Science of the Invisible

Why we need dystopia

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:04:00 +0000

BBC Radio 4 was really on a roll with the short talks, starting with Tom Shakespeare in the morning and this talk in the afternoon, in which playwright and poet Michael Symmons Roberts wonders how close the gap between imagining and living in dystopia actually is.

A.J. Cann

Looking for the 10%

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:41:00 +0000

I've been meditating on Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap.

The weakness in this "law" is the precise number. In most of my dealings, 99.9% of everything is crap. But the principle stands, and to counteract the drag, I've been trying to look for the 10%.

Sure, the 90% dominates everything, and it's easy to get dragged down. There's even some solace in writing zingers such as Why I can't stand Clare Balding, but I'm resisting, trying to find the 10%.

Which category is this in?

A.J. Cann

All you need to know about MOOCs

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:30:00 +0000

A.J. Cann

Digital stewards

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:55:00 +0000

"In higher education institutions, the take up of new forms of technology for teaching and learning is often led by a few innovators, first exploring the technology and then introducing it into practice. They act, formally or informally, as a focus for that introduction as they help others to follow in their footsteps. In doing this, they themselves seek support as they improve their expertise, but in their own institutions there may be few who can provide this. So they try to share the experience of those with a similar role in other institutions. Traditionally this has been done through face-to-face meetings such as conferences. Now the widespread use of social media provides many opportunities for the exchange of ideas and information. The two blended together is a strong combination.
Here, we explore the utility of social media for this purpose within a framework that has two elements. First, there is the extent to which the technology facilitates and promotes interaction. Of particular interest is whether it can be used as the basis of attempts to build a community of practitioners, those who share a common interest and wish to exchange ideas and their experience. This issue may be explored with the well-established concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger 1998), described in more detail below. Second, the practitioners who are promoting the use of digital technology within their institutions may be thought of as technology stewards (Wenger, White, and Smith 2009), defined as “people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with or interest in technology to take leadership in addressing those needs”. An alternative, and more accurate, designation would be digital steward, thus taking the focus away from the technology itself."

Experience of developing Twitter-based communities of practice in higher education. (2013) Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21: 18598 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.18598

I've been lucky enough to work with several digital stewards in my time. My former colleague Jo Badge was one (she still is but got fed up with herding academic cats and moved on to sort out the teaching profession). My current colleagues Terese Bird and David Hopkins are digital stewards. There are probably others that I should mention but have omitted. These individuals are transformative of institutional practices, more valuable that all the formal training the institution spends its money on. But a prophet has no honor in his own country.

A.J. Cann

Digital Identity for Researchers

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Today I am contributing to a workshop session on digital identity for researchers. Although I don't think I'm a typical social media user, I am a case study. As is my usual practice, I decided to use this blog to collect and structure my reflection on what I'm likely to say at the session. My colleague Terese Bird is leading the session, and as we've done similar things to this before, I know she'll do a good job introducing the key ideas such as active online profile management, so I'll limit my introductory remarks to this:

The commonest reason (still) given for not using social media professionally is "I don't have time". Leaving aside the obvious response that you should find the time by wasting less time in meetings, etc (!), it is true to social media can be a huge time sink. If your only interest is purely professional, it is important to set some goals and targets by which to measure your performance. But what to measure? Probably not hits/pageviews or followers - which give static and misleading information - how are you going to measure active engagement with your content which can justify your time expenditure? What analytical tools can you use to measure and record this information?

Your Personal Network
The art of using social media professionally is in building and curating a diverse personal network of contacts who can help you in various ways (jargon: Personal Learning Network). Read this, and avoid the social media echo chamber. Why is a personal network important? Because as long as you feed it (with your time and knowledge by answering questions), it will serve you. If I search Google to ask How do I do this? it will give me the answer. If I ask my PLN How do I do this?, it is likely to say "Ooh, you don't want to do that, we did that and it was a disaster. Why don't you do this?
Your PLN will keep you up to date professionally, invite to to speak at conferences, to write papers and chapters for books, and offer opportunities for research collaboration. Neil provided the analytical and software expertise we needed to carry out this research. Neil is in Australia - we've never met.

My online presence
Google me, and you'll find out (after you've done the disambiguation).

What pleases me is that my blogs (I'm currently maintaining six blogs, designed to serve a variety of purposes, although they're not all publicly visible) come at the top of the list. Why is this good? Because running a blog gives me a longer term online presence, much more control, and more ownership of my online identity. This blog in particular is both a megaphone I use to shout about my achievements (recent example) and a handy online scrapbook I use to work out ideas and try them out on my network, who I trust to tell me if I've got it wrong. I've never kept a paper diary or a notebook, but even if I had, the convenience of being able to find half-forgotten content by tags or via search would outweigh the usability of paper. (I have a regular secure backup strategy for my blogs, I can't afford to lose this valuable content.)

If my blog(s) are home territory, I also have active social media presences on Twitter and Google+. I'm also currently rediscovering the value of YouTube, and I'd recommend that you seriously consider YouTube as a way of representing yourself online.

Why multiple services rather than concentrating on just one? Because although my networks on these services overlap, they are distinctive and have different affordances. There is some content I would share via Twitter and content I would choose to share via YouTube (and then publicize via Twitter). If it's worth saying, it's worth shouting about.

Where I'm not
I don't find much value in artificially constructed all-purpose "Facebook-for-X" sites such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate. Cut out the middleman, assume control of your online presence.

Reading:
Social media: A guide for researchers (Research Information Network, 2011)
This is getting a little dated now in terms of tools, but the principles are worth reading.

Social media to enable and profile the researcher - Bird & Cann from tbirdcymru

A.J. Cann

Assessed student contributions to Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:52:00 +0000

Compare:

Roth, A., Davis, R., & Carver, B. (2013) Assigning Wikipedia editing: Triangulation toward understanding university student engagement. First Monday, 18(6).

with:

Cann, A.J. (2008) Assessment 2.0: Wikipedia writing projects. Higher Education Academy's/JISC Distributed E-learning Programme.

Discuss.

A.J. Cann

This week's MOOCs

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:33:00 +0000

With YouTube Creator Academy done and dusted ->

it's time to move on to:

HRP258 Statistics in Medicine

This looks interesting, runs on the Stanford OpenEdX platform, and uses R. 8-12 hours a week is a big ask for the next 9 weeks though, so I'll be cherry picking as usual. Very very xMOOC, no hashtag as far as I can see. My personal ILOs for this mooc are:

A gander at this implementation of the the OpenEdX platform
To improve my statistics knowledge
To improve my R skills

Unit 1: Descriptive statistics and looking at data

I like the fact that all the content is there at the outset of the course, enabling self-paced progression. I particularly like the way the discussion is linked to the mini-lectures on the same page rather than residing entirely in a distant forum. The graphical navigation bar above the videos is a bit cryptic, it took me a long time to find the quizzes for each section:

The R exercises are tagged on as optional extras, which is fair enough as not all participants will want them. However "For this course, we will be using R almost exclusively through the Deducer [package]." This is evil as I don't want to downgrade from R v3 to R 2.3 as required by this package installer. I can understand why this has been done but I won't be using Deducer as it is way behind in terms of R versions and compatibility with current versions of Excel is unknown. I'm not against using a GUI for R, but Deducer isn't the right one. Sad face. I will try to do as much as I can in this MOOC with R alone to achieve my personal ILOs.

The format of the Unit 1 Question Set is good - varied and makes full use of the web interface. Slight downside, a couple of the questions are ambiguously worded.

Marks for HRP258 Unit 1: 6/10. A solid start with room for improvement.

Progress towards my personal learning objectives:

A gander at this implementation of the the OpenEdX platform: Excellent.
To improve my statistics knowledge: Very good - in general, this is well taught.
To improve my R skills: Slight.

A.J. Cann

Rethinking Digital Literacies

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:25:00 +0000

Rethinking digital literacies: a sociomaterial analysis of students use of technology from Martin Oliver

Yesterday Lesley Gourlay and Martin Oliver from the Institute of Education talked about their JISC project, Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute. These are my rough notes from the session (recording here).

What are digital literacies?
EU definition stresses "appropriate".
Beetham 2010 report stresses construction of identity.
Gillen and Barton 2010 emphasises practices.

Framework: Sociomateriality
Actor-network theory (Latour) including non-human technology actors.

Project: Digital literacies as a postgraduate attribute
Surveys and focus groups.
Online/blended means "the student experience" is meaningless - experience is atomized, likewise technology use.
Journaling (n=12) via structured interview programme.

Emergent themes
"Orientations":
Example 1 - curation - digitize everything
Example 2 - combat - fighting the tech - agents - "computer says no"
Example 3 - coping - adverse technological circumstances
Spaces

Identity
Personal-professional
Presentation of self

A sociomaterial analysis of my working practice:

Conclusions
No clear taxonomy.
Constantly shifting practices.

Discussion
Challenges posed by atomization of experience.

A.J. Cann

Building ghettos - I told you so

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:22:00 +0000

In the past I've commented on the mistake of building educational social media ghettos. My opinions were not popular with those who were funded to build edughettos.

I haven't changed my opinion:

Williams, S.A., Lundqvist, K., & Parslow, P. (2013). RedGloo: Experiences of developing and using an emerging technology in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), 668-672.

A.J. Cann

Visitors and Residents - an online lecture series

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0000

OK, so I'm actually just noodling around with YouTube, trying to figure out the best use of Playlists for educational purposes. If you're interested in finding out more about the Visitors and Residents concept, this video playlist is the easy way to do it. Just sit back and relax :-)

A.J. Cann

Channel Hopping

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:17:00 +0000

The YTCA mooc has inspired (or at least, motivated) me to do something about my YouTube presence. The first thing I did was to spruce up my YouTube Channel following the advice from week 1 of YTCA, so this now has a trailer video, channel description, artwork and a few other goodies.

YouTube only allows one channel per account, and like many people, I use my YouTube account as a general repository for multiple purposes, so it doesn't have a clear brand identity (I can speak YTCA). I've got multiple Google accounts, but signing in and out is a pain, with inevitable mistakes arising from being in the wrong place. After a little detective work (Google really doesn't make this easy), I figured out that you can divide a channel into sections, which is pretty close to what I want to do, so I now have a microbiology section, and an education section, where I warble about edtech and such - hence the new link in the sidebar ->

For the effort I've put into YTCA so far, I'd say it has paid me back pretty well. I really like these light touch Google mini-mooc's as I find them much more useful than the 12-week-masquerading-as-degree-course jobbies being peddled by Coursera and Udacity.

A.J. Cann

In #YTCA the medium is the message - Lessons 1-3

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 08:01:00 +0000

YouTube Creator Academy started this week, and as is my practice I'll be posting weekly reflections here to keep me engaged.

#YTCA isn't a cMOOC or an xMOOC - it's a gMOOC. Google is running everything on its own platforms - Google Groups for forums (hate Google Groups, but at least they're better then Blackboard discussion groups), Google+ +1's for polls, etc.

In the first lesson, I found the analytics hints particularly useful, e.g. emphasis on watch time over views.
Drive subscribers to drive watch time (key metric for display algorithms).
How best to drive subscribers?

Regular and advertised posting schedule.
Posting frequency.
Consistent content model.
Social media pimping.

Clearly, I'm not doing any of this right :-)
Video Manager > Analytics > Views > Reports > Traffic Sources

Mobile is top driver for video content - this is lean forward not sit back!

Lesson 2 was the hard sell for the controversial YouTube One Channel design.

Lesson 3 went all Apprentice with branding to sell physical stuff.

Marks for YTCA out of 10 so far? 6.

A.J. Cann

I tried to warn Michael Douglas, but he wouldn't listen

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:55:00 +0000

Four years on, the only blog post I've ever written here about oral sex remains by far the most popular content on this site....

A.J. Cann

A learned society is a platform not a publisher

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 08:02:00 +0000

Microbiology Today, the venerable quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology, has a swanky new website (which is a huge improvement on previous iterations). The magazine itself has also had a makeover, and it now looks great:

Recently SGM took the decision to make MT online a "member benefit". For an organization dedicated to promoting microbiology to expend the time and effort producing something as good as Microbiology Today and then to lock it away so that only people who have already signed up can read it would be a stupid (although possibly understandable) decision. The idea that people will engage with a learned society because they will be able to read a magazine online a few weeks before they would otherwise be able to read it is implausible, unsupported by evidence, and possibly laughable.

Why locking this content away would be a stupid decision
SGM, like other learned societies, is not in the content business - it's in the society business. But seduced by decades of income from content publishing, learned societies have started to believe they are publishers rather than being dedicated to promoting their core interest - in this case, microbiology. If you want to understand why being in the content business is a dumb idea, read The Trouble With Content by Jeff Jarvis.

SGM, like other learned societies, is not a publisher, it is a platform. Unless it understands that and acts accordingly, it is doomed via the disintermediation of the Internet. Forget about raising income, unless the platform serves the interest, the future is bleak. Content is a product, it is not the interest that learned societies must serve.

So here's the good news. SGM has decided to make the superb content of Microbiology Today free to all at the time of publication, although only in PDF format. This is a smart move as it will recruit new members. The thing that is missing now is an explicit copyright statement to enable people who read the content know what they are able to do with it. By adopting a Creative Commons licence as forward looking publishers are increasingly doing, SGM gets the best of both worlds, publishing great content while acting like a society and engaging new members.

Disclosure:
I am a currently an elected member of the Society for General Microbiology Communications Committee, but the opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of the SGM or any other organization.

A.J. Cann

Test post

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 08:30:00 +0000

This is where I went on my holiday.

To be honest, I'm just testing the new version of the Blogger iOS app, which seems to have improved considerably since the first time I used it some months ago, but to be honest, I think I would struggle with anything other than short text posts or photoblogging (which it seems quite good for).

Created my first YouTube video playlist for teaching

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:39:00 +0000

Yeah, I know, I'm years off the pace :-)

Useful background videos for the project preparation course session on critical analysis on 13.06.13:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA009205F2F80A0DE

A.J. Cann

A Shakespearean tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:27:00 +0000

Earlier this week I visited the refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford for the first time and experienced a Shakespearean tragedy. I'm not referring to the plot of Hamlet, the best play ever written in the English language, I'm talking about this particular production, and also about the theatre itself.

Visiting the RST has been the highlight of my artistic experience for many decades, and although I went to a couple of performances in The Shed in Stratford while the RST was out of commission for nearly a decade, I was very keen to get back to HQ and figure out exactly what had taken them so long. Immediately on walking into the foyer the answer was obvious - all those millions of pounds had been spent on building the gift shop. The auditorium itself is disappointing, lacking the presence of its former self where I saw so many great productions. Although the atmosphere is OK, the best description of the new auditorium is probably the estate agent term "bijou". At nearly 30 quid each, the "cheap" seats we sat in had nearly half of the stage obscured by an overly intrusive safety barrier. While clearly designed to prevent me plummeting to a painful death from the Upper Circle, an hour in and I was regretting its presence - not only because of my stiff neck from craning over and under it, but because by that stage of the evening, plummeting seemed to be about my best option, assuming I could take enough members of the cast with me betwixt seat and stage. Fortunately rising suicidal thoughts were diverted by the Interval, when drowning of sorrows and numbing of critical faculties with alcohol was much needed.

I suspect Jonathan Slinger is a talented actor, but he is miscast and misdirected in this role. After hours staring down from the gods at the Prince of Denmark's bald spot I was rueing the fact that he hadn't got the Prince Charlie thing going on. I'm not going to comment further on this botched production, as Charles Spencer has accurately summed it up pretty well in his review:

"I wonder what Greg Doran, the company’s new artistic director, makes of this botched shot after his own superb production a few years ago, starring David Tennant."

Tennant took the role of Hamlet by the balls and walked the line between madness and sanity. Slinger doesn't know where he is going - but blame the director for that, not Slinger, who I believe is much better than the effort he is allowed to give here.

I would like to end by focusing on the few good performances in this disappointing effort. Ophelia is a bloody awful part to play, probably the worst characterisation Shakespeare ever wrote, but Pippa Nixon gives it a bloody good try in so far as she is able to in this flawed effort. Robin Soans as Polonius is excellent, although I would personally prefer to see this part played with a little more gravitas and a bit less whimsy. But the clear star of this show is David Fielder as the First Gravedigger - nails it, old school.

A.J. Cann

YouTube video editor gets some nice new features

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 30 May 2013 12:07:00 +0000

Including:

Face blurring: Protect the anonymity of people in your video. Could be really useful in education.
Slow motion: Slow the speed at which your video plays (half speed, quarter speed, eighth speed). Like this:

A.J. Cann

The WordPress.com Reader

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 30 May 2013 08:23:00 +0000

I'm still pretty happy with The Old Reader, apart from the inability to organize feeds in folders and lingering concerns about the sustainability of their business model. For that reason, I'm still looking at alternatives and I was excited by the announcement about being able to import OPMLs into WordPress.com

Sadly, after a bit of a play it's clear that the linear display is no substitute for a full fat RSS reader such as TOR, but it's a positive move for WordPress and a pat on the back to them for that.

A.J. Cann

YouTube Creator Academy

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Wed, 29 May 2013 11:28:00 +0000

I've signed up for YouTube Creator Academy (June 3 - 16, 2013). More info.

Although I've had over a million views on YouTube, my objective for this MOOC is not to become a YouTube millionaire, just to pick up some useful tips on how better to engage with the YouTube audience.

Join me, I think this could be fun.

A.J. Cann

Double Chocolate Banana Cake

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Mon, 27 May 2013 17:33:00 +0000

via Becka Colley

You like chocolate. You like bananas. You like cake. Chocolate Banana Cake is the antithesis of Visit to the Dentist, Tax Bill, Nick Clegg.
You'll like it.

3 very ripe bananas, mashed
12g cocoa powder
50g sultanas
50ml dark rum
75g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb
50ml sunflower oil
75g caster sugar
50g plain chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract

Soak sultanas in rum for at least one hour (or overnight). Mix everything together and place in a lined loaf tin. Bake at 170 C for 45-60 mins until risen and a skewer comes out clean.

Eat while reflecting on the fact that one day, every member of this government will be dead (except Malcolm Rifkind).

A.J. Cann

Crushed

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Sat, 25 May 2013 17:59:00 +0000

I'm really a mash man - pie or not, that's my thing. So when my wife foisted crushed new potatoes on me a while ago I was sceptical. After two servings, I was hooked.

Boiled new potatoes, skin on.
Drain and crush gently to marble sized pieces.
Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and, if you have feelings of social inadequacy (you do), a little chopped flat leaf parsley.
Toss.
Eat.

A.J. Cann

Vote of confidence for The Old Reader

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:26:00 +0000

Afore the impending demise of cheatin' taxweasel Google Reader, I have moved all my RSS subscriptions to The Old Reader. And very good it is too, doing exactly what it says on the tin. The mobile version also works great, better than Reader ever did. And this simple cloud-based solution syncs to all your devices.

Feedly just doesn't cut it for me, and Flipboard - well Flipboard (which I like for what it is) is the eye-candy in the undemanding Saturday night TV schedules of the Internet. If you're a serious RSS user like me, I suggest you give The Old Reader a spin. And if you like it, make sure you donate to keep it going.

But is it sustainable?
So far, 285 people have donated. I don't know how much the hosting and bandwidth costs are going to be for this service, but if it takes off, they will be considerable. I don't think donations alone will cover this. A freemium model might be another option, but without Google's deep (tax-lined) pockets, The Old Reader is going to have to make it pay somehow.

A.J. Cann

THES write up

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:13:00 +0000

"Do you ever trawl through social media to see what your students are saying about your course? While this can satisfy your curiosity, it could also be an effective way to identify students who are failing to interact with their classmates and are at risk of quitting, researchers have found.
A University of Leicester-led study asked all 257 undergraduate students in its School of Biological Sciences to use the Google+ social network as part of an IT module. They were encouraged to use it to discuss their studies, and undertaking active social networking even contributed to their final mark.
At the end of the term, the students had contributed thousands of posts. Some had happily used the site to share information about their course with their peers, in a similar way to how they might talk to friends on Facebook. Others were much more targeted in their use of online tools - and would log on only to get the information they needed, when they needed it. These two types of internet user are known as “residents” and “visitors”, respectively.
“The students’ networks mostly looked similar, with lots of interactions,” said Alan Cann, co-author of the study and senior lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences. “But we did find exceptions.”
Some students formed very small networks, he explained, and were not speaking with their peers at all.
“Instead, they were communicating primarily with members of academic staff. We found that many were overseas students whose first language was not English.
“It shows that some students place authority figures in very high regard and are not interested in peer-to-peer conversations or student-directed learning,” he said.
In the end, one of the international students with a very small network dropped out of the course. “I should stress that the majority of our overseas students did interact, and most completed the course,” Dr Cann added. “However, it does show that you can look at social network usage to identify those who might need more support.”
The paper, “Visitors and residents: mapping student attitudes to academic use of social networks”, was co-written with academics from the University of Oxford and The Open University and published in the journal Learning, Media and Technology."

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/social-media-use-may-flag-up-likely-dropouts/2003961.article

A.J. Cann

Digital Literacies for Employability

noreply@blogger.com (AJ Cann) — Thu, 23 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Mark Goodwin and I have been funded by the UK Higher Education Academy under the Digital Literacies in the Disciplines scheme for the following project.

Digital Literacies for Employability

Digital literacy is an essential transferable skill and some have argued that it should be placed above knowledge work from an employer perspective (Littlejohn, A., Beetham, H., & McGill, L. (2012). Learning at the digital frontier: a review of digital literacies in theory and practice. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(6): 547-556). Digital literacies have a life-wide impact which is not limited to either the academic or the employment domain. Developing critical and evaluation skills results in sought-after and adaptable employees. Yet digital literacy is not simply about learning from content online this represents a deficit model of education (frequently practiced) rather than skills development. Although there is no universally accepted definition of digital literacy, the European Commission defines it as the confident and critical use of ICT for work, leisure, learning and communication and JISC defines it as those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society: for example, the skills to use digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; as part of personal development planning; and as a way of showcasing achievements.

Digital literacies can be thought of in the following hierarchical framework:

Competencies are easily measured. Is a student (or an academic) capable of sending an email attachment, or using statistical software, for example? Skills are more subtle and less easy to quantify - keyboard skills, for example (hugely important and almost always overlooked), or multimedia authoring such as producing high-quality digital images or video. But the true life-wide benefit comes from the highest level of digital literacy managing online portfolios of achievement and online identity, and augmenting the taught curriculum with a rich range of external sources. Higher education has done a poor job of inculcating this higher level literacy in comparison to the baseline and more measureable competencies (Littlejohn et al., 2012). Academic staff - themselves not trained in these areas - are not best placed to lead this type of personal development student-centred approaches are called for.

This project takes a student-led approach to the development of digital literacies by embedding digital literacy development in personal development. Students will focus on the development of peer engagement with reusable digital objects portraying employability scenarios based on fictional but realistic case studies - Career Plan A versus Plan B, for example. In the process, they will also develop many other latent capacities to strengthen their employability skills portfolio, such as time management, communication and collaborative skills, and digital competencies. Working in close partnership with academic staff within the School of Biological Sciences, the student team will develop case studies on the Xerte platform portraying student career planning and choices, giving first and second year students an overview of what lies ahead of them and the skills they need to gain in order to achieve their desired outcomes. Importantly, the scenarios will allow the participants to explore the development of a clear career focus alongside alternative options (a Plan B). This fits neatly within existing employability training within the School of Biological Sciences, but extends the current programme by the introduction of a peer-to-peer student-led element. This approach has been highly successful at other institutions, e.g. the digital literacies student champions project at the University of Southampton. By participating in this project, student digital literacies will be enhanced through both the production of online employability resources and through student partnerships with academic staff and other related roles (for example, learning technologists in the School of Biological Sciences and beyond through participation in the University of Leicester Learning Technology Advisory Group).

Participating students will build a portfolio of evidence through using a wide range of digital tools ranging from email and advanced search engine use through multimedia authoring and professional engagement with social media for dissemination to a wide audience across the University and beyond. All outputs from this project will be freely available online via a Creative Commons licence. Although similar work based on career case studies has been highly successful at other institutions, these resources are not publicly available (Myers, L., Gibson, F. & Dallison, K. CASEwork: Careers attributes and skills for employability through case based learning. HEA STEM Conference, 2013). The ethos of this project is that development of digital literacy and employability skills will be enhanced by the knowledge that the participants are working in the public sphere and aiming for the widest possible deployment of their outputs.

Participating students will benefit in a number of ways:

Development of high level digital literacy skills including communication and project management skills, directly relevant to their own employability.
Development of their employability skills portfolio either independently or as part of the Leicester Award for Employability

To avoid exploitation of the student workforce, participating students will also be offered limited financial compensation for their time.

Experience of applicants
The academic team leading the project has a great deal of experience in training students to use digital technologies and in guiding students through employability decision making. The core team will be supported by learning technologists from the School of Biological Sciences and beyond as necessary, and from the University of Leicester Career Development Service.

Dr Alan Cann leads numeracy and IT skills training in the School of Biological Sciences and has undertaken research in this area for many years. His recent publications include:

Wright, F., White, D., Hirst, T. & Cann, A. (2013) Visitors and Residents: mapping student attitudes to academic use of social networks. Learning, Media and Technology.
Badge, J.L., Saunders, N.F.W. & Cann, A.J. (2012) Beyond marks: new tools to visualise student engagement via social networks. Research in Learning Technology 20: 16283.
Cann, A.J. & Badge, J. (2011) Reflective Social Portfolios for Feedback and Peer Mentoring. Leicester Research Archive.
Cann, A., K. Dimitriou, and T. Hooley. (2011) Social media: A guide for researchers. Research Information Network.

Alan Cann also has many years experience of developing and managing successful websites. All of the websites he currently manages run on virtual XAMPP stacks running in the cloud. These include the highly popular MicrobiologyBytes website, AoB Blog, and the innovative SciReadr project. Cloud based computing is the greenest solution to provision of online resources and is essential in order to avoid costly investment in local hardware.

Dr Mark Goodwin leads the Employability Programme in the School of Biological Sciences, which has attracted funding from a range of sources including the HEA. The University's Career Development Service has adopted the Programme as a model intervention for their interaction with academic programmes, allowing them to work with employers and teaching staff on a structured set of initiatives as an integral part of the curriculum, and aspects of the approach have already been adopted by a number of other Schools and Colleges at the University of Leicester and other HEIs. Mark Goodwin is currently working with Nathan Pike, Discipline Lead for Biosciences at the HEA, on a review of employability initiatives with supporting resources that will act as an evidence-based guide for the sector. He also has experience of developing online resources, as lead for the Virtual Genetics Education Centre, which was recognised in the Jorum teaching and Learning Awards 2011. We intend that the proposed student-led case studies project will be disseminated in the same way, as well as by traditional reports, peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations - in addition to the work that the student team will do to promote the public-facing online resources. Recent publications:

Goodwin, M, Ademe, G, Pennington, M, Bartle, C and Jackson, P (2011) Engaging students, staff and employers in enhancing graduate impact: Tourism Management at the University of Gondar , Chapter 2 in Patsy Kemp and Richard Atfield (eds) Enhancing Graduate Impact in Business and Management, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport, Tourism, Newbury, Threshold Press, pp.9 20.
Goodwin, M and Lawrence, K (2011) Identifying and developing student aspirations: the role of the personal tutor , Proceedings of the Effective Learning in the Biosciences Conference: Equipping Students for the 21st Century, Leeds, UK Centre for Bioscience, p36.

Purpose and outcomes of proposed work
To be successful in managing the transition from undergraduate programmes to employment or further study, students need to start the process of career planning including the acquisition of relevant experience and evidence early in their studies. Our prior work has developed a coherent Employability Programme for undergraduates on a range of degree programmes in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester. The programme involves a series of staged interventions:

Year 1 February: Student-Intentions survey and Student-Destinations analysis
Data used to inform:
June: Year 1 Intentions after Graduation event (research and planning)
- intentions, destinations and careers
- what is necessary in a successful application
- what you can do over the next year to prepare (and the support available)
- networking with employers and admissions tutors

Year 2 Follow-up activities and support in preparation for:
June: Year 2 Careers in Biosciences event (planning and execution)
- skills matrix for degree programmes
- application strategy
- CVs, applications, interviews and assessment centres
- networking with employers and admissions tutors

Year 3 Focused sessions and support
Focused sessions to support applications (with support from personal tutors and alumni)

Delayed decision making can have disastrous consequences for career outcomes. By engaging students in career planning and the necessary skills acquisition as early as possible in their higher education career we are seeking to achieve more favourable outcomes. The project will continue this approach but extend the initiative by developing a student-led peer to peer element which does not presently exist and would not be possible to develop without the support requested.

A Student Employability Team (12 members at present) has been recruited from current Year 2 students. It is intended that this team of enthusiastic volunteers will form the nucleus of the student-led team who will undertake the proposed project. In addition, this team will roll over to become the Year 3 Student Employability Team, who will work with the new Year 2 Team to provide a view of employability preparation across the curriculum. There is some online support for our students, which this project will complement. The Careers After Biological Sciences material consists of alumni experience of various bioscience-related careers. Student-developed case studies developed as part of this project will fit neatly alongside these existing online resources. By building on to existing employability structures we will be able to achieve rapid development of this new project and, importantly, sustainability of the initiative and resources produced after the period of HEA funding has ended.

We intend to inform the Student Employability Teams of our plans for the project as part of the June 2013 Year 2 Careers in Biosciences event and to encourage them to start preparing ideas and holding discussions over the summer so that the construction of resources on the Xerte platform can begin quickly in September 2013. Dr Cann will install the Xerte Online Toolkit and prepare training resources for student participants such as any additional documentation required and screen capture how-to videos over the summer.

Timeline
May 2013: Outcome of bid.
June 2013: Announcement and initial discussions with student participants at the Year 2 Careers in Biosciences event.
August 2013: Installation of Xerte Online Toolkit and prepare training resources for student participants.
September 2013 - December 2013: Production of employability case studies and
January 2014 - March 2014: Final case studies and impact analysis of project (student-led evaluation).
April 2014: Final report and papers written.
Subsequent years: Online resources will remain publicly available for a minimum of three years, available for download and dissemination via the Xerte platform.

A.J. Cann

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