The annual Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) Conference took place last month at Senate House, London. A wide range of topics were covered from changes to work based learning, to open access and online pedagogies.
Dr Nicola Millard, from British Telecom (BT) discussed the changing nature of the workplace and highlighted elements of her report entitled ‘the future of the office’, which looks at the growing trend of non office based workers.
There was a ‘fireside’ question and answer session, where the panel discussed what worked well and what did not in technology projects. The panel agreed that technology projects were more about the people than the technology. Engagement with the user at all stages, good transparent communication and the ability to see the world from the customer’s view point were important.
The process of designing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for Coursera, by Goldsmiths, University of London, and how the online experience doesn’t always match the face to face experience were topics also discussed during the conference.
The conference concluded with Professor Diana Laurillard, from the Institute of Education, discussing how other online pedagogies and blended learning can be mapped. She demonstrated her pedagogical patterns calculator and argued that good blended learning in universities was needed for the students who pay £9,000 fees and not for people who, according to the data, already have Bachelors or Masters level qualifications and who are using MOOCs as a way of continuous professional development (CPD).
A link to the videos is available here to view.
More information on the conference can be found on the FOTE conference website