Reflections on ALT-C 2009

ALT-C 2009 took place in  sunny Manchester! The conference dinner in the very impressive surroundings of Manchester Town Hall was memorable, and praise was deservedly heaped on the students who helped to prepare and serve the meal.    There was much to digest too in terms of conference presentations and discussion – here are 6 of my highlights.

Manchester Town Hall

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brostad/

More and richer discussion

One significant improvement this year was that more time  was allowed for question and discussions at the end of papers which made for a much richer experience.

The learner perspective

For me the conference started off appropriately with the learner perspective. Aaron Porter, from the NUS, highlighted the challenge to get more students to consider themselves as part of an academic community, in a situation where, according to a recent NUS survey, 60% of students attend university to improve career prospects, whilst 22% go for reasons of academic interest. Technology can clearly play in role here, but how can we help stimulate this through use of online social networks without taking them over?  Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor in waiting of the OU, also recognised this, in a very entertaining and passionate keynote, when talking about the OU’s SocialLearn project – going to meet students where they are (not the VLE!), but allowing them to retain control.

Richard Walker from York, presenting on staff engagement with technology, questioned student expectation as driver for the adoption of technology. He made the point that a common consumerist approach from students doesn’t necessarily chime with good pedagogic practice. So student pressure might increase the rate of adoption of e-learning, but possibly at the expense of its quality. This is a discussion I often have with academic colleagues. As was shown by the findings of the JISC learner experiences of e-learning programme, students may be familiar with technologies but they don’t necessarily have an understanding of how they can be used for learning. Students, especially in their first year, can be strongly influenced by their lecturers’ use (or lack of use) of technology. So creative, appropriate and well-embedded use in the early stages of a programme can set a valuable example.

Learning design

Shifting to the lecturer perspective, Diana Laurillard talked about supporting teachers in their learning design. This was a recurrent theme of the conference , emphasizing the importance of helping teachers get to grips with learning design to facilitate the sustained and appropriate embedding of technology in teaching programmes. Diana mentioned a range of learning design patterns and ways in which these can be represented, for example in the visual box and arrow diagrams of a tool such as LAMS.  These can be mapped and evaluated against learning theories such as the conversational framework.   Elaine Draffan and Peter Rainger from Southampton looked at the learning design process with a focus on inclusivity in a very useful workshop. They have developed a model for the identification of the challenges presented in designing accessible blended learning. The identification of learner profiles, identifying skills strengths and challenges, can be used to help plan learning activities which meet the needs of a range of students.  Peter is also in the process of putting together an online course for lecturers to help them design blended learning. Many useful resources on designing accessible online learning can be found on the LexDis site, for example strategies for overcoming various accessibility issues.

Death of the VLE??

The much anticipated (and previewed!) “VLE is dead” debate featuring James Clay, Steve Wheeler, Graham Atwell and Nick Sheratt was an entertaining session. Never before have I heard the view that the VLE is not dead but a “self harmer” !
The session succeeded in stimulating lively discussion, especially around whether it would be preferable to focus on what we are trying to achieve as opposed to any particular tools or technologies, taking us back again to areas of curriculum design.

Open Educational Resources

The Jorum Learning and teaching resource competition shortlist was again of very high quality. The Learnhigher resources, for example on groupwork, looked extremely useful. Open educational resources in general were a  hot topic at the conference. Dave O’Hare from Derby presented on the Pocket project, which raised the debate around open content amongst staff in the participating institutions. Dave stated that most of the staff had been happy to share their content, though there were questions as to whether this was due to them being self-selected and whether it would be the same in other institutions or amongst other staff. It is not yet clear to what extent there has been a shift in the traditional academic resistance to sharing resources. However with more universities participating in OER projects, for example the JISC OER programme,  a body of evidence will hopefully start to build up which can be used to help persuade colleagues of the benefits.

The Open Scholar

Terry Anderson picked up on the theme of open content in the final keynote. He extended it to not just content, but what might be the characteristics of the “Open Scholar, for example sharing their research through publishing in Open Access journals. Gideon Burton has written about this on his blog, posing some interesting questions and suggesting that more open scholarship can “bridge the great divide between research and teaching”.

And to end, a plug for Open Access Week,  October 19-23, 2009, which aims to broaden awareness and understanding of open access.

VLEs – engaging students (but what about the staff?)

In ALT-J March 2009 an article by Alice Maltby and Sarah Mackie from the University of the West of England explores the extent to which use of a VLE can help or hinder student engagement.

The article describes a project in which student activity in the VLE was tracked and this was mapped against their performance. The aim was to assess whether tracking VLE use could help to identify students at risk of disengagement, who are less likely to complete their programmes of study.

Findings of the study varied between the 2 cohorts involved. In the first year Organisational studies group assessment performance steadily increased in relation to the number of times students accessed the VLE. With the second year Marketing cohort however there appeared to be an optimum level of VLE use above which assessment performance dropped. In other words too much use of the VLE could have a detrimental effect. The authors suggest that this may be due to what Mason (2002) describes as “The flexibility of the medium itself …. the ability to jump from one resource to the next on the Web can be over-used so that relatedness becomes an end in itself, and meaning is lost.”

The authors emphasise the importance of self-efficacy in learners as a way of supporting engagement. They define self-efficacy as “the belief that one can do a task and can transfer the learning of that task to similar tasks”. Prompt feedback can help to build students’ notions of self-efficacy, and VLEs offer a range of opportunities for this.

To a certain extent the authors conclude that their findings are consistent with Lee’s (2001) model of learner engagement in Web-enhanced environments, which identifies 4 learner types: Model students , traditionalists, geeks and the disengaged. However they acknowledge that further investigation is necessary especially into potential reasons why some students access the VLE less than others.

This is certainly one of the questions that arose for me out of reading the article. Also how can lecturers affect student levels of usage to promote engagement, especially early on in a course? (Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model springs to mind here). According to the article, the VLE is used for “pre- and post- session learning activities … preparatory work, readings, links to a wide range of resources, advice, formative assessment and revision”. How these activities are set up is not described in detail. To what extent is the lecturer’s engagement with and use of the VLE affecting learner engagement here? For example if learners are accessing readings through the VLE, how is the lecturer facilitating reflection on these, and what feedback are they receiving from their peers and/or the lecturer? As I have commented in a previous post on the JISC learner experience of e-learning research, their findings suggested that:

• tutors’ use of technologies is an important influence on learners, especially early on in their studies
• many students are not sure how to use technology to aid their learning
• new learners tend to be conservative in their study habits, having fixed ideas about how technology will be used.

The lecturer’s role would therefore seem to be of utmost importance here: for example ensuring that learners are clear about how they are expected to use the VLE, how its use relates to their F2F contact and what benefits online activity can have for their learning. Also lecturers can have an influence in modelling effective use of technology for learning. Some staff will be able to adapt easily to this online facilitative role, but for others it will be a challenge which will require significant amounts of support. Surely we cannot consider student engagement without also facing up to the challenge of engaging staff in the effective use of technology to enhance learning?

References
Lee, M.G. 2001. Profiling students’ adaptation styles in Web-based learning. Computers and Education 36, no.2: 121-32

Maltby,A. and Mackie,S. Virtual learning environments – help or hindrance for the ‘disengaged’ student?  ALT-J Vol 17, no 1, March 2009

Mason, R. 2002. Review of e-learning for education and training. Paper presented at the Networked Learning Conference, March 26-28 n Sheffield, UK

Revised approach to HEFCE’s strategy for e-learning

I have at last had time over Easter to read the  revised approach to HEFCE’s strategy for e-learning “Enhancing learning and teaching through the use of technology“, published in March.

I found it very useful, in giving an overview of the context and key recent developments, together with a framework for institutions to use when considering their own strategic priorities.

As well as stressing the continued role of partners such as JISC and the HEA, the document highlights the importance of institutions developing their own strategic approaches to enhancing learning, teaching and assessment through use of technology. It highlights 3 key areas of potential benefits: efficiency, enhancement and transformation.

It describes the “unique role” of Higher Education in “providing learners with the higher-order skills of evaluation, critical analysis and reflection, synthesis, problem-solving, creativity and thinking across discipline boundaries.”  However it recognises that in order for staff to be able to exploit technologies effectively to help develop these critical and analytical skills in their learners, they need support.

The support of senior management is also key. The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and JISC’s strategic technology initiative  aims to help raise awareness amongst HE leaders of the potential of educational technology and how it can be integrated in institutional strategy.

A suggested framework is provided at the end of the document. The purpose of the framework is to “assist institutions in maximising the strategic benefits of technology”. It is designed to be used flexibly so that institutions can adapt it to suit their own needs. It provides suggested strategic priorities in 7 areas (2 of which have changed since the 2005 Strategy document):

• pedagogy, curriculum design and development
• learning resources and environments (was “Learning resources and networked learning”)
• lifelong learning processes and practices (was “Student support, progression and collaboration”)
• strategic management, human resources and capacity development
• quality
• research and evaluation
• infrastructure and technical standards.

For each area examples are provided of how technology might be used for strategic gain. These need to be fleshed out into realistic goals for each institution, but provide a useful outline.

JISC Learner Experience of e-learning workshop

Yesterday I attended the JISC Learner Experience of e-learning – Phase 2 findings workshop in Bristol.  The event proved to be an active and enjoyable introduction to some of the key findings of the research so far as well as to some of the methodologies used to collect qualitative data.

The central message coming through was that our learners vary considerably in terms of familiarity with and usage of technology to support their learning.  Generally speaking learners mature in their use of technology during their learning journey (see the STROLL project) and tutors’ use of technologies is an important influence on them.

Other powerful findings from the research  included:

• there is evidence that the digital divide may be getting narrower but deeper, i.e. overall more people have access to more technology, but there are a small number who are significantly affected by lack of access
• many students are not sure how to use technology to aid their learning
• new learners tend to be conservative in their study habits, having fixed ideas about how technology will be used.
• learners have high expectations about the institution’s ICT infrastructure, that it will be robust, flexible and accessible

Although the research involved many students from different backgrounds and in a range of contexts, the research team’s recommendation was very much that results may not be representative of the wider student population, and that participants should be encouraged to research their own learner populations to help provide a localised and context-specific learner voice which helps to inform the institution’s strategy with regard to e-learning.

Several of the activities used in the workshop demonstrated use of some of the methodologies used in the research, which proved interesting, such as the “Interview plus” technique where learners may be asked to bring an artefact e.g. something they have created in a learning context, which provides a stimulus for the interviewer’s structured questions.

Also  we tried out a card-sorting exercise in which you provide a learner with a set of laminated cards with technologies written on them, and ask them to rank these in order of importance to them. While they are moving the cards around you talk to them about why they are putting them in that order. This proved to be a very effective exercise in the workshop, and my colleague Hilary Griffiths and myself discussed the potential use of such an activity in staff development workshops. Materials for this and other activities are available on the project wiki, under a Creative Commons licence which means they can be re-used or re-purposed for academic staff development. A range of video clips from interviews built on the card sort activity are available on the  E4L Interactive Case Studies website.

The team are still synthesizing data from the projects and I look forward to the final results.

Futures cafe – cloud computing and google apps for education – 19th March 09

Yesterday I attended the Futures cafe event organised by the ILRT in Bristol. The 2 speakers were Sam Peters, Business Development Manager for  Google Apps for Education and Andrew Charlesworth, Director of the Centre for IT and Law (CITL) at the University of Bristol.

Sam started by giving an overview of “Google apps for education“.  She outlined some of the potential benefits for institutions. These included:

• leveraging the power of Google’s infrastructure
• offering tools for realtime collaboration e.g. Google docs
• meeting the challenge of the pace of change (how do/can a university’s systems effectively keep up with rapid technological change?
• allowing institutions to focus on their core business
• saving money

Sam has worked with a number of early adopters of Google apps within UK HE, including Leeds Met, SOAS University of London, and Westminster.

Andrew’s presentation covered some of the implications and risks of cloud computing and suggestions for institutions to avoid “FUD” (fear, uncertainty and doubt), including questions one might ask a potential supplier offering cloud computing services.

There are implications in a number of areas,  including contracts and Service Level agreements, privacy and data protection, financial regulations, surveillance and interception, IPR, jurisdiction and commercial espionage.

Key risks discussed included:

• Service outage – e.g. Gmail was unavailable in Feb 09 for several hours. How does this compare with our existing services?
• Confidentiality e.g. outsourcing of data storage – who has privileged user access to your data? How are they vetted/ hired?
• geographical location of data and legal implications of this
• disaster recovery processes
• long-term viability of the vendor (e.g. Andrew mentioned the demise of the online storage service – The Linkup as an example)
• security and integrity of your data – backup, archiving and transferability of data if you need to exit the service

Andrew went on to recommend a number of strategies for avoiding FUD, such as:

1. do a risk assessment
2. compare and contrast vendors’  SLAs
3. identify your legal and regulatory obligations
4. identify financial and reputational consequences of any breach
5. ideally seek geographic control of your data
6. ensure you have powers of audit and oversight (in Andrew’s words “Yes, we trust you, but … we’d like to check anyway!”

After the presentations there were a number of questions and then participants split up into groups to discuss issues further.  One interesting area of discussion was to what extent does the institution apply these same criteria to existing systems? Another was what exactly in Google apps  is free, and what is not included. Also on a more practical level how effective is Google gears to support offline collaborative working. Many participants were understandably most concerned about data security, and felt that such technologies may be better suited in an undergraduate teaching context but less so in a research context especially where there were third parties involved.

The event was a very useful introduction to issues surrounding Cloud computing, gave an opportunity for people unfamiliar with Google Aps to get a better idea of how they work, and lastly prompted some good discussion about how appropriate  the use of such tools might be at Bristol . More details are due to be posted on the Futures Cafe blog in due course.

More on handwritten V typed exams in HE

Many thanks to Andrew Cosgrove for his reply to my previous post on written V typed exams. I absolutely agree with Andrew about the importance of handwriting and am not for a minute suggesting that this be neglected. My point was simply that in nearly all of our universities in the UK traditional summative assessment methods are inconsistent with the way students write during much of their education and in later life.

Coincidentally this is a point emphasized by Dai Hounsell, professor of higher education and vice-principal at the University of Edinburgh, in an article in the most recent edition of the THE. Professor Hounsell says:

“Almost all universities that I’m familiar with require their students to submit work in word-processed form, if not electronically. Yet many of them still cleave to a system where ’sudden death’ handwritten exams are a major element in determining degree classification.”

One problem with this is purely physiological. “Computer use means that students are losing the capacity to write quickly for lengthy periods. You just create muscular cramp.”

More importantly, the advent of information technology has changed the way people write. “We can write things in almost any order and go back to revise them. Handwritten exam answers involving extended prose and essays are increasingly calling for strategies that students are no longer familiar with.

“That in itself would be problematic, but what we also have to remember is that those strategies aren’t required in the world beyond university either. Students are not going to go into jobs where someone is going to say ‘I’m sorry, but you have got to submit a handwritten answer in the next 30 minutes.’ It is a sort of white elephant and in many ways I think there is a lack of readiness to confront that.”

Would it not be more appropriate to offer a range of assessment methods, including handwritten and typed essays as well as other innovative assessment techniques, which better reflect the wider world of education and work, as well as catering for students’ varying strengths?

And if this is the case then what might be the key barriers preventing this from happening ?

Learning Futures Festival 09 and typed V written exams

Last week I attended the Learning Futures Festival 09 event in Leicester.

In the first keynote Sugata Mitra gave an interesting presentation on his “Hole in the wall” projects and his ideas around self-organising learning systems. His research shows that groups of children can learn many things if they have shared public access to a PC, including computer and Internet skills (many of us with children can vouch for that!), functional English, speaking and pronunciation skills, algebra and biotechnology!  (see http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/holeinthewall.html )

The second keynote saw Ralph Schroeder giving an overview of his thoughts on the future of Virtual environments. He outlined 2 “end-states” for the future:

1. 3-D video conferencing
2. Computer-generated systems (using avatars) such as Second Life

He raised a number of potential reasons why the use of shared virtual environments might not develop, including people’s pre-conceptions that somehow face-to-face meetings are better than virtual ones. I would agree with his point that virtual is different, not necessarily inferior to F2F, and indeed in some situations meeting someone virtually e.g. in avatar form, can be preferable in that it lessens pre-conceptions based on physical appearance.

Following the 2 keynotes there were 2 “intervention panels”, in which a panel of speakers each talked for 5 minutes followed by questions and discussion. The second intervention panel “Creating the future” had an interesting range of speakers: Dave Hall, Registrar at Leicester, John Fothergill, Head of the Engineering Department at Leicester, Aaron Porter, Vice-President (Higher Education) for the National Union of Students (NUS), and Ricardo Torres Kompen from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.

Dave Hall gave an insightful presentation on some of the challenges of embedding educational technology in HE, which was refreshing coming from a administrator’s perspective.  Ricardo used a word which I don’t think many of us present had heard before: prosumers! (as in “The students were prosumers – producing as well consuming content”).

Aaron gave a wide-ranging and eloquent talk about some of the challenges facing HE and society in general over the next few years, and the importance of the changing expectations of our students.  From the student perspective Aaron focussed on feedback, interaction with personal tutors, and assessment. He was especially interested in how technology could be used to align assessment methods with today’s educational and work habits. For example, he would like students to be able to write examination answers using a word processor, so they can edit content in the same way as they would in other writing contexts in the course of their learning and future work lives.

Some work has been done on this at the University of Edinburgh.  Nora Mogey in her article “The end of handwriting? Using computers in traditional essay examinations” points out the inconsistency of requiring “Net Generation” students to write examination essays by hand when throughout their study (and indeed later on in work) they use word-processing to write notes, reports, assignments etc.

There are of course a number of issues, for example word-processing skills vary (but so do hand-writing skills), and as Mogey suggests “we should match our assessment methodologies as far as possible to the most common study habits of our students”.

The University of Edinburgh carried out a trial in 2006 , and concluded that it “demonstrates an approach to the use of computers in a traditional essay exam which is achievable with minimal disruption to existing administrative processes and which appears to be attractive to a majority of students.”

In the Edinburgh trial the “Exam4” software produced by Extegrity was selected on the basis that “it was felt that the use of a very simple tool would be more appropriate in that it was less likely to confound the mark for the academic content of the exam with a measure of the student’s skill in using a particular word processor.”

Advantages of Exam4 included:

• a proven track record in the USA of stability and reliability
• built-in security which locks down a PC or laptop and prevents access to Internet, hard drive or USB sticks for example
• automatically saves work at regular intervals
• can be installed on users’ own laptops or university PCs

The examination process was exactly the same as normal with the exception that answers were entered on a PC rather than handwritten. Exam question papers were still distributed in hard copy form, but answers were typed. In addition to entering text, tablet PCs with pens were used to allow students to draw diagrams.

Scripts were encrypted by the software and can saved to a designated location. They were then printed and distributed for marking as normal.

Students participating in the evaluation of the trial agreed overwhelmingly that this was a good idea. Some problems were identified with use of the tablet PCs, but the typing of text was fine. However they stressed the importance of having sufficient time to familiarise themselves with the software. Their main concern was the possible impact of differences in typing abilities, as well as consideration of how typed exams might be marked (more harshly) as compared to handwritten ones. For example they thought there might be an expectation that errors should be corrected in a typed essay which might be allowed in a handwritten script. Research evidence indeed confirms that handwritten essays  receive higher marks than the same essays typed (e.g. Russell and Tao, 2004, ).

The conclusions of this trial suggest that it is definitely an area to investigate further, especially considering that the software can be installed on students’ own laptops with which they are most familar. So maybe Aaron’s suggestion will become more common practice over the next few years.

WEETHE – eXe presentation

I have been further exploring eXe recently and last week I presented a short demo at the WEETHE meeting at the University of Gloucestershire.  I used the Ready-to-run Windows version, which I had on a memory stick, and this worked well.

This was followed by a hands-on session by participants using the tool, and some discussion . Generally reaction was positive and people were interested in further investigating the tool.

The demo tutorial I used is available at:
http://go.bath.ac.uk/rxlw

eXe for authoring – first impressions

It’s been on my list of tools to have a look at for a long time, and at last today I had a window of opportunity to have a first play around with eXe. And it was well worth it!

eXe is an Open Source authoring application designed to be easy for academics and others without technical web skills to use. Resources authored in eXe can be exported as IMS Content Packages or SCORM 1.2, amongst other formats, and imported into VLEs such as Moodle.

You can download it for free from http://exelearning.org/Download .

The thing I most liked about it is the way that it encourages you to take a structured activity-based approach to creating resources, a bit like Moodle in some ways but with more scaffolding.

Learning packages created in eXe are structured in pages, to which you can add a range of iDevices.  Different types of content can be added through the iDevice menu, for example websites, quiz questions, RSS feeds, cloze exercises, images and a range of structured activities.

For my first page I chose the “reading activity”. This gives a built-in structure with headings: what to read, activity and feedback. Later I looked at the “case study” activity which prompts you to add the “story”, followed by an activity and feedback.

Other features which were appealing were:

1. You can easily re-size sections e.g. choices in MCQ question.
2. You can embed LaTeX.
3. It is easy to re-order pages.
4. You can embed entire webpages and wikipedia articles.
5. It is easy to combine or sequence activities and move things around within and between pages.
6. The layout and style are clean, attractive and professional.

A couple of initial problems I had were:

1. You are supposed to be able to embed Youtube videos , but I couldn’t get this to work.
2. Unfortunately there doesn’t yet appear to be any matching type exercise.

However these are small minor issues.  Overall eXe appears to be a relatively easy-to-use tool with great potential, and which offers considerably more functionality than alternatives such as Wimba Create.

For an introductory video see:

Some thoughts from ALT-C 2008

Last week I attended the ALT-C conference in Leeds, which was on the theme of “Re-thinking the digital divide”. Here are some of my highlights:

John Davies from the University of Sussex presented the Skillsclouds project. This is an interesting idea on the use of tag clouds to support student understanding of transferable skills. The project aims to present transferable skills in an engaging and visual way, so students can find out more about what transferable skills are, identify more easily where they are found and can be applied in their curriculum, and be able to write about their skills, for example in CVs, in an effective way.

Helen Keegan from the University of Salford gave a very enthusiastic account of experimental use of web 2.0 technologies in an Advanced Multimedia course. She particularly focussed on issues of digital identity / “impression management” to help students in the creation of a professional and appropriate online presence.

One aspect of attending ALT-C is always to see what new tools are being used, and James Clay always comes up with something interesting. Unfortunately I missed James’ sessions, but his use of Seesmic seemed popular. Seesmic is a video micro blogging web application, which can be described as a bit like Twitter with video.

Jane Hart’s presentation of the top 25 tools for learning practitioners was also a valuable session. Although many participants were familiar with most of the tools, there was general recognition and thanks for the valuable work Jane has done in collating information on these and making resources such as tutorials freely available. A few tools which caught my eye which I hadn’t used before were:

1. Voicethread – collaborative multimedia slideshow which allows participants to comment through audio, video, file upload or text. Also allows annotation of what’s on the screen. This really has to be tried out, but there’s a demo which gives you an idea.
2. Yugma – web conferencing tool which allows desktop sharing, file sharing and also has a whiteboard. There is a Skype extra which allows integration with Skype (more on this at a later date as we are trying this outat the moment)
3. UStream – live video streaming.

The showcase of short-listed Learning Objects from the 2008 ALT Learning Object competition presented a range of different types of Learning Objects, from the information-giving (Alien Worlds) to the more interactive / game type (Managing diabetes), from objects created by Flash developers and e-learning designers to those created by lecturers with no technical expertise, just using Word templates then produced in Wimba Create (e-evolve project).

All of the entries can be accessed from the Intrallect website.  My personal favourite, Visual Directions, unfortunately didn’t make the shortlist of 3, but I thought it was a very engaging, useful resource which had been found to appeal greatly to its target audience, art and design students, who in my experience do not always readily engage with online resources. Visual Directions covers use of sketchbooks and reflective writing, with fantastic visual design and effective use of audio interviews with students and lecturers.

Gilly Salmon’s session on “What if Learning Technologists ruled the world” was a thought-provoking challenge to the “arrogance of the present”. Gilly encouraged our community to rise to this challenge and not only to develop our vision for a better future for education, but also to act to bring this vision to reality (we will be given an opportunity to report back on progress at next year’s ALT-C, “In dreams begins responsibility”, which Gilly is co-chairing!).  Someone who has clearly got a vision and is working towards achieving this is David Cavallo of the One laptop per child initiative, who gave the closing keynote speech. David encouraged us to help “build a better culture and language for thinking about learning” which I guess is a familiar refrain for many of us working on a daily basis with colleagues who may have a very different attitude to teaching and learning (As Itiel Dror joked, those teachers who say that “we are here to teach, it is up to the students to learn”).

Photo of David Cavallo’s presentation by http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindfieldz/

Looking forward, what can we take away with us from these messages of vision, transformation and need to bridge a range of digital divides? I guess one personal reflection is that individually, or within individual institutions it is easy to feel quite restricted, isolated and/or of limited power and influence,  but we have the tools now which can enable us to network, share ideas and spread good and innovative practice like never before (witness the success of the Crowdvine social networking tool at this year’s ALT-C. )

Lastly I have to mention the excellent Conference Dinner. This was held at Headingley cricket club, and there seemed to be unanimous agreement that the food and service were excellent, all provided by local catering and hospitality students.  Special mention must go to the amazing chocolate tiered creations which were brought out at the end.  Wish I’d had a camera at hand! Fortunately James Clay did so here is his excellent silent movie style video: