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The following is a summary and some reflections upon...more...
It's been an intellectually draining few days with a range of visitors to the institution talking about a range of different topics. It started on Monday with George Siemens giving a talk titled "The future of the University: Learning in distributed networks" (video and audio from the talk available here). A key point - at least one I remember - was that the structure of universities follows the structure of information and the current trend is toward distributed networks. On Tuesday, Mark Drechsler ran a session on Extending Moodle using LTI which raises some interesting questions about how the LMS mindset will handle the challenge of a distributed network mindset....more...
Read this piece - Why CIO's, IT and Faculty need to find common ground on technology - by David Wiley yesterday as it did the rounds. The article argues that the focus of the CIO/IT on highly reliable systems is a mismatch for the needs of innovation in learning and teaching. It brings up the tension between standard systems and rogue systems (aka shadow systems). The solution to this is a space - a policy space - that enables innovation....more...
The following is a summary and some initial responses to this paper...more...
In a a prior post I wondered about the "end in mind" for university analytics projects. What follows outlines why I'm skeptical of such projects....more...
Have signed up for another MOOC - Statistics in Education for Mere Mortals - to fill a hole. What follows is the diary of the first week....more...
Learning analytics is one of the new management fashions sweeping higher education. As a consequence, every Australian University I know has some sort of project around learning analytics underway. Some of these projects are actually considering how to help the folk at the coal face - students and teaching staff - use and benefit from learning analytics....more...