Oct
26
Thoughts on Educause 2007
October 26, 2007 |
It is hard not to be impressed by the scale and organisation of a conference the size of Educause – 7000 delegates and the programme and logistics that go with it are no mean feat. There is nothing to compare within the UK or EU which is both regrettable and not surprising. I had heard vague comments about Educause sessions being long on hype and short on delivery, but from my one experience this year I couldn’t level that criticism. The majority of the sessions I attended were good, some very good, and overall I succeeded in my plan to learn more about Web 2.0 activities and issues around changing student needs and expectations.
I guess that the things I take from the conference fall into two main groups: Web 2.0 and its impact on institutions, and just how different students are becoming both in their needs but also their approaches to study.
The work at Xavier seemed to present a clear message that to embrace Web 2.0 technologies, existing structures need to be abandoned for more personalised and user-centred approaches (also entirely relevant to the work we have begun around the JISC web site). The Wisconsin-Madison session reinforced the idea that social networking technology is also all about engagement, something maybe institutions lose sight of sometimes, and that these approaches lead to a very different way of working; trawling great ranges of information and then filtering it for trust and value. Wisconsin also highlight the fact that institutions shouldn’t try to tamper with these technologies but just adopt what is already there.
The Project Technology exercise threw up interesting issues around both staff issues as well as structural questions commenting that adopting Web 2.0 approaches has a broad institutional impact that needs the active involvement of students both in terms of content creation and institutional planning. Equally the work at Marist acknowledged the deep changes needed in pedagogy and institutional structures and approaches that Web 2.0 brought with it and amplified the view that this can only be done with the genuine and deep involvement of the student body
Throughout all the session I was struck by the recognition that students have changed and are continuing to change and that institutions needs to change with them. The Committee of Inquiry being run by JISC could do well with listening to many of the comments coming out of these (albeit US) examples. The ECAR survey highlighted the fact that there is no such thing a standard student; the use of social networking technology has not peaked; there is increasing use of mobile technologies; teaching is still of high importance and institutions need to deal with help desk needs, WiFi and mobile and handheld issues. Finally the Tomorrows Student survey stress the disconnect between adults and students, institutions need to consider much younger students when considering student needs and the digital natives won’t enter universities until around 2014.
