I think it was Pierre Dillenbourg, who once said that MOOCS are like marathons. You may find a map and run the Stockholm Marathon by yourself, but doing it together with some 20 000 other people is just more fun. With a crowd it is easier. People motivate each other.
It is known that only a small percentage of those who enroll to MOOCS complete courses. Several studies have shown that over 80% of the people doing MOOCS already have two- or four-year post-secondary degree. This means that the people taking MOOCS have trained to learn approximately 14-16 years before taking a MOOC.
Could it be that to study on a MOOC you must already be a good learner? You must know how to learn?
If this is true, the big question is how do you learn to learn? How do you you learn to study? How do you become a self-regulated learner?
What we know about learning and running. Training helps.
The concept of “mobile learning” (m-learning) started to appear in research literature in the early 2000’s. The first mLearn conference was organized in 2002. I have done mobile learning related research for 20 years. In 1998, we released the Future Learning Environment (FLE) that was already designed to be usable with mobile devices that feature a web browser. At that time, we were really excited with the possibilities presented by new devices like the Nokia Communicator series (1996 +) and some years later the Nokia Internet tablet (2005 +).
A big part of the Future Learning Environment (FLE) vision was to allow students to conduct progressive inquiry everywhere, in a museum, in the forest, everywhere. The idea that children will get out of the school building and move with their devices to study the world and its wonders, with their peers, was a central part of the FLE design vision. Today we see this kind of contextual inquiry happening in some scale. My favourite platforms enabling contextual learning are Seppo.io, LifeLearn and Funzi. Check them out.
Another research and design principle of the FLE, perhaps even more important than the mobile use case, was the ambition to create tools which would be pedagogically sound. We strive to design tools based on pedagogical theories and research, and in this way contribute to meaningful learning. These two principles, pedagogically soundness and mobility, have been kept in all our later mobile learning research projects.
In 2006, we were excited about the fast growth in access to mobile phones in the global south. The devices were usually basic: for making phone calls and sending and receiving text messages. Nevertheless, we wanted to explore could these basic mobile phone functionalities be used also for searching reliable and educational content, could they be used to share knowledge with others in different ways? To study these issues, we developed a MobilED –audio wiki service. MobilED audio wiki worked as follows: Users could search for the meaning of a term by sending an SMS-message to the MobilED server, the server then called back the user and a speech synthesizer will read the article found in the wiki (e.g. in Wikipedia). When listening the article, a user could also dictate audio annotations to specific sections. If the term searched was not found in the wiki at all, then the user could contribute a new article by dictating it to the system. The possibility to contribute was very limited, however the contextual access to reliable information was there. Today the access to Wikipedia is offered widely via a variety of Android and iOS Apps.
In the last couple of years, in our research group’s mobile learning research we have focused on enhancing learners’ possibilities to reflect and to learn self-regulated learning practices. TeamUp and Reflex are example of the prototypes we have been designing to research some of these issues. These web apps, designed primary for tablets, are still online and can be used. Another good, and fast way, to get to know them is to read the following research article (it is open access):
A complete list of the latest mobile prototypes that belong to the category of helping students to reflect and to self-regulate, are described in this last blog post in our research group’s website. Just scroll down to the section “prototypes”.
Through this work, in the last 20 years we have aimed to help students to behave like experts — whatever digital device they happen to have in front of them, from basic mobile phones, to smart phones, tablets and computers. Someone could claim that it is irrelevant what device people use. I strongly disagree. Some devices are better for production of information and common knowledge, when some others are designed for acquisition of information and for sharing personal information. Current smart phones seem to be, unfortunately, only better for the later.
Today, 70% of the world youth is online, mostly with their smart phones. The number of mobile-broadband subscriptions globally is now over 50%. These means that half of the world population goes online through a mobile device.
With the growth of access to Internet, via smart phones, there is also new global challenges spreading: fake news, alternative facts, disinformation, ignorance . . . . at the same time we are also in the middle of changes in the future or work-life. Some research claims that close to 50% of employment is at risk of disappearing as a result of computerization and automatization.
A future with masses of unemployed people, that are easily misled by disinformation, doesn’t sound like a very peaceful future. Something should be done.
Today, the grand challenge in global learning is our ability to provide scientific, rational and critical thinking skills for all.
I believe, this we can be done only with mobile devices. This is why I am still interested in to explore mobile learning phenomena.
And if you are now wondering did mobile learning started 20 years ago in Finland? Of course not. If you ask me, it was in 1977, when Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg introduced the idea of “Personal Dynamic Media”. If you want to read more about this, check out the article The Father Of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed (still no place to put the pen!)
This post is written to share and to document some screenshots from the latest prototype designed and developed in my research group. The prototype is called Webdialogos.
Active learning refers to practices where students do more than just listen lectures, read learning materials and do exams. In an active learning students are developing thinking skills. They are guided to analyse, synthesis and regulate their own learning endeavours. The emphasis is on students own exploration on the topics of the course as well as their values and attitudes on them.
In the Media Lab Helsinki, Aalto University I teach Introduction to Media Art and Culture course. It is an intensive three weeks course with close to 40 students. It is active learning. Student do home readings and screenings: articles and documentary films. In small groups they study concepts and prepare a video essays. Crucial part of the course are the classroom discussions, organised as fishbowl conversations. Last year I was experimenting with a video conference to have the conversations online.
For this year I got a grant from the Aalto Online Learning (A!OLE) program to develop a prototype of a video conference service that enables online fishbowl. Thank you! So we did a prototype — a proof-of-concept prototype. The code is not beautiful but it works. It is good enough for our internal testing.
With the course we did an experiment and organised one conversation online. It was a surprisingly successful and pleasant experience. The screenshots are form the experiment. We collected data from it and are now taking a closer look of it. I feel that we have designed something pretty unique.
Thank you Hanna Haaslahti and Iida Hietala for co-teaching the course with me. Thanks to Julius , Bo and Jana for developing the Webdialogos prototype. Thank you Katherine and Philipp from the Unhangout team for your thoughts and ideas.
I decided to write a couple of draft/work in progress texts under the title Augmenting human intelligence with artificial intelligence. I am publishing the texts in several parts. The first part is called metamedia and attempts to explain the essence of technology that affects human intelligence.
Part 1: Metamedia (or New Media, or programmable media)
You may have heard the story of two dogs. Two hard working dogs — a young dog and an old dog. One day, after another long day at work, the dogs went to a pub. They sat down at the bar and asked for beers. The bartender nodded and soon handed over the beers for the dogs. The dogs started to sip their drinks.
By Giulia from Wikimedia Commons– Uh . . what a day again, said the young dog.
– Yeah . . . . terrible day. I am getting old, too. I am not sure how long I can go on”, the old dog said.
Still, the dogs felt good and relaxed. The day at work was over. Cold beer tasted great. Suddenly, the bartender’s old Nokia phone rang angerly: “ti-di, tii-dii, ti-di, tii-dii, tii . . . ”
The dogs shuddered and looked each other. The bartender was reaching the phone. The young dog screamed:
– Wait, wait !!! . . . if it is Pavlov, we are not here!
What is special about the dogs of this story? Yes, they are working dogs. They go to a pub. They like beer. They are like humans. What makes them most human? Not the fact that they have jobs and drink beer. Their humanity lies first in their fear of Pavlov and secondly in their ability to reflect and self-regulate.
The technology we call today artificial intelligence is not very good either of these. Machines hardly have emotions. They already may change their behavior based on data analysis, but hardly reflect on their actions in the meaning of dictionary definition of reflect as an intransitive verb:
To think seriously; to ponder or consider. People do that sort of thing every day, without ever stopping to reflect on the consequences. (Reflect on Wiktionary)
In the story of the dogs, the phone also plays a role. The phone is the technology that is triggering both, the emotion of fear, as well as the reflection and the self-regulation processes. It makes the dogs to have non-verbal communication with each other, and then verbal communication with the owner and operator of the technology, the bartender. Damn technology.
Instead of an old Nokia phone, today most of us are carrying in our pockets something we may call metamedia (or New Media or programmable media). A computer with an internet connection, whatever a desktop, laptop of a smartphone is metamedia.
Firstly, metamedia is able to imitate all earlier forms of media. It is a phone. You may call your friends. It is a tool for messaging the way postcards and letters use to work. You may send text messages with images and longer letters as emails. It imitates very well newspapers, magazines, books, mail-order catalogues, coupon news and booklets. It imitates TV with online video services and radio with podcasts.
Secondly, metamedia is programmable and runs algorithms. You may program your metamedia: from simply setting an alarm to your clock app, to code your own operating system. Between these there are millions of other ways metamedia is programmed. There are software that runs “You Won an iPhone” and “Your Computer May Be Infected” – advertising scams that have made millionaires. Data is gathered to feed algorithms to target people in elections with hyper-specific appeals based on psychographic modeling and targeting.
This leads us to the third characteristic of metamedia. Metamedia remembers everything and is ubiquitous. The words of warning we say for teenagers really are true: what you put to internet, stays in the Internet forever. The Internet’s memory is endless and with our metamedia in our pocket, if not always us ourselves, someone can get to the data saved to the internet at anytime, anywhere.
When thinking technology augmenting us to solve the challenges of our time, to build a better society and to be better humans, we should keep in mind these characteristics of metamedia.
Also, the joke of the two hard working dogs could be rewritten. The bartender could be an AI-agent, the boss could program the AI calling the dogs. But who is the boss programming the AI? What should be the dogs reaction?
In the next part I will write about how metamedia is affecting the landscape of knowledge, learning and teaching.
I decided to write a couple of draft/work in progress texts under the title “Augmenting human intelligence with artificial intelligence”. I am publishing the texts in several parts. The first part was called metamedia. This piece is about lifelong learning (organizations and other stuff).
Part 2: Lifelong learning (organisations and other stuff)
Woman worker in the Douglas Aircraft Company plant 1942. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer. Photo restoration by Mbz1 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
There seems to be a commonly shared understanding that the world of work is ongoing a dramatic change. Although the reported fears of losing jobs because of automatization and move from permanent jobs to freelance and gig economy have not happened so far (in Finland) there are some reliable studies predicting that about 50% of the current jobs will be lost. For instance, if you think the 600 000 employees of Amazon, it is reasonable to assume that many of their current human-made tasks related to logistics will be automated.
I am not fully convinced about the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, but the point that we should aim to free people to do more things that are “meaningful contribution to the world” should be central when we develop automatization and artificial intelligence (AI). Simply, we should get rid of all painful, hard, harmful and dangerous jobs. We should let machines to do them and let people focus on meaningful things. The future with AI and the automatization of work, however, brings two major challenges.
Firstly, we should understand what kind of work is meaningful and should be primarily done by people. Secondly, related to the first challenge, we should broaden our industrial management mindset, where the aim is to have well-defined processes of production that are manageable with indicators and (simple) quantification.
Meaningful work is work that benefits other people, communities, societies, and the environment. The list of work that should be left primary for people — whose intelligence should be augmented with AI — is long: from caretaking professionals to highly skilled professionals and from R&D personnel and artists to teachers. All these jobs will also benefit from AI, but are not, or should I say should not be replaced, by AI or automatization. Neither should they be squeezed to models of industrial management.
For this kind of work, we need management and organizations that are very different from those designed for the industrial era. We may call them Soulful Organizations with self-management and independence of small teams facilitated by information technology. The soulful organizations rely on common visions, mission, and values instead of strategy documents. They aim to minimize bureaucracy and focus on outcomes instead of production. They are networks, and networks of networks, that efficiently share information. Crucial in this type of organizations are the digital tools to facilitate, not to manage, the operations. As said already, in these jobs the AI’s role is to assist the professionals to do their job better.
In the new kind of meaningful work learning is not something separated from the work. Continuous deep learning that results as higher quality must be integrated into the work. Rethinking the original idea of lifelong learning can be here very useful. Lifelong learning is not about productivity or employability. Lifelong learning is an attitude and a set of skills needed for leading one’s own personal development. Lifelong learning is to make life meaningful. When your work is meaningful, getting better in it is motivating and rewarding by itself.
During the industrial era, learning was divided into formal-, non-formal and informal learning. When more and more of our activities are mediated by metamedia, this categorization is becoming obsolete. Still 20 years ago, it was common that people got a degree from a school (formal learning) and then got a job where they then once in a while attended some training programs (non-formal learning). Informal learning was a matter of reading newspapers and books, listen to a radio, watching television, participating in civil society activities and having a chat with your family and friends in social events. The socio-cultural and education background strongly defined your informal learning activities. The cycle was simple: (1) a lot of economic, social, cultural and educational capital >>> (2) more informal learning >>> (3) more economic, social and cultural capital.
The above cycle still works. With the AI, automatization of meaningless work and meaningful work done by people we must take care that all will have access to the positive circle to increase their economic, social, cultural and educational capital. The formal education, the school learning, play here an important role.
Schools, in all levels from primary to universities, should aim to increase pupils’ cultural and educational capital and prepare them with skills and attitudes needed to be a great informal learners that will build soulful organizations doing meaningful work. Graduates from formal education should be curious, explorative, critical, self-organizing and self-regulating, understand how researchers work and able to do research themselves. Learning a bit of “systemized common sense” will be useful, too.
中文: 清华大学国徽设计组成员与各种设计方案合影。 By Tsinghua University via Wikimedia Commons.
OECD Education Director Andreas Schleicher recently claimed that because of the tech revolution, in a near future arts may become more important school subject than maths. I agree with Mr Schleicher on the principle, but also see a lot of challenges in the way we teach arts and design — and mathematics, too. Maybe a better approach would be to find a balance: models of teaching and learning where math and art studies are not competitors but rather learned together.
Inside the art and design education, however, there are many conventions we should reconsider. The fourth industrial revolution is challenging us.
First of all we should have an idea how art and design fields and jobs will be in the future. What kind of role artificial intelligence will play in art and design? How is the role of an artist and a designer in the world of “intelligent design”, where computers are designing or doing at least part of the design? What is the role of artists and designers in bioengineering? How about in the design of robotics and cyborgs?
Cumulus is the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media. As a network of over 280 member schools from 56 countries it is the forum to discuss and put forward new agenda for art and design education. I am right now attending the Cumulus conference in Rovaniemi. So far, I haven’t seen the above questions being very high in the agenda.
Among the art and design educators, the questions of sustainability are considered super important. And they definitely are. Art and design education is already putting forward all four aspects of sustainability: environmental, social, cultural and economical. The questions of fourth industrial revolution are naturally interlinked with the questions of sustainability.
What could we then do, in practice?
I would like to see that the art and design colleges and universities will starat online programs and MOOCs focusing on critical topics related to the technology revolution. This kind of themes are, for instance, data-driven design, AI in design, bits and atoms affecting to each other and design ethics in the time of mass data.
Lets see if we’ll get something started in the conference.
Wikipedia is available in 303 languages. It is estimated that there are between 5000 and 7000 human languages in the world. Out of these close to 4000 have a writing system.
Today in the Wikimedia movement, we cover less than 8% of the languages that could have a Wikipedia. To be honest, I think, we are not doing very well, especially if we take our vision seriously.
Starting a new Wikipedia in a new language is not easy. Actually, it is very hard. Could we do better in here?
Could we have step-by-step installation for starting a new language?
Could we even automatically start Wikipedias in those languages that have a language code and do not have a Wikipedia today?
What would be the possible harm of having Wikipedia’s in languages with just a starting page with a welcome message to edit and a text explaining the fundamental principles of Wikipedia?
I think it is fair to say that Wikipedia is am eurocentric and colonialist project. The entire idea of encyclopedia is European: the way of organizing knowledge, the scientific method underlying it etc. Being a great idea, however, I think we should present it for others as little colonial way as possible. One way to do this is to give everyone the opportunity to participate in sharing of knowledge in their native language.
The article reports a study of an illustrative case of using digital media tools — iPads, a trail camera & PCs — in a kindergarten community (42 children + 8 adults). Our results indicate that by using the media tools children were able to realise connected learning practices. With the help of the media tools children were able to study and to do their own discoveries in and after a forest trip and harness their own funds of knowledge.
The process itself, the images captured and artefacts created mediated connections with parents, grandparents and outside experts. Children were collecting data with a trail camera and then naming, classifying, and categorizing the data as well as searching, evaluating and applying new information. Children were also sharing their insights with each other and the wider community with spoken words, drawings and images.
The case was unique. The kindergarten was participating in educational project for in-service teachers organized by a University. The idea was to support the teachers to co-design forest-related learning projects with the children. The forest was used as a learning environment to provide children dynamic, unstructured, and multisensory modes of information, and full-bodied primary experiences where they could create different kind of interpretations and objects of activity.
The media tools played an important role in the case. Without them and the media created with them the connected learning would have not happen. The media tools helped children to study interest-driven and inquiry-oriented manner and to connect their learning with wider social network. Naturally critical in the case were the teachers, who were letting this to happen by sensitively encouraging children to work this way.
Although being a case with rather special setup, we see that the results can be used in the learning design of early-childhood education and care. Here are some Implications for practice and policy:
Take advantage of environments in the natural world, from forest, to lakes and parks.
Do not plan too much the forest trip: let children to play, explore and tell stories in and about the environment.
Encourage children to materialize their evolving ideas though activities such as by drawing, singing, storytelling, and by making material or digital artifacts.
Have the media tools available as tools for children to document and create their artifacts.
Involve parents and grandparents to the activities: ask them to join the forest trips and share the artifacts created.
The article was co-authored with Henriikka Vartinainen (the first author) and Saara Nissinen. The study is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the “Forest as a Learning Environment: South Savo as a Key to Communal Forest Knowledge” Project (UEF, project no. A70133).
With the corona crisis many campus universities have fast moved to online teaching. To help people in the transition, with a group of volunteers, we wrote an open guidebook, for educators in difference educational levels, on how to start online teaching. I mainly contributed to the section about how to continue university education in times when people cannot go to the campus. The Guidebook in Finnish is in the Finnish Wikibooks (Wikikirjasto). Feel free to translate it to other languages. To share some ideas in English, too, I wrote this.
As a teacher in a campus university, the first thing to do when starting online teaching is to find out what are the online tools and software provided by the university. In most universities there are some Learning Management System. For video conference many universities use Zoom.us, Hangouts Meet, MS Teams or Skype. Some favor the open source BigBlueButton for video conferencing. Google Drive and Office 365 are the most common tools for sharing and collaborating, and Google tools and MS Teams are used for teamwork. Many universities also use various types of instant messaging, such as Slack, Signal or Telegram, for teaching. To get an idea how are your students doing in times of the crises, you may also check once in a while your university’s Jodel-channels. In the anonymous platform students tell about their feelings very openly.
The Learning Management System (LMS) is often used for enrolling to courses, sharing content, communicating, forum discussions, assignments, and similar administrative activities. The LMS is good to be used as the portal for online teaching and learning; a single place where students will find all the other tools and software used in a particular course.
Scheduled lectures and group work can be conducted with a video conference. When your university have moved to online teaching, for students there are real challenges to stay in the mood of studying. Now you are competing with other online activities; watching movies, playing online games, hanging in a social media service. Therefore it is important that you will do all that scheduled lectures and meetings online, according to the original program. The video conferences will give students a scheduled time when they are expected to work with others in their studies. This will give them rhythm. There are other benefits, too. During the video conference, students can quickly ask from their teacher questions related to the course practicalities and completion, and as the teacher you can guide them through independent study, group works, and assignments.
Instead of using e-mail for general course related communication, it is better to use the LMS’s discussion forum, which will email notifications to students. This way the messages are archived in one place and can be read later. It is also good to have the schedule, the video conferences and course assignments in the LMS. This way they can be found in one place, no matter the time or place the students are. Most LMS are also usable with mobile phones.
Therefore, the very first step when starting online teaching in a campus university is to make sure that your course pages in the LMS are in good shape. Some universities automatically create a template for each course, including course descriptions, learning objectives, syllabus, timetable, and classrooms. In some universities, courses must be created by teachers to the LMS. It is good to think of your course page in the LMS as the course’s home page, a place where students can easily find the most important information about the course and how to complete it.
To the LMS’s course page you can add links to the software and study materials used in the course. Direct links to services (e.g. video conferencing) and materials (e.g., library database, PDFs, online videos, etc.) will make it easy for your student to use them in a right time. All they really need to remember or bookmark is the course page in the LMS.
The actual teaching, both remotely and traditionally, is mainly communication. Students should be actively reminded of assignments and the course schedule. Having scheduled video conferencing is a great way to rhythm online learning and teaching. The so-called flipped classroom is a good method for online learning, too. You may give students assignments to study topics independently, to read articles and watch videos (e.g. lectures or documentary films) and then use the video conference to discuss about the materials together. Just like in a traditional teaching, you can also divide students to small study groups and ask them to do assignments together. In the video conference the study groups can then present their results to others.
There are some tricks to have a successful video conference. Here is my list of seven tips:
When someone is presenting, keep others’ microphones muted. If you can’t do this as the host ask all the participants to mute their microphones. This will reduce background noise and improve the quality of audio.
When starting the video conference ask everyone to say hi for all. This will increase the sense of belonging. It is also way to test that everyone’s video/audio is working.
Encourage everyone to have their video on. This will improve the feeling of presence. The participants will feel that they are together in a same room and helps to keep everyone on a same page. Modern video conference software and the bandwidth can handle video very well. If there is someone who really do not feel comfortable to have the video on, let them just to use the audio.
Facilitate discussions. You may open microphones for some participants (2-4) in turns to have discussions and debates on the topics of the course. You may think this as a way of having a panel discussion or fishbowl conversation online. For a teacher this is an easy and nice way to give a turn for all to share their thoughts and to talk in the video conference.
Use the share screen to give presentations. Also teach your students to use it. This way students may prepare presentations as an assignment and present their results to others.
Use the breakout rooms (if you have them in your video conference software). Breakout rooms are a great tool to manage group assignments and discussions. Divide students to breakout rooms to have a discussion on the topics of the course. Then invite them back to the main room and ask them to summarise their discussions to all.
Guide your students to use video conference and other collaboration tools to do their group assignments. Having these skills is a really crucial skills for the workforce of our time and the future. These times they may also organise online parties with the video conference tools.
Teaching online is not rocket science. It is possible and can be fun, too.
I wrote these to an earlier blog post about online teaching, but maybe they deserve their own entry, too. Here is my list of seven tips to have a successful online video meeting.
(1)When someone is presenting, keep others’ microphones muted. If you can’t do this as the host ask all the participants to mute their microphones. This will reduce background noise and improve the quality of audio.
(2) When starting the video conference ask everyone to say hi for all. This will increase the sense of belonging. It is also a way to test that everyone’s video/audio is working.
(3) Encourage everyone to have their video on. This will improve the feeling of presence. The participants will feel that they are together in a same room and helps to keep everyone on a same page. Modern video conference software and the bandwidth can handle video very well. If there is someone who really do not feel comfortable to have the video on, let them just to use the audio.
(4) Facilitate discussions. You may open microphones for some participants (2-4) in turns to have discussions and debates on the topics of the course. You may think this as a way of having a panel discussion or fishbowl conversation online. For the host of the meeting this is an easy and nice way to give a turn for all to share their thoughts and to talk in the video conference.
(5) Use the share screen to give presentations. Also teach your participants to use it. This way they may also present to others.
(6) Use the breakout rooms (if you have them in your video conference software). Breakout rooms are a great tool to manage small group discussions. Divide participants to breakout rooms to have a discussion on the topics of the meeting. Then invite them back to the main room and ask them to summarise their discussions to all.
(7) Guide your participants to use video conference and other collaboration tools to do their tasks. Having these skills is a really crucial skills for the workforce of our time and the future.
Now they have collected a list of open source / FLOSS tools for online collaboration during the pandemic. The original file is in the Wikimedia’s etherpad. I don’t want to share the link to that collaboratively editable file, but I copied here the content as it was on Tuesday 9th at 11.30 AM.
When you see our students, say “Hi” and “Thank you!”
AUDIO-VISUAL CONFERENCING
Jitsi Meet (https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/)- free, no limit on participants, browser-based (which means nothing to install for any participants) (but bugs a bit if you are many)
https://openstreamingplatform.com/ Open Streaming Platform (OSP) is an open-source, RTMP streamer software front-end for Arut’s Nginx-RTMP Module. OSP was designed as a self-hosted alternative to services such as Twitch.tv, Ustream.tv, Mixer, and Youtube Live.
https://joinpeertube.org/ PeerTube aspires to be a decentralized and free/libre alternative to video broadcasting services. (FLOSS and free and federated)
The Wire – https://app.wire.com/ – Wire is an encrypted communication and collaboration app available for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers such as Firefox. Wire offers a collaboration suite featuring messenger, voice calls, video calls, conference calls, file-sharing, and external collaboration –all protected by a secure end-to-end-encryption. Free for personal use. Open source. You need to create an account with an email address.
UpStage – https://upstage.org.nz – real-time collaborative manipulation of digital media (images, animations, audio, live streams, text etc) along with a text chat – for creative play, improvisations, performances & presentations; email info [@] upstage.org.nz if you would like a guest log-in. we are holding events during the pandemic.
AUDIO TECH routing a DAW into video streamingvia @ahihihhttps://github.com/ahihi/daw-loopback-guide Music Hackspace @MusicHackspaceWe have a new forum! Join the discussion atonline-tools-for-the-pandemic | Etherpad Ubuntu Studio is a free and open source operating system, and an official flavor of Ubuntu. Ubuntu Studio is the most widely used multimedia-orientated operating system in the world. It comes preinstalled with a selection of the most common free multimedia applications available, and is configured for best performance for various purposes: Audio, Graphics, Video, Photography and Publishing.http://ubuntustudio.org Routing computer audio https://jackaudio.org Game development
https://www.systemli.org/en/2020/03/15/solidarity-as-infrastructure.html – “As a left-wing tech collective, we want to support you in using the right tools while still maintaining a minimum of privacy and security standards. Below are some specific recommendations for tools that we find useful for digital collaborative work processes.”
NextCloud – https://nextcloud.com/: open source document sharing, alternative for Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. Needs to be hosted on a server. There are some providers, you can sign up for free here: https://nextcloud.com/signup/ (there are quite a few options, but you will need to check each company individually to know how good they might be) or check with your webhost, e.g. Mur.at provides NextCloud for its members.
This week at the Helsinki airport two coronavirus sniffer dogs started to work. More dogs are trained to detect Covid. The dogs are trained to detect the virus by sniffing samples taken by swiping skin with a wipe. The test wipe is then dropped into a cup, a dog will sniff the sample and signal if there is a virus. Fast and simple.
The research and training of the dogs is done by researchers from the University of Helsinki’s veterinary faculty and dog enthusiast. The preliminary research results show that trained dogs might “even perform better than the current Covid-19 tests that are based on molecular techniques”. There are some more studies with similar results.
Training the dogs is not a simple task. The people who have trained the dogs for the Helsinki airport have worked for years to develop the method and conduct research on the topic. A real challenge is how to scale the training program? How to make it possible for more people around the world to train dogs for this purpose?
Good news! It is already happening. In 2019 researchers of the veterinary faculty joined forces with the people of the Aalto Design factory, including Shreyasi Kar, our awesome MA student from the Aalto Media Lab to tackle the challenge. Shereyasi also made her MA thesis on the topic.
Image by Shreyasi Kar.
A real challenge is how to scale the training program? How to make it possible for more people around the world to train dogs for this purpose?
What the team developed is a functional prototype called Scen Bot, a device to train dogs for smell related tasks such as drug detection, scent tracking, and medical detection. Scent Bot consists of three parts: a device called scentBot; the treatDispenser and a mobile app for remote control and tracking the training.
Dogs can use the Scen Bot independently. The Scen Bot device is left for a dog to play with, to learn and to get automatically treat when being successful with the game. For the human trainer the mobile app will tell about the progress of the training and to modify the program.
I am not sure how far they are today with product development but this e-learning solution for dogs could make a huge difference.
In the fully remote mode we are not able to meet some of the very basic human needs.
In the news article Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro points out that “the basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, belongingness and meaningfulness have not been met in remote learning”.
Maybe we could take a closer look of the basic human needs.
When thinking needs you can’t really overpass the Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs. If we think about universities we should aim to meet the need for self-actualization and transcendence (meta-motivation). 3/13
You remember that according to Maslow’s theory the most basic needs must be met before people get motivated to achieve higher level needs. There are good reasons to challenge this, but if you are hungry, cold and scared you do not have time to look for self-fulfilment.
You might be now asking what really are these self-fulfilment and self-actualisation?
I define them as development as a human being or growth leading to more full potential as a human — a conscious creature in the universe. Often this is also called simply learning.
And this leads me back to the question of the university community. We — like all good communities — should be designed for learning. You may call it a learning environment, if you wish.
So what makes a learning environment great? Right. You got it. It should meet all the needs of the people. Then we may think how these are met? This leads us to another theory.
Steven Reiss (2000) has presented a theory of 16 basic desires that motivates human action. There isn’t a lot of empirical research evidence, but I see it as an interesting design framework when thinking about learning environments and universities.
Reiss sees that there are individual differences in these 16 desires. We prioritize different things. As a community, however, we should consider all these individual needs are served. Some people desire one more than another.
This leads us back to the question of wellbeing of a university community and its members. We should think about the human basic needs and desires. We must ask, how well do we meet these needs and desires in the university community? I’ll pick some desires as examples.
In the context of a university the desires like power, independence and curiosity are easy.
How about acceptance, idealism and family?
Do we appreciate everyone as they are?
Do offer possibilities to advance social justice?
Do we make it possible to have a family life?
Most of these desires are difficult to meet in remote working. Online courses are a lousy learning environment.
University is so much more than degrees, courses, credits and research outputs. The quality of these depends on the quality of other things.
Finally. What learning, research and creative work needs the most is psychological safety.
Poor working conditions, bad workspaces, continuous organisational reforms and redundancies do not increase this.
Disclaimer: These are just some bases used in learning environment design research.
I admit, I like the famous Wayne Gretzky cliché quote “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been”.
I, however, just noticed that I have always phrased it a bit differently — and never have used it seriously. My version is:
“Don’t skate where the puck is, skate where the puck is going to be.”
The difference is not huge but there is a different flavour. If you know where the puck has been but is not anymore in there, skating there is really stupid. When you observe where the puck is, see the situation and learn to read the game — the other players movements — so that you are good at predicting where the puck will be, you are smart. We may conclude that Gretzky’s wisdom is about ability (1) to estimate probabilities, (2) to do predictions and (3) to act accordingly.
To be really good at all these three you must use both decisions making processes; (1) the automatic, intuitive and often unconscious thinking and (2) the slower, analytical reasoning (Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow). In the case of hockey, you can’t really do the second. The game is fast. Therefore, the great players have internalized the second thinking so well that it has become part of the first.
In slower processes, such as life, we are not in a great hurry to do decisions. Still, we make decisions relying on intuitive fast thinking that is often strongly affected by emotions. In life the ability to vary and combine fast and slow thinking is important. In this your ability to recognize your emotions helps a lot.
Emotional, something one could say non-rational, decisions are not bad as a such. The key is that you are aware of it being an emotional decision. For me so called emotional decisions have been my best decisions. In these situations, I can be aware that the probability of things going well are not great, the prediction is unclear. Still, I want to act. I take a conscious risk. The puck may come where I am skating to. Often it does.
I recently read my grandfather’s (born 1909) memoirs. He was not a hockey player. He was primary an officer in three wars, and secondary a businessman. I think he was relatively good at estimating probabilities, but terrible with predictions and actions. He was definitely bad at recognising his emotions.
He quit the school and joined the army in 1926 as a voluntary. He was 17. His father asked him to finish the school before going to the army. He didn’t follow his father’s advise. They didn’t talk much after this.
Although, for him the decision to join the army was strongly emotional, it was not a bad move. Europe was fragile and Finland was a young nation in a need of an army. The puck was going there. In the army he joined the cavalry, because he was good at riding and loved horses. Bad move. He went where the puck was, not where it was going to. When he was serving in the army, came a new law that for the Cadet School you need the upper secondary diploma. The puck was moving again.
After the unsuccessful carrier in the army, he was . . . today you could say . . . a serial entrepreneur with different kind of businesses. In 1930’s he travelled several times in Europe and looked for business opportunities. In summer 1939 he made his last trip to Baltics, Poland, Germany and Hungary. Hitler attacked Poland on September 1st. He made it back to Finland on September 7th 1939.
Soon after the trip he joined the army again. On 30 November 1939 Soviet Union (USSR) attacked Finland. The Winter War began. In the following seven year in three wars, he served as a captain and a major. In his memoirs, the parts where he writes about the war times are full of stories of good luck. There are also good examples of his rational decision making.
Still, very often he claims that in the war he was lucky. He survived from terrible situation and saved others, because he was lucky. I think he was not lucky. I think in the war he was in his best. His ability to put his emotions to background and to do rational decisions, and most likely also fast but good decisions paid off. He was where the puck moved.
When the wars were over, however, the army didn’t have anything to offer him. New situation. Back to business. Back to different kind of decisions making environment.
His later life story is full of examples of bad luck, or bad decisions, as I would call them. Not because he wasn’t able to do rational decision but because he was not good at reading the situation and to predict. Between the lines you can read his inability to recognising his emotions and their affects to his decision. All the obstacles in his life were seen by him as bad luck. He missed the puck.
I don’t even know why I wrote this. It is not really related to anything. Should I press “publish”? OK. Intuitive decision.
“- – if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made “for listening” – – for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another.” (John Dewey, 1907)
Who chooses the tools for teaching and learning? The topic comes and goes. Today, in your teaching you may want to use a tool you found online. It can be a cloud service provided by some company or institution that operates in the World Wide Web. You try it out and find it useful.
Then your IT department hears about it and don’t like it, because you are using something the university is not supporting. These days they may even waves the GDPR flag for you.
In my case this was the situation with Zoom (pronunciation). I started to use Zoom in teaching and research six years ago, in 2015. Already at that time it was the most accessible, fast to use and reliable video conferencing platform in the market. Luckily, at that point, I could buy a license to the service for my research group. I also talked about this cool new service for some people in my university’s IT department and asked if we could have a university wide license. They were not so exacted, but still tolerated that I used it. All good.
At some point, I heard that our university got a license to Zoom. Actually, it happened because the CSC – IT Center for Science, a company partly own by our university got it up and running in their own servers. For some reason, however, our university’s IT department didn’t tell anyone in the teaching faculty about it. So, when I accidentally heard about it, I naturally stopped paying my license and moved to our institution’s server. All good.
When moving to the remote teaching mode last spring, I helped tens of my colleagues to get their teaching going on with Zoom. I think that without Zoom our teaching would have practically collapsed. It really saved the last spring. As well, last autumn and this spring the most important tools for teaching are still Zoom and our own course management system called MyCourses.
Another very useful tool for teaching, especially in art and design, is Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard platform. During the pandemic, in many art and design schools, but also in design consultancy, Miro platform have really been a life saver. We may assume that its role in both will stay strong also when we return to campuses.
In the last couple of years Microsoft has strongly invested in developing their Teams product. It is obvious that this is done because of the success of Zoom. In our university we have a license for Teams, too. Somehow it is funny that now all administrational video conferences are on Teams when for teaching everyone uses Zoom. Teams works somehow, when Zoom is robust like the famous toilets of old trains. it is simple to use and provides the most essential video tools for teaching and group work. No doubt, that with students I prefer to use Zoom.
In our university we also have license to Google Drive, that provides the tools that are most commonly used for co-authoring research publications, often across institutional and international borders. In our university administration de facto tool is Microsoft OneDrive. Now the university is also taking in use SAP, to manage business operations and customer relations. I have a very weak idea for what the SAP will be used for. Let’s see.
I am fine to use different tools for different purposes. For me, and I assume for all teachers and researchers, the key reason to choose a tool is that it works for the purpose. The teaching situation is quite unique “business operation”.
The tools used are not only tools to deliver something for a customer, like teaching a student, but they also may promote and simulate or hider and inhibit students’ activities. What is crucial in learning is anyhow what the students do.
In a good learning environment, with meaningful set of tools students have a dynamic interaction with the tools and the environment. You can’t really educate anyone directly — from one mind to another. Education takes place only by the means of the environment and the tools provided. It is a tricky business operation.
It’s been now a year and a half of online conferences. In the beginning they were exciting. Great — less traveling!
I have participated several that have bee very well organised. For instance, I was closely following how the Participatory Design conference (PDC 2010) was organised. The PDC’s Handbook for Meaningful and Engaged Conversations is good reading for anyone interested in to organise an online conference.
Usually online conferences sucks. I am going to attend one more, the World Conference on Mobile, Blended and Seamless Learning (mLearn 2021). I am excited to give a talk in there, but same time sad that the conference was not arranged face to face. This will be my last online conference. I am done.
So, what is wrong with online conferences?
The reasons are the same, why some 15 years ago there was a lot of interest to organise unconferences, with less formal talks and more discussions. People felt that in a conference we should focus on the things that are most valuable: the discussions on the topics of the conference, things happening outside the formal presentations. The hackathons, design sprints and game jams are another forms of knowledge sharing and learning that are often better than a traditional conference.
In academic research, having face to face conferences, however, still makes sense. In a face to face conference there is always naturally a lot of other things happening than formal talks: you meet a colleague in the corridor whose research you recently read and have a chat, you have a breakfast with a potential collaborator and build trust, you listen to a great talk and ask some additional questions about it during the coffee break. In online conferences these others things are close to zero — not because many organisers do not see the value of them, but because it is just impossible to organise them. Virtual get-togethers? Thanks, but no-thanks.
So, why these things works in face to face, but not online?
This is simply a question of human nature and human psychology. When we are traveling to a conference, we are out of our daily routines and responsibilities. We are in a mode of meeting other people, to learn from them, to take most out of the time with other people, our colleagues. We are fully immersed to the conference, physically and mentally. In three words: we are present.
From their homes in Finland, every schooldays at 9 AM teachers sent text, image and audio messages to their students’ mobile phones — school assignments of the day. In the camp children were having a daily schedule to study Finnish, maths, environmental studies, history and later English as it was requested by the students themselves.
Students were different ages and divided into four groups; (1) three to five year old, (2) six to eight, (3) nine to 12 and (3) secondary and upper secondary age. For each group the assignments were based on the Finnish national core curricula for early childhood education and basic education.
During the day children completed the assignments and sent them back to their teachers who then provided feedback in new messages. In a typical day teachers sent hundreds of messages: images, short texts with emojis and voice messages with Finnish children’s poems and stories, such as the Eduard Uspenski’s book Uncle Fedya, His Dog, and His Cat, chapter by chapter — read by the teachers in Finnish.
With private messages teachers were able to tailor their assignments based on each student’s interests. If someone was interested in big animals or maps they got assignments related to them. With private messages teachers got to know the children, listen to them, to understand their needs. This way they were also showing for the children that they really care about them.
Originally the project was supposed to last only couple of months, but as there are still some Finnish children in the refugee camp the distance teaching this way has continued now over a year and half. Those children who already made it to Finland are now attending local schools. It is obvious that, the distance school prepared these children for the new experience, new language and culture. They hopefully understood that they are welcome and there are people who care.
In this beautiful story there is only one major problem.
The messaging app used in the project was WhatsApp. The choice of using the app was understandable, as it was already used by the parents of the children to stay in touch with their friends, family and Finnish authorities. It was right there. Ready to taken in use.
To put forward this kind of distance school, to make it global initiative with WhatsApp, however, would be deeply unethical. Why?
The app is own by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) with a long history of collecting data for commercial purposes and political manipulation, selling private data, literally supporting distribution of fake news and ignoring human right violations caused by their platform. WhatsApp does all this, too.
I assume you all agree that all this is exactly what school should not be. Actually, education and schools should fight against all these matters.
What could be done then?
How could we enable this type of distance school, taking advantage of so called smart phones that are already in the hands of billions?
We need a Signal School. In practice, we should organise distance school the way the Finnish teachers organised they school of 23 children in a refugee camp. Except that this time using Signal and having thousands of schools, teachers and children — when ever needed.
If you do not know Signal, let me summarise the main points why it should be the platform for the global mobile distance schools.
Firstly, Signal is free and open source software. This is important. I will come back to this later.
Secondly, in Signal there is privacy by design. The software developer is not collecting any private data from its users. For the messages there is end-to-end encryption and the servers are collecting only data that is necessary for the service to run. No private data. If you do not believe, you can always check the source code — it is widely peer-reviewed.
Thirdly, there are apps for Android and iPhone and desktop programs for Windows, macOS and Linux. All these are open source, too. This means that they are also open for building extensions, such as curricula and assignment banks to help the teachers work.
Fourthly, Signal is owned by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, run by donations and grants. This means that we all may donate to Signal, to fund its future development. And if you are a software developer you may donate your code.
Schools are primary infrastructure for and of a common good, not a business as a such. This is the case with Signal, too.
So, how does Signal compare to WhatsApp when it comes to features?
All the features used in the Finnish distance school are available in the Signal. The only difference is the lack of status (also called stories).
Who should take an action? I really don’t know but I can wish.
World Bank / UN / UNESCO / UNICEF. Obviously. They all have raised the issue of learning losses from COVID-19. With the climate crises we may assume that in a near future we will see more and more school closures here and there. This means that we should be prepared for future crises and not only think “a path to recovery“.
World Economic Forum. WEF have long promoted to connect every school to the internet. Fair enough, children with a mobile phone, Wi-Fi and Signal may then use the schools’ internet connections to join the Signal School. The connectivity is necessary an issue. Therefore the operators should also provide no cost data for children to access the Signal School. The net neutrality, 5G mobile networks and fair and competitive market are also important. I assume WEF promotes all these.
Wikimedia Foundation and Signal Foundation. Compared to the earlier, they are really small players. They, however, have at least two advantages: technological knowhow and mission to make the world a bit better place. The curricula and assignment bank could be build on Wikiversity. To the Signal desktop, primary used by the teachers, there could be an extension using the resources found from the Wikiversity.
Epilogue
After sleeping over this, I felt this blog post needs a list of action points. Some concrete steps that could make us better prepared for the next crises that will close schools again and force us to rely on distance teaching.
Educational crises fund. A global fund that is reserved to respond to the future educational crises when schools are closed.
Signal School infrastructure. There is a need to build some basic infrastructure to make the Signal work globally and precisely for this purpose. The mobile and Internet operators should make their network open for no cost for all Signal School data traffic. The most responsible operators would naturally keep it this way also outside the time of crises, as the Signal School could be used also to provide basic education for children who are not in school for whatever reason, living in a refugee camps etc.
Signal School version. We should develop some software extensions making the use of Signal software easy for teachers and children in the situation of crises and school closures. There could be some ready made educational assignments and pedagogical hints for teachers — simple things like if you haven’t heard from your student in three days give them an audio call and ask how are they doing.
Signal School brand. People working in the educational sector should be aware of this. There should be a global marketing and communication campaign.
Teacher training. Although the basic features and basic use of Signal is more or less familiar for more or less everyone on this planet, there is a need for teacher training. Teachers are trained to teach in a classroom, not with messages. There are many pedagogical and didactics matters that knowing them their work will be easier and gain better learning results.
I leave it now here. There are better experts and people with more power than me, who could can make this real. “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.”
Metaverse is a concept primary used in tech and media industries but also by journalists. It is fair to say that nobody really knows what it is or how it will be.
For many, metaverse is the second coming of the Second Life (2003), a 3D virtual world with avatars to hangout and talk with others and to build the world, when some refers to the next generation multi-user online games, such as Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2011) and Fortnite (2017). Common for all these are, that as they are platforms for playing game(s), they are same time places to hangout and talk with others. This way we may call them 3D social media with avatars. Metaverses like these already have a relatively long history.
In addition to the 3D virtual worlds, metaverse is often considered to be a service where the real and the virtual worlds are merged — like in Pokémon Go (2016), the world first commercially successful augmented reality (AR) game. When the developer of the Pokémon Go is currently building a platform for AR developers, it is fair to say that also this kind of metaverse is already here, just full of pokémon.
If we look at the research literacy, we may claim that metaverse is today everything that belongs to the area of mixed-reality, as defined by Milgram and Kishino in 1994.
Milgram, Paul & Kishino, Fumio. (1994). A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays. IEICE Trans. Information Systems. vol. E77-D, no. 12. 1321-1329.
The article What is mixed reality? by Speicher, Hall and Nebeling (2019) gives a good overview of the more recent research and discussion on the topic.
It could be sensible not to use the metaverse concept at all, but as it is discussed as the future of the Internet, I felt that I want to write something about it, too.
I also have published a research article where we were experimenting learning with mixed reality in mirror worlds. The mixed reality and mirror world are often considered to be a key part of metaverse and, not surprisingly, education — such as corporate onboarding and creative teamwork — has been presented as one area of applications. Therefore, I see that I may have something to say. At lease, I want to say something about the future of the Internet.
Firstly, when it comes to 3D virtual reality, there is very little discussion about the possibilities of using photogrammetry to create multiuser 3D virtual worlds. We humans leave in a rich audio-visual real world. For over two million years we have been learning to leave and act in our environment. We are hardwired by evolution to navigate in a real world, with real people, with real objects. Still, the current 3D virtual worlds are rather cartons that photorealistic replications of the real world.
I believe, that the future of the Internet is not in cartoon-like 3D virtual worlds, but in the replications of real world environments that are photorealistic.
This means that also the avatars in these worlds should be photorealistic. By being computer generated they naturally will still be editable with filters and other forms of image manipulation. This means that the starting point of creating an avatar will be a photorealistic 3D model of the user. The model will be made with photogrammetry that is then edited to be how the user likes it to be. The most important is to have a face that is recognisable by others, similar way as we recognise people from photos. I am convinced that even a rounded paper doll avatar with a face photo is better for social interaction than a cartoon-like avatar.
The first step, however, is to great the photorealistic 3D worlds — replicas of the real environments.
We are getting there. There are some interesting recent research on using photogrammetry to create 3D models of the real world to the Web. It is also interesting that this is not done in the tech companies of the Silicon Value but by the New York Times. Recently their R&D Lab published An End-to-End Guide to Photogrammetry with Mobile Devices and instructions on how to Delivering 3D Scenes to the Web. Furthermore they have released open-source code for people interested in to experiment with it.
As mentioned earlier, the AR is also considered to be an important part of metaverse. Although, it may at first look like totally different than the 3D metaverse, I think these could be integrated. If you think that the core of metaverse will be photorealistic replicas of the real world environments, it means that the data collected about these spaces can be easily brought also to the AR that is experiences in the actual location.
If you now take a look of the first image in this blog post you may imaging a use case where you are standing in the restaurant and looking for a way to find my research group‘s space in the same building. Because the whole building is modelled for the purpose of creating the photorealistic 3D world, also the information about our space is saved to the system. In the situation you could ask your phone “where is Teemu” and get audio instructions to find me, or you could use your phone to project little arrows to the floor guiding you to our office.
With this kind of integration, the Metaverse could be a space for user innovation just like the Web. People could develop such services as adding notes, audio and video clips or AI bots to the spaces, in the real world and in the replica of the space in the virtual world. This information would then be accessible and editable both in the real world and in the virtual replica of the same space. I am sure with this kind of open Metaverse platform you are able to imaging thousands of use cases and applications.
I know that there are challenging if the Metaverse is strongly linked to real spaces and environments. Therefore the 3D virtual world part of the Metaverse, should be open also to develop totally imaginary spaces and environments. The point is that the photorealistic part would be the main entry point for the people and then from it you could find ways to the imaginary 3D worlds.
When reading this you may have wondering who could build this kind of platform that is merging the open photorealistic 3D virtual world and the AR?
The answer is obvious. It must be build by us, just like the Web was and still is build by us. From large part the software pieces to build this kind of Metaverse are already open source. So we could start working on this direction already with our mobile phones with cameras, free software, open standards and the Web.
Me as a dancing (animation), photorealistic avatar in the Mozilla Hubs.
Mozilla Foundation and other non commercial web-players are really important in the development of the open Metaverse. The Mozilla is already developing the hubs, a multi-user virtual space in WebVR, and probably should be the universal Metaverse platform.
Learning Environments research group’s room in the Mozilla Hubs made with mobile phone photogrammetry. Still some work to do to make it photorealistic.
I assume that soon, in a less than 2 years, you can visit me in our photorealistic 3D office in our campus from your laptop. From there you will find me and my colleagues working as photorealistic avatars, good enough for you to recognise us. You will also enter the room as an avatar. If your avatar is a photorealistic replica of yourself, the door is open and we can discuss over audio. If your avatar is a dragon (or you do not have legs!) you must convince me a bit more to open the virtual door for you.
I have been serving the last three years in the Executive Board of the Cumulus Association — the leading global association of art and design education and research. We have over 350 Member institutions in 63 countries.
The Executive Board is elected by the Members. When I decided to stand as a candidate in 2019, I made some promises for the voting Members. I will list them in here.
(I) Improve the Governance of the Association
I think any community is only as good as its governance. This is the case with all human systems. The model of governance defines how fair the system is. When a system grows and have more diversity it needs more governance. Still a good governance can be lean, based on trust among people, where we assume good faith from everyone.
I made the promise to improve the governance of the association, because there were rumours of peculiar practises of favouring some Members over others. Not necessary corruptions as a such, but a culture that is not necessary according to all the principles of good governance.
Therefore, one of the first things we did in the Board was an Executive Board Handbook, that defines how do we in the Board, and in the Association in general, practice good governance. When the basic operational principles were defined, the Board ended-up to work very efficiently. Some people, actually told us that we are doing too much.
When serving in the Board, I also realised that our “association” is actually not a legal person — a registered association under any legal system. With a significant annual turnover and reserves, I felt very uneasy.
As a joke I started to call us a motorcycle gang or mafia, especially when there was talk about “Cumulus-family”. From the legal point of view being a motorcycle gang was not exactly true, as our book keeping and general administration was in the hands of my employer, Aalto University. Nothing we did was illegal. So, if we were not a motorcycle gang, we were a friendly mafia operating under the protection of my employer. When this was realised in the Board, we started to work on to register the association. I consider this to be the most important thing to improve the governance of the association.
As a Board member, I was happy to get many of those issues I felt strong about also to the strategic plan, in addition to the aim to improve the governance. I’ll explain in the following the three other promises I made for the Members. I see them all interlinked. They are also present in our strategic plan.
(II) Make Cumulus Less Eurocentric and More Global
When founded in 1990, Cumulus was a network of couple of European art and design universities and colleagues. That time it was a platform to foster student and faculty mobility within the European Union Erasmus programme. As an organisation it served the rectors, deans and officers of international affairs to agree on number of practicalities and to lobby on the importance of art and design education and research in Europe. This was very important for Europe and the European art and design schools.
I got to know Cumulus in late 1990’s as my University was one of the founding Members. For faculty and students Cumulus didn’t offer much. By students and faculty, at least in our University, it was seen as a a club of the leadership and administrators. This was more or less the situation for the first 15 years of the Cumulus. In 2006 Cumulus started to accept Members outside of Europe. It was growing and collecting more membership fees.
Now we are over 350 Member institutions almost all around the world. In the last couple of years, some Members outside of Europe have asked what are the benefits of being a Member? Everyone pays membership fees, but it easily looks that the European Members are those who get the benefits.
Most of the Board members felt that to stay relevant we must serve better all our Member — to find ways that all the Members will benefit from Cumulus a bit more than a logo in their website. All the Members should not pay the bills of the European club.
Therefore, in the Board we started to look for opportunities to offer scholarships for faculty and students coming from Member schools in the Global South. We also started to work on a solidarity model, that could be used to lower the membership fees for those Member institutions who really can’t afford it. These initiatives are not ready yet, but they were started.
(III) Make Cumulus Student and Faculty Centred
I also promised that in the Board I would focus on developing services for students and faculty. I wanted Cumulus to offer our students opportunities to learn from other (art and design) cultures and expand their world views. For faculty in our Member institutions, I wanted to develop forums to discuss about the art and design education, to share the best practice and to learn from each other.
Again, in the Board most of us thought similarly. In the Board we discussed that to stay relevant, we should focus on the students and faculty and less the people in the administration of our Members institutions.
My colleagues in the Board started to renew the Cumulus Working groups. The aim was to offer the working groups an online platform to initiate and have conversations on matters they mostly care. This was piloted and the plan is that in the next stage these tools will be integrated to out website. This related to the last promise I made.
in line with the plan to focus on students and faculty we also launched the Cumulus for Ukraine initiative to support Ukrainian art and design students and faculty displaced by the invasion. We started to collect information of the programs in our Member schools and opened a “helpdesk” for individuals looking for a place to continue their studies or to become a faculty member in one of our Member institutions. I think this is something we should continue doing also in the future, around the world.
(IV) Make Cumulus Digital First
When applying to the Board I felt that this is the area where I can contribute most. The Cumulus website was terrible. We hardly were present in the social media, in addition to emails we didn’t have any collaboration tools for the Members. We didn’t have an entry in the Wikipedia or page in the LinkedIn. Now we do. We still do not have a system for member relationship management.
For many years the main mode of collaboration in Cumulus has been to get together somewhere in the world, twice a year in the Cumulus conference. Conferences are important and we still need them, but is it necessary to meet two times a year. Who really can afford it? I felt that this is terrible waste of resources, both our Members and the nature. With digital tools we should be able to provide more opportunities for our Members to collaborate and also to get together more locally.
My Board colleagues did an excellent job to redesign and renew the website. We also started to develop the tools for online collaboration, to reconsider the Cumulus conferences, to plan online conferences etc. The pandemic naturally was an additional factor in here. Somehow I was so busy with other things that I didn’t contribute much to this. Luckily there were other Board members with vision, wisdom and capacity to do it.
I think in this area, in the last three years, we have made a great progress. Thanks to the commitment by some of the Board members.
Related to the “Digital First”, I also have worked to design a system where the Member institutions could offer online course to each other students. This is a wicked design problem with thousands of factors affecting in it, but I am still convinced that this is precisely what we should and can do in the Cumulus.
Epilogue
The three years Board term is coming to the end. Soon it is a time to have a Board Election.
In the last couple of months, the Board’s proposal to register the association has raised concerns among some European Members and their friends. The Board, elected by all the Members has, however, been 10 favouring the registration and the new Statues with the necessary amendment. One Board member has opposed the renewal. I call this process a transition from being a motorcycle gang to become a global association. “To be, or not to be.”
I should now decide whatever I run for a second term in the Board. Somehow, I would like to run and maybe have a change to complete the good initiatives we have launched in the last three years.
On the other hand, if we do not register Cumulus association before the new Board starts, I must admit that I have failed.
I have not failed only personally, but I have also failed the Members who voted me to the Board. I was not able to Improve the Governance of the Association — the most important promise I made.
Writing all this makes me peaceful. I did my best. I am sorry if it was not enough.
I am still going to work for the last months of the Board’s term to advance the values I believe in.
“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” Sayre’s law
I think it was Pierre Dillenbourg, who once said that MOOCS are like marathons. You may find a map and run the Stockholm Marathon by yourself, but doing it together with some 20 000 other people is just more fun. With a crowd it is easier. People motivate each other.
![By Giulia [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https:::creativecommons.org:licenses:by-sa:2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons 2](http://teemul.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/by-giulia-cc-by-sa-2-5-httpscreativecommons-orglicensesby-sa2-5-from-wikimedia-commons-2.jpg?w=756)
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