What I don’t get about Twitter

I'm still a relative novice at Twitter. I've really only been tweeting for a few months. I probably only tweet a few times a week, but this is mainly because I don't often feel that what I've got to say would be remotely interesting to anyone else!

I've found it useful in lots of ways. I've picked up on some really useful websites and other resources as a result of links in various tweets, such as elearning resources from @gconole. It's also been a good news stream for certain things that I wouldn't normally pick up on via mainstream sources, such as higher education (@timeshighered), construction economics (@brickonomics), and even a journalist's perspective on the goings on at Loftus Road (@davidmcintyre76).

However, whilst I'm glad I'm on Twitter, and I do value it, there are certain aspects of it which remain a bit of mystery to me. So, here are the top five things I just don't get about Twitter. 

1. Meaningless hashtags


I understand the principle of hashtags and I think it's one of the things that makes Twitter a potentially really useful tool. Adding a relevant hashtag means that users with common interests or a shared group can easily locate tweets which are relevant to them. Hence, I make use of #H807 for my Open University studies (because H807 is the module number) and #QPR to locate tweets about, yes, you've got it - QPR.

But could somebody please explain the point of hashtags like #wornoutbeforeistart #needsomesleep #lookingforwardtotheweekend ? What purpose do they serve? I just find them really annoying.

1. 
   

   1. 
      
   2. Follow Friday

I thought "Follow Friday" (#FF) was supposed to be used to recommend people you follow to others. I also thought that you were supposed to state why you are recommending them. So why does every Friday produce a deluge of tweets that contain "#FF" followed by a whole string of Twitter names with no reason to follow them?

3. Being followed by random people 

Why would someone who has no connection with me whatsoever want to follow me? I could understand if we had something in common, but there doesn't seem to be any reason at all for some people to follow me. Strange.

4. Banal tweets

I must confess that I've tweeted occasionally about something that just happens and you feel the need to tell someone. But really .... am I seriously interested in the fact that you are wondering what to have for dinner this evening or that you're on a coffee break. Why do people think that anyone would want to know that?

5. Retweeting everything 

Like hashtags, retweeting is a really useful tool. If I see a tweet from someone that I follow which contains a link to a useful resource, then the obvious thing to do is retweet it. But some people's tweets seem to only consist of retweets. If all they do is retweet other people's tweets then maybe they've missed the point of Twitter in the first place.


 
So there you are. As useful as Twitter is, I think these points will continue to bug me. Having said that - I'm still discovering new ways of using Twitter, and I'm keen to experiment with using it in connection with my teaching.

H807: Week 17 – Activity 2 – Supporting your elearners

In this activity we are asked to reflect on a paper by Dearnley (2003) which discusses student support in the context of mature learners who were practicing nurses and were studying through open learning. Dearnley identifies three types of network which provide support:

• Social (typically family and friends)
  
• Professional (typically work colleagues)
  
• Academic (fellow students and personal tutors)
  

We are asked to consider the following questions:

1. Focus on your prospective learners: will they have any of the same issues as the students in Dearnley's paper?
   
2. Which social, academic and professional frameworks do you access as a student – for example, in your study of H807? I'm not assuming that everyone will use all three or will have access to all of them, a point that Dearnley also makes.
   

 

Question 1

Undoubtedly, some of the learners in the group on which I will base my activity will experience many of the same issues as those in Dearnley's paper. Our courses attract significant numbers of part time (day release) students who often have demanding professional jobs. Furthermore we tend to have substantial numbers of mature students who may have family responsibilities to balance alongside their studies. In fact, even many of our younger, school leaving entrants also have to contend with part time employment and family commitments. It is therefore highly likely that the majority of our students will benefit from all three types of support network.

Question 2

From a personal perspective, I would say that I benefit from primarily from the social and academic networks. My family and friends provide the emotional support that is often essential when the demands of part time study get on top of me. They also keep me grounded when I am perhaps getting things out of proportion. My fellow students on the course are also a valuable source of support. It is always helpful when one is really struggling with workloads, or with understanding a concept, to know that others in the group are going through similar difficulties, or indeed having to cope with much more difficult circumstances than me. I feel that I get the least support from my colleagues at work and there is virtually no allowance made for my studies. This may be my own fault in that I have never really sought support.

Reference:

Dearnley, C. (2003) 'Student support in open learning: sustaining the process', International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning [online]http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/132/212 (Accessed 29 May 2011)

Champions!

When I resurrected my blog earlier this year I decided that I wanted to make it a bit more wide ranging than just my Open University studies. In the heading to the blog I actually mention that I will include posts about construction education and about the frustrations and joys of supporting QPR. I've managed to include several posts about the former, but so far not one single post about the latter. The reason for that is simple: I didn't want to tempt fate! The season which has just ended has been the best season in a generation for QPR fans but I thought if I wrote anything in my blog about this it would simply tempt fate. However, now the season is over I thought it was only right that I finally included something about QPR being champions and promoted to the Premier League.

People who don't follow football find it difficult to appreciate the highs and lows which fans go through. I took my son to his first QPR game when he was five years old in 2002. At the time we were in the third tier (what is now League One) and the club was struggling. For years he has had to put up with the jibes and taunts from his friends who support Chelsea or Arsenal or Manchester United. Throughout that time I used to tell him to simply ask those so-called fans how many times they had actually been to see their team play. In most cases this was once or twice a season whilst, as season ticket holders, we have hardly missed a home game at QPR in that time. He has stuck with the team through thick and thin, and let's be honest – it has mostly been thin! It has been difficult at times over the years to maintain the enthusiasm for QPR as performances on the pitch have often been mediocre at best, and the club became a laughing stock off the pitch due to bizarre boardroom activities and the rate at which managers were hired and fired.

All that changed last year. In the second half of the 2009/10 season the board finally appointed a proven manager – Neil Warnock – and allowed him to get on with running the team. I have to confess we were less than enthusiastic at the appointment, having seen the style of football adopted by Warnock at previous clubs, Crystal Palace and Sheffield United. Well – our doubts were unfounded because Neil Warnock had an immediate impact last season, stabilising the club and avoiding relegation. In the close-season he made several signings, most of which were greeted with scepticism to say the least. And yet on the opening day of the 2010/11 season we beat Barnsley 4-0 at home and went top of the league on goal difference. Amazingly (and I still have to pinch myself when I say this) we stayed top for virtually the whole season apart from a couple of weeks.

But QPR don't do things the easy way. In March the FA announced that QPR had been charged with seven offences relating to third-party ownership of players. There was immediate speculation that, if proven, the charges could result in a significant points deduction. So, the best season ever was about to be ruined by matters which had nothing to do with performances on the pitch. This cloud remained hanging over us for the remainder of the season. It clearly affected the players who struggled to maintain their form. However, the important thing was that they didn't lose too many matches. They drew quite a few but they managed to keep accumulating enough points to keep them top. The FA's hearing took place during the week before the final day of the season. A decision was due on Friday 7^th May but no decision was forthcoming.

On Saturday 8^th May QPR played their final match of the season at home to Leeds United. Regardless of the result QPR would still be top of the league, but no one knew whether the FA would deduct points and strip us of the title. My son and I followed our usual matchday ritual of driving out to South Ruislip station to get on the Central Line to White City. There were loads of Rs fans on the train and at each station more and more got on. Everyone was excited but also really anxious. Then, somewhere between Perivale and Hanger Lane, I received a text message. It was an official announcement from the club:

"Official QPR: WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! The FA have announced there will be no points deduction. WE ARE PREMIER LEAGUE!"

I couldn't believe what I was reading. I had to read it again but once I realised it was genuine I just shouted it out. It seems I was the first one on the train to get the message because it went up and down the train like wildfire. Suddenly everyone's phones were going and people were cheering and shouting. We got off the train at White City to walk to the ground and there was unbridled jubilation everywhere. Grown men were in tears. It really was memorable. We just stood outside the stadium for a while to soak it all in.

As I said, people who don't follow football find this difficult to understand, but when you have invested so much time and emotion (and money!) in following a team, when something like this happens it really is special. We lost to Leeds on the day, but it didn't actually matter. QPR were presented with the Championship trophy on the pitch at Loftus Road after the match and the celebrations continued well into the night.
It was a fantastic day which I think I will remember for ever. It was great for my son too, who finally gets to see his team compete at the top level after years of putting up with so much stick.

U RRRRRRssss!!

Fragmentation, Silos and the Impact on Built Environment Education

I gave a presentation at a symposium on Friday 20 May at the University of Westminster. The symposium was for the launch of a new research centre called ProBE: the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment. It's a joint initiative between the School of Architecture and the Built Environment and Westminster Business School. 


The symposium included a range of presentations by guests from around the world, including Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Sri Lanka, as well as the UK. 


To me, the most striking thing about the international presentations was how much more integrated and coherent the education frameworks for the built environment professions seemed to be in other countries. My presentation focussed on the fragmentation which exists amongst the built environment professions in the UK, and the impact this has on education. Here's the presentation:

ProBE presentation 20 May 2011

More information about ProBE

Tuition fees, a revolution in higher education, and another four day weekend!

A few days off work for me at the moment, which has coincided with a break in the H807 course. I suppose I should be forcing myself to stay away from all things digital and have a proper break, but I think I've reached a stage where I start to get a bit twitchy if I haven't been online for a few hours! That might sound a bit sad, but believe it or not I still find the whole internet and social network world quite exciting and, given the ease of access via laptop, iPad or smartphone, I guess I'm genuinely hooked.

A couple of things have got me thinking this week which at first didn't seem particularly related to each other, but the more I thought about them I realised they were actually very closely related indeed.

Firstly, my daughter's sixth form college held an evening for parents to explain the ins and outs of applying for higher education. I managed to wheedle my way out of attending, but my wife went and, aside from all the usual information about choosing the right subject, and the right university, and filling out the UCAS application, she was quite shocked about the potential impact of the new tuition fee arrangements. Our daughter is currently in the first year of sixth form college, so if she wants to go to university then she would be entering in 2012. She will therefore be part of the first intake affected by the new fees. Given that I work in higher education I am reasonably well informed about the new fee arrangements, but I have to confess that it really starts to hit home when I consider the issue in the context of my own family. I've been following the issue quite closely on Twitter (@timeshighered) and it is clear that the majority of universities expect to charge the maximum £9000 per annum for their courses. If a student also borrows £4000 per annum for living costs, then by the time they graduate they will have accumulated a debt of £39,000. What shocked my wife was a point made by my daughter's college that it is quite possible that the total cost of repaying that loan could be over £80,000. In other words, graduates may end up paying back more than double what they borrowed. In effect, graduates will have the equivalent of a small mortgage at the age of 21, assuming they enter a graduate level job.

Now of course we don't yet know what the final arrangements will be, as the government doesn't even expect to publish its white paper on the matter until June, so inevitably there is a lot of speculation and misinformation out there. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that this is will have an impact on applications to universities. My daughter is not even sure that she wants to go to university, irrespective of the fees, but in the past young people in her position would probably have gone anyway. Surely they will now think twice if it means saddling themselves with a massive debt for the next 30 years. Some people will say that this is a good thing if it means that that people entering university are genuinely committed to it. However, this has to be considered against the fact that the whole thrust of government policy on higher education over the past twenty years has been to increase participation rates. Universities have therefore adapted to cope with larger numbers of students. It is highly likely, in my view, that there will now be a significant decline in applications to universities. I've made the point before that I think many people in higher education are simply ignoring the potential threats brought about by the new fees. They seem to believe that "we'll be alright as long as we keep doing what we're doing".

This brings me to the second interesting point that has arisen this week: an article in the Times Higher which I picked up on via Twitter. The article, by Cathy Davidson of Duke University in North Carolina, maintains that our higher education system was developed over 100 years ago to meet the needs of the industrial age. In the early twentieth century the response of universities to the industrial world's emphasis on efficiency, standardisation, specialisation and hierarchical management structures was to reorganise into faculties and schools, and to have specialist degrees and disciplines:

"The history of 20th-century higher education has been the history of assessing individual achievement, measuring, certifying and quantifying outcomes and outputs."

Davidson suggests that the structure of higher education is no longer suited to the modern world of high speed communication and knowledge transfer, and she claims that the time is now right for a new revolution in higher education. In particular, she suggests that graduates nowadays need to be equipped with new skills:

"....new sorting and attentional skills, collaborative skills, judgement and logical skills, synthesising and analytical abilities, critical and creative skills, qualitative and quantitative skills, all together, with few lines between them. These are sometimes called "21st-century literacies", a range of new interpersonal, synthesising, organising and communication skills that companies insist today's graduates lack."

I think there has been a lot of emphasis in recent years on the role of universities in producing graduates who are ready for the workplace. In my own work I lead a programme of degree courses which are highly vocational and are designed to prepare graduates for entry to specific professional disciplines. We attract students partly because they know that when they graduate they have a direct route into a career. I had assumed that this would continue to be the case for the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the current recession in the construction industry. However, it seems to me that the universities which will be successful in the future will be those which produce graduates with the attributes to enable them to adapt to a fast-changing environment. In the era of high tuition fees universities will have little choice but to respond. Prospective applicants will quickly become proficient in identifying the universities which are capable of providing the types of courses suited to the modern world. At the moment I don't even know what those courses might look like, but I do realise that if we simply carry on doing things as we have done for the past twenty years we will very soon find ourselves obsolete.

Anyway, it's probably best not to let that spoil another four day weekend. Personally, as an avid republican, I can't stand the whole royal wedding thing, but I'm very glad of the day off because the wedding happens to coincide with my best friend's 50^th birthday. I'll be doing plenty of celebrating on Friday, and if QPR can beat Watford on Saturday then the celebrations will continue!!

Killing two birds with one stone

I'm being a bit cheeky here, or looking at it another way, I'm just being sensible. In any event, I'm basically trying to kill two birds with one stone. In H807 this week we have been asked to evaluate the usability of a technology or web-based resource. At the same time, I am currently involved in a JISC sponsored programme to produce Open Resources for Built Environment Education (ORBEE). My involvement is to produce three learning packages in the field of Building Adaptation and Conservation, which is one of my specialist areas.

For the ORBEE project I would like to incorporate some screencasts in the online resources so I have been experimenting with free online screencast services. In an earlier blog I had a go with screenr which was quite successful, but the screencast length is limited to 5 minutes. One of my fellow students on H807 (thanks, Karl) drew my attention to Screencast-o-matic. Despite the awful name it's actually a very useful, free service which allows users to produce instant screencasts of up to 15 minutes' duration.

It took me three attempts to get this right and it's still fairly crude, but I have to admit that it's a really easy tool to use. All I've done is to use PowerPoint with a voiceover to describe an animated graph. To anyone not interested in the subject I have no doubt that it will be incredibly boring, but it does relate directly to the work I've been preparing for the ORBEE project so, from a purely personal point of view, it's been helpful.

Screencasts can be uploaded directly to YouTube, and then embedded in a website or blog as I've done here. There is no need to download any software, and you can start recording your screencast within seconds of opening the webpage. You don't even need to log in or sign up for anything.

Anyway, here's the screencast, though I won't expect many people to be actually interested in it:




I won't include my notes about the usability of the technology here, as we've asked to post them directly on the H807 tutor group forum.

Education or qualification?

The other day a colleague was bemoaning the fact that students weren't turning up for lectures. To anyone teaching in higher education this is a familiar scenario: the end of term is approaching, there are lots of coursework submission deadlines, the content which relates to the coursework has all been covered already, etc. etc. All of these factors often lead to one thing: half empty lecture rooms. My response to my colleague was that a lot of our students are what I call 'strategic' learners. This is particularly the case with part time students who only attend university on one day per week and may have demanding employment alongside their studies. These students tend to focus on activities which contribute to assessment. If this means that certain aspects of the course are treated rather superficially, or even ignored, then so be it. Passing the course and gaining the qualification is, for many students, more important than the deep learning which we as academics like to promote. In other words, many of our students are more interested in getting a qualification than an education.

A common response to this problem is to use the module assessment regime as a 'stick' to beat students with. The argument runs something like this: if students have to sit an exam at the end of the module then they will be much more likely to attend all the lectures to ensure that they don't miss any of the content and, more importantly, don't miss any hints about what might be in the exam. Or, even better, why not have short, sharp in-class tests at regular intervals throughout the module. Provided the tests contribute to the overall module marks, the students effectively have to turn up to classes.

I was reflecting on this in the light of the work we have been doing in H807 this week. One of the activities this week has involved looking at assessment practices in the context of Web 2.0. Personally, I have serious reservations about the value of exams and tests as a means of assessing learning. I can empathise very strongly with the view put forward by Elliot (2008) in his paper about assessment in the age of Web 2.0:

"Some educationalists claim that the current assessment system encourages surface learning and "teaching to the test". Instead of instilling genuine problem solving skills, it fosters memorisation. Examination papers that appear to pose 'deep' questions are answered by rote memory – memories that are acquired by students under pressure from parents who want to see their children gain qualifications, and drilled by teachers who are seeking to meet targets." (Elliot, 2008)

I have no doubt that greater use of exams and tests would ensure that lectures were better attended. But isn't this missing the point somewhat? If students are not turning up to our lectures, doesn't this mean that they either don't want to, perhaps because the lectures are boring, or they don't need to, because the lectures don't give them anything that they can't get somewhere else? If it's the former, then we as academic staff have to take some responsibility for this. Are our lectures engaging enough? If it's the latter, then maybe it raises the question of whether traditional lectures are simply obsolete as a means of conveying information, especially when students can access information in so many different ways.

So – what is the point of using exams and tests as a way of forcing students to attend lectures, if the lectures themselves are actually not providing much of an educational experience? I think that well designed assessment should actually be integral to the learning which takes place in a module. The assessment can actually provide the vehicle for students to put in to practice the application of the concepts and principles which form the content of a module. Rather than seeing assessment as something which is tacked on to a module simply as a means of determining whether the learning outcomes have been achieved, the assessment activities can be the means by which the learning outcomes are achieved.

Undoubtedly, Web 2.0 technologies can make a significant contribution to effective assessment. Referring again to Elliot (2008), he suggests that the type of assessment activity best suited to the contemporary learner would exhibit some or all of the following characteristics.

• Authentic: involving real-world knowledge and skills.
  
• Personalised: tailored to the knowledge, skills and interests of each student.
  
• Negotiated: agreed between the learner and the teacher.
  
• Engaging: involving the personal interests of the student.
  
• Recognise existing skills: willing to accredit the student's existing work.
  
• Deep: assessing deep knowledge – not memorisation.
  
• Problem oriented: original tasks requiring genuine problem solving skills.
  
• Collaboratively produced: produced in partnership with fellow students.
  
• Peer and self assessed: involving self reflection and peer review.
  
• Tool supported: encouraging the use of ICT
  

With the fantastic potential offered by Web 2.0 technologies should we really be looking to Victorian assessment methods simply to ensure that students turn up for lectures that probably aren't particularly useful in the first place. Let's focus on the positive aspects which can be derived from Web 2.0 rather than worry about minor disadvantages. Let's use Web 2.0 to ensure that assessment actually encourages our students to get an education rather than just a qualification.


 
Reference:

Elliott, B. (2008) Assessment 2.0: Modernising Assessment in the Age of Web 2.0 [online], Scottish Qualifications Authority; available from http://www.scribd.com/doc/461041/Assessment-20 (Accessed 8^th April 2011).