Speaking of Second Life, I’m watching Sloodle with real interest, because proper integration between Moodle and Second Life would make teahcing and learning in SL a whole lot easier! See their concept:
I just watched Kathryn Greenhill’s presentation about introducing Second Life via Murdoch Library. Clearly the potential for Second Life in tertiary education and digital literacy is impressive, even if there are some serious obstacles to overcome. Kathryn’s presentation illuminates a very sensible and reassuring way to introduce SL to staff and students, so if you’re thinking of heading down that path, take a look:
Blackboard quietly announced Scholar, their social bookmarking tool, during early January. Here’s part of the announcement:
… you can check Scholar out at http://www.scholar.com for a little hands-on exploration, and even subscribe to RSS feeds of various bookmark views. But a lot of the cool stuff that’s the “customized for education” part requires a Blackboard Building Block or PowerLink to be installed on your Blackboard Learning System. So since you can’t see it all from the public site, I’ll describe it a bit here.What makes Scholar different from other social bookmarking services you may have used or heard of (e.g. del.icio.us) is how it works in an education setting. Scholar has all the typical features you’d expect from a social bookmarking service (tagging, tag clouds, RSS feeds, a bookmarklet for browser integration, etc.), but we wanted to make social bookmarking more relevant for Blackboard-powered courses and academic research. We spent a lot of time thinking about the problems students and faculty encounter when they go about doing web research or building engaging courses, and gettting feedback on those ideas about how social bookmarking could be enhanced for education.
Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will know that I’m not a fan of the big LMSes, of which Blackboard is the biggest, releasing scaled-down tools which claim to have the infrastructure of social software but cut back on who can use these tools (such as WebCT’s initial blog tool). Scholar, to my mind, is pointless because there is almost nothing gained by using Blackboard’s version and it locks out all non-Blackboard users (from contributing; they can still access bookmarks, they can’t store any). Check out their info page (click the image to enlarge):
The folks over at EdTechPost made this rather important comment in Scholar’s wake:
sure I’d love to see systems that instead of creating additional silos and enclaves allowed users to move in an authenticated form from the institution’s systems to ones out on the general web, you know, have my cake and eat it too. But the customers (that’s you, right) have got to demand this, not expect vendors whose whole business model is ‘lock in’ to simply just provide it.
I couldn’t agree more. So demand we must.
Let me emphasise why I think Scholar is a mistake and why we should demand it not be used: Public social bookmarking services like del.icio.us are open to everyone. They are truly social in the sense that anyone (online) can contribute and use the service. A course which uses a properly social software tool like this enhances students’ understanding of a tool they can use in other contexts (both in and outside of educational settings) and allows students to keep/build upon their initial bookmarking/annotation of the web. Scholar, by contrast, is linked to a proprietary LMS which users will cease to have access to once they leave their educational institution. Moreover, this tool is not, nor is intended to be, available outside of educational settings. Teaching students with tools they can learn for life with makes a lot more sense to me than tools which can only be used in a particular black box which students will cease to be able to open after a period of time.
e-Clippings blog is similarly vitriolic in their dislike for Scholar. What do you think?
As James notes, WebCT and Elgg have come together through Curverider and Aperto. As Sasan Salari announced:
I am very happy to announce that Curverider and Aperto are collaborating on an integration between the Open Source system Elgg and WebCT’s product lines.
As is mentioned in the announcement, the collaboration brings together the robust eLearning framework of WebCT with the social networking and blogging tools provided by Elgg.
I am especially pleased that the integration demonstrates how innovation created in the Open Source world can be used in conjunction with products in the commercial space, to create a total solution which benefits the end user.
The integration provides a seamless transition for faculty and students as they navigate between Elgg and WebCT.
To me, the integration opens up a whole world of pedagogical possibilities - instructors can now easily take advantage of some really exciting emerging technologies:
- blogging
- podcasting
- social networking
Most importantly, Elgg allows instructors and institutions to operate outside the bounds of the individual course or section - learning groups can be created across multiple sections, multiple courses, and even across departments.
Over the coming weeks, I will be discussing how Elgg can be used effectively in conjunction with WebCT, and I would really like to hear from existing WebCT customers on what they are looking for.
I’ve commented on this over at James’ post, but I thought I’d repost here:
While I’m cynical about WebCT’s motives in all this (it’s a bit like the sinking Titanic deciding to order a whole lot more lifeboats at the time they hit the iceberg) given that many universities *are* demanding a blog tool within WebCT, I’ve got to say that an Elgg plugin/interface which seemlessly moves between the two (as far as I can tell) is a far better option than the internal blog tool we’ve been discussing in the past few weeks. Having a fully functional blog tool like Elgg will, to my mind, encourage the use of blogs per se and may, indeed, lead a number of people to the conclusion that Elgg might be one of the core tools they want rather than WebCT. Perhaps WebCT/Elgg will lead to Elgg/Moodle without the diruptions of completely alien systems.However, pragmatically, WebCT isn’t going to the be thrown out tomorrow by many unis, so Elgg-in-WebCT is, to my mind, a far better option in the shortterm than WebCT-without-Elgg!
It’s not perfect, but it’s a far better blogging option than those provided internally by WebCT alone. And once the ease and integration of Elgg becomes widely used by WebCTers, perhaps Elgg will stay the distance even if WebCT doesn’t …
It’s official: the WebCT/Blackboard merger has the green light from the US powers that be (DOJ). [Via Stephen Downes]
Today Mark Hallam from WebCT spoke at the Annual Teaching & Learning Forum held at the University of Western Australia. Mark previewed a number of WebCT’s next steps including ePortfolio tools and blogs. However, on close questioning, Mark admitted that WebCT’s blogs aren’t really blogs at all because…
1. They are locked behind WebCT’s password protection.
2. They cannot be made publicly visible (there is a complex workaround whereby students could copy there WebCT-blog entries to their ePortfolio and then allow anonymous access via a guest password, but WebCT cannot bypass the password stage).
3. Comments can only be made by internal WebCT users using the same installation of WebCT.
4. The “blogs” don’t have RSS feeds.
Mark actually admitted that blogs are already doing everything that bloggers want, and that WebCT was not providing a blogging tool, but rather a tool which usurped the name for something “blog-like” because that’s what many universities are asking for. For WebCT, I fear, their “blogs” won’t cut it because what people want are blogs … not a different tool which borrows the name.
I suspect WebCT’s efforts in this area are fairly similar to James’ report on Blackboard’s latest “developments”, even thought both teams are still, in theory, developing their tools independently.
(Despite all that, WebCT’s sponsorship of the Teaching & Learning Forum did provide a really good barbeque and drinks, so kudos to them for that, at least!)
eLearn Magazine recently put up a list of predictions and comments from experts in the field about eLearning in 2006. Here are some of the more interesting quote/bytes:
‘[T]eachnology, no matter how innovative, is still just an enabler.’ - Lisa Neal
‘Blackboard/WebCT merger … [will fail because] the United States Department of Justice will quash the merger in the end on antitrust grounds.’ - Micheal Feldstein
‘m-learning begins to grow in earnest, … As a result e-learners are no longer chained to their computers and network connections; they are learning while hiking in the mountains, strolling on the beach, or jogging along a city street.’ - Ray Schroeder
‘Mass collaboration online will change the way learning is defined and delivered in 2006, moving away from start/stop courses to continous learning experiences (acquire and maintain). There will be less connecting people to content, and more connecting people to one another (collective knowlege). - Ben Watson
Personally, I think these are all fascinating perspectives and while a little optimistic, I like Ben Watson’s the most.
Josie Farmer has been a leading figure in getting Moodle and other Open Source Tools more widely know and used in the UK and European educational circles. At the recent UK Education Technology Show, Moodle got a very good showing and response which I’m very encouraged by because I really think Moodle is going to be one of those LMSes which survives and grows through community developers into something far more useful and adaptable than the current WebCT/Blackboard giants. For all the news check out Josie’s Moodlebug posts which have a great roundup of all Moodlisms for the show, and her post over at EdTechUK.
The Washington Post reports in “Blackboard’s WebCT Deal Spurs Antitrust Questioning” that the WebCT/Blackboard merger is getting a lot of scrutiny from the sort of people whose litigation tends to seriously restrain digital goliaths:
A deal by educational software company Blackboard Inc. to buy its chief competitor has raised questions from antitrust experts at the Justice Department. District-based Blackboard and the competitor, privately owned WebCT Inc., each has received two requests for information from the Justice Department, Blackboard said in a filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a BBC news article today, there’s a discussion of cheating, plagiarism and its changing nature in digital culture:
Technological solutions alone will not be enough to prevent children using the internet to cheat in their coursework, a government adviser has said. Professor Jean Underwood of Nottingham Trent University says it is up to teachers and parents to show that plagiarism is inappropriate. [...] Professor Underwood said technology could help ameliorate the problem but was “no quick fix”. She said software already existed to help schools ascertain whether work was the pupil’s own. “It can even be as simple as typing a phrase into Google.” “If a phrase has been plagiarised, sites will bring it up.” [...] Professor Underwood said some software could check as well as mark work. But she said some clever students would find ways round such programmes. [...] “We need to think smart on an academic and technological level,” she said “The internet is a wonderful thing with the power to change lives - but there will always be a downside.”
While I gather the article and the survey is describes are aimed at primary and secondary education more so than tertiary level, I do think the general philosophy of teachers, educators, parents and anyone else who is part of the learning process(es) taking some responsibility to teach students and learners that plagiarism is wrong is extremely important in ensuring the upcoming generations don’t have a far less developed ethical approach to plagiarism, (mis)appropriation and cheating.
In the last couple of years I’ve taught several courses which have looked a digital culture and had a sizable online presence. From those I’ve found these three strategies can be useful in increasing student awareness of the ethical (and practical) dimensions of citation and the problems of plagiarism:
[1] Talk About It In Every Course - Sometimes I’ve found that students simply don’t have enough conversations about plagiarism. Many academics presume that students already know what’s ethical and what’s not, especially in the second, third and later years of a university degree. For various reasons, some students will not understand what plagiarism is and why it’s wrong (especially when the rhetoric around the tertiary system is often phrased in economic terms - “in purely financial terms, doesn’t using existing work mean I can finish my degree faster and get a job” might be the thoughts of some students!). Having a conversation about the expectations of the course in the first tutorial/seminar/class session which includes flagging the unacceptable nature of cheating/plagiarism is important. If possible, it’s worth setting aside enough time to make this a real conversation - put the right questions/starting points on the table and students will almost always come to the conclusions that cheat/plagiarise are wrong themselves!
[2] If Get Students to Post Their Material Online and Discuss The Copyright Status of Their Work - In the cases where a course has a public and visible online presence, I’ve found it important to discuss what should and shouldn’t be in a university course blog in some detail with them before students start posting (especially since many of them are familiar with different experiences of blogging from personal and social blogs). An especially useful part of the conversation can be when students consider how they would like their online posts and their online writing to be protected. Starting from a student-centric perspective can make issues of ownership, ethics and plagiarism much closer to home, and increase an awareness of why these issues matter. While I’m not a huge fan of speaking the tongues of legality, I’ve found the practicality of using some sort of official copyright license on university blogs quite important. Moreover, working out which license in conjunction with students can be an extremely fruitful process. For example, the Self.Net tutorial blogs all used a Creative Commons which works on the ‘Some Rights Reserved’ principle (letting you work somewhere in the spectrum between the absolutes of the public domain and full copyright). The specific license used was Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 which has these stipulations:
Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
Non-Commercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.
In a nutshell, this license was the legal equivalent of the ethical guidelines students agreed upon when discussing plagiarism and responsibility in the first tutorials and thus makes their decision far more clear when it has a legal form as well. These licenses also explicitly flag two more important things: (a) that students actually own their work, something often not made clear and (b) that other students, courses, universities, individuals, self-learners, etc. are explicitly welcome to build upon and re-use the work of students in this course and that agreement is presented with a legal mechanism which basically enshrines the anti-plagiarism practices academia has cherished for centuries (ie it’s about ensuring creditation as they key thing!). Thus students also start to consider their work in the spectrum of learning materials online, too (and self-awareness of their sometimes rushed efforts can help them bring a more critical perspective when examining other online sources!).
[3] Write Assessment That Illustrates the Continuity Between Online and Offline Sources - For example, in my Self.Net course last year, as the first minor assignment (worth 20% of the course mark), my colleague Jane Long and I came up with the notion of a Critical Annotated Webliography. That is, an annotated bibliography of exclusively online sources. In order to focus the webliographies, I wrote four hypothetical questions, and then asked student to write an annotated bibliography of online source that they would use if they were to answer the essay question (but they were not actually required to answer the hypothetical question, just describe how they would’ve gone about it). This assessment piece ensured that the critical skills students bring to offline/ print sources in books and so forth was also brought along when addressing online sources. One of the bigger issues still seems to be that students (and some educators) treat online sources as if they need different critical skills (and, more often than not, less critical skills) to analyse. While new media such as Flash animations certainly need media-specific analyses, when an item online is text or just a PDF or html page, then the same critical skills can be brought to bear as would be regarding offline sources. This is an extremely obvious point, but one many students need a helping hand to make. In Self.Net I found the Webliographies were never successful in discussing and understanding these issues, and student feedback suggests it was a successful method to engage with the ethical and practical issues surrounding online sources. (For a few good examples, feel free to take a look at Hourann’s Webliography, Carley’s Webliography or Dani’s Webliography which were written in the second half of 2004).
Incidentally, while I do understand that in time-constrained teaching environments, there’s something useful about plagiarism-detection being automated, I nevertheless have huge issues with institution level plagiarism detection systems like TurnItIn.com. In my view this is (a) treating the symptom, not the cause and (b) treating students as if we expect them to cheat. While I might be living in a utopian bubble, I still believe that it’s the educator’s job to ensure a philosophy and ethics in students which will see them choose not to plagiarised and if plagiarism is occurring I would also like to think the educators are clued in enough to be able to spot it in their areas of expertise.
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