MELSIG

Over Easter MELSIG (Multimedia-enhanced Learning Special Interest Group) ran a conference hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, based in their new business school – a very shiny, impressive building. It was Smart Devices for Learning #3 using smartphones, tablets and apps to enhance learning. The quality of the building was matched by the presentations on the day – lots of shiny, impressive ideas. I would like to share a few of those with you in this blog post.

App for Dentistry: Peter Gough from MMU explained how many of the labs in dentistry could be difficult for everyone to see, especially when dealing with work no bigger than a fingernail. The idea for the app came about from looking at airline seats and how they all had screens integrated in the headrests, so that everyone had a good view of the film. Mobile devices provide the perfect personal space for the detailed videos needed in dentistry. The app was created with a selection of short videos which students could use to clarify and reinforce any teaching points. You can get the app here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rpd-online/id557887815?mt=8

Spritz for text: Have you ever thought about how much time your eyes waste moving across the paper as you are reading? Spritz have. And they have come up with the Spritz Reader. Why not have a go? Once you are on the page, you will find that you have to try all the different speed settings. I have some doubts, in that I am not sure we do read every word on a page and often we need to see words in a group to ascertain context, but I’m prepared to watch the development as it is an interesting concept. I’m also not convinced by the colours in the trial version – the white background would become very wearing to stare at. Try it for yourself at: http://www.spritzinc.com/

iPhone charger case: One of the most interesting things that happens at conferences is that you talk to people about a variety of topics, not always related to the conference! I was chatting to someone and mentioned my current frustrations with my iPhone battery, which only lasts a few hours. He had the same problem and bought a charger case for his iPhone. This is a case with a small, extra battery fitted in the base. I have since looked into this and there seem to be various ones available. Having searched a variety of online sources, there are many types available at a range of prices from £15 to £65. This may seem to be a consumer problem, but actually I think it is a problem that will affect many students. I use my phone all day every day for work – and often learning or researching is a part of that. It has become a constant companion in my productivity. However, currently, I have to keep a spare charger at work or manage without a device after 3pm when the battery runs out. Of course, the best solution in the long term would be if we had batteries that lasted longer or a means of easily replacing them once they start to fail.

Enhance, Empower, Enrich, Enable: 

Simon Thomson from Leeds Metropolitan University took an unconventionally traditional approach to help staff engage with new technologies. He used a ‘chatterbox’ to get people talking and asking questions about technology. There were smiles all round as we nostalgically remembered how these paper devices had told us who we would marry and how many children we would have in our schooldays, but this was overtaken with discussion about how we need to have constructive conversations about technology and it does not matter what facilitates this. You can find a link to the Chatterbox template here:

https://drive.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/file/d/0BxWwytR9UrBHc0F2VEJ2bEdmcG8/edit?usp=sharing with instructions on how to fold it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN2Af9Brv6U

BYOD4L: (Bring your own device for Learning) This was a session in which the aim was to share 100 ideas, which will be collated and published by MELSIG at a later stage. We had to examine the benefits that a smart device could offer and write up into a poster the best ideas from each group. I look forward to seeing to final results!

iTunesU at The University of Sheffield: Graham McElearney gave a presentation of the work that is taking place at The University of Sheffield to showcase excellent learning content through the iTunesU portal, which is accessed through mobile devices. Previously, iTunesU was only available to users of Apple Devices, but now it can be used via an app called TuneSpace on Android devices as well. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.twokit.tunespace

Other sessions that took place were as follows:

• Augmented reality project @MMU using Aurasma app, presented by Dee Vyas and Nillan Fakira, Manchester Metropolitan University.
• Use of iPads in Healthcare, Deborah O’Connor, slides and transcript available here:http://www.slideshare.net/amiddlet50/deborah-oconnor-engage-reflect-and-revise-melsig-2014
• Using Twitter for business engagement, presented by Sue Beckingham, Sheffield Hallam University (SHU). This would be particularly useful to anyone who has not really used Twitter or who is considering using it for engaging a larger audience: http://www.slideshare.net/suebeckingham/using-twitter-for-business-engagement-34488801
• Anne Nortcliffe (SHU) presented a survey that she had carried out to examine the readiness of staff and students for the use of mobile devices: http://www.slideshare.net/amiddlet50/nortcliffe-are-we-ready-for-smart-device-learning-survey

One final thing to note is that MELSIG will be running a virtual conference on ‘BYOD (Bring your own Device) for learning’ using the hashtag #byod4l later in the year.

If you would like to know more about MELSIG, there is a JISC mail group at: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=MELSIG or you can follow on Twitter @melsiguk

The next MELSIG event is on Social Media for Learning and will take place in Liverpool on Tuesday 3rd June.

Is it ever safe to fail? #safefail

I often use the opportunity to access online education and technology videos whilst waiting around, they can get me thinking and inspire me. One such recent video featured Deborah Frances-White at the Learning and Skills Group Conference 2014. This post covers some of the thoughts from there, and how it lead to #safefail.

Safe (Takoma Park, MD) by takomabibelot CC-BY 2.0

Fail Stamp by Nima Badiey CC-BY 2.0

Near the beginning of the session Deborah asks for a volunteer. She gets two people willing to volunteer, a woman near the back of the room and a man in the front row. The woman is keen, eager and volunteers immediately. However, the man in the front doesn’t see this. Deborah goes on to explain what happens, how the man feels a compulsion to help the speaker out in what he feels to be a difficult, even uncomfortable situation. She says that in a room of a similar size it is usually possible to get one enthusiast volunteer; less common to get a reluctant but helpful volunteer, but everyone else feels a sense of relief that at least someone has volunteered.

In a room where several people know each other you can get the situation where a group will band together and rowdily volunteer an individual, something like “John, will do it!”, “Yeah! Go on, John!” Almost a case of ‘throwing someone to the wolves’. This isn’t an uncommon situation. Most people get a feeling of butterflies in the stomach, apprehension or downright fear at the request for volunteers. Most people sit at the back of a session for a reason and the front row is almost completely empty or fills up last; this then acts as a shield for the rest of the audience. Most people want to sit back in their seats and observe someone else do it first, they can then assess if they would be any good at it before having a go themselves. This is what comedians play upon when ‘working’ a live audience.

There is one group of people where it is possible to get lots of volunteers, children. Deborah gave an example where she was working with a group of children and she asked if anyone would like to have a go and almost everyone put up their hand and said, “Please, oh, please pick me.” The child she picked looked like she had won the lottery. And all the other children sighed at not getting picked. So being first when you are a kid is an opportunity. First when you are an adult is seen as something to be avoided. An adult going first doesn’t have any chance to assess if they will be any good at it. Children have a strategy. That strategy is to have lots of goes. Have as many goes as they possibly can. Their metric is how many goes they got. They aren’t necessarily bothered about the quality of any individual go. As adults we are more interested in having one perfect go, or having no goes at all. Deborah then uses an example of a fairground coconut shy where you can have three goes for £1. We know that the first few goes we are gathering data. The first throw could be way off target because we haven’t yet judged the weight of the ball or the distance correctly. On subsequent goes we are using the data from the previous experience to adjust our behaviour. However, if this is flipped to the example of a seminar or workshop then we prefer one go rather than three because it is giving more opportunity to demonstrate that we are no good at something. We are afraid of failure and possible humiliation. Children know that lots of goes means getting better at something; adults aren’t good at that.

So why, how and where does this change occur?

There must be something in the feedback processes that we receive throughout our development that causes this change to happen. Through that development we become more risk averse because of the imposed sense of being judged and the sense of failure. As a child if you feel relaxed and you think that you can achieve something, then you have a go and possibly don’t quite achieve it then your failure is pointed out to you and maybe you are told that you were over confident, you were ‘cocky’. You have to know your limitations. So we begin to learn that we need to look anxious and ultimately to be anxious and less confident of our abilities or potential. So any environment where we ‘do learning’ we take that anxiety in with us. Any training course, any workshop, tutorial, etc.

So this got me thinking. Is there merit in trying and failing often to improve our skill-set, without fear of judgement or ridicule?

I have heard successful entrepreneurs say how they fail often and they see it as a learning experience.

There is one area where continued failing is actually encouraged, leading to an elevated feeling of success on completion. This is in gaming strategy. A game that is too easy to master is not rewarding or fulfilling, leading to negative comments in reviews. People want to be challenged. They want to fail so that they can persevere and overcome a problem to finish a level in a game and move onto the next level. This is how the skill-set improves. When developing games for education, this ‘safe-failing’ needs to be understood and employed appropriately.

“In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try.”

David Viscott, Psychiatrist

So can this ‘safe-failing’ be used more generally? Should we as learning technologists be experimenting and reporting what happens, be it a success or a failure? I have my views on this, but what are your thoughts? Leave a comment below. Also, if you have any examples you have of ‘safe-failing’ I’d like to hear them, make with #safefail
 

Fail Better by Feral78 CC-BY 2.0

You can see the full Deborah Frances-White video from the Learning and Skills Group Conference 2014

Images used:

• Safe (Takoma Park, MD) by takomabibelot CC-BY 2.0
• Fail Stamp by Nima Badiey CC-BY 2.0
• Fail Better by Feral78 CC-BY 2.0

Event at Sheffield Hallam:Social media in learning, teaching and assessment

A couple of weeks ago I attended the “Using social media in learning, teaching and assessment”  event at Sheffield Hallam University on  the 1st May 2014. The event took place in Hallam Hall on the main Campus. I thought it would be useful to share some highlights with you…

Speed-dating!

Well not quite… I am referring to the format of the event, which was very similar to the speed-dating style.  We were presented with 11 tables that each contained a particular showcase in social media and were asked to choose a particular table as our starting point.

We were then given 15 minutes at that first table, before moving on to another of our choosing. Each table in turn would then also last 15 minutes.  The idea being that you got some good insight into about 4-5 tables’ worth of showcase within the entire allotted time.

I enjoyed this method of presentation. It ensured that you got to take in the main points from a good cross section of different activities. The only issue I could see with this style of presentation, is that things have to coordinate well, in terms of table finishing/starting times, otherwise you miss some important information from your next table.

Here is some highlights from the tables I chose…

Table 1 : Sharing experiences in starting out with social media in Learning Teaching and Assessment

The lead for this table was Dr Mark Faulkner in the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at Sheffield Hallam. The activity involved getting his students to produce a video that would then be hosted on YouTube. Students shot the video themselves (the content focusing on getting residential care patients away from the home and to more stimulating outdoor environments). This served as a fun initial activity for students (and student feedback was positive) but it also had a number of longer lasting goals…

• Development of a facebook page that would incorporate this type of video plus other sources of information from/for health professionals.

• Opportunity for students to look up the YouTube video and reflect back on the key messages that it contained.

• The key messages from the videos could be disseminated to health professionals, in particular nurses caring for patients.

This table served as a great introduction for those who are interested in the  use of social media in learning, but were relatively inexperienced in the field.


Table 9:  Students’ use of social media for professional networking

As part of a module entitled “Designing & Developing E-Learning” a group of students  were tasked with putting together an online employability resource that would showcase the use of social media (particularly LinkedIn) for employability.

The resource, a mobile website, was built using a mixture of technologies including HTML5, Bootstrap (a website which helps new developers create web resources) and contained a mix of text/video and pictorial resources.  The resource was presented to us  on iPads that we could all use to scroll through the various information that was available. It was noted that the resource was still in development.

The students reported that this project had been an incredibly useful exercise, not only in terms of learning about the social media platforms themselves; how they work, and their main functions; but also about how important they may be as part of raising a student’s career profile.

Table 10:  Blended use of Facebook and Twitter for a deeper level learning and understanding of the course.

Matt Willett talked about his use of a Facebook group in the Business School, that had been developed over a number of years. Matt talked about how the use of this group (currently around 350 students) had enriched the learning experience for students, by giving them an area for support (academic and peer led), discussion, information exchange and fostering a learning community.

We talked about keeping the purpose of a student Facebook group clear. For example ,official course communication could/should be made in the VLE, whilst the facebook group remains the mechanism for more informal and supportive communications. We also talked about how academics would interact with the group. Students have the right to post information in this Facebook group,  but there is a fairly constant academic presence there, to ensure the group stays engaged and on topic. 

Matt also utilised a Twitter account to further help inform students, as well as structure and direct learning. An example use of this technology would be to help inform any upcoming lectures, so that students(who were following the Twitter account) would be armed pre-lecture.

Table 5: Enhancing Course Identity through social Media

Due to the overrunning of the previous session, unfortunately I missed some of this session… however...

The Presenters Claire Bland, Billy Bryan and Joanne Jenkins were talking about how they were looking to develop a code of practice for social media through research, focus groups and interviews with staff and students. These interviews were made to ascertain how best to structure social media platform/s that suited both staff and students.  There were 4 technologies included here: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blackboard. 

There was some interesting discussion regarding how much input and presence staff should actually have in maintaining learning-directed social media areas (particularly Facebook/BlackBoard groups). Leaving students to their own devices on the one hand could lead to lack of student engagement but gives them much more freedom.  On the other, there is a potentially large administrative burden on staff in constantly keeping the information flowing, and students may feel restricted in what they can say. We also discussed the fact that Facebook has been seen in the past, as a the one social media tool that the students want to keep separated from their academic study. However it does seem that if set up correctly it can be a real addition to the student learning experience.

That wraps up my highlights from the day... very enjoyable, and hope to see more of this style of workshop!

Uni Learning Techs Forum

Learning Technologists' Forum

The Learning Technologists' Forum was held on Friday 9 May in the Arts Tower. There were over 20 attendees from across the University at what proved to be a packed agenda.

Farzana began the proceedings making initial introductions and everyone introduced themselves.

MOLE Update

Danny Monaghan presented the new updates for MOLE (Blackboard). Some of the issues with the service had been resolved my end of 2013 making it more reliable. Encouragingly, MOLE service statistics are showing a year on year increase and there is noticeable increases particularly in the use of Turnitin for student submissions. We are now investigating the possibility of going Blackboard hosted as an institution.

In the next couple of months we should be able to publish a road plan of where the service is going. There is a guide in production that Danny will be circulating to Learning Techs soon. Additionally, we are working with the CiCS Communication Team to produce MOLE videos. These will be in place by the start of next term.

Danny give out warning and advice about the upcoming three week busy period of course rollovers and software installation updates. The rollover will take place from 7 to 18 July. Courses are considered read-only during this period. Departments will  be informed when this has taken place. Various tests and checks are required during this period to ensure that the rollover has proceeded successfully. This is a technical process from the CiCS end. However, we can’t check the content. When told that courses have been rolled, please look over them to ensure that all the content is there and correct. DON’T LEAVE TO THE DAY BEFORE TEACHING. If any error has occurred during the process there needs to be time prior to teaching to rectify this.

MOLE system upgrade will be taking place between Friday 18 and Wednesday 23 July. Upgrades take place annually for various reasons, including bug fixes, speed and stability improvements, and to introduce new features. These can be significant feature enhancements, for example anonymous and parallel marking; this feature has been specifically designed for the European market. Danny has seen a demonstration of this, but not had hands on yet.

Anyone interested in testing new features, please let Danny know. Actual courses are the proper test for this so help us out. Email Danny if you are interested. Information will be circulated through MOLE Contacts and the MOLE Google Group.

Xerte

Mark Morley presented the work he has been doing with Xerte. A discussion has been taking place on the Learning Techs’ Google+ discussion group, initiated by Paul Jinks. This discussion showed that Xerte was something that several Learning Techs across the University have previously considered or wanted to have a look at, given the time.

Mark gave a brief explanation of what Xerte is. Put simply, it is a toolkit for producing eLearning objects. It is template driven to enable easy, intuitive production of pedagogically sound learning objects without the technology being too much of a hurdle. It was developed by the University of Nottingham and has been around since 2008.

The templates allow a range of different page types to be created, these include:

• Text
• Rich Media - Graphics, Video, Audio, Slideshows, etc.
• Interactivity

A more comprehensive breakdown of the available page types is available online.

Significantly, the latest version of Xerte is now HTML5 compliant. This means that it is using open standards. This enables learning objects to be created and subsequently accessed from a broad range of devices and browsers. Though it should be noted that not everything that could be produced in the Flash version can be produced in HTML5, yet. To demonstrate the HTML5 compliance, Mark showed an example on a mobile phone that only allows open standards to operate, and the learning object worked fine. It also demonstrated the look, feel, and usability on mobile devices of the produced learning objects.

Mark provided some background about why he was looking at Xerte. Initially, this was related to Open and Online Educational Resource (OER) creation. This would enable greater sharing across departments, faculties and at the university level. More recently he has been looking at the possibility of re-purposing FutureLearn  MOOC content using Xerte.

Mark had installed a standalone server on his PC for testing and was also using the JISC TechDIS Xerte Sandpit for testing with a view to setting up a full install on a University server for further testing.

Some examples of shared online learning objects were shown.

• Dementia 1
• Introducing Health Psychology: A training workshop for counsellors
• The Sconul 7 Pillars of information literacy

Also highlighted was an example of how Xerte had been used by the University of the West of Scotland for Inquiry-based Learning where students created shareable learning objects. And this also showed how JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) Scotland seems to be having a push on promoting the use of Xerte.

There was a little time for discussion. Jesrine Clarke-Darrington has used Xerte previously.

Several people at the University are using Articulate, which is also now HTML5 compliant. Ian Loasby is using it in Law. Lecturers create content themselves and currently Ian uploads it but he will be getting them to do it in the future.

Pebblepad

Zafer Ali presented Pebblepad to the Forum. We have had Pebblepad at the University for about two years and anyone in the university who has a valid account can use it. CiCS has recently taken it over as a centrally supported service. Pebblepad is very flexible in its use and can do many thing, though this can be a problem sometimes as it can cause confusion. It allows students to create a portfolio, reflect on work, share their own work with anyone they choose whether they are internal to the organisation or external.  

It is now integrated into the MUSE Portal. This summer it will also be integrated into MOLE. This will allow set up in a courses so the students can click a link to take them straight into Pebblepad.

There are standard templates (forms) within PebblePad for all users to use to help them reflect on anything. Additionally, there are also other tools within PebblePad which allow users to make an online CV, Portfolio and Blog. There is also an asset store where the user can store any digital items. Items can be shared with others, for example with their instructor or external moderator. These templates can be used to replicate what otherwise could be created in a Word document, Excel sheet, Google Form.

Pebblepad is mobile compatible. So if students need to make reflections when they are out and about or on placement then they can do it on their mobile device.

Pebblepad can also be used for professional development. Currently, there aren’t plans for this as an institutional initiative, though individuals can use it for CPD recording. This is useful for continued reflections and review at the time of SRDS.

The data isn’t tied into the system. Students can retain their account once they have finished their studies and it is free for a year, then a paid for service. You can also export data as pdf, etc. It’s possible to create a portfolio as a google searchable webpage. There is fine grained access rights to this that enables sharing by someone for a short period of time and rescinding of rights at any time.

There will be some training sessions run by CiCS in the summer, which will be advertised.

StarPlus

Maria Mawson and Rachel Collier-Wilson from the Library came to talk about the StarPlus service. It has been established as a library catalogue and discovery tool for a couple of years. Everyone has their own individual ‘eshelf’ within StarPlus. This allows notes, reflections or information to be recorded by the learner.

For collaborative learning and sharing there is a Facebook ‘Like’ button. Reviews are visible to other users. And it is possible to add tags for different resources. This has been used by Gary Wood, work for which Farzana Latif added the ability to create tag clouds.

Promoting the StarPlus service and features has been done via blogs and Twitter. It would be good to get the message circulated more widely. There is a tutorial about using StarPlus in the Library Information Schools Course section on the web.

What’s coming up in StarPlus? Single sign-in is on the way. Implementing the new version of the underlying software for StarPlus, this will be coming in July. The landing page will be made easier and clearer to allow more intuitive access to using the database.

There are citation and permalinks options. For the former there a different citation styles available and the latter enables information to be pointed to more easily.

During the discussions section, it was pointed out that to publicize the collaborative work further there could be some examples from work done in CILASS that might parallel the usage of tagging and the sharing of resources in StarPlus.

There was also a question asked about whether StarPlus could incorporate digital learning objects into the catalogue for integration. This could potentially be a possibility in the future.

iTunesU

Graham McElearney came to showcase some of the work that has been done on the iTunesU project as Learning Techs might be the first point of contact for people who want to participate.

Apple say iTunesU is the largest open educational resource in the world.

Graham highlighted reasons why the University might be interested in making material available via the service, e.g. having a responsibility to share knowledge.

What is the difference the between iTunesU, YouTube and MOOCs?

YouTube might be considered more amorphous, and less structured than the categorized iTunesU and therefore much harder to access content of interest. Additionally, YouTube can get blocked in some countries.

MOOCs are very structured, usually formed into a weekly, structured programme running for a set duration with some element of self-assessment during or at the end of the programme. iTunesU is more about accessing the content as-and-when it is most convenient for the end consumer, and without any time restrictions. The videos created for the University’s Discovering Dentistry MOOC has now been made available via iTunesU.

iTunesU gives us an opportunity to take the fantastic diversity of the University and showcase it in a digital form.

Graham showed three examples of material that has been made available via the service:

• Work by Anthony Rossiter in Engineering
• Archaeology fieldwork
• Animal Behaviour Tim Birkhead

Colleagues at the forum were asked if they had got or knew other colleagues with any resources that might be useful for inclusion. The main proviso for content is that it is legal and adheres with copyright law.

There was time for a quick discussion in groups of attendees to generate ideas for inclusion to the service.

Mobile Learning

James Goldingay then introduced the Turnitin iPad App to show the advantages it could bring to academic colleagues. Some of these include

• Marking Off-line - you don’t have to be connected to the Internet whilst marking
• Flexibility - everyone marks in their own certain way - you can choose where you want to mark
• Speed - The method with which you transition between student papers (swiping the screen) is potentially quicker than using the mouse on the desktop version
• Access - Switch on the iPad, access the App and you're ready to mark, no need to wait for an operating system to load

James showed the Forum how the App looked. Turnitin have now introduced a 4 digit passcode to the App to prevent other users from accessing Turnitin assignments; should the iPad  be left unattended. He also emphasized the importance of selecting “Turnitin UK”, and “integrated LMS”, on setting up the App this allows it  to link with the VLE (MOLE).

When using the marking within the App there are icon driven options.

• QM is the ‘QuickMark’ facility - a set of commonly used marking terms
• There is a free text input (and if you have an iPad with Siri then you can use an audio comment facility via this option). Claire Beecroft from ScHARR has used this audio option for marking; it proves quicker than using the onscreen keyboard of an iPad.
• Can highlight text and the free text box will be anchored. Highlighting can be in different colours.
• Also can write directly onto the piece with the text option.

The ‘Graph’ icon in the top righthand corner of the screen gives the originality report in real time. You can mark whilst the Originality report highlights are active.

The ‘Blue pencil’ icon allows a general audio and text comment for the entire piece of work.

At the top left of this screen you can return a grade. In addition, if you have a Rubric (marking criteria) attached to the assignment you can also use this to help assist in calculating the score. Students will also be able to see this Rubric.

Feedback from the use of the App has been positive.

Limitations (at the time of writing):

• No PeerMark support
• No Grading Form
• Grade Anything
• Link comments to rubrics
• No Android support
• Grade anything or grade nothing

There will be a full training session  given on July 1st  for the Turnitin App.

Additionally, a series of mobile learning sessions are planned for over summer 2014. The themes range from: using MOLE, conducting research, assessment and feedback, reading on your Mobile device… These sessions will be publicized on the LMS

Finally James reported back on the first “App swap” meeting held on the 25th April. He reported that as this was a first meeting, there was first discussion as to how this forum should move forward. It was agreed that there should be a future focus on some choice apps, following a show and tell format.

5 Things Google needs to do better (if it's to be taken more seriously in higher education)

Image: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Robert Scoble

At The University of Sheffield we have been using Google Apps for Education for about four years, and as many of my colleagues know I’m a big advocate of the technology giants move into education and collaboration, and have been for almost a decade. Like many of my peers enjoy the benefits of using Forms for questionnaires and knowledge gathering, Docs for collaborative document writing, even penning a journal article via live Google Doc paper slams with two of my colleagues. I love the ease of meeting the very same people in a Hangout to work on the paper and donning the funny augmented fake moustaches at the same time. Yet there are a few things missing that would really turn this powerful suite of tools into a truly academic productivity suite.

Academic understanding

Most people I work with agree that Docs are great, their simplicity and ability for true synchronous collaboration is without doubt a winner. Docs are what the Web generation were waiting for whilst Microsoft were left sleeping with their tired, but trusted Office platform. Docs may not have all of the functionality that Word has, but that is changing thanks to a collection of new add-ons including thesaurus, table of contents and even a track changes tool that is almost taking Docs back to Word for those uncomfortable with the comments option. Yet one thing for academics is still missing and that is reference management software integration. For any higher education students, especially those taking Masters or PhD level studies and academic research staff the addition of a proper cite-while-you-write plug in would be a big step forward. Docs does have the EasyBib citation generator, but at present the application is limited to searching Google for either a title, ISBN, DOI, or Keyword. In addition it only has a very limited number of citation styles, which compared to the likes of Mendeley has thousands. Another option a colleague brought to my attention was the Google Add-on Paperpile which does have potential with its cite-while-you-write function. It isn't free, but at less than £30 a year probably worth investigation. To use Paperpile you need to export your Mendeley or Endnote, et al references and PDFs, whilst it works effortlessly in Chrome. Paperpile is a step in the right direction, but perhaps still feels too lightweight compared to the established reference management applications, time will tell. Applications used in academic research and teaching departments such as Endnote and RefWorks are capable of managing thousands of references easily. The issue isn’t about whether an add-on can insert references or import a few dozen but whether a large scale, structured collection of references can be inserted easily into an essay, journal paper or book and a bibliography be created in a variety of citation styles. Until such as Mendeley, Zotero or another reference management application resolves that issue, Docs will really only be fit for small articles and essays not systematic reviews or large scale reports. The reason for this is not down to such as Paperpile’s inability as it may well be capable of this, but academics need to see the tools they trust achieve this. If you have used Endnote for 20 years you need to know the next tool you move on to will be a step forward with minimum fuss. In addition students and academics would need to move away from Firefox and for some Internet Explorer as more of these tools appear within Chrome, that is still a hurdle many are not yet ready to take. Obviously as I have argued above not all of this is Google’s fault, but like their take on Social Media, their slowness on the uptake with regards to a real reference management solution means it could be some time before we see widespread serious academic use of Docs.

Consistency

Google are renowned for providing real-time updates for their applications, often with little or no notice, which is understandable when you have tools that are used by millions of people and for free. Yet on occasions Google misjudge these changes to the point where it can cause uncertainty and frustration amongst its users. Take Google Reader for example, a much used and loved tool for staying abreast of websites and resources via RSS. It was particularly useful for academics to stay abreast of new journal articles and blogs, yet Google killed it off much to the delight of competitors such as Feedly who gained new subscribers in their millions almost overnight.

One potential switch off was an indication of their failure to understand how universities were using their software when they announced they would close the appointment slots function within Google Calendar. For those unaware, appointments were useful in a multitude of ways in education, from tutors allocating slots for their students to support staff, such as librarians doing the same and allowing students and staff to sign up for one-to-one sessions. These would then be added automatically to the student’s own calendar to prevent them from forgetting what they had signed up for. It was a great exercise in preventing time wastage as it did not rely on students to jot down the appointment in a notebook only to forget it.

As a result many in the academic community and beyond voiced their annoyance at such a decision which Google eventually reversed, so at least they saw the error of their ways, it’s just a concern they could do something similar again.

Google do not get everything right, look at how slow they reacted to the growth of Social Media and how Google Wave bombed in its attempt to change how we handled communication and networks, yet for every big failure they have had multiple successes. The hope is that they learn from the mistakes of Wave and know when to manoeuvre a u-turn with the likes of appointment slots.

Privacy and settings

This is not in relation to Google’s attitude to privacy in general as that is a different topic which could stretch for pages, but how Google run Hangouts On Air. Again at my university we were lucky to get Google Apps and one of the tools with most potential is Google Hangouts. Hangouts are superb for student support, project meetings and general catch ups. When the On Air functionality was turned on we saw this as a great way to deliver live webinars and run such as open days for our department. Sadly unlike publishing a video to YouTube, the privacy settings were no where to be seen, so you could not make your on air hangout private as it sat in a public lobby. Anyone who has ever been into a public Web lobby will know that it can be open to abuse and trolling. So our first attempts at Hangouts On Air were slightly uncomfortable as various strangers came in and posted dubious comments. There were no options to make the Hangout private via a password which could be shared with attendees or schedule the Hangout so that attendees had a URL they could copy and paste in advance. It all felt too open, and therefore potentially unsafe, so my institution decided to turn off this function. Ideally Hangout On Air should have the option of private hosting via invite only, like a professional Webinar where you can see exactly who is in your lobby and preferably be able to orchestrate invites and kick off bad attendees. Once these issues are refined Hangouts On Air would be a brilliant addition to the academic’s collection of tools for teaching, instruction, collaboration and communication.

Better Offline

From my experience the one thing that really puts academics and students off from using Google Apps is their restricted functionality for working offline. I have a Chromebook and have conducted most of my work for the last five years in the Cloud, I know there are certain things I can do like create my own personal hotspots should wifi not be available or simply have some papers with me to read in the event of a wifi-free train journey. Yet for many students and academics they still travel around with USB sticks or use desktop based software such as Microsoft Office, also for other reasons as previously mentioned other than the Cloud not being accessible.

In recent years Google Docs have almost taken a step backwards with a nod to Microsoft with offline version of documents in Drive and such as track changes as an add on. Yet offline email and documents is still not really taking off for many Google App users as they have been used to moving in one direction, that being totally cloud based. Yet as I have experienced wifi is not consistent or fast enough in many places in the UK, whilst open and free wifi locations are not always the safest place to work on a sensitive document due to the risks of being hacked or spied on. The move towards Dropbox style functionality of Drive has been a good one, but still there needs to be more fluidity and ease to the switch between offline and online and between various platforms. Obviously this is something Google is working on and getting better at as there are now more options, although offline editing in IOS and Android still appears to be unavailable, whilst you can only use offline in the Chrome browser. The nature of Google is to be online, and in the future that is where we will all be working, but until wifi networks become faster and more reliable, Google will have to try harder to be offline as well as online in their attempt to win over more students and academics.

A Connected World

Google has build and collected a diverse and growing toolbox of useful tools that have changed the way many work in academia for ever. For many there is no going back to Outlook, Word or PowerPoint, yet despite the uniformity and ease that Google Apps afford the user there is still one thing missing. Anyone who has ever used project management tools such as Huddle or SharePoint or at our own institution a tool called uSpace created by Jive will understand the feeling of working within a bubble. That all of the tools within the wider package all feel enclosed. This is by no means a statement saying SharePoint and uSpace are better than Google Apps as they are not, by a long chalk. Yet for Google to really step into the education arena they need to have the feel of a virtual learning environment (VLE) or project management suite like Huddle. There is no question that the majority of Google Apps work together and most have small learning curves, if you learn Docs you’ve almost learned Blogger, if you can use Blogger you’re not far off from mastering Sites. Even though at my institution the Apps sit safely behind a password and are all accessible from one menu that includes Groups, Contacts, Maps, Blogger, YouTube amongst others, there is still an air of desperateness about them. Yes you can embed a video in a blog, you can add a Doc to a Site, it all works very well it all connects and embeds nicely. Yet you cannot see the collections of docs, groups and videos in one place such as you can in our VLE. The benefits are simple that you can group discussions, documents, blogs in one place and view them at a glance with one big overview. Of course you can do this to some extent with Sites, or embed Apps within your VLE but if it was that simple we would be seeing more examples of it, whilst it just feels a bit unwieldy and a workaround. Whether Google’s game-plan is to create a VLE to rival such as Blackboard I don’t know, or they might even consider buying a VLE and drop in the suite wholesale. Google Apps for Education is without doubt a powerful collection of tools, and as anyone who has used them will know they do not rest on their laurels. The set of tools will continue to grow and advance and by addressing these five issues they will see a huge uptake in their usage in academia.

Resources:

https://paperpile.com/

http://www.easybib.com/

http://www.mendeley.com/