[]1Today I’m in Oxford, at
the ‘What does it mean to be an expert in the web era?’ [seminar]2
([programme here]3). Hashtag [#blog/digitalcurrency]4 (hm, this
is a messy tag though, lots of bit-coin-esque stuff). A bit of a ‘live
blog’, check out the workshopy bit at the end of the post especially,
and the link there.# Credentialing, grade inflation [Cristobal
Cobo]5 (from the [OII]6) kicked us off, talking about
credentialing and credential inflation…in the 14-17th centuries
(Collins, Handbook of sociology of education), and more recent
discussions regarding a shift from elite, to mass, to universal higher
education. Worth pointing out that my supervisor Simon Buckingham Shum
often gives around [global demand for higher education outstripping
supply]7.# Learning currencies [Dave White]8 carried that
on with a distinction between education and learning, where the former
is taken as the formal element (schooling, etc.) and the latter is
something else. He suggests the web amplifies that difference, and that
students need to spend more time negotiating the dissonance than
pre-web. Dave suggests we think about knowledge as ‘currency’ –
credentialing gets us something. Traditional currency: around
provenance, authorship, expertise, format (paper v web, etc.),
citations, etc. Emerging currency: google pagerank, likes,
followers, comments, views (suggesting, following a Berkman Centre
report) that ‘credibility’ doesn’t reside in the object anymore Suggests
a simple experiment – give a paper v. website version, which is better
trusted (indeed, research around ‘credibility’ exists on this sort of
issue, see e.g. excellent [Microsoft Research lit on
credibility]9). Suggests an exchange rate from traditional to
emerging (e.g., I tweet my research), but not the other way – my
pagerank doesn’t relate to my REF submission. Some see the web as a way
of offsetting printing costs to the student, of just broadcast models.
But we can create as well as consume, what the hell are we doing if all
we accredit is consumption?
The best version of the Firefox logo I’ve seen?
Web Literacies [Doug Belshaw]10,then talked about the [web
literacy map]11, and how we might use [Mozilla Open
Badges]12, to accredit these sorts of softer, localised, flexible,
etc. sets of knowledge. The open badges folk are now working on how we
could badge in various other areas (medicine, sciences, etc.), while
Doug is leading on the literacies work. Interesting issues re: losing
expertise. Doug gave lots of detail on badges, and suggested reading
this [blog post]13. One interesting thing here is [e.g. badges
for employability]14, and I don’t think it’s in that post, but the
idea that plenty of employers use specific credentials precisely to tie
their employees in to that employer.# Open literacies – Badged Open
Online Courses? [Hannah Gore]15, then talked about work at the OU,
how materials are repurposed and reused, and the various projects across
the OU. The best way to get involved in this is to look at the
[OpenMedia blog]16.# []17Panel – Expertise and formal v
informal learning Ken Skates from Welsh Assembly (who was in Oxford to
launch [a report to get more Welsh students to Oxbridge]18) joined
us for the panel. Hannah – suggested the content should be completely
open, and the discussion (and quantification of it) should drive how we
understand who is an expert. Doug – suggests learning theory needs
updating for digital age (I disagree with this in some ways), and that
things are more flexible now than before (more agreeable). Dave gives
the ‘institutions provide the structure, and validation for education’
angle (not one he necessarily agrees with). Gave some good shorthand
methods for credibility judgement, including that many of these are
fundamentally based on very traditional proxies – institutional trust
(e.g. URL domain, Google PageRank trustworthiness, etc.). Ken –
suggested ‘value’ is a key measure of expertise, economic is one of
those, as a result non-traditional and traditional methods can both play
a significant role here (this of course misses the ways they perpetuate
certain systems). Talked about a layer cake of learning (and value) –
the ‘value added’ MOOC, the university degree, the top level research,
etc. Question raised that what we should be interested in is the skills
(not just about ‘owning knowledge’ but ‘ability to navigate knowledge’).
Dave suggested to Ken that actually rather than a cake, we should be
interested in a ladder – we need to care about how we get people going
up the rungs. Doug notes structural issues, re: success – the top of the
ladder, and the rungs on the way up are managed by people who are
already there (and have interest in not being knocked down a rung!).
Dave (in character) notes that scarcity makes the thing of value, that
the elites will just build new rungs up if necessary. Ken asks – will
expertise become more specialised as we develop? (Thinner slices of
cake), interesting point given many people suggest the opposite, that we
need to be more general and flexible. Doug suggests to some extent that
might be true, but agility on connecting slices of cake is important.
Dave notes (in response to Doug’s concern) that outsourcing expertise to
algorithms is not a new concern (see e.g. my talk on this in the context
of [search engines and personalisation]19). Someone (with the
minister?) noted that we can (unlike before) start to assess some of the
skill gaps we might be interested in (critical literacies) e.g. with
PISA. Obviously disagree with the PISA note, but the broad point re:
interesting assessment possibilities is an interesting one. I made point
re: What does web expertise mean? What does expertise in the era of
the web mean? We have experts (e.g. Doctors), what do we want from
them? What does access to (creation of?) expertise mean for novices?
Doug noted that for many, moving online changed how they dealt with
their own professions. Ken made point re: risks and benefits of online
(e.g. work/life balance). Interesting point raised v. inappropriate
analogue being made around policies e.g. online v offline harassment#
Workshopy bit Three topics: 1. The world – expertise beyond the
institution – “What can/should citizens demand of the higher education
sector in the Web era?” 2. Teaching & learning – taking
advantage of the Web – “Which areas of our teaching and learning
practice do we need to change to respond to the opportunities of the
Web?” 3. Research – what do we know we don’t know? “Which
areas where the Web and higher education meet need to be better
understood (and why)?” [G’doc here]20 (with some excellent
notes, I’d recommend looking there if you’re interested).# Summary
Dave suggests: If there’s work to be done, it’s in finding ways to
collect languages across formal and informal, web and not web (insofar
as that makes sense now) languages, different types of value,
understanding different sorts of assessment, etc.
