followed by:

• Dr Sue Timmis - Senior Lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning at University of Bristol Graduate School of Education http://www.bris.ac.uk/education/people/14185/index.html
  “Mind the gap! The power and the challenges of connecting theory AND practice in University learning and teaching”
• Dr Jane Williams – Director of Technology Enhanced Learning Team at University of Bristol Medical School https://twitter.com/bristoluniHStel
  "Handing over the keys: unlocking the potential of students as developers and researchers of elearning"

14:00-14:30 Refreshments/networking

14:30-15:30 Three short papers from:

• Karl Luke - E-Learning Technologist, Cardiff Institute of Infection & Immunity Studying MSc Learning, Technology and Society at Bristol University. https://twitter.com/karl_luke
  “Squashing Others”: Appropriating and Repurposing Social Collaboration Tools in Higher Education Online Courses. Using “Participatory Web” Tools in Education: Expectations, Practicalities, Roles, Tensions and Challenges 
• Dr Joe Nicholls - Principal Consultant: Digital Enablement. The role is concerned with enabling the development of staff and student digital literacies at Cardiff University. Studying MSc in Digital Education with the University of Edinburgh  https://twitter.com/JoeNicholls
  “Discovering alternative ways of learning and teaching through representations of practice” 
• Mike Johnson – Lecturer Information Management and Teaching at the School of Healthcare Sciences, Cardiff University Doctoral candidate in Technology Enhanced Learning and e-Research at Lancaster University https://twitter.com/agentjohnson
  “When is a blog not a blog? Domesticating blogs through academic supervision”

15:30-16:00 Panel summary and Q&A to close.

If you're free, do please feel free to come along too!

This is a link to Cardiff University Estates page for Ty Dewi Sant 2.21