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An Academic Polemic for a Pandemic

or why we need to evolve

Dr Chris Meudec - IT Carlow

http://www.echancrure.eu

echancrure@gmail.com

@echancrure

EdTech 2021

Slides available for commenting at:

https://tinyurl.com/vuj768bz

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It's a polemical presentation...

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  • Controversial, not aiming at offending
  • I am just a guilty; self reflective
  • It's contentious
  • A little tongue-in-cheek

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Pat on the back everyone

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  • We all teach online now thanks to Covid-19!
  • We have all digitised our teaching delivery and assessment practices
  • That was the easy part; at a deeper level nothing has changed
  • Academic sclerosis is alive and well

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Academics' Duplicity

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Research

Teaching

+ Campaign for open access

+ Want research outputs to be known

+ Aim for reproducibility

- Static teaching resources protected by password-protected VLEs

- Teaching behind (online) closed doors continues

- Reusability is low

+ Collaborative

+ Collegial

- Design resources and teach in isolation, in silos

- Poor articulation of courses: mosaic of modules

+ Strong, robust peer review processes

+ Inquisitive attitude and curiosity-led culture

+ Historical recall, learning from mistakes

- Weak external examinership

- Broken, document-led, quality systems

- Criticism of colleagues teaching frowned upon, unquestioning

- No traceability, not learning from mistakes

+ Uptodate contents

- Glacial pace of contents change

+ Open-ended

+ Independent

- Academic Calendar, delivery constraints

- Quality Manual

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Transforming Teaching

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  • Not because of Covid, but out of necessity
  • Technologies make it possible, but not sufficient
  • Which industries are true trailblazers of change?
  • Agile software development (2001) have led to profound changes
    • in business: Lean entrepreneurship (2011)
    • in engineering: see Nasa vs SpaceX (2002)

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Agility Defined

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We are uncovering better ways of developing

software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

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Conditions for Agile Teaching

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  • Collegial competence trumps the syllabus, the team is central in agile
    • Contents may change in weeks [remove bureaucracy and hoops, flatten organisations]
    • Teaching practices may change mid-semesters
  • All teaching should be live and open to all
    • early, regular and realistic quality assurance by peers, learners and experts through asynchronous in-document commenting [facilitates change]
    • all resources free of restrictive copyrights, easily accessible, archived, versionned and easily adaptable for reuse [improves productivity]
    • favours interdisciplinary, collegiality, diversity, internationalisation, cross-functional teams, exchange [destruction of silos]

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Our higher-level education system is failing

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e.g. HSE Ransomware attack is a reflection of our failure

  • Requires interdisciplinarity:
    • software development/software operation, end-users psychology
    • public system management, public software procurement
    • administrative leadership, etc.
  • What was the curriculum experienced by those in charge?
  • Requires constant fast curriculum changes

How can we contribute to an MBA's cybersecurity contents? We can't.

How can we analyse what was taught? We can't.

Can we evolve the curriculum in a week? We can't

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Impediments

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  • Academia does not change unless forced
  • Changing mindsets is much harder than merely changing practices
  • Dealing with legacy systems, practices: "cultural debt"
  • The tyranny of accounting: productivity vs quality improvement (need a different fitness function based on broad graduate outcomes). Not MOOCs!
  • Many failed "agile" practices: Agile is very hard.

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Agile Bullshit (US DoD)

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It's not just about "EdTech"...

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  • We must also learn to adapt new managerial practices emerging from technological leaders
    • not about embracing the same values
    • learning from their successes
  • Agile software development which is team-based, evolutionary and iterative is such a practice.

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Bibliography and Contacts

Dr Chris Meudec - IT Carlow

http://www.echancrure.eu

echancrure@gmail.com

@echancrure

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Beck K. et al. 2001. Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Berg C. 2019. SpaceX’s Use of Agile Methods.

JARV IS... 2019. Must I Evolve?

Ries E. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses. Portfolio Penguin.

US Department of Defence. 2018. Detecting Agile Bullshit.