Dr Rónán O’Beirne’s Weblog

Education; Technology; Digital Transformation; Information & Knowledge Management; Librarianship; Digital Leadership

Wednesday saw our colleagues Saluka and Manisha delivering an excellent presentation to a small group about the direction of the Academy of Design. Noting their focus on ethical manufacturing processes within the textile industry I asked Dr Khosro Jahdi from our Masters in International Marketing team to join us for the morning session. There was much discussion about the event in Colombo the big Fashion Show planned for the last week in November. Dr Jahdi was keen to be involved and, from his perspective of an expert in corporate social responsibility, felt that there was a common interest amongst all parties. Colleagues from our art and design school provided further support. This looks like an exciting strand to the future work.

On Tuesday I spent time hosting two visitors from the Academy of Design in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Saluka Kotagama Principal and Manisha Gunawardane – Head of the Centre for Creative Enterprise. I gave a brief outline of my role and that of learning resources before we made our way to visit the VLE team in their office at Grove Library’s Victory room, for a demonstration of our Second Life and OpenSim activity. The project that is being set up has a focus on fashion design a real strength of the Academy of Design. We were particularly interested in merging the fashion design aspects with the use of live avatars in the virtual world. We were also intersted in how Moodle might be used to support collaborative learning between our two institutions. To set the ball rolling Tim gave a wonderful account of the history of Second Life, tracing the context and explaining some of the important detail. He then demonstrated an animated cat-walk along with lighting and effects. This served to ignite the discussion and a number of ideas were identified as possible ways forward. Richard took us through the latest developments with Moodle and there were some areas where collaboration with Srinreth the moodle support person at the AoD could be taken further. This work promises much for the future. Many thanks to Tim for the work he put in to making his get off to a great start.

Today is a big day in the organising of the Bradford Action Research conference – we have got to the stage of publishing the publicity and making the announcement – here it is!

A two day conference at Bradford College on 19th and 20th November 2009 on aspects of teaching, learning and assessment.

Join academic colleagues for this event to be held at The Henry Mitchell Hall and The Yorkshire Craft Centre, Bradford College.

Conference Fee of £45, includes a conference dinner on the evening of the 19th November at the National Media Museum.

Presentations from academic staff at Bradford College include:

• Distance Learning: developing and improving practice
• Cognitive and academic linguistic proficiency
• Using critical incident analysis in peer review
• Assignment feedback: formative or futile?
• Addressing the needs of under-represented HE learners
• Working towards a model for inclusive education in Initial Teacher Training
• Improving progression potential
• Space-fd Project
• UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology
• Supporting mentors of Fdsc students in the workplace
• Assessment strategies that benefit all learners

Additional benefits include:

Lunch on both days will be held in the college’s art gallery, The Bradford Gallery, where delegates will have the opportunity to view our current exhibitions: Darren Baker celebrating the work of our former student,recently commissioned to paint a portrait of HRH The Queen, and our Christmas gift selling show Bedazzled. Delegates will receive a 10% discount on any purchases made.
Dinner at the National Media Museum, Bradford will feature a pre-dinner networking opportunity with entertainment provided by students studying Performing Arts at Bradford College. Dinner and drinks are included in the Conference fee.

Registration opens on 21st September and closes on 9th November. Final confirmation and directions sent to delegates on 13th November. Following the event, conference highlights and papers will be available online on 30th November.

Register here

JISC have made a documentary about the future of libraries, it lasts for about 9 minutes and mentions Google a lot watch it here.

An alternative view of the future of libraries can be found in this promotional video by a library management systems provider from The Netherlands.

Hotel Park Hyatt - Dublin

On a recent visit to Dublin to see the WB Yeats exhibition at the National Library of Ireland, I noticed this new building on the canal docks. This area is undergoing a huge regeneration programme which the current economic climate will challenge. If you click on the image the link takes you to the website of the architects.

It made me think that the architecture of Dublin has changed significantly in the last 20 years yet, apart from generalist tourist guides, it is over thirty years since the publication of “A Guide to Modern Architecture in Dublin”. Perhaps it is time for a follow-up publication – sooner rather than later given the pace of change.

Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund (TQEF) 2009 – 2010

We have secured funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to enhance the teaching and learning in HEFCE funded higher education provision at the College.

I am therefore calling for bids from those of you associated with H.E. teaching and learning for action research projects for 2009 – 2010. I hope we will receive sufficient bids to run in excess of 20 projects across the College.

Each action research activity will be allocated the sum of £3,500. This may be used to fund staff timetabled hours at a notional rate of £50.00 per hour (or part time hours to pay part time staff or cover). Within this amount is included all costs for publication or any additional materials or resource to support individual projects. There will be an initial meeting of those who are successful in their bids at which aims, research titles and approaches may be shared and networks (real and virtual) established as I expect several pieces of work will be forthcoming under each priority heading. Those undertaking research projects will be expected to produce a written report and to present findings to colleagues at a dissemination event to be held at College. This event will be open to colleagues from across the institution, from partner institutions and beyond.

Under the HEFCE funding conditions, only proposals that will enhance the quality of teaching and learning in HEFCE funded provision can be considered. Themes for the 2009 – 2010 action research projects are consistent with our mission and strategic objectives namely; widening participation, employer engagement, progression and lifelong learning.

The call for action research bids is therefore under the following priority headings:

• E-learning/e-assessment in HE
• Assessment strategies
• Teaching and learning strategies specific to work-based learners
• Enhancement to peer review schemes
• Teaching and learning strategies for students progressing from the new diplomas
• Strategies to enhance learning for students for whom English is not their first language
• Identifying potential in schools
• Teaching strategies to unlock potential of non-traditional HE learners
• Unlocking potential of under represented HE learners
• Enhancing learning through social cohesion

Proposals need to specify the aim of the piece of work and how it relates to the headings above. They must also show how the work will enhance the quality of our teaching in H.E.

Yr 1 Contemporary Dance 2009 Summer Finale

After a break in posting due in the main to workload and in particular activity associated with our TDAP (Taught Degree Awarding Powers) application and the IQER (Integrated Quality Enhancement Review), blogging resumes with this update.

The VLE team are developing excellent systems and procedures to embed Moodle more efficiently across the whole college; with 23,000 students here at Bradford that is quite a challenge, but one they are certainly up to. They have moved office into the Victory Room in Grove Library – so named because it resembles, with its portholes, HMS Victory. Incidently I noticed during a recent presentation I was giving that the main porthole of the room if one stands in the traditional front of the classroom position, is lined-up exactly and gives a view of the clockface on City hall which must be .5km away. Back to the VLE team – it has recently been added to by the arrival of Gillie and now more recently Steven. As I have said before the allignment of the VLE team with the learning resources, systems and the academic library teams under learning development is a hugely important aspect of our recent successes.

The academic liaison librarians are busy developing new approaches to induction and in a wider sense the whole area of information literacy which as many of you know is dear to my heart. This will kick in early in September and reach a frenzy of activity by mid-October. Marketing materials are also being developed to tie in with this. Thanks to JISC 2,900 new E-book titles have been setup on the OPAC and are available for use.

The operational staff on all sites are undergoing training and of particular interest here is the staff development and training for those who find themselves dealing with difficult situations. This will tie in with a greater clarity of policy on a range of behavior management issues across the college.

Learning Resources Systems staff are currently very busy setting-up and installing ILT equipment across the hundreds of teaching spaces in the college. This is the culmination of a lengthy audit of software and hardware and a complex budgeting process that has sought to distribute resources as fairly as possible across all programme areas. They work against the clock as academic staff return soon and will invariably have changed their minds on various aspects.

The agenda of research activity across FE and HE continues to grow and staff are busy organising our first conference to disseminate findings from some 15 research projects that have been undertaken during the the past 12 months, the conference will be held in November.

Grove library is being refurbished – a new carpet at last also there is a new air-conditioning system being put in on level two / three. More computing facilities will follow.

To all staff busy working on the above and many other projects, I offer my thanks and appreciation for your continued committment and support.

The link to “Readings” at the top of this blog page takes you to stuff I’m reading – however, so enthused am I by this recent publication, I decided it merited a post of its own. Cloud computing is the biggest new thing that will happen to IT departments in learning institutions for a long while. To get an overview and clear perspective of the issues I recommend The Tower and the Cloud.

The blurb reads:
“The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual—or consumerization—is reducing the individual’s reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing—a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Consumerization and industrialization beg the question “Is this the end of the middle?”; that is, what will be the role of “enterprise” IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education.”

Read a pdf version of the book HERE

Using the WorldCat citation service the full bibliographic details are:
KATZ, R. N. (2008). The tower and the cloud: higher education in the age of cloud computing. [Boulder, CO], EDUCAUSE.

A recent roundtable discussion about the future of Lifelong Learning in the current economic climate raises some interesting points. Sponsored by the Guardian newspaper the challenge was set out thus:

“With the country in the grip of a recession widely recognised as one of the worst in history, training has never been so important. For those working in lifelong learning and skills development there are big questions to tackle. In an increasingly uncertain economic climate, predicting what kind of training is required, and to what level, is a big challenge. With rising unemployment, should the emphasis lie with re-skilling or up-skilling? And should specific sectors take priority?”

A full report of the debate is available from the Guardian website

Reminds me that in 1997 when asked about his economic policy, Mr T. Blair stated “Education is the best economic policy we can have”.

Here are some podcasts that I have recently listened to which some may find interesting – accessed from the JISC website.

Here Sarah Thomas of University of Oxford and Robert Darnton Harvard University discuss the future of libraries

Here John Crawford and Christine Irving talk about Information Literacy as a ‘democratic right’

This final one, here, is a longer cast where OCLC Vice-President Karen Calhoun talks about the provision of digital content for learning and research.