The opening keynote was presented by Maren Deepwell, Chief Executive of the Association for Learning Technology She revealed some of the results from ALT survey and trends identified 2014-2018. Highlights were that lecture capture was up 20% and assistive technologies up by 7%. She also talked about the gender bias and suggested the reading Invisible Women: Data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez.
Then when it came to the parallel sessions we decided to go to the three different tracks so that we would be able to cover the whole conference between the three of us - however, in hindsight this was not a great approach as some presentations were not very engaging at all.
David Baume's session What information capabilities do your graduates need and what practices and policies will help them to achieve these? was an interactive session which discussed the importance of guiding students to build information literacy skills. We are trying to be helpful by providing our students with the most relevant articles - especially as distance educators we want our students, often time poor learners who are at higher risk of drop-out (than mainstream university students), to succeed. You provide all materials and students do not have to search for reverent material. So by being more helpful are we hindering them and their skills development in information literacy? David used the analogy of teaching his granddaughter crossing the road. How he helped her realise what were the dangers to look out for. Yes a car is a danger but only if it is moving towards you not away from you. The narrowing down process is where you can help your learner develop their own judgement. So in the first year we can provide most of the materials required but as they move on to second and third year give them more chance of putting their Information Literacy skills to work. It really made me think of our practice at UCEM. With our No Student Left Behind initiative, we have tried hard to provide as much support to students as possible, but are we inadvertently hindering them? Information Literacy skills are not just for the induction week/module - we need to support our students to build their skills over the course of their studies with us.
By the way, now I am using David's method of narrowing down process with my twins teaching them how to cross the road so it was a very worthwhile session :)
Then I attended Sarah Sherman's On your marks, get, set, study! Preparing students to be digitally ready for learning where she presented a course with 4 units they have put together for the UoL institutions.
- Unit 1: General Technology
- Unit 2: Learning Technologies
- Unit 3: Access, sharing and safety
- Unit 4: Getting organised.
This Moodle course is an openly licensed one and Sarah offered other institutions to adapt it. Kate has already expressed UCEM's interest in a Tweet.
Plagiarism in Distance Learning: Causes and measures for control presented by Ayona Silva-Fletcher and Clare Sansom was another presentation I really looked forward to since looking at the programme. In this they talked about a research project they have undertaken at UoL after seeing 274% increase in plagiarism cases at University of London World Wide during the past five years. In the study, they have contacted programme directors for UoL institutions with a survey to get an understanding of the plagiarism problem. In their presentation they presented plagiarism as a spectrum from clone, remix, find and replace, 404 error (made up references) to re-Tweets (too much of a chunk stuck in assignment). Some of the main reasons for plagiarism as revealed by this study were:
- Lack of knowledge (cultural background, insufficient engagement with materials, ignorance of self-plagiarism)
- Not enough time
- Pressure
Another disturbing fact that the research shed light on was the fact that if a student gets away with one minor plagiarism offence they go on to re-offend. So does that mean the institutions need to come down hard on any plagiarism offences how minor they are? The presenters offered their proposed solutions: communications, teaching materials (JISC, Indiana University), Turnitin as a learning tool (allowing students to view plagiarism report) and making training compulsory.
I was really interested in hearing about this research and I was wondering whether there could have been another piece of work done in parallel looking at what students (both students who have plagiarised and those who haven't) thought about causes and solutions. Programme directors would be able to give details that are revealed in disciplinary process or what students have told them but asking students would have corroborated the findings and may even give us a completely different perspective.
All in all the event was a great learning opportunity giving me food for thought.
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