An overview of a paper discussing how learning technologies & Web2.0 give us new ideas on participatory policy development; Policy 2.0. Presented at #BESA2014 Glasgow University 26 June 2014 Written by Nigel Ecclesfield & Fred Garnett

1. From Web 2.0 to
Policy 2.0
NIGEL ECCLESFIELD – JISC
FRED GARNETT – LONDON KNOWLEDGE LAB
#BESA2014 GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 26 JUNE 2014

2. What is Web 2.0?

3. Why Policy 2.0?
 Web 2.0 affordances offer the potential for;
 Participation
 Support for collaboration
 Emergent behaviours that are not predetermined
 Data use and analysis open to wider groups of users
 These potentials offer ways of considering and developing policy rapidly
being lost in the UK, Europe and the USA
 Policy is best developed in open and wide-ranging contexts
 Web 2.0 technologies are good at capturing emergent behaviours so
can be adopted to capture emergent learning
 Web 2.0 technologies can help overcome the partisanship of expertise
ensnared in a lobby mentally
 In UK Education there is a growing disconnect between policy and
practice that needs to be addressed

4. Our work with a policy link
 “Architecture of Participation” – Adaptive
Institutions working across Collaborative
Networks
 Public Value – emerging from dialogue and
collaboration with publics not the views of senior
managers in public services – see Lea (2008)
 Policy Forest out of Learner-Generated Contexts
 Emergent Learning Model, the PAH Continuum,
MOSI Along

5. Government Policy
 FELTAG (Further Education Learning
Technology Action Group)
Matthew Hancock – Skills Minister
BIS
 ETAG (Education Technology Action
Group)
Michael Gove – DfE
David Willetts – BIS
Matthew Hancock - BIS

6. Issues
 Policy as an “expert” activity – avoiding the
mental model trap identified by Hase (2014)
 Decreasing participation in policy development
 Redefining the vocabulary of US commentators
and adding dialogic and emergent learning
perspectives
 Developing tools to increase participation in
policy development
 Research leading rather than being funded by
policy initiatives

7. Questions
How do we;
 Start to talk to learners and colleagues to explore the impact of internal and
national policies on your practice and experiences?
 Supplement all data gathering exercises such as the NSS in higher education with
dialogue and start to feed he questions and answers that emerge from those
discussions into reports and your feedback. for every consumer satisfaction
question add a Socratic question such as “what questions should I ask to enable
you to tell it as it is?”
 ask learners and colleagues difficult questions about how they experience existing
policies and practice and, more importantly, how they might, individually and
collectively seek to change these, without be afraid/intimidated?
 Ask for support and funding to research policy and time to contribute to
“conversations” and consultations to address issues as you experience them?
 Take O’Reilly at his word and use the affordances of the Web 2.0 technologies to
network and participate in chat and dialogue and network to find collaborators
and stimulating challenges? Look at Mitra’s learners and learn from their openness
to challenges and new experiences, unlearn the obsession with individualism and
isolation in our professional lives
 Work with learners and colleagues as peers and participants to challenge policy
and introduce changes in your work
 Ask any proponent of a new policy for the evidence of its value and the basis for
their promotion of it

8. How would you do
this?
HOW WOULD YOU MAKE POLICY?

9. We would compare
policies dialogically;
Learner-centric
Technology-centric
DfE (ministry)-centric
MORE ON ARCHITECTURE OF PARTICIPATION BLOG
WATCH FOR BEFORE & AFTER POLICY FOR MORE IDEAS

10. Nigel Ecclesfield and Fred Garnett
#nefg
Full Paper From Web2.0 to Policy 2.0
n.ecclesfield@jisc.ac.uk @fredgarnett