Felly dwi'n meddwl, yr wych yn cael ei ddoch yn dweud y ddau. Felly mae'n meddwl, yn meddwl, yn dda i'r ysgrïdd cyfan. Mae'n meddwl yn ddiwrnod o'r aelod ni'n gw tan, ddweud wrth ei ddweud ar lawn. Yn ymarfer, rydyn ni wedi gweld i ei hynny'r ysgaw MRF, sy'n фosbeth hynny'r ysgrifennu o'r gwnod arall dwi'n meddwl i'r ysgrïdd. I'm Joe Wilson from the Scottish Qualifications Authority. We are head of New Ventures. I'm just going to start off some of the thinking that I think we need to get going today. First of all, I'm a member of the Association for Learning Technology. This is one of their sick groups that is organised this event today. You'll hear a bit more in a minute or two, but we're always very grateful for all providing a lever and a neutral kind of space for us to move in to discuss things that actually affect us beyond institutional, departmental, public body land, the kind of open space that we actually need to think in often to move things forward. We've got a day today that really looks at all things open. Why is it a good time to look at all things open? Well, if I look across the sectors that I'm engaged with, if we look at schools across Scotland, still coming through a major innovative curriculum called curriculum for excellence, at the Shackland, as we speak, and some of you will be aware, there's lots of noise and chattering around the first rollout of the new National Four and National Five qualifications. Next year, new hires were about to do reformed advanced hires as well. With all of that all going on, it's a very good time to have another look at how we all work together to help our colleagues who teach in schools to support them with learning materials and resources. I really have a thing again about who's at the centre of all of this, which is the learner. It's all about the learner and life-long learning. It's not about these barriers that we create around what happens in schools or what happens in front of education, or gosh, only universities in higher education do that, or that's nothing to do with this community learning. In fact, the learners at the heart of all of this, and if we get it right and we use technology wisely, and we have an open and sharing culture, then we can actually do a whole lot more for our learners. The same too if you look at college space. If you look at college spaces now, colleges are just coming through, and I'm on the board of the college, so I'll use this word advisedly, quite a brutal period of reform and regionalisation where, with all the best will in the world, a lot of the efforts are all focused on due diligence around regionalisation, of restructuring and all of these kind of things, and there's a danger in that too that we lose a focus on the learner and life-long learning. There were too busy worrying about restructuring and doing all these things, but we don't take time to think about how we might share things, how shared services might be in the future, how we should be working together. Universities too in Scotland I think probably are in the most privileged position. I do use that word advisedly too. I think we're very lucky to have a government that supports the principle of free higher education, but I think there's a good pro quo in that too. I think if higher education is free, what else can universities do to support life-long learning in the college space and the school space? And I think too if you look at the coverage just in the last week, particularly from down south about students who are now paying customers beginning to complain to ombusmen and various other things about the service culture in higher education. We shouldn't be asleep at the wheel about that, but that fundamental relationship between institutions and learners is changing, and it's changing above all because actually learners don't have to come to any of our institutions anymore to learn. If they're self-actualised learners, there's lots of learning there already, be it the car mechanic learning how to fix things by having a look at YouTube through to the investment analyst busy doing a MOOC from Stanford. There is a bit in all of this where all of us and our institutions have to re-evaluate how we are supporting learners, and the best way to do it, I believe, is through much greater openness and much greater sharing of things. So things that I think have happened by now, but aren't there, things like, where are the communities of practice of, let's look at some of the hotspots in the system, everybody always complains that schools or colleges don't get the teaching of maths or the teaching of computational thought. But where are the communities of practice of the shared materials or these things cascading round the system, particularly from the big seats of learning, where a lot of these rocks often fly out from, usually straight into the Scotsman or the Heron saying that somehow teachers can't do this or somebody wouldn't it be good if that noise stopped and rather than criticism, learning materials and resources flowed out round the system, cos that would help rather than just be noise. Where are we in terms of looking at new models of assessment? If we've got learners moving through schools and colleges and on into universities, how are we enabling a learner to take their portfolio of learning with them, not just the paper certificates, the SQA, give people or that scroll that universities give people. What employers want to see is they want to see that rich collection of things that differentiate us as people and differentiate us as learners. And we need e-portfolios that follow the students, that aren't things that get switched off after the students left. There's lots of evidence in the college space that there's good stuff happening around e-portfolios and things, but when the student goes back to get the stuff a year later, cos they're not a student anymore, so all of that has been deleted and chucked out for the next student. There are clever cloud services, some of which are free, that we should be thinking about using across the system. We just need to open badges and new kinds of credentials and sit in amongst all of this too. Beyond formal education, the people that we all touch directly, how can we help community learning? One of the big challenges we've got in the system is digital participation. A learner or even a citizen without a browser now is at a disadvantage. They can't engage with civil society. They can't actually claim DWP benefits and things of that without, because as government services move to digital by default, we're not empowering these people. So again, how can we open up resources to support the voluntary agencies and all of these folk who are out in the front line in communities trying to get communities switched on and motivated and turning these folk not into alienated subgroups, but turning them into lifelong learners and empowering them. So we won't manage all of that today, but what we've got today really is a programme looking at all of these kind of open things. Some of you might be, or somebody has to comes along to these kind of events. In the audience, you're a mixture of school people, mainly higher education people and some for the education people, and a lot of folk that one way or another have got, you might not always appreciate it, because the tiller's sometimes quite small, but some of you have also got the hands and some of the controls that can make some of this open stuff really happen. If we just keep pushing a bit, and this open stuff isn't just happening here, it's happening all around the world, and I'll shut up with that, but hopefully that's what you begin to think. You'll see the programme and I want to just focus as they come up. And really now I'd like to introduce my people who will do a wee bit about core altars. Thank you very much, Joan. Hello everybody. I always get the privilege to be the first one to talk at this event that I think is the third time I've come along to tell you a little bit about what we're up to and what we're hoping to work on with you. But before I begin to talk to you a little bit about what the association does, what we do with our membership, I wanted to share a more personal reflection, because I think the first time I came to the Old Scotland State was in 2012 at Glasgow and Cognodonian University in Linda hosted us, and I think some of you were there as well. I can definitely see familiar faces, but there were maybe 25 of us at most, and we were talking about how we could make this group, the Old Scotland Special Interest Group, really flourish as a group of members of the association, grow and influence, how we could become more involved in policy development, how we could become more involved with schools, with colleges, not just with universities, and how we could really make an impact. I'm really proud that two years on we are now here in the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh, and not only has the size of this group really grown, but also with support from the GISC, RSE and from SQA, we've been able to put together a very exciting programme. Gone are the days where there was a few of us and we were sharing a bit more informal updates, but I'm really excited about the amount of engagement this group's been able to pull together. I'm aware that there might be other old members who are not in Scotland watching this online, but I think it's fair to say that this is one of our most active, most influential special interest groups, and I'm really proud that as an association we have such active membership in Scotland. Over the past two years, we've also come to a watershed milestone for ALT itself, in that we've published a new shared vision for the future in the beginning of this year, in February, in a new ALT strategy, and I'm sure you'll get this presentation afterwards, so hopefully you can click on the links and see what I'm talking about. But one of the key issues in the new strategy that we've really set out is to work more with policymakers, more with government, to try and really convey the voice of our members, and I'm hoping that some of what we'll hear today will help them form policy here in Scotland, but also more widely. And we've also had a real emphasis on growth internationally, and also collaboration internationally, and I think that's one of the really important role that the special interest groups have played in really helping to provide geographically bound or topic bound focuses for engagement for people, to kind of build those supportive networks that Jo was talking about. Trying to really build mechanisms for which people can share resources, can share ideas, but can also be honest about what doesn't work and what we need to work on. But also, not everything we care about is digital, and I was in Glasgow only a few weeks ago to see Jo and Sarah Cununius and Linda Greener, the co-chairs of our conference this year, and I didn't take the opportunity to go and see the School of Art. I didn't get to see the library. I've never actually been there. I'm hoping some of you will be more fortunate than me. But one of the things, apart from being personally a library fanatic, that this news story and this strategy really made me think about is that not everything in digital, not everything in learning technology is digital. There is many things we care about, and what we care about the most is obviously people, but also things that we create together. So I thought in this presentation I wanted to talk to you a lot about some of the member-led things that our association currently does, and then we're able to do. And one of the areas where we've been really active over the last year or two is our MOOCs special interest groups, and some of them are involved in that, I know. And also an upcoming event that's running in June on MOOCs, where we ran a conference at Southampton last year. And there's also the Open Education Special Interest Group, and they're running the OER conference. And I'm hoping very much that maybe in 2016 that conference will be in Scotland, I think 2015 will be in Wales. So it's a really exciting space where we're very active internationally. And also I'm joining the Open Policy Network, which I think is something we're very much looking into both as an association and as a special interest group. A really interesting international collaboration very much committed to learning, teaching and assessment in the open. But also I think we're trying hard and I think this is a good example today in this event. Collaborating with partners including Jisk and the Association of Colleges, and a lot of other sector bodies, both specifically in specific regions and countries, but also internationally. I'm sorry. One of the things I'm most interested in finding out more about today, and I think we're all hoping that you'll be able to join a lively debate, is the policy and the Scottish Open Education Declaration. We've been, I think, getting some comments already, and there's obviously a declaration on the internet you can look at. But I'm very curious to see if this is a model that could be shaping some of the work on open education and particularly declarations and commitments to that in other areas of the work we do. So I'm extremely interested in that in particular in the debate this afternoon. But one of the things I think that my role in this in particular today is also as we work in other areas of policy development, both government particularly on the further education learning technology action group and the now broader education technology action group. One of the things I'm very passionate about is helping us learn in forums like today's meeting and translating that back into other policy contexts, because there are certainly a lot we can learn from the work we do here with you in Scotland and try and apply that in other areas. So that is one of the things I in particular want to take back. But I also want to talk a little bit about some upcoming things, and I'm aware that Joe and Sarah and Linda, as co-chairs of this year's conference, all very excited about September and our upcoming event. We have a special focus on openness this year, and I very much hope that some of you will be able to join us. I'm afraid it is not in Scotland. We tried, but the term dates didn't work out so unfortunately it's going to be in Warwick, but we hope some of you will make the journey and join us for that. I think we found in particular with the focus on FE as well in the conference that it's becoming more and more broad as a forum for exchange of ideas, and we're hoping to have a strong Scottish presence at our event this year. But I also want to make you aware of another activity which we're involved in, which is coming up, which is a special issue for the journal that out publishes research and learning technology. And one of the things we're trying to do is to think of a topic that would let us put into practice some of our aims for international collaboration across different areas. So we're planning a special issue together with the Sloan Consortium, who are based in the US, the Irish Learning Technology Association, with whom I'll recently sign the new memorandum of understanding, and Askelide, based in Australasia. And what we're hoping to do is, with guest editors from each of the associations, including ourselves, is to actually put a special issue out, which is all about collaboration internationally and across borders. We're hoping to focus on particularly open initiatives that help us as technology becomes more and more global, and the tech companies that develop a lot of the services that we use on a daily basis, operate more and more globally. We're hoping to try and contribute to a debate that shows how some things can work very easily with technology, and how some things can maybe still be improved on areas we can work on. And I can tell you that scheduling a telephone conference, even for four people in four different time zones, should be its article in itself, because I think we didn't think about that before we got the special issue together. But last, and not least, many of you, and I think Linda is now here, and we'll hopefully not blush too much if she's the lead tutor of this week, hello Linda. Many of you have been involved in our open course in technology enhanced learning, and I'm rather least qualified of many people in this room to talk about that. I think Martin Hawksy is certainly more qualified than some of the people in many of the other tutors, but it's one of the most fun and exciting things we've done in a long time. It's an open course. This year we've had over a thousand registered participants, and we've started experimenting with open badges so that people can earn open badges as part of the course, and hundreds of those have been issued. And also this course is entirely designed and run by our members, but we haven't had any funding to run this course at all. And it's a really great example, I think, of how much positive willingness there is amongst our community to help others to share, to do what Jo was talking about earlier, to really just not say, well this doesn't work, but there is a problem and we should do this, but to say look, here are some resources, some ideas, some ways of thinking that I found useful that you might find helpful too. And it's been absolutely fantastic to see the breadth of people who are engaging with the course, and I think it very much shows what we try and do to body some of our values really strongly. Last year when we ran the course it was mainly focused on AG practitioners because of the way it was funded, but this year we've opened it out to practitioners across all educational sectors. And it was absolutely fantastic to see that over 25% of participants are not from AG. There is practitioners from FE, I think over 220. There are schools practitioners, people from the commercial sector, private learning, lifelong learning, adult learning, offender learning. It's really exciting to see, and people from lots of different countries, which makes it all a much more international endeavor. I'm hoping very much that this is an example of something that we can work on in the future, a sort of entirely different business model for a MOOC or an open online course, as it doesn't generate any income and it's all done with your work, your time, our members' expertise and voluntary effort. And I think that's a really wonderful development that we're hoping to build on in the future, hoping to maybe extend our use of badges and hopefully be able to help with professional development and the recognition of what learning technologists and others who have learning technology as part of their work on a daily basis. So last, what's next? So what's coming up? We're very interested in working with you. It's something over the years you've got to get used to the fact that people film. There's two things you have to get used to. The first impact is film. Now that's killed any challenge, any joke from any civil servant in any presentation, just so you know. I think there's something in the civil service code about not cracking jokes online or something like that. And secondly, of course, you've got to get used to the fact that everyone is on the screen now, not you. And it took me ages to realise that wasn't just because I'm incredibly boring. It is because people are writing things or writing notes. Having said that, I can add something to the conference or the meeting today. I think firstly a health warning if I may. I'm not an educator. I'm not even a policy maker in the education environment. But what we thought we'd try and do today, I work in the digital team responsible for the digital strategy in Scotland. What we thought we'd try and do is just give you a little bit of context about how this country is trying to create itself and sustain itself as a world-class digital nation. Because I think it's important that if you're going to engage with government to achieve the kind of aims that we've just heard about, that people understand and can appreciate the context in which we're trying to work. So, as I said, I'm not really going to talk much. You've got a whole day, I suspect, talking about education and technology and education. I'll touch on it a bit, but I'm not really going to talk very much about this. And we do have the Minister here, the Education Minister, Mike Russell, who is on record, I think, making some very, very positive noises about the opportunities of technology. He's certainly on record talking about the need for all education institutions to develop, to meet the challenges of technology. And he's also, I believe, on record talking about the potential and how encouraged he is about the potential of MOOCs and other things. In particular, to get messages across, but also to widen participation and widen access into the pathway of higher education. So, I think, from an education context, all the messages are going in the kind of direction that this organisation wants to see. And obviously, Joe has a very strong role in that, and we're very pleased and encouraging to see this. So, what I want to do now is just try and, I'll come back to some education things, but really just talk more generally about digital in Scotland. And the first thing to say, and this is a kind of quick advert for our own department, but I think it's important when it comes to engaging with us. We're in a very unique and, I think, very strong position in Scotland, because digital, as you all know, touches everything. And there's nothing that can't be digital. But we're lucky in that we have a single digital directorate, a single digital department within the Scottish Government, that is able to pull together various strategies, infrastructure education with a few others, and building a range of external partnerships. And what is all the bad, and the kind of, what this is having to talk about, the challenge of digital in Scotland. But I think also there's a book here, and I'll turn it back. It's about creating what we describe as a world-class digital in Scotland. It's a rhetoric that you will hear, obviously, in terms of universities and creation of world-class universities. I think it's important that as you develop your thinking of a world-class school, a world-class education, one starts to use the same in the mentorship and influence that direction of travel. A quick update on where we are and the progress that we've been making with Scotland's broader digital strategy. First, I'd like to say it tends to dominate my post bag, and I tend to talk more about connectivity than anything else, because that is still probably the greatest public interest across the country. It's quite a pleasure not to have to major on that today, but we are making very, very good progress in Scotland in terms of rolling out the kind of infrastructure that we're going to need to sustain some of these ambitions, some of the ambitions that you have for education. So we have a next-generation final broadband project which will reach 85% of premises by the end of 2015 and 95% by the end of 2017, and we will go beyond that with new money that's coming in from various sources. We have a rural broadband team called Community Broadband Scotland, whose explicit role is to work with communities who lie beyond that or printer in the 5%, and to develop community-based solutions for them. It's really, and Joe already mentioned participation and making sure that people aren't excluded. This is about ensuring that it's not a connectivity reason that people are excluded. Beyond that, we have further plans to really deliver world-class connectivity in Scotland by 2020, and that's about going anywhere at any time and using any device. We still have challenges in this country, particularly around mobile coverage, as many of you will probably know, and that's got our next focus, but that's going to require different ways of the public sector investing and making sure that mobile and Wi-Fi technologies allow us, as I say, to go anywhere at any time and use any device by 2020. There are four elements that connectivity is represented by that swishing thing. I think I've been in five different countries now, and I've seen the same swishing picture, so someone, I hope, is getting good rules. On the right-hand side, digital public services. I'll come back a little bit to this in the context of open data and some of the things that might be relevant to today's discussion. We don't tend to use the terminology digital by default that was mentioned earlier by Joe. It's certainly digital first, but digital by desire. It's a termination to offer public services in Scotland that are wanted and welcomed and are very user-friendly. Joe is talking about a focus on the user. We'll certainly focus on the user in the delivery of development of digital public services. Again, we're making good progress in terms of making all services accessible through a single port with Scotland, and more importantly, perhaps, making sure that services as they develop across the public sector are done to a similar common standard and a commitment to being open in the development of those services. To now the bottom, I will spend a little bit longer if I may. This is meant to represent digital participation. I would love someone to tell me a better photograph to never satisfy the picture that I have for digital participation. But Scottish Government recognises absolutely explicitly that, and it's just recently published a digital participation strategy that says this, with digital participation provides an opportunity to challenge some of the really fundamental in-brained inequalities in our society. And if we're not careful, digital inequality will reinforce those fundamental inequalities in our society, and that's what the strategy is about, making sure that that doesn't happen. So there's a commitment to try and build levels starting with basic digital literacy, and then building from that a pathway through to some of the more advanced digital skills that are required at the top end of the pyramid, if you could, or pathway, to really get behind the digital economy and build digital businesses and add value to society. But starting with basic digital literacy and throughout that pathway, having the kind of formal accreditation that Joe and others can bring to the party. And we hope that that whole pathway will eventually lead to an SQA framework. Certainly we hope that the basic skills and the basic training will be done. We try and drive that work forward to a thing called the digital participation charter in Scotland. And that's an organisation or a movement that's been around for a couple of years now, and tries to encourage organisations of any type, and we really would welcome membership from across the academic sector, because we're fairly poorly represented within charter membership from our leading colleges and universities. And organisations of any type, to say two things, are in a much stronger position. The other element of this strategy I think that's worth noting is there's a determination to use a variety of different settings to get the messages across, to get basic digital training and support in place. So that can be community settings, it can be networks of volunteers from within the public and private sector. It can be third sector organisations who we do think have a huge and leading role to play here because of the trust they have with many of the people who are currently digitally excluded. I didn't say that, I mean I think most of you can guess probably who are the digital excluded. They're all the people, the people on low incomes, the people living in social housing. They are people who are disadvantaged in many other ways in other words. So there's a whole network of things, and we're hoping to build a network of digital Scotland centres where people can actually go and get assistance and support from getting online. Many of these exist already, many of them are in libraries, but hopefully many more will be in different types of community settings. And Joe mentioned it, I think there's a hugely important role for statutory services such as community learning to be involved in that process. And then finally, the light new picture on the end is meant to represent Scotland's commitment to supporting and developing the digital economy in Scotland. Two parts to that, first thing to get businesses of all types to embrace digital technology to use it for marketing, for procurement, for other forms of trading. But secondly, to recognise that actually Scotland has already a very vibrant digital ICT centre and that that needs supporting and bolstering as we go forward. One of the great developments for Scotland's digital strategy over the last few years is a recognition within a number of government documents that the digital ICT centre in Scotland has unique strengths and is one of the sectors that will be critical to the future of this country's economic future of this country. And so it takes its place alongside sectors that you would expect, tourism or island gas renewables, and it's now very much at the top table of the economic thinking. That's going to require a number of things, and particularly it's going to require a lot of effort in terms of digital skills and digital training. Our sector may be very successful and we do have some huge strengths in things like digital health and the use of data and the like. But like a lot of digital organisations and companies, indeed, like government, we're struggling to find people we need to work within that industry to really take it forward. There are a huge number of job opportunities within the digital ICT sector and we've recognised this recently in the publication of a digital ICT skills plan by Skills Development Scotland, which looks to engage industry in particular in filling those gaps and I think that's a really important development for us. Firstly, it looks at the education system as a whole and says, this is a long-term structural problem and it has to start with our teach. Not only computer science, obviously that is part of it, but also other subjects within schools and to really get people to recognise that new technology is absolutely part of almost any subject now in Scotland, particularly if you're going to go on and study it. So it's very much up in the education sector, but it's also about working more explicitly with industry and getting industry to examine, firstly to examine and to identify where the gaps are and secondly to take a role in the delivery of those training courses that we require. One of the commitments in there is the Development of a Digital Skills Academy in Scotland, hopefully within the next 12 to 18 months, which will target some of the immediate skills gaps and put training courses in places to deal with those. Now, how that comes about, what mechanisms we use to deliver those trainings very much up for debate and up for discussion and it may be something that you can look at today. So that's the digital strategy. I just thought I'd pull out a few things that may provide some context for your discussions later on. If I misjudged them, I misjudged them, but hopefully they do. The first is government has a determination to drive forward digital transformation across the public sector. I mean anybody in any sector above the economy, and I've worked in industries over the last couple of years like recruitment and I actually worked for Royal Mail, which is probably one of the most explicit organisations when new technology came across and changed inside our business model. Anybody working in any organisation will realise that digital technology is transforming the way in which we do business. And Scottish Government is committed to driving digital transformation across the public sector and using digital technology to try and bring about some of the long-held ambitions that we have for things like the better integration of health and social care, for example. Digital rig does if it's used properly, applied properly, understood properly, have the opportunity to drive forward some of those huge policy commitments of the Scottish Government. So there is a commitment that people like yourselves who are trying to do things in new and different ways, there is a real commitment to work with you on those kind of things. The second bit of context, I said in terms of digital participation, it says there is a focus on learning and not just assistance. There is an important strand of thinking around digital participation, the use of digital public services called assist digital. So when public sector services in particular are put online through a digital by default strategy, use the UK Government's terminology, then the people doing that are challenged to say, how are you going to assist people to get online? And that is very important and we will have the same approach in Scotland. But we want to come out in a slightly different direction here because in the purest sense you can help someone to get online by doing it before I can assist you to use a digital service by sitting in front of the computer myself and dealing with what you are telling me on the telephone. And what we want to try to do here explicitly is actually use the opportunity, to use the opportunity that people need to go online for whatever reason it might be to help that as a hope to develop digital literacy and digital skills and get into that pathway of learning that I talked about. The third bit of context I've just said, we're not stopping, we don't believe that it's right that we stop just at the development of basic digital skills. Obviously they're important, obviously they're vital and in many senses digital literacy is low levels of conventional literacy and some of these things are really difficult not to crack but what we want to do is position that as a pathway of skills and to try and provide opportunities for people to move up that pathway and as I said before, right at the very end to really start to add value to the digital economy in terms of the businesses they create and the ways in which they can change services to the audience. The fourth thing to turn to context is what I've described there as maximising the use of public assets. I was mentioning that a few of us are immune to the impact of digital on what we do. Well, there are opportunities to use public assets to get across many aspects of the digital strategy so there will have to be connectivity in remote public sector buildings and schools as part of the sort of Scottish wide area network programme so there will have to be connectivity in these places. There are colleges, schools, libraries that offer fantastic settings for digital training and digital skills development if we can get people working in a partnership to do that and so very much part of it. So you can see what we've got out there that can help this digital transformation across the sector and also a commitment to partnership work. A number of those elements of the strategy I talked about are not being taken forward just by government so the digital participation work, for example, is being led by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations on our behalf because we think that they are in a much stronger position to engage with many directly with trust and credibility with many of the people who are mostly in support for digital working. The work in promoting the digital economy has been taken forward in partnership with Scottish Enterprise, High Designers Enterprise and Business Gateway. The connectivity programme that I referenced right at the beginning is a joint piece of work between national government and local government so it's not something that can just be done by one organisation and there is a commitment on all aspects of the digital strategy to work in partnership and I think it's important that you develop your strategies for how you take this forward to realise that there's very much a willingness and an openness to engage in that way. I mentioned data very briefly. We do think that the use of data and the wider use of data is absolutely critical to the long-term vision of delivering effective public services in Scotland and we do have a vision, a sort of 2020 vision if I can call that of citizens feeling very comfortable about the way in which their personal data is being shared, because it's being shared responsibly, but that people know how to access their data. Certainly they know how to access the personal information that's held about them. That data isn't the English to deliver public services and that when we use it for research, the United States has a place in order to protect people and build that confidence. So there is a real focus within the Scottish public sector on the use of data and working together to develop a data vision. Last three if I may just briefly. I mentioned the importance of the digital ICT sector and I think it is critical to the future of the Scottish economy and the reasons out there in terms of context for your work today is that we are looking at a government to find opportunities to stimulate new ideas and new businesses and encourage people working in universities like this one or actually, unless people are specific, working in buildings like this one to develop new business opportunities when they are at college and when they leave. We have an outstanding record already in terms of business startups. This university has a particularly outstanding record in terms of business startups but what we are trying to do is use the wider digital strategy, use the fact that we are having to transform digital services to provide opportunities and ideas for businesses to get on board with. So if it can be done in that way, it is very much the kind of context in which we want to work. I was going to talk about flow, but I understand that it is on the agenda and someone with far better knowledge of the subject than me, globally in the nation wide online learning environment. I think it is just an example of how we are, what I will say is just an example of how we are prepared to develop and invest in providing a safe online environment for school children and schools to work. We do see it very, very much as part of our future commitment to supporting and sponsoring the development and technical skills in schools. It has its challenges, I am sure they will be explored today and we have to make sure that children who grow up using the glow environment and protect the environment are well equipped to move into the world of work in those areas where perhaps the environment is going to be slightly different. But that is this afternoon. Finally, I just wanted to reiterate the point. We have a policy commitment to build a world-class digital Scotland and we are really keen to work with partners who can do things in the digital space which can be considered world-class. We are trying to find ways of illustrating that Scotland is actually open to ideas and is open to investment in digital technology. We have done a number of connectivity pilots working with people who are prepared to test their technology in Scotland. We have just launched an internet exchange in Scotland. It is all about positioning Scotland as a place which really gets the digital world. If you can come through those planning ideas and that commitment to germ and others, then there is a really welcome for that discussion and an opportunity to take you forward. So hopefully that set a little bit of context about where government policy on digital is and leave you for the rest of the day to focus down more explicitly on the challenges of education. So thank you very much. That probably wasn't it. So that is going to be getting a double-ed or triple-ed but in a way, again, some of us don't know how policy works. Call this as policy up here. The Minister then writes a letter of guidance to the funding council and then the funding council translates that into policy. So is it by magic that you use David and Ronnie to chat about funding council in this space? Thank you very much, Joe. Good morning, everyone. Then it is exactly as Joe described that is the policy process. I think we can talk a bit more about that. Great. Okay, so we've got half an hour with me and Ronnie. We thought we'd be discussed, we'd like to spend most of that time having a discussion with you to give you a chance to input your ideas on how you as a network, as a community, can engage with a new piece of work that the funding council has involved in with the open university around open educational practices. But before we get to that, I want to give a funding council update, a policy context to all that as quickly as I can. I think the first thing to say is that very noticeably the learning technology agenda is very high in policy-making circles at the moment, both within the funding council government and I think more widely. Joe said at the beginning of this morning something to tell you is very small. Well, I imagine the reason it's got my profile is perhaps because of the lot of people in this room and the work that you have been doing to kind of knock on doors and so on. So well done for that. We've seen questions about this in the Scottish Parliament. There has been a mention of learning technology moves and a letter of guidance from the Cabinet Secretary. And just a couple of weeks ago the funding council had a whole meeting, a whole day, just on the topic of learning and teaching which got us into learning technology, looks and all those things. That workshop was something quite new for the Scottish funding council. It used to form out words for people like me presented with proposals that they have to agree to and that kind of thing. And what we've tried to do is give the council a bit more space to focus quite deeply on the role of thematic issues. So really to get a whole day just to talk about the status of quality learning, teaching, how students are learning was really good. And we had inputs from the Quality Insurance Agency, Education Scotland from our students talking about our experience and from many academics and universities, including Martin Bean. Martin Bean for the Universities, the Vice Chancellor there, came in by the video conference. And those of you who know Martin will know the power of what he makes his points around openness, around what the university does. So those messages were really heard very strongly by the funding council on that day. It wasn't, as I say, a meeting where I was taking proposals and there's any specific decisions being made, but I think it was really useful for the council to get back up to speed with a agenda of the realities of learning teaching today and the possibilities afforded by technology of where it could develop in the next few years. So what does the funding council do? Well, we fund stuff and still in this space, the biggest thing that we're funding is GIST. And I thought I'd just remind ourselves that the kind of things GIST has been doing in the agenda for many years, except around infrastructure, institutional repositories for research outputs and other things around open standards for those things. The council has a collection of resources available through JORUM. Open JORUM has done a lot of work on access publishing and so on in research data management and supporting that with practices around the digital curation centre and their advising people on RDM strategies and those kinds of things. It's been all the work undertaken by the RC in Scotland around open badges and I suppose it's a new GIST it's just kind of recreated itself and we're a creation of the funding bodies. But if you've had a look at GIST, perhaps like recently it's got 10 impact areas that will be governing its strategic efforts in the next few years, and one of them is around the open agenda. Now at the moment, there doesn't seem to be a lot of detail in the box around what GIST is planning to do on the open agenda, but I would imagine there's going to be a fair degree of continuity from the fairly broad support GIST has given to this agenda just looking at what it's done in the past. So one last point to make about GIST today, as I say, it is now a company, it belongs to the institutions, it's no longer a committee of the funding bodies, and that's quite important for governance terms because you as the members of GIST are really going to have to drive what GIST does. So I guess what I'm trying to get across to you today is there is that commitment to the open agenda from GIST thinking it's up to everyone in this room to let GIST know what we would like them to do on this site. GIST is now a cautioning group and if you want to avoid being fat on just services, please make sure your institution is a member of GIST by the 1st of August. I just say that because I know that the letter is going out to all the universities and colleges in Scotland and sometimes these letters get lost, so if you're not sure whether your institution has signed up, please chase up the letter on the other person's desk somewhere and make sure your institution joins GIST by the 1st of August if you want to avoid being fat on services. So I mentioned the letter of guidance to the funding council from the Cabinet Secretary last year. The letter of guidance is in a couple of different sections and this piece came up in the university section specifically and it talks about open learning resources and the power of delivering things online. And it specifically asked the funding council to take forward a short-term project to further develop and enhance the sector's capacity and online pedagogy, so quite a specific thing we were being asked to do. Round about the same time we got that letter we were having a discussion with the University of Scotland, they put a proposal essentially to try and leverage to share some of the work, some of the knowledge they've had through working on future learning and that kind of thing with the rest of the sector. So that proposal had come in in parallel with that individual university that approached us for things that they wanted to do around MOOCs, open education and so on. So then we got the Minister's letter of guidance and we thought, well let's put all that together. We got a small number of universities in the room Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lulew, we said it can be used the open university's proposal as a basis for something that would engage the whole section and respond to the challenge that the ministers put down. So that's where we got to. We've just agreed at the beginning of this year funding for that project. It's 1.27 million over three years. Sounds like a lot of money if you break it down by years.  What I'd like to do in the rest of the session is just to tell you a wee bit more about the project and then with Ronnie to open up a discussion because this is fairly early days for this project. What I'm going to show you next is what was in the mid in terms of the eight outputs from this work and I think these are fairly high level and still at a stage where they could be shaped by what we all want to get out of this project. This project has to say that it's about primarily universities, most colleges in Scotland so we'd really be interested in your views. Now for the risky bit where I give you my opinion on what I think these will look quite some better represented than Ronnie will look down correctly if I get them wrong. So the first one is Hi I should say Ronnie was actually responsible for writing this bit so I'm glad he's here today to talk to you straight on this. Okay so the first one is a review of current educational practices, what's going on, who's currently involved and doing moves and other kinds of things. And secondly an events programme and this is where we start to share share learning, share practices we'll have guest speakers and all the usual things but more of the kinds of topics that you would be interested in that would really help here in your own practice. There will be an online hub obviously some people are currently involved in future learning that's not a space that everyone can be involved in it does have a particular kind of focus it is a lot of branding a particular kind of markets for learning so for those institutions you can be involved in future learning for whatever reason this will be a hub where materials can be deployed you can learn from things on that platform. The fourth one, well this is not a project which will be about developing lots of stuff, it's not about creating loads of learning materials but we did want to see some worked examples so the project will produce a small number of open educational resources that are of relevance to Scotland that deal with real world problems we had in Scotland and in last year's Scotland summit we did touch on this what would be the problems that mooks are going to solve for us in Scotland why would they be worth investing in what new things are they going to enable us to do so the kind of things though so we might be looking at in Scotland is dealing with the issues of reality that you're having in Scotland transitions might be another one you mentioned early on curriculum schools to what extent are colleges and universities on the same page as learners come from schools with curriculum for excellence on the mind book as part of the things we can do using what we are is to make that transition easier now the next one could be about batching of informal learning people have done bits of learning either on mooks or in other places and how that is accredited I think reading the bid so a space here that's maybe around time marking of institutions quality improving resources that's recognised so probably about those two things sixth one learning design as Paul was saying earlier we've got challenges to do with people being digitally excluded and maybe excluded and challenged in other ways to what extent can curriculum design really help to overcome some of these barriers of participation in further minor education research and evaluation recognising that from future learning we have some very good some big sets of data learning analytics about people's experiences on the platform so how can that data of that research data be shared so that everyone in college and universities in Scotland can all benefit from that from that forum everybody's practice in this space why are people investing in it what is the benefit for them what are other plan models that should be considering and the new words that have cropped up in that context was freemium which was entirely new to me okay so hopefully that's given you a kind of high level view of the origins of the project broadly what it's hoping to deliver and I'll let Ronnie take over just now I really want to get some feedback from you about shaping that project in detail thank you despite the branding I actually work for the open university not the funding council what I want to just actually I just want to talk briefly and actually it's more questions for me for the room I really saw this an opportunity even though it's a short time just to sort of open up some of the questions I had when I was thinking about what I was going to say actually about a presentation I've been to recently where someone actually did a presentation called what we talk about and we talk about iPad and I'll give you the short version which is actually we're talking about education you know what we're talking about as in the past and it actually comes from a guy named Carver, short story writer who built his reputation on writing wonderfully terse and sparse stories and 20 years later what came out was actually those wonderfully terse and sparse stories that he built his reputation on were entirely based on the work of teams of editors who actually revised re-mixed it I think you get where I'm going with that but to follow around the importance of actually opening this inability to revise that but also I mean what that story was about was that actually sometimes when we're talking about something we end up talking about particular things but actually what we're really talking about is some of that underlying when we talk about openness we quite often talk about the licence because that's one of the things we see as enabling also the technology we like as David said, talk a little bit about learning design and about how we actually facilitate those journeys and quite often when we talk about openness we talk about who we are and the actual content at the same time we also talk about things like platforms and repositories, place to prove things but as David said maybe in this project we're not necessarily just talking about repositories because actually there aren't a reason about repositories now we talk about metadata granularity one of my favourite words, interoperability especially now that I'd like to say it properly and we also talk about findability because these are great challenges there's a lot of content out there how do we actually locate it and so on and sometimes going back to those economic worlds we talk about marketing because for many universities openness is not just about those altruistic motives those are some of the things we talk about when we talk about openness and in my feeling is what actually we're really talking about or what I think I'm really talking about is teaching and learning about how we are actually changing the pedagogy of our practices around the academy and in particular what I think we're talking about is about being open to more people so actually online and open licensing what that has done is generally it's broadened access more people can access content but it hasn't always necessarily broadened participation and that's why one of those outcomes is there about learning design to broadened participation because actually we've got to ask ourselves some questions here we've actually got a little bit more maturity about hosting content and thinking about licensing is actually what we're thinking about who's using that stuff because actually I think what I feel we're talking about is actually shifting the balance of power in the academy in the academy to new types of learners to new types of knowledge production I did tell David I would quote that as a question rather than a statement and one of the questions I wanted to ask was around this vision was about how we engage we have a project here it's a funding there are some people who are on the steering group and part of the governance structure but actually what we've been tasked to do with the funding council is put a broad approach as we possibly can and that's about actually how we engage that's about actually more than the usual suspects who are in the steering today but obviously we do want to engage with those usual suspects but we also want to engage with the unusual suspects and actually how do we actually do that and we'd actually, what we're at one here today doing is actually asking for your help to try and do that but also to ask around some of those partnerships that come how do we actually do those kind of partnerships what structures do we need to put in place in this project to make sure that actually there's a partnership between everybody across Scotland who's interested in it and then I think there's some deeper questions that might come along later in the project about what that should mean about its pace and sustainability so those are the questions that I have around and I was hoping that they would like to get some answers from you guys so the door's open It's not really an answer to the question but it relates to the question to the thing about the transference of power of the light from the academy to a wider audience a worker organisation which ranges from people who are really open with what they do and very strong in terms of use of digital technology through people who are very face to face and often close many share with their colleagues at loads of work how much the challenge you think is cultural how much do we think the challenge is cultural as opposed to technology or even financial is probably the middle bit too in relation to the cultural but is that a cultural challenge and how are you going to come down to that? That's the much minus thing isn't it around actually how we change them those cultures and practices for their institutions I don't know I mean I think that is the key challenge and the question we're asking today is how do we meet that challenge I'm basically on my sets about events and raising awareness and so on but that actually just creates a space and people only go into that space and join in that space and they're actually going slightly in that direction so what are the levers from the drivers that will actually make people enter that and that's a good question I think looking at the economic models is helpful there because technology hasn't been a barrier but I think some people's preoccupation with I can make lots of money out of these learning materials and that really seems to happen but that mindset seems to be a barrier too so I think that last point about the economic models and why we're doing things this certainly and that there can be a payback my release is something freely you get paybacks somewhere else in an institution if I could be established in everything that's rational and it takes a place and we'll have a bit of an actionist when it's out I'll check two great questions please and Suzanne Loller, the director of Jordan mentioned that there are a number of repositories out there I was wondering how the project was going to work with Jordan at all and then my second question is you have a language with a number of universities but getting out of the speculation pass we took it with Glasgow Member and you mentioned how you want to work with other education colleges I'll pick up on Jordan yes we're in conversations with Jordan we don't see personally and I'm speaking personally on his early days I personally don't see the purpose of any hub to be about creating repositories there are many repositories that have different approaches and can do different things for different people and actually and I think that what we would be doing would be actually helping and directing people to the appropriate repositories for their needs including Jordan I can't remember someone in Manchester I can't I'm the director of Jordan in Manchester you're not speaking to me I'm sorry I can't remember I can't remember I'm not speaking to you second part do you want to work with other education colleges how do you work with them? someone who would be aware of the resource platform that is called the Development Network that's had quite a long gestation period and I guess we want to see how that might be used in practices and that's definitely one of the target repositories It is a very tough issue in Scottish education and we must address issues that are very relevant to Scotland. I just follow on from that point. We have had a previous discussion, you were interested in Scotland was trying to involve the students underrepresented, and one that has been to universities that have involved older ones. ond y ddefnydd i'n amlwg i ddweuddol bod sy'n ddweudu ohonoeth a'r llwyff honno'r ddweudio'r ddraflowniad. Rydyn ni'n fwyfydด gweithio'r ddweudio'r ddweudio, mae gennych bod pobo'r dweudio'r ddau'r gwahog speedd yn medweithio'r ddau'u ddau'r ddau'r ddau. Ac mae gennym eich ymddangos ymr göll yng Nghymhwyr i yw ddymnu'n i ddechrau y ddefnyddio'r gynnig oedd d÷gau wedi ddim ni yn ei meddwl. Is it about that the content is not relevant? Is it after something about the pedagogical design and our particular approach? I mean some of the things that we're working with at the Open University are actually thinking about how we actually embed these open educational resources and practices within partnership what we're doing with third sector organisations like refugees and asylum seekers with carers organisations and so on. We're actually looking at alternative pedagogical models that are embedded within trusted communities of practice that people who are largely from education can go to. And so I think that within that there's actually a whole bunch of different approaches and I think that's why it's a key thing for the project. Quite often when you see an objective project it doesn't, you know, it's about institutions laring from each other and not everybody's going to be as good as widening participation as they are. Yeah I suppose it also put the word for plans for a lot of the work they've done for their widening access students. It's found it works so well in improving their achievement that they've rolled out those practices to their whole undergraduate student body and that should work for them. But let's face it that we have a collection of universities, they have different profiles, improvement and different missions. The core thing about this project is we have established a small group to manage the project. What we're trying to do here is make sure it's a project that's going to reach everyone and that's why we're giving the chance to try and move to the project objectives today. So it will be something that has to come from the sector. It's just a big number of points before about the participation particularly in the books. I know that the headlight figures are very much in most people doing it on any other degree or a higher degree. But actually a small bit significant number is on them. I'm just looking at some sorts of potential there where it's talking about education. 60% of the degree is going to 2% of the master's, but 18% of only secondary. And I think we've got to be careful that we've gone just right off as other people have been trying to do the right direction and participating. There's a big chunk there that can be quite interesting to find out who that chunk is and what they're doing and why and where they're coming from. I think there is, I'm just going to say that in terms of the profile of people who use both university and university's open learning platform, depending on which audience I'm speaking to, sometimes what I'll highlight is the two thirds of a listed degree. Sometimes I might highlight one third just of high school. Well actually I think that there's some data from Coursera that shows actually that more people with PhDs don't finish the books than they have finished them. I'd just like to explore the word you've got on the screen there, sustainability and the role that that's going to play in the project. Because I think, I know you were at the recent Open Coursera Consortium conference in Brianna and I think there's a lot of evidence that shows to really make the most of open education you have to start with staff development and building capacity in the sector. And I think you really have to dedicate resource there to enable to really get the kind of benefits and affordances that we've just heard about this morning. And I think there is a bit of a, we're listening, quite a delicate situation at the moment where funding is increasing the short term and there's a real danger of losing capacity in the sector of many people who have the expertise to enable the support of developing online pedagogies and online education. So I think that's going to be crucially important to take into account particularly looking at the economic models. It's not just about how you persuade staff to apply access to the resources or teach more books. It's about how do you support the people who have the expertise already in the sector to ensure we don't lose them from Scotland. Because I think there's a real danger there that we're losing the very people that can actually make these changes happen. Yes, I'm thinking about how to relate to the core business model of the university. And not just universities but the other organisations as well. I've had some interesting discussions with first sector organisations about that quite often get a lot of data from the people they work with. And actually they're trying to, they would like to give that data to people for nothing but also they're also wondering about the commercial value of that data. And it's actually, you know, there's a, because they've got a social mission there and it's actually how you maintain your social mission. But also commercial, you know, actually sustaining it really. It's a big question. Can I have a question or just a thing? I think there's something in this room. I think fundamentally how all of this is driven is by what we call the open professional. Well, that is the eighth semester called the new semester semester, the school teacher, the adult learning continuum, wherever that tutor is working. If they're not willing to engage in open and sharing, then it's not going to happen. But they're only able to engage in open sharing if their institution understands we're open. And I think that a strand of this should be looking at practice and policy about what open institution is. And that doesn't mean that you're giving away all your credentials because there will still be some content based on what you see. For specialist purposes, we're going to base money on this specialist content for this specialist audience that gives us an advantage in, you know, whatever the latest technology is or whatever. But even when they do that and there's public money, I think it should only be able to hold back two or three years, then that should come at a point. But the rest of the things that we do mostly when I'm speaking as an English and History teacher and all these kind of things, I should be able to give all of that away. And my institution should be encouraging me to give all of that away. And that is not sophisticated learning objects and things. Again, I think in all of this, let's also not kid ourselves on that when we open all of this up, sadly there's going to be this wealth of fantastic learning materials that we've put publishers out of business. It's not what publishers will still do all that special stuff. And institutions will still create wonderfully rich, fantastic OERs. But actually, to reach more learners, you need to think about the old professional and how you get institutions to think about what their own policies are. And I think that should be a strand of it, that kind of practising policy of an institution. And if you get that, that would be good for you to be using in colleges, but something needs to cast you down into the school system too. Maybe we need a precious workshop about what an open institution might look like. Yeah. And what professional might be, what professional practising might be? You're doing your general teaching course of vocation, or your TQAV, or what is your practice in that open? Sorry, I don't need to know if you have a question about that. Just a follow-up comment, I think that the open practitioner is a really key ingredient. And I think what's also a key ingredient is support for the open practitioner, because we can't expect people to be effective open practitioners. We don't actually provide them with support. And I think it could be in FE, there is a really strong case to be made for very, very strong support for teachers in using technologies. There is so much innovation going on, so much sort of people out of their own back with their own gutters trying new things, helping learners. And that's fantastic, but to be able to scale up that change, I think to scale only comes with the support. And that is something that we as acceptors, or communities, haven't been very successful in putting in place. So I think that's something that's really important. OK, two on one. Hi, I'm a caretgatherer at Blastley University. One point of things, you've been involved in recently are the books with future land. And what that's quite interesting behind that is that in developing material for online, you've really got to think about moving this because it's so much easier. But we've also had challenges with that. For example, one of the courses I'm doing this now is economics. And a lot of the energies are specialist, and they come from the welcome class. So you've got a whole lot of issues around copyright ownership licensing. And the challenge there is it's not that you can get these energies elsewhere. They're actually created using special techniques, special machinery. So you can't just say that one's copyright only, it's a different one. And I think there's still quite a lot of challenges in that area. I'll do it with copyright in one of the six out of three areas I've studied. I'll just get permission to back to you. Joe's just posed this question. What is the number of institutions which could have a lovely set of power? In terms of... I've written it down. In terms of the number of institutions... Clearly, there needs to be a commitment from the managers, from the top professionals of the organisation. I'd like to ask... I noticed that the Scottish Government has said it's left. Now, I'd like to ask you what do you think the world of the government of the Scottish Government should be in developing better institutions? And what's the world of the funding class? And I'll probably just speak on one of those. Well, I think we have a responsibility to the higher education sectors. We have a good set of institutions. It looks very different from England. We don't have any influence on private providers and so on. But I think we do have a responsibility to make sure that sector is sustainable in terms of staying better than in terms of this offering. Because in the kind of space we're talking about how long will it be before we're getting lots of market share of our own students to some of these international providers. So we have to be nimble. We have to be up for the challenge and responding to that. And I think there are various reasons that we think we might be able to lead on some of these issues. We are small, but we have good branding and a lot of expertise. So I think when people talk about weeks being a disruptive technology, we might have new kinds of institutions, or it might be as Joe was saying, there's an open bit to the institution, which helps deal with some of these aspects. Maybe it's well in participation and that's what you think of the institution. On the back of that, they're increasing the market share and it makes sense to do that for other reasons. Whilst continuing with a predominantly campus-based educational offering, which is still big demand in Scotland. So that may be the thing that enables us to continue doing a lot of the things that we want to do. So it's not like it destroys the institution and it enables us to carry out a new way. So I think from the council's point of view, that's our responsibility through the quality assurance agencies and so on to make sure that we're staying up to date in terms of practice. And this is, I think, a big part of that. From the government's point of view, and they've set out their digital strategy of being, in the front of the council, we have a group which looks at how that strategy plays out in our sector. At the moment, the emphasis has been very much on infrastructure and I've talked about the network and some of the enabling things. As we get to some of the issues of practice and how people engage with public services and education, I think that becomes a more interesting discussion. I think it's early days what the government's expectations of how this is going to transform university education and certainly MOOCs and things like that have dominated the kind of policy backtrack. I go to meetings and people talk about, you know, it's not just about MOOCs. I think that's understood. MOOCs is the first thing here, but behind that is issues of pedagogy, issues of the open philosophy, but they're almost there. What more questions you want to ask? Just a quick comment. I don't know if anyone is aware of this, but there has been a better extent to principles of all the metrics in Scotland than we have for one of the MSPs who sits in education committee, specifically asking us what we're currently doing along with this education. So we're really useful, perhaps, to come up with a project feeling group to find out what the results of that are and how that information is going to be used. I just know, because I've been asked to jump to this point, I hope you guys have been assured of who the others have asked on this slide. But the other point is just a general one. Excuse me if I've got a question. About the project, I think it's really welcome. It's timely. You probably picked up, I think there's something that's ethanol in the community, about how it was set up and I've been able to perhaps want to open this gap, but I wasn't trying to say in terms of involving our real institutions at the end of the day. Well, I'm aware of that, but I do take that point. What I'm trying to set out today was basically how we came to where we got to and in that initial meeting we had with our partners. It was very much for them that we were designing something that was going to engage everyone and I think we're not too far down the line to come up with an agenda that will be of value to everyone. Necessarily we have to have a conversation with a small group of people and open it up. Sorry, that's not going down well in some quarters of that. I think it's still a project to you which if we all engage with it will deliver things that will engage in that spirit. OK, all right, things have been running in the door to be with this overlenging and I think we're still this is a dialogue about this open space and I think the really good news is here's the Scottish Government pushing money into this open space and you've got chance to shake it so maybe you can do the usual work over lunch then. Thanks very much. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and I'm here to kind of like relieve for lunch I hope. This is really just about our very practical journey to open badges at Borders College I'm going to apologise because I wasn't sure if everybody knew about open badges or not but I'm guessing most people do so I apologise, we can I'll just do a very quick intro of what they are and what they look like but then focus more on how we're using them at Borders College. I always say I think that the best way to open badges is to remind people of when we're brownies or cups because people can also relate to that so is there anybody in the room who didn't have a badge as a brownie or a cup when they were young? Thank goodness what we all do in your life. Most people can relate to this because when I was a day no sexist comments met me but most women always remember that when they got their hostess badge as a brownie it was like that, the big goal in life so that's what most people get really back to but badges have existed in this form for a long time and open badges are obviously just a kind of updating version of this supported by Manzala a visual representation of something that you've achieved with obviously metadata hard coded into it to actually explain what's the reason for having been awarded that badge so the image is there there's various data behind it and it's an organisation and they don't endorse by someone else to give it extra credibility they generally are hosted in a backpatch so they're being an independent and they're hosted by Manzala but they can then be pushed to various locations although Shalene and I were in this conversation just to give a name in about that as yet they're not really being pushed out to other places, they're kind of being hidden away and it's one of the steps that we need to track is how we actually get them pushed out and displayed in different places the idea behind the badges is obviously the name the description, the criteria which is one of the most important things and also other elements one of the things that interests me most about badges and kind of the future steps of badges is around this evidence element I think there's huge scope to start linking proper evidence into badges and kind of using that to kind of give it more value so if you issue in a badge that shows that you can create a short film why can't you link that and show people the film so that they actually see it rather than you telling them that you can do it and I think again that's one of the areas that I'm keen to kind of look into it's just a screenshot from my backpack showing how badges can be displayed and how they're shown next there I'm just going to skip through this because I appreciate that those people will know all about this In terms of our journey at Borders College I really just want to kind of go through the various steps we've gone through in this journey and it has been a kind of in and out it's been a kind of long journey and we've touched on various elements so we tried to get it into the curriculum right away and then we kind of stepped back from that then we issued middle badges because we were in control of that and then started issuing CPD badges we're now working with local employers and thankfully we're back bringing to starting to get them into the curriculum so I'm just going to kind of talk about the first encounter I've ever had with open badges was in June 2012 at that SC Scotland annual conference and Doug Belsher was presenting open badges and I have to say it was like this huge light bulb going on in my head I've been taught computing as a lecturer for a number of years there was always loads of areas that went really accredited within the curriculum so for example at Borders we were replacing some of the kind of standard processes with more creative approaches so instead of writing an essay we were getting them to create a podcast instead of submitting a report they were creating a short film we couldn't acknowledge that in any way all we could say is you've ticked creative industries unit we've done that, you've got that and it was on their transcript but there was no pair that said this student actually has a bit more to offer they don't just have the rate chance at the end of the day they've actually got these additional skills so that was kind of where we started with this but it's not an easy journey as I said I was delighted when I heard people speaking and thought I was glad you started dating me forward and I kind of ran back to Borders kind of shouting and screaming and then I got there and I kind of hit this big wall where you know there was a lot of concern from senior management about you know what is this, what does this mean where are we going with this is it more assessment, is it more work how much does it cost us, how much time is it going to take so all the standard responses that you would expect to get a new innovation and I can say it was this one at the time you think that I couldn't just spend most of the college and run with it but I didn't give up so my colleague and myself sat down who were responsible for teaching agency interactive media at that time and we could very quickly identify areas that were missing so for example as I said the podcast and the short films we also recognised the value of retaining our students to open badges and motivating them we have students who struggle very much in terms of the fact that a lot of them would be dropped out of school or maybe only in college because they have to be there until they are 16 or because their parents have told them that you are doing something and so you need to keep motivating those students they are not just going to turn up every day and they struggle with some of the concepts particularly on computing which can generally be a harder subject for them to deal with issues such as colour and user interface design they always struggled with that and we felt that there was a gap there if we could break those subjects down a lot more and sort of acknowledge their learning at every stage then we would have a better chance of keeping them so we spent some time scoping out a few badges and the criteria that would be associated with those and we sort of took that to our middle management and said this is what we want to do and at this point there was a real kind of hands up as in we can't do this this is too difficult, this is too new this is what we are doing there is too much time involved there is too much assessment required why are we over assessing why are we assessing things that we are already assessing so there was a lot of concerns and this also sounds very negative at this point but it was just really another step in the process for us thankfully we have our technology hands learning unit within the college which has only recently been found we are only official as of 1 January this year although we were just funded for the 18 months before that and so we were able to try some things through the team which kind of didn't really affect the college in the same way that the badges across the curriculum were done so at this point we decided that we were still going to persevere with open badges and what we were going to do was issue them from ourselves so we are responsible for Moodle within the college so what we decided was we could credit the students for their digital literacy skills within Moodle so when they contribute to a discussion forum when they put up an effective profile picture and things like that so we ran a very small pilot really with the aim of introducing badges across the college in a kind of gentle way and this was one of the first badges awarded to one of our students and they were well received by the students this is just to give you an idea of the badges we worked on a kind of mini badge and then scaling up to kind of a larger badge so they had to sort of gather three or four, sometimes buy mini badges to be awarded the kind of big badge at the end and it was really just about focusing on the digital literacy as I said so it was about discussion forums about submitting assessments electronically and encouraging them to do more things within the VLE we also started to recognise the work that the staff put in because often a lot of our staff put in a lot of their own time to develop really interactive materials within Moodle and again that's not really recognised there's no sort of acknowledgement for that work so we were able to award badges to our staff so it was done a good job within Moodle we also finding contribution we suggested that our students would be able to award badges to staff and I have to say it right down like a letter to them in fact I did hear the word union to mention at one point and my thinking in this was really that we are still in an environment within an FE institution where our students are actually really still rewarded at the end of a year they still bring you a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers to say thank you for the work that you've done with them and again I thought rather than putting them away in the chocolates I'd rather have an open badge that I actually acknowledge the work that I've done for them so that was the thing behind it like I said it didn't go down to you well and I'm desperate we're looking for somebody in the open badge community across the world that's going to say to me I'm allowing students to award badges to teachers and I'm kind of used to say that it does work well if it's okay so I think that again just kind of gave me a timing kind of stop and say just going back to June's presentation there is a huge culture shift required to kind of accept all this stuff and people need time to kind of adjust it's not going to happen overnight I mean that's two years we've been working on open badges now and only now are we kind of getting to the point that people are kind of really aware of them and happy to accept them I had a chance meeting in the corridor which is usually where all the best meetings happen with our head of HR and she said I found it open badges what are they and I explained them to them she said can we have them and I said yeah and she said well you know our paper certificates that we have for CPD sessions they get lost, they get thrown away they don't really have any value to people I want to try and kind of increase the value of our CPD sessions so we did discuss giving people so it was a kind of very simple process they could have a paper certificate or they could have an open badge but thankfully head of HR did not they were just getting a badge so whether in the light or not they were getting an open badge but we're at the point where we only award open badges for staff CPD sessions so every staff CPD session within Borders College is acknowledged with an open badge and it means that basically every member of staff in Borders College which has been really effective because it's a good way of kind of blanket quoting everybody and saying you have to know what these things are so everybody hopefully if you ask anyone at Borders College to know what they are now and we've also seen kind of increased value in these badges so before where people were getting paper certificates and they weren't in the issue what the value of this paper certificate was they see the value in their badge so the CPD sessions aren't just mandatory anymore they see that these badges can actually power you outside the organisation and although the design of the badges did take a long time to start with we now have a kind of template which you can see where we have associated colours with different types of CPD sessions and things like that and it's fairly easy now to just change the middle image kind of looking back and it has been an interesting journey I'm still glad that I did start on the sort of open badge journey and I think I'm more realistic about what needs to be done I think I have a much better idea of what's needed I think I would like to be somebody starting open badges now and telling myself what I know now but you know I think sort of working groups with various organisations just SQA Rose Development Network another organisation will really help that we need to make sure that we keep working together to move this forward just kind of collating some of my thoughts about what the key points have been in this journey we have found that the image is important, the design of the image is important it's not the be all and end all the criteria are obviously the most important thing that add value to it but it has to be something that people aspire to people want something that's nice they want something to collect that they sort of like looking at and it's beautiful you do have to handle concerns sensitively I think it's very easy I'm such a believer in open badges it's very easy to sort of say what's the problem but I've kind of learned over it's not a good way to deal with it so you have to get a look for different routes and obviously the CPD was an amazing way to get in for us once you get institutional buy and it's a much easier route to follow and that's kind of where we are at the moment in terms of borders we have just agreed with our senior management team that over the next three years we will introduce open badges across the curriculum which is a huge win for us to get to this point after two years of a struggle that's where our work is to look at work with individual faculties within the curriculum and identify areas where open badges can be introduced we've got lots and lots of other ideas about where we'd like to go with open badges which are a credit and prior learning within open badge we get a lot of people coming back to the college you've been out of education for a long time you maybe don't have any actual qualifications and we think that you should be able to actually recognize that learning by saying somebody at Borbys College can put a wrapper around that learning and give it a badge so that it's got value elsewhere we also want to try and create pathways for our learners so that for example a student who's on a care programme can say I want to be a nurse by so I want to be a pediatric nurse and that we can sort of guide them to a suite of pediatric related badges that would help them to get to that place and the biggest win recently is that we've actually really started working with local employers a lot of the feedback we got from the students was it's great to have an open badge but if it doesn't have any value locally what gives it to me so we're working with NHS Borbys which is obviously one of our biggest employers in the region and we're now piloting open badges for them when I said when when the pilot is successful we're able to introduce open badges across their CPD for the NHS and that will be a huge, huge win for us again for every member of staff within the NHS actually we know what an open badge is and for them to possibly be receiving series from our staff, from our students with open badges associated with them means that we've got an end there already and we've also started awarding open badges for early and adult placements as well I think there's just a couple of the pen they've just kind of finished off I think I was speaking to Joe just a few days ago and I was saying you know when the SQ made the announcement last year that it was okay to do open badges it was a huge kind of win for us it was somebody saying that this was okay it wasn't just a passing kind of fad there was real value in it it really opened doors and I think that was the point where you know our colleagues started saying okay actually we'd like to take this seriously and really work with it the work of the website is really crucial as well we're part of that group and I think in terms of trying to gather people who are interested in open badges kind of moving this forward and trying to answer all the questions that we've still got around open badges you know every time I do a presentation on open badges it's generally the same questions that get answered I don't think we're much closer at the moment to answering those and I think the work of the website really has to be about answering those questions you know and trying to make the process a lot simpler for people I always think about you know what's the future of open badges and what can we do next I like the idea of working sort of collectively to create a suite of subject specific open badges I think there's much more guidance needed around the tools that are available there's so many different tools available in terms of open badges I think we'll try to work out what do they do what do they use which version of a toolkit do they use which version of a badge maker do they use and in terms of what I hear they need people who actually create open badges need a simple process to get them from stage 1 to stage 10 or wherever it is where a badge is issued and displayed and that doesn't exist at the moment it's still quite complicated to work out what you need to do to do that in my current role I'm starting to work with the schools we've had a lot of inquiries around open badges and so we're starting to work with schools in the next couple of weeks to try and get them issued badges and the borders as well and also work with the students and the pupils to start creating an issue in their own badges there's always the question around funding and whether there could be more specific projects around open badges which would always help money's always an issue obviously in time and again I think there's still a big role for us to play in terms of introducing open badges to employers there's all the information out there about open badges digital means badge canvas and the badge maker project which are all good tools to kind of start people up and obviously all further information is available from just in the case studies that way if anybody wants to contact me those are my contact details I'm always happy to speak to people about our journey so thank you just because open badges some of us are all certain things and we know a bit but actually I think it's really interesting to hear this is the borders getting badged this is the schools the NHS, the colleges using them it's really innovative what's happening here I don't think it's become a lot of challenges so I just want to thank you Can I ask from an employer's point of view what can the students send them what can they see say before an interview we haven't worked that yet we hope in the future it'll be a case of sending a CV and then a link to their backpack where they can share specific badges within the backpack so they can say I'm applying for this job, I want them to see these badges and I'm applying for this job, I want them to see that that would be the ideal that within your CV somewhere that there's a link to the badges but we haven't worked on that yet it's almost like a portfolio we're going to weigh in that you can imagine somebody can look at the badges and use it as a way of opening discussion I mean again I think that's in relation to the evidence element of badges I would like to think that we've got Mahara portfolios versions which at the moment kind of die almost when they leave, we do export them sometimes to other places but again if there's a link to a badge to a portfolio of work again it would be a great start point for a discussion It's not got a question actually at this point I don't know One of the issues that we have is that some of the employers in the university to officially recognise that there are a lot of badges that have just been supplied with that little context I'll just amplify that One of the challenges the university had was they wanted the university to recognise the badges and that made employers more reluctant to accept them without that university endorsement so I'll just put it back in here You have a question here Is it related to how students and staff are displaying the badges in the air? They're also displaying them in the middle at the moment, so we issue them through the middle they're displayed in the middle, they have a separate area within the middle now for their badges but what we do is we issue instructions to push them out to the backpacks but again it's a conversation Shalene and I were just having about where do they go with them next and I think these are still all the steps that we haven't got to yet almost so we do more questions and more areas to explore so it's the next step for us A question When you're running out of badges that are connected to the curriculum how can you connect it to the curriculum in general so that if somebody comes across a page like that that they know that this is a national or part of a national curriculum or a wide curriculum In terms of the curriculum it's very much just what was lectured and identified areas that I haven't acknowledged within an SQE qualification for example so they still have that I'll never disappear but it would be for the other things like maybe volunteering or work placements or things like that they kind of don't get accredited in the same way Is there some kind of link back because that would be quite interesting We'd be great We've also got challenges we've got challenges too so at the moment what we might just be linking back to is to a PDF document somewhere and if the badge is that compliment and national qualification so the badge might just be overtaking a performance criteria or an outcome it might be a bit misleading to an employer to get a link back to a whole 40-year unit of learning when in fact the badge is only 10 hours or 5 hours but there is something in that that's a personal system but data data sheeting too that's where we are John There's a nice piece of work being done in a school in New Jersey a new health and tax group that's set up a one-press website that allows teachers to business that's aimed purely at teachers at the peak for an informal CPD an informal CPD particularly around ICT digital skills at those time periods the one-press site is actually open to anybody to use and see even free for you to download and use for yourself we formatted for yourself one of the nice things there is the teachers when they get the badges actually print them out and display the one on their door Any other questions before we close off our lunch one more Just thinking about this conversation and the discussion about the open education practices project that we talked about earlier on one of the outcomes one of the state pilot outcomes was about methods for accreditation of informal learning and it sounds to me that there's a real opportunity to link that original project or that project to the sort of open practice and CPD I think it's a real challenge and I'm shooting it Absolutely, I think all of the set what was all that when I was talking about in schools, in colleges and certainly in universities there might be something of having a platform or even just a methodology of how we open badges because at the moment we're kind of we're all exploring the ages of this thing but there's not a theory one way for us to do that I just want to add the off-site group that we by just in Scottish education group has a number of subgroups that advocate just for those things that are actually comprised of schools, employers agencies, FAMHs so that covers the whole draft of people and if you're interested have a look to it and go for off-site and get tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow I think I'll be so on that note see you then thank you thank you thank you thank you