Audrey Watters – Music for Deckchairs

For now, our own

Kate Bowles September 6, 2016 8 Comments

In open online spaces, opening doors is not enough. Maha Bali, ‘Reproducing marginality,’ September 2016 We so easily forget our bodies. Mary Freer, ‘This body goes to work,’ August 2016 Over the last week I’ve been skirting a significant conversation begun by Maha Bali (“I don’t own my domain, I rent it“) and continued by Audrey Watters (“A domain of ones own in a post-ownership society“). Never far away is Andrew Rikard’s Edsurge post “Do I own my domain if you…

Being an academic, Edtech and online learning

In Palo Alto

Kate Bowles October 16, 2015 1 Comment

1. I’m still in Palo Alto, and I’m none the wiser about the street sign program that asks locals to look up and think about the meaning of their city.* I’ve now found eight different examples, and they’ve started to take on an anxious tone. The whole place feels like it’s worrying about something. Would you say that things in your city are better or worse than they used to be? Do you ever find yourself longing for “the good…

Being an academic, Change management, Higher education

What next for the LMS?

Kate Bowles September 27, 2014 16 Comments

All of a sudden it’s LMS week* in mostly-US higher education. Nudged by the imminent Educause annual conference, there’s a whole pop-up festival of reflection on why we still have enterprise learning management systems—and why we have the ones we have. Audrey Watters, D’Arcy Norman, Phil Hill, Michael Feldstein, Jared Stein and Jonathan Rees have all contributed to this thoughtful and detailed conversation; anyone who thinks universities just woke up one day trapped inside a giant LMS dome really should read each of these at least. And Mike…

Edtech and online learning, LMS evaluation

Seriously, Mister Jones

Kate Bowles April 4, 2014 13 Comments

The good or bad faith with which power is exercised is irrelevant; raising the question on these terms will not be effective. Power cannot be shamed into limiting itself in this way. It seeks to limit us. Jason Wilson, “Moderation, speech and the strategy of silence”, Detritus You know something’s happening/and it’s happening without you/yes it is/Mister Jones Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, this beautiful live version I’ve been thinking a bit more about Steve Wheeler’s invitation to discuss whether…

Being an academic, Change management

Pieces of the sky

Kate Bowles October 20, 2013 13 Comments

None of this is inevitable — not MOOCs, not funding cuts, not the death of the giant brick-and-mortar research university or the death of the small liberal arts college, no matter how gleefully the libertarians in Silicon Valley rub their hands as they craft their hyperbolic narratives about the end of the university and the promise of education technology — all their stories about innovation and doom and profit. Audrey Watters, minding the future, 15 Oct 2013 “Normality’s threatened by the…

Edtech and online learning

For all to understand

Kate Bowles September 19, 2013 3 Comments

UK universities should eagerly seize the opportunity to widen their impact and support the OU by contributing material to FutureLearn rather than getting locked into one of the US platforms. This is an arena where the UK has huge worldwide potential. (House of Lords, Grand Committee, July 24 2013) So FutureLearn has finally launched, to much hoopla. The Code of Conduct, which all users are required to accept in order to sign up, contains 13 items, and they’re mostly standard,…

Australia, Edtech and online learning, Internationalisation

Visions always belong to someone

Kate Bowles January 25, 2013 16 Comments

The awkwardly titled Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in a Digital Age that was released this week has generated a ton of coverage, which is interesting given its niche provenance. An apostolic group of North American educational stakeholders, including some very high profile names, got together and co-authored a fairly wordy document about the values and entitlements that we might protect in the name of online learners. What I’ve found useful is that most of the people involved…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Student engagement

It’s not you, it’s me

Kate Bowles September 25, 2012 26 Comments

So, I signed up for a Coursera MOOC, and almost immediately the experience turned into Lucy and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a scene that suckers itself onto almost any stressful situation. Lucy and Ethel take a job putting chocolates into wrappers. It’s a conveyor belt scenario, and the task itself is simple; the challenge is to keep pace. Lucy’s enjoying herself, messing about. But one stumble leads to a recovery problem, and before they know it Lucy is eating chocolates…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education

Punctuate this

Kate Bowles March 28, 2012 4 Comments

Here’s how timezones work. Australia perpetually wakes up a) ahead of everyone else and b) the last to know what happened overnight. And so it is with today’s discovery that while we were sleeping, Blackboard executives were tearing off their business suits and putting their underpants on over their tights in order to jump out of the phone box as crusaders for openness in education. Specifically, in the flurry of press releases about the acquisition of MoodleRooms and Australia’s own…

Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk

The robot and the muse

Kate Bowles December 23, 2011 2 Comments

It’s that time of year. Predictions and lists everywhere, like the snow currently falling over Google, WordPress, bitly … (memo to northern hemisphere: look down very carefully and like Gulliver you will see the tiny little people from the other half of the world running around doing their Christmas shopping in shorts). It happens like this every year, but higher education has a particularly worried tone at the moment, which is no wonder considering the lack of restraint in the…

Casualisation of work, Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk, Student engagement