Institute of Change Management

"Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards" - Bob Dylan

The University of Brighton Business School has announced a formal launch for the Institute of Change Management ™.

When: 18th June 2008
Where: University of Brighton, Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, Brighton
What time: 5.30pm onwards

This gathering will be the first in a series of networking events, where change management practitioners will be able to mix, exchange experiences, renew old friendships and make new ones. A varied programme of guest speakers, information about the role and activity of the Institute and facilitated networking will be buoyed along by food and refreshments.

If you would like to attend the event from 5.00pm 18 June, please respond to Business.Services@brighton.ac.uk or telephone + 44 (0)1273 643222.

Susan Bull and Open Learner Models: Special Issues of IJAIE

"Turn the pages you didn't open ..." - Gene Clark

I shared an office with Susan Bull at the University of Brighton in the late 1990s. Susan, who has now moved to the University of Birmingham, is one of the most imaginative and hard working people I ever met and she has produced umpteen trillion papers on Learner Modeling and in particular Open Learner Models. I wish I had thought of open learner models myself but at least I was lucky enough to co-author a couple of papers with Susan (Bull & Shurville, 1999a, 1999b).

So what are open learner models? Over to Susan and her co-authors ...

• "The learner model is central to an adaptive educational system, as it is the model of the learner’s understanding (and possibly also other attributes such as their goals, motivation, learning preferences, etc.), that enables a system to adapt to the individual user’s current learning requirements. Traditionally, the learner model has been closed to the learner since its primary purpose, as indicated above, has been to allow a system to adapt to the individual’s needs. For several decades now, the Artificial Intelligence in Education community has been developing methods for modelling learners, and dealing with the dynamics and potential inaccuracy of learner models. One promising approach to improving the accuracy of the learner model is to open the contents of the model to the learner it represents, to allow them to suggest additional information, or to propose corrections to entries, thereby helping to maintain the accuracy of a system’s model of the user’s knowledge and other attributes relevant to the specific educational context. A second benefit of this interactive approach to learner modelling is that the learner model now plays a new role – not only can the learner contribute information to help increase the accuracy and therefore the utility of their learner model for adaptation purposes, but the model can also become a learning resource for the student in its own right. Such an open learner model (i.e. a learner model accessible to the learner modelled) offers the learner a perspective on their understanding that is not usually available to them, which can facilitate reflection on their knowledge and on the learning process more generally, as students must carefully consider their knowledge state before suggesting changes to their model. Furthermore, even non-interactive open learner models (that is, learner models that are inspectable but not changeable by the user) have the potential to prompt learner reflection and metacognition in a similar manner, as they confront the learner with information about their understanding which is likely to provoke some kind of cognitive reaction from them." (Bull, Dimitrova, and McCalla, 2007).
  

That more or less says it all. My only comment is that open learner models herald a way for artificial intellgence in education to embrace constructivist and student-centred approaches. To my mind reflection and metacognition have to outshine passive grazing of knowledge. It would be trendy to mention that open learner models have potential in personal learning environments and connections to learner-generated contexts. As Lyn Pemberton used to tease, I'm so a la mode that I'm going to do it anyway.

Susan has just co-edited a pair of special issues of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education that introduce the state of play and current research issues in open student models. I recommend that anyone with an interest in AI and education should read the first and second parts of the introduction (Bull, Dimitrova & McCalla, G, 2007; Dimitrova, McCalla & Bull, 2007). Susan's has a paper in the issue with Judy Kay of the University of Sydney 'Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI
:-) Learner Modelling Framework' , which takes us toward a common framework to compare and contrast open learner models. Phil Agre argues that research in AI goes through neat and scruffy phases and both are necessary to make progress. It is good to see the emergence of a neat framework to tie the field of open learner models together. Now people can get on with some wild and scruffy research!

With further progress in mind, I notice from her home page that Susan has some PhD opportunities available and is particularly interested in supervising PhD students interested in open learner modelling, adaptive learning environments, mobile learning or computer-assisted language learning. If you are setting out in educational technology then having Susan as a supervisor would be a grand way to start. I certainly learned a lot sharing that office.

References

• Bull, S., Dimitrova, V. & McCalla, G. (2007). Open Learner Models: Research Questions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 1), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 83-87.
• Dimitrova, V., McCalla, G. & Bull, S. (2007). Open Learner Models: Future Research Directions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 2), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(3), 217-226.
• Bull, S. & Kay, J. (2007). Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI Open Learner Modelling Framework, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 89-120.
• Bull, S. & Shurville, S. (1999a). Cooperative Writer Modeling: Facilitating Reader-Based Writing with Scrawl. In Morales, R., Pain, H., Bull, S. and Kay, J. (eds), Proceedings of Workshop on Open, Interactive and Other Overt Approaches to Learner Modeling, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education 1999, pp 1-8.
• Bull S. & Shurville S. (1999b). Online Reader, Writer and Student Models to Support the Writing Process. In Kay J. (ed.) The Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on User Modeling 1999, Banff, Canada, pp 295–297.

Postgraduate Courses in E-Learning at Brighton and Sussex

"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name ..." - Theme from Cheers by Lance Mannion

As there is a dearth of education and training opportunities for e-learning specialists, I would like to mention a course that I always hear good things about. The University of Brighton and Sussex University have joined forces to offer a Post Graduate Certificate in E-Learning Design. The following information is quoted from the course web site at Sussex:

“The PGCert in E-Learning Design is a part-time programme aimed at those working in or intending to work in the e-learning industry. Two potential awards are available: a 60 credit and a 90 credit version. The 60-credit PGCert in E-Learning Design is suitable for students with a background in education, multimedia or computing. This programme provides a means of augmenting their skillsets to fit the needs of the e-learning industry. For those already working in the industry, the 90 credit PGCert in E-Learning Design (Professional Practice) offers opportunities to strengthen and expand existing knowledge and skills, and to demonstrate proficiency in a professional setting. Areas covered by the programme include e-learning design, learning technologies, project management, and theories of learning (60 and 90 credit versions). The full 90 credit PGCert in E-Learning Design (Professional Practice) provides an opportunity to develop effective reflective practice in the workplace. Successful graduates from either version may choose to use credits gained in this course towards an MSc in Learning Technologies offered by the University of Brighton.” (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/publications/pgrad2007/areasofstudy/Computing,%20artificial%20intelligence%20and%20IT/16376)

The Brighton MSc offers the following topics: User-centred Design and Development, Research Design and Evaluation, Project Management, New Media Applications Development, Theories of Learninge, Learning Development, and a Major Project.

As an ex-employee and graduate of both universities I know many of those involved in teaching these courses and can thus highly recommend them. If you are looking for a qualification in E-Learning then these are great courses to investigate. Of course if I have my way they will soon face some additional competition from down under ...

Themed issue of Campus-Wide Information Systems: Community @ Brighton: a year in the life of Web 2.0 at Brighton

"An' when some punk comes a looking for sound ... Rastaferi goes to ground" - The Clash

I am working with well-known Brighton Business School yardie Asher Rospigliosi who is editing a themed issue of Campus-Wide Information Systems on 'Community @ Brighton: A Year in the Life of Web 2.0 at Brighton'. During the academic year 2006/7 the University of Brighton made the Elgg Social Networking platform available to all 33,000 staff and students as an institutional platform. So Brighton now brings a year’s experience of ubiquitous social networking, which has generated technical data and grounded pedagogic reflection. The proposed issue will draw together a range of pedagogic, social and technical perspectives, to explore the opportunities and problems of nurturing and supporting campus wide social networks.

• Community@Brighton – implementing a institution-wide social network by Stan Stanier


• See what I’m saying by Patrick Letchska and Jill Seddon


• Who spoke first by Asher Rospigliosi, Simon Shurville and Sue Greener


• Supporting alternate reality games with Elgg by Katie Piatt


• Using C@B for PDP by Deshinder Gill & Stan Stanier


• Defining the Field by Glenn Longden-Thurgood & Stan Stanier


• Reflections on a year of Community by Sue Greener

The issue should be hot off the press in 2008.

Excellent change management text book by Mark Hughes

"... please tell me you all - why does good change take so long?" - Greg Brown

Projects are synonymous with change. Hence the project management community has learnt that managing a significant project entails managing concomitant change on behalf of the project team and the stakeholders. Problematically, however, the rational and teleological approaches that dominate project management (Pollack, 2007) are more suited to directing technical processes and logistics than to the subtleties of wrangling complex emotions and politics. Worse, the change dimension of significant projects is inherently ‘wicked’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973). This means that identifying and characterising the potential change issues, selecting approaches to ameliorate them and identifying metrics to evaluate progress are irreducible parts of each particular project. Consequently project managers must accept the lack of steadfast algorithms for planning, implementing or evaluating change. Hence, when managing change hard nosed, logical positivist project managers need to learn how to interweave softer, less deterministic mindsets into their professional practice. Realising this, as a working project manager, I decided to update my skills and sought a course that would address the non-algorithmic people side of projects and change.

So I recently completed a two year part time M.A. in Change Management at the University of Brighton taught by Mark Hughes and Steve Reeve. The course was great as it used action learning/research to share experiances between experianced managers. A perfect learning design for the target group. Mark has now published the excellent text book 'Change Management: a Critical Perspective'. Mark's text is a blessing to educators because it presents rigorous arguments against reifying positivist approaches to change, together with sober alternatives, and contextualizes these arguments within a first rate evidence-base. This approach sets a radical agenda squarely within the workplace while opening the floodgates for critical and reflective debate in the classroom. I am currently reviewing the book and hope to publish the review in the journal Project Management in Business.

Mark also recently published ‘When Faculties Merge: Communicating Change’ in the recent special issue of Organizational Transformation and Social Change that Tom Browne and I edited. In the paper he brought his extensive subject knowledge of change management to bear in the context of his personal experience of a radical change to his faculty. Mark suggested that ‘the storytelling approach may be regarded as an antidote to the often prescriptive/normative nature of the change literature’. This provided a worked example to back up the assertions in this book. Anyone interested in change management in higher education would be advised to read the paper and the book.

Mark is also interested in 'Encouraging and Supporting Postgraduates Who Wish to Publish Work from Their Studies'. I think his approach works well with enquiry based learning, mode 2 and could be adapted to web 2.0.

References

• Pollack, J. (2007). The Changing Paradigms of Project Management. International Journal of Project Management. Volume 25, Issue 3 pp 266-274.
• Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 155-69.