Tag / 2016DML

by Christian

One year after #2016DML

tl;dr: I am giving a brief update on what happened to the ideas I was kicking around in my #2016DML Ignite Talk about refugees hacking the education system. I am also briefly describing a class in which students and refugees tell stories and share their perspectives.

One year has passed since my trip to #2016DML and my Ignite Talk. Lots of things have changed for me personally since then and, more importantly, not many things have changed in the way that refugees’ access to German higher education is designed. What has changed, though, is that fewer people make it to Germany and, to many, the perceived urgency of finding ways to integrate them into the education system has lessened a bit. This is not to say that nobody is working on that, not at all, it is rather becoming the ‘undercover operation’ that it has been before 2015. Some organizations, Kiron for example, have gained some ground. Mostly, however, it is left to the federal states and the universities to organize the efforts around studying in Germany. And that’s a good thing, I think. This is exactly the kind of problem that should be solved by society, its democratic organizations, its elected officials, and with tax money. On the other side, this makes changes in the information ecosystem hard to push for, difficult to implement. We’re still talking about a massive bureaucracy organized mostly by PDF for download.  Continue reading →

by Christian

Dimensions of Openness, #OER17 and an old podcast episode

tl;dr: I tried to pin down some thoughts from a podcast we recorded a while back and slipped into a comparison of OpenEd scenes in Germany and the rest of the world, especially the UK and the US. I then pulled myself together and even managed to link to my own work that I presented at #OER16

In the middle of December 2015 Markus Deimann and I invited Martina Emke as a guest to our podcast (we record the Podcast in German as it is our native language). While Markus and I usually just ramble on about what has been happening in between recordings (a theme we copied pretty much from the early concept of the mostly fabulous TIDEPodcast), we aimed to focus the discussion a bit this time. At the bottom of this page, I embedded the podcast recording.

At the time of the recording, the OER17 conference committee were still reviewing the submissions and it became pretty clear that this will be an inspiring conference which will send its delegates home with new perspectives, ideas and experiences on everything open in education. After last year’s OER16 which was themed around Open Culture, OER17 now tackles important questions around the Politics of Open. As many have noted before me, a theme that could not come with better timing.

Also, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research had just launched a program aiming to foster and facilitate production and use of OER in the German educational landscape. In short, a project called OERInfo is supposed to make OER in Germany more visible to educators and other stakeholders while a decentralised effort to qualify educators is undertaken within educational institutions. Leuphana University, where I am employed, is part of a joint project with two other German universities that combines an approach of Service Learning with the use of OER. This program by the ministry is very much focused on content as well as training of staff. More far-reaching concepts like pedagogy, connectedness, a shift of dynamics in the teacher-student relationship or learning in networks find only little, if any mention in this program. I think you can safely say that most experts and initiatives in Germany are content-driven, while also considering licensing and infrastructure to host and disseminate the content. Continue reading →

by Christian

Hack the Edu System – 6 Weeks after my Ignite Talk

tl;dr: I promised regular updates after my Ignite Talk at #2016DML and this is the first post that is meant to catch everyone up who is interested.

It has been six weeks since my Ignite Talk at the 2016 DML Conference. After the talk, many educators and practitioners reached out – not only from the conference site but also from elsewhere in the world. Some gave feedback directly as comments in the Google Doc (resulting in a slightly edited draft), some tweeted and some sent me email. I promised that I would try and keep everyone in the loop and so I will try and sum up what happened since #2016DML. Continue reading →

by Christian

#2016DML – Warum nicht auch in Deutschland?

tl;dr: Ich war bei der #2016DML Konferenz des DML Research Hub an der UC Irvine in Kalifornien. Inhaltliche Breite und Tiefe, der konstruktiv-kritische Blickwinkel der Teilnehmerinnen bei gleichzeitiger Begeisterung für das Erproben und Machen haben mich beeindruckt. Nun überlege ich: was können wir davon und daraus lernen, was sind mögliche Ursachen für die wahrgenommenen Unterschiede?

Vorab ein outing: ich bin Fanboy. Wenn Bezug zu Digitalisierung von Hochschullehre besteht, lese ich die Veröffentlichungen im Blog des DML Research Hub, teile sie gern, spreche darüber mit Kolleginnen, in einem Podcast und bei Konferenzen. Ich versuche Bezüge zu Entwicklungen im deutschsprachigen Raum herzustellen und empfehle jedem, der neu oder alt im Thema Digitalisierung von Bildung ist, einen Blick auf die Website des DML Research Hub. Mir fehlt also die kritische Distanz für einen möglichst objektiven Bericht zur diesjährigen Konferenz. Deswegen unternehme ich auch erst gar nicht den Versuch, sondern schildere lediglich meine Eindrücke und versuche daraus abzuleiten, was ich in den deutschsprachigen Debatten rund um EdTech, Offene Bildung und Digitalisierung von (Hochschul-)Bildung vermisse. Continue reading →

by Christian

#2016DML – a look back

tl;dr: I visited the annual conference of the DML Research Hub #2016DML and I tried to pin down some of the many experiences that stuck with me. This should be a much longer post than it actually is.

When I was introduced to the DML Research Hub and the inspiring people in its wider network by Nishant Shah, I was a bit overwhelmed by the complex and critical questions contributors to the blog and to the ‘twittersphere’ (is that still a word?) were asking around digital media and pedagogy, connected learning and its impacts and influences on learning and teaching in general. Leuphana Digital School had been around for a bit longer than one year, we had finished our pilot course and we had also tried out how to apply its infrastructure to the freshmen week at Leuphana. We were still in the process of figuring out things on our own and we had no real capacity for the conscious and planned integration of others’ theories, ideas or practices (see my related post “Where would you start?” for context).

While attending a DML conference seemed out of my world by then, imagining to present during an Ignite Talk session would have blown my ‘2013 self’ out of the universe. So, in October 2016, I had the privilege of attending and presenting at the conference and, while memories are as fresh as they will ever be, I want to take the chance and ban some of them onto the web. Continue reading →

by Christian

Hack the Edu System – Ignite Talk at #2016DML

tl;dr: I gave an Ignite Talk at #2016DML in which I talked about access to Higher Ed for refugees in Germany. In the transcript below, I am inviting you to give feedback and to suggest ideas. If you want to dig in deeper, there also is a Google Doc with first ideas.

Here’s a recording of my talk

As I write this post I am on my way from Hamburg to Los Angeles, both excited and a bit nervous about the upcoming #2016DML conference at UC Irvine in California. This is the the first time for me to be presenting at an Ignite Talk session and I don’t have that much experience at international conferences to begin with. When I submitted my proposal, I would not have imagined for it to be considered and so I didn’t pay too much attention to the format itself. I followed an “I’ll see about that when I get there” attitude. So, I am on my way now and I have decided that this will also be the first time for me to publish a blog post about a talk I am giving. I am doing this for several reasons: Continue reading →