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#HEFE2015 – My notes

09:30 Dr. Nicola Millard (NM)
A look into the workplace of the future

(NM) psychologist in background

6 trends  – 6 D’s
Dilbert
Diversity
Dolly
Dr. No
Droids
Distance

(Look into term “techno stress”)

BOYD is a big trend, IT dept. don’t always like this as they start to lose some control.

Diversity:

Cultures, gender, age, personality etc.

Age – First time ever we now have 5 generations in the workplace.  Due to living longer and the expectation our pension will last around 18 years, we will need to work for longer.  How do you retain expert, knowledgeable employees? Not everyone in later life will want to work Mon-Fri 9-5.  This is where flexible working starts to come into play.
Business is becoming increasingly virtualized.  Collaboration is becoming recognised as beneficial but that the older generation have been taught collaboration = cheating.
Email is a terrible collaboration tool – you need to know who you wish to collaborate with before you email them.  If you put your idea / question out on social environments / media, people with similar ideas / questions and answers will be able to connect with you.  In extension this allows you to network.

Dilbert

Socialising in the office, working in the cloud
Work environments are starting to offer a choice for how and where you work.  A one size fits all type of office environment doesn’t work.  Things you need in an office environment:
Flexible areas to work
Great connectivity
Cake
-Playing coffee shop noise into an office environment has been shown to increase productivity.

The death of distance 

Permanently homeworking is hard – providing a hub to allow staff to come in and work helps.

Productivity is increased when you allow staff to collaborate.  You need to provide the opportunity for staff to ‘collide’ to allow them to spark a collaboration.  This can be making / allowing the team to all take a coffee break at the same time or providing collaboration areas where staff can break out of their offices / workstations and collaborate – allow them to draw on the walls!

Teams the collaborate face to face physically some of the time (vs only virtually) have greater productivity.

Introverts don’t like video – (NM) covers her camera with a post-it note in some meetings.

Audio hasn’t improved much since Graham Alexander Bell’s time.  BT are working with dolby to improve it.  They have introduced noise cancellation to remove the ‘heavy breathers’ from the call / meeting.  This seems to help maintain engagement and attention in the meeting.

None of these tools helps replace the traditional getting together to collaborate by they can help to increase productivity especially when collaborating over distance.

The Rise of the Droid

Smart things are on the rise.  From robots to smart phones.
In the future a lot of driving jobs are going to go and be replaced with self driving cars, truck, planes.

Some jobs are being lost to robots / AI, this has been true for a long time (e.g. typing pools replaced with everyone doing their own typing on simple computers which is being replaced with dictation to AI)

How work is changing

how do we offer a flexible approach to education which reflects the flexible approaches in the workplace?

Jobs like Nursing are not going away – BUT there may be less paperwork.
Hairdressers – women want a human – a lot of men would be ok with a robotic hairdresser

HE need to equip students with the skills required to engage with the modern workplace.

————————-

Innovating Learning Environments
Sean Corcorran, General Manager (SC)

Steelcase education (USA) (SE)
How do we leverage learning spaces to improve student education?

SE – Focus on behaviour in physical spaces, empathy for users, Innovation in furniture, tools and technologies for teaching and learning.

[Wireless headsets with multiple channels to pickup presenter working well, save for the one person with a different colour / channel listening to someone else]

The model of the classroom hasn’t changed since the 1350s in most areas. Desks facing forward to a presenter at the front of the class.

Pedagogie – Technology – Space come together to support active learning.

Observations -> insight -> solutions

[Shown images of a class where deskchairs are moved around to allow small group working – then the member of staff had to present something and a student turns around in the chair losing her workspace.  At the end of the class the college had to pay staff to return the chairs to the default setting]

Learning can happen anywhere but the spaces between the dedicated learning spaces are usually not equipped / not set out to support this.

[Shown image of traditional – hybrid – progressive clasrooms using the same footprint of the building]

Question to ask: The progressive leaving environments are good but, they do not support the numbers the traditional classrooms do.  Usually you build a building to support the numbers you expect in each room, moving traditional spaces to progressive will lose max number of students per room – how can this be overcome? Do we need to keep some traditional spaces to maintain numbers?
Answer: Yes it will reduce density.
LT 12 sq ft per stu – new deskchair 17 sq ft per stu. HEIs will need to re-evaluate how to structure classes and timetables – expand duration of day?

Have data from USA to show an increase in engagement from staff and students after redesign to use adaptive technology and furniture.

Question asked on durability – Is durability of adaptive furniture being addressed?
Answer – someone suggested to SC that students are harder on furniture than prisoners.  Yes they are addressing this where they can. SE offer warranty (missed length)

————-
Have a look at using www.zeeting.com in class to allow students to ask questions during a class – the lecturer can answer them as they go or offline after the class.

————-

Using technology to enhance student education
Dr. James Pickering (JP)

Leeds University

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) used:
Screencasts
Podcasts
eLectures
eBooks
MOOCs

Students reported ‘liking using these’ – but so what? What has this done to their learning?  Is a video better than a textbook at teaching the learning outcome?

How do you deliver these resources? – HE VLE’s are usually poor as it takes several clicks to access the module and then the content.  Collections on sites such as Youtube can allow students quicker access to resources [ but you would need to signpost their location].

Does Technology enhance learning?
Better question is:
How can we can we design technology that enhances learning, and how can we measure that enhancement?

When shown a picture to learn something there is usually a lot of information in one image to take in and learn.  A screencast allows you to build that picture up slowly and allow you more time to take the information in.  But does this improve learning?
[Shown ‘Dual Code Theory’ – where words and images are processed by different areas of the brain]
This fits perfectly with the screencasts.

[Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of multimedia learning – 5]

Split class into two groups.  Tested pre learning, gave one group Textbook, other screencast.  Tested after learning – not much difference but screencast better.  Tested over 4 weeks and those who used the screencast retained much more knowledge than those who used a textbook.

Use of the eBook didn’t make much different in the top quartile but did for those in the bottom.  This difference meant that those who used the eBook passed the exam and those who didn’t (from the bottom quartile) did not pass.

Ran a MOOC a couple of times. The MOOC had several different levels of study within it.
[Live Q&A sessions are a ‘nightmare’]

Well attended, reviewed – 50% active.

Asked students if the MOOC could have replaced the lectures delivered alongside for local students on course – the students said no it could not replace the lectures.

The students liked the resources provided in the MOOC. They didn’t engage in the discussions.
[JP is doing more analysis on this and putting this together for later publishing]

———-

The Role of CIOs in Transforming the Management of Student Data
Mike Day – NTU
Prof. Neil Gorman – HEDIP

CIO = Chief Information Officer

Redesigning the information landscape-
Reduce the burden to the HEI

525 HE data collections (a HEI could be providing data to 525 requests / reports)
93 organisations collecting the data
Lack of coherence in published information – same data going out to different areas under different requests.
Lack of data quality

[Basically we need to find a solution which will combine requests and provide the data they need if identical – requesters should collaborate to reduce burden on HEI)

HESA are trying to develop a single interface for all agencies requesting data to allow for a defined data set.

Efficiency and effectiveness needs to come from the executive team.

HEDIIP Data capability toolkit
-Management and governance of data assets
-Self Assessment of capability maturity

HEIs Need one true data set – not everyone having different data sets that say different things – one truth.

Prevent users from entering false or incomplete data where possible.

NTU created a Student dashboard based on the data they hold on that student and use this data to help show learner & learning analytics.
used HP + solutionpath to produce.

Reviewed the legal and ethical issues prior to using the data they held.  Their legal forms and statements already allowed for the use but they were not sure it was ethical.  As they were sector leaders on this there was no ethical papers on this topic.  They therefore set themselves boundaries and a review group to consider each step.

Use the data they held to produce and engagement score – this is always show to the student and tutor.  Only difference is that the tutor can place comments on the score.

If a student falls behind the others it can raise an alert.  By being autonomous it doesn’t require additional time of the tutor.

Providing charts to the student showing their engagement vs the class average.  Both in a cumulative view but also a week by week

Students and tutors can see what data is being used and can ‘gamify’ the system.  The system will self-heal to de-value the data that seems to have been cheated. i.e. if students check out a lot of books just to get a higher score the library data will have a lower rating.

———–

Leveraging Innovative Technology to Inspire and add value to learners

JISC
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel

[Intro to AR]

Marker based AR
&
Markless – GPS data supported

[Developed AR app for geography field trips to allow student to access more data in the field]

Considerations when developing:

  • Substance is key – it might look good but what is the point – learning outcome?
  • Mixed team approach:
    • academics
    • technologists
    • project manager
    • students!
  • What type of AR is appropriate:
    • 2D image rec
    • POI
    • 3D obj rec
    • 2D tracking 3D models
  • What content are you trying to deliver?
  • What devices, connectivity, environmental
  • Share assets! Reuse and share
Leeds college of music
Used AR to allow students to learn how to use the equipment in the music studio – get help on the equipment.  This allowed 24 hour access to rooms and support on their use.
[seeing AR in use and learning how to use a mixing desk]

Have tried the application on wearable AR headset. Worked well

————–

Enhancing Future Learning through Technology and Analytics
Dr Phil Richards
JISC

30 HEIs already have some learning analytics systems in place.
Worked with HEIs to come up with a framework to support the learning analytics
Data to be held in a shared data warehouse.
NTU first HEI to present data back to students.
JISC have filled all service providers except the student consent management service
System flags a student to their tutor when their engagement changes in a negative way.
Students can set their own targets and they can share their targets with other students in a game / competition style.
Working closely with 3 HEIs and another 5 on the way.
www.knewton.com – look into
—————–

Interesting Day, I’ll follow up with additional thoughts from some of the exhibits.

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