Pass the SoLT

A few months ago I posted a comment about an Open Educational Resource (OER) research project that I'm involved in looking at uptake and policy around their use in Australia. My earlier posting shared more information about this project along with a link to a related Slideshare presentation. Since then we have been analyzing the initial responses to a survey on the use and general understanding of OERs, which has led to an interesting line of discussion about the shift in language from OERs to Open Educational Practices (OEPs).

The recent findings of the Open Educational Quality Initiative were explicit about the need to go beyond OERs in current thinking and argued that they have potential to lead to more open pedagogical practices and innovative cultures. Put another way, the focus on OERs per se may be looking for love in the wrong place!

There are important implications for our research from this subtle yet significant evolution of the OER/OEP literature. A major focus of our present study is on policy (macro, mesa and micro) and the language or discourse we adopt is really important. So it was interesting to recently find on Wikibooks a comprehensive User Guide for Organisations and policy resource on the topic of OEPs. The resource covers a number of topics ranging from models to marketing and is a good starting point for institutions wanting to better understand and take advantage of the open movement. Notably, the resource was developed with Ako Aotearoa funding by a team led by Leigh Blackwell.

I was particularly pleased to see a section at the end of the resource with responses from a handful of key individuals which include several critical remarks. In my view, there is a need for more critical debate over the claims, promises and learning futures of the OER/OEP movement as we seek to disrupt more traditional models of education. The unresolved question in my mind is whether the OER/OEP movement can truly become mainstream in an age of where institutions are preoccupied with revenue, rankings and reputation.

I spent more hours than I would like to admit over the Xmas break exploring the features of my new iPhone. I don't think I'm close to the 90 apps that a colleague has downloaded on his phone, but I do have an impressive variety of applications. They range from 'Quick Office', which gives me full Office functionality, to TwitBird Pro to read and publish tweets, the 2009 OECD Factbook and an assortment of games, including several versions of Solitaire.

However, it hasn't been all play and I have to confess to downloading several ebooks on my iPhone, such as John Kotter's Learning Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail and Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I've yet to download one of Michael Fullan's seminal works on educational change to balance the business speak of my current ebook selection.

Since acquiring my iPhone, I've been reflecting on the impact it has had on my life and work patterns. More to the point, the iPhone has renewed my interest in the potential of m-Learning and reminded me how important it is to have access to technology in order to truly evaluate its potential. Basically it's a hen and egg situation in that if you don't have access to the latest gadget, then you don't know what you don't know.

With this point in mind, I attended a full-day workshop today hosted at Massey University by Professor Mohamed Ally on the topic of m-Learning. Mohamed is the Director of the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University in Canada. He's also the author and editor of an open access book on m-Learning, entitled Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, published by Athabasca Press.

The workshop provided some interesting examples of initiatives underway around the world and discussed how many developing countries appear to have embraced the potential of m-Learning, and in so doing jumped a generation of desktop and laptop technology. However, there is a sense of technological determinism in this observation as John Pilger reminds us that despite huge advancements in technology over the last 50 years, the wealth gap between developed and developing countries has more than doubled. Can we really expect m-Learning to solve some of the deeper structural injustices of the global economy?

There is also a sense in which thinking about mobile technology is ahead of deeper considerations of how to exploit its pedagogical potential. This point was evident in a number of examples. Nevertheless, the workshop was successful in revealing some of the challenges facing tertiary and higher education providers, especially in New Zealand where broadband and wireless access is underdeveloped.

That said, pragmatically, we can assume that future learners will have greater access to mobile technology and will expect to make regular use of their personal digital assistants for information gathering and learning. Although my own iPhone experience leans towards the value of mobile technology for informal and non-formal learning, formal education providers need to start planning for, and supporting the use of, such devices in all future technology enhanced learning initiatives.

We have a professional responsibility to learners to pilot and explore the potential. In this regard, in New Zealand we can learn from our Australian colleagues where a number projects have been undertaken supported by the Australian Teaching and Learning Council. Some of the more interesting initiatives were reported in 2009 in an open access book, New Technologies, New Pedagogies: Mobile Learning in Higher Education, edited by a team in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong.

Finally, for people who couldn't attend the presentation, the slides from Professor Ally's workshop will be available in due course on the Ako Aotearoa website. Notably, Ako Aotearoa was one of the key sponsors of the workshop series and a special m-Learning interest group is likely to be established as a community on the Ako Website for people with a particular interest. I would expect a reasonable number of people to join this community based on the level of interest and attendance at today's workshop.

This week a colleague alerted me to a JISC funded elearning report entitled 'Understanding Global Activity in Higher Education and Research'. The report describes global elearning activity in 10 different countries. Although the report describes some interesting initiatives at each country level, after reading the study my overriding impression is a deep sense of unease about the validity and trustworthiness of this type of research.

Put bluntly, the country reviews for Australia and New Zealand are poor. For example, in the case of New Zealand there is no mention of Ako Aotearoa, the eLab Group, the high level of Government support for the use and development of open source software, including high uptake of Moodle by education providers, and the success of the Massey University led Mahara eportfolio system now being used throughout the world. The Mahara experience alone is sufficient to challenge the following conclusion:

"The overall impression given is that New Zealand currently sees itself as an informed follower. It does not appear to set out to be a leader in the field as things currently stand."

One has to question how any researcher could confidently arrive at such a conclusion from an analysis of web-based literature. Accordingly, the report is found wanting on a number of fronts and serious doubts must be raised about the validity of the data collection. The authors appear to be sensitive to this criticism as the following statement appears at the start of the Executive Summary and on a number of occasions throughout the report:

"It needs to be stressed that this study is not an attempt to objectively and exhaustively identify all aspects of e-Learning and e-Infrastructure in each country. We have endeavored to highlight some interesting, innovative and important initiatives – but in so doing we offer no guarantees that major initiatives have not been over-looked."

Unfortunately this type of qualifying statement or 'get out of jail' card does not diminish the report's shortcomings. After all there is no such thing as objective social science as all research is value-laden. In terms of the exhaustive claim, the study may struggle to find all relevant documents and initiatives but it could have done a better job of developing a systematic approach to the literature search.

About four years ago, I was centrally involved in a study of elearning policy across a number of countries in a report entitled 'Global Picture, Local Lessons: E-learning Policy and Accessibility'. Notably our report was extensively draw on by the authors of the latest JISC study. In our earlier study we went to some lengths to document the way the literature was searched and to validate the country reports. We explicitly stated the importance of this strategy in helping to inform the conclusions:

"The area report validation process added significantly to the value of the final report. The contextual understandings and complexities of policy of which we were made aware by all validators ensured a more comprehensive and nuanced collection of area reports" (Anderson, Brown, Murray, Simpson & Mentis, 2006).

One can only speculate that the research timeframe and funding limitations prevented the researchers from undertaking a more thorough analysis of the different countries. However, it does raise a question of why you would bother to fund or commission such weak research. Perhaps this helps to explain why the report refrained from providing the reader with an overall synthesis and conceptual discussion of the country reviews. The lack of a detailed discussion section is a major weakness of this report as the reader is left to largely reach their own conclusions.

On a positive note, the Appendices contain a number of recommendations which if accepted in future research would address some of the methodological shortcomings identified in the above comments.