I had the pleasure recently to run a module workshop on "The Philosophy of Higher Education" in the Postgraduate Certificate course in Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Higher Education (PGCLTAHE) for recently appointed lecturers in Cranfield University's Defence and Security Department at the Defence Staff College at Shrivenham. Most of the participants could be described as late career entrants to the academic profession.

The slides are here:
http://www.slideshare.net/georgeroberts/philosophy-of-higher-education

And a topic map is here:
http://www.xmind.net/share/georgeroberts/xmind-768070/ (click on outline view to see all topics unfolded)

Having run this workshop twice back-to-back, I can see many improvements I would make were I to do it again.

At Shrivenham, the quality of the knowledge, argument and experience of the participants certainly made it a challenge. As Brookfield (2001) said, learners have the right to expect authenticity, credibility and reciprocity; to set ground rules, provide alternatives, exemplify models and give access to experience. This was a high-ability group: well read with many years of professional, commercial and military experience (one was a General). I don't know if I met their expectations in these regards, but they did engage forcefully and critically with the idea of a University as an instance of one of the great institutions of society with an important function of cultural reproduction. Universities are a part of – or provide a part of -  the answer to the question of the purpose of society. In response to an early question on what is "Philosophy of Higher Education", one participant cut the Gordian Knot: "what is it and how do we do it?" University is one of the places where the question of what the purpose (or function) of society (or our society) is addressed.

Reference

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Check out:

Whitchurch, C. (2008). Shifting Identities and Blurring Boundaries:
the Emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK Higher Education.
Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4), 377-396.

Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00387.x
Volume 62, No. 4, October 2008, pp 377–396

“… describes a further category of blended professionals, who have
mixed backgrounds and portfolios, comprising elements of both
professional and academic activity. The paper goes on to introduce the
concept of third space as an emergent territory between academic and
professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less bounded
forms of professional.”

Although not written as a dystopian vision, it can certainly be read
as one. For some freelance is freedom. For others it is bloody hard
work. It is interesting seeing the “B” word entering other discourses
than learning technology, and to see Third Space theory, too,
collocated with blended learning (which I had never thought of as a
theory – what does it explain?).

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I suppose there comes a tolerance of living with a degree of chaos. Knowledge is quite loosely coupled, I find.The page I showed with the links came originally from a talk I did at the November eLearning at Brookes (eL@B) meeting on Participatory Media for teaching in Higher Education. The link to the slightly updated mindmap, which I showed in the class is here, where everyone should be able to reach it, should they care (click on “outline view” – lower left – to get the page with the links):

http://www.xmind.net/share/_embed/georgeroberts/xmind-198337/

I’ll put the slides up on the VLE for the class. They are already publicly available on SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/georgeroberts

The talk is on the Brookes Wiki, links are on the page (but it is behind an annoying wall):
https://wiki.brookes.ac.uk/display/elab/current+UK+projects+on+lecture+capture

There is a link to a video of the talk, here (still behind a wall):
https://wiki.brookes.ac.uk/display/elab/eLaB+20+November+2009

Maybe we’ll get some of these walls lowered.

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It may not seem like a big thing. I have generally preferred clients (apps and RIAs) to browser-based Internet tools. But, yesterday after years of Outlook, Eudora, Mozillamail, Thunderbird and MacMail I closed my mail client and am using the Gmail interface in FireFox. Partly this is a self-enforced discipline to see how well the Google@Brookes mail, contacts,  calendar, tasks and chat integration work. I am particularly interested to see, after going off-line, as I often am, whether the offline mail app stands up. So far you can only view, not update calendar entries offline (a weakness, in Google's offering). But, having said it is not a big thing, I feel a sense of excitement (why?!) maybe born of renewal. In doing this I tided up my browser, killed off Diigo, Amplify and Twine, and went back (almost) wholeheartedly to Delicious (well they are owned by Yahoo). I made a new set of tabs for start-up: mail, calendar, Wave, Reader, and JISC Institutional Innovation. It is as if my computer is new again.

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Who is using social media at Brookes? Twitter? Facebook?
We are going Google now
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/cs/google/
Ever wanted a blog. We have a blogging platform. Easy to set up. Just go to:
http://brookesblogs.net
We are upgrading this to WordPress mu 2.8.9.1
There is the wiki at:
https://wiki.brookes.ac.uk/
What will the impact of all this be?
I will be writing about it here… and there

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