The power of open cross-institutional collaboration for connected professional development in higher Home : Annual Conference 2015

The power of open cross-institutional collaboration for connected professional development in higher

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Wed, Sep 9 2015, 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Authors: Chrissi Nerantzi, Sue Beckingham, Diogo Casanova, Kathrine Hack, and Sheila MacNeill
Room: Room 2.220 (Second Floor)
Theme: Harnessing the power of the crowd – collaboration and connectivist learning
Type: Standard Presentation

Description

In a time where resources are tight, time is precious and expertise is distributed, online collaboration offers an attractive approach to professional development. (European Commission, 2013). This paper discusses the enablers: a shared vision, commitment and trust, which are prerequisites for using the open and connected experiences and practices enabled by the social web to allow the design of innovative and sustainable approaches to professional development.

Social media provides opportunities for versatile collaborations with like-minded individuals and groups, both within and between institutions. Both educators and students can engage in participatory pedagogy (Depietro, 2013; McLoughlin & Lee,

2007) as co-learners collaboratively shaping the learning process and the outcomes.
This approach provides a genuinely flexible framework which has implications
for both formal and informal education as well as other aspects of human
endeavour.

This contribution describes the Bring a Your Own Device for Learning (BYOD4L) open course; a grass-roots informal cross-institutional initiative aimed at connecting practitioners and students to learn about how mobile devices can be used to enhance and transform learning (Author1 and Author2, 2014). The course modelled practice, in that it was delivered through a distributed and connected learning community over multiple social media platforms such as WordPress, Google + , Facebook and Twitter. The 5C Framework (Author1 & Author2, 2014) (connecting, communicating, curating, collaborating, creating) was used to scaffold learning and progressively introduce participants to more complex pedagogical activities using smart devices.

This third iteration of the non-funded BYOD4L project (January 2015) attracted participation from UK-based HEIs (nine) and FEIs (three) and two further collaborators from Europe and the US. Typically there were approximately 450 hits per day on the course ‘home page’ on the WordPress site, and the daily ‘tweetchats’ attracted an average of 177 active participants and 3000 tweets. This contribution will use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to inform delegates of the perceived benefits and challenges for participating institutions for open and collaborative cross-institutional initiatives and recommendations for sustainable cross-institutional professional development offers.

References

Depietro, P. (2013) Transforming Education with New Media: Participatory Pedagogy, Interactive Learning, and Web 2.0. New York: Peter Lang.

European Commission (2013) High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education. Report to the European Commission on Improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe’s higher education institutions, European Union, available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc/modernisation_en.pdf

McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2007, December). Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007 (pp. 664-675).

Author1 & Author2 (2014) BYOD4L – Our Magical Open Box to Enhance Individuals’ Learning Ecologies, in: Jackson, N. & Willis, J. (eds.) Lifewide Learning and Education in Universities and Colleges E-Book, available at http://www.learninglives.co.uk/e-book.html

Reed, P. (2015) Analysing #BYOD4L Tweetchats (Mon-Fr). The Reed Diaries http://thereeddiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/analysing-byod4l-tweetchats-mon-fr.html

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