Behold, the result of our toils (with a huge thanks to everyone who helped us on this endeavor!): “How do students use ICTs  in Higher Education?“.

The survey focused on four areas:

1. Hardware ownership (phones, laptop, tablets, etc)
2. Use of Social Media
3. Satisfaction of UvA services
4. Use of ICTs in education

And now we don’t have to guess the answer anymore when we ask ourselves the questions: do 50% of all UvA students have a smart phone, and what model? How often do they use Facebook, how many own a tablet and do they prefer digital syllabi versus hard copy? Should we provide affordable tablets? Do most of them have Macs, or a windows laptop? What do they prefer, more commitment for digital tests or the use of ICTs for increased interaction with their teachers?

Here are some things we can conclude based on this survey:

• Who would have guessed, but there is (for me) a surprising lack of smart phones amongst Faculty of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science students
• Maybe some might have guessed, but more students at the Faculty of Medicine own an apple laptop than at any other faculty
• 85% of students have a Facebook profile and it is more popular amongst freshmen than seniors.
• Female students check their Facebook profiles more often than male students, which fits the general findings regarding women and social media
• There is no doubt, across the board, students want mobile access to their Blackboard announcements
• Twitter use is growing, but still low at 30%
• Students who have web lectures provided as a service, can’t get enough of them
• Students want more digital low stake tests
• Investing in improving ICT skills amongst some teachers is not a foregone stage.

Now comes the time where we analyze and discuss what these statistics mean for the way forward.

What students want does not immediately imply that is in their best interest. For example, if supplying web lectures structurally (in a setting where lecture attendance is not mandatory) results in less attendance, this could affect the experience of studying in a negative way. Knowing what they want does however provide insight into how best to approach them when aiming to increase student engagement, increase succesful completion of study programmes and identifying where possible deficiencies exist.

The university has the task to prepare students for future careers, as scientists, researchers, public servants and private sector employees/entrepreneurs. In this role the university needs to keep an eye on the current and future demands made on employers and employees of the future, and provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills. Insufficient ICT literacy may be a hindrance in achieving the most out of a study programme as well as the ability to apply existing potential fully in later careers. Providing too many support measures to assist studying may be considered coddling, when the skill of managing self-study is a very beneficial one in the perspective of life-long-learning. In this regard the phase of study should play a part when choosing which support measures to implement and which ICT literacy skills to hone.

This study “How do students use ICTs  in Higher Education?“is a step towards ensuring that the educational policies set out by the university is a match with the levels, tools and needs of students. It is my recommendation that it should be monitored annually, building on the experience we have now.

* previous ICT in education coordinator at the Faculty of Medicine, UvA, current ICT in education coordinator at the Faculty of Humanities, UvA

Teaching academic digital literacy is not only with the purpose to increases students chances of contributing significantly as professionals, but also to protect them from information overload which in the worst case scenario can lead to a burn-out.

Knowledge workers need to master information management skills to make effective and efficient professionals. When your main capital is knowledge, and this knowledge has a shelf life of 5-10 years (maybe less by now), it is crucial you possess skills to keep updating your main capital. In the recent past one of the main challenges was access to the right information. A hierarchical world pre-determined for a large part what your path in life would be. Financial means determined if you would have access to the better schools and hence better jobs.

In today’s increasingly flat world, access is increasing. The rise of open access content and open educational resources is an example of this (The Power of Open: over 400 million CC-licensed works, with increasing freedom), as is MITs recent completely open access AND accredited  courses online. Today the challenge is no longer access, but 1) discerning which information is relevant, and 2) accessing it in an efficient way.

Let your social network do the filtering and curation

One of the most effective ways to access relevant information, is to let your social network do it for you. Imagine the effect of choosing your network of ‘friends’ on Facebook based on professional interests. As well as the people you follow on twitter. The result would be a social filter on either the mass of information available, or a star team of curators gathering and republishing information on a scarce topic.

• The one who can google (notice, it has become a verb) better than his colleague, is more empowered.
• The one who uses google alerts and streams these to his/her feed reader is even more empowered.
• The one who is networked with others who do similar information curation, is most empowered.

Pros:

- preparing for exams. Students can refresh their memories by viewing the lectures all over again just before an exam. This would potentially up their grades
- show it to your mum. Students can show their friends and families what they are learning at the university.
- show it to prospective students. By giving new students a taste of what’s to come, they can make informed decisions on what path to choose in their university careers.
- reflection. A lecturer can check these videos and evaluate his or her own performance. By confronting  yourself with yourself in such a manner, ticks and errors can more easily be spotted and corrected in the future.
- evaluation. Quality control staff can use recorded lectures to evaluate performance.
- portfolio. A lecturer hunting for a new job can use such videos to show what s/he is all about.
- archive. Think of how awesome it would be to have a video lecture series of Max Weber or Robert Merton. Lectures are restricted to a time and place, and once uttered lost forever. Not so with a videorecording.
- substitution. Sometimes in university life, a student will follow two courses which have two lectures taking place simultaneously. In this case both lectures can still be followed if one is taped.
- bodily harm. Disease, amputated limbs, chronic hospitalization, plague quarantine: it does not necessarily have to destroy your chances at the university. If you are indisposed for whatever reason, a recorded lecture can help you out. This also works whenever a lecturer is malfunctioning: his or her recordings from previous years can be used to fill the gap.
- Wait, what? If you missed the point, or you didn’t hear it right, a recorded lecture will allow you to rewind and recheck some parts.
- on the move. With today’s technology you can watch videos on mobile devices wherever you want. Many students travel by train, and this provides an ideal opportunity to brush up on their knowledge.
- showcase. The university can put videos of their top lecturers on iTunes U and YouTube Edu. This can add to the prestige of the university.
- back into the open. Our lectures are mostly publicly funded. Videolectures enable us to potentially return the favour: release the knowledge produced on the university back to the public. Sharing knowledge for a better world!
- more time. It is possible to use videolectures as homework for students, to free up time during contact hours for other things: in depth discussion, different perspectives,  empirical examples and so forth
- international co-operation. Putting videos online means that the same class can be followed in any number of countries. Lectures held at the University of Amsterdam can be used in Sweden, Czech Republic, Colombia, India and so forth, as they have during the IDS Lecture Series course.
- webbased learning. Videolectures can become part of a course fully held online.

Cons:

- preparing for exams. Students can just skip the lectures entirely and save up all the work until just before an exam. This results in lower class attendance, less facetime, no opportunity for questions and so forth.
- show it to your mum. Students can just show these videos to anyone, out of the lecturer’s control. Who knows where these videos could end up?
- show it to prospective students. Students seeing these lectures might be scared off. Showing them flashy promotional videos filled with promises of excitement might be more motivating.
- reflection. A lecturer watching him or herself might be so horrified by the experience and would refuse to be filmed in the future.
- evaluation. Lecturers may feel that their professionalism is under attack (and their job security at risk)when regulatory bodies start investigating their lectures.
- portfolio. Having a bunch of popular videolectures may lead to better job offers for lecturers, robbing the host university of talent
- archive. Everything you say in the lecture room will be recorded for posterity, including the dodgy, tricky and dubious bits. Maybe a lecturer would prefer to keep their words within the four walls of the lecture hall.
- substitution. Having this option of videolectures as a backup can stimulate sloppy lecture planning.
- bodily harm. A student with a cough or a running nose who would ordinarily visit the lecture might now opt out due to the videolecture option
- Wait, what?  The consequences of inattention and mucking about in the lecture hall are now less pronounced, due to the video backup. Students can afford to not take notes and be lazy.
- on the move. In this day and age, everything has to be fast, on demand, and no-one takes their time anymore. Academic education requires careful deliberation and lengthy concentration. Videolectures that are used on the go contribute to this rushed behaviour.
- showcase. By using videolectures as a PR tool we shift the focus from spreading of information to the public to selectively controlling what we believe that the public should and is allowed to see.
- back into the open. Lecturers create their presentations based on their audience, which typically is a group of students. By separating the lecture from its intended viewers, we create the risk that the wrong sort of people will pick up on the content of a lecture, which can create its own problems
- more time. Lectures are a university standard, and by outsourcing them to the digital realm you start tearing down a centuries old tradition. Lectures are meant as a performance, one to many, where the audience shares an experience. Atomizing the students by having them watch lectures isolated in their little rooms is detrimental to their academic development.
- international co-operation. By using lectures from a far away place, you risk destroying a job for a local person. The same lecture could have been given by a native staff member in a native tongue, with a native perspective that might clash with potentially Eurocentric or imperial points of view
- webbased learning. To borrow the concept of alienation from Marx, what learning online does to people is alienating them from  the social act of pursuing knowledge. Without interaction with the speaker and fellow students, someone’s intellectual growth can be stunted, incomplete.

It turns out that this post has become rather frivolous, my apologies. Some of the ‘cons’ took me quite some effort to make up. There are some things, however, that are worth mentioning (again):

- Run away! Though this is not something that happens with every course, and it is not always clear whether the cause is the option of video or simply a boring speaker, there is sometimes a tendency for students to stop showing up to the lecture hall. The problem with this is that students will not be able to ask questions to the speaker or socialize with each other during the breaks. It can be argued that university attendance should have a strong collective element, and video does not necessarily contribute to that
- stifled speech. Lecturers have often mentioned to me that they changed their way of lecturing because they are aware of the camera pointed at them. This leads them to sometimes be less candid and more careful about the things they discuss, because they never know who is watching, and whether they might get in trouble for speaking their minds or being careless with anecdotes or personal remarks.
- privacy. Often a lecturer will turn down the recording option because they fear they will lose control over their words. They are afraid that (parts of) their lecture ends up on YouTube, with ridicule or harassment as potential results.
- policy abuse. Department policymakers can, in a cost-cutting frenzy, decide to completely substitute a course for a videolecture. This means that people lose their jobs, or less jobs will be available, not to mention that having a person of flesh and blood instructing a class trumps any non-interactive video series. Videolectures are better used as part of a course, rather than a replacement of a course.

He uses his facebook profile to decrease the distance between him and his students. He does this in a balanced fashion, no flooding of the status stream with inconsequentials but once in a while a witty reflection on his personal life, a response to a BBC documentary on labor clinics in Sierra Leone and sharing interesting readings relevant to the course. By doing so he

is making himself more a person of flesh and bones, someone the students can relate to and have more feeling for than a distant neutral professor they know only by name and see at the bottom of a large lecture hall.

According to Professor Mooi the success of this formula is not per se visible in higher scores or more students passing the course, but Pathology was a renown least favorite bachelor course amongst students, and now it scores as one of the most favorite courses in the bachelor.

He has also created a channel on youtube where he shares “knowledge clips”, mini lectures on practical skills or clearly defined nodes of content. He explained that by doing so he could free up some of his lecture time for more in depth reflection or contextualisation.

His facebook profile is free to befriend and his youtube films are open for everyone to watch. In his own words he explained that he had recently published a book which was quite expensive and many universities with less means could not acquire the book, whereas much of the content of that same book is now freely available via his youtube mini lectures.

By doing so he has applied a degree of inverted or flipped learning. As a picture says a thousand words I will leave the explanation of a flipped classroom up to this infographic sent to me by my colleague Nynke Bos. The image below is just a preview, click on it for the full version which is published here: www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/

It was a great example of a teacher reaching out to his students with the technological means we have today, and making teaching and learning a more personal, intense and rich experience. Very inspiring, so thank you SMCadam, and thank you Prof Wolter Mooi!

Thus far the UvA weblectures have about half a million of unique views, and naturally this figure is expected to keep growing. As part of this growing interest in and usage of weblectures, a site and community have been established about weblectures and other uses of video in education. Right now about twenty lecture halls have an automated recording system installed and the plan is to add another forty over the next few years.

Eventually the university wants to go public with its lectures, but in a specific way. Unlike MIT’s Open Course Ware, we will not dump our classes online wholesale; the intention is instead to use a “best of” as a kind of display case. Both iTunes U and YouTube Edu will be used for this purpose.
Jaap Tuyp followed Werner, explaining why the university chose for the Mediasite platform: He had formulated a list of 64 criteria with his colleague Paul ‘t Hoen, and mediasite was the most suitable compared to about eleven other competitors.

After Jaap we met Sabine Rummens, who heads the lecture hall infrastructure. She gave more information on which (kind of) lecture halls had cameras, and which rooms would get one in the nearby future. One thing of particular interest was that she reaffirmed the ownership of recorded lectures: namely the educational institutes employing the teachers. Though no news to us, this is helpful to assure our own management that they have the final say over what happens to these lectures, and that they don’t have to answer to any legal team further up the chain.

After the lunch, where the audio-visual department of the UvA proudly displayed their outrageously professional equipment once again, Frank Thuss took to the podium to talk about mobile learning. His assignment was to explore the available mobile applications for education, which he has aggregated on this site. The interesting projects related to video were about teachers videoconferencing with students at locations via mobile devices using Coach’s Eye (saving traveltime) and knowledge videos (using the ShowMe interactive whiteboard app). These projects are a work in progress and the experiences of the teaching staff will be published on a project blog, though where this blog can be found is unclear to me.

Next up was Leo de Jong, who had the audience discuss the process of setting up weblectures with eachother, during which time I had a fun discussion with two colleagues and John Kleinen, a social science teacher with an interest in visual anthropology.

The day ended with Koos Winnips, who presented research done on the effects of weblectures. Two points of interest: (a) there was no evidence that the lectures that were recorded suffered a significant attendance drop of students and (b) unfortunately, students who watched videolectures did not significantly score higher than students who did not (but who did attend the lectures).

• In the classroom
• School Pride
• Potential students
• Professional development
• General outreach

I hope it will have the desired effect I am looking for which is to help explain to some what a natural extension it is to use social media in education and learning processes.

And for those looking for a little more “meat” to this topic, why not try A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. Happy reading!

“learning analytics refers to the interpretation of a wide range of data produced by and gathered on behalf of students in order to assess academic progress, predict future performance, and spot potential issues. […] and to tailor education to individual students more effectively.”

Source: NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition, pg 22

Is it only me, do I have an unusual sensitivity to peer pressure? Maybe, but I get very excited when I imagine an online learning environment which tells me, how I score on my digital diagnostic test compared to my peers, how many students have preceded me in downloading the optional reading I just downloaded, and based on my downloading habits and diagnostic tests, what my estimated end grade will be compared to the average. Okay, the latter possibly goes too far, but this is the core of what I find exciting about learning analytics. What information can we give back to the student, in a social context, so s/he can gauge their performance related to the group, and their own standards, and take action based on that information.

We are moving away from a top-down, hierarchical, vertical world, to a flat networked world where monologues are replaced by dialogues, and personalized products (mix your own breakfast muesli here!)  Why would we be focusing on using learning analytics only to “tailor education” in a top-down fashion more effectively? What could we come up with if we gave the data back to the student who generated it, presented it in the context of the group (the social element) and let them decide what they want to do with it. From the “leaning back” type of learning to “leaning forward” as I heard today from a very inspiring speaker, Wim Veen! Give them the information so that they can adapt their behavior, improve their study habits, feel accomplished when they score well, or decide to skip that party this weekend because all signs say extra studying is needed… supporting the educated, informed, context aware, empowered, social learner… I like!

We have all heard of the high failure rates of ICT projects. But I am finding it challenging to pursue a sense of Zen when confronted with enormous ineptitude and the supposed acceptable adaptations to work processes. How many times in the past months haven’t I heard the remark “Oh but you can assign a couple of cheap staff members to tackle that problem can’t you?”.  Implying that students could do some assembly line style work which will take hours, even days of their lives, whereas the system would have, had it functioned as it should have, accomplished the task in seconds.  And the task did not exist before we adopted the system, which was supposed to make work more efficient…

But it is that remark which I trip over. It reminds me of the importance of guarding the line. We need people who say, this is where I draw the line. We need them in society to keep the way we organize ourselves humane, and we need them to mobilize against unacceptable developments, like the Occupy movement, which by the way, why did it take so long in the making? And we need them  within organisations when monolithic IT systems are rolled out over hundreds of people in such a way that the system fits everyone, and at the same time no one, and the solution offered is to put a couple of cheap labor staff members on the task.

This is not a call to arms. I understand teething pains at the launch of such a system. And yes, the use of the term “slave labor” is an exaggeration.  But please let us keep notice of the sliding slope and guard the line between acceptable workarounds, and unacceptable ones.

One of the most interesting things is that these lectures are now viewable on mobile devices. The other lectures we have are in MediaSite format which is an html-frame with videos and slides next to each other, and this is not mobile-friendly since it requires a lot of screenspace. The YouTube video has the slides edited into it, making it more accessible for mobile or e-reader users.

On top of that, this video is now open to a larger audience. The fact that it is in Dutch is radically limiting, but the potential still exists for a wider discussion of the material, or even more plain usage like showing your parents what you do all day. I think this is a small but significant step into the right direction: making publicly funded stuff open to the public. Special thanks to the lecturer (Bart van Heerikhuizen) who was the one requesting this lecture to be put on YouTube in the first place!

Part I.

Discussions about the effects of technology, both positive and negative are not new. What is new is that we live in a time where it is developing at such a fast pace that the research into it’s effects can barely keep up. We have technology which begets the new technology. Cars could not make better cars.

The internet, computer processing speeds, social networking sites and mobile technology are exposing us daily to new ways of accessing information and communicating. Many of these technologies have been and are being adopted in the workplace and in education. It is not surprising then that discussions are taking place between lecturers, students and policy makers about which technologies to embrace and which to avoid.

This is Part I of a series wherein I would like to share some recent discussions, publications and presentations on the effects of new technology on society and by extension on learning and teaching.

To ban or not to ban

Last June I was invited by the Educational Committeeof Sociology to discuss the effects of students using laptops and tablets during university lectures. The question raised was whether laptops/tablets should be allowed in the lecture hall or whether they provide too much distraction and should therefore be banned.

Some benefits to laptops/tablets being used during lectures were mentioned, such as:

• advantages to taking notes digitally
• being able to access the PowerPoint slides and lecture readings from the online learning platform (Blackboard)
• being able to Google unfamiliar terms or related information.

Other benefits, currently less widely applied, are opportunities to increase student-lecturer interaction (gathering feedback or questions from the students via internet based tools) or student-student interaction (the sharing of lecture notes online).

The negative usages and effects mentioned were:

• bright screens and typing sounds distract from PowerPoint presentations and the lecturer
• internet access gives way to a variety of distractions such as chatting, facebooking, gaming, and emailing.

And it was mostly the distraction component which was argued with most fervor by the committee members. Students who are emailing, gaming, doing all sorts of non-lecture related activities on their laptops/tablets can lead to:

• less effective learning during the lecture
• distraction amongst students in close vicinity to the laptop/tablet
• demotivation of the lecturer who sees his/her students not paying attention.

Distraction

Distraction in the lecture hall is a real problem. But it has been a problem long before laptops or tablets existed.

There are those who argue that the structure of lecture based teaching has outlived it’s effectiveness. Some research underpins lecture style teaching as one of the least effective teaching methodologies available.

Although reflecting on the effectiveness of lecture style teaching may be useful, it is valid to say that laptops/tablets which can access the internet are an extremely powerful source of distraction. Gaming, facebooking, chatting are activities with a high stimulus which play on our reward systems (see Part II). Counter this with a two hour academic lecture, and it is easily understood why internet access is a real problem to combat.

Combating distraction

The question is how to deal with the distraction the internet provides.

One option is to ban laptops during lectures. Many universities have chosen for this option. However this approach may be akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Students who benefit from taking notes digitally, suffer under this policy. Digital notes can be more easily edited, reorganized, reused and shared for learning purposes. Plus many students find they can take more comprehensive notes digitally than with pen and paper.

Another option is to disable internet access in the lecture halls. This is a compromise to allow students to take notes digitally, but avoids the access to outside or internet based stimuli.

The downside of disabling internet access is that distraction from internet based activities is one which students will be facing in their future careers. Burn out caused by information overload is becoming more and more common. A professor I spoke to recently mentioned that colleagues signal a possible burn out amongst their peers by saying “Have you heard, so-and-so doesn’t answer his/her email anymore”.

Dealing with the problem by creating a temporary “unnatural state”, a non-internet-accessible lecture hall, might increase the teaching effectiveness during lectures, but does not provide students with the skills to deal with distraction from internet outside of class, or later in their careers.

Inspired by a fellow learning technology professional at Oxford University, I suggested to the committee to involve the students in tackling the problem. A professor could, at the beginning of his/her lecture series, raise the issue, explain what negative effects it can have and request suitable behaviour during the lectures. Thereby including it amongst the unwritten rules of how to behave in a lecture hall setting. My expectation is that most students will respect the request, and those that don’t can be called to order by the lecturer or by fellow students.

Digital academic skills

This discourse reinforced my belief that there is a task for universities to provide students with specific digital academic skills. Training digital literacy. Teaching them how to harvest the benefits of new technologies for information curation, information access, collaboration, communicating and presenting arguments. But harvest without being overwhelmed by the opportunities or burdened by the information overload.

This is a task which I think suits a future facing university. One which identifies and applies beneficial new technologies, while also empowering today’s students to master the challenges which new technologies bring. Recognizing that even digital natives can do with some extra guidance in the speedily changing digital environment of today.

Let me end with an appropriate quote from a presentation I will be referring to in Part II:

“Wellbeing in our new digitized environment is really about transferring all of our offline everyday wisdom into this new world.”