Web 2.0 Untangled: Technology-enriched IBL

At #web2untangled, held in Oxford yesterday, Professor Philippa Levy and I gave a presentation: Starting as we mean to go on: Technology-rich Inquiry Based Learning in the first undergraduate year. The first part talks about what Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) is, the second part is an example of the IBL approach in our first year of the BSc Information Management, and the third part identifies some themes in the research literature which address IBL and technology. At the end are 2 slides of the references, and a link to the Sheffield companion to Inquiry Based Learning, which you can download from here.
This is the presentation.

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Web 2.0 Untangled: Elluminate use by the OU library

At #web2untangled in Oxford today (where I'm speaking later) the third talk is from Helen Clough at the Open University. For those outside the UK, the Open University is the major distance learning university in the UK. Elluminate is one of the online learning platforms that they use, and the OU library is using it as well. Helen is describing its use, and the feedback they've had. Because I want to drink the coffee I've brought in, I'm goingto be lazy and embed the ppt here instead of writing about it ;-)

Using Elluminate to deliver Library training at the Open University

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Web 2.0 Untangled: Ethics and law

Eric Davies talked about Web 2.0: Weaving ethics and law at the #web2entangled conference in Oxford that I am attending today. This presentation identified how may issues there were, and how few of them were really resolved. He started by asking us to talk amongst ourselves about what ethics meant. He defined it as "moral coices and the values that lie behind them", whilst laws were "agreed principles established by law and society".
Meanwhile, Web 2.0 is enabler of creative change - enabling distributed co-creation and so forth. He cited Shoshana Zuboff (Creating value in the age of distributed capitalism): with the focus now on individual creation. Eric characterised this as a mutation in the producion/creation process. This brings empowerment, but also responsibility, to the individual. However, the implications for organisations, as well as individuals, have not really yet been explored properly.
In terms of education he saw the mutation manifesting as e-scholarship, and changes in approach to learning and teaching. Eric mentioned Badrul Khan's framework for e-learning does include ethical aspects, which concern "social and political influence, cultural diversity, bias, geographical diversity, learner diversity, information accessibility, etiquette, and the legal issues." (quoted here). He also mentioned other studies which have revealed the concerns about Web 2.0 (such as identity, authority and security) and ways in which Web 2.0 has been used in education (e.g. building relationships, showcasing work). In the latter context, problems that have emerged include ownership issues, disruptive interaction, illegitimate use of content, protecting the anonymity of students and generally protecting their space.
Therefore key issues are: trust, privacy, data protection, copyright, plagiarism, unacceptable use (in terms of content and activity) and diversity (cultural diversity, accessibility etc.). In terms of unacceptable use, there are all sorts of ways in whichthe law could be broken, or local acceptable use guidelines could be breached, from statements that could be seen as inciting terrorism or were libelous, through to unacceptable advertising. Eric identified the great tension between enabling and regulating, with monitoring bringing its own concerns (e.g. privacy and censorship). This was seen as a big problem area that was not really being grappled with adequately.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Iced leaves in the grounds of Wolfson College, Oxford, this morning.

Web 2.0 Untangled: 1

Today I'm at the #web2untangled Web 2.0 Untangled conference in Oxford, organised by UC&R and COFHE. Peter Godwin started off the day with a talk entitled Library 2.0: bah humbug?. He began by highlighting how the number of older (50+) users has increased dramatically, and that we are finally entering a phase where e-books are getting used and not just hyped. Talking about the pervasiveness of mobile technology, he mentioned the ECAR study of undergraduate students and technology.
Peter thought it was the time to reflect on how useful Web 2.0 was, and what it was really for, as librarians tend to be enthusiatic about it, but students don't really use the range of Web 2.0 tools (e.g. are less likely to blog and use social bookmarking sites). He mentioned a new JISC report Managing students's expectations of university. One role of librarians is helping students to see how they can use tools like Netvibes to keep on top of material for their studies.
Coming to information literacy, Peter emphasised that librarians have a big role, but weren't the only people who were concerned with it. He felt that for information literacy in future, sifting and evaluation would be more important than search. Helping students to scope the topic was also important: students finding it hard to understand how they can home in on what they are supposed to be addressing.
In terms of creating material, Peter talked about Screenr (here is one of his videos), which I've been using for a while (though I've mostly used it to create videos about Second Life so far).
His final words were that for the social, mobile population, information literacy was about changing attitudes, not so much about skills.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Grounds of Wolfson College, Oxford, this morning.