Professor Patrick Carmichael

I spent an interesting week in the United Arab Emirates at the invitation of Zayed University (Dubai) and the United Arab Emirates University at Al-Ain.

At the UAEU I presented the work of the Ensemble Project in a lecture called ‘Semantic Technologies for the Transformation of Higher Education’, and then at Zayed University I was Keynote Speaker at a seminar organised in association with the journal ‘Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives‘. I spoke about “Threshold Concepts, Troublesome Knowledge and Disciplinary Identities’ to an audience drawn from universities across the Gulf Region (UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait). This was then followed by workshops to launch a network of teachers interested in using action research approaches to research and develop practice in HE in the Gulf Region.

This is the first network of its kind in the region, with network groups focusing on conceptual change and troublesome knowledge (my group); generic skill and attributes; and ‘learning styles’ and student self-assessment. These groups will be supported by an online environment and the intention is to provide peer-support for participants as they carry out small-scale research activities in their home institutions.

I presented my Inaugural Professorial Lecture at Liverpool John Moores University on 22nd February.  The topic was: “Can New Technologies support Radical Pedagogies?”

The lecture was the second in a series on ‘Educational Visions’ organised by the Faculty of Education, Community and Leisure and CERES, the Centre for Educational Research and Evaluation, at LJMU. Full details of the series are here.

This was the outline: The claims made for new technologies in education are ambitious and wide-ranging: nothing less than the transformation of schools and universities, and new kinds of teaching and learning are promised.  As new web technologies and ever-more portable devices emerge, their potential for social and education innovation is heralded.

Yet much educational technology seems to reproduce established teaching and learning practices, and reinforce existing teacher and learner roles. Perhaps the problem is that the educational world waits expectantly to see what technology will arrive next and then wonders what to ‘do’ with it … maybe we are looking in the wrong places for innovation, and need to explore ‘whose technology’ and ‘whose learning’?

The ‘Semantic Web’ or ‘Linked Data Web’ is one of these new technologies and it certainly represents an area of rapid innovation; but how can it be used by teachers and learners in ways that are not only innovative but also transformative, emancipatory and radical?  Some of the web tools developed by the ‘Ensemble’ project will be presented and the opportunities they offer for creative and radical pedagogical practice will be explored.

Further information is on the LJMU website.

I am editing a special edition of the international, peer-reviewed journal Technology, Pedagogy and Education, exploring the potential of the broad ‘semantic web’ vision and of specific semantic technologies to enhance teaching and learning in different educational sectors and settings. Details follow:

Aims and Scope

The emphasis in this special edition will be on teaching and learning practices and the discourses that accompany them, rather than on the development of technical ontologies, semantic enhancements to resource description or educational administration.   This would be an edition which promotes better understanding of how emergent semantic technologies might support and enhance teaching and learning, and that invites educators to consider how their own practice might be transformed, what barriers might exist to adoption of these new technologies, and their implications for learning environments, relationships and outcomes.

Papers are invited that address questions including, but not limited to:

• How are visions of a future ‘semantic web’ and the affordances of its associated semantic technologies understood by teachers and learners in different educational settings?
• How might access to a linked ‘web of data’ transform the nature and scope of learning activities?  What hitherto unrealised opportunities for teaching and learning might now be realised?
• How can the opportunities to access large collections of distributed data be reconciled with predetermined learning outcomes?
• How do teacher and learner roles, relationships and identities change in teaching and learning environments enabled by semantic technologies?
• What are the barriers to adoption of semantic technologies in teaching and learning environments? Are these institutional, epistemological or technological?  Or some combination of these and other factors?
• How can teacher and learner experiences of the introduction of ‘Web 1.0’ and ‘Web 2.0’ into teaching and learning environments inform understanding and enactment of ‘Web 3.0’ – the semantic web?
• What are the implications of semantic technologies for assessment, transitions into different learning environments and for existing systems such as e-Portfolios or Virtual Learning Environments?

Participation

Initial enquiries may be made to me at w.p.carmichael@ljmu.ac.uk and a 500 word (maximum) summary of the proposed paper should be submitted by 11 December 2009.    Successful authors will be notified by 8 January.  Full papers will then be required by July 2010 for final submission following peer review by November 2010.  Normal journal procedures and formatting requirements apply. All papers will be double-blind peer reviewed.    Submitting authors are particularly urged to consider issues of copyright clearance in relation to images and representations of other web content.