I took the following two pictures in two recent trips of mine. Similarities and differences abound, but one difference (other than the language) stands out for me. And that difference reminds me of an unfortunate state of affairs in the learning technologies field.

Look at the photo below. It’s from a  menu that I came across in Dublin.

And the next one: It’s from a  menu that I came across in Stockholm.

Other than the differences in the language, do you notice anything else? (Hint: Look at the typography.) Wouldn’t it be amazing if instructional/learning designers paid that much attention to the details as well? Yes, beauty and aesthetics are probably the least of our problems (so say the critics), but they count, and they count more and more in a world where beauty (constructed as it may be) surrounds us.

(High resolution images are available on my flickr page)

This is another one of those mini posts related to the changing nature of the work that academics do; specifically, publishing. I wrote this after  being directed to the Public Library of Science site from Tony Hirst‘s tweet:

If you visit the website mentioned (here) you will see that the Public Library of Science will be making available a number of metrics intenting to evaluate the reach of published articles (I played with a similar concept here). These metrics (which will accompany each article) include reader notes and comments, ratings, social bookmakrs, citations in the academic literature, and so on. Not only is this a step toward transparently assessing the value of a publication, it provides another impetus for academics to seriously consider engaging with and participating in social media spheres. In an age where ongoing debate, collaboration, interaction, participation, and engagement are daily buzz words when envisioning improved education, shouldn’t the same ideas apply to our publications? If you are interested in these issues you may like to look at this cloudwork (and especially the comments made by Giota on the credibility, resistance, legitimacy, and power structures). It’s an interesting conversation.

Your thoughts?

[This posting is divided into 2 parts. This is part 2 and it provides an exercise in popularity metrics for online open access journals. The first part of this posting, providing an editable spreadsheet of online open access journals,  is available here.]

In this post I demonstrate several points that I have been playing with over the years. On the one hand, the post takes a simple concept (the popularity of academic journals) and attempts to rethink it in the context of the digital, interconnected space. On the other hand, it demonstrates the power of the “cloud” and the opportunities provided by posting information in online spaces that are accessible via standardized formats (such as XML). The posting also serves as an example of what kinds of opportunities mashups can provide to universities/education. And finally, I just wanted to learn how to remix data via online services

As you may have seen in my previous posting, we collected a list of all the open access online journals that we could find that are focused on publishing educational technology research. While having the list online in an open spreadsheet format allows anyone interested to update it, it also allows us to manipulate and remix the data. As a simple example, consider the issue of journal rankings. I’ve seen it debated on ITForum, on twitter, at the University of Minnesota where I did my PhD, and at the University of Manchester where I currently work. The issue is that “top tier” journals are good for tenure, but there are debates on what constitutes “top tier.” Is it readership? Rejection rates? Quality? Citations? All the above? I could link to a few different resources here, but the only one I will refer interested readers to is the European Science Foundation ERIH listings that I personally use as a guide.

My intention in this post is to rank the online open access journals according to “popularity.” As I see the rolling eyes through the tubes of the internet, let me say that popularity in this case refers to the number of sites that link to a particular page. Higher numbers denote more inbound links (= higher popularity). If you want to see the popularity metrics without reading the details of how this was done, the end result (that is generated every time you click on the link) is available on this page. At the time of writing, the least linked-to journal had 0 inbound links and the most linked-to journal had 31,534 links.

To be fair (or, “a word of caution”): The popularity index is not without it’s faults. Popularity doesn’t mean quality or even readership. The number of inbound links can be easily manipulated. The measure leaves our RSS subscriptions and number of individuals receiving TOC alerts. Also, inbound links carry equal weight regardless of where they come from. Another issue relates to journals changing URLs. For example, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication used to be hosted an Indiana University but is now part of the Wiley InterScience group (and is still open access). Also, the URL we used to link to a journal might not be the most appropriate one. To fully understand and see the problems with this method, one has to dive under the hood of the whole process, and that’s what I am doing next.

The implementation in detail

The journal URLs are posted in a google spreadsheet that allows data to exist online in a variety of formats (e.g. csv and html files). Those files can then be read into Yahoo Pipes (essentially, a drag-and-drop mashup tool). Once Yahoo pipes has a list of journal URLs, those URLs are send through the Yahoo Site Explorer API which generates “information about the pages linking to a particular page or pages within a domain.” That information includes the magic numbers used in this exercise (i.e. the number of pages linking to a particular journal via its url). Once the numbers are generated, Yahoo Pipes exports them as an RSS feed. That feed can then be imported back to a Google Spreadsheet. And that’s it. Whenever a journal url is added to the spreadsheet, the pipe generates a popularity number for it without anyone needing to do anything. A new journal appears? No problem, just add the url and its inbound links will be counted automatically. If you want the full details, feel free to grab the actual yahoo pipe that does all the work and clone it (at this point I should thank Mat Morisson and Tony Hirst, whose postings on yahoo pipes and online data manipulation helped me rethink how I was doing this). If you don’t have a yahoo account and are interested in how the implementation looks, the image at the top of this post is the actual pipe created.

A final word of caution

This is not a valid method to decide where to send your next paper . Yet, as I see more and more conversations online about  open access (e.g., BJET published an editorial on the topic on Aug 12, 2009) and alternative ways to evaluate ones contribution to his/her chosen field, this simple example may ignite ideas for evaluating journal contributions (in the UK at least the issue of journal impact is currently being debated as we await the transformation of the Research Assessment Exercise). Also, the ranking is less interesting to me than the implications behind our ability to remix available data to think about journal “impact”. Finally, if you are managing an online open access journal and you feel that the URL used is not representative of where users link to, please feel free to correct the url by visiting the original listing. If we used an erroneous link, we apologize and we thank you for helping us correct it.

This past week, my colleague and I had the pleasure of having with us a group of 25 faculty members from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In cooperation with the National Center For e-learning and Distance Learning, we held a two week workshop/training session for them on e-learning, digital technologies and education. Our conversations over these days touched upon multiple aspects of online and distance learning, ranging from cultural issues to techno-social affordances, to LMS evaluation, quality assurance, creativity, and pedagogical transformation. While I had a curriculum designed for my workshop days, I followed about half of it. The rest was revised on the spot according to what we felt we needed to cover and the needs that arose. In reality, the workshop wouldn’t have been successful had the curriculum was set in stone, but, if you are reading this far, I am probably preaching to the wrong choir

Below, is a list of items/ideas surrounding workshop issues. Other than being helpful to me, they might also be helpful to you if you are planning on leading a workshop/training session:

• People seem to like lists. I don’t know why, but they do. I think it was Curt Bonk who had wrote that people like lists and acronyms (probably because they are memorable), but the last item that I gave to my colleagues before they left today was a list of 10 things to keep in mind when using technology in education.
• This group was especially interested in learning from our experience with e-learning. Frequent questions were: How does the University of Manchester do e-learning? How do you train instructors/professors in using technology in education? What is your e-learning agenda? How do you convince instructors to adopt technology? What went wrong and what did you learn?
• Pedagogy and technology-enhanced pedagogy should be central and this should be made explicit from the very beginning. By George (!) enough with pedagogy-enhanced technology!
• University networks are just plain weird. On the one hand, my computer (that is registered on the network by its mac address, which is a unique identifier) would not connect to the network via ethernet. On the other hand, more than 1 person can log on the lab machines using the same username and password. The reason why the first issue arises while the second issue is ok is baffling me.
• Practical activities and discussion trump theory.
• People also seem to like to explore the courses that others have created and investigate specific design ideas or specific things that worked well or didn’t. I had my own courses to showcase and a few other open courses, but I wasn’t able to invite others to talk about their own experiences/courses. Perhaps the next time.
• Every university is different and it’s always difficult to give specific input on what might work in a specific situation. Recipes for success are generally recipes for disaster. For example, in some of these universities, the university’s budget is a non-issue. Yes, you read this right. In this economic climate. This was something new for me. To be more specific, it doesn’t matter if Blackboard costs money and Moodle doesn’t.
• Studying your learners helps. Did you know that online learning and distance education are  pressing matters in Suadi Arabia due to the fact that 38% of the country’s population is between the ages of 10-14 and the country needs to provide higher education to these people? It’s an exciting time for our field in this part of the world.
• Respectfulness, politeness, openness, appreciation, and kindness (along with a desire to improve education) go a long way.

I will end by posting a link to a twitpic posting that occurred during class time when we were trying to explore how the college of applied arts could promote student work online. And, in the spirit of the cross-cultural learning that transpired during the sessions, I look forward to visiting my newfound colleagues in the near future in Saudi Arabia. Inshallah (which, incidentally is a common Cypriot expression and is not derived from a specific religion)… oh, the things that this blog’s visitors learn are never-ending

Alec has posted a CFP for a special issue on Technology and Social Media for the in education journal:

See http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/1632

[Update: Thanks to your contributions, my student has been able to raise funds needed and reach the people needed to graduate. Thank you! Read the whole story at the link below...]

My student lacks the funds to graduate. We thought to turn to social media to help him graduate. Can you help?
http://helpmetograduate.wordpress.com/

In a couple of short weeks, I will be presenting a session at the Connecting Online 2009 conference (http://connecting-online.ning.com/). I am excited as this is my first online conference (and I suspect that it will not be my last). If you are interested in student engagement, please feel free to join the online conversation on February 6, 2009 at 6pm GMT at http://connecting-online.ning.com/. The presentation’s abstract is below:

Learner engagement can be defined as the learners’ act of investing effort and commitment to meaningful activities in anticipation of learning outcomes. The question of how to engage learners in the technology-enhanced classroom has proven elusive for educators and researchers alike. In this presentation I will discuss how a set of teaching strategies and pedagogies combined with the creative use of six technologies (a Learning Management System, a blog, audio podcasts, a video sharing website, a web conferencing and desktop sharing software, and a collaborative authoring application) engaged and empowered learners in a postgraduate level classroom to pursue their individual and communal learning goals, leading to impressive and unexpected outcomes.

See you there!

I was really happy to see Alec’s attempt to discover a definition of the term Personal Learning Network. Not only I consider such attempts to be valid forms of inquiring and researching a topic (see my attempt to discover a definition of the term Emerging Technologies), but I am uber excited that Alec had such a great response from his colleagues!

but instead I am blogging. I just got news that a proposal for a book project we have been playing with has been submitted. This is not the emerging technologies book – this is a whole new project that takes a more creative and “unorthodox” way to teaching and learning. I hope to be able to share more within the next month or so, once we hear back from the publisher. So far it looks promising as the published we pitched it to really liked our idea and the person we approached to write the foreword was positive. I’ll keep you updated, but it probably won’t happen until next year

I just received an email entitled “Amazon.com’s Black Friday Deals” and visited the amazon site to see if they have any deals on the books that i’d like to buy. I quickly stopped looking though because of the time required to go through the deals. Wouldn’t it be helpful if Amazon pulled together Black Friday wish list for me, showing me the books/items that were in my wish list AND were discounted on Black Friday? Simple and elegant, but apparently not available! Maybe next year…