Project Completion and Wrap-up Meeting

The TEL SIP carried out at Swansea Metropolitan in partnership with Jisc Advance/Jisc RSC Wales has now completed its work. A final wrap-up meeting was held yesterday with Pete Scott, Head of Service for Jisc RSC Wales, and Lis Parcell, Senior e-Learning Advisor (HE). The meeting reviewed the outcomes of the project, particularly the briefing reports on current TEL innovations, and agreed that they made a useful contribution to the debate about future TEL developments both for the institution and for the sector generally. In this regard, the reports were not only disseminated within the institution, but were made available more widely through the project blog and it was hoped that this broader sharing of the project outcomes would increase the value of the SIP project. The meeting considered in detail a range of issues that the project had explored and agreed that the continuation of monitoring the influence of the internet, social media and personal technologies developments was essential for future educational planning. A concluding message from the SIP project was that Jisc, as a body central to the promotion of innovative technology in education in the UK, was a valuable asset for all institutions. Further to that, RSC Wales, as with all the other regional support centres, provided focussed professional TEL support, advice and access to resources in a very effective way.

Briefing Paper 3

This briefing paper on the use of social media and personal technologies in education is the last in the series for the SIP project. It provides a current picture of the use of such technologies and it can be seen that the whole area of development is very active at present and can be expected to change over the next 12 months and beyond. It emphasises the need to be horizon scanning at all times and building the information gathered into planning for the use of social media and personal technologies in the support of learners.

Sip tel innovation report 3 from Tony Toole

MOOC Briefing Paper

This second briefing paper for the TEL SIP project reviews the current MOOC landscape and concludes that they should be more accurately described as Massively Open Online Learning activities rather than as formal courses. It discusses the potential future of massive online learning and potential business models for institutions.

The report is shown below:

Sip tel innovation report 2 from Tony Toole

Sip tel innovation report 2: MOOCs from Tony Toole

Briefing Paper Topic 2: MOOCs

The second briefing paper to be produced as part of this SIP project will be a commentary on the development, significance and likely future impact of MOOCs (massive open online courses). There is considerable debate about this vehicle for online educational delivery, both positive and negative. There is also widespread lack of knowledge and experience of MOOCs in the educational community; inevitable with such an emerging and immature delivery method. It is hoped that the briefing paper to be posted here will be of use to those exploring the potential of MOOCs. An excellent summary has already been published by Li Yuan and Stephen Powell of Jisc-Cetis and this can be viewed below:

OER Briefing Report

This briefing document comments on the OER movement generally and the Jisc Advance OER InfoKit in particular. It is one of the planned research reports for the TEL SIP project.

e-books and e-book readers

The written word remains an extremely effective way of communicating. We read text at approximately the same speed as we listen and absorb a spoken narrative or description. It works well and we are comfortable with it.

Since the printing press was invented we have had hard copy books to read and libraries and booksellers to access them. Since personal computing and, latterly, tablet computers became commonly used digital versions of those books have been made available for download or viewing online.

In my view e-books are going to grow in usage in education. The ability to download, store and read digital documents on iPads and similar mobile devices means that students can access a wide range of resources anywhere without the need to visit a library or to carry around a pile of books.
Publishers are recognising this new way of reading and are creating new business models and ways of operating as a result. Libraries are reconsidering their ways of servicing the needs of readers for the same reason.

The series of postings on the RSC Wales blog on this subject is very useful for the education community and provides a number of links to resources. In particular it points to sources of freely available e-books that would be of value to students, staff and, because of the cost saving, to institutions. The blog post with these links is shown below:

Jisc Resources: The Student Journey

A key focus for Jisc has been the innovative use of technology in the support of learners and the outcomes of this work are encapsulated in The Student Journey page on their website shown below. Once again, it is possible to drill down to greater levels of detail and to use the links to explore the range of support materials available.