Category: Ideas Page 1 of 5

Google scholar alerts on citations

Email is a productivity killer. But, one kind of email I like to receive is from Google Scholar, alerting me of newly published research that is in conversation with my research, aka papers that cite my work.

a screenshot of emails from google scholar showing new citations to the author's research

I love this feature because it quickly allows me to

  • get a sense of how others are reacting to my work
  • track some of the literature surrounding my research interests (emphasis on some)
  • discover new authors
  • keep my never-ending “to read” list full

I’d love it even more if Google Scholar also

  • delivered all available papers in that same email (e.g., if there was a way that it would connect to my institutional library and retrieve them or just give me the open access ones)
  • kept an up-to-date spreadsheet of all citations that I could use for different purposes

It ought not need clarification, but to be clear: 1) citations don’t necessarily mean that one’s work is impactful or significant. What if they are all critical of the work?. 2) lack of citations doesn’t necessarily mean that a paper isn’t worthwhile or significant, as areas unrelated to the quality of the work often influence citations (e.g., timing)

Metaphors of generative AI in education

It’s been interesting to see what kinds of conceptual metaphors have been used to describe generative AI. Conceptual metaphors are ways to talk about something by relating it to something else. It’s been interesting because the ways we choose to speak about generative AI in education matter, because those choices impact experiences, expectations, and even outcomes. Early pedagogical agent research for example, identified different roles for agents often positioning them as experts, mentors or motivators. Even the term pedagogical agents carries its own connotations around the kinds of work that such a system will engage in (pedagogical), compared to say conversational agents or intelligent agents.

Below is a small sample. What other metaphors have you seen?

Update: See Dave Cormier’s related post around prompt engineering, or what to call the act of talking to algorithms.

What makes for good policy? Thoughts in relation to BC’s digital learning strategy draft

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the digital learning strategy that my home province of BC is considering, as well as talking with various people about it. I’ll be sending my thoughts to the ministry shortly, but haven’t yet decided whether I’ll post them here. What I do want to share though, in case others find it helpful, is the framework that I used in making sense of the strategy and what it might achieve. In other words, in thinking about the content of the policy, I had to answer for myself the question: What are the hallmarks of a good policy? And in turn, I had to answer for myself what “good” means. While this isn’t a typical post for this blog, it’s one that interests me because (a) Royal Roads University offers an MA in Higher Education Administration and Leadership, and (b) i think about policymaking in my grant-seeking efforts.

To help me think through the content of the policy, I considered the degree to which the policy is

  • Inclusive. This strategy should address the needs and concerns of very many groups of people, and every institution in the province. Typically this is conceived in terms of institutional size, focus, location, etc, and, in Canada in particular, in terms of our relationships with Indigenous peoples. However, because of this strategy’s focus on digital learning, it also ought to address both the needs and concerns of predominantly in-person institutions as well as the needs and concerns of predominantly online/hybrid institutions. If the policy is about a particular kind of institution, then it should explicitly focus on, and define, that kind of institution.
  • Informed by evidence. This strategy needs to be informed by the literature on digital learning (duh), but also by the literature on how innovations are supported, sustained, and scaled; as well as by broader literature around sustainability, equity and inclusion, etc etc.
  • Descriptive. The strategy ought to describe macro-level actions, efforts, outcomes, etc rather than prescribe micro-level efforts in order to support the diversity, as well as the opportunity to innovate, in the sector. There’s a bit of a tension here between  descriptiveness and prescriptiveness, and it seems to be that it’s a bit of an art form to find the right balance.
  • Supportive. In inviting the sector to engage in various valued activities, the strategy should explicitly state how the provincial government is going to support the sector in its efforts. In other words, the policy ought to not only state the responsibilities of higher education institutions, but should also highlight the responsibilities of the Ministry and the ways in which it will support higher education institutions (e.g., in terms of resources, fora to provide opportunities for collaboration, funding for institutions to attend fora, etc, etc).
  • Aspirational. The strategy ought to identify its North Star, the thing that not only invites diverse groups to collaborate, but also to agree and strive toward.
  • Contemplative of unintended consequences. The policy ought to consider not just what it might achieve, but what it might unintentionally produce. This is a difficult one because it’s as much about what is in the strategy as it is about what is not in the strategy. To use a university policy example to make this concrete: While a policy which requires open educational resources is laudable in encouraging access etc etc, one of its unintended consequences might be that the course curriculum will be made available to everyone – including groups which use such content to harass and disproportionately target faculty who teach topics they disagree with.

There are other issues here to consider, such as the degree to which a policy includes outcomes which can be evaluated according to fair and explicit criteria, but those are perhaps “general good policy” criteria rather than this-specific-policy criteria. Plus, this post is too long already.

Over to you: What would you add to this list? The comments section is open.

July 31 update: Dr. Chuck Hodges alerted to a forthcoming chapter on National Educational Technology Plans that is relevant.

Strategies for addressing the Canadian post-secondary sector crisis

I was on a flight from Toronto to Vancouver on Saturday morning, and spent some of my time thinking about the strategies that Tony Bates believes may be helpful in addressing the coming crisis in Canadian post-secondary education.

I share Tony’s qualms concerning the future of higher education in Canada. In this post, I am going to share some thoughts in response to one question that he raised: What other suggestions would you have for making our institutions more relevant for a digital age?

People sitting on grass having a conversation
People sitting – by Ben Duchac on Unsplash

Before I go further, I should clarify two points:

I agree with Tony that we need radical curricular reform and compulsory training for every faculty member on how to teach. I also agree that we need new digital universities, which incidentally says nothing about the appetite for and/or challenges of such an endeavour. I imagine that Tony calls for new digital universities because a blank canvas offers space room for new/different ideas than revisiting henceforth established practices. While the BC government is exploring such a feat with the expansion of post-secondary opportunities on Vancouver Island’s West shore, these opportunities aren’t bountiful. So, within the existing system, what may be some strategies for current universities beyond the ones that Tony proposes?

1. A team-based approach to every course. A team-based approach invites the knowledge and expertise of multiple groups of people to the design and development of a course. For instance, this might involve every single course employing the services of an instructional designer in a meaningful way. To truly involve an instructional designer, as opposed to merely asking for input that may or may not be taken up, we need to restructure course design, development, and evaluation practices. At a fundamental level, this requires involving faculty, instructional designers, learning scientists, evaluation consultants, and media professionals in what is typically a solo approach.

What problem does this address? Improving teaching and learning. This proposal works in conjunction with Tony’s recommendation to provide compulsory training in digital learning. Such training will be invaluable in the act of teaching and facilitation, and will be helpful in having conversations with a team of professionals about course design, but we need to do more.

2. An education that is flexible to the needs of society. Our institutions are often grounded on structures that invite students to fit neatly within a template that we’ve created (e.g., courses start in September) or make drastic changes to their lives in order to fit that template (e.g., moving to a different city).

How much flexibility is there in typical degree programs? How many courses are electives? In how many courses do students select from a menu of assignments, assessments, or outcomes? This is not to satisfy mere preferences but to provide education that is responsive to needs and and realities that people face – people who have multiple and competing responsibilities.

I’ll use the practice of flexible admissions here to illustrate. Imagine someone who ended their undergraduate studies ten years ago in order to care for a family member. Or someone who holds a diploma and has been working in their chosen profession for the last 15 years. Or, someone who holds multiple diplomas and has 3 years of work experience. Now imagine these three individuals desiring further learning through an undergraduate or graduate degree. Institutions that are relevant to the needs of society should be able to offer paths to credentials that not only recognize prior coursework, but value prior experiences, learning, and knowledge. We know that universities do not have a monopoly on learning and knowledge and that a classroom of people from diverse backgrounds may provide an enriching learning experience for all. Why then exclude learners who may not have followed a typical path to learning? Flexible admissions policies address this issue by providing alternative paths to education. While some universities in Canada do this (including Royal Roads University, UOIT, and Athabasca University), flexible admissions that recognize prior learning, competence, effort, and accomplishments are not the norm.

What problem does this address? Life is complicated and many people follow non-linear paths to education either by choice or due to forces outside of their control. A relevant higher education institution is inclusionary, and flexibility is one approach to eradicating exclusionary and limiting practices.

This area requires caution: There might be a tendency here to eliminate student barriers without concomitantly providing supports that will enable students to succeed. One form of flexibility for example may be a self-designed, self-paced, and self-guided program of study that imagines students as individualistic and autonomous individuals who succeed without institutional and societal support.

3. Rapid engagement. Imagine that your institution wishes to launch a new program, perhaps an MA degree on Indigenous Knowledge or Educational Entrepreneurship or Critical Animal Studies or FinTech or Climate Emergency or any sort of programming that is new to your institution. Is it possible to go from concept to launch in matter of a few months? Probably not at present, but that’s what we should be striving for. To do so we need to eliminate bureaucracies that impede innovation both at the institutional level, but also at the provincial level (where programs are approved). This is not to say that institutions should strive to chase the next high-enrolling program or to abandon the deep critical work that universities do, but to say that innovation is a staple – a characteristic even – of universities, and we should strive to reduce the barriers facing it. Removing such barriers may also do something else: it might enable academia to set the stage for discussion rather than respond to a discussion.

What problem does this address? Slow responsiveness to changing societal needs and barriers to innovation.

There’s little in the notes above regarding research, commitment to research, affordability, social justice, and so on, which are issues that I believe are also at the core of this conversation. Over to you: What are your thoughts, recommendations, and suggestions on this topic?

Diversity, Justice, and Democratization in Open Education and #opened17

This post is more about connecting some dots for myself, and drawing parallels (see 4 especially), than making a fully comprehensible argument.

Blog work-in-progress, they say.

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Diversity by Manel Torralba

1. In 2012, we wrote that the open movement, and thereby the individuals associated with it, assume “ideals such as democratization, human rights, equality, and justice.” We argued that individuals should be vigilant and reflective of their practices, and that “such vigilance should focus both on determining who profits from [open] practices and who is excluded from them so as to combat both under-use by some (e.g., those lacking entry to or knowledge of useful networks) and over-use or exploitation by those with the wealth, power, and prestige necessary to effectively strip mine sources.”

2. I was reminded of this recently, as there has been many conversations around diversity in the open education movement. Some, but not all, of these conversation surround the choice of a keynote talk at the Open Education 2017 conference. Here are a few tweets to contextualize this conversation.

3. As part of the Digital Learning and Social Media Research Group, we’ve been awarding funding to individuals interested in conducting research with us. One of the papers resulting from these research opportunities contributes somewhat here. Michael Paskevicius was interested in examining discourses surrounding openness on Twitter and we analyzed a large Twitter dataset for this purpose. In that (forthcoming) paper, we wrote: “Inherent in the idea of openness is the attitude that all should be able to participate and share and reap the benefits of open communities. However, our results on the national and gender demographics of participants raises questions as to the ongoing diversity of the open education community. Notably, the U.S. dominates English-speaking conversations about openness, and though this might be somewhat expected given the relative size of that country, overrepresentation of males in the community should lead us to consider whether there are social or other barriers of entry for female participants. Interestingly, females gradually gained traction in the community and even overtook males in 2013, but this trend swiftly reversed the following year, and males now participate more than females at a rate of 1.8-to-1. The reasons for this up- and then down-turn is unclear… At any rate, if diversity of perspectives would be valued in any community, we would anticipate that this would be the case within open communities, so we suggest that leaders in this area should consider ways to better understand this issue and the reasons why many who should be participating in these conversations are not.” [emphasis mine] From: Paskevicius, M., Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (in press). Content is king: An analysis of how the Twitter discourse surrounding open education unfolded from 2009 to 2016. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.

4. In response to a question I asked a couple of weeks ago, Martin Weller noted open universities’ contributions to the ideal of democratizing education/learning. Others, noted openness in general. To what extent can an innovation/approach/activity be said to be democratizing when itself could be more diverse and more inclusive? Put differently, can open education be democratizing when itself and its community could benefit from being more democratic, diverse, and just? If i had to venture a guess, I would say that many in the open education community would say “yes, open education can concurrently be democratizing and in need of growth.” Warning: How is this different from techno-utopian SV approaches to educational technology that go like this: “We are democratizing/uberizing/disrupting education, even though we do need to work on our privileged heteronormative ways?” Perhaps what’s different is that in the open education community there seems to be a desire to do better, to be better, or at least, to start with, an acknowledgement that we can do better.

As I said… work-in-progress.

Being online: Recommendations for early-career academics

When I wrote my book Networked Scholars, I was very intentional in my writing. I wanted to avoid writing a “how to” book. Not that there’s anything wrong with “how to use social media” books, but there’s plenty of those, not to mention countless blog posts and advice columns on outlets like Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle, etc.

Beyond that though, my interests aren’t social media per se. My interests are on the ways that people learn online and the ways that knowledge is managed, negotiated, developed, and shared in digital environments. Though social media are central to these process these days – and let’s face it, most media are social nowadays – there are practices central to knowledge exchange and dissemination that have nothing to do with the technology, such as open access publishing and self-archiving.

What does this have to do with networked scholars? Well, I think the time is ripe to actually write a book of suggestions, principles if you will, for early-career academics (PhD students, new assistant professors). The suggestions will go beyond social media, aiming to (a) help people be more effective and productive online, and (b) help faculty and faculty trainers prepare people in these efforts.

This book will be different. It will be laconic and will nudge individuals to be more awesome in their online practices. I’m partnering with a graphic artist to create it. Below is a page from our early work.

Do you know of a publisher who might be interested? Are you a publisher that is interested? I am exploring Punctum Books, but would love to hear other suggestions.

Liberate your research

Digital Learning Environments, Networks, Communities. Your thoughts on a new course?

At the School of Education and Technology at Royal Roads University, we are very excited to be redesigning our MA in Learning and Technology. We will share more about the program in the near future, but for now we’d love any input that you may have on one of the courses my colleague Elizabeth Childs and I are designing. The course is called Digital Learning, Environments, Networks, and Communities. The link sends you to a Google Doc that hosts a very rough first draft of the course. We would love to hear your thoughts, critiques, ideas, gaps, etc on the Google Doc. Are we missing important details/readings? Are there additional activities that we should consider? What questions do you have? How can this course be better?

Some background information on the program follows.

Context: This is the first course in a two year MA degree in Learning and Technology (33 credits). The degree is offered in two modes: fully online and blended. The online group of students and the blended group of students come together in the third course. Thereafter, they continue together and complete the rest of the degree fully online.

Program Goal:

The program is founded upon principles of networked learning, open pedagogy, personalization, relevance, and digital mindsets. Students collaborate and contribute meaningfully to digital learning networks and communities in the field. Graduates will be able to create and evaluate digital learning environments. Students will apply theoretical and practical knowledge to critically analyze learning innovations and assess their impact on organizations and society.

Program Description:

The program responds to the demand for qualified professionals in the field of technology-mediated learning and education. It addresses the need for individuals who have the knowledge, skills and ability to assume the leadership roles that are required to plan, design, develop, implement and evaluate contemporary learning initiatives. Following several foundational courses, students transition into the inquiry-focused portion of the program. Next, they create digital learning resources based on personalized learning plans and facilitate a student-designed and student-led seminar experience that requires them to draw upon the networks and community(ies) they have been contributing to and cultivating over the duration of the program.  

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