Polytechnic 2.0

... will help us become more informed, responsive, innovative and learner-centred...

Unprecedented opportunity to achieve more open, accountable, responsive and efficient leadership...

Once information and learning resources are liberated as key organisational assets, possibilities — foreseeable and otherwise — are unlocked through the invention, creativity and hard work...

These statements are derived from Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 - an Australian Government Taskforce report calling for public agencies and public servants to engage more using the tools and capabilities of the ‘collaborative web’ or Web 2.0.

This comes at a time when there are calls from within educational institutions in Tasmania to restrict and even block altogether access to Web 2 services such as Facebook.

As the Report states:

Government 2.0 requires leaders to engage with what is for many, an unfamiliar and challenging agenda. Are we up to it?

Though it involves new technology, Polytechnic 2.0 is really about a new approach... the existing culture of hierarchical control and direction must change sufficiently to encourage and reward engagement.

The Report has been released under a Creative Commons 2.5 Australia Licence allowing a new document Engage: Getting on with Polytechnic 2.0 to be derived from it - mostly by replacing the word 'Government' with 'Polytechnic' and focusing on learning and the learner.

This derived version outlines a Polytechnic 2.0 agenda in terms of three pillars:

• Leadership, policy and governance to achieve necessary shifts in culture and practice.


• The application of Web 2.0 collaborative tools and practices to the institution as a learning organisation.


• Open access to leadership and management information and to open educational resources (OER).

Polytechnic 2.0 presents challenges to some well established organisational and educational practices and has the potential to change the relationship between our institution and its learning communities.

Getting back to Facebook there are many educational reasons to question the calls to restrict or block access to this and other web 2 services. According to the 2009 Horizon Report:

“Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work,collaborate, and communicate. Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global
connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time.”

For more see In Defence of Facebook.

Playing TAG

Many staff and students are using web services for displaying, organising and sharing their work. A number of Creative Arts teachers have been looking at how work might be tagged within these services so that staff and students can search for products created

• by Tasmanian Polytechnic students and staff
  
• in the same course or qualification
  
• on the same campus
  
• using the same media

In addition to facilitating searching a state-wide tagging system could allow teachers to easily collate student work for quality assurance/moderation across the state.

One issue to be addressed is the fact that students and staff are currently using a range of different web services for the same function. For example photos are uploaded into Flickr, Picasa, Deviant Art... We can create a single RSS feed from multiple web services by using an RSS aggregator that creates a new combined RSS feed such as Yahoo Pipes - rather than mandate a single web service.

We would also like to showcase student work by tagging items so that they automatically appear in RSS feeds within embedded code set up for our intranet, Facebook and public website. This will be archived by creating a Flickr group (linked to a state-wide Creative Arts Flickr account) where students can display their best work. Some of this work will then be tagged for showcasing - as well as being organised into sets and galleries.

This cross-campus tagging can also be applied to web services for video, audio and other media - any services that provide an RSS feed from tag searches.

Some of the thinking behind the use of tagging is presented in the following slides created for Creative Arts staff considering using Flickr for the first time to encourage student comment and reflection. They would also like to use it to facilitate some mentoring and critique from the arts community outside the organisation.

Learning to Walk...

Above you can see teacher Hilary Reader making some final head adjustments before taking her avatar to the hairdresser. On the right on the big screen one of her Tourism students flies over Jokaydia in Reaction Grid while on the desktop a Hospitality student walks her avatar through a forest on the Island Campus of the Tasmanian Polytechnic in Second Life.


Over the last week 4 classes (60 students) have been introduced to virtual worlds - well virtually introduced... we had a few technical issues but we are almost there.


The students are from a range of courses in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management at the Hobart and Drysdale South Campuses. They will explore and work in both Second Life and Reaction Grid - and perhaps some other virtual worlds.


Evidence for assessment including photo's, movie clips and reflective journals will be displayed in ePortfolios that all the students have now set up in the Polytechnic's Mahara. The students have all joined a 'Virtual World' group in Mahara that contains links to help and tasks, and most have added classmates as 'friends', customised their profiles and made comments on each others 'walls'.


Avatars have been registered and some students have begun to learn how to walk, talk, sit down and fly. After Easter they will learn to eat, dance, teleport and take photo's.


Some technical issues with graphics cards and ports meant that some students used Open Sim on USB memory sticks to practice customising their avatar's appearance. To make the USB world more interesting some of our buildings from the Island Campus in Second Life were copied across to the USB world using the Meerkat Viewer.


More classes will be joining these students after the Easter break.

And in news just in... We've heard that funding has been approved for the project: Virtually Here by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. Project descrition:

Virtually Here

"To improve opportunities for collaborative interaction and communication for students who are geographically isolated, using the virtual world of Second Life (for adult learners) and Reaction Grid (for students who are under 18 years of age) as the primary learning platforms."

Web 2.0 Exploration

40% of Polytechnic teachers are currently exploring web 2.0 or collaborative web services for learning. Many are using online blogs, photo or video albums for reflective learning or folios for assessment evidence or showcasing work.

The graphic above shows some examples of other web 2.0 services being used by teachers for learning, teaching and assessment. The red lines are indicative of the networks of 'friends' that each service may also bring to the 'classroom' giving an outside audience and increasing the potential for collaboration.

The Flexible Learning Team is now making some recommendations about which particular web service to use for specific learning tasks or desired learning outcomes. This will not only guide those who may be looking for a service to meet their needs but also create a critical mass of users within the organisation that can help each other.

Game on for Learning

Panorama of AppV Games on CleVR.com

Today 60 students were playing networked games as part of the Enrichment Program on the Elizabeth Campus thanks to dedicated problem solvers in ICT Services. Simon and Rob (pictured far left and centre - they were moving fast...) used MS Application Virtualisation (App-V) to deploy 60 instances of legal games across normal student networked computers.

The beauty of this is that the games don't affect the other software running on the network or network performance. While playing the games students have no access to the internet and play time can be controlled centrally.

The test run today proved it worked brilliantly! Game-based learning environments have been used on various campuses before for

• developing literacy, numeracy and communication skills
• digital story telling
• machinima (movies made 'in-world')
• modding (building games using commercial game engines)
• character design, AI and scripting
• 3D design and terraforming
• problem solving and system thinking skills

Today's session was just about fun and the doors had to be closed after the first 60 students arrived leaving many disappointed!

Simon and Rob's work will mean that ICT Shared Services can provide similar engaging learning environments across all campuses into the future.

Enabling a Learning Commons

Click graphic for full size

Polytechnic Libraries and Learning Centres have been evolving for many years and now bear little resemblance to the traditional libraries that many might remember from twenty years ago.
This evolution is continuing as we plan to meet the needs of tomorrow's learners, teachers and other clients. The Polytechnic Corporate Plan (2009-2010) outlines a 'learning commons' philosophy that further integrates learning and support services for students and facilitates the flexible-applied-connected-supported learning agenda.

In addition the State Library and UTas Library are changing to meet client needs. The national Re-Imagining Libraries Strategic Plan is indicative of the directions many libraries are taking:

"In collaboration, the National, State and Territory Libraries of Australia and New Zealand will become leaders in empowering people to create, discover, use and transform our collections, content and global information resources."

These directions require more open and connected ICT services than has previously. The Polytechnic Library Online Services Project team has been mapping the ICT functionality needed to meet the above agenda.

The above graphic (click for full size) maps the ICT functionality to enable:

• Information and resources to come into the organisation including Open Education Resources, Open Courseware, RSS feeds... (LHS of graphic)
• Information and resources produced or added to by students and staff within the organisation including Open Education Resources, Open Courseware and RSS feeds to be shared with others (RHS of graphic)
• Online access by students and staff within the Polytechnic via normal logon (LDAP) or Open ID (bottom of graphic)
• External access by school students, mentors, local communities... via open unauthenticated access or Open ID (top of graphic)

These needs will now determine the kinds of systems that will be required. Current ICT systems may or may not be sufficient.

E-Portfolios for students and staff

E-Portfolios are now ready for anyone in the Polytechnic who wants to use them - staff, classes, groups, individual students... As described before we are using Mahara to provide this service. We have two hosted services arising from different pilot projects in 2009 - one is just Mahara and the other is an integrated Mahara + Moodle installation.

Teacher and user guides (video and text) are available and a community of practice has been established across all campuses. It will be interesting to see how many staff and students decide to use E-Portfolios who were not part of previous projects.

Problems encountered during the 2009 projects will hopefully be addressed with recent changes such as

• upgrading Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8
  
• upgrading Mahara to allow for importing and exporting
  
• customised help

Mahara isn't the only solution for E-Portfolios. Some staff and students choose to use

• blogs with embedded code from other sites where they save work or links to online file storage
• wikis or services such as Google docs and sites
• Deviant Art or similar shared galleries
• Flickr, Picassa or similar photo albums
• Facebook or MySpace for student or whole class folios or online presence with rich media
  

A survey of staff at the end of 2009 revealed that 40% were exploring so-called web 2.0 or social media sites for use with students. The attraction of Mahara is that it provides some social media functionality within a local learning environment while still providing student control of access to work including external access via a 'secret' URL.

Students can connect with and share work with classmates or friends as well as teachers and feedback from students in the 2009 projects indicated that this was highly valued.