Last lap

Your 2.0 Life: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0
Mountain Community Colleges
This session didn't really deliver for me. They presented a lot of models and frameworks from the NCAT (National Centre for Academic Transformation) on course redesign using technology. http://www.center.rpi.edu/PCR/Proj_Model.htm .

The part of the presentation that stood out for me was the discussion about social networking sites - academics invading the student territory and not being welcome - argument. One of the academics had introduced Ning to her students and felt that it created a neat solution for them and her - them, because it wasn't straying on their social territory but the general use of the concept was familiar to them - her, because unlike in Facebook, she could control the environment and establish some baseline rules. There was very little of this needed in fact and she was pleased with how, with very little intervention from her the students started supporting each other - and even more pleased that as a consequence the number of direct emails to her requesting support dropped considerably. Surprisingly few in the audience had heard of Ning.


Ok - my last post - who's still reading anyway?

Designing the Next Generation Student Technology Fluency Programme - George Mason University
Interested in this because they had reported good results with their first programme. They are of comparable size and ethos to SHU - mission to 'Live, learn and succeed' and culture of entrepreneurialism. Describe DF as being caught between 'hype and fear'. Hype about how supposedly DF the digital natives are and fear along the lines of 'Facebook ate my daughter' media headlines. Argued the case for technology 'education' (why) not 'training' (how) - you know the old question - would you want your daughter to have sex education or sex training at school...
So, the difference between their first and second programme - first was more a series of pilots/small grants to fund initiatives etc. Decided they needed a more sustainable approach with second programme. They went to Heads of Faculty and asked for names of all staff who currently teach any type of research methods course (could our DoF provide this?) and through invitation from this list set up forums to share problems with the current provision.
The programme is based on Ten IT Goals (which cover the broad range of DF and although CT not a specific goal all have an element of critical awareness) http://tac.gmu.edu/goals/tenitgoals.html they also make an attempt at defining what advanced level skills might look like. They've set up a resource bank of DF assessment activities to encourage staff to use and integrate and add to - this sounded interesting and something I'll follow up. The revised programme only came into being in summer 2007 so no real evaluation of its impact as yet. The rest of the session was about their new Learning Hub - along the lines of the D&S learning hubs but one institutional hub with different specialist staff based there and open to staff and students - again, only a few weeks open so they are holding their breath to see if anyone uses it.
They summarise DF @ George Mason as 'a programme, a process, a space'. (Just the one space then?).