Archive for the ‘Aalto University’ Category

Imagine courses that take place in wikis, blogs, social networks…

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

I am this week in the WikiSym / Wikimania double conference.

Its’ another great opportunity to spend some time with the world’s brightest wiki-minds: academics, developers, community members and bureaucrats.

I am going to give a short talk on Friday in the Wikiversity session. I am going to present the EduFeedr, a small and beautiful project I am working with Hans Põldoja.

If you can’t make it to Gdańsk — it’s sunny and with nice mixture (like good wikis) of Slavic flexibility and Prussian order — you may check the following presentation. I’ll copy here also the abstract of the talk:

Designing Tools for Supporting Wikiversity Courses: the Case of EduFeedr

In spring 2008 the authors organized a course on composing free and open educational resources (in the Wikiversity). It was officially a master’s course at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. The authors decided to make the course available with an open enrollment through the Wikiversity and promoted it in their blogs. As a result about 70 people from 20 countries signed up for the course on the Wikiversity page.

The course was organized as a weekly blogging seminar. In each week the facilitators posted a weekly theme and links to related readings on the course blog. The participants reflected on the weekly theme in their personal blogs and commented their peers.

One of the challenges in a large blog-based course is to follow all the communication. Typically this communication takes place not only in blogs but also in other environments such as Delicious, Twitter, etc. Most of these environments provide RSS feeds but typical RSS readers are not very suitable for following this kind of courses. Most of the RSS readers such as Google Reader are designed for personal use. In a Wikiversity course it would be important to have a shared feed reader that all the participants could use.

EduFeedr is a web-based feed reader that is designed specifically for following and supporting learners in open blog-based courses. The design process of EduFeedr is based on the research-based design methodology. We have organized several Wikiversity courses where we have tried out various online tools to manage the course. The initial user needs for EduFeedr came out from this contextual inquiry. Interaction design methods such as scenario-based design, user stories and paper prototyping have been used in the process.

As a result of the design process we have indicated the key features for EduFeedr. These include (1) signing up for the course, (2) visualizing how the students have proceeded with the assignments, (3) visualizing the social network between the students, (4) annotating blog posts and comments, and (5) archiving the course.

EduFeedr is currently a work-in-progress. The first version is implemented as Elgg plugin and we are currently doing internal testing with real data from several Wikiversity courses. In this version we have implemented signing up for the course and some of the planned visualizations. We are planning to launch the beta version of EduFeedr service in late summer 2010. The source code and more information about EduFeedr is available at the project web site (see http://www.edufeedr.org).

Posted in Aalto University, Collaboration, Conferences, Design, Open Source, Sharing economy, Social Software, Wikimedia, Wikiversity, educational tool | 3 Comments »

Design thinking and education

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

The Nordic Conference on Activity Theory and the Fourth Finnish Conference on Cultural and Activity Research (FISCAR10) started today. This time the conference takes place at the Aalto University School of Art and Design.

The keynotes are video streamed online. The recording will be available in the same site, too.

The original home of the activity theory is in psychology (cultural-historical psychology) but people in the community have always moved across different disciplines. The theory has also achieved interest especially among such areas as education, organizational studies, work research and human-computer interaction.

This year — because of the location where the conference is taking place, I think — there are more design thinking in the air than probably ever before. Also the concept of combining art and design, economics, science and technology in the Aalto University is interesting when analyzed in light of the activity theory.

During the conference, I hope, we will have many discussions about design thinking and education, with emphasis on product design, artifact creation, architecture — on things that have concrete impact to people’s life.

It’s not the first time that “design” is discussed in the context of education and learning. One branch of learning science have present the idea or design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). In design-based research the aim is to do research with designed interventions into real-world educational, teaching and learning situations. In design-based research design interventions are a research method.

I think design-based research is missing some important aspects of design thinking. In design field the designs — artifacts, products, “things” — are the main outcome of the activity. The design process is creative and intentional activity of composition: “brining parts, pieces, functions, structures, processes and forms together n a such a way that they have a presence and make an appearance, particularly of unity, in the world” (Nelson & Stolterman, 2003). The designs (the “things”) are the change agents. They are concrete things that are changing our way of doing things.

For someone coming from the field of new media design the impact of tools and artifacts in human life and culture is obvious. People playing with new media and internet know that these things are changing the way we live our lives, socialize, communicate, work, love, hate, and learn.

The sad thing with the new media is that we easily take the tools and artifacts for granted, as something that just comes like a natural force. This is of course not true. There are people “designing” these things. They are driven by values, ideals and intentions. They are humans.

Design is communication. Design thinking is a skill of moderating design communication, deliberating different intentions and interests. But this is not enough. Design thinking is also an issue of leadership. When there is a request to deliver the “thing”, the designer must be able to do decisions. To get the thing done.

Here is a video nicely explaining how design process can go wrong.

Posted in Aalto University, Collaboration, Conferences, Design, educational tool | No Comments »

Academic Administration and Freedom

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

What a title. Reading it makes me smile.

I am nowadays dealing almost daily with academic administration of the soon starting Aalto University. I am kindly asked to comment plans of having new ICT system, how to have ICT enhancing teaching and learning, tenure track, research assessment exercise etc. All these are important and event to some extent pretty interesting stuff.

When dealing with these things, there are three proverbs I keep on repeating in my little head. These are:

1) Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

2) Don’t fall into the Not Invented Here syndrome (NIH).

3) Don’t be the fire chief who keeps on telling for the volunteer firefighters that their did their job, but technically wrong. (I think this is very Finnish proverb / joke and does not make much sense in English)

With the Aalto University – merger between the Helsinki School of Economics, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology – one of the key preparatory activities was an extensive, international research assessment of all the units of the three Schools.

The results from my unit – Media Lab Helsinki – were in a nutshell, as follows (straight quotations from the evaluation report):

“Scientific Quality of the Unit’s Research – Numerical Rating (1‐5): 4 Very Good International Level”
“Scientific Impact of the Unit’s Research – Numerical Rating (1‐5): 4 Very Good International Level”
“Societal Impact of the Unit’s Research – Numerical Rating (1‐5): 5 Outstanding International Level”
“Research Environment at the Unit of Assessment – Numerical Rating (1‐5): 4 Very Good International Level”
“Future Potential of the Unit of Assessment – Numerical Rating (1‐5): 5 Outstanding”

You may guess that we were pretty proud about the results. Regardless of the great results from the assessment, I am seriously worried whatever these results will ever translate to any constructive actions.

I am afraid that when things will be “reorganized” we may loose the flexibility and freedom causing the good results. We will throw out the baby with the bath water.

For instance, the new tenure track system may not recognize the existing expertise in the unit and those who (1) made the great results and (2) are holding the “outstanding future potential” will have hard time to find a place. In a worst-case scenario these people will reclaim the results of the research assessment and move to some other University or research institution. I have some friends in US with this experience.

With the new ICT systems – for internal communication and to enhance teaching and learning – I am afraid of the not invented here syndrome (NIH).

For instance, when selecting intranet/extranet solutions we should be well informed, educated and strategic. This means, that we a honest with the fact that the software engineers are not necessary the best people to design communication systems, such as intranet solutions. They of course know how the bits move in there, but are not – seriously – very good with people, those poor things who will end-up using the system.

In my unit, in last 15 years, we have designed and implemented hundreds of intra/extra/social media systems. The Onni intranet system, developed in-house in cooperation with some people from the School of Design, is definitely one of the best intra/extra/social media systems in the “market” (Socialtext is pretty good, too). Why wouldn’t we use the Onni in the whole Aalto University? Because it is not made by the software engineers of the Helsinki University of Technology but some weird art and design people? I am afraid. To demonstrate that I am not myself falling it to the NIH, I am open to accept Socialtext, as the intra/extra/social media system of the new Aalto University. Please no Confluence Wiki (it’s a wiki, not an intra/extra/social media!).

Finally. The fire chief. In our unit we have many flexible practices that help us to do our job very well: to do (high quality) research and to run our MA and doctoral programs. Sometime the procedures are not exactly according to the rules and guidelines of the University. We do things in a way that may look strange for someone who is not that deep in our operation. In most of the cases there is a practical reason to do things the way we do them. Often the reason is just “common sense”, to save time, effort and nerves or to be focused and not to do things that are not necessary. The results count, right?

Summa summarum: We need autonomy and freedom – not only in the University’s relation in its funders – but also internally in the University, in the unit’s relations to the academic administration.

Posted in Aalto University, Collaboration, Open Source, Social Software | 3 Comments »