 So, oh, I saw there was another person. No, okay, fine. So want to know a little bit about you. Who would describe themselves as an academic? Academics in here. Oh, great. Who works in higher education? That's not because I don't like academics, by the way. Thank you. Well, can we just have in a little chat before we start? You're not late, we're just having a chat. So who would describe, who works in higher education? H.E. Okay. Who works in something that's really different from H.E. Fabulous. What kind of work do you do? Oh, really? Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Okay. What else was I going to ask? Right, so who has English as a second language? It's not their first, their native language. Oh, that's really interesting. Where are you from, sir? You're German. And do you know, funnily enough, you won't believe this, right? So am I. But I barely speak a word. And there's a story behind that, but I won't go on about it now. Yeah, I understand that. Sorry, a long time. Okay. Who's left-handed? Oh, you freaks. Is there any one right? Okay. That's very unusual. It should be, is it 17% or something? Not nil. Okay. Why am I asking these stupid questions? Why am I asking these questions? We're kind of to get to know you, but also because, forgive me, but in a way you're my kind of learners, aren't you? Because if you leave this session as the same as you came in, then you've wasted your time, other than the fact that it's cool in here. Okay. So in a way, what I've got to do is understand you as people and individuals and learners, haven't I? I've got to do just a bit of that. Now, technology is really good at that. Yeah. And lectures, workshops, are not quite as good, are they? Because I have to kind of treat you homogenously, as, you know, the reason I, I'm so sorry, the German, what's your name? Matthias, the reason I kind of asked them, and picked on Matthias a little bit, is to say, oh, goodness me, you know, there's something that I have to take into account, just a little, just a tiny bit. If I make a cultural reference to something in the UK, I've got to look it into, oh, right, okay, that's interesting. Do you see what I mean? There's an individual element to each of you, that this kind of session is not great at. Technology is brilliant at it. Okay. So what is this session about? It's my second of the day, so I might get confused, bear with me. I don't believe the hype making informed decision about learning, learning technologies in a context of constant change. This is the sequence of the session. I start by talking about hype, and I will explain why it's important. I talk about constant change, but the number this session is about informed decisions. Okay, that's what it's about. Actually, just, I've learned a tiny bit about you, I'll just do a little bit about UFI, then a bit about me. We are a charity, charitable trust. We believe that equitable access to skills enabled by technology is vital to a thriving economy. We tend to focus, not entirely, we focus on learners that are poorly served by traditional mainstream provision, and we believe technology works in terms of providing skills, okay? We have this term vocational plus, vocation skills plus technology, and it's called VokTech. That's why we're the UFI VokTech Trust. The term, the acronym UFI has a long and strange history, but I'm not gonna bore you with it. We do three things. We provide grant funding, we invest in organizations, and we advocate through partners, and I've skipped a really important part, which is that we are a key strategic partner of the Association for Learning Technologies, which is partly why I'm here, why we're here. Maareen, my colleague is also here. I just thought I'd tell you a tiny little bit about me. I've been doing this job strange enough for 40 years, as of the end of this year. I did my first learning technology product in 1983, and I flip between very pragmatic, vocational training, corporate work and so on to academia. I like doing master's degrees. I've got an MBA from this very institution from about 35 years ago. I've got an MSc in network learning, and very oddly, an MMS in creative music technology. The only reason I'm saying this, it's not about sort of bragging, I was saying how clever I am, it's about saying that this presentation is gonna be right down the middle of those two, hopefully. I am very much on the pragmatic side, but I support my pragmatic position through what I hope is robust research and kind of effective academic practice. So, I'm talking about decision-making, but I'll intro these other two elements, hype and change. As I say, I will be consulting my own notes, simply to remind myself what I've learned over the last day or so. I just wanna do some terminology. I don't know if you read the abstract, the description, but what I'm doing is I'm using virtual reality as an exemplar of some of the decision points and elements of hype and so on that I'm gonna be talking about. This isn't primarily a session about virtual reality, okay? But I just thought we needed to sort out some terminology. Could anyone just summarize, sorry, one more thing. I can't possibly talk for an hour. You are gonna have to contribute, I hope that's okay. I want to make this as kind of workshoppy as possible. So, my first interaction, could someone just explain the difference between those three? Very briefly, yeah. There's a spectrum of reality for the immersive experience, which is the real-world present AR and the other side is minimal overlay, which might be the space seven things and then MR. Mixes the two. So, I'll just try and summarize. Virtual reality should be just, you must correct me if I'm wrong, okay? Virtual reality should be all about complete immersion, creating a simulated world in which one is immersed, yeah? Augmented reality overlays information onto the real-world, okay? And mixed reality is kind of, it shouldn't be called merged reality, should it? It should be called mixed reality. Yeah, it's mixed reality. I don't, this graphic is not one of mine. So, mixed reality kind of merges the two, okay? And the reason that it's really worth doing this is because I've had projects, I'm not gonna say at UFI. I have had projects which have been funded and started and planned and in which the main parties didn't know the difference, right? So, it's just worth being clear about that. In other words, they just, they said they were doing an MR and it was a VR. Anyway, oh, forget that one. Right, don't believe the hype. 1990s theme tonight. 1990s theme, eh? Isn't that great? I didn't have a costume until costume. I didn't have the light get up until this morning. Okay, and by the way, I don't endorse public enemies positions on all sorts of things. So, why am I talking about hype? Well, we're trying to sort out decision-making, rational decision-making. The problem with hype is that it's blurry. It interferes with the objectivity. And what we're talking about is extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion. And I promise you, it is relevant. And the reason it's relevant is because of this. Suits come across as the Gartner hype curve, just indicate in some way, and I've seen a couple of people write, okay, it's really, really important. And just, you know, the basic principle is that many things, not just technology, they have this very distinct curve where they appear and then sort of the media gets hold of them and all of a sudden we have extraordinary expectations that, you know, these things, whatever they are going to solve the world's problems. And then things crash because we realize they don't and little by little you get a slope of enlightenment and people start adopting them. And the reason I think this is such a great tool is because Gartner and others have actually broken it down. So these things are clues. Isn't that great? So you, for example, the point at which, let's find the zapper again, the point at which you start seeing negative press, you can say, oh, you think, oh, okay, we're at the top of the curve here. Yeah. When you start seeing loads of suppliers appear on the market, you know, you get shows and all of a sudden, everyone is going, I'll tell you what, virtual reality authoring tools, they're the biz, right? And you didn't see them the year before. You go, hmm, I think we're there. You start seeing failures, you start seeing, let's have a look. I like this figure, 5% of the potential audiences adopted the fully. In other words, despite all the promises, no one's using it, right? And then you get the sort of curve which goes up. So it's a really good tool, isn't it? And the reason it's a good tool is because it will affect your decision-making. So what Gartner and others, that they've applied it to all sorts of different technologies, the digital marketing, oh, look, AI, how relevant is that? Generative, do we agree? Is it? Let's think about it a minute. Do you think we're right at the top? Could it get any worse? Tell me, are we going? Sorry. Okay, so just for the folks streaming and recording, I'm so sorry, I forgot your name. Sue from disk has just said, we don't think we're maybe not at the top of the high curve yet. I think in my opinion, is that what's so fascinating about generative AI, what's so fascinating, like the next 5,000 things, are that it's got up that curve a long way, whether it's at the top or not, but really quickly, really quickly, the fastest ever, like if we'd had this conversation a year ago, we'd go, oh yeah, isn't AI cool, right? And now it's splattered all over the mainstream media, isn't it? Okay, and so I'm sorry, I'm kind of pointing at that one. And there is, there's a little bit of audience over here as well. Okay, let's just go on one more. Okay, there's all sorts of technologies on there that I don't really understand, but it's the same point. It's a really, really excellent way of helping out, helping you understand the messaging you're being hit with. And what we've learned over decades is that you will be hit by all sorts of complex messaging, right? By experts, by idiots, by media, by colleagues, by colleagues who are idiots, and so on, right? So I just wanna, oh, look at this, this is interesting, augmented reality down here. Do we agree? Where do we think augmented reality is? Now, why do we agree? I think augmented reality is kind of the signal of our third reality. Okay. Obviously, augmented reality is still there, but the height of the video, whether it's real or not accessible. Oh, that's interesting. Just create augmented reality, and that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. That whole view of augmented reality. That's interesting. I'm not entirely sure I agree. I reckon augmented reality is kind of maybe down here, or on the way up a bit. It's becoming a bit commoditized, actually. Someone came, yeah, sorry, Mato. Yes, it will, soon. Yeah, and I confess what we were just hearing there from Mato is that, and I didn't know it was there. I'm so sorry, I feel terribly ignorant. You can get an AR overlay, what, on the screen, on the car screen, right? So presumably the AR overlay gives you all sorts of information that you need. I can feel a tangent coming on, but I have to resist. The tangent basically being, isn't that an amazing form of performance support? Why on earth do I need to learn how to read maps? Why do I need to know all sorts of things that I used to have to learn if I can see them all in real time? Anyway, I could go on for hours about that. So where are we, for example, I'm just gonna do a few examples. Where are we with online retailing, do you think? See? Are we on the road? Yeah, well, of course we are. It's completely commoditised, isn't it? AI-generated graphics, specifically graphics. Dali, mid-journey, that lot. Where are we on that? Somewhere near the peak? I think so. Anywhere before the peak, maybe? I think we're not on the peak, aren't we? Self-driving taxis. We're towards that, and I've got to tell you a funny story about this one. I know this is a tangent. Has anyone seen that fantastic YouTube video where there's a self-driving prototype car in San Francisco, which is stopped by the police and tries to get away? Isn't that great? And then another cop car comes in from the corner and stops it, isn't that amazing? Anyway, and the best bit is that the police get up and they say, hey, guys, there's no one in it. Anyway, learning management systems fairly obviously, way, way, way up the curve, okay? Where is the VR? I'm gonna be talking a little bit about VR. Where is VR on this? Somewhere up here, maybe? You said that it was taken over by AR, do you think? Sorry, it was taken over from AR? It was taken over from AR. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I'll be talking a bit later as to why I think it's on the way up. So I reckon it's somewhere there. Well, maybe roughly. Anyone radically disagree? Good. Please do disagree on anything. Okay, so just to reiterate, why we're talking about the hype cycle because you need to be able to absorb messages, you need to be able to understand messages clearly. We live in such a complex world, which is what I'm talking about, excuse me. Okay, change. I love this quote, things in this world are in so constant a flux that nothing remains long in the same state. And obviously I'm being cheeky because that was actually written in the 17th century. Now, the kind of change we're going through at the moment is kind of spectacular. And I was saying to the little session this morning to Lynn others that we're not in a period of transition. We are not. We're in a period of total constant change for the rest of humanity. It's it now, change all the time. We're not transitioning from one state to the next other than stable one to an unstable one. I quite like this curve. It's much misused. It was, you may or may not have seen it before. It's the Kubler-Ross curve and it was originally developed for, it's something therapeutic use is handling of grief. It is occasionally misused in terms of change management, particularly in the corporate sector. But the reason I think it's useful is because of that. So we're not in that situation anymore where one is dealing with whatever the truth is, whether you manage change through denial and shock and anger and depression, whatever, whether or not it's true, actually that's what's happening. So just as we accommodate a particular type of transformation or change, 15 others arrive. And then we realize that we didn't understand the first one and then so on and so on and so on. So the kind of change we're going through, or in other words, the kind of change we're going to have to cope with when we make technology decisions, that change is now constant. And yeah, okay. So how do we deal with it? Well, there's this rather neat model, which I was amazed was actually developed in the 1960s by a chap called Francis Aguilar. It's amazing what you learn at conferences, isn't it? And I have occasionally used it to help very complex jobs, really problematic clients break down the nature of their change. It looks so obvious, doesn't it? It looks just such common sense. But if you are in a situation, I used to do change management for large corporations and almost inevitably, the technology folks would steam in and say, this is what you got to do. Because there's all sorts of emerging technologies, maturing technologies, copyright plans, etc. And you get this focus on that there. And there's all sorts of other things going on as well. The important thing about this is that all these factors affect what people need to learn and how they're going to learn it. They all affect it. Clearly, you're not going to use this model every time you get a new mobile phone, are you? Or you're not going to do it for sort of like, the next little piece of software you buy. But very large transformations, big installations, strategic changes around the technologies you're going to use to support your whole learning infrastructure. Do you know it really helps? And actually, on a couple of jobs, I've done one of those where you actually identify what's important and what's unimportant. So I've been a bit mischievous there in that I've deliberately put the technology bit very low and the environmental bit really very high. You've got to understand, all right? If you're doing large-scale technological transformation, it really, really helps. I learned a lot at this conference. This page is almost unintelligible because of all of my notes. So at UFI, we think a lot about change. We're mainly in the vocational space. What we've, the kind of things we look at, we tend to produce a lot of reports, documents, this kind of thing. We just came up with this thing, a white paper on skills for an economy and transition. It's very interesting and it looks at the key changes that are going on in the vocational workspace. This is a fantastic publication. There's a really good couple of chapters at the back, which are about AI. The trouble is that AI changes so quickly that by the time you've printed something, you're not up to date anymore. But anyway, it's a good document. Now, I know this has got a slightly grim title, but one of our other partners, the resolution foundation, is they have an ongoing inquiry called the economy 2013 inquiry. And this particular document is excellent at providing a model that structures all the various changes that are going on in the workplace. So the reason I've introduced those is just to kind of introduce this idea that we think about, we look at the nature of the changes that are going on. And we're in a very fortuitous situation, a very privileged situation at UFI, because if you think about what we do, right, we give money to people, we give grants to people. Therefore, surprise, surprise, a lot of people like us, don't they? They come to us, they say, can we have some money, right? So we get a lot of people coming along and saying, this is what our problems are, right? These are the technology solutions we're thinking of using. These are the things which bother us, right? So we're constantly kind of getting free market research, yeah, because we see what people are interested in, what bugs them, what worries them. And yeah, like I say, it's a privileged position to be in. So I just wanted to ask you, and this is the most open of open questions. What kind of things are you experiencing in your lives and works, that your work, that you would regard as really significant changes, things that are really affecting you? Any thoughts or comments? You're gone. Okay, well, they have a high... A high, yeah, of course. So I come from a education and employability background, relate to a lot of the things that were talked about in the workplace. And you have to be hit of the hiring... Yeah, yeah, the curve, yeah. ...in the tech industry. And roughly at the same time, the AI, I came up. And I've literally seen people in running businesses speaking out loud, how can we boost this in order to cut people? Yeah, of course, of course, yeah. Going through this experience as we speak, seeing that basically, that goes up even before the technology is actually there. So we're somewhere in this kind of falling curve. Because decisions are being made in businesses based on the speculation of what the hype will basically bring in terms of business benefit, which in a year's time, not two years' time, so not to be... You're fake. So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think just to summarize what you said, so the change that you're experiencing is around poor decision-making and employment issues. What else is going on? Anyone else? Yeah, go on. Cost of living crisis, for goodness' sake. What else? Anyone? Lynn? When you speak, do you just use the intent of the person? Really interesting. Oh, pardon me. Choice, and I think those that are not using tech are quite right if they're a lot more overwhelmed and where do I start? Okay, so just to summarize again, a widening gap between those in FE that use tech and those that don't. Great, okay. Anything else? Come on, there's been loads of things. I'll chuck up a few ideas. These are just mine, actually. I did ask around UFI, various colleagues. So the kind of things that just popped up spontaneously, this was the widest, most open of questions, but this is an interesting one, particularly if you've got teenage kids. Concentration spans, destroying learning or expanding flexibility. There's quite an argument to say that concentration spans declining actually means that you can jump from one thing to another very quickly. There's also some utterly rubbish data going around about it. If you come across this stat which says we used to concentrate for 12 seconds now, we only do eight seconds, it was made up. It's all over the place. But let's have a look. World Economic Forum has come up with some interesting stuff around how much people read. If you compare 1984, it would be 1984, wouldn't it? With 2021, young people read half as much as they did or spend half as much time as they did, which is interesting. So concentration spans a ruble of distance. This is a great one. So I do quite a little bit of work in prisons. And I came across a job just yesterday before that was talking about the removal of distance. So let's say you're a very serious offender, you've murdered someone or similar, you were in prison for a long time. It's pretty tough to train you, okay? And then it's really tough to employ you because you're not safe, right? So I came across this job where basically we're using digital twins to train dangerous prisoners to do skills outside, all right? Complex skills, engineering skills. And then here's the really cool bit, right? They can actually do those jobs. They can actually do them using digital twins and using replicated technology outside the institution, right? So we're training them and giving them real jobs, removal of distance, micro accreditation. Sorry to be controversial. Yeah, yeah. Or, or, because if you're a, if you've committed a very serious crime, you may never be at full liberty. You may leave the secure institution, but you may live in a set, you might have a tag or whatever. Therefore, you're not gonna be on the building site, right? That's the wrong context. You're not gonna be in an engineering company, but you can still do the job. Isn't that great? Removal of different micro accreditation. Do we need big qualifications in curricula? I was just being mischievous with Lynn at lunchtime. You know, if we, if we do micro accreditation and you build up competence in little bits, do we need think, do we need universities? I don't know. And we've already mentioned, I mean, AI is everywhere. It's like bindweed or something. You know, is it gonna erode skills or is it gonna help us? It's gonna have to cross it is either or damn it. And then I just wanna give a UFI perspective. Okay. The UFI perspective, so we see a lot of, because like I say, we're in such a privileged position. People come to us and they tell us what's going on out there. Greening economy, remote learning, post pandemic staff shortages. That's an interesting one. AI, of course, key industry skills shortages and system fragmentation. The white paper I mentioned is, it very much addresses this issue that the learning and training system is very fragmented. Okay. I'm just gonna have another quick drink of water. We can skip that. I'm very keen to keep time. Excuse me. Oh, actually, no, I will ask one of those questions. A lot of the discourse about technology is around coping. And I don't like that. Yeah. This is not about coping. It's about baking. It's about, I'm so tired. It's about making the best of things, isn't it? How do you make the best of what's happening? All right. So, forgive me, we are gonna have to talk about, oh, let's not talk about it. Yeah, let's talk about VR. All right. So, VR is changing very, sorry? Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. So what I would say is that's making the best of it, isn't it? Making the best of the situation. Yeah. Brilliant. Do you know what? I'm gonna ask you to repeat that so I can summarise it correctly. Just do it again. Oh, don't worry. Then... That's accurate. No. It's about signing what you want, how best you can do that and then using the tool to pay it off. Of course. Thank you. Thank you for repeating that because what you've actually done, I was a bit mischievous there, forgive me. You've actually given an intro to my next section. So, thank you. I'm gonna go on to decisions in a minute but the kind of key message behind this first part or the second part is that if you don't understand the nature of the change and its impact on you, you're less likely to make good decisions and more likely to be distracted by the hype, okay? So, section two relates to section one. Understand the change you're going through. Right, decisions. And just a reminder here, the decisions you are making are there to cultivate learning, to generate. That's the decision we're making. We're not making a decision, thank you to get cool technology or whatever, we're there to cultivate learning. Okay, just a trivial exercise. How do we make decisions about where we go on holiday? Who's recently been on holiday? Come on, it's the end of the summer. Marine, how did you make a decision? You had to go to a wedding. I asked you, I shouldn't have asked you, should I? How do you make a decision? Is it somewhere? And then it depends on what you've been talking earlier about doing so, it's family that you're there rather than a person who tries to buy some on holiday. Yeah. Which is the other thing that's popular. Yeah, and it's really interesting, your sort of body language and the way that you're explaining it is, it's not a big deal, we just wanna have some fun, you know, that's fine. It's probably not the way you make decisions if you're gonna spend 20 million quid on an IT system. It's probably not the kind of decision, it's not the attitude you take if you're gonna say, let's invest a lot of money in virtual reality or we've got a serious problem that we need to address using this. That's not the way you do it, is it? What did I have for lunch? How did I make the decision? Anyone, what did you have for lunch? I just walked down the aisle and I thought that looks nice or I was really late as well. So I just, well, I picked what was left, to be honest. Right, buying a house, how do you make decisions about buying a house? You do a survey? You do a survey, what else? Do you have a sort of criteria list? Do you have a, sorry? How does it feel when you walk in? So there's a very subjective bit and how did you decide on it? I decided, so this and the real estate agent actually walked around with the camera so we had a thing of a little bit of space. Okay, so there's subjective elements. Well, you're very brave because of course in this bait and switch, I like this because in this wonderful era of genitive AI, it could have been the faker state agent and the non-aggressive house, couldn't it? So what I'm getting at, it's so obvious, forgive me. There are many, many models of decision-making. Of course there are, but it just helps to reflect on what are you doing? What's the element of objectivity and subjectivity here? Forgive me, I have a very intriguing friend who makes decisions about lunch on a spreadsheet, analyzing whether there's enough protein in it and carbohydrate and all that kind of thing, right? That person is down that end. Do you know what their job is? They're a data scientist. Okay, so it just helps to be aware of where you are and what you're doing and how you move up and down. Oh my goodness, have I offended any data scientists? Sorry. Sorry. Okay, cheers. So I'm so sorry. Okay, now, let's just get serious just for a second. Forgive me, I'm just gonna check the time. Okay, we're doing all right. Okay, let's just get serious for a minute. You're investing in some technology, but let's remove the word investing. You're deciding on a piece of technology in order to cultivate learning of some sort and I'm gonna talk more about what that means in a minute. It really helps to have some kind of criteria list, doesn't it? I think this is Microsoft, but it doesn't matter, you'll find lots of these around. Technical fit, maturity, time scale, all this kind of thing. Yeah, I would have thought so, yes, I think so, yes. Actually, anyone else want to criticize this list? I think that I think, no, no, no, no, that's really important. What else is missing? In advance and some might emerge from looking around like in the house, right? So like you might have a list of house, I mean, house buying, but then you might come up with other criteria. Of course, of course, that's so interesting. That's such a good point. So just to summarize again, you start making decisions, you start with a list of criteria if you're a particular objective, but as you find options, other criteria emerge. That's really interesting. And that relates very strongly, very powerfully, doesn't it? To this idea that technology changing all the time, because if you came up with a criteria list three months ago, it might be different now, yeah? And also this relates to the idea that you cannot be an expert in everything that you're looking at. Therefore, the thing that you're looking at will tell you more. Now, I just want to talk about requirements, because of course requirements in our context, the requirement is that we help people learn. That's the key thing. So let's just forget about all this techy stuff and talk about learning. Forget that bit. So I have a couple of favorite phrases, and forgive me, I've forgotten who came up with them. I think they're both colleagues, ex-colleagues. I've been doing this long time. I want to go right back to first principles, right back to first principles. So I like this phrase, you can change without learning, but you can't learn without changing. I like that. And if your learners haven't changed, they're not learners. Now, of course, we're in a context where the word student is used a lot. So if your students haven't changed, they're not students. I don't know if it works, does it? Because of course, you can have students that don't learn anything. Anyway, it doesn't happen around here, of course. So the reason that I am going right back to sort of almost infantile basics is that learning is about change, obviously. So when you think about, I'm going to go back one. When you think about learning, you have to think about change, because it's the change you want that determines the technology that you use. I've got time for this little exercise. Yes, we have actually, good, right. Good, I'm sorry, it's just, I, yeah. Now I'm aware, thank you. I'm just, I was going to do a cultural cliche thing but I'm not going to now. What do these four characters have in common? Okay, so I will just explain who they are. We know who Mahatma Gandhi is. Erling Harlan plays Manchester City. I hate Manchester City. He scores lots of goals. We know who von Berger's. We know who Emily and Pam Kirk's is. There's something, there's something. Okay, there's something to do with activism, maybe. What am I talking about? I'm talking about change. I'm sorry if I'm treating you like idiots. I'm so sorry. They've all disrupted a paradigm. They had more than that. They had a theory of change. They had a theory of change. One of the words, so you go on. The what? I'll tell you, right. So each of them has or is involved in a very clear theory of change. One of the words, they are involved in this idea that there was an outcome was required. They knew what the change was and therefore there was a process that caused the change to happen. That's what learning is, okay? Just going back to explain. I'll start with the footballer because this is the one that always kind of makes people what are you doing Patrick? So Manchester City, they needed someone to score more goals. They wanted to win the Champions League, which they did and they partly did it because he scored more goals. It was a theory of change. We need a number nine to score more goals. Gandhi, his history basically, he realized that the Indian population could overwhelm the British Empire. So he picked on the salt tax, which everyone was upset by and literally got a million people to just show the British that they didn't stand a chance based on their opposition to the salt tax. Tax. Thunberg clearly, a very interesting character, a theory of change was kind of naive persona, aggressive, clear. I will create a media presence that influences this particular issue. I would actually question whether it's an effective theory of change. Emmeline Pankhurst, what was hers? This is a really interesting one. What was her theory of change? Women's suffrage, that's the end goal. But how did she disobedience? And actually, here's an interesting one, disobedience and violence. Yeah, so she felt that actually she could raise the profile of women's suffrage. Yes, no, yes, you're right, but I think he does. I'm going to defend myself. And I did say contradict me, didn't I? I did say contradict me. So, you know, I'm not going to take offense. But what I'm saying is he's involved in a clear theory of change, all right? I'm really not a fan of this whole thing. I know I've come over a bit sort of blokey about all this, and maybe I shouldn't have used him. But he is part of a theory of change, yeah? Is it the coincidence, the coincidence that three of your four change magas have been disobedient? Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, it's a good point. Something that I'm very intrigued by is this notion that, you know, for goodness sake, this is really obvious. You know, innovators are disruptive, of course they are. They tend to be awkward buggers, yeah? Don't know. And it's really interesting that you spotted that. Incidentally, the last time I did this, Marine, I think you saw this, I made the catastrophic error that I put three men up. Isn't that awful? And I must apologize, even though you weren't there. Because I said, oh, what have all three got in common? And my boss said, they're all men. Anyway, I'm so sorry I went banging on about this, but it's really important because I have seen so many projects where people have said, for example, these are quotes from real projects, our learners will learn because we're using games. So where's the theory of change, right? And there's another one, we'll give them the information to do their jobs better. Yeah, it's not a theory of change. Those are methods, aren't they? So your technology selection's got to support your theory of change. And incidentally, UFI's got one, really complicated. But basically what it is, I'm obviously not gonna go through it, but the idea is that we underpin a vocational skills system by the very best digital tools, pedagogy and learning technology, and the outcome is around the UK economy thriving. So each of these components is part of our theory of change. And it's a really interesting document, and you can read it here. Okay, again, I'm staying with really, really basic first principles. So learning, what do your learners like now? Start point, how will they be different in the future? End point. So that's what designing learning is all about. Okay, so what is the change? You want these people to be involved in? What experience will create this change, okay? What's your learning strategy? Now, I'm very aware that I'm using the term learning strategy in perhaps a different way than it's used sometimes in higher education. What I'm talking about is the big idea. What's the big idea? What's the strategic thing that ties your learning together? What's the learning strategy? And it's only at that point that you start thinking about technology and then technology about learning strategy. You get this kind of iterative thing going on. Now, I was talking, this is one of the things I wanted to change in my presentation. I was talking to a lovely chap from Durham just before lunch called Paul Finley. And he was brilliant at talking about the way that your understanding of technology options... I can get this right. What he was saying is you need to constantly scan forward and make sure that when you're looking at technology options, you think not just now, but three months or six months, you think a lot about sustainability and development and where things are gonna go if you possibly can. And it really helps if you get experts to help you with that. So this kind of iterative thing can be very tiresome these days because you're not only like to go around it many times, you're likely to go around it with different options each time you do. And the reason I'm showing this really oversimplified diagram is to the left of the dotted line, you should not be thinking about technology. And so many projects I've been involved in, start, oh, what's the change that's used for you? And it's really painfully obvious, but I'm gonna give you another farcical example. This is not a UFI project because we would have nothing to do with this. Not long ago, I was working with a legal company and they said, look, we've got these guys and they don't, because we got these guys and they're not reading policy documents, right? So what they were gonna do, it's laughable. They were gonna build in a whole lot of PDFs, right? So you wandered around a virtual office and you saw a desk over there with a PDF on it and you read it, yeah? 250,000 pound project. That wasn't about the change, it wasn't about the experience, it was about the cool technology. Okay, I'm just gonna run through a few UFI and other VR examples. And the point of these is not to say how cool VR is, it's about being really clear what the learning strategy was and how they got that right before they chose the VR. First step trust, these very underprivileged individuals who have appalling lives, they have no faith in their inability to do anything. So what they decided on, what first step decided on was that really simple tasks, changing a wheel and a tire of a car. The way that the individual should would learn it was through repetitive practice, repetition of processes. Painfully obvious, painfully obvious. But the only way they could do that was VR, right? So they said, right, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have this procedural thing replicated in virtual reality and they will practice it. And as an aside, the reason it was such a great, or it has been such a great success is because these poor individuals who have got appalling lives, you put a headset on them and the world they're in is much better than the one that they know in the real world and they feel looked after. Yeah. Body swaps, here's a really interesting one. In the real world, you can't, I can't jump into Myrene's head and see what I'm looking like and that's probably a good thing actually. But in virtual reality, I can do that. So Body Swaps does that brilliantly and what they decided was in the soft skills learning, yeah? What I can actually do is when I'm learning about how to interview and how I'm learning how to be interviewed, I can swap my perspective. I can actually get into someone else's body in their head. Isn't that amazing? So they decided on perspective shifting. The only way you can do it is VR. Anagram, this is one of my projects at VR. At VR, I'm so tired. At UFI. Oh, dear. This is great. So let's say you are a psychiatric medical professional and you're dealing with psychotic, seriously mentally ill people. Wouldn't be great to get inside their mind. It might be a bit disturbing, but you can actually get into a person's mind and see what they're seeing and feel what they're feeling. Is that extraordinary? So they decided really, this is a award winning before it was involved with us. It was, what's that really cool media festival in Texas? SWSX, South by Southwest, of course. They want a prize there for this, right? The only way you can do that is VR. So they decided on the strategy first and they chose VR. This is not a UFI project. It's by a company called Nanome. I don't know how you pronounce that. Perspective shifting, okay? So these are medical professionals looking at molecules living next to a molecule. That's great, isn't it? So what they decided was that the particular learning strategy they were employing at the time wasn't, it wasn't, okay. So the learners, the professionals who were being trained weren't able to conceptualize the nature of these particular molecules accurately enough. So they thought, well, let's show them. Let's show them closely. Let's shift their perspective. Another one, this is personally very important to me. This is Parkinson's sufferers. This is an immersive application where Parkinson's sufferers learn to rebalance their themselves and regain certain motion. And again, they decided physical immersion was the only answer, it's got a BPR. Simple one, Northern Irish Association for Care and the Abilitation of Offenders. This is a UFI project. And the strategy was, and in their project specification, it says our strategy is exploration and consequence, right? This is a health and safety program. And basically you wander around the building site and you take decisions around what to do in a building site. And I think this is my last one. I think so, let's have a look. Yeah, this is another great one. This is one of our projects. This is for classroom assistants. Classroom assistants have problems. They tend to be somewhat under-trained to start. They have problems really understanding the environment they work in. So again, the project spec says very clearly the learning strategy is about emotional immersion, right? So they deliberately make this quite a dynamic environment in order that the learners really feel where they are. Okay, so those are just some examples. And again, I'm not saying that these are really great examples of VR. I think they're okay. I think they're pretty good. But the reason I'm showing them is because they have very, very clear and explicit. The explicit is important learning strategies, excuse me. Okay, a few more curves and processes. Just a reminder, we're talking about decision-making. The reason I keep going about learning strategy is the learning strategy determines to a very significant extent the technology you decide to use. Okay, I really like this technology adoption curve. One of the points we were talking about earlier on was around organizational culture. So when you're deciding on your, when you're making your learning technology decisions, it helps to understand where you are. Now, I know that these terms over here are somewhat pejorative, late majority laggards and stuff, but you need to be honest where your organization is. You need to be really honest where your organization is. If you're here culturally, technologically, you need to be honest. You need to be clear where you are. Now, I've just had a five-minute warning. So we're not doing too badly. I'll just accelerate to teeny bit. Okay, another one of these processes and things. All technology, generalizing here, all technology moves in a particular way, all the ones I've experienced anyway. You start off, and this is to some extent, but not entirely replicates the hype curve. Pretty much all technology starts off with a, in a phase of using proprietary tools where everything's incompatible, where it's difficult, there are technical challenges. You need specialists, you have immature processes, development is slow, there are lots of risks. I was first involved in web development where we had a team of, I think, 15. We developed the first Marx and Spencer's website. We needed 15 people. It was rubbish, it was also rubbish, waste of time. I now do fantastically complex website building in half an evening for friends. The reason being is I have a generic tool. I'm not particularly technical. Everything's compatible. It's technically simple. The processes are established. I can develop quickly in its low risk. So VR is pretty much commoditized, right? Why? Because I can now use authoring tools. In other words, I can use a preset package to build stuff with. But assets costs have dropped amazingly. I can get libraries of three-dimensional models for like $2 now. LiDAR, do you know what LiDAR is? It's scanning technology. So let's say I wanted to scan this desk with a computer on. I'd walk around with LiDAR and it would give me a three-dimensional model. So, you know, I learned really complex 3D modeling tools like Cinema 4D and Blender. I didn't have bothered, actually. You can get really easy 3D building tools. Compatibility has increased. The cost of headsets, hardware costs have dropped. Now, I just want to talk a little bit more about learning strategy and design production. But I keep saying the same thing. If you're going to make decisions, you need to know where you are in this kind of, in this phase. Yeah? You need to know where you are there and where you are there. So very quickly, I'm going to skip over that bit. Okay, just, all right. Yeah, no, I'll do it. So design production process streamlines, all right. Learning strategy, expertise develops. Right, learning strategies, that's really important. So when you start with a new type of learning technology, you don't know how to design for it. But when you've got a really, you know, maturing one, you've got all your learning strategies ready, you've got your interaction types ready, and the general principle of the designs are established. Yeah, so not only is it easy to buy the thing and use the thing, but in terms of designing the learning experience, that's easy too, because everyone's done it before. And then finally, the application of that technology clarifies. So for example, with VR, you apply it when you've got perspective shifting, when you've got high risk, high cost. For my sins, a while ago, I worked for the military on a VR program, aiming missiles, missiles are expensive. You know, you don't wanna shoot too many off. When you need motion in the environment, when you need a motion in the environment, that's when you should use it. And we know that now, because early on in the technology, we don't know when to use it. We make awful decisions. And then don't use VR for this. Don't use it just because it's fun. Don't use it when you've got high information, when you're wandering around an office trying to read PDFs, don't do it. Scale is still a bit of an issue. Headset costs dropped a lot, but it's not until we have glasses, like you were saying at the back, that it'll be really cheap. If you've got special accessibility requirements, it can be an issue. Obviously, if your skills refer to physical contact, it's very stupid indeed to use VR. And long duration. This is a very important issue that a lot of people miss. Don't use it if the learning you're cultivating, you're aiming at developing, involves four or five hours at a chart. There's a lot of research that shows that people get very disorientated, can fall over, feel sick after a certain period. And actually the data is quite contradictory on that. I've seen some data that says, don't do more than 10 minutes. And just to kind of finish, I think I'm finishing, this is really interesting. Check your assumptions. Check your assumptions. Look, everyone says VR's fun. Yeah, but teens don't want it, young people don't want it, right? Check your assumptions really carefully. Okay, here's the summary. I talked about hype, I talked about change and how those feed in to decisions. I hope that's been of use. You haven't talked anything like as much and that's my fault because this was supposed to be kind of reflective workshop. But like I say, I hope this has been of use. Just a little promo thing. UFI is running this future skills award. Have we got any flyers here, Marion? Okay, don't worry, we've got a few here. Okay, this is an award that's asking the question, there's real cash available, hey folks, real money. Yeah, not for your, is it correct me if I'm wrong, Marion? It's not for your institution, it's for you, isn't it? Yes, for you. You want 500 quid, don't, 5,000 quid, 5,000 quid, don't ignore us, okay? Have a look, there's some flyers gonna be handed out here and thank you very much to receive a copy of these slides, do scan that, do get in contact with me. And I'm so sorry, it's actually quite... No, you're not, it's a matter of fact, if I could first ask you around for thoughts, if that's what you want to say. Thank you. Questions or thoughts, any more? Should we come back? My back then, which is, I've got you two, you and me and Anne, we are, which is, you know, colleagues in New York who have made decisions about buying and selling learning resources. Yeah. And they're also investing in the technology to be able to use those, but often there's a quite a lot of hints like them. I know, yeah. So they're trying to find multiple things, but also which accelerates the cost. But also there's a timeline associated with that, particularly when the content is around where there are safety standards that are paid. And that's a really big inhibitor for the colleges in the universe. I know. So they're going to be investing. What's your view on how that could be overcome as a problem? Do you know what? I'm going to do that facilitation thing of opening this up and saying, what do we think? I can give you my view. I can give you my view. But seriously, we've got this whole institutional kind of cultural thing, haven't we? Where because of the nature of these institutions, decisions are kind of locked in. Are there any obvious answers or am I going to have to have a go? I think you've posed me a question that I can't directly answer. It's an institutional thing, isn't it? It's an organizational thing. And so in a way, all my stuff about decision making is somewhat, I wouldn't say useless, but it's tricky in your situation, isn't it? In other words, you can make these decisions, but because of the way the organizations function, your decision may not necessarily be implementable. Is that right? For the longer term? To realise that pool of investment then. Do you have a chat afterwards? I'm just trying to get my head around it. I'm not an institution. I just made it fast enough. You've just heard of it. Ah, okay, I'm sorry. Okay, all right. Any other thoughts on that? Some of it is to do with pricing models for the organizations that create this. So... Oh, you see, that's interesting. Yeah, because the organizations don't price something a particular way because if you don't start off with a low point, you don't get access into these institutions to begin with, but actually that price doesn't quite reflect the work that has gone into creating it. And so what they then do is have to price it differently later on once they have you in. Sorry, this is my sales background talking for them. So it's actually more how the pricing models work. Yeah, I thought you might have... Yeah, because they're not the core of the university, so we may apply some of their big decisions that are going with their... And hilarious how limited the decision-making is now farthest away from what you were basically describing. Part of it is also, I always thought that, first of all, there's not the real understanding of the technology and the context that's a bit. You'll have intern stakeholders who will be quite convinced of a specific technology often because they're on the same train as the person selling it to them. I have seen that. And once you're basically bought into a specific system, it's very hard to get the organization to leave it again. Yeah, absolutely. Even though, for example, it has outlived its usefulness as well, but people become really wedded culturally to a specific system. Because it's hard to change, actually. Incredibly hard to change. Really, we can say we love you. Yeah, and I think sometimes... Not only that, people don't want to resist the change, but I think within organizations, people also have kind of made their career with something. And at this point, we kind of rise when the dean lives. And he was in business talks about how he's going to have... Yes, so you've got a chance. I have one sort of half-baked thought in that I worked for PWC for quite a long time and we kept making incredibly expensive, very dumb decisions. And the way my boss... I don't think he resolved it, but he helped it, was by engaging in the most scrupulous evaluation you ever seen, right? So we were going to like, granular pounds and pens and stuff, saying, we know that this worked. We know that it worked. Can we have more of this? And he was very honest. He was saying, this didn't work. Somewhere up the chain, the dumb decision was made. And we did this a few times and I would say we made a little bit of a change. Really, really, really granular forensic evaluation can help, yeah. I don't know if that's relevant. Any other thoughts, questions or are we done? Great. But I'm sure people can interrupt your tea break while I'm following you at the end of Patrick. Thanks to you once again. Thank you. Thank you very much.