Learning technologists - the next phase?
Subject: Learning technologists - the next phase?
Date: Friday, September 18, 2009 10:02
From: Terry McAndrew
Conversation: learning technologists - the next phase?
... I too have read this thread with interest. I’m not a ‘learning technologist’, I am an IT manager who works with IT for learning and teaching. Sometimes I’m glue, on other days a small cog. However, if the future of the learning technologist has been somewhat truncated by the introduction of the VLEs and the demand for the processes that support them, then there may be other opportunities about to spring up. I’ll be brief and don’t take this too literally.
One of the current frontiers is all about Open Educational Resources (OER) and the drive to get sustainable processes to produce L&T resources which can be ‘re-purposed, re-mixed and re-used’. The heavy industry to enable these resources to be found and adopted is in place but the drivers to get lots of content into the pot have needed a bit of help. The current UKOER pilot projects for the individual, institutional and subject strands are seeking to identify and tackle the issues to enable OER release to work in an effective and sustainable way. This is where the ‘learning technologists’ have an opportunity and it sometimes mystifies me why the ALT community appear not to be working simultaneously at the subject discipline level outside their host institution. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer.aspx
There must be plenty of material not very visible e.g. behind VLEs, which could benefit other similar students but the hassle of sharing itself (“why bother?”) limits the re-use of the items. Learning technologists will work on solutions for academics and their students in a particular discipline but fail to inform the wider discipline community that a solution exists – presenting at the ALT is partially preaching to the converted; there are lots of potential adopters who do not follow the ALT.
One way to do this could be through an article in the appropriate subject centre literature (bulletins or journal papers) or maybe just an appropriate tag. Using my own subject centre as an example, use ’(#)heabio’ for the Higher Education Academy’s Bioscience community (a shameless plug) or share your bioscience delicious bookmarks with heabio (something we are dabbling with). Will next generation ‘Learning Technologist’ be one who can identify the existing resources/materials in the spaces and repositories and then re-mix or build on them AND write it up in such a way that the experience can be found & shared to their professional credit through publication AND publish it through popular social software? C’mon you guys, get your blogs, bookmarks and tags aligned, identify yourselves to your subject centre, and let the rest of us find and expand the market for all your hard work! Surely this will boost the profile of the ‘Learning technologist’.
http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/events/themes/elearn/
Regards,
Terry McAndrew
C&IT Manager
Centre for Bioscience, The Higher Education Academy
Room 9.15
Worsley Medical and Dental building
University of Leeds LS2 9JT.
