I've finally had a moment to resurrect my blog on technology, the eMM, copyright and anything that stimulates my mind and can't be made PBRFable. I've brought across the old posts as I'm actually pleased to see how well most of them have aged. As time permits I'm going to revisit some of them to see what has developed since then.

A question from a colleague sparked this posting. What happens when the traditional paper books used in such exams or tests become eBooks?

This is not a trivial question.

New technologies provide useful opportunities to revisit models of work that we think we understand and test whether our approaches and assumptions need to be reframed. The inevitable growth in the use of eBooks as replacements for paper textbooks raises some challenging questions for academics who use open book tests in their courses, and also provides a hint of a wider need for change in our conceptions of information use, learning and assessment.

A colleague at the University drew my attention to a recent article on being a PhD student in computer science, describing how to lead from below. Its a good article, filled with useful advice to PhD students learning how to engage with people in other roles. I also think it describes very well the approach that academics, e-learning support staff and innovators should be taking more generally in the university.

Alison Byerly posts on an Inside Higher Ed blog the interesting issue of what we call people engaging with MOOCs, are they really students?

"If we allow the word "student" to lose its primary meaning as a person formally engaged in learning through enrollment in a school or college, a person toward whom that institution and its faculty assume some responsibility, then we undermine the case for colleges and universities as the place where students go to meet their educational goals."

Siva Vaidhyanathan is an interesting and thoughtful scholar who often writes on copyright issues affecting higher education. His recent article summarising the outcome of legal battles between US Author's groups and Universities is an useful summary of the complex issues facing modern institutions attempting to comply with copyright law. At heart is the desperate attempts of the traditional, and increasingly irrelevant, publishing industry to somehow protect various distribution arrangements in the face of overwhelming evidence their time has past.

The Education and Science Committee have started an inquiry into 21st century learning environments and digital literacy. Rather than intending to write law, this is a chance for politicians to explore an area before developing policy.

One of the interesting case studies used in Rogers' book The Diffusion of Innovations is the story of introducing clean water into North African villages. The women of the village resisted using clean water from a tap for other than ritual purposes until the 'high status' women in the village started using it for cooking. It illustrates the problem that innovations are not used even when, objectively and empirically, they are better than existing practice. Indeed, the women in Africa used all sorts of creative and implausible explanations as to why they would not change their water use habits. A Canadian PhD student has now come up with another great example of how innovators need to use existing preferences and desires to motivate positive change.

ACODE 60's workshop was today and focused on the area of Learning Analytics. Although MOOCs seem to have overtaken analytics as the issue of greatest interest in e-learning there is a case to be made that analytics are a more significant challenge to institutions and their staff. Outside of the US at least, the public higher education sector in Western countries is experiencing a sustained focus on quality. Quality in this case is that measured by performance indicators as scrutinised by the funding agencies of government, and consequently as seen in funding bestowed or withdrawn. These indicators are increasingly dominated by student outcomes such as qualification completion, but also include measures of retention and success within a course of study.

ACODE 60's workshop was today and focused on the area of Learning Analytics. Although MOOCs seem to have overtaken analytics as the issue of greatest interest in e-learning there is a case to be made that analytics are a more significant challenge to institutions and their staff. Outside of the US at least, the public higher education sector in Western countries is experiencing a sustained focus on quality. Quality in this case is that measured by performance indicators as scrutinised by the funding agencies of government, and consequently as seen in funding bestowed or withdrawn. These indicators are increasingly dominated by student outcomes such as qualification completion, but also include measures of retention and success within a course of study.

The precarious nature of academic professional development is always lurking in the back of the minds of those of us working in the field. Last year seven of the eight New Zealand universities reviewed their development activities and Ako Aotearoa is preparing for significant changes in their future. So perhaps its not surprising to see Australia chop back as well:

"Funding for the Australian Learning and Teaching Council will be discontinued from 1 January 2012, providing savings of $88 million over four years. The Government remains committed to continuing to improve the quality of higher education in Australia, and is establishing new quality and regulatory arrangements for higher education through: a new national regulatory and quality agency, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency; a new National Register of Higher Education Providers; a new Higher Education Standards Framework; and the My University website."