 Ydw'n cael ei wneud, maen nhw'n cael ddwy'r sloed ar y barbwarrau, i ffwrdd, yn dweud, yn dweud yn ymgyrchol, ac rydym wedi ar y swyddon, ac mae'r rhaid i'n cael ei wneud amser, felly'r Cymru ei wneud yng Nghaerfforddol, nid oed yn fwy o gwneud. Yn mynd i'n rhaid i'n credu bod y cyfwyrd, felly'n gwneud beth sy'n cael ar y barbwarrau. Erbyn yn y gweithio'r tawr, mae'n mynd i'n digwydd i'n gweithio'r gweithio, ond we have a distinguished list of academic experts officials lined up before you who are... I think this is probably one of these sessions that is very much about the making sense bit of the sea change. I think we're hearing a lot of the developments that are happening, there's lots of the research that's going on, obviously the kind of development of systems, thinking about the broader context of social technologies and so forth, all sorts of discussions around that and the infrastructures and so forth. But I think the key thing is making sense of it and I think having a debate and a discussion and a dialogue around what's really important here and I think that will help us all to understand what we might need to focus on perhaps in our professional lives in implementing designing new technologies, researching, working or establishing policy around them. So that's what we're going to do with some, as I say, distinguished input. I'm going to chair quite tightly here, we will have six five minute inputs from each of the contributors to the panel who I'll introduce but I'll also ask them when they get up to talk about where they come from, what their job is around this topic. If you had to concentrate on one single activity that would foster a sea change, what would it be and why? So this is really about what's making sense of what's going on here, what's significant and what's important in taking this work forward and this agenda forward. So without further ado, I'll invite Jilly Simon up. Well colleagues, thank you for this unexpected opportunity to talk to you. Professor of e-learning and learning technology at the University of Leicester where I head up the Beyond Distance Research Alliance and from January I'll be Professor of Learning Futures at the University of Southern Queensland. Now I've used that opportunity to tell you because that's my single activity for the forthcoming years will be to try and, with all your help, create the future. And I'm going to have one more go at the sea change metaphor to try and explain to you what I mean by that. If you could imagine a beautiful beach, it's probably in Queensland but it could be somewhere else. And there's big breakers coming in and breaking on the beach and you're standing there and you're watching if you like the pebbles on the beach and you're watching the sand and probably watching them in driftwood or anything else that's around. Now as you watch a breaker coming in, some of it would ripple across the beach and just disappear and sink in. Others would move a pebble a bit further. Others might crash in up and, you know, in certain environmental conditions might sort of crash into cars driving along the promenade for example and lots of other metaphors that you can think of. And I think we're in this kind of position now and I don't think we should just be standing by watching this happen. I think we need to start getting our buckets and spades out and start to dig some of the channels to start to help some of these waves go in some of the directions we want. And I'm going to offer you a very simple model for doing this. You know I like models. One is that we have hindsight now of a thousand years of formal education and a lot more of informal education. We didn't invent informal education did we? It's been going on for many years. But even if you take the thousand years of higher education for example there's enormous hindsight from that. But what we need to do now is gather that up and make sure we've got the insight that will take us forward. So for me it is the ecological relationship between all the various strands of what we're doing would be the key insight from looking back into history. And that's where the foresight comes in. We need to use all of that to start digging those channels to create the future rather than stand by and let it happen. And if learning technologists, the learning technology community with all the associates can't do it, then who can? It really does have to be us to give those channels I think. So I think for my foresight is this just a position the systems approach, the ecological approach to actually put in everything together and enabling the waves to channel. And now prefer directions rather than standing by and shaking our fists at the one wave that knocked us over. So the model is hindsight, insight foresight. There's another little tiny bit of sight with it and that's oversight. So don't forget to learn from the mistakes and don't forget to take a systems approach because it's everything that happens together that really, really matters. So that's what I'm going to be doing. What are you going to be doing? And I've got Hayden Blackley. Hi, I'm the head of learning and teaching at the University of Glamorgan in South Wales. And like Julie, looking forward to the future is something that fills me with genuine excitement. Having spent the last five years of my life working in technology-enhanced learning before taking a wider remit, I'm one of those who knows that enhancement of learning and teaching in the next decade isn't going to happen unless it's going to happen through technology. This isn't something where learning technologists are now, do we have them at the universities? Do we have people in schools who are learning technologists as well as teachers? Do we have people in the FE sector who use technology? It's the only way I'm going to suggest that we can survive. And I tell you why I think this. It's because I remember how I first learned to swim. And with a sea metaphor, I know when I've been out on the Gower that it looks so beautiful when the sun is shining, but just get a little bit away and you get that lovely pull of the Bristol Channel making the water go from north to south. Oh yeah, and here's the Atlantic making sure you're going west to east. So if you're not familiar with the currents, don't go on the boat because you'll end up three beaches over and think, where the... am I? And I remember learning to swim because I'd gone for lots of training in a local pool. I failed. Every time they took those things off that held me up and I had less buoyancy in those days I have to say than I currently do, I would think it was just a consistent factor until I went sailing and I fell off the other boat and suddenly I found that somewhere there was all this ability to do something that I'd proven I couldn't do in the past. I was now able to swim at least as far enough until I got some sand under my feet and could stand up. And I think these next few years are going to feel a bit like that for those of us who are doing learning technology and looking at how technology enhances learning and are looking at learning and teaching. Why? Because when I have conversations with our vice chancellor we're saying, how are we going to model in Wales a 40% reduction in income over the next four years? England might get away, I reckon with 30% to 32%, but of course in Wales, HE is nowhere near as significant a political item and pre and post school is where the politicians get their votes from. So we're going to have even bigger cuts, I suspect. And my vice chancellor is saying to me how are we going to do those things? And of course what happens then is everybody gets into apologies to any accountants, accountants' mind. Everybody gets to say, oh yeah, how can we cut that little bit out? What can we stop doing? But as Julie says, it's not the time to worry about keeping those waves back. Good old canoote managed to prove it couldn't happen way back, so why do we try doing that? What do we do that makes that difference happen? What do we do that allows us to change? And for me, that big thing, is to remember what we thought we already knew. The learning technology is not about technology and is about the learning and even universities are not about worrying about our financial situation but about the learners. And so those of you who've heard me presenting in the symposium on the student learning in the digital age project and other projects that are going on, the work of Rona Sharpe and Helen Beatham will know that. I believe and hope I share that belief with you that if we're going to be here making that difference we don't look to see what those cuts are but to see how if we're going to have learners we're not going to just be good at using technology in the university or school which is sometimes where we get a little bit monofocal but are actually going to be using that technology for life. Then guys and girls, they need us. The world needs us and sometimes we forget that. This is my fourth old sea and the first one was three years ago here and at that time we were all talking to each other about what to learn in technologies. Do we have a profession? Thank God those conversations are beyond us. Now we're asking how do we ensure that learner voice influences learners who become the people who challenge society and how could we possibly let them down if we focused on our budgets and not on what makes a difference for them. I've got a feeling I know what it was like to listen to an Iron Bevin from that point on. We've now got three Johns which the middle John told me was the name of a band and he might know. The first of the Johns is John Clayton. Thank you. I don't know if I'll be playing music though. I'll leave that singing to John. I can't play an instrument. I'm John Clayton. I'm the emerging technology centre in Hamilton, New Zealand and that's where the good beaches will be, Jilly. Australia doesn't have much at all. They're close enough to us to call us no good so we'll leave that here. I hope there's no Australia. How many Australians are here? Unfortunate that you live there. You gave a thinking of coming to New Zealand? Anyway, when I got the question, I just thought, well, what shall I talk about? What am I going to do when I get back to Wintech next Monday? What sort of task am I going to be undertaking? The first thing that came to mind is in the past in our institution we've provided professional development to staff on a wholesale centralised provision. So we said all staff need this professional development. Put them in our technology lab and teach them how to use this technology and then get them to go away and we're hoping that this will make a change to them and that they'll start using it. But what we've been doing recently as part of our studies that we did, we looked at that model and I did a presentation here and we called that the deficit model. We were actually looking at people and we were saying, well, you really need some training because you're not really good enough to teach and you need to be done this and then what we do is restructure this and we go in and we cure these people of their lack of technology ability. And so what we've been working on is actually saying, well, really, that's not what we want. We want tutors to come to us and actually say, I want this professional development and this type of technique that I'm going to be using whiteboards, I'm going to be using lecture capture technologies, I'm going to be using Moodle, I want to be able to do this and then we want to provide that professional development. And what we've developed is an assessment rubric and on this assessment rubric we're allowing people to go into it and look at some learning outcomes and then underneath it will be some generalized questions for them and what they'll do is they'll select these questions and they'll either be confident or capable in that or they won't be and what they'll get is a little carpet. If you've seen the EMM model from New Zealand, Stephen Marshall's work what you do is with a self-review framework is you create a carpet and the carpet will have all these colours. The dark of the colour means you're really confident and confident in that subject, the light of the colour you can now identify that you need to do some training. So when we go back to New Zealand we're allowing out that assessment rubric and because we can roll that out we've created a certificate an open flexible network learning which we're just going to try and get approved and what it does for us is it allows people to review where they are, it allows them to undertake the professional development that they want and it gives them the power and the motivation to undertake all that training. So that's where we've the immediate thing when we go back is to look at an assessment rubric type model where people can actually be empowered to choose the professional development in learning technologies that they want rather than us saying come along at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon to learn how to do Moodle learn how to do Moodle quizzes, learn how to do this we're actually saying that's not the model that really motivates you let's do something different let's try and get this working like that. Thank you. John Cook. The three Johns I feel free to use the John I'll check my flies don't know actually so it's difficult to follow some of these guys but I'm John Cook I'm a professor of learning technology enhanced learning from the learning technology research institute based at London Met University which has been in the news quite a lot for various reasons but it's a good university to work at and we've been hiding away in a little unit with my colleagues Andrew and Tom I don't know if they're here but now we've moved back into education the department to do some proper work, some teaching again which I'm really looking forward to rather than walsing around doing research projects so we'll do a bit of both so it's good to have a proper day job again actually so this question is quite pertinent for me the story I often tell is about technology it's about automatic tele machines and ATMs I love the idea of going to the wall and getting money out but what happened before they put them in the wall is when they were first invented this piece of tech they put them inside the banks so you couldn't get your money out in an evening you couldn't get it out at the weekends but someone had the brainwave, the paradigm shift to go take this piece of technology put it in the wall and it was more useful for people one of my jobs is to go will be to show my colleagues and I did work for the deputy vice chancellor trying to do this you go around showing colleagues the use of technology how you can use it and frankly I'm talking to a converted audience here but I'm sure you have this in your institutions it's colleagues the teaching colleagues do sometimes they need a bit of a nudge the paradigm shift thing it comes from coon use the thing you need a shift in the way you think about things we need to take the technology outside the wall, put it in things and hence my interest in mobile learning I think you've got the students you've got this technology and you've got the very au fait with it and I was quite interested to to see the talk by Alex Bowles earlier on from the students union and he mentioned a tweet from students and he said you need to create added value not have value from the technology it's quite interesting what the students think and they think the staff are good with powerpoint but then they're not very good with other technology but that doesn't matter we can help them and so it's nice to know that the students will help us so the whole thing about it's not about the technology it's about the pedagogy and it's putting the students first it's quite important remembering I think we should get Alex to maybe do a keynote again of people on the students union it's very important to keep getting this perspective and I find that's a good argument in my role of working in the faculty of humanities arts, languages and education I'll be working with colleagues and I'll be reminding of the student perspective and it's not I saw some tweets going on about they don't students can't always use these fancy technologies because sometimes you want to promote certain times of learning and it's difficult that's true but that was James Clay's tweet but I think it's our job to enthuse them and I think one thing I find useful is I used to by middle names Nigel and I use in slide share and Skype things because it makes me unique then people who know me I used to play in pop bands and someone said I thought it was Johnny Jell Cook so it's good to reinvent reinvent yourself and have different personas even if it's the same persona and I'll be doing that with colleagues trying to think of ways to do the paradigm shift this is nice these things are popping off was that you? I think the Jell you've got to make things Jell and the paradigm shift is you've got you've I won't be giving people and the thing about the ATMs is how far do you take that metaphor you're taking money out of the wall are we taking money out of the students so I'm a bit worried about where I'm going with that particular sea change maybe that advice chance is probably quite like that so it is about putting the students at the centre of my colleagues thoughts that's the way I've always managed to win arguments and that's the way I think the ideas will Jell so thank you and the third and final John is John McLaughlin well if we have a band of the three Johns with the name John McLaughlin I've got to be the guitarist I guess my ability to play the guitar is roughly akin to my in depth knowledge of higher further education teaching and technology I'm a civil servant I work for the department of business innovation and skills my policy responsibility is for government policy and the use of IT in further and higher education but I come to that with a complete lack of knowledge about these issues I don't have the decades of experience or even in Julie's case the thousand years of experience and knowledge to bring to you I do however on reflection on my own learning career when I was young I had a quite dramatic effect on my own learning with a piece of technology because when I started school we used to write with nibs that stuck in bits of wood and you dipped into ink wells with ink and I was bloody awful at that but when they invented Bayros I could suddenly write and that suddenly opened up my own learning and led me sadly perhaps to where I am today so to get back to the exam question I've got to make a couple of points one is that I did need in order to answer this make the assumption that anything I did could have that kind of significant impact and therefore I've viewed this as if I actually do have an influential position in government or that maybe an influential government minister had actually instructed me to concentrate on this area of work and secondly I've avoided the populist answer that the activity I would concentrate on would be to prevent any funding cuts for education it might have got a cheer but it wouldn't have led to any debate and discussion from the perspective of the government it would be completely unrealistic and anyway I think I already spend a lot of my time helping to support the case that Biz is putting forward to the treasury for sustaining the approach to expenditure in further and higher education so I think I'm already doing some of that now I take the view that if I had a blank, if all of us had a blank sheet of paper on which to design a post 18, 19 or maybe post 16 education and training system that met the needs of our economy going into this very first century it would look very different from the one that we actually have and I wouldn't mind betting that with this very different system we could get higher numbers of graduates, trainees trained professionals and specialists than we have now we would have them better educated and better trained than now it would also have more better focused research it would be more readily and more freely available and not only that we could do all of this with the same money that we now spend or maybe even with less money than we now spend if we were able to design a brand new system from scratch we now know based on the thousand years or more that Gillie and others have talked about and based on the use of technology but we're not in that situation I believe the design of our present system largely results from the position of the traditional university degree in the organisation of our system it's based on the idea of a relatively small group of people going to university at 18, 19 or 20 studying full time for eight, nine months a year for three years their studies comprise one or two lectures of one hour each week in a number of topics which are closely related that's supported by classes tutorials lab work each week and then assessed by written exams at the end of the process and then they go out to work and pursue their career and all that teaching that they have will be delivered by academics and then by research so I think that premise conscious or unconscious seems to me to be the sun around which all of the other elements of our FE and HE system have to circulate and are influenced by and I think that's a fundamental problem so if I had the chance the exam question to concentrate on one single activity I'd spend my time trying to move towards a system and approach that you might design if you had that blank sheet of paper more realistically that means trying to develop a more level playing field for our system making relationships between one part and other more logical providing greater parity and sense in funding systems, removing barriers that inhibit flexible approaches or that prevent teachers from doing things differently or more innovatively and a lot of you find that I'm sure in your professional lives so what would be my key targets for this initiative well I think that the key one would be the position of part-time studies or other forms of non-full-time non-continuous studies there should be a funding system that means that they're treated comparably to the traditional full-time study and there is still a place for the traditional approach I think but it has a place not that position of the sun this more flexible approach will allow students to choose a studying approach that suited them and suited their circumstance and that could change if their circumstance has changed and in institutions would be able to offer a more varied and more flexible pattern of studies to meet these varying needs but also ensure that our funding was looking at chunks or modules rather than whole courses funding learning results rather than just the inputs another bugbearer of mine is and therefore a target for me would be the first year undergraduate courses I think this country wastes a lot of money and resources on designing learning resources independently and separately throughout the country for essentially the same courses let's have a common set of resources for the broad range of first year undergraduate studies in economics, physics, French etc the common courses and a similar approach in FE so that what different institutions do what different teachers do is concentrate their valuable expertise on how they use the resources to teach not on designing resources that are essentially pretty similar and I think HE and FE are false distinctions and cause problems in our system it's much more I believe of a continuum through I don't even know where you start or where you end but it's not that distinction that we always seem to look for certainly in government between the two and therefore look for funding of all of our higher and further education as we now see it on a more equal and a more consistent basis that would help bring far greater logic to the academic and vocational question that we still face we shouldn't have to say is it academic or vocational again that's part of that continuum and might it be better for most not all of us to be expected to study or to train up until age around 20 not thinking of 23 years up to 21, 22 but a couple of years post 18 and then move into and that might be full or part time even then and certainly at age 20 you go out into work and practical experience with an employer or as an independent learner maybe and then come back after a few years of practice to finish off your studies or to further your studies perhaps to bachelor's level or further actually the master's level seems far more relevant to most professional careers these days and therefore the idea of the bachelor's level is becoming just a stepping stone but again master's level studies are not properly funded or not equally funded within our system so that's another form so what I would like to do to foster the sea change and maybe the metaphor of the sea change for me is about the storms that will follow the 20th of October when the funding review is reported but what I'd like to do to foster that sea change is to promote and encourage a comprehensive culture change of education system and that means that we'll be in a situation where technology can encourage and lubricate this change and the change itself would then enable far greater more sensible use of technology that will fully support and enhance the whole teaching and learning process not just for a few years from 16 or 18 but over a whole life of learning which is what we need in the modern society that we're living in Thanks a lot and our final input is from Julie Vos I must say it's quite a hard act to follow five very distinguished people I'm not quite distinguished more easy to distinguish as perhaps the only redhead at the conference Hayden focused on the world needs us well I'm going to come down to a very local level and talk about how Imperial College where I'm from needs me I'm not necessarily me but me and our learning technologist I'm the e-learning services manager and I'm based in the ICT department in Imperial College the key thing that's affecting us at the moment is a VLE review now there might be groans amongst the audience from people who have done one are doing one or are thinking of doing one it's a big thing and it will foster a change within an institution for us we're seeing maybe it's a potential for more developed use of the VLE like many people we have some very good areas of use of the VLE some who don't really use it or just put up a couple of resources so maybe this will foster a change from the supplemental use to a more dependent use of the VLE the interest that we've found so far throughout our review is looking at more collaboration through blogs, wikis, workspaces and bringing people together more what we found was that they don't really want the VLE to do everything but they do want access to more tools trying to bring everything into the VLE through seamless integration and enabling people to do more the key thing is probably going to be about changing the ways of working people want to be more efficient so things like inline notifications so you're browsing your learning materials you don't want to have to click away go and find the forum you want the forum messages appearing a bit like following a twitter feed personalisation is key they want to be able to log in when they want it and not necessarily have to go right have to go into this course increase connectivity with the use of mobile devices mobiles are becoming quite a buzzword and people are looking at how they can incorporate them but it shouldn't just be a case of accessing the VLE through the mobile through a web browser but really making use of mobiles and the things they can provide the challenges that are going to face us are to do with budgets the reduced or zero increased budgets and we also have a recruitment freeze on support posts so how is this going to affect us when we're trying to bring in a new system and change things we are going to have to justify the effectiveness of the VLE we could go through the review and at the end of it we find well actually there isn't much funding so what do we do now we've chosen this VLE but we can't afford it hopefully that won't be an issue but it might be and it's things that we're probably all going to have to face up to is even if we do integrate with other tools can we afford to bring those tools in and the key thing is ensuring the buy-in from senior management so through our jobs we're going to have to ensure that we do prove to them that what we're doing is effective and it's having results and for our users it's about managing the expectations we're not going to find the perfect VLE although some vendors will tell you that they have it we're going to have to compromise and it's something we're going to have to make people realise so probably a shorter talk on a slightly different slant from everyone else but thank you that's great I'll just give you a quick recap before the vote's coming no that's not serious it's not the X factor but there's certainly been some really interesting themes I love the insight, hindsight, foresight but also oversight from Gillian I think that was the main message see it as a piece see it as a system but also see it historically and understand that to really take the change forward which was brilliant, Hayden very much learning at the centre but also the learner which is a key theme learning and the learner John, actually let's ditch the old models of professional development let's talk about self-review and assessment tools or tools to support that self-reflection and assessment for practitioners John the paradigm shift and the making technology useful but again the key message around the centre of this and making it useful to them is important John from a policy perspective it would be great to start from scratch and design from a blank sheet of paper but what we really need to do is to put the well generally funding incentives in to make and possibly other policy incentives but funding incentives in to incentivise learning in different ways and designing learning and delivering programmes in different ways so that's a redesign kind of approach and then from a kind of institutional approach again it's that issue of making the technology useful for using opportunities like the redesign of a VLA to meet the needs of learners in terms of what they want to do again a kind of learner perspective not necessarily learner voice but learner perspective in that to get the right functionality to make that change from a kind of a supplementary use to a more dependent use on the core technologies now for questions, comments observations from the floor and we're also getting them in from the city feed and illuminate so anyone for a stab at a question or observation or review hi it's Mark Johnson from the University of Bolton it seems that this is more of a comment than a question perhaps I want to make an appeal for recognising how important the technological decisions that we're taking now recognising the consequences of those decisions on the generation to come and it seems to me that we need a sort of moral seriousness about our consideration of technology which perhaps has been lacking in the past we haven't taken technology seriously perhaps in the way that Gillie is hinting at, this sort of very deep ecological historical perspectives and I just wonder what the panel then sees as the key moral choices that we're faced with as we look at learning technology now I'm going to get this microphone because I think to respond to that it may well be useful is anyone from the panel want to answer that John first John you're about to get through, I think that's right in the ethics symposium and the things I'll just make the point I make there very quickly is that when we're looking at these things we shouldn't just tag on ethics through the committees and things like that it should be part of the debate all the time with the mobiles in particular you're getting the notion where things can be tracked your location can be tracked, your context what you're doing can be observed and then should that be you've got in different cultures with blackberries to unpig their security codes and so you're getting this whole debate coming to the fore and decisions we in education piggyback off typically what's going on in commerce, flash and the mobile service providers and yet a lot of these what we can't scale up and get efficiencies unless these different we as an education schools, FE, HE band together to get the economies of scale but there's lots of moral issues involved in there but we need to do it, we've got chest in higher education we get cheaper software but we can't do the same and meet the needs that were mentioned to use the mobiles so I think there needs to be a bit of a portion of banding together again a unified strategy I think Mark I welcome particularly the look at ethics and because I have a background in moral philosophy it's something that's very familiar to me however I've heard it used as an excuse not to do anything I don't think you're using it in that context I know the kind of stuff that you're writing and thinking about but I'd be very wary of raising it too high at the flag if it becomes an option to oh yeah we can't engage in using something that's going to help to learn it's learn because we haven't yet understood the moral dimension so I just like it not to become another dictator like some of the other very well-meaning and engaging activities that can actually stop allowing us doing things which effectively help learners yeah we need to think about it yes we need to make sure that all the people who are assisting learners in their learning journey are able to consider what it means but we don't want to wait until we've got a model philosophy of technology in fact I suggest we possibly already have one but of new technologies before we actually go and do something ok, thank you I've got a very good question coming in coming through Twitter really earlier on is too much weight given to the student voice do learners know best it's a really interesting question isn't it I don't think they do I mean one of the things we've been trying to do is to engage with the learner as an equal partner and imagine in the future and I can tell you if you have focus groups and all this sort of stuff you don't really get anything usable and in the end when one learner said to me you're the professor, you're supposed to know this kind of stuff I realised that the approach really wasn't working but we have now developed a whole series of workshops to help them imagine in the future in new kinds of ways based on the insight for oversight model that I briefly described earlier and using the technologies themselves using, we've invented something called Google Opoly and all this sort of thing fun type things and we are now starting to get some real workable scenarios and some real baseline ideas that we can work with so I don't think they know it's the same challenges that we have to look into the future but I think there are ways and it's all on the project and I'm happy to share with anyone who's interested how you can actually go about enabling learners to offer you preferred scenarios for the future which are useful so it's not that they don't know best it's that you need to find the right ways of getting that the evidence in the more than context is that engaging student voice and supporting them to be able to articulate the decision has improved the way that they engage with technology and learning I grant I've never taught anybody that's under the age of 18 and most of our students are over the age of 30 given the nature of our institution so there may be elements of learning and teaching where it wouldn't be applying us directly but the idea that our learners and one of them remember because I'm still learning aren't able to engage we can facilitate that engagement but actually cause it's not just about what they're going to do for the next three years but because it's about what they're going to do with the rest of their lives and very definitely in the ontology end of models of learning in that context Thanks Let's look for some more questions in the audience I think there were one or two hands up we've got two at the front Okay, we've got one hand up that I didn't notice first of all and then two down at the front row here As I've got the mic, a quick cheat a comment on the last one which is our users as learning technologists don't always know best, we know that so why should students always know best but I actually wanted to say something completely different which is it seems to me that if we really want to be radical about these things we need to separate summative assessment from teaching why can't I go to a university and say technology is like demonstrated, I can get a degree we've still got a tendence based learning you have to come and do a year or three years or whatever it is to gain the qualification you have to pay the fees to do the studying whether or not you know it and actually if you want to support real better learning maybe we need to separate the two allow students to use technology use people, use whatever they want to learn so I'd like your comments on that particularly those from institutions who might be most impacted by that I quite agree with with that why and one of the things about assessment rubrics that we're looking at pushing out is we're starting to say well yes divorce the summative assessment totally from the actual requirements that they need so if you can prove we've got a certificate we've outlined it, it's got elements it's got objectives, learning outcomes and people go through the certificate and they choose what they want to do but it also is an opportunity for them to demonstrate their capabilities so at one time they'll say oh I want an assessment on outcome one so they'll go and provide some evidence or undertake some training or undertake some professional development or do something and then provide that evidence against that summative assessment and then be able to complete the certificate so what it does is it opens entry at any time at any place for them to do what they want not in a structured way or you've got to turn up on Tuesday at 10 o'clock to do the Moodle part, no you can choose to you can choose to be assessed on the Moodle activity at any time and you just provide the evidence that you've done it and if you can't do that and you need some help you go to the professional development unit and you are mentored to get you to complete that competency that you need to complete provide the evidence so that means assessment is flexible so you've got open entry you've got open assessment that's the way of the world Thanks so there's some models already developing around that I think the answer is yes to the question I think we've got Nigel down at the front first Okay thanks Vanessa this is really directed both at Gillie and John McLaughlin I've been interested at this conference in the sense that national policies seem to sort of float over us and be seen as being inevitable and at another level we have institutional policies that people say are the barriers to change and development using Gillie's metaphor around harnessing sort of historical knowledge insight, foresight oversight and so on How at an institutional level can we generate the feedback loops into policy to change it and move it forward and for John from the institutions how would he see the institutions as influencing the policy climate rather than just being passive receptors of the decisions made without evidence by governments of all colours the present one Well as I've got the microphone I suppose I've got to answer first the perspective of government we certainly don't see institutions as passive recipients of whatever government policy might come along they are very vocal participants in the process and many universities in particular but also FE colleges and other learning providers have great influence within government in its broadest sense as well as specific political parties therefore there is a great influence and government decisions aren't although they might seem they are at times they aren't taken in isolation they're taken into account the reactions that there will be a knowledge of those systems so we have a very complex political and social and economic environment and government does its best within the principles that each government sets to make logical decisions based on the evidence that they believe they have now sometimes the evidence is the evidence that they find supports their arguments and they can ignore the evidence that doesn't support their arguments but I think in general they do try to make logical decisions based upon a coherent political and economic approach the results we might not agree with or we might agree with and the results are affected by a whole wide range of different strands and environments in the world in the economy and if we come back and focus on let's say higher education government can government funds and funds certain things but only what not much more than 50% of higher education these days and it doesn't specifically direct universities institutions to do things it tries to influence them and lead them in certain ways and then within the institution generally institutions don't specifically direct academics again it's a complex picture of checks and balances within an institution so if you come from let's say from David Cameron down to the student there are a whole range of different processes and decisions within there which probably pull in a range of different directions and then the world economy and environment impacts as well which is why it is not a simple matter and why my approach was very simplistic earlier because even if I had the opportunity to do that and the power to influence it would not go simply that kind of direction because our world is very very complex Thanks John Gilly you were mentioned so do you have anything I have a go I think the thing is that it's about to dig in the channels on the beach it's very easy to stand by and say wow what was that that went by that's sort of changed our lives but I really don't think that any of us need to do that I mean I certainly didn't go out with any privilege I've not been full time to university I've only done it by taking whatever opportunities and working with them as they're presented and for example when I went to Leicester there certainly wasn't an already structured process to get involved in consultation but I do understand that if you can strategise especially a strategy that you don't then create from a foreign try and impose on everyone else but you treat as a process a process to be worked with then everyone can be involved in that I do believe that everyone can get involved at the institutional level and at the government level for example OAT is involved in itself you know in consultations so is the higher education academy they're not kind of there to impose things on us it's entirely possible to get involved in these things you only have to ask you'd be welcomed to do that so it's actually at all sorts of levels that anyone in this room anyone listening would be welcomed to get involved in that and the key thing you need to understand is if you can get a strategy accepted resources will flow it's the strategy that creates the resource to do something it's not a separate process and that does happen in institutions you may say it won't happen in mine but I tell you it does if you can get something accepted as a university of strategy no matter how small then there is some commitment to making sure that that activity is realised so that's of some help strategising properly is the answer at different levels I think we did have one hand up over there yeah, James Clay, Gloucestershire College Julie gave her told us in her thing that the VLE is not dead and that it can be part of a well-rounded PLE yesterday Dave White gave a very passionate defence about explaining how the lecture is not dead but the question that I think we do need to ask are we clinging to what we're comfortable with what we're used to doing and what we've been used to doing for ages or do we need to stop rethink and change what we do we've got to stop doing what we've always done because we've always done it that way term starts in September we know why because the students need to get the harvest in I'm going to ask Julie to answer that actually so we've passed the microphone I'll try to answer it Imperial we are looking at a VLE whether that's the best thing we should do we have said maybe we ditch a VLE and go with the best of breed approach and bring in all the other tools that people do want to use rather than clinging on to a VLE and doing everything through that but the VLE is what people are used to and maybe it is just a case of going with what we're currently doing and maybe we do need to sit back and think about how we might change things I was speaking to someone who was thinking maybe we phase out the VLE slowly but bringing in the other tools that people are really wanting to use Anyone else like to comment on that? I guess I'm going to agree with James in many what he said like Julie my educational experience was entirely so with distance learning so I've never attended a lecture in my life until I gave my first one and it's interesting to me that therefore I didn't fall into some of the traps that some of my colleagues talk about this is how it happened to me and therefore it didn't happen again and I think that's one of the challenges for the whole area of learning technology is there are things which work simply because we've got this space and this discussion we're sitting with eight of us up here and a whole pile of you there because the space says that and while we can strategise about how we want the space to be in 20 years I know that if I went back to our Department of Children Education Lifelong Learning and Skills who do listen as John was indicating they'd end up staying what about all the wasted space called me to have lovely flexible alternatives and as an institution we'd be arguing that there are efficiencies around economy of scale and we'd be saying actually though we don't care if not much of the learning happens there what is the scaffolding that's around it and I think for us it's discovering that scaffolding and from a learner voice point of view people are still coming to university we try to discover why they're doing that we try to do a lot of research on why aren't they all now open university students because if I was going to be there as an advocate of a way to learn which suit in my own learning style of experience absolutely perfectly but that's not where we are as long as we have people who are going to turn up they're going to have some expectations that I think is going to take quite a long time for us to challenge okay I'm going to draw it to a close actually because we've run out of time I think this debate will run and run we're going now to closing remarks and we'll do a bit of apologies for a bit of stage shuffling when we'll kind of move around a little bit can we thank all of our six panellists for their contributions and all of you for your discussion