Thursday 30 April 2015

The Future of Mobile and Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher and Further Education Conference

Yesterday I popped along to Salford University for a conference called 'The Future of Mobile and Technology Enhanced Learning'. There is a full list of speakers here if you're interested in who presented but I thought I'd share a summary of the highlights of the day for me and my thoughts on some of the presentations given.

So to start we were introduced to an app called MeeToo by a company called Lumiinisight which we used throughout the day to post questions about the presentations and to carry out voting/ polling. You can ask questions via the instant messaging feature which is pretty neat.  I quite liked this app although there are similar alternatives out on the market which I suspect are free although not sure about the pricing for it. Never the less I thought it was a neat little app and if you'd like to find out more about it then check out the website.

I'm going to focus my attentions on two presenters. Firstly Jonny Driscoll who is the CEO of Unipin. A new 'social learning environment' on the market. The focus for the platform is around student engagement and social learning built upon real time social media interactions. The concept hangs of the idea of drawing in 3 aspects of university life into one well presented interface. These 3 (if memory serves) are academic, personal and extra curricular activities. It looked like a mix of Pinterest, Google + and Facebook smashed together with a sprinkle Evernote. Jonny graduated only a couple of years ago so he's managed to bring his own experiences of a recent graduate into this platform and into the vision of Unipin. Questions raised about the product were around privacy and encroaching into the social space of a student. There are options to adjust privacy settings so you're not divulging too much of your personal profile. As an academic you can timetable in lectures and allow note taking. The algorithms mean that students are seeing the most important and relevant information to them  each day, be that a social event or a seminar.

Personally, I liked the concept and the way it looked but I think there would still be a need for managing some teaching and learning process such as assignment submission and feedback elsewhere depending on what the platforms being used for. Rolled out on a wider scale I think the product has potential for some FE and HE environments and it'd be interesting to see what feedback they get from students in terms of it pulling in the 3 aspects of university life.


Secondly and finally, Prof Neil Morris Director of Digital Learning at the University of Leeds delivered a presentation on digital technology and higher education - delivering benefits for a student education. Neil talked about their approach and strategy to address some of the issues surrounding student learning, online environments, the digital age and learning technologies. What sprung out to me was the similarity between what they had already done and what we as an institution are also starting. Some key areas such as MOOCs, OERs, lecture recording and blended learning were under their digital strategy for student education. Here at the University of Sheffield we are also looking to take a similar approach and look at these themes institutionally through an digital engagement group. It would appear that taking this holistic view of a 'digital offering' and looking at each aspect of it with a clear strategy for support and implementation is a worthwhile approach. That cohesion amongst 'all things digital' across an institution is often overlooked when introducing just the tech and process as opposed to firstly thinking about the digital pedagogies that command the tools in the first place.

1 comment:

  1. Informative post Nav......Initially I really liked the Unipin interface......looked really clean and fresh. Fundamentally I think there are issues as it appears to require shifting from established platforms to an all in one...rather than an aggregator platform. Ultimately I'm not sure how people with 10 years of digital id will feel about arriving at Uni and being asked to switch to a completely new digital platform. Not sure how that differs from current VLE offering. Not sure the constant tweaking of algorithms for all customers would be scalable. Felt the detail on that was a bit sketchy. Will make interesting viewing as it plays out.

    Thought Prof Morris' presentation was a comprehensive case study looking at the implementation of video into the full range of teaching and learning spectrum, from MOOC and OER through iTunesU to on-campus courses. The clear and persistent desire to remove technical boundaries to drive staff engagement was a real plus to hear.





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