Workshop Proceedings Learning Technologies 26 March 2014, University of Hull, Hull The Higher Education Academy STEM (Computing) / Department of Computer Science, University of Hull Edited by Deryn Graham and Neil Gordon Workshop Proceedings Learning Technologies 26 March 2014, University of Hull, Hull The Higher Education Academy STEM (Computing) / Department of Computer Science, University of Hull Edited by Deryn Graham and Neil Gordon ISBN 978-1-907207-48-8 Foreword We are pleased to present in this volume the position papers for the second Higher Education Academy (HEA) STEM (Computing) Learning Technologies Workshop 2014. Collectively, they cover a range of interesting research and informed opinion. The success of a workshop of this nature is dependent upon the calibre of the submissions and the participants, which have both been exceptionally high. We wish to both welcome and thank the contributors to this workshop. In addition, we wish to extend our thanks to the workshop committee and referees. In particular, we wish to thank Mark Ratcliffe and Karen Fraser of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), STEM (Computing), for continuing assistance and support in making this workshop possible. Workshop Chairs Neil Gordon and Deryn Graham Workshop Committee/Referees Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Hull: Neil Gordon. University of Greenwich: Deryn Graham. This workshop was funded by the HEA. Templates were also provided by the HEA. 1 Contents Keynote Introduction to the HEA, Learning Technologies and WebPA. Karen Fraser, The Higher Education Academy; Neil Gordon, University of Hull; Deryn Graham, University of Greenwich 3 Papers Personalised Learning Environments. Robert Costello and Nigel Shaw, University of Hull 4 Mixing Social into the Blend: The impact of Social Learning on Learning Technologies. Mike Brayshaw and Neil Gordon, University of Hull 12 Using program source control to motivate student learning. Simon Grey, University of Hull 21 A Pedagogically Motivated Guided Inquiry Based Tutor For C#. Adele Butterfield and Mike Brayshaw, University of Hull 33 Introduction to WebPA and the WebPA Special Interest Group Report. Neil Gordon, University of Hull 53 Launch Of The New WebPA Help Support. Melanie King, Loughborough University 55 2 Mixing Social into the Blend: the Impact of Social Learning on Learning Technologies. Mike Brayshaw Neil Gordon Department of Computer Science, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK m.brayshaw@hull.ac.uk; Department of Computer Science, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK n.a.gordon@hull.ac.uk Abstract The success of school and university based learning has been built on the social context within which the learning takes place. In this paper we consider this learning in the context of 21 st century technologies, where social interaction and presence can be dually in the virtual world as well as in the physical world. Technology can offer new flexible approaches to learning, opening up more opportunities and choice for learners in the where, when and how they learn – making learning truly flexible. The variety of interactions between students becomes something which can happen in a variety of ways, which may complement – as with blended learning - or replace traditional learning exchanges. This raises questions about how teaching and learning are delivered and managed, and how they may be assessed. Social media is a particular challenge – students’ preferences differ, some wanting to utilise their social presence in their formal learning, others want to keep it separate. For institutions and staff, the issues around personal and institutional identities make the decision to use social technologies a challenging one. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) offer another approach – for some commentators a disruptive one –to university education, and raise challenges about how universities develop their own campus and online offerings in this developing virtual marketplace. Keywords Social Learning; Blended Learning; Flexible Pedagogy. 1. Introduction Going to school or University was always a social event. The importance of the social aspect of learning has been noted before, particularly the use of the appropriate scaffolding that this interaction may bring about (Vygotsky, 1934; Bruner, 1961, 1966; Wood, et al., 1976). So what has changed and how have learning technologies brought this about? We now have new ways of being social and this has major pedagogic impacts. The development of the Internet, Web 2.0, and ubicomp (Brush, 2014) have led us to consider how we deliver “what, which, and how” in a blended fashion, where the blend reflects that we have now multiple options about the way in which we deliver material (Allen, 2007). Of importance here is the new affordances of social technologies and how they support peer-to-peer interactions. They offer the opportunity to overcome teacherstudent contradictions (Freire, 1970) or classic Computer Mediated Communication hang-ups like synchronous versus asynchronous communication. Most people do not think of their phone as a computer, rather they consider the phone as a social communication device. Given that we live online, the question is how can we effectively learn online? Virtual campuses are not new 12 (Eisenstadt et al, 1996), but early implementations are typically a metaphorical veneer on existing practice. This paper will look at how social media can be used to deliver core University teaching that would of old constituted lectures, seminars, and tutorial as well as key linked social events – it is not always what you went to see as who you missed it with. The role of Webinars, MOOCS and Virtual and Augmented Reality will be discussed and we reflect on how they change the educational mix. Social aspects of being at a University will also be addressed. Indeed in Social Computing we are not shackled to any Newtonian Reality; the context in which we choose to interact and learn can be one that we imagine to best scaffold our personal learning. 2. Flexible and Blended Learning Flexible learning (Higher Education Academy, 2013) focusses on providing learners with choice – sometimes considered in terms of the 3 dimensions of flexibility; the how, where and when to learn. Such choices can be enhanced and supported with technology (Gordon, 2014), with opportunities to allow for blended learning (Ceretta et al, 2002), which considers the use of computer based learning technologies alongside formal instruction. As noted above, computers are now becoming ubiquitous, with many users not considering their mobile, tablet, television or games console as a computer; however, in terms of eLearning these are all manifestations of computers within everyday life. In terms of blended learning, a student may attend classes and other more traditional activities, which are complemented by computer based support such as interactive learning objects, computer based simulations and computer aided assessment. This may include lecture capture and replay, or other support to replace some elements of the original teaching, or to give extra flexibility by enabling students to learn in different ways. The opportunities here can include supporting different learning styles, allowing choice in the place and/or time of study, as well as the more pedagogic focus of what the learning actually involves in terms of the learning style and content. The choices afforded by technology become more challenging when issues of assessment are considered. Allowing some choices – such as where to take an assessment, can be considered as placing the robustness of the outcome at risk e.g. how to verify the identity of the individual taking the assessment. Allowing selection in the form of assessment can also cause difficulties when it comes to ensuring the comparability and equivalence of different assessments – in what way is an oral presentation equivalent to a report, and how to these really compare to a closed book exam? Another aspect of assessment may be choosing whether to work individually or in a group – which places extra complications around the recognition of work and the allocation of marks. Such choices can require culture change by the individual teachers as well as by institutions and their systems. 3. Assessment in a social context With the internet generally, and social media in particular – whether promoted and required within a course, or utilised by students to supplement institutional tools and systems – the opportunity for cooperation between students is sometimes encouraged and is certainly more available and supported than hitherto. However, the borderline between cooperation and collaboration, and the transition to unfair means remains a challenge when it comes to assessment. 13 Peer assessment – that is the marking of one student’s piece of work by another student – is one way to manage scalable marking solutions. However, such approaches open up issues around the training and capacity of the (student) markers. Such approaches can encourage student to student dialogue around work, but the difficulties of validating the marking may dissuade teachers from using it. Team based projects are another way to encourage interaction, and to utilise the strengths of social media. However, team based activity can be problematic when it comes to assessment. The issue becomes how to apportion marks, how to validate marks, and how to deal with appeals and complaints. 3.1 Groupware and Web 2.0 for team projects Groupware – that is Internet technologies to support group and team work – offer tools that can assist individuals in carrying out group activity. Equally, a number of Web 2.0 technologies – such as Wiki and Blogs – offer mechanisms that can support cooperative working. The benefit of such tools from an assessment perspective is that they provide author and date stamping of work, so giving some audit trail of who did what, and when. This can aid in assigning marks based on apparent contribution; however, such analysis can be time consuming and would miss any non-recorded interactions, such as utilising other private social media, or even face-to-face interaction. One solution to this is to put the onus on the allocation of marks back onto the students themselves, as considered in the next section. 3.2 Assigning Marks e.g. WebPA As noted in the previous section, assigning marks is non-trivial. One approach to deal with this is for the teaching staff to mark the overall product that a team produce, and then to use a weighting to allocate a proportion of that mark to the individual team members, based on some judgement of the relative contributions. Such a judgement could come from reviewing the audit information on a team site, from interviewing – in person or virtually – the team and/or its individual members, or by offering the opportunity for the individual team members to record their perspective on the relative contribution of the team members. This last approach is one supported by a number of web tools, in particular by WebPA (2008) which allows students to provide a rating of team members’ contributions, which are then used to generate a weighting to allocate an individual mark. Whilst WebPA is typically used in traditional campus based teaching, the approach and tool itself would be equally applicable to an entirely virtual teaching environment. Of course, any auditable data available – such as activity logs – can be used to validate the weightings that come from the student judgements (Gordon, 2010). 4. Social Media and Education Social Media is at the very heart of our modern interaction with each other. The thought of being off-line or unable to connect with those that we want to – despite the often vast distances that this involves – is an anathema in the modern ages. It is common for Universities now to use Social Media in their advertising (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfHull), as method of communicating with their alumni (e.g. Twitter #HullAlumni orhttps://www.facebook.com/yorkalumniassoc) and for the existing students organisations and 14 societies to communicate (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/Hullstudent). As a follow on to this now we will now look at how this technology impacts in an educational context. 4.1 Changing the Location of Learning The internet and WWW have changed how Universities can disseminate their material and interact on an educational basis with their students. This can be in terms of making slides/notes available, as virtual notice boards or messaging systems, YouTube Video Lectures, direct mailing to cohorts or targeted students, as well as, as previously noted, carrying out assessment and marking. It is easy to see how Facebook and Google+ can be used in a similar fashion as providers of information and download facilities or to post homework. What is more of interest is the social interaction affordances they offer. An early attempt at a Virtual Campus was the Virtual Summer School (Eisenstadt et al, 1996). It used WWW and forum style synchronous and asynchronous interaction to provide the infrastructure backbone. However, two weeks before the course was set to run, in order to familiarise people with the new equipment and facilitate interaction they were required to meet in a Virtual Bar using a standard chat facility and virtual drinks (virtual for some – actual local drinks for others) with social sessions taking place between 8pm and 9pm (GMT). Conversations on dogs and cats and other subjects were entered into. This continued through the fortnight of the summer school culminating with a virtual disco on the last night. The students were perceived to carry on using this social world throughout the Summer School and for academic as well as personal, non-academic conversations. Another bold attempt to change location is to move to a new world altogether. The Department of Information Systems at the University of Sheffield has developed a Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) island. Second Life is a parallel reality where you can live through your own invented avatar and trade in money and real estate in an analogous manner to a conventional experience. Communication is via real world metaphors in this virtual world. Information Islands in this world are focuses of activity. Infolit iSchool is a (University of Sheffield) island that promotes Information Literacy and Inquiry-based learning (http://secondlife.com/destination/infolit-ischool). The educational activity is quite literally moved to a second place. The problem with this metaphor is that considerable extra baggage has to be engaged with before any learning takes place. That students might not be predisposed to entering into this fantasy is also an issue. One of the major changes to location over the last few years has been the growth of MOOCS (Massively Open Online Courses). Many major Universities now offer access to online materials and assessment. They offer access to famous Universities at very affordable prices. Anyone from around the world can take these courses and thus their uptake in less-affluent countries is one of their major claims. Proponents would argue that the change of location allows the world to educate itself and re-adjust social imbalance. For example Stanford University’s AI course has 160 000 enrolled with 23 000 students completing the course and getting an appropriate achievement certificate. If you consider an average University Lecturer starting teaching at 25 years old, with a class of 200 students a year, in a whole career they are not going to teach that number of successful students. This represents a massive shift towards virtual locations of learning but it is not without its downside as we shall discuss. 15 Another aspect of change of location is mobile learning. MOOCs don’t care where you are. Ubicom means that we can interact with virtual universities wherever in the world we find ourselves and at whatever time we choose. Given the development of Unicom delivery devices the co-location of student and university campus is loosened even further. The constraint now is more one of bandwidth and appropriate receiving device like a Pad or console. The location of class is similarly altered. It is no longer necessary to co-located with fellow students to interact with them in the same way as the teacher does not have to be physically present. This is also true for people with similar interests or those that pursue similar causes. Google+ Communities allow those with common interests and subject matters to form subject interest groups. In a classroom setting this can be used as a basis for group work and sharing of resources 4.2 Changing the Educational Paradigm Employed Mixing Social into the Blend is all about how to use Social Media in the fundamental philosophies of teaching. As discussed earlier Blended learning aims to exploit different approaches as most applicable to the current learning context. To do this the flexibility and liveliness of the approach naturally lends itself to the endeavour. Indeed the lack of inertia that new media brings to the mix means that swapping between approaches is easy. Classic chalk and talk can readily be updated to multi-media presentation for example via YouTube, Picasa, Facebook, and Google+. Didactic blends can have a similar treatment by the associative interactive techniques which we will deal with in the next section. 4.3 Changing the Type of Interaction Mixing Social into the Blend means that we can look at how the types of interaction, in an education context, can change. Sharing resources using Googledocs, YouTube, and Picasa is an exciting new way of interacting. Fordham, and Goddard, (2013) present two case studies using Facebook to provide students with information, to encourage them to communicate, and organise their activities and share the results of their research. They note how Facebook Timeline can help teach a curriculum, provide a platform for homework and revision, host debates, provide for peer mentoring and tutoring, allow sharing of ideas, videos, and resources, and the setting up supporting groups. In Twitter use of hashtags for rapid response and research is a similar resource. The importance of choice of #hashtag in Twitter is a critical issue. Tweeting provides for a rapid response although the limited in characters (140) may limit what can be expressed and effect necessary dialog. Follow up Fridays provide reviews about who to follow next. This can lead to the development of Twitter strategies; for example do you decide to follow those with a large following? A Twitter backchannel (Bruff 2011) or parallel conversation can be developed alongside physical teaching to encourage reflection on and meta-discussion of existing lectures or seminars, so that questions raised in any mode of delivery could be dealt with using this channel Crowdsource is another emerging type of interaction in social media that learning technologies can exploit. It allows for multiple views to be solicited by asking the folk out there on the net for their views. The idea is that if you ask for a wide range of opinions and knowledge you will be in a more 16 informed situation on which to base our subsequent actions. A real-time stream of discussion via can be implemented by a particular #hashtag. In interactions there is always the issue about who you are talking to. In a physical co-located work you can sense the actual presence of your correspondent and from that extrapolate some personal details. This is not so online. People typically have multiple identities e.g. a work/school/university email and private ones like GoogleMail , Hotmail, or their ISP provider based email. This is compounded by new identities on Facebook and Twitter. This may indeed be a feature so that one can have one identity or many identities depending upon what role that you wish to play in a Learning Technology based pedagogic interaction. Another enhancement social learning can bring to learning technology is to build a learning community (e.g. Holton, 2013). In a community mutual help and support can be encouraged, knowledge and resource shared, tips passed on, and learning made a sociable experience. Distance Learning can often be a very lonely thing to do (e.g. Willems, 2007), particularly when there is just you in the house or housemates are all asleep. Communities can help to overcome this by bringing people together, talking to each other, maybe at antisocial times, whilst sharing common goals like studying a course. Further Interaction in Learning Technologies can be provided by the use of a news stream that provides up to date information for absorption and comment. Live debates on social events and current zeitgeists can be entered into which can greatly add to a pedagogical dialog. Foreign language news streams can further add to this debate and enlarge the syllabus. Blogging is a Learning Technology that provides yet another new type of learning possibility. Although intended as biographical logs they can be used to provide commentaries on education courses and as a focus for repositories of education resources (e.g. robmiles.com) Real time education policy can also be updated e.g. via Twitter timelines which give us access to the latest thoughts of Government Policy makers Whilst not strictly Social Events Webcasts/Webinars can form part of a new Online Interaction that fit in with Social User of Computers for Learning. 5. Discussion 5.1 Who is really out there listening One of the big problems with using social media is understanding who we are broadcasting to. Even with email people frequently confuse reply with reply to all. Likewise people often only mean to send a message to a local group “I’m playing squash this lunchtime” and end up sending it to the entire University. For a University this is not catastrophic – however if you post on the internet this is to the whole world and it is (maybe) a permanent event. The effects can be far reaching (BBC, 2011). What can be thought of as private conversation, when broadcast in public can have far reaching consequences. Google+ provides additional levels of privacy, selectable at each session which may help militate against some of these problems. 17 Google+ Hangouts allows limited number of people to talk and video conference. That it is a Hangout is a constraint on who is going to be present and thus who can hear your comments. Even so the need to be candid in such an open forum still remains. 5.2 Is “being a friend” the right thing for student and teacher? The world of social media is a very flat one without the rigid hierarchy traditionally associated with schools and universities. This can be a good thing. It can encourage open discussion and knowledge sharing. Conversely meeting your first professor can also be a positive experience. Respect for learning can aid learning itself. The views of a neophyte may not be the best ones that that individual will subsequently have. A downside to social media is that it has to be used responsibly and professionally. In 2011 Vasagar and Williams (2012) noted that one in ten school teachers accused of misconduct in the UK and reported to the General Teaching Council for England had used social media, chat rooms, and email contact to forge inappropriate relationships with their pupils. 5.3 To the Future One key driver in the field of virtual universities is MOOCs and the vast uptake of this learning technology may be one of the most important of the contemporary age. Major Universities around the world are investing in this route as a way forward, but do they solve all of our problems? The enrolment rates may be impressive, yet to call a course successful with only a 14% completion rate would be considered a disaster in convention chalk and talk circles. Indeed one wonders how many of those taking the course already had a degree and thus had additional experience which helped them in their studies. That they provide little hand holding is a problem. We have reported elsewhere about the need to provide guidance in education provision (Butterfield and Brayshaw, 2014). One of the opportunities for Learning Technologies in the future is how they can provide not just the education media but the associated interaction and contact to guide and best inform students in their study. With the increased growth in bandwidth and the massive expansion of power of the computers that we wear, how long will the text based social tools that we use today reamin dominant? Whilst students can see they own learning, reciprocity, and instinctive thinking, what can you say in 140 characters and in an open and public forum (Rich and Miah, 2013). Given all this online social interaction, it is ironic in that we do it often with no one physically around. In Alone Together, Sherry Turtle (Turtle, 2010) reflects on how we now rely on the technology for our social needs rather than meet up in a real space. 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