This two-part BLOG results from my
experience in Leading the Organisational and
Complexity Research Group at Westminster
Business School, London UK, and is all
about exploring the experiment my university
is currently calling ‘Tearing down the
Walls’ i.e. exploring new technology in web
2.0 environments.
In this second part of my
Blog I will explore the ‘Tearing down the
Walls’ experiment itself.
It all started in the mind of Roger James
our Information Systems Director who
wondered what would happen if we let
students loose to develop new applications
for the university for other students [and
maybe also staff] within the existing
‘garden walls’ [their phrase – another one
for me to learn] of the university’s
applications where there is currently a lack
of compatibility to easily transfer between
student activities, but also to ‘tear down’
these walls through the use of ‘cloud’
computing. The project is called internally TWOLER where the ‘LER’ stands for
Lightweight Enterprise RSS and the TWO for
Web 2.0 [ a pun on the 2 for – geddit?
Well, I didn’t either!]
Most universities have walls that limit
access to applications, that limit who can
come into the university environment and use
the facilities, and that limit whio can
suggest and develop new applications.
Additionaly, universities, university
applications are clumsy and for our new
generation fo stduntes, not intuitive uin
use. This is the generation, after all, of
FaceBook and Bebo, of iPhones and Twitter...
Our interfaces do not match those already
within the students’ experiences and our
graden walls prevent the linking between
these applications that they are used to.
The Tearing Down the Walls project has been
based on the idea of ‘let a 1000 flowers
bloom’ – not all will set seed and flourish
in our garden and produce healthy plants
next year, and even then, some may have
cross-bred alonmg the way. Yet those few
plants that do flower next year will be
healthy and strong and adapted to the
environment in which they exist.
In all this excitement though about
technologuy we must continue to remember
that technology cannot solve all problems,
after all pull works better than push and
some solutions may well be social but
facilitated through technology.
The project has already some 12 major funded
applications under way by students. The
necessaity to provide financial aid and
incentives was perhaps a disappointing but
inevitable outcome so far of this project.
Our students live hectic lives and few can
afford not devote any time left over from
their studies away from earning their next
year’s fees and living expenses – I am being
charitable here, some lecturers would put
the equation the other way round – students
first earn and in their time left over,
study. So our students needed financial
assistance to give them, [or encourage them
to find] time to develop these applications.
This project is part of the HE Innovation
programme [run by JISC] and it is hoped that
it will do a number of things: it might
encourage students students to spend more
time within the university’s learning spaces
as the environment will be more familiar to
them and may have cross-overs from external
spaces; students might build learning
structures that have more meaning for them
and this learning might extend out to bring
in more within the university; positive
graffiti might evolve [see graffiti on
FaceBook]; and more commercial commodity
systems will join seamlessly into the
university’s environment.
So what sort of things are students working
on?
-
One student is developing a talent space
whereby he is finding all the artistic
talent – musicians, dancers, actors and
artists and so on, around our four
campuses, and putting them together and
enabling them to showcase their
endeavours on video and by links to
their own websites and so on.
-
Another student is providing a four
campus map of accessibility for disabled
students to be uploaded as an iPhone
app. Yet another is looking to provide
an alumni mentoring systems for current
and continuing students. This can now
happen because Alumni will have
continuing access to the university’s
environment for the future. Not only
will they have an email for life, which
may useful to them, but there is an
issue around IP, privacy Vs connection
and security against tearing down the
walls.
-
Another student wants fellow students to
tweet all through lectures and then
these tweets will be aggregated into
their Virtual Learning Environment [VLE]
to see what students thought were the
most important aspects of the lecture.
Now here I put my pedagogy hat on and
wonder just how useful it is for
students to twit all through the
sessions? Are they really listening,
interacting and participating? Will they
learn more from the twits than the
lecture notes- especially if the twits
are not aggregated and selected for
relevance by the tutor?
-
In Biosciences a student is preparing a
mashup for First Years with various
scientific databases. The main idea is
to make a student forum where bioscience
students can discuss lectures,
practicals, coursework, student life etc
on a fun and informal basis. It will
include views and opinions and gather
feedback from upper year students
whether work-related or based on student
life that can be specific to course
needs. Details of the modules, contacts
of the module leaders and lecturer
reviews will be included. Furthermore,
module handbooks and specifications will
be simplified down into key sections and
key Youtube videos in difficult topics
with a glossary as, for instance some
pharmacology recommended book do not
contain the meanings of important words.
There would also be a section dedicated
to careers for each of the modules, with
key skills that are required and work
experience places that may benefit
others. Students or staff can contribute
to this.
Additional proposed apps:
-
PLACES OF INTERESTS: As a student
studying at a campus, the student may be
new to the area and not know the area
very well. Therefore it would be useful
to create an application that for
searches places of interest around the
campus. For example restaurants,
shopping malls, post office, cinemas
etc. it would include a feature where
students can rate these places. The
rating with then be displayed when the
user searches for a particular place.
This app could be used on a mobile
device such as the iphone and Google G1.
-
MESSAGE ALERTS: An Application system
that gives alerts to a mobile device
about lectures/tutorials such as
cancellations. It can also alert the
students when new VLE content is
uploaded.
-
BOOK BEEPER: When taking out a book from
the library, most students do not
remember the date they have to bring it
back. Therefore there should be an
widget which acts as a beeper to notify
the student that their library book is
due/over due. This widget can be
implemented on the main university
account and can also be used on mobile
devices.
-
Yet another student is proposing a
Gadget to Mash up the google maps API
and the information about news and
events around campuses. Using the
zooming interface of google maps the
access of the live feed would be easy
and fun. Because of the overview and
detail attributes location based
information would be easy to display
even on the small screens of mobile
phones. Open classes, meetings, special
events would have a journey time
calculation in a similar manner as
tubejp.co.uk
provides such information.
Yet more suggestions include:
-
COLLEAGUE FINDER based on a delicious
account. The gadget would support
cross-campus collaboration by helping
students find the right colleague for a
specific project. Therefore student life
would not be constrained by the distance
between campuses. Using one's delicious
tags students could find others with
similar interests. The gadget could have
a project proposal part too where people
would advert open positions for group
work.
-
University library mashed with an AMAZON
WISHLIST. Accessing one's amazon
wishlist the library could recommend
books available now or in the future
which are relevant to one's interests.
Using the ratings attribute the gadget
could make a list or comparisons of most
popular and course relevant books.
-
Mobile application for finding out the
locations of the COMPUTERS THAT ARE NOT
IN USE around the uni.
-
A web based USED BOOK auction system for
university students to sell their used
books and other academic materials. This
will specially be helpful for the
students, who have completed their final
year and are going home.
-
A data mashup such as BLOOMBERG’S MARKET
DATA for each day mashup against
university calendar especially helpful
for the WBS finance students
-
TRANSLATION mashup which includes
previous student experience with the
subject and how to choose your optional
modules based on the experience of
previous students. Overcoming
difficulties in Translation through
providing links to Reliable Dictionaries
including online dictionaries; Reliable
sites that help in translation; personal
glossaries ( a collection of terms and
expression researched by previous
students); Extra free courses related to
translation such as Trados sessions,
ECDL sessions, Extra language tuition
available. A law student wants to make a
visual spider-net of one chosen area of
law (European Law). The first level
would be the EU in general. The second
level would be case law and the Third
level would be directives, regulations
and decisions.
One thing we see clearly here is the
sociotechnical imperative of user direction
in terms of providing systems that work how
they want them to work and when they want
them to work, in operation. The project is,
of course, specifically designed to permit
users, in this case the university students,
to do this. We also see that many, if not
most, of these sites apps are being used to
share implicit knowledge. They want to know
the experiences of past students explicated
for them to save them time and effort, but
also to understand better their chosen
topics. Variance control as advocated by
Cherns in his seminal work and as applied to
Knowledge Management in my book of 2002, is
happening – the social systems of the
students are deciding what these apps should
be, how they should be ‘mashed up’ – put
together, and who by - the person with the
requisite knowledge and understanding of
requirements. Truly a user-designed and
user-programmed set of systems. We also see
that information flow is happening as the
garden walls are broken down and management
are not permitted to interfere, checks and
barriers are being broken down, with
students being given the power and
authority, with the responsibility, to
decide what resources they need and when.
The multifunctional principle with the
organisation making sense of its environment
through the use of its human and
technological resources is at work here. It
seems that through this tearing down of the
walls the University of Westminster is truly
looking to become a sociotechnical knowledge
sharing [at least at the student level]
organisation. We have yet to see, as the
project progresses, just what the change
imperative within the university, will make
of this project and just how much the
student experience will change as a result.
