Unbundled university - webinar summary

Yesterday evening, listened to Prof. Laura Czerniewicz's presentation on unbundled learning - hosted by flexible learning NZ.

The blurb for the event indicated a micro level project on -  the intersection of increasingly disaggregated curricula and services, the affordances of digital technologies, the growing marketisation of the higher education sector itself and the deep inequalities which characterise both the sector and the contexts in which they are located.

Here are notes taken through the presentation, tidied up a little this morning:

Summarised the emergence of online provision over time especially dramatic growth of online education since the introduction of MOOCs.

Overview of the marketization of education including the competitive market as education is pushed into becoming a business rather than public service for greater good.

Universities moving into and soliciting for paid services. Students are viewed as clients and consumers. Language of business pervade institutions.

Increased income inequality means access is now difficult for many.

Unbundling the degree from all sectors occurring.

Shared landscape of course provision in the online space with traditional lectures / tutorials becoming blended / flipped and the increase in micro credentials. NZ being the only country at present to have a nationally agreed system for the accreditation of microcredentials.

Funding models have shifted towards fees for services and full service partnerships.

Online programmes require a whole new strand of support to be resourced, developed or extended and implemented.

Course design has to be more robust and course student support requires greater investment.

Provided overview ofstudy – researching emerging models of unbundling.

Unbundling relatively new and largely conceptual and theoretical with a focus on critical theory and little empirical work.

Digitisation and marketization have become more extensive in many countries.

Sample of 6 universities in South Africa and 7 in the UK plus 6 private companies (e.g. MOOC providers).

Data from publicly available information, interviews (policy makers and senior decision makers), focus groups (academics and professionals supporting online learning) and student surveys.

Findings mapped relationships across universities and private companies as to online learning networks.

Provided examples from interview data to report on themes:

Reasons for unbundling from senior decision makers included increase in access/reach and a 3^rd stream of income. Pragmatic approaches to working with private companies. Tension between core business and global competitiveness. SA more concerned about social justice than UK who supported marketization.

Private companies considered universities to be slow and inexperienced, saw themselves as pioneers and preferred universities that were entrepreneurial. Felt they understood students’ needs, profit making was couched in terms of new markets of students. Saw themselves as brokers between technology and student learning needs. Paid attention to the importance of university brand, rankings and reputation and building trust with university.

Academics were much more sceptical and concerned about their agency, top down decision making and serving the neoliberal agenda. Concerns about inequalities – digital and in general.

Alignments and tensions and issues of agency, control and negotiation were also themes coming through.

There were few incentives for exploiting the affordances of emerging models and there are continued risks in increasing digital inequalities.

Overall, provided an update on how marketisation has impacted on ways higher education responds to the outcomes of neo-liberalism, at the expense of learners - especially those who have been already marginalised.

Neuroeconomics – via Coursera MOOC

Over the last month and a half, I have been working through a MOOC offered through Coursera. This is part of my professional development for this year, to augment readings (summarised through this blog this year) in the areas of neuroscience and neuropsychology.

The MOOC is offered through the Higher School of Economics which is part of the National Research University  located in Moscow. The presenter is Professor Vasily Klucharev. The course has a traditional structure. Videos each week as lectures – usually 3 – 5 broken up into 5 -6 minutes to 20 minutes. Each video has one set of multiple choice questions embedded. At the end of each week, a short multiple choice test is completed. There is a time limit on the quiz and 3 attempts are allowed. The exam at the end of the course is made up of 20 multiple choice questions.

The above supplemented with a short collection of suggested ‘readings’ in the form of book chapters and journal articles. There is also an active discussion forum which I have not had time to delve into but will try to catch up on at some stage.

Part one introduces the topic. Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary discipline to introduce aspects of psychology and neuroscience into rationalist economics. The foundation and rationale of neuroeconomics are introduced.

Week 2 goes through the neuroscience aspects required to understand how neuroeconomics itself works. Various means of accessing brain activity as decisions are made are also covered in week 2. Importantly, fMRIprocess is explained so that future graphs and explanations can be understood. FMRI images are statistical combinations of structural (what is activated) and functional (how often activated) brain activity. Brain activity is captured through magnetic resonance of blood flow through the brain as laboratory tests are completed by test subjects.

Week 3 begins the work on understanding how the brain goes about making decisions. The concept of a diffusion model for decision making is introduced and discussed in some depth.

Week 4 introduces the parts of the brain – the nucleusaccumbus (anticipates gain / reward), orbital frontal cortex (compares and integrates information regarding reward outcomes) and the dorsolateralprefrontal cortex (does the control and planning). Examples are provided of how each operates and then how all the brain sectors work in tandem to make value judgements and decisions.

Week 5 brings in the important contributions of emotion into how decisions are made. Emotions contribute either as innate or learnt responses. The theory of emotion states we appraise, evaluate, take action, make physiological changes or express through action. Emotional stimuli is thus assigned a form of ‘value’ albeit, subjective values. Emotions are also the product of brain activity and add a subjective dimension to how we make decisions as how each person comes to a ‘conclusion’ is coloured by the context, historical-social factors, ontology etc. etc. So, we hope to be rational thinkers but perhaps we are nowhere near as rational as we would like to be!

In week 6, the ways in which the brain makes decision either as option 1 (intuitive, heuristic, automatic) or option 2 (reflective, analytic, consciously monitored) are introduced. The role of the dorsallateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is brought in to explain how people modulate their needs through self-control. Fairness and temporal discounting (delayed rewards) also plays a role. Therefore, decisions not necessarily rational but impacted on by emotions and the way various parts of the brain evaluate choices.

Week 7 brings in the contribution of ‘risk’, how does the brain assess ‘risk’? Is there a difference between risk and uncertainty? The ways in which we make decisions with an element of inherent risks is predicated by how the options are framed. We tend to be risk adverse if we see a gain but risk seeking when faced with a loss! Small probabilities are overweighted and large probabilities under weighted. Therefore, we will gamble on an outcome when faced with a losing proposition whereas if we perceive a sure win, we are conservative.

The last two weeks of the course discusses ‘society and brains’.

Week 8 discusses the ‘social brain’. Firstly, a video of ‘game theory’, the economics decision making model is presented. Revised the levels of complexity in neuroeconomics – neuron – brain – cognitions and emotions – society and biosphere. Social influences seen to be an evolutionary factor (selection between genes, between individuals within a group and between groups within a population). Correlation between social complexity and neo-cortex volume in primates. Game theory used to try to understand situations where decision-makers interact. Game consists of a set of actions and a payoff function. Uses ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ to illustrate cooperation. The neurological fundamentals of social cooperation are summarised with the role of mirror neurons highlighted.

The last week of the course, brings in the dimensions of evolution and the concept of humans as ‘economic animals’. The concept of cooperation as being innate in humans and to a slightly less extend in primates / apes is used as example of neuro-based pre-disposal to certain traits. Biological market theory is used to find out if there are natural examples of the existence of market type scenarios in nature. For instance ‘cleaners’ / groomers and ‘clients’ between animals – reef fish or anemones with small schools of ‘cleaner’ fish. Clients allow cleaners to enter their mouths without eating them. Monkeys have complex arrangements for grooming, with hierarchical and supply based systems. Market systems impact on how services are interchanged. Capuchin monkey experiments can be trained to trade coins for tools to perform tasks – usually leading to a food reward. Capuchin monkeys also learn value of coins, trading for ‘bargains’ and ‘gamble’ when loses are framed as wins (i.e. loss aversion). Both capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees reject unfair exchanges, indicating the perception of equality to be present in primates.

Overall, a very traditionally structured course with content delivered via weekly readings, video lectures, in lecture quizzes usually at the end of the lecture, multiple choice quizzes at the end of each week that count towards assessment and discussion forums. Took a couple of lectures to get used to the professor’s accent but the explanations were clear and powerpoint visuals usually helpful. The end of week quizzes were of variable quality, with many written poorly but the standard of multi-choice question construction did improve, so the lecturer was learning by doing and responding to student suggestions.

I am now enrolled in a few more courses to the end of this year to improve my understanding of neurobiology. These courses meet my individualised learning needs and are useful for professional development but you need to be committed to watching the hour or so of videos each week, taking notes, thinking through the information before attempting the quizzes. I would say I did learn lots of interesting facts and a couple of items I can apply to current projects. Of note is the opportunity to be introduced to up to date thinking on brain function, albeit, from a specialised point of view. 

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day 2

Day 2 begins with a breakfast session with Aka Aotearoa director, Dr. Peter Coolbear. Peter runs through 'what's next for the Academy' by setting the current tertiary education scene. With policy, items include new tertiary education strategy, public service success targets, parity of success for priority learners, foundation and transition, increased accountability for universities and strengthened quality assurance processes. For pre-degree level impacts are from TRoQ, more learners in STEMs, MOOCs, capability of teaching teams, professional accreditation of tertiary teachers and protection of academic standards. A challenge to the academy to become a 'go to body' for advice on tertiary teaching or learning issues.

First presentation of the day is a sharing session from academy members of vocational education research forum held recently in Qingdao, China. Kelly Pender and Sam Honey share photos and highlights and a question and answer session follows with Julia Bruce and myself assisting.

The student's perspective follows with presentations from 3 students. Rachel Cahir nursing student from Massey University, Jarod Burl a carpentry student from United and Natalie Frew studying Science at the University of Waikato. The students provided their impressions on their learning. Of note, the strong contribution of work placement and work based practice. These are opportunities for consolidating theory and obtaining experience with real and pragmatic actual practice. A rewarding frank and candid question and answer session followed.

A dialogue space precedes morning tea to unpack the morning's activities.

Parallel sessions commence and I attend Peter Mellow's on 'MOOCs and learning with digital curation'. Presented on varieties of MOOCs from no lecturer presence to some and a lot of lecturer presence, taster to full accreditated course, large numbers or just several hundred, structured or semi-structure constructivist. university of Melbourne MOOC Coursera-based learning analytics presented. Discussed possible shift of MOOCs to become digital duration with social media like Facebook and scoop.it.

Then Professor Eric Pawson's 'creating sticky campuses' presentation on 'what makes good student campuses'. Importance of informal learning spaces (indie, outside and virtual) to provide space to learn, interact and socialise. Literature on student engagement by George Kuhn and 'sticky spaces'. Summer student project derive through focus groups was for spaces to be comfortable, have different or flexible function (subject specific and general), amenities (PowerPoint, WIFI and catering options) and management of access at appropriate times.

After lunch, we have Gordon Suddaby continuing the update on 'national accreditation scheme for tertiary teachers', work completed the Alison Holmes. Provided overview, context and suggested process. Arose out of Aka Aotearoa 'taking stock' project to try to rationalise the large number of qualifications for tertiary teachers. Currently awaiting outcome of Australian initiative to meet similar goal. Any accreditation needs to involve process and confer added and sought after status. In general, tertiary institutions have code of ethics for research but not for teaching although many ITPs and some universities have codes of conduct. Suggest investigating Canadian example. Good discussion ensued with regards to the why, how, what and advantages and disadvantages of a proposed accreditation process and designation.

The academy executive lead the session on 'future of the academy'. A discussion on role of academy and how to move forward.

A poroporaki and wrap up closes a busy but pertinent symposium.

NCVER 2013 'no frills' conference - Day 1

At the annual Australian National Center for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) conference this week. The 22nd conference held at Mooloolaba. The second time i have attended the conference in this location in the last 10 years or so.

As usual the first day of the conference consists of workshops. Here are notes of the actual conference presentations which take up all of today and half of tomorrow. Conference opened with welcome and housekeeping from Sue Ferguson NCVER and traditional welcome to country which included a digeeridoo recital plus official welcome from the Director of Sunshine TAFE, Leesa Boyle.

First keynote from Tom Karmel, managing director of NCVER who speaks on the "implications of increasing education levels on job prospects from a quality of jobs perspective". Higher education for many is encouraged as it leads to economic gains for both individuals and society. however, is there going to be a saturation point? so, what is a good job? how can we rank jobs? by skill, income and occupational status to come up with a cumulative percentile. 1% means job is in the top 1%. examples at the top of income are medical specialists and government officials. High skill include academics. Lowest skill include fast food cooks. lowest paid include hairdressers and cooks. There is a gender bias with male occupations having less correlation between skill and pay. Between 1996 and 2001 large increase in qualifications across Australian workforce.

Corresponding rise in jobs that require professional or specialised qualifications. Over 15 year, advantage of higher degree has declined in terms of pay and entry into top occupations. This change reflected in all other qualifications apart from Cert 3 and 4 where there has been no change. Effects tend to be occupation specific, for example although increase in higher qualification and batchelors engineers and educators retain advantage but management has slightly lowered.

In Science, IT, health greater differences. Therefore, in general, a qualification no longer gaurantees as good job as in 1996, but there is considerable variation between occupations and professions.

Then second keynote with Nik Babovic, deputy vice chancellor of Central Queensland University. He presented on his reflections on the establishment of a dual sector university. Nik reflected on the various operational challenges and new opportunities for teaching and research.

Currently still in transition with CQ University and CQTAFE becoming one institution in July 2014 a process begun in 2010. Challenge involved in bringing higher ed. and VET together to align stategic goals, centralise environments and build the partnership.

After morning tea, concurrent sessions in 5 streams begin. I attend Dr. Darryl Dymock's with Dr. Mark Tyler on "workplace change and skill needs". Report on one of the topics in Professor Stephen Billet's project on continuing training and education in work. Asked the questions, what recent changes have there been in your job? what changes do you anticipate in the future?

The argument is that individuals change as workplaces requirements change. continuing development required to meet workplace requirements, workplace needs transform and remain in the workforce longer. Therefore, what models and practices of continuing tertiary education will meet work requirements into the future?

Interviewed 80 plus workers in a range of industries to find out if there was work driven change. 0ver 90 changes made although 15% stated no change. Examples provided in changes in role, job scope, processs, services and products. For future change, 25% predicted no change but broader influences, work related changes involving work roles, new systems, technology etc.

Changes tended to be due to change of role, expanded work tasks and internal policies and systems. Implications include the emphasis on workplace in supporting learning, workers' need to engage with learning as 'the work is the learning'.

Second session with Dr. Steven Hodge, from University of Ballarat who provided background on "challenging the ideal curriculum alignment in Australian VET". Is there an alignment between competencies as per the intended curriculum with the graduate outcomes? are the graduates work ready as defined by industry. so, are industry skills as specified in competencies and interpreted by and implemented by VET practitioners preparing learners with the required skills.

VET practitioners asked about initial and continuing education in relation to interpreting competencies, implementation of and assessment of competencies. Interviewees revealed disparate levels of understanding about competencies and their purposes. There was divergent understanding with some saying competencies were things to aspire to vs minimum standards. Difficulties could be due to the language of competencies, short initial and lack of continuing education on competencies and expertise development stages means experts are unable to unpack their own understandings.

Therefore, there exist difficulties in the curriculum alignment process as practitioners may have difficulties interpreting the competencies.

After lunch, a session with Beth Evans from OTEN TAFE NSW, with "improving student outcomes: student completion of research and projects in distance education". OTEN is largest vocational education provider of distance learning in Australia with 64000 students with diverse needs, entry levels, motivations etc.

2011 completion rate for VET only 27% compared to university sectors 70%. project of OTEN students gathered 400 plus survey responses. Students generally satisfied with OTEN services but required student pre preparation with regards to becoming distance learning student. Distance learning still highly text based and emphasis needs to be also placed on helping students become self-directed able to pace and structure their own learning programme. Digital literacy important and a tech help person a available to assist when required as all courses fully online.

Second afternoon session on "massive open online courses: MOOCs in the VET sector" with Jamie Murphy from the Australian College of Applied Education (Perth). Provided overview of MOOC including advantages and disadvantages and some approaches to MOOC pedagogy.MOOC mania (Daniel, 2012) provides history and background. Platforms include coursera, google forays, uversity etc. Diffusion of innovations by Everett Rogers, 2003 provides framework to evaluate innovation.

Last up Liz Toohey and Chris Dann from University of Sunshine Coast on using mobile assessment platform: a shared space for critical discourse. Used to support teacher mentors who support teaching students out on classroom experience. Using mobile phone, tablet etc. used to provide means to provide consistent support . ensure learning outcomes can be achieved, assessment strategies can be shared, learners supported and on site supervisors sharing practice. work integrated learning therefore supported with a personalised approach to mentoring.

Research question was 'what is the impact on learning when mobile devices are used to collect data, measure progress and inform judgements against clearly defined benchmarks throughout the learning process.

Ios App - Pre service teacher tracker used to record evidence of student and mentor formative feedback while observing student teaching in the class, providing evidence for later discussion and forwarding on to main institute. Videos can also be attached for self or shared reflection.