Reflecting on WCOL2019

On the last day of the 2019 ICDE World Conference on Online Learning it felt a bit like getting to the end of Christmas Day (or another big event that has been highly anticipated for a long time) where you stop and realise that the big thing you have been preparing for and waiting for has actually happened. I think it has been a big success for DCU and especially for the organisers of the conference (@mbrownz, @1MNGM, and the team they build around them). I want to say a hearty well done to them for a great conference experience.

Over the last few days I have had the privilege of meeting and reconnecting with some great people and saw some great presentations that meaningfully intersected with aspects of our DCU Connected practices, experiences, travails, and research interests.

At the end of the pre-conference event that took place on DCU’s St. Pat’s Campus on the 3rd Nov my colleague @orna_farrell and @mbrownz launched the Teaching online is different: Critical perspectives from the literature report (for more details see this blog post and for a related needs analysis report see here). I found that the findings in this report around elements of high quality online teaching especially when performed by part-time online educators were echoed and reinforced at different points in the conference. One example was a presentation from @hodgesc (Georgia Southern University) that highlighted the importance for part-time online educators of timely response/instructor availability and the provision of clear assignment instructions.

A second highlight for me centres around the theme of openness. First I had the opportunity to present with my colleague Dr. Megan Gaffney on an open pedagogy assessment in a psychology module (discussed on the blog before here and here). But more important than this was the opportunity to receive encouragement in our iterating toward increased openness from valued friends like @thatpsychprof and @catherinecronin who were themselves at the conference to highlight open practices and policies. Thank you!

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Finally, supporting adult, online learners presents a host of challenges in terms of offering supports tailored for their needs and ensuring that institutional central services work for them, and it was cathartic to hear from many other delegates who face the same or similar issues, and useful to hear how they faced those challenges. In a session where @orna_farrell and I presented on behalf of a research team looking at how we supported refugees to study on our open access, online programmes other researchers presented on: the importance of work and family factors for DE student well-being (Dr. Philippa Waterhouse from @OpenUniversity); a no-cost online learning course for primary caregivers of older adults (Dr. Lorraine Carter from @McMasterU); and on mental health challenges faced by adult learners (Lorna Rourke from @StJeromesUni). Thank you all for sharing your work with adult learners.

There were other noteworthy aspects to the conference, but I think this post is long enough already!

The Sweet Summer Heartache of Leading an Online Learning Programme

This post marks my return to the blogosphere after being in a preparing-for-the-new-academic-year-of-an-online-learning-programme fugue state since early August. Some of my colleagues and I have taken to referring to that August-September period as the #timeofgreatsorrow as we knuckle-down to try and get as much of the online learning materials (completing edits, updates, and design/development of new materials), assessments, VLE/LMS infrastructure updates, etc. etc. ready for the start of the year. Our philosophy is, where possible, to provide students with access to all learning materials and assessments on the first day of the academic year. Although I have been gradually working on the flow of work during the whole year, trying to move elements of work to other times of the year, I have yet to find a way around the sweet summer heartache of having to drop all research, writing and service work to focus 100% on this teaching and learning work for at least two months. It is rewarding work, but it is exhausting.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Much of what causes the #timeofgreatsorrow is the way in which our DCU Connected programmes run by my Unit (Open Education Unit) use a teaching and learning model created specifically for online, off-campus study where small teams of full-time academic staff work with larger teams of part-time, off-campus, adjunct faculty who fulfil specific teaching and learning roles (described in Brunton et al. 2018). This provides many benefits in terms of the oversight that I have over the programme and the consistency that results in terms of learning materials, assessments, student experience etc. It also allows my unit to be a lean, efficient one that can exist in an education system that does not provide the same supports to off-campus, online students that it does for their on-campus, full-time counterparts. But, during times of intensity I can become a bottle-neck for the progress as almost everything comes through me for quality checks and final sign-off. During the summer the only way to stay out of bottle-neck city and get everything done is to focus on T&L work and pull extra hours in a calculated game of chicken with both the start of the academic year and burnout.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

But, I am out from under the start of the year (in week four…), the programme looks great after the work that was done, and the students are happy (the biggest numbers we have had so far on this open access/education, online, UG psychology programme), and I am ready to figure out where I left all that research and writing work and get back into things like writing blog posts.

Onward!

GDPR, Data Ethics, & Final Year (Psychology) Research Projects

Protecting the data of participants in research studies is a particular focus of psychology programmes, especially those accredited by Professional Societies with their own ethical codes of practice, e.g. the Psychological Society of Ireland or the British Psychological Society. The (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), launched in May 2018, and the enhanced data protection rights it grants within the EU adds additional layers of complexity to what psychology students must learn about and be able to implement in their research. Additionally, it places greater implications in terms of action, with regard to both their legal and ethical responsibilities in conducting research that collects peoples’ data, especially when that data is classified as sensitive in an ethical and/or legal sense. In the 2018-2019 academic year my team and I needed to enhance the way in which undergraduate psychology students (on the DCU Connected Psychology Major programme) learn about data ethics and (legal) responsibilities in an online, 15 ECTS credit, final year research project module (PY320: Advanced Research Methods and Project).

GDPR is a complicated, highly legalistic set of responsibilities for all professional researchers (i.e. staff) to get their heads around, and many researchers are struggling to understand data protection responsibilities and the implications for their research practice. Some institutional documents on GDPR, created to cover everything from administrative handling of student data, to campus companies, to researchers, are too general to be useful to researchers in this work. If experienced researchers often struggle with GDPR, what do we have to do to help students to get to grips with their data protection responsibilities?

The Psychology Major team’s usual practice with final year research projects is that students, under supervision, go through a process equivalent to the full university ethical approval process, with the ‘full’ form assessed by a local ethics panel acting with devolved authority from the university Research Ethics Committee (REC). Enhancing this process involved: using the university’s new form, now with separate sections for data ethics and GDPR; gathering the additional data protection forms and making them available to students through the modules Moodle course and an online Psychology Laboratory (DPIA [risk assessment document] & PDSS [spreadsheet listing use of data]); providing students with briefings on GDPR responsibilities; and then working out the bugs in this new process, for staff and students in terms of things like misunderstandings of the definition of personal data, through the ethical approval process. I feel this went well, and in 19/20 the teams’ aim is to more cohesively work the new materials, forms, and teaching on GDPR into the flow of the module.

The Moodle course for the PY320 module, and our online Psychology Laboratory

This experience has made me think differently around data ethics and legal responsibilities, both in terms of how I will now go through risk assessment and data protection work in my own research and also in how to teach UG psychology students about this area. In our online learning materials I think I will separate out data ethics and responsibilities from the other ethical concerns students must consider in their projects, given the specific considerations in this area.

This post relates to my role as the current Committee Chair for the Psychological Society of Ireland’s (PSI – @PsychSocIreland) Division of Academics, Teachers, and Researchers in Psychology (DATRIP). In June, the Division launched a monthly series of online brown-bag lunchtime sessions. The format for these sessions is short, 10-minute presentations from one or two presenters, followed by questions and answers, comments from those with other experiences/expertise on the topic, and general discussion. Topics can be on any topic that is relevant to the aims of the division, i.e. that promote best practice in teaching and research in psychology. This is a forum for the sharing of knowledge and expertise among psychologists working in research and/or teaching fields. The first session in June was facilitated by Dr. David Hevey (TCD) and I and it focused on Open Education and specifically Open Science/Publishing and the implications of the work being done by the (Irish) National Open Research Forum (NORF). The July session relates to the post above, invovling a short presentation by me with related discussion. If you are interested in these kind of sessions please keep an eye on my twitter account and the Division Facebook page.

Video-based Career Supports for Psychology Students

One of the many great presentations I saw at the second annual conference of the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Division of Academics, Researchers, and Teacher (DART-P) (@BPS_DARTP) related to The Talking Jobs video series/careers podcasts for psychology on YouTube, produced by Dr Rachel Bromnick from the University of Lincoln (@unilincoln).

This is a great example of technology being used to aid psychology students in better understanding the different possible career possibilities, as well as practical advice on getting ready to pursue career opportunities. It is also a great example of an academic going way above and beyond to innovate to the benefit of students.

I provide students on my programme with periodic careers webinars focusing on different sub-disciplines of psychology, along with one to one advice when sought, but this kind of innovative practice is on another level.

Productivity, Wellbeing & Academic Workload

I recently attended a very useful CPD event organised by the Division of Work and Organisational Psychology in the Psychological Society of Ireland on Productivity. The event was given by Dr. Richard MacKinnon a workplace psychologist and managing director of WorkLifePsych (@dr_mackinnon), who has a straightforward and effective approach to how we can reflect on, and improve how we work in order to positively impact our overall wellbeing in a holistic way by looking at a number of pillars of productivity. You can find out about this (psychological) evidence-based approach to thinking about your productivity in a podcast co-hosted by Dr. MacKinnon, My Pocket Psych, specifically starting at episode 32. The show notes relating to the different episodes contain a number of very useful resources.

Image of woman working at a desk with a planner, laptop, notebook, and phone. She has one hand to her head as if a little overwhelmed. — Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com

Tools that can help those working in higher education to manage their workloads and improve wellbeing in a holistic way are to be welcomed, especially in academic roles with the open ended nature of that work and the expectation of continually maintaining excellence across a number of areas. The pressures of academic roles have been brought into sharp relief recently in three reports from the UK, with two research reports on wellbeing in universities, from the charity Education Support Partnership (reported on in an article in The Guardian,
‘It’s cut-throat’: half of UK academics stressed and 40% thinking of leaving) and a report from the UK Higher Education Policy Institute (Pressure Vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education staff).

Take care of yourselves everyone!

Follow up on Piloting an Open Pedagogy Assessment

I have created a blog, Open Psych, for the students of the DCU Connected BA in Humanities (Psychology Major) to openly share aspects of their academic work in order to communicate valuable and interesting psychological knowledge to the public. Relating to my earlier Piloting an Open Pedagogy Assessment post I have shared the work of students on the intermediate level Developmental and Educational Psychology module in the online, DCU Connected BA in Humanities (Psychology Major) programme in 2018/2019. These students produced an #openpedagogy assignment where they created a communication, in the form of a digital information pamphlet or infographic, that is shared with the public, advising schools and educators on how to improve adolescent mental health and wellbeing.

eg image — image from the Open Psych blog

I would love to hear from others if this was this a good way to go? What other ways could this work have been shared?

Reflecting on an Online Networked Learning course (ONL191)

ONL191 is an Online Networked Learning that was developed as a response to a growing need for courses dealing with the use of digital tools for teaching and learning. The course design is based on open, collaborative and networked learning practices and participants explore how a problem-based learning format can be utilised for CPD in an online learning environment.

The structure of the course unfolds over 12 weeks: an introduction week; a second week for members of problem based learning (PBL) groups to get acquainted with one another; and then five two-week periods with each focused on a different topic (Online Participation and Digital Literacies; Open learning – Sharing and Openness; Learning in Communities – Networked Collaborative Learning; Design for Online and Blended Learning; Lessons Learning – Future Practice). Within each two-week topic there is a relatively small amount of content to go through compared to other free online courses/MOOCs in this area (academic readings, videos, other open online resources) an overall webinar on the topic, a tweetchat, and within each PBL group there are a number of online meetings as the group discusses the topic, examines a related scenario, and use the FISh method to analyse and come up with a way of answering some or all of the issues raised in the scenario.

Fish model

The bunch-o-humans PBL approach in this course was interesting, productive and set it apart from similar courses that I have taken, which usually tend to use the model of providing much more content with a supporting facility for comments providing the point of human contact. I think it scared some participants off early in the course but it made me fully commit to this course, attend regularly, and do the related work as I felt a commitment to the group I was in. I found there was good utility in the PBL model as a basis for CPD activity, and I will consider using it in CPD activities I design for colleagues. The FISh model is also an interesting tool that I have added to my toolkit. The course has also pushed me to start blogging on my professional practice, which is a good or bad thing depending on your point of you. I am not sure the world needed another EduBlog. Finally, interacting with my PBL group has highlighted to me that I know more than I realise about some topics, and that my obsessive hoarding of references, resources, models etc. can reap benefits when I share them in such a community.

I enjoyed this course and recommend it to others 🙂

The Empathy Map as an Early Learning Design Activity

Topic 4 for the ONL191 course focuses on how to support and design for learning, with a particular emphasis on accounting for emotional presence (in the context of the Community of Inquiry framework) in learning design. My problem based learning group decided to focus on an Empathy Map learning design exercise that would be used early in the design process. This exercise, taken from the Extend Ontario materials, helps to empathise with, and better understand, the learner for whom we are designing a learning experience. It is, perhaps, an exercise better suited to those scenarios where you are working on something that students are already encountering/using so that you can base the map on formal and informal feedback you already have. If you are working on something brand new then mocking up personas may be a more effective way to go (for examples see Grainne Conole’s augmented 7Cs), or at least mock up your personas first before using the empathy map. Here are some examples of my groups early attempts at using the empathy map.

The Value of Learning Communities

Rather than try to answer the question myself of why there is value in being a member of a learning community, or even better several learning communities, I decided to ask some of the other participants at the marvellous OER19 conference that took place in beautiful Galway city, Ireland on the 10th and 11th of April. What they said is here in full in this Youtube playlist. Cherry picking my favourite parts of their answers the value of being in a learning community is that it is a route to continuous learning as you learn from interacting with others, being exposed to different perspectives, and that is is simply more fun to walk the road with others than alone!

Thank you to to @wfvanvalkenburg @gconole @cathycasserly @TomFarrelly & @TerrymagNF for being willing to give their thoughts!