To fail is human - let's share and learn from it

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Behind every success there are lots of failures. Papers that never got published, projects that didn't get funded, courses that flopped, examinations failed, opportunities missed and so on. It happens to everyone but is seldom talked about or analysed. The success cult promoted on sites like LinkedIn shows a steady stream of successful people doing great things (more often than not "awesome"). Rather than being inspired I have often been a bit depressed when scrolling through all the success stories. It's a similar feeling at conferences which are also celebrations of success. I don't mean that we shouldn't celebrate success, but there are also lessons to be learned from less successful activities, since we can all relate to them. We may not feel we have ever reached the successful heights of the best practice cases but we can all identify with schemes that didn't win any silverware. But it's so hard to get people to share those experiences - it takes courage to admit your failures. But we could learn a lot by sharing these examples and discussing how we could improve. Most importantly hearing that even the most respected educators have failed many times in the careers.

This is the gist of a nice article by Tracy Nevatte in Times Higher Education, Lead by example and share your failures. She calls on senior academics to share their failures and how they contributed to later success. Many young researchers and teachers despair at repeated rejections and wonder if they are really cut out for a career in education and an opportunity to be rassured that everyone has felt like that at some point can be more inspiring than listening to stories of constant success.

We rarely see senior academics share their failures, either with each other or with those at the start of their careers, but their career trajectory is undoubtedly full of them. Do they not share these stories because they’re ashamed or, rather, do they not see them as failures in the first place? The latter seems more likely. Only when we normalise failure, and take the isolating power of it away, can failures equal success. But it’s going to take effort from early career researchers, research leaders, institutions and funders to get there.

There are indeed failure conferences, sharing experience and discussing how to improve. See Failcon for example. I've never managed to attend one but wish I had been able to. It's not easy, however, to attract speakers who are willing to talk about their less successful ventures and you certainly don't get any career points for doing so. Being a keynote speaker at a failure conference would not be something to post on LinkedIn. But we need to remove the shame and stigma and dare to share. Realising the even the top practitioners have a long string of flops behind them can reassure many who feel like giving up. By opening up like this and discussing our shortcomings we can also move away from the toxic overworking culture that has so often been spread on social media with people bragging about the unfeasibly long hours they spend working on their projects, papers, course design and project applications.

This post was written without any contribution from AI. I wonder if AI can discuss its own vulnerability ...

Self-assessment of digitally enhanced learning and teaching - overcoming inertia

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The pandemic threw all educational institutions into the deep end of the educational technology pool. Adapting to what was for most institutions a relatively new form of teaching and learning was a traumatic but also transformative experience. In the wake of that experience the most obvious strategy was to take stock and make a thorough review of what worked, what didn't work and how to improve in terms of using digital technology. In an increasingly unstable and unpredictable world the likelihood of further crises is extremely high and therefore the need to ensure that education can quickly adapt.

There is no shortage of research, reports, guidelines, tools, webinars and conferences to help educational institutions improve their use of educational technology in teaching and learning. Organisations like the European Commission, EUA (European University Association), EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) and many others have run projects, produced reports and run dozens of webinars and conferences all based on extensive research but somehow they seldom result in major changes on the ground. It's not simply about the adotpion of technology, that is really not the main point, it is a change towards more inclusive and active forms of teaching and learning. It's about learning to learn by active involvement in meaningful collaborative work where technology is an enabling factor. But the main barrier is the reluctance to change from the traditional information transfer model that so many people feel comfortable with and which is perceived as effective and indeed symbolic of higher education.

An excellent way to move towards this is to look carefully at how technology is used in the institution today and how this contributes to a more holistic view of teaching and learning - a process of self-assessment. This has been the focus of a recent EUA project, DIGI-HE that I have been involved in (on the advisory board). The project has included numerous studies, consultations and thematic peer groups reaching a broad range of educational institutions and in various disciplines. One report in particular offers a comprehensive overview of the wide range of self-assessment tools available and advise on their use: Developing a high performance digital education ecosystem - Institutional self-assessment instruments.

Set against this prerogative and growing strategic interest, this report presents a review of 20 instruments from around the globe designed for self-assessment of digitally enhanced learning and teaching at higher education institutions. It offers a number of insightful observations concerning their use (or non-use) by institutions for promoting both quality enhancement and digital capacity development. It should be of immediate interest to higher education institutions, but also to policy makers, developers of instruments, and generally, to all those who seek information on such instruments.

The project also produced a MOOC on FutureLearn, Inside Digital Higher Education: Self-Assessment Guide for Educators. Here institutional leaders are taken through the process of reviewing the institution's current strategies and planning for a self-assessment, looking at both risks and opportunities. The course was run during the spring but is available as an asynchronous self-study course. This is a good springboard to kick-start a change process and the project's various reports provide further guidance and inspiration from institutions who have already started their transformation process. 

This is one example of the abundance of the guidance and support available for digital transformation and pedagogical development but as the saying goes: you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Despite the clear benefits of conducting a self-assessment there seems to be a great reluctance to do so, despite the lessons of the pandemic and the abundance of research into active collaborative learning. The first barrier is the abundance of tools that creates anxiety on which one to choose. Faced with too much choice we simply don't make a choice. I think we all experience feelings like this in our daily lives when faced with the myriad of choices available in everything between insurance to telecom providers. It seems that we all suffer from inertia when it comes to actions that threaten our comforable balance. 

Self-assesment also demands a lot of time and energy at a time when most people feel already stressed and overworked. It also risks exposing wasteful practices or inequalities in the present system and thus creating conflict. The pandemic was certainly disruptive (tragically so for millions around the world) and there were signs that we would need to rethink our structures and systems to adapt to new challenges. However, we seem to have simply reverted to old practices again without much reflection. Changing the way we live and work is too demanding so we return to the default. Thatä's why we can't expect too much of institutions to embark on such costly processes voluntarily (with a few exceptions). Governments and authorities need to help them find space and time for these processes and offer incentives for doing so. Then we can hopefully create some momentum that will generate interest and widen involvement.

Reading around the world, with a little help from my network

I read a lot; it goes with the job of course but even outside work I just keep reading. At the moment I'm busy with an extremely rewarding project to read at least one novel from every country I have visited, 56 in total. In view of the environmental impact of air travel, I can't hope for any more international travel unless overland, so I will now focus on travel in my own part of the world and appreciating my past travels. One way to do that is by reading.

The idea for my reading project came from Ann Morgan's inspirational book blog, A year of reading around the world, where she documents her quest to read a book from every country in the world in one year, all 195 of them - yes, even the Vatican City! I believe in setting achievable targets and decided to limit my total, but maybe once I've done them all I could just go on and see how far I get. To get the inside story of Ann's reading marathon you can watch the TED talk she gave a few years ago.

She reached out to her readers for tips on which books to choose and I decided to make use of my own network of educators around the world in the same way. I've written many times on the concept of personal learning networks and how my contacts have helped me in so many ways over the years, answering questions, recommending work literature and sharing practice. So this time I contacted them and asked for recommended reading from their countries. So most of my reading list has come from personal recommendations making the books even more special, reflecting both the country and the tastes of my friends.

I have also been a bit liberal with my definition of countries. Three of them are self-governing Nordic territories, Greenland, Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands, but they all have distinct histories and culture and deserve special status in my list. I have also included a country that no longer exists, East Germany (DDR), that I visited several times and also had its own literary culture far removed from that of  West Germany. Some countries like the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Russia and Germany were well covered before I even started but I was surprised to discover that I had never actually read anything from countries like Spain, Portugal or Italy (apart from Roman authors from 2,000 years ago). I've now got 16 left before I reach my goal. The trickiest hurdle to clear will be Liechtenstein since as far as I can see has no novelists who have been translated into English. I have a basic knowledge of German but have never studied it and couldn't tackle a novel. Even Ann Morgan had trouble with this one and in the end read a travel book about Tibet by an author from Liechtenstein. I am restricted to reading books in English or the Scandinavian languages though maybe with a bit of patience I could manage one in French.

We tend to be very ethnocentric in our reading. Most people focus on authors from their own country or from the homes of the major publishers: the USA and the UK. Only when the Nobel prize is announced each year do authors from other countries get a chance to be in the spotlight. Just reading one book from a country doesn't give me much insight to its culture but at least I have opened the door. In many cases I have found other books that I will hopefully follow up in the future.

Another aspect of this activity is that I am affirming my love of printed books. I have a lot of packed bookshelves in the house and this project is filling them to the last centimetre. Of course I could save space and time by reading them as e-books or even audio books but then I couldn't really see my collection. My bookshelves are like a trophy cabinet in the same way my record collection used to be. My disenchantment with the digital tsunami has lead me to return to reading printed material, even the daily newspaper in the letterbox.

After the sadness of my previous post I have decided that I want to keep this blog going but widen its horizons outside the confines of educational technology. I don't intend to turn it into a book blog but I think I may include posts that reflect on my reading in the footsteps of my travels.

Frozen in the headlights of AI

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This has been the longest break between blog posts since I started this in 2008. I've been busy with other things but I also have to admit that it's hard to find a topic that inspires me just now. My retirement last year has meant that I no longer spend hours reading reports, articles and news items in the field and I am not in direct daily contact with educators and researchers to provide input and inspiration. I am still taking short assignments but have no intention of returning to full-time work. A major reason for retiring early was that I realised that I had lost my enthusiasm for the field. Educational technology is all about big business and is dominated by a few global corporations profiting from all the data they acquire from students and teachers alike. Although there are still havens of openness and collaboration, most of the internet is controlled by the big five corporations and driven by greed. I'm not sure I want to continue encouraging the use of technologies that I'm feeling increasingly uncomfortable about. This theme has been well documented by Audrey Watters who after many years of exposing the myths and bluffs of the educational technology industry finally decided to leave the field completely and start a new life (see her present blog which today is about fitness and nutrition instead of technology).

I find myself frozen in the headlights of the AI juggernaut and realise that I don't have the curiosity and energy to find out more and test new opportunities. I see many colleagues presenting optimistic ideas for how we can use AI to benefit education and how tools like ChatGPT are simply the modern equivalents of the advent of the pocket calculator or the iPhone. Yes, there are certainly benefits to using AI in education as long as we do so with caution and as long as we have control over how the data gathered is stored and used in the future. But I can't see that happening when there are such overwhelming commercial interests involved. I see enormous potential for misuse in the form of surveillance, control, automation of skilled work and an explosion of fake news and propaganda. Stop the world, I want to get off.

I found some consolation reading Tony Bates' latest post, What are the main issues facing digital learning in the future?, where he announces that he will be scaling down his work in educational technology and citing AI as the insurmountable barrier. 

I could continue in the field and still contribute to the important but specific areas of online and digital learning, but AI is the deal breaker. I would have to work so hard to become expert in this area (and even then I may not have the mathematical skills), and it is now so critical to the future of digital learning that expertise and full understanding of AI and the issues around its use in post-secondary education and teaching are absolutely essential. I hope there are younger, brighter educators coming into the field who are willing to develop this area of expertise.

The challenge of learning about AI and its implications are one step too far for me too. AI is a complete game changer and if I am not willing to devote a lot of time to learning more about it, I don't think I can be relevant in the field anymore. So I'm unsure about the future of this blog which has been a part of my life for so long. I'll wait and see if I find new inspiration in the coming months and if not I can round it off with a review of what I have learned from the process.