Might be near King's Cross somehow

Reminder has arrived for talk on Thursday, emplyability and HE. It will be on Zoom , I thought from Lancaster, but the email comes with a map of Collier Street near King's Cross where SRHE is based. With freinds from Phonic FM I sometimes stop off there on way back from ExCEL towards Paddington. We check out BETT and Learning Technologies. The area is going to be major for tech and information. We found the Samsung cafe. So I am in Kendal, away from Lancaster but with Zoom might be near London anyway.

Still looking at paper on what Networked Learning means at this time. It seems to define some limits. The subject area stays the same as something recognised by academics, though the tech possibility changes. In some ways there can be networked learning without technology, it could be a face to face meeting, but over time the tech is more of an option some of the time.

I still like "blended learning" as a reference point but this is seen as "slippery to define" . Sometimes vagueness is easier to work with. There is concern about the commercial moves being made during the pivot online post Covid. Examples include the "monetised successors to MOOCs, referencing Techlash, published in Australia. I don't know if the Techlash writers know how Futurelearn developed in the UK. Originally fully owned and funded by the Open University where there was concern that Peter Horrocks closed buildings for regional support to invest in a free online platform. His arguments were rejected and he had to resign. No other UK HE source has been mentioned as a possible source of funding. So later 50% of Futurelearn was sold to Seek, a jobs site in Australia. This may be where the concerns at Techlash come from but is there any proposal for a MOOC platform that would be less vocational or less concerned with tech skills? 

There is a section in the paper which I am quoting in full

Critical and emancipatory dispositions appear in weaker and stronger forms. Or perhaps it would be more helpful to say that they sometimes feature in accounts of inquiry and action that are tightly bound to the pragmatics of local organizational contexts. Good examples include instances of networked action research and professional development through action learning. And they sometimes feature in much deeper and/or wide-ranging critiques of the structures and circumstances in which (networked) learning takes place (see, e.g. Jandrić and Boras 2015; Ryberg and Sinclair 2016; Littlejohn, Jaldemark, Vrieling, and Nijland 2019). In revising our description of networked learning, this interest in forms of emancipatory action research, underpinned by a commitment to social justice and empowerment, needs to find a place. This also implies that we should situate a revised definition within larger action-oriented projects and/or promote its application in broader educational, social and political movements (Jones 2019).

This offers a way to relate to professional development and action learning, possibly with critique and emancipation still for discussion. ( I am showing this blog to some other people in professional development groups , problem is hard to predict what the results will be )   

Looking at Chris Jones paper for more about social and political movements I find the take on MOOCs too  dismissive - "Only a few years later on from their height, the idea that free courses offered via online platforms could supplant universities and schools seems ridiculous, but this was a widely held view until recently. " ( p291 ) The term MOOC may not be used so much but the platforms continue and are shown to be viable. July 19th Class Central report that Coursera has raised $130m , implication valued at $2.5b . Whatever the numbers mean there is a continuing MOOC interest. In May Dhawal Shah claimed that MOOCs are "back in the spotlight" . Coursera and EdX both in the top 1000 sites for traffic and FutureLearn just outside top 3000. Social and political aspects of MOOCs continue. Free options are still available as well as the certificates and degrees.

So I think the space to look for is the overlap where the MOOC scene meets the criteria for Networked Learning. I realise the numbers and business model aspects are not central to Networked Learning concerns. But they will turn up somewhere.

Last, but not least, there are open questions about organizational and policy issues, which need deeper exploration as we find new spaces for networked learning. 

Futurelearn partly based at British Library, round the corner from King's Cross. Not far from YouTube.

 

Browsing round MOOC scene

This week I am away from Exeter desktop and radio shows already recorded. Sort of holiday, browsing time depends on weather, today raining. On Thursday there is an online talk about platforms, labour and employability. Should have been at Lancaster. Dr Janja Komljenovic also did a podcast about LinkedIn a while ago that probably relates. Certainly covers employment as a claimed aspect of universities.

I still try to find out what is meant by a "Platform University" as focus for a conference that has twice been cancelled. I think the platform scene is regarded as negative, as if the campus model is less commercial as it exists. See previous posts on Fortress University but the aspect to check out is what to think about MOOC platforms such as Futurelearn. Despite the monetisation there are still free options and the range is not all jobs related. I can see how the direction raises questions but I would like to know if there is any form of MOOC platform that most academics would support.

The talk description mentions EdTech investment direct to individuals or business rather than in services for universities. Platforms such as Futurelearn are harder to categorise. They might include content from universities that reached a wide audience for free or as micro credentials, then encouraged units of a degree or similar. This seems noyt to be much mentioned. I am also looking at recent paper on Networked Learning which could have more about MOOCs I think. Not sure where the links might be.

Also thinking about professional development as in improvement activity. I come across formal versions and also fairly casual as in local community radio. Mostly forms of podcast or video so I realise this is limited as a learning base. Some sort of social media will exist around it, not sure how. Tweets follow, some with more limited scope so another blog post in a week or so depending on what still fits. 

Fortress Journalism , Fortress University

BBC and Guardian both announce lost jobs today. My guess is the model of print needs revision for internet. The audience should be involved in the journalism. More on this later or previously.

I mention this as I started looking at the Durham lecture by Peter Horrocks and the interview by Peter Wilby that appeared later in the Guardian. I think the Guardian take on journalism was a large factor in how the lecture was interpreted. "In the digital age, what happened to newspapers will happen to universities." This was the opening quote, based on the remarks about Fortress Journalism as well as the Fortress University. I get the impression Wilby is not convinced of the claims about newspapers, any more than the academics he quotes are convinced about a digital direction for the OU.

The age of “the fortress university”, in which “the academic was the custodian of knowledge” sheltering behind “high barriers to entry”, was nearing its end, Horrocks said. “I remember UK newsrooms scoffing at the idea that news consumption would move away from then dominant newspapers or broadcasters to digital aggregators. Who is scoffing now?”

Wilby mentions "apocalyptic language" on the campus and claims of the end of the OU as it has been known.  There are real problems in creating space for a digital project such as Futurelearn, a MOOC platform. Wilby reports on the closure of regional support buildings. But the quotes from OU staff suggest more general concerns with online pedagogy.

“Our worry,” one senior academic told me, “is that the current management is running the university down. They see its future not as an academic institution but as a media platform.”

Horrocks, his critics can reasonably say, has form. He came to the OU from the BBC, where he had spent his entire working life, latterly as head of the World Service. In an earlier job, he turned BBC news into a multimedia operation, to the consternation of its more traditional reporters who were upset when he said that aggregating and curating content, some of it from social media, was part of their job. “You’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things,” he said. “It’s not discretionary.”

This is how Futurelearn is mentioned

Money will also go to FutureLearn, a commercial offshoot offering Moocs (massive open online courses) from the OU and other universities around the world. Seven million “learners” (in Horrocks’s word) already use its courses.

So learners are in quote marks and Futurelearn is a commercial project. No recognition of social learning as such, no exploration of MOOC purpose other than commercial. Tweets at the time suggested there was also concern about the loss of funds as there was no obvious way then to monetise. Degrees were just starting but Wilby reported complaints that this started with Coventry. OU degrees are now included.

The lecture in Durham had much more than appeared in the Guardian. Starting with a wider scope of audience and purpose.

We know that an alarming proportion of young people are either unemployed or economically inactive. A higher education sector geared for eighteen-year-old school leavers is not well positioned to cater for the needs of those young people not currently engaged in study or employment when, later in life, they see the opportunity they missed or realise that they now need knowledge and skills they once considered unnecessary.

This may have more response now than it did then. Apparently there will be support for FE and skills. Horrocks pointed out the problems with part time courses

Since 2008/09, entrants to part-time undergraduate courses in England are down 61%. This is equivalent to a cumulative reduction of a staggering 660,000 in the number of people entering parttime courses. That mean that the proportion of part-time students in the system plummeted from 40% to 25% in just five years. In an employment market where employers are concerned that there may not be enough highly-skilled people to fill future roles, these numbers matter.

Futurelearn and other MOOC platforms now offer modules as courses that start free but can be certificated and combined into academic or vocational qualifications. 

What would happen if major multinational employers in the UK, perhaps the big four major consultancy firms, began to accept a “LinkedIn” degree provided by, say, US and Australian universities? LinkedIn would soon know how the successful candidates for roles in those firms might do in terms of promotion and even earnings. It might be that LinkedIn degrees would soon be preferred to Russell Group degrees, especially for roles in multinational companies. How soon would Russell Group universities be expected by students to provide qualifications that, at the least, could be converted to “LinkedIn degrees”? How soon might students at Durham demand that the best of the collaborative learning provided by LinkedIn should be an elective element in their Durham

programme?

Since then LinkedIn Learning has offered many courses and works closely with employers. Google recently announced Coursera content that relates to jobs around AI and machine learning.

The lecture on the Fortress University is available as PDF from the OU and also it is on YouTube. The investment by Seek , a jobs site in Australia, was not a major story in the Guardian but suggests the approach is working out somewhere. The Guardian and other journalists could go back to this and consider what has changed.

 

MOOC, Futurelearn, Platform compared to what?

Yesterday joined via Zoom a lunchtime talk by Laura Czerniewicz from Lancaster via Zoom. No actual food though still advertised as lunch.  She spoke to a paper available as PDF courtesy of Springer. This is partly a history of student strikes in South Africa and the shift to online learning in response. Questions and discussion related to recent events. There was concern from academics that the online offer was breaking the strike. Issues of equity continue. How can HE manage a change, in particular forced by circumstance? Mention of "wicked problems" and claim that a new term "diabolical problems" is needed for this situation. The outcome could be "fair blended learning" . Concern continues around the external private companies seen as "solutionist".

I hope to contribute more to the next event. For technical reasons I do not understand Audacity / Windows 10 either copes with "stereo mix" or the microphone. Cannot have both so chose to record. Will wait on official release, expected soon. But I like to have backup.Some screenshots also. Lancaster campus is a potential site for a walk and talk bits of linking video. The Spine has been updated but so far not found much support for spending conference time on casual video. Meanwhile Zoom etc has put a camera everywhere. Just needs an edit with some sort of link.

Anyway, back to the paper. Figures show an activity system ( Engestrom 1987 ) which seems to concentrate on individual learning. I will check this out more next couple of weeks. Some of the same system elements could be put in a model for a soft systems approach. ( Checkland , Poulter 2006 ) This is also about organisations that change, via a systems model. ( more in a later blog, just a suggestion at this time )

The Spine on Lancaster campus has the education at one end, management school at another, public space in the middle, well suited o an open chat show / walk.

Another talk at the end of this month, Dr Janja Komljenovic on "Digital platforms, digital labour, and the future of employability" . Online, somehow in Lancaster, organised by Society for Research into Higher Education. I think this continues some ideas from the conference about the "Platform University" though i understand the conference has been discontinued. Laura Czerniewicz mentioned it yesterday as not happening as far as she knew.

Platforms seem to be regarded as a danger for the campus tradition. External private companies with a "solutionist" approach only needed in emergency. But I personally like the MOOC scene and have supported Futurelearn for example. The early free phase has changed to monetise certificates both for employment and degrees but free offers continue as well. This is a way to expand access but Futurelearn may still be an issue.

Peter Horrocks was criticised by some at the OU for closing buildings to invest in Futurelearn. His lecture at Durham on the Fortress University described the benefits that online might offer. However a later interview in the Guardian was also based on quotes from any people at the OU with concerns about policy and doubts about the investment in Futurelearn. Later there was investment in Futurelearn ( also Coursera) from Seek, a jobs site in Australia. I do not know if other UK HE had an option to invest in Futurelearn. Guess based on Twitter the negative view probably continues. There is now more obvious monetisation, Coursera seen as viable.

I also plan to go back to the Durham lecture about the Fortress University and check out how many minutes in to suggest where to start. It is a bit long to expect many people to hear it all. My question is- if there is objection to Platforms , assume Futurelearn is a platform , - what is it being compared to? Is anything about the Fortress University valid as a way to describe the existing alternative?