Frustrating Searches

[GraphDesProject]

I picked the topic “design thinking” simply because I had been doing a bit of work on this lately. But I also think that this is a topic that learners would find more meaningful if it came from a variety of professionals, rather than the usual tutor. It’s a term sometimes used to describe ways of innovating (very fashionable) but can also be used to describe the processes and ways of thinking to arrive at creative solutions to (any given design) problem. I also had a fall-back topic of “Experience Design”. Was looking just for things to use directly with students – how frustrating was this activity!

 
Merlot
 
I hadn’t used this before and would be hard pressed to use it again. Found a great piece called Pathways to Peace about making a peace tile, but not relevant to what I was searching. The nearest thing was a course called Introduction to Design Enquiry (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-273-introduction-to-design-inquiry-fall-2001/). This had a video link in it (that is on YouTube anyway). But quite a disappointment as I saw on the forum that both Elizabeth and Tim had got a lot from their searches here. Also it looked boring!
 
Jorum
 
This looked really hopeful as I found a whole section (masses!) of resources called Innovation through Design Thinking and Creative Strategies  from a ceramics MA course in Wales. They had made several short Vimeo films (http://humbox.ac.uk/1835/) about different aspects, such as responding to place and context. But the films had no audio…..what?? And the notes that I had to peer to read wouldn’t have made sense to my learners. Another big disappointment.
 
There were also some links to thinking skills courses from the OU etc but I didn’t delve into  these. Improving your thinking skills http://dspace.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/10949/834
 
 
 
As I by now suspected the HEA site also had little of use to my learners, though quite a few things I book marked for my own use such as a range of projects on Sustainability (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/subjects/adm/Sustainability-as-an-Enhancement-Theme-for-the-21st-Century-Design-Graduate and http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/subjects/adm/A-ZofSustainableMaterials)
 
 
 
I already knew that the Open Learn site did have several short courses about Design Thinking as I had already used them. One of them has a short but great to-the-point video of designers discussing their interpretations of Design Thinking that I would certainly use with learners of any level.
 
So I turned to the popular sites with hopefulness….
 
TED
 
Found so much here that I’d need to go through and weed out what I could use. But most to of the talks I have seen are lively and accessible. I think my learners would (generally) respond fairly well to them.Here is their menu page for things called up when I entered “Design Thinking” http://www.ted.com/search?cat=ss_all&q=design+thinking And here for “Experience Design” http://www.ted.com/search?cat=ss_all&q=experience+design It’s going to take a while to get through these!
 
Similarly for YouTube there is so much that I will need to review and sort out what is useful. Benefits  of YouTube items is that they are often short enough to hold interest for beginners. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=design+thinking
 
Hated  iTunesU and by this time was so frustrated I didn’t give it much time – it looked like one big advert for Apple products.. .and anything that did look interesting wouldn’t load!
 
Also had a look at the Design Council, who a few years ago used to have lots of great written resources. They had one page with links, which I feel could be useful, but after looking at TED and YouTube I wondered why some of these weren’t videos (getting very lazy!!) (http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/about-design/)
 
 
 
Conclusion – use the professional education sites when researching for educational/subject specific things that  I can use in my pedagogy and possibly modify for inclusion. Search popular sites for relevant things to use direct with learners (but check them first for academic levels). I love research, but I hated this activity!!
 
Sancha (@GraphDesProject)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[PeterHartley]

Really interesting post but you left me a bit confused. You seem to have found quite a lot of stuff you might be able to use – in which case, why ‘hate’ the activity? Is there a way of making it less frustrating? Maybe this is something to raise in the webinar (especially as we have one speaker from Jorum)

Best wishes

Peter

 

[GraphDesProject]

Peter,

Yes rather over-dramatic! I think I did find quite a lot of things and if I was just browsing I’d investigate them more fully – but these were things for me not items to fit the purpose (resources for learners). Funnily enough later that day I by chance picked up a Twitter stream of #design #thinking and found quite a few leads!! It’s just knowing where to look and, I think now, researching in a different way from usual, hence the frustration.

Sancha

[ElizabethECharl]

Sancha,

I hope you will be able to bring that point up at the webinar or it may be made clearer during it as to how resources are organised and criteria used to categorise the resources.  If is is going to be difficult I think that would be a shame for all users as that would be another barrier to accessing.

[GrahamRGibbs]

Your comments echo my experience when looking for resources. I’ve ‘wasted’ hours looking through Jorum and Merlot and been put off by some of the low quality of the material I found. The main issue here was that there wasn’t enough reliable and detailed description and meta data to make a judgement about the resource without downloading it and spending time looking at it. The need to spend time looking at the material is still true for YouTube, but I have found that getting to the video resource is very quick, and, as you say, the videos are often quite short. But even more importantly, you know how long they are before you start. I also think the arrangement into channels on YouTube is helpful. Once you’ve found a good video on a topic, you can then look to see what else is on the same channel. I’ve spent a lot of time finding resources for by classes on statistics and SPSS use. Most of what I have found is on YouTube and using the channels once I’d identified some good quality material was a good search strategy. I’ve used this strategy the other way round too. I’ve found some poor and incorrect videos and then avoided other stuff on the same channel. (For those unfamiliar with YouTube, channels are how you post videos onto YouTube so looking at the channel is a way of seeing other videos posted by the same person – or institution).

[GraphDesProject]

Hi Elizabeth,

Sadly I’ve been unable to see the webinars live since the first one as I’m at work at that time.

I don’t think there is a problem per se with accessing resources – but I have more sympathy, I guess, for learners after this activity if they have to research in ways alien to them (and quickly).

Sancha

[GraphDesProject]

Graham, Yes I agree very much. And the same applies to print resources too. For example, there’s a generally good book on design thinking that has some errors in it, which puts me off the whole, so I tend not to use it at all.

And I know this is a course about TEL but is there going to be anything about the combination of technical to non-technical resources, I wonder?

Sancha

[AliSheph]

I had mixed results! I decided to look for resources on groupwork, as I will be teaching on a module next year which involves this.  I used LearnHigher as I had not used it before – I had had a hint from one of the webinars that there were some relevant resources on this site.
·         How easy was it to find a relevant resource?

[LearnHigher] Quite straightforward – and the links from this resource to others were also useful
[TED] – not at all.  Despite several keyword searches, I couldn’t find anything relevant.  I did a search on a completely different topic (corporate strategy) and struggled to find anything on this as well.

·         How could you incorporate this resource into your professional practice?

[LearnHigher] Might adapt some of the handouts/slides for group briefing and when creating peer assessment forms
[LearnHigher] Might read a recommended book on groupwork problems
[LearnHigher] Might embed the weblink to the student resources on groupwork from LearnHigher (a series of videos) into the VLE and refer to in the group briefing, or possibly play the most relevant ones in class
[TED] – n/a

·         Which source did you find more useful (and why) – the ‘official’ resource bank or the open search?
·         Official resource bank
·         Are there any limitations to the use of your preferred resource for your learners (e.g. copyright licence; login requirements)?

[LearnHigher] There’s a wide CC licence and no login requirements

·         Would your own students agree that the resource you prefer is accessible?

Yes, but I don’t think they would look at TED themselves either! 

[ElizabethECharl]

Sancha – hopefully you have been able to access the recordings of the webinars? They are normally posted if not on the same day the next. This week and previous recording are at: http://octel.alt.ac.uk/course-materials/ .

The issue about being able to locate and search through OERs on Jorum was raised and it appears that they have attempted to address this and are currently testing an improved interface at: beta.jorum.ac.uk/find .

The other possible search aggregator was a resource I was not aware of called XPERT (http://xpert.nottingham.ac.uk/ ) – I have not yet had an opportunity to see how well the searching options works but thought I should mention its as well.

[PeterHartley]

RE Groupwork

You might also want to look at a small book for students which I put together with Mark Dawson (we were both involved with the LearnHigher initiative) and there are some resources on the accompanying website which you can download:
http://www.palgrave.com/pocketskills/groupwork/

This is an area I used to teach – drop me an email if you want further suggestions.

There is also a chapter on groups in the book which came out of the LearnHigher CETL and which we mentioned in the webinar,

Best wishes
Peter

[Ted O’Neill]

Yes, Graham, you said “The main issue here was that there wasn’t enough reliable and detailed description and meta data to make a judgement about the resource without downloading it and spending time looking at it.” I think that really is the problem. I spent quite a lot of time searching through Jorum, which I had never used, but finally left empty handed. 

The category structure is not very useful-at least for me. I was looking for English language teaching and learning materials. (I teach English at a uni in Japan with some very high level students.)

I tried looking at the few items that seemed potentially relevant, but it does take a long time to load previews or download and progress though. The file listings are pretty much opaque.

I wonder if a commenting system would be helpful? Users could build up better metadata, perhaps. But it might all be noise.

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