Tag: Open

Future of Technology in Education Conference 2013

The annual Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) Conference took place last month at Senate House, London. A wide range of topics were covered from changes to work based learning, to open access and online pedagogies.

Dr Nicola Millard, from British Telecom (BT) discussed the changing nature of the workplace and highlighted elements of her report entitled ‘the future of the office’, which looks at the growing trend of non office based workers.

There was a ‘fireside’ question and answer session, where the panel discussed what worked well and what did not in technology projects. The panel agreed that technology projects were more about the people than the technology.

2014 – the year of the SPOCs

Following on from my previous article in February, around Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this article looks further into what has happened in this area over the past few months. MOOCs have been mentioned on BBC’s Newsnight to conferences. The number of providers and courses have increased. This article examines what role, MOOCs can play as a technology that could bring about a wider change in the higher education sector.

A new UK based MOOC provider, FutureLearn launched on the 18th September 2013 at the British Library in London, with guests including the Universities Minister David Willetts. FutureLearn joins some of the biggest US providers such as Coursera, EdX and Udacity.

The MOOC Phenomenon

This post is both a brief summary of thoughts and my reflects on the MOOCs movement which I have observed and continue to observe as a participant, including talks I have attended. If you are in Learning Technology (or even if you are not), then you will not have failed to see the rise of the MOOC (that’s Massive Open Online Courses). Here’s a video explaining the concept too.

The Annual Draper’s Lecture at the Teaching & Learning Conference at Queen Marys, University of London was the first MOOC themed talk I attended on the 16th January, presented by Vice Chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, entitled “MOOCs, Napster and the Tyranny of Conventional Wisdom: Where’s the Next Giant Leap for Higher Education?”

Learning Technology Trends for the New Year

Happy New Year! Skipped posts in December! I thought I’d write a post about Learning Technology trends for the new year. Newspapers, Magazines and websites such as the BBC are awash with  predictions of things to come!

Anyone interested in education couldn’t have missed MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses, first brought to our attention in this country by the three main US providers Coursera, edX and Udacity. The idea is simple, a mass participation in a course using the web. Seems like the next step in distance learning? Maybe. The idea of the MOOC has been criticised by several educationalists.