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Summary of CETIS Pedagogy Forum Launch event
Summary of the Launch event held 14 April 2003
By Lisa Corley, Pedagogy Forum Co-ordinator
The CETIS Pedagogy Forum was launched to identify good practice in the use of interoperability standards and specifications and also seek to benefit from the wide experience of the UK learning technology community to input into these. It is highly important that the e-learning standards meet educational needs as well as fulfilling technical requirements, and for that we value input from the learning technology community.
The event, which was quickly over-subscribed, attracted over 80 delegates from institutions around the UK, plus one from Australia, one from the USA and one from Cuba. For those who attended it provided a welcome opportunity to meet and discuss the growing issues involved in implementing e-learning, and served as a useful introduction to the issue of standards.
The programme for the day included presentations by key speakers in the area, plus several opportunities for participants to discuss the issues raised and feed these back to the Forum. A Panel session of presenters and representatives from CETIS, ALT and LTSN closed the day with a discussion about the participants’ needs and the future of the forum.
Bill Olivier, Director of CETIS opened the day with a brief introduction to the work of CETIS. Lisa Corley, the Pedagogy Forum Co-ordinator then gave an overview of the aims of the forum and invited participants to contribute their ideas to the Forum and help to widen the community involved in standards discussions. She explained that eLearning standards and specifications to date have been rather infrastructural and technology focused. We are now at the point where we need to ensure that the 'learning' is put into learning technology specification, and for that we need to generate a meaningful dialogue with those whose focus is on pedagogy.
Lisa then introduced the first keynote speaker, Professor Diana Laurillard , Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit at the Department for Education and Skills. Prof Laurillard discussed the Government’s agenda for the Information Age and highlighted the need to maintain both the technical standards and the pedagogic focus e-learning requires. The case for open technical standards was made, and the downside issues were also noted before raising the question “Could we devise standardised pedagogical designs?”. Prof Laurillard then demonstrated how a generic learning activity could be developed and suggested that design tools need to match the complex pedagogical requirements. She closed with asking “Who can deliver the interoperability of pedagogical standards?” and suggested that this Forum is a vital starting point.
Professor Mark Stiles, Professor of Technology Supported Learning and Head of Learning Development & Innovation Information Services at Staffordshire University then gave a provocative presentation, challenging the developments in eLearning to date as being focussed on Delivery, Content and largely Passive. He noted that there is massive culture change required and asked ‘Will a focus on content stunt pedagogy?’ He concluded that the introduction of content standards is a two-edged sword: they hold the promise of sustainable eLearning, aid reuse and repurposing, yet Content reuse could reinforce current pedagogical weakness. Plus, as was also noted throughout the day, Prof Stiles argued that effective implementation of standards within the wider context of e-learning will demand a strong and coherent approach to staff development and support.
Following this, participants formed into several groups and discussed various issues arising from the presentations and their experiences in general. Then everyone reconvened to feed back the main points of their discussions to the wider audience.
Professor Oleg Liber, Professor of eLearning at Bolton Institute of Higher Education and also CETIS Educational Adviser opened the afternoon session with a presentation which gave a brief history of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and the hopes and wishes that they aimed to fulfil. He then challenged these promises and the assumptions behind them, and argued that in terms of interoperability, no real attention had been paid to pedagogy, perhaps because of an assumed mass model? Prof Liber then gave an overview of EML (Educational Modelling Language) which describes learning interactions summarised as ‘People engage in Activities with Resources’. He argued that we need to harness the potential offered by e-Learning and open out the debate and involvement with the community. He and summarised the requirements for this, which are:
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• Re-invigorate innovation in eLearning
• Requires demand from users
• Pedagogic requirements must be at least as important as managerial and technical concerns
• Time for wider involvement in standardisation initiatives
These requirements can also be seen to be a key focus of the Pedagogy Forum and the issues raised gave food for thought to the audience, generating useful debates in the discussion and feedback sessions after the presentation.
After the afternoon discussion session, Prof Fred Lockwood talked briefly about the newly
published book ‘Reusing online resources: a sustainable approach to e-learning’ edited by
Dr Allison Littlejohn. He noted that the book, a collection of papers by international authors,
reads like a ‘who’s who of e-learning’ and raises important questions for the e-learning community.
He then handed over to Dr Littlejohn, who also commented that many of the contributors to the book
were present at the Launch event. Copies of the book were available at the event and Allison also
mentioned that there would be a worldwide, online debate about the book and the issues raised in
order to elicit further contributions from the global community. For further details of the book
and the debate see
http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/CAP/reusing/
The afternoon keynote speaker was Prof Grainne Conole, Professor of Educational Innovation in Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Southampton. Prof Conole made reference to many of the discussions and ideas raised in the day and presented her views on the effects of networked learning and the impact of learning technology standards. She put forth that there is an inherent assumption that E-learning should be underpinned by good pedagogy. She defined networked learning and went on to describe the various pedagogical approaches which may be taken, highlighting the current trends before discussing potentials for the future. Prof Conole then described some current specifications and the potential for these, noting that we need to ‘bridge the gap’ between the technology and the pedagogy and her ideas for potentially achieving that, including the need to engage practitioners plus the development of tools for linking standards work to effective pedagogy.
A panel session ended the event, with discussion around issues raised throughout the day. Professor Oleg Liber thanked the speakers and participants for their contributions to the Forum launch. The co-ordinator, Lisa Corley, asked for input from participants as the desire is to meet the needs of the community.
Judging by the feedback, the event was a great success. The general consensus was that it was a
much needed Forum and although its early days and is a new area to some, that the ‘birth’ of the
Forum is a good idea.
Further feedback, plus any Ideas for future events are welcome. Details about the next
meeting will be available soon.
PowerPoint Slides from the event are available on the website at
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/pedagogy/articles/Events
During the course of the day there was some reference to a new specification brought out by IMS called Learning Design.
Related to the discussions were requirements for ‘tools’ and some mentioned ‘LAMS’
(Learning Activity Management System) and COLIS (Collaborative Online Learning & Information
Services) - this is not a ‘tool’ but the acronym came up and Feedback gathered from the
evaluation forms asked for more information about both these; future events and briefing documents
will hopefully provide this, but in the meantime you may this information helpful –
its extracted from minutes of the CETIS Educational Content (EC) Special Interest Group.
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/pedagogy/files/lams_colis.doc