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Professor Martin Weller

Professor Martin Weller

Professor of Educational Technology

The Open University Institute of Educational Technology Professoriat


Martin's Blog

Profile

I've been involved in many of the OU's e-learning developments, including being director of the VLE, leading the SocialLearn project and chairing the first major online course (T171 with 12,000 students).  I am currently leading on a strategic project to bring a learning design approach to the University's module design systems, called Curriculum Business Models. 

My research area is in digital scholarship - I blog about this, and have recently written a book on the subject (published by Bloomsbury Academic under an open access licence). I have been involved in the open education movement for a number of years, being part of the original team that gained funding for the OpenLearn project. I have been the lead on a number of research projects in this area, including FLOSSCom (looking at open source models for education) and Sidecap (promoting open education resources in African, Caribbean and Pacific universities)

I'm a regular and reasonably well known blogger at Edtechie.net

 

Qualifications

BSc (Hons) Psychology

MSc Artificial Intelligence

PhD Artificial Intelligence

Teaching Interests

I am currently authoring on two courses in the MAODE - H817, where my block focuses on open education and will be run as an open course (or a MOOC), which anyone can access, and H818, the project based course.

I chaired the Masters course H806 Learning in the Connected Economy. This was the first, and as it turned out last, course to be launched by the UK e-University. It was the first OU course to be developed purely as learning objects. I joined IET in 2002, but prior to that I worked in the Telematics department, in the Faculty of Technology at the OU. My main work there was on the course T171, You, your computer and the Net. I chaired the production and presentation of the initial course and later co-chaired it. I also authored two of the modules. The course was based entirely online and had around 12,000 students annually. I also worked on T396 Artificial Intelligence for Technology which was my first course at the OU. I have also authored on H807 and H808.

Research Interests

Most of my research falls under the broad category of digital scholarship:

The impact of new technology on academic practice

Changing nature of academic identity in a networked world

Open education - the uptake of OERs, implementation of MOOCs, etc

I've published quite a few papers and three books, so if you're interested, see the publications page.

Publications

Authored Book
Weller, Martin (2011). The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice. Basingstoke: Bloomsbury Academic.
Weller, Martin (2007). Virtual Learning Environments: Using, Choosing and Developing your VLE. Oxford, UK: Routledge.
Weller, Martin (2002). Delivering Learning on the Net: the why, what and how of online education. Open and Flexible Learning. London, UK: RoutledgeFalmer.
Book Chapter
Weller, Martin and Dalziel, James (2009). Bridging the gap between Web 2.0 and higher education. In: Hatzipanagos, Stylianos and Warburton, Steven eds. Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. PA, USA: IGI, pp. 1659–1671.
Weller, Martin (2003). E-learning. In: Jones, D. C. ed. The New economy handbook. San Diego, USA: Academic Press, pp. 1044–1068.
Conference Item
Weller, Martin (2010). Big and little OER. In: OpenED2010: Seventh Annual Open Education Conference, 2-4 November 2010, Barcelona, Spain.
Conole, Grainne; Brasher, Andrew; Cross, Simon; Weller, Martin; Nixon, Stewart; Clark, Paul and Petit, John (2008). A new methodology for learning design. In: Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (EDMEDIA), 30 June - 4 July 2008, Vienna.
Cross, Simon; Conole, Grainne; Clark, Paul; Brasher, Andrew and Weller, Martin (2008). Mapping a landscape of learning design: Identifying key trends in current practice at the Open University. In: 2008 European LAMS Conference, 25-27 June 2008, Cadiz, Spain.
Brasher, Andrew; Conole, Gráinne; Cross, Simon; Weller, Martin; Clark, Paul and White, Juliette (2008). CompendiumLD – a tool for effective, efficient and creative learning design. In: Proceedings of the 2008 European LAMS Conference: Practical Benefits of Learning Design, 25-27 June 2008, Cadiz, Spain.
Journal Article
Weller, Martin and Anderson, Terry (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and Elearning (EURODL), 2013(1),
Weller, Martin (2012). Digital scholarship and the tenure process as an indicator of change in universities. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal (RUSC), 9(2), pp. 347–360.
Weller, Martin (2012). The openness-creativity cycle in education: a perpsective. JIME Journal of Interactive Media in Education
Weller, Martin (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249 pp. 223–236.
Siemens, George and Weller, Martin (2011). Higher education and the promises and perils of social network. Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento (RUSC), 8(1), pp. 164–170.
Pearce, Nick; Weller, Martin; Scanlon, Eileen and Kinsley, Samuel (2010). Digital scholarship considered: how new technologies could transform academic work. In Education, 16(1),
Weller, Martin (2010). The centralisation dilemma in educational IT. International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 1(1), pp. 1–9.
Weller, Martin (2009). Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change. On the Horizon, 17(3), pp. 181–189.
Conole, Grainne; Brasher, Andrew; Cross, Simon; Weller, Martin; Clark, Paul and Culver, Juliette (2008). Visualising learning design to foster and support good practice and creativity. Educational Media International, 45(3), pp. 177–194.
Conole, Grainne and Weller, Martin (2008). Using learning design as a framework for supporting the design and reuse of OER. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 5
Weller, Martin (2007). The distance from isolation: Why communities are the logical conclusion in e-learning. Computers and Education, 49(2), pp. 148–159.
Weller, Martin (2007). Learning objects, learning design, and adoption through succession. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 19(1), pp. 26–47.
McAndrew, Patrick; Weller, Martin and Barret-Baxendale, Mark (2006). Learning Design and Service Oriented Architectures:a mutual dependency? Journal of Learning Design, 1(3), pp. 51–60.
Weller, Martin; Little, Alex; McAndrew, Patrick and Woods, Will (2006). Learning Design, generic service descriptions and universal acid. Educational Technology and Society, 9(1), pp. 138–145.
Weller, Martin; Mason, Robin and Pegler, Chris (2005). Students’ experience of component versus integrated Virtual Learning Environments. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21(4), pp. 253–259.
Mason, R D; Pegler, C A and Weller, M J (2005). A learning object success story. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 9(1), pp. 97–105.
Weller, Martin; Pegler, Chris and Mason, Robin (2005). Use of innovative technologies on an e-learning course. The Internet and Higher Education, 8(1), pp. 61–71.
Mason, Robin; Pegler, Chris and Weller, Martin (2004). E-portfolios: an assessment tool for online courses. British Journal of Educational Technology, 35(6), pp. 717–727.
Weller, Martin and Robinson, Ley (2002). Scaling up an online course to deal with 12,000 students. Education, Communication and Information, 1(3), pp. 307–323.
Weller, Martin (2002). Assessment Issues on a Web-Based Course. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 27(2), pp. 109–116.
MacDonald, Janet; Weller, Martin and Mason, Robin (2002). Meeting the assessment demands of networked courses. International Journal on E-Learning, 1(1), pp. 9–18.
Weller, Martin J. (2000). The use of narrative to provide a cohesive structure for a web based computing course. Journal of Interactive Media in Education(1),
Other
Cross, Simon; Galley, Rebecca; Brasher, Andrew and Weller, Martin (2012). OULDI-JISC Project Evaluation Report: the impact of new curriulum design tools and approaches on institutional process and design cultures. OULDI Project (Open University).
Weller, Martin (2012). The Virtues of Blogging as Scholarly Activity. Chronicle of Higher Education, US.

Blog posts


13Jun

The cost of support

Two factors are making universities (in the UK in particular) consider the costs of their courses like never before. The first is the withdrawal of state funding and reliance on student fees. I guess this was always the intention behind...

30May

You can stop worrying about MOOCs now

I guess we all knew the MOOC bubble would burst sometime, but I'm saying it's happened this week - it just doesn't know it yet. The reason? Commercial MOOC providers have started making noises about becoming elearning courseware providers for...

23May

If education were free, what would MOOCs be?

Here's a thought experiment, if there were no students fees and higher education were free, what would that do to MOOCs? I mean, obviously it'll never happen... oh, wait, Germany just abolished student fees. Yeah, but what do they know...

15May

Uncle MOOC

Uncle MOOC will be looking after you for a few weeks... A metaphor is always a handy way to get a grip on something new (as long as one is aware of its limitations). My attitude to MOOCs changes on...

03May

Edukashun is brocken - the Tumblr

To save me clogging up this blog by banging on about the lazy 'education is broken' meme used to justify venture capital, I've set up one of those Tumblr blogs that gathers stuff together here: http://brokeneducation.tumblr.com/ I think there's a...

02May

H817Open reflections

My small MOOC open course, H817Open ends this week, so I thought I'd post some reflections on how it's gone. I'll start by saying what my intentions were for it. The idea was to mix formal and informal learners (as...

02May

The MOOC wars

I admit it, I'm slow on the uptake, but I had a lightbulb moment David Kernohan pointed me at Donald Clark's post on MOOCs "More action in 1 year than 1000" (no hype there then). As Brian Lamb has reported...

16Apr

It's only an island if you look at it from the water

David Kernohan has a good piece on education funding and the manner in which MOOCs commercialise higher ed over on his blog (although I disagree with his criticism of Jim Groom and Stephen Downes). It resonates with some discussions I...

12Apr

Mrs T & the battle for history

(or, yes, another bloody Mrs Thatcher post). The passing of Mrs T has led to some interesting reactions in our house. My wife, raised in the Welsh valleys, and who saw her village go from a state where everyone worked...

09Apr

My MOOC tech ecosystem

On my open course H817Open I use a mixture of technology, and thought it might be useful to describe these here, and also to indicate what I'd like to do beyond this. The technologies are: OpenLearn - This is where...

Other Interests

I'm a mediocre runner, I take photographs over at blip or flickr, and I'm studying for an MA in History.

last updated 06-Jul-2012