This was led by Stephen Ehrmann from TLT and Phil Long MIT.
the full report is available at
www.tltgroup.org/iCampus/
and
icampus.mit.edu
This session was about why staff in other institutions dont pick up on innovations created elsewhere, the NIH problem (not invented here). I came because I thought there would be parallels in the barriers we face in mainstreaming our innovations across our own institution.
Basically, Microsoft gave MIT a great big wodge of cash to build cool things. A distinctive feature was that students could bid for funding - around £25k was available for each individual student project. When they offered the iCampus software to other institutions there wasnt that much take up. The list of projects reads something like TLTP type stuff. Almost all of the adoptions were outside of the US, which is very strange indeed - adopters were India, China, Australia - not that strange when you really think about I suppose. US adopters were driven through teachers meeting other teachers.
The reccomendations are about how to accelerate the development and spread of innovations like this. Unfortunately, one of the presenters like the sound of his own voice, to quote Chuck "he was a smart guy and he may just be as smart as he thinks he is..." This meant that we didnt really get around to the conclusions.
7 years and millions of dollars - if you visit the report, you should note that when Americans use the word "assessment" around things like this, they mean "evaluation."
They looked closely at 5 projects - things like using labs remotely, writing skills (! that one is called iMOAT), a system for annotating with video (XMAS), - and all this stuff was free.
this might ring a few bells - there is plenty of innovation going on, the issue is getting it to impact on students and staff.
It was when they started coming out wiht things such as "almost all educational innovations are content specific" and "regarding dissemination of content-specific innovations: peer to peer connection is crucial but doesnt scale." I started to feel an attack of the Victor Meldrews.
The real problem here, you know, might be the open source thing. How much value do you attach to something free? and is anything really free? and what is the incentive to update and support this stuff? OK, you see something you like, but then what do you have to do? figure out how to make it work in your context, realise it is using something your IT people dont like/understand/ support; if it goes wrong who do you call? etc
If you have a big buy in to the VLE as we do, then the tools somehow already fit. What worries me is that this iCampus is what Web 2.0 might look like - it's Woolies pick n mix versus Thorntons. It's Revels versus Quality Street. I like the odd chocolate lime or pear drop mainly for nostalgia/gimmick value, but give me Valhrona 80% any day.
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9 comments:
iMOAT? - I can't believe how many times I've (i'VE) heard of projects called iXXX here. Built-in redundancy or what!
ah - a chocolate analogy...how could I resist. Sometimes you want top quality (=robust, reliable, secure) and for that you are prepared to find out how to get that quality and put the extra effort into the journey to the only shop that sells it (=authentication/timelag).
Sometimes you are at your desk and you just need a quick chocolate fix and you'll take whatever is in Liz's tin - may not be your absolute favourite but it is there, easily accessible and free (in terms of cost and time - although Liz welcomes input by the user community) - lots of quick in and out web 2.0 applications are based on that philosophy...but we have to recognise that the real web 2.0 action isn't with the mavericks (=random suppliers each making their own particular product) it is the range of different easy to get, cheap chocolate bars you can choose from that all come in purple wrappers(Google=Cadbury, Rowntrees/Mars=Yahoo/Wiki-siblings). It may seem a random collection of flavours but the purple wrapper gives you the re-assurance to take a chance on something you haven't tried before. New flavours come and go (you didn't know you wanted the new ones before they arrive and you don't miss them for long after they are gone), they take over niche experts (Fry's Turkish Delight/writely) and enhance it with their better quality outer coating.
Don't confuse open access with open source. Open source is designer-indulgent - to mix the metaphor for a moment - open source is the high spec/feature rich kit car that only the builder can drive well, open access is about user choice - it is the chocolate shop - you can buy the same bar every day for life or you can try something different every time you go in.
Our challenges are clear, as Andrew said earlier, technology is open, universities tend to be closed. The disconnect - staff say "why should I", students say "why wouldn't you". We need to be prepared learn/unlearn/adapt and accept. Don't get hung up on why SL has 3 million residents, just celebrate that it does and offer opportunities for those finding meaning in those environments.
My grandmother always said you get what you pay for, though she was mostly talking about schools. She was saying that if people had to pay for public schools (note, REAL public schools, not stupid private ones that are called "public" like in the UK) in the US, they would demand more out of them. Of course they do pay in taxes, but not explicitly.
There are some free things in life, but normally they are things you don't want, and/or someone couldn't sell.
If the tools are so great, why wouldn't they hire some people to go sell them?
really???
Wikipedia, flickr, MySpace, del-icio.us, gmail, IM, google desktop...er...blogger???
Most of them are not free either really (wikipedia is donation run, so people have to pay for it). I don't know how delicious works though. The rest are all advertising based, so they are being given to us in return for our time/attention with a product. Blogger is only advertising based if you agree to it (you can add ads to your blogs and get a cut of the revenue).
Does raise an interesting point of if we are headed towards a point where what we get is mostly free but we see a ton of advertising as the price, as most of the online apps work in that way (or are supported by a company like google or yahoo who ultimately make their money that way).
Perhaps they should take their project and give it away with lots of advertising to use it. Do we recognize that advertising=payment or do we thing of it as free?
sorry Brian - I'm with Liz on this one - it is free to the end user and that is the important feature in the technology no whether the costs are covered elsewhere and it is exactly the same in your schools example - "explicitly" is the key:
"if people had to pay for public schools... they would demand more out of them. Of course they do pay in taxes, but not explicitly."
Do you think people value these services as much as if they had to pay for them explicitly? I wonder if there are potential generational differences in attitudes. It seems that many younger people are more of the view that things should not have a cost (downloading music, movies, etc.), is that why more of the services are advertising based, because some people just would not accept paying for them (I guess younger people have less money/ ability to spend it online too)?
not sure about valuing more, but I think you are right about the generational point. The scary thing to me is that it would appear that having some stuff free (or at implicit cost) that are very high quality leads to even greater expectations that other things of a similar quality should also be provided at zero cost to end user, or at least that value judgements are based on expecting higher quality for additional cost. "If I can get MIT course materials for nothing and you (SHU tutor) need me to buy a book/need me to pay fees to access your content - then it had better be much, much, much better than MIT stuff.£
To pick up on the advertising thread, I'm aware that I have a bit of a bipolar stance on this one.
On one other hand, I'm strongly opposed to advertising funding (and compromising) public services.
The US offers plenty of examples of potential problems. Eg. Students for Sale. I'm glad that we're on a heavy time lag over this one.
On the other hand I've recently set up a space for a group I'm with using wikispaces. (Free to group, but forces some low-key advertising to our users). It's so easy to get sucked in...
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