Again, at ELI 2008 in San Antonio, I’m currently in a plenary session in which Henry Jenkins from MIT is speaking on “What Can Wikipedia Teach Us About the New Media Literacies?”

I’ve blogged on Twitter before (July 28 and July 30, 2007), and with the exception of my recent 4 week hiatus, I’ve been using it consistently and extensively since those original posts. However, I’ve not personally experienced one key affordance of Twitter: enabling a backchannel (kibbutz, for chess folks) for a more traditional speech/lecture. If you visit the ELI 2008 with Friends Twitter page and track back to approximately January 27 1:00pm CST/US, you’ll see the conversation that occurred via Twitter while Professor Jenkins spoke.

The quantity and multi-directional nature of communication currently occurring is mind-staggering, and that’s without getting too deeply into the Flickr stream for the event or searching for blogs with the ELIAnnual08, ELI2008 or ELI08AnnualMeeting tags (I’ve seen or heard it all three ways, but was just told via direct Tweet that the first is the “official” tag). I’ve known this could occur, but to experience it first hand with the volume at which it is happening is simply amazing. As I mentioned in the Twitter conversation, you can literally “hear” the backchannel via the keyboard clicks going on in the room; of course, having round tables to allow attendees to actually use their laptops makes a tremendous difference.

I’m attending the Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting in San Antonio and wanted to share a few thoughts regarding this morning’s preconference workshop - Changing Learning Cultures on Campus from Theory to Practice facilitated by Dr. Dieter Euler from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

St. Gallen began, around 1999-2000, engaging a significant institutional initiative to “change the pedagogical profile” of the institution; the goal was to move “from a culture of teaching to a culture of cooperative self-learning incorporating technology.”

Initially, this sounds like a learning signature for the institution which guides the mission of teaching and learning within the University. I’ve encountered a learning signature before at Cy-Fair College in Houston. I wonder if such an explicit declarative statement is common among higher education institutions, if any institutions K-12 included. I believe the lack of such an explicit statement is one that has inhibited change in several institutions in which I’ve worked. Identifying the pedagogical philosophy of the institution seems to be key; defining that signature seems critical to making progress toward enhancing the pedagogical practice of those within the institution. The challenge and difficulty is to get those involved to agree on a pedagogical profile.

To accomplish the goal, St. Gallen established a specific agenda with four key points:

• curricular changes: more context-related subjects (25%); self-regulated learning environments making up a considerable part of the curriculum
• learning platform - potential to support communication
• pedagogical changes - learning environments representing the new learning & teaching culture
• strict quality-assurance system: introduction of rigorous evaluation procedures

Those points provided the background from which the main activity for the workshop was generated. The focus of the workshop was a small group, interactive simulation on how to create change within an institution. The computer-based simulation was fantastic; I encourage any educational change facilitators to take a look at this simulation. More information available at:
http://elearning-reviews.com/projects/educhallenge-en.html

The primary take-away for me from the simulation focused on the notion of formally approaching, considering or developing strategy for the use of informal networks. Could or should technology integrationists track and keep a cluster chart of informal data? For example, if Professor B indicates they heard about a technology from Professor A, should educational technologists make a practice of documenting that relationship in some manner for future reference? Does it not also make sense for educational and technology change agents to track profile information on relevant individuals and potential adopters?

I’m familiar with many of the preferences and tendencies of the faculty with whom I work, but that’s different from making a concerted effort to document, track and analyze the inter-relatedness of professional and social networks within the institution.