However, these values represent the beliefs and opinions of staff and students now, so it was important to ask how they might change in the future. As such, school children were included in the study to investigate the following questions:

• Will a future generation of students hold the same values?
• What new values, opinions, and needs towards digital higher education might emerge in the future?

Since the school children were far removed from University experiences, testing questions were more abstractly focused on learning in general and we remained open to understanding the contexts that affected their learning beyond school.

Five 90 minute sessions were conducted with school children from two schools near Edinburgh: one primary and one secondary. Two of the sessions were with 16 to 17 year olds, engaging a total of 14 students, and three sessions were conducted with 8 to 10 year olds, engaging a total of 43 students.

To encourage everyone to think about learning as an activity that happens beyond just the school walls, we kicked the sessions off with a general discussion about where we learn, how we learn, and who from. Drawing sheets were used to help the children capture their ideas and for the NFT team’s data collection. Information captured during this activity helped us determine how the children perceived their experiences of learning, along with recurring positive and negative responses to their school education.

In pairs, the children were then asked to design their dream school of the future using a mixture of drawing and collage. Special attention was given to the following prompts: what is happening in your dream school; who is there and what are they doing; what does a typical school day look like; what things are learnt there, and how are they being taught?

As the students negotiated their ideal learning scenarios, the NFT team sparked conversations with them individually and asked each pair to expand on points that had reference to any of the four values. When responses conflicted with the four values, or when new values were suggested, they were captured by the team using post it notes and subsequently discussed and synthesised into recommended changes to the values, strategy, and vision.

In groups, the workshop began mapping the four core values to each of these worlds, trying to understand how they might be played out in each.

Using a blank jigsaw manufactured by Zoe and Santini, each group built layers around one of these worlds. The first encapsulated how the four values might be manifested, based on group discussion.

The second layer provided speculative examples of what digital education specifically might look like for each of these ‘value’ quartiles. Sian provided a brief brain dump trying to encapsulate something of what we mean when we talk about ‘digital education’:

Finally, we used props to begin to illustrate the speculative examples of digital education devised by each group: using playdoh, toy robots and plastic fruit we attempted to bring these worlds to life. The groups narrated their scenarios to one another and the workshop concluded, taking us another step closer to the co-design of a values-based approach to our digital education futures.

In the end, the process we devised was adapted from the work Keri Facer and colleagues conducted a few years ago as part of a large project looking at long-term sociotechnical futures for education (and published most accessibly in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Our version has five stages:

1. Foresight:
   1. Taking the community pulse
   2. Mapping in the form of two foresight reviews focusing on factors likely to influence change in education over the coming years:
      1. scientific and technical trends
      2. social and educational factors
2. Scenario development:
   1. Scoping plausible future worlds
   2. Designing educational futures for each
3. Testing ideas and designs
   1. Student panel
   2. Academic expert panel
   3. Children’s panel
4. Surfacing insights and recommendations
5. Translation into policy and action

At this point we have just about reached the end of stage 1., having run and written up a series of events and done short interviews with input from around 300 students and staff. These latter we’ve edited thematically and made available here on the website, with write-ups from each of the events also surfaced here in our blog. We’ll be publishing the reviews here shortly too.

It’s important to the project that we surface as much of our process as possible, trying to show our workings rather than just producing a final report which obscures how it was produced.

As for data, Jeremy explained that there are rivers of data flowing through the university already: environmental data (air and sound quality, etc.), university events (graduations, matriculations, seminars, and more), online activity (logins, discussion board posts), bodies (footfalls on campus, ID entries into the library), and more. To frame the discussion a bit, we then presented personas, or students we were designing for, some distance and some in Edinburgh, all with different takes on the university experience. Personas move the discussion away from the abstraction a bit: how unlimited choices of data and things might lead to some decontextualization of the event so we wanted to frame it this way. Jeremy and I explained that the personas could be about teaching, research, or community based improvements: distance to distance, distance to campus, campus to distance, all of the above. Groups discussed the personas, discussed data points to use and configurations to explore. Groups presented their IoT configurations.

Configuration #1

A configuration taking data from three distinct yet entirely representative aspects of university life: administration (EUCLID data), social (coffee data), and more. ODL students would get wearable devices that change colour depending on what is the dominant mode of activity on campus. Colour spectrum would be from red (intense learning activity) to green (leisure activity) and data would be drawn to represent each. For the reverse, there would be physical maps on campus representing the ODL campus: a live feed from ODL students’ activity globally with detail if interested. For example, Rebecca from Australia is drinking coffee (leisure) as am I in Edinburgh. A good use of non-scholarly data to support community and connections.

Configuration #2

The second group presented an emotional dashboard which was about making human connections. Within the course page, students use colours to describe their mood over the course. It useful for students to know I am not alone or what their peers feel in general. It is useful for staff to know when students are struggling and how they might help. They emphasised that such an approach could be layered so can just use colour to suggest mood or can expand on that by adding an image or some other media to make a connection. Discussion boards could feed off this dashboard.

Configuration #3

Full disclaimer: this was Jeremy Knox, Lucy Kendra’s and my (Michael Gallagher) group. We designed for one of the personas (Gossy) who struggled to explain the university in meaningful ways to his family home in Nigeria. We explicitly saw this family and these extended connections as part of the larger university community. Our configuration involved Gossy collecting his social data (physical proximity with others, social media, and more) and using that to brighten or dim a lamp in his mother’s house. A simple connection. Another one was to take both Gossy and his mother, map their daily movements through Edinburgh and Lagos, respectively. To collect data along those walks and curate postcards at intervals through an application.

All of these configurations were about strengthening connections and community which for an increasingly distributed university is critical to ensure that all are involved are the community.

there was no time and time itself

don’t we always swallow a little more when the breath massages the spine

here in this classroom there is a notion that the nation exists

grasping toward the past it was the future held the coral chalice up to the light (poor coral whitened as the sea waves unto death)

what you will teach is

you broke that notion with your greedful mining time it was always and anyway

that golden classroom when the light pierced the beaker her glass a trembling concatenation of quantum realities as when the first burning torch was raised as now the first equation which makes light possible always always always is

a whole nation’s notion exists the gulf was crystal when we were kids diving to kiss on the banks of this nymph grotto weighted with tyres now floating polystyrene the green bottles blue bottles clear bottles holding my breath

what you will teach is what you believe

waving flinging the keyboard popping the button on your shirt shining desk pounding wet heads with first person second person third person south against north against east against man against woman against computer against robot i want to lift up without needing any tools

what you will teach is a dream no reality a notion no a nation

holding my breath forever is the same as breathing into the endless utopia of space

you will open your hand and (gold wire diamond glass plastic silver laser)

data is water time is light

JL Williams

Empty Halls:

The room echoed, its emptiness expressed as resonance
The lines of chairs caked in dust and soft sibilance
The hiss of the lone mature student sitting down, the rustle of their bag
As they unpack, connect, buffer, and adjust for lag
They slide their glasses on, insert their ear pieces delicately
As the dark lecture hall now fills with ghosts awakened electronically
Connected now, the space is more illusion than reality
The students flicker in and out, avatars without integrity
False identities configured from vanity
Amalgams of fashion, celebrity, monstrosity
As the loading bar spins they watch the lecturer refresh
“Was she ever human?” They gossip. “Has she ever known flesh?”
Information is imparted, man’s input still audio visual
But with API and SQL this became residual
A habit from a time before we became maths, a time of individuals
As our dying bodies were left behind, our children became virtual
Leaving empty lecture halls and one joker’s faded desk inscription
“Transhumanism.
New man is new algorithm.”

David Creighton-Offord

I had been looking forward to the Near Future Teaching DIY Film School event since I first saw Stephen Donnelly give a demonstration of some of the very cool mo-jo (aka mobile journalism) kit that Media Services at the University of Edinburgh have invested in for staff and students to make use of in their work and study, and play.

The equipment generally allows a mobile phone to magically morph into a pimped-up fully functional hand-held video camera. Items such as the BEASTGRIP give you a more stable base and allow you, if you wish, to attach to a tripod, and then you can pop on a RODEVideoMic and a portable Commlightand you’re ready to go.

Stephen talked us through all the equipment, some top tips for how to get started on your first videos, and showed us some examples of really stunning short films made with iPhones such as this beautiful film commissioned by Bentley Motors.

Then the teams were sent out with the equipment and they each had about an hour to make their first film. To our surprise one group even managed to do some editing of their interview, and you can take a look at it here.

We were so impressed by the participants who jumped right into the process and not only explored this remarkable, empowering and accessible high/lo-tech equipment, but who also managed to incorporate Near Future Teaching-inspired questions about the future into their vox pop interview.

If you work or study at the University of Edinburgh and are interested to learn more about and use this equipment and to get involved in the Near Future Teaching vox pop conversation, get in touch!

Some responses that came out of our final discussions included the following:

• The University of Edinburgh is very research-focused, maybe a broad educational model isn’t useful for Edinburgh?
• How do we address discussion across disciplines in a university like Edinburgh?
• If computers are doing the marking, feedback could be quite challenging.+
• Global collaboration with other universities to fund the implementation of expensive technologies?
• Always being online and available, students have less separation between university and home.
• The University should be teaching students how to separate work and non-work time, and time management skills.
• Design space, technology and curriculum to support learning.
• Green screen and hologram teacher, students have massaging seats and sofas.
• Lecturer using visualisations, material can move around in 3 dimensions, physical interaction with things is still important.

So, quite a lot was raised that was provocative and fascinating, and will help us going forward with the project as we try to get a sense of what staff and students might want from digital learning technologies in the future. Here are some of the conclusions that we discussed at the close of the session:

• What are the values and what is the purpose of the University?
• What sort of education do we want to provide?
• What should a University be?
• Focus on the individual student and consider mental health.
• How do you create an environment that supports students throughout their entire journey?
• How can technology help students to be more comfortable and visualise concepts?
• How can technology be helpful and personalise the learning experience?

Overall, it was a stimulating and intriguing workshop, where we learned a lot about not only what students think about technology but also about how we might develop our Near Future Teaching sessions as we continue with the project.

Join the Near Future Teaching conversation by responding to any of these topics here and/or on Twitter by using our hashtag: #UoE_NFT and our Twitter handle @NearFutureTeach.