There were several really good examples of how Wimba can be used to bring the world of business and work into the institution. On my course, we regularly bring practitioners in to talk about their work, but the focus from some of the other universities was different, and more clearly focused on employer engagement and enhancing the employability of graduates.

Alice Bird and Alex Spiers of Liverpool John Moores University LJM introduced Wimba in 08, and have trialled it out in a variety of ways, on which more later, but specifically in employer engagement they have a programme called WoW (World of Work), and are starting to use various Wimba tools to enhance this. They are creating employer podcasts using Wimba voice, where they get someone in business or industry to describe a typical day in their life, to give students a better idea of the realities of work.
They are also using live classroom to bring in industry professionals talk directly to students in a Q&A format. There was a great idea from the floor where one institution  sends a headset/mic combo, webcam and a small present to everyone who presents instead of the travel expenses they would otherwise have paid, which makes the industry professional feel valued and respected.

Ideas came thru as well of how to use Wimba to run open days for prospective students, and for outreach to the parents of K12 children to help them understand how to help their children.

The other main theme in this regard was in how Wimba products can be used internally for communication within the institution. Ivy Tech Community  College has rolled out pronto to an impressive number of students and staff, with some 17k students and 1400 professors signed up. They use pronto for helpdesk support, with library, blackboard, tech, admin and financial service desks at both a global and local level, many open 7 days a week from 8am -10pm.

LJM also demonstrated how they used voice tools for formative feedback, describing it as their ‘killer app’, for me the real insight was how the same 2 minutes of staff time could be used to write 150 words of feedback or say around 500, so giving the student much more in depth feedback for the same amount of effort, and feedback that was sent back to the student immediately. They felt that audio feedback gave  flexible delivery of feedback in an authentic voice. They also used the Wimba podcast feature for revision, subject expert debates, community building and employer Q&A’s. They saw some barriers, however, in that its non searchable, the length of recording vs engagement needs to be monitored, its not suitable for large group discussions, and accessibility is a major concern.

Finally they had some good stats on student feedback to Wimba, 25% responded that Wimba was much better than other distance learning software they had used, 100% said it had a positive impact on their learning,100% would choose to study on a wimba enabled course again,  and it had an overall 8.75 /10 satisfaction rating as learning tool

‘If we were going to modify assessment as if making a contribution to their ability to learn after their course rather than during it was the primary need, how would it be different?’

His focus was then on how to reshape assessment policies so that their main intention was to help the learner build their capacity for self and peer judgment to further their lifelong learning.

David went on  to define current approaches to assessment in HE, which he saw as broadly to certify achievement (summative) and aid learning (formative). This often leads to too much emphasis  on current learning to meet requirements of a specific module at a specific time. He argued that we should be fostering the learning needed beyond end of a course –what he defined as sustainable assessment- which should serve to build their capacity to do something over and above an immediate task.

He suggested that we need to change  from:
Norm referenced to standards based
Testing what has been taught to assessing learning outcomes From exams to diverse approaches
Unilateral to active involvement of students
Separate domain to aligned with learning

His argument developed by describing what he called the Practice turn which has followed the reflective turn of recent years, which has these key features;
Practice is necessarily contextualised, embodied and  involves whole people with motives feelings and intentions; and it cannot be discussed independently of practitioners. It is co-constructed in relationships to others and their views of practice construct it –client and professional co-construct their practice together, and therefore only has meaning in light of its social location/construct.

He described the changing context of work, with a shift from the individual to the collective, and that it is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary, which involves the  co-production of practice and co-construction of knowledge.
This has created a serious clash of cultures between the complex collaborative culture of work vs. the individual character of educational assessment.

What this means is that we have to build capacity for learning in the future, essentially enhancing  a Judgement developing capacity. This then generates this question for any assessment exercise, ‘What are the consequences of this assessment for learning – does it build capacity for judgements about learning beyond this  course?’
The focus should then be on fostering reflexivity and self-regulation throughout the course, exposing and revealing the processes of judgement, not just thru assessment tasks. This demands that we recognise the variety of contexts in which learning occurs – and that judgement is not independent of context.

One major failing of many attempts to introduce new assessment models is that they fail to stage opportunities for developing informed judgement throughout programmes – there is almost always a failing  to be consistent across modules and programmes

What does all this mean? Well for Boud, students need to be involved in all aspects of assessment processes especially in practising judgements – they must be active agents in assessment rather than passive recipients of it.

Essentially then assessment becomes the  calibration of judgement – learners act on basis of belief in their own judgements need to know that they don’t know – identifying  knowledge gaps is more important than identifying knowledge.

He made a fantastic point about why students often resist new assessment models because students are behaving rationally in resenting changes in assessment because they have learnt how to behave in traditional assessment environments, and then we capriciously change the rules on them. So we need to be able to persuade them why it will be beneficial to them, and how this will aid them in meeting the formal requirements of the course, that we are doing it because its for real, the single most important and valuable thing we could imagine doing with you now in this module.

All assessment activities need to equip students for future leaning – we must ask in what ways is this particular task building their capacity for future learning, how does this help them make judgements.

His advice to achieve this is to:
Actively engage students
Let students give and receive feedback
Develop authentic activities that reflect real world practice
Raise awareness of learning and judgement
Integrative activities across modules and programs
Let students design assessment activities
Realise that the potential for developing capacity for informed judgment is central to all practice
Plan programs and course units to scaffold students to become increasingly sophisticated judges of their own learning
Make the design and selection of assessment tasks a key part of T&L

And consistency is important, we must think about all of the tasks and run the argument for them all – not just one innovative bit and everything else reinforcing old ways.

Web 2.0 is widely used by children, with over 74% having at least one social networking site account and the use of email and instant messaging is almost ubiquitous. However, most of this activity takes place OUTSIDE the school – 49% blogged outside of school with only 9% blogging inside school, whilst 69% had a social networking profile, but only 8% used it  within the  school. The only real area where school use was widespread was in the use of wikipedia, where over 73% used it in school. Only 8% of learners do not use Web 2.0 tools at all, and only 24% do not use social networking sites. But the really interesting part are the analysis of what these activities mean. The report finds that despite this high level of activity, there is “little evidence of groundbreaking activities and only a few embryonic signs of criticality, self-management and metacognitive reflection”
However, the report does acknowledge that web 2.0 can be useful in several key areas in shifting the pedagogy and methodology towards a new learning paradigm. Specifically, it finds that web 2.0 stimulates new modes of enquiry, in particular engaging in collaborative learning activities and engaging with new literacies. The report makes some fascinating comparisons between traditional school based learning and the new paradigm, making the following paired comparisons:

Private learning versus collaborative learning
Creative editing versus cutting and pasting (highlighting the danger sof the quick fix of cut and paste from the internet)
Serial processing versus parallel processing (and the growth of tagging and ‘folksonomy’)
Successive attention versus simultaneous attention (multitasking)
Authorised knowledge versus distributed knowledge (the need for some form of directed guidance to the web)

It also sounds a warning note as to why the adoption of web 2.0 may have to be a slow and steady progression, rather than an overnight sensation.  The report found that

‘Most teachers interviewed saw social networking as ‘play’, and as a medium to be discouraged in school. Most young people surveyed, however, saw social networking as usefully transient and private, occupying a space safely distant from the gaze of their teachers and parents.’

emphasising the division between school life and personal life.  But it also cites the new demands web 2.0 makes on learners to adopt new modes of learning, and the products of this learning then need to be accommodated into the school curriculum – how do we assess group collaborative work for example.

The report found that Web 2.0 approaches worked best when there were flexible models of learning, with Web 2.0 approaches embedded in the curriculum, both within and across subjects, coupled with support for student learning at home. This needed to be backed up with sufficient computer infrastructure, bandwidth, and technical support, and needed support and encouragement from senior management, with sufficient resources dedicated to training and development, especially for innovators. All this had to be backed up by a clear and reasonable e-safety policy that allowed maximum access possible whilst still providing adequate levels of protection for students.

The reports conclusion notes that
‘Perhaps one key implication for practice, therefore, is for evangelists, innovators and visionaries (and policy-makers) to take careful account of just how much is being asked of teachers in encouraging the wider implementation of Web 2.0, and to recognise that relatively slow and cautious progress is inevitable. That progress may require inspiration sustained with resources that meet both the infrastructure and pedagogic challenges. But it may also require deeper consideration of the wider fabric of curricula, assessment, and established practices for designing sites of teaching and learning.’
So the  need is  to take things slowly, build out from outposts of innovation and prove the need for web 2.0, and then see the transformations emerge organically from experience. What does this mean for higher education and businesses? Well at present it seems that children are going to emerge from school with a lot of experience of web 2.0 in their personal lives, but not much concept of how to apply that to other spheres. So the responsibility of educators at that level is going to be, at least for a generation or so, to provide the guidance and mentoring to allow learners to combine their familiarity with web 2.0 with a critical sensibility of how to use it to enhance their understanding of the world. We need to help them analyse and critique their world, and do that in a collaborative way through dialogue.

A recent presentation by Chris Lehmann sums it up really well, (thanks to kevin’s blog engaged learning for this, the slideshare is at ignite philly)  he calls for us  to ‘make technology like oxygen, ubiquitous, necessary and invisible’, and then use it to help students

Research:Collaborate:Create:Present:Network

A great clarion call for all levels of education!