Supporting Learning and Teaching....

Motion Based Sensing In Education

2012-01-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

Hello, and welcome to the first post of the year. Having received a Kinect for Christmas I have spent many an hour playing it with my 3 year old son (especially Kinect Adventures). I also managed to wangle a copy of the UFC personal trainer and all I can say is WOW, this game is amazing, it can read when you do press ups, push ups, standing jumps etc and can even tell by my posture if I have cheated.

Now, bet your wondering where the e-learning comes into this. Well on my google + stream the other day I notcied a post by a Mr James Clay talking about a http://edublend.blogspot.com/2011/09/motion-based-audience-response-system.html motion based response system being developed at the University of Portsmouth.

Now we have all seen motion tracking cameras that can follow you about, but now we are starting to see motion based selectivity that can be programmable... I wonder how long it will be till there are scripts, clients that have this built in.

I have been having a think about how this could be used for e-learning and think there could be many a possibility, but as always we shouldnt try to use this for stuff there is already a market for unless it is a improvement. Maybe health and safety vids in the future will test you to see if you are picking stuff up properly etc.

Catching the information Bus

2011-11-28T06:04:00.001-08:00

http://www.intuitivebusinessintelligence.com/Harper_Adams_University_College_Improves_Student_Experience

Came across this recently in one of my searches. My old colleague Roger Greenhalgh had an idea to create an information bus, that sits on top of all the databases, that would allow for easy data reporting and manipulation.

The idea was that data depending on user rights could be accessible to staff, students, service providers and management. You could cross tally results for research, for example how many students from a certain demographic scored 50% and higher on their exams. Or an easy method for managers to pull up information on student intake etc without having to higher in specialists or task others to develop reports. It seems the company he has went with provides this service and allows you to create a 'dashboard' where you can easily see the reports that concern you.

Definatly something to think about if you want to improve services, and not wholly unattainable.

Gripes with the way social networking is done

2011-07-29T04:42:00.000-07:00

Havnt posted for a while but thought I would just keep this blog up to date.

Why is it all social networks are standard to deliver to everyone. Why not as the initiator of a conversation you could bring people in when you needed to. So you type something all your friends can see it and some people comment on it, could those comments not be hidden until you 'open' them up and bring them into a conversation?

Fixing the financial system

2011-03-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

With the advent of technologies and GPS. It should be possible to track the flow of money through the world. Especially digital transactions. Without identifying people we could see how much money is swallowed up and where. You could see where investment was needed or track how much money goes out of the country from foreign workers.

The downsides of OER

2011-02-07T02:55:00.000-08:00

Having recently tried to use some OER in anger, we download a QuestionMark questionset from a well known repository. On installing the qpack, we noticed that there where questions with graphics missing. There was a name and an e-mail next to the releaser, so I thought may as well drop them a line to see if they had the graphics handy. The releaser it seems was not the releaser of the materials but the author of the questionset. So someone else had released the materials without giving it a proper review. The releaser was very helpful though in getting the images to us, but as they mentioned they are under extreme pressure in the normal work instances.

A lot of people might not be aware of the extra workload and communication involved in OER and really should. Someone might get in touch and expect an answer, others might be after more information about a specific subject. Quality control is something that needs to be rigourus especially when releasing materials out into the wild and people need to be aware of the possible extra time after publication.

Creating a Plug n Play framework for OER in HE institutions

2011-01-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

As part of the Oxford ripple project we are looking into a kit of software called OERCA. This kit of software basically makes the copyright clearance process for #OER much easier. What could be done to further improve the process would be to have an end point where the clearance could say safe for exposure, from where the software automatically uploads it into JORUM or Xpert or some other repository.

In that case an institution could install this software and they almost have a full working process from start to finish.

Teaching students real world skills

2010-11-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

Was approached today by an academic who wanted to incorporate version control in their engineering course. Now VC is something which is used in the 'real world' and is an industry standard practice. This also includes project management methodology, so why not start introducing them to project management tools!

The academic wishes to create groups and wants the groups work to be locked down to that group. But also have a place for them to discuss the project.

So some of the things we will have to look into is

Who will support the technology (IT,e-learning)?
What tech would be best suited?
How can we link into what we are doing into other similar modules

This is a showcase of some of the places we as education have to go, by replicating real world scenarios and infrastructures.

Some of the ideas is using elgg/sharepoint as the communication platform, subversion as the version control and microsoft project/Trac as the pm.

Gaming in E-learning

2010-11-08T02:37:00.000-08:00

Gaming/Movies has already been proved to be very influential in the way we learn. For example think about after you have played need for speed, when driving have you thought, Im just going to try to slip stream that lorry or take the inner lane on a corner.

It intrinsically builds into you the desire to replicate the game into real life. Same as real life replicates into the game, you see UFC and you want to control Brock Lesner in UFC Undisputed and you want to elbow smash into Frank Mir. All these things are exiting, which is at the core of learning, if you have motivation and excited about something you will want to learn. If its dreary you wont take much in.

One of the most important aspect of gaming is levelling, you want to test yourself against certain situations that allow you to progress. If you are on a linear module designed to cater for all skill levels you will either fail to learn enough important stuff or if you are on the higher end feel less stimualted to learn and so pass along the module course like its a breeze and it doesnt challenge. The role of the teacher in that sense is to try to gauge the level of the course based on their own academic and peer experiences, this is hard when most academics in the field are not teachers first they are content experts.

In order to build these quality gaming simulations takes time, money and experience. All of which poses a major risk especially in this economic climate. It is still something which I would like to triall and if the chance ever came about would like to partake some research on.

Timelines

2010-10-18T08:20:00.000-07:00

First post in a while, been busy learning OER stuff and just getting to grips with my new post.

Well this post is going to be about time!

Time is generic, if there was no time , there would be no then??

Well anyways, one of the concepts that we have identified is that it would be useful for almost every course if there was a generic timeline tool created. Even better if this tool could have overlays, sort of like you used to get with the transparent slides.

So one of the projects we have commisioned is to come up up with a generic tool that would have a database backend that would feed into a site with checkboxes, sort of like autotrader.

New Start

2010-09-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

Well as from last week I finished my 6 year post at the University of Derby, I started there as a temporary developer and managed to work my way up to a senior position.

Yesterday I began my new role at Harper Adams University College as a Instructional Design Leader, where I got to meet the new team I would be working with. There's a broad range of skills and the developers were whittled down from 80 applicants down to 5. So these guys are the best of the best.

Theres a lot of exitement kicking about the project, with the fact that we can try new things and push a few boundaries. Not only that but we all get brand new laptops complete with BioMetrics! Cool, always wanted to have a play about with that. So as always we got them to start with a SWOT analysis, always good to find out about each others strengths and weaknesses. I think one of the ways to bring equalness and partnership to the team is to have everyone a owner of a service. So that they feel they have a responsiblity for something.

Not only that but having met the e-learning team that already exists, it sounds like they are pushinng a few boundaries themselves with respect to the services they offer.

Since there is no e-assessment at the college one of the points of the project is to bring CAA to Harper and for that we are going to have a look at a range of options.

Definatly looking forward to the challenges that the project will bring.

Learning in Waves

2010-08-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Nope not google wave,

The concept is old but I thought I would do a bit of reflectiveness on the subject for my own benefit. In the old classroom when a student would learn a bit of information, the wave of retention would begin. Reinforcement would start the process again, in the old days and still to now this would be achieved via homework. This would carry on until either it dissipated or the barrier broke and it entered the long term memory.

Nowadays people are thinking about how they can support the student to create their own wave. Formally this occurs using groupwork or now socially.using social network sites. We can support this by creating social learning tools or by creating social learning areas (SEA) within our learning centres.

E-learning can be seen to strengthen the wave by creating bursts at different intervals.

Constructivism occurs in a similar method, by planting the idea or item of knowledge within the subject the item can grow and change according to how the subject views and changes much like a tree with branches.

Google Shmidt Gone mad

2010-08-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ceo_suggests_you_change_your_name_to_escape.php#comments-open

So the best the CEO of Google could come up with was for teenagers to change their name, in order to escape the openness of the web.

Instead of spouting stuff like that, why not add more privacy to the web instead.... its like shouting heads or tails and turning the coin over if you lost.

If biometrics, identifiable dna etc is all planned for the future, a person should be able to link data to themselves and then choose to delete whatever information they want... except maybe criminal records. To think that everyone has to change for the web is ludicrous thinking and if that's what the people steering the web are thinking then god help us.

Encouraging Formal Informal Learning

2010-08-11T05:09:00.000-07:00

Choice.....

That after all is what drives us an enables us to do the things we do. Today we had Interviews for the new Dean of 'Learning Education and Innovation' department. Almost all of them were focused on Students Learning 21st Century skills. When asked what how we could support that as a department they talked about us working closely with Academics.

Here's my idea .... With all these informal learning learning spaces, we could utilise them better. Having workshops, ran by academics and training staff on technology throughout the semester could prove valuable. Students could pick n chose what workshop they wanted to attend. Having them certified would be even better!

We talk about getting students to use web 2.0 technologies etc, but what are we doing to encourage the use. We push stuff out to academics all the time, but what are the odds of it filtering through?

I think having informal workshops now and again would not prove too difficult, would enable students to feel in control of their teaching and help towards there PDP.

Custom Questions in Blackboard

2010-07-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to do custom questions in Blackboard but didn't know how... read on.

If you need to do a drag and drop question, balance sheet or have your own randomly generating questions then you can. We have been looking into this for a migration project to convert from our current existing assessment system to another.

Using the HTML question box in the blackboard quiz creator your can insert a link to your externally hosted flash question file and then by using JavaScript pass the answer from the flash piece to standard Blackboard question. For example

Question > Pass question answer > Blackboard text entry > Check Score > Auto Input to Gradebook

Any questions feel free to ask

Skills For Life (21st Century Skills)

2010-07-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

At the LTA forum I attended an event hosted by Elani. Elani is an academic who is using PDP (Personal Development Plans) within her modules. The reason being is Elani believes that by encouraging students to branch out into different areas of the field will allow for a better student learning experience. Also at the course was an academic from ADT who is using similar methods within his module and is looking to support 21st century skills through it. The exeption is that the academic from ADT changed the name from 'PDP' to 'Passport to Learning Certificate', this is more friendly on the ears to students and they seemed to engage more with this than the offical PDP. Elani agreed with this and noted it was something to change in her modules. Now since I am coming at this from a technologists point of view, I was thinking how can we support this process.
Something similar to what Adam has done with his SQM could be used as it take into account some of the Basic Structure, see below for a mockup of a system.

Portable Social Profile

2010-07-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

t would be dab handy if there was a way of transferring a student socially to other applications and transferring their links, friends etc.

Please find below a mock up of the concept,

To be able to plug your own social network outside of facebook would be ideal.

XML

Example Piece

Interactive E-Books

2010-07-06T06:21:00.000-07:00

Ive been reading the Horizons Report on the up and coming technologies to watch. One of the technologies they mention is e-books. Now the benefit of e-books is that they save paper and are pretty mobile you can take them anywhere.

Now if you where to treat it as a e-learning course and have the text along with interactivity then user might receive a better learning experience. The old books used to have mutliple choice questions at the end so lets make e-books more interactive.

Whats in a VLE...

2010-03-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

Mobile can be added to the list,

With Stanford University and a lot of other Universities using the MobileEDU (Now Mobile Central) iphone app from Blackboard the world of the student has opened up, now they can easily check module information, assignement information, sports info etc on the go. The app is even 'fashionable' in the sense it looks up to date.

Now Moodle have stepped into the arena with their own app Moodle4iPhones though this is still in development it would be interesting to see what it can offer students, especially since the project is open source.

I will run a comparison on the two once the moodle one has been released, in the meantime I am going to be looking into the Iphone app from Blackboard and will report back here

Tsunami

2010-03-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

While I was browsing I came across a demonstration island for weather studies,

This was developed by the earth system research lab of the NOAA. They have took the simulations of second life to the next level, demonstrating such things has how hurricanes occur, what happens in a tsunami etc. This is a really good useful way of demonstrating the effects and what it would look like to be in one, though maybe second life graphics itself could be improved, the concept behind it is really good.

I suggest you take a look...http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteora/177/161/27/

Academic Involvement

2010-02-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

When starting major University pilots, it might be useful to propose for academic involvement. We have all these skills here in the University so it might be time to utilise them. For example the social networking project, it could be useful to try and get a psychologist involved, or for the QuestionMark project we could get an e-assessment expert. This would provide a comfort for the academics in the pilot and allow for a an easier involvement process.

As an e-department and learning technologist we have skills in multiple areas but are generally experts in none. This is where these resources could come in useful. Whether we pay for them or that is in their interest I think the way we go about these things could be improved.

Ownership

2010-02-22T02:57:00.000-08:00

Watched the programme on the 'Virtual Revolution' on Saturday and found it quite informative. It reiterated some of the ideas I have heard about regarding the lack of deep learning within e-learning. And one of the concepts it made think about is ownership.

When you go out and buy a book it is yours you can look at it at anytime and you have control of it. One of downsides of electronic material online is that it is shared with everybody so the knowledge is distributed.

I suppose one of the way to get around this is to use tablet pc's or e-readers. I think this is something we should concentrate more of in the future within the University and provide some focus to it.

One Big Community

2010-02-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

Think about it, we badger on about social networking for all types of things, for business to get together, for students to do collaborative learning and for us all to socialise together.

Now do we practice this ourselves, wouldnt it be great if the University itself had a social network, allowing each other to share best practice/ideas/reasearch etc. Lets say Academic A has been trying some really cool stuff that lecturer B would never probably get the chance to see or hear about. You could make postings that way and allow people to subscribe to feeds on e-learning or whatever subject you wanted to.

Now we things like intranets etc which is sort of like this, but does not provide the personality of a social network, then we could have sub groups for the sub committees, if someone has interest or a speciality that they would like to share then they could join that group as such and provide feedback that way. It could make interpersonal working more friendly etc, I have found social networking does not really work for small teams you need a pretty hefty user group to work best, providing a lot of posts. The other benefit of a large cohort is that you are just a number, this makes it a lot more easier to voice opinions etc without judgement.

That is not without problems:

Implementation

Engagement

Privacy etc

But is that not you have with social networks anyway??

e-learning Overload

2010-02-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Much as the same as us techie's becoming overloaded with 2.0 tools, the same thing seems to be happening with academics and e-learning tools. We throw so many tools at academics that a lot of them dont really know where to begin or how to fit it in with their modules.

There is always going to be the next big thing, but in the sense that average joe lecturer who designs their module, they dont need constantly inundated with e-learning progaganda, recently a few collegues have came up to me and said that they simply dont have the time to look at anything. This is due to staffing reductions and more responsibility being put on them. There seems to be a fine balance of filtering these tools out to everyone, we should give academics a chance to breath..

The worse is when you have multiple tools that basically do the same job, yet we advertise them separetly, all this casue confusion to the user.

Anyway like a tide that will never cease the e-learning onslaught continues..

Excellent diagramming tool

2010-02-12T04:08:00.000-08:00

Recently came across a website called lovely charts which provides an online diagramming tool.

Lovely charts is a web 2.0 tools that allows you create charts for many purposes. These range from swimlane designs, uml 2.0 to wire framing. See below for a mock-up I did for the proposed hosting service for Question Mark. You create and export to png for free from lovely charts but further features require payment.

Project Management in the e-Department

2010-02-10T00:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I would do a couple of posts to describe the processes behind some of the work we do here at the e-Department. So I will start with the Project Management software we use.

Agilefant

Agilefant is an open source kit of software (which means its free!) developed by the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. The software itself is constantly updated with pathes and features which makes it one to watch.

We use Agilefant to help project manage some of the projects we have running from, computer based assessments to large scale social networking pilots. There are a number of heirachys we use in Agilefant starting with PRODUCT > PROJECT > ITERATION> BACKLOG>TODO. We have found using Agilefant a blessing as we can keep track of where projects are and what is still to do. Iterations are usually about a week to two weeks in length and we try to ensure that we have deliverables by the end of that iteration, this helps us define what is in scope and out of scope for the project or iteration.

The software allows us to get a rough overview of the work that people have on, though that could be improved.

All in All a good program and defintaly recommended if your bring project management into your e-department.

What is in a name

2010-02-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

Have your ever noticed what departments are called in a University, on looking at ours, we have:

E-Resources
Education Development Unit
e-Dev
IT support

Now where would you go to if you wanted a piece of e-learning developed for you, would you

A) Go to e-resources
B) Go to Education Development Unit
C) Go to e-Dev (e-development)

Answer is ..... B

ok

Now where would you go if you wanted e-learning support help

A) Go to e-resources

B) Go to Education Development Unit

C) Go to e-Dev (e-development)

Answer is .....B + C (unless it was e-books which would be A!)

Answers on a postcard. What is your institutions departments called?

E-Learning in the snow

2010-01-15T05:30:00.000-08:00

First blog of the year so I thought I would talk about the weather.

Theres been a lot of talk on the telly about students missing exams due to the weather etc, Isnt this the time when e-learning comes into its own! The ability to sit tests and still study when you are stuck at home is one of the fundamental properties of e-learning. All this talk about students not being able to drive in etc, we should by now be able to accommodate them somehow.

I am just waiting on the amount of ECF's that will be piling into the University.

Personal Learning Networks

2009-09-28T02:28:00.000-07:00

Recently attended the first Scottish e-assessment conference up in Dundee. The conference itself was quite progressive, usually these conferences are full of old fashioned test theory etc. While there is nothing wrong with this, I prefer seeing how new technology enhances the learning experience.

I found John Connors talk on Convivial Learning in a Tangled World very thought provoking. He talked about how connectivism is changing our fundamental psychology ('If all team think the same then the team isnt thinking')and about new century unlearning skills. This is very interesting as the amount off crap we intake via the internet , useless information takes up space.

One of the most important points I took away from his talk was that the empahise that at the moment in the transition stage to personal learning networks a lot of onus is put onto the student to create their own learning network.

Survival of the fittest rule number 1

TwitterFall

2009-08-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Well after numerous times to get interested in twitter, I finally came trumps. Twitterfall is a superb online application developed to classify and segregate the information that you require based on keywords. Students or lecturers could use this to find the most up to date information on whatever subject they wish.

For example I have listed Modern Warfare 2 as my keyword and it shows up any tweet that mentions it. This has helped to view sneak peec videos etc.

Liasing with students

2009-08-10T02:06:00.000-07:00

This is more of a question of sort, I was wondering how many people liase with their students union, especially with regards to rolling out large central student software.I think this is something that we could do a bit better to gather a better feel of what the students are missing or want. Or should this communication always come from the lecturer and if is the communication getting through?

For example, do you put forward your proposals to the students union and gather their feedback or do you rollout large services from the top down?

Who are we to play god?

2009-07-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

With the advent of social networking sites, peers were able to link up relationships with others. There was no heirarchy with regards to the relationships unless you count the people who collected others to look popular. Now that is all and well, but what happens when a University or Company introduces these capabilities. The lecturer if in the group now becomes the lead figure and this create heirarchy and accountability.

That gives a lot of power to the University, we now not only control and administrate the students education system, but we are now trying to control and administrate their personal information. We can see who is more popular, who is the alpha's. Would that slip into the way academics perceive students, will the lecturer use that to their advantage? Others might feel left out of a group if they start Uni and see that there are already groups being formed. It is an interesting topic, and one that should be experimented with first to ensure that these details do not come to pass.

Will the uptake be as well without a heiracrhy or with?

University e-Learning Scale

2009-07-01T03:06:00.000-07:00

Recently a colleague attended another University to have a look at what their e-learning set-up was. It was interesting to hear what other Universities are doing. I thought I would spend a few minutes visualising what I think the different stages are of a Universities e-learning structure.

Have a look at it and feedback any comments changes or where you think services should be placed.

Video help for applications

2009-06-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

We seem to be getting a lot of requests into the department for screen videos showcasing features and intrsuctional videos on how to help guide users. I know many people use these videos for their products, and it is something worth integrating into a product development. I just thought I would highlight this topic as we have had about three request in this week.

We personally use captivate for this as it is very user friendly and can easily add comments etc
Also the motion capture part allows for easy recording of second life. The only downside to these things is when you are entering text on the screen as it takes ages.

Next generation web---Illuminati?

2009-06-24T04:04:00.000-07:00

Step back in time and the world generally learnt english to communicate with each other.... well http://www.babelwith.me/ has certainly thought outside the box. Everyone thought web 3.0 would be semantic or mobile. Babel have thrown in to the mix the ability to communicate with people in their own language.

This cool website which is in alpha, would if integrated into the web properly allow for some really powerful chat applications, for example second life and allow people to speak comfortably with each other.

Virtual Research Environments (myExperiment)

2009-06-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

We have VLE, CMS and VRE'S.

VRE'S is a answer to a question posed by researchers... How can we collaborate more on a project between ourselves and externals. myExperiment is a joint project by the University of Southampton and the University of Manchester. I can see this being useful, sort of a ning/facebook for researchers.

They also provide a free open source version which you can install at your location institutaion and is developed on ROR.

JISC has recently provided some funding for these types of projects, so it is something to look forward to.

Though the question is do we need a seperate VRE when you could possibly convert part of an already existing Social Network to this purpose....Answers on a postcard.

Social Networking Games

2009-06-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

Competition can be healthy....especially with regards to education.

While looking at supporting Social Networking capabilities and other programs within Institutions I wonder how much is geared towards the student. We seem to be heading to a very business like venture, forgetting that students are generally in their teens. As with health and safety spoiling alot of fun we could be to blame for that as well.

My point is that when implementing something like a social network for the classes/modules students we should bear in mind that fun also comes into play. For example if you dont know someone on your course and you give them a game of poker its one way to strike up a comradship and banter between the students.

So when your thinking of employing a social networking facility, why not drop in a few games there as well.

Using Second life to replicate real life enivronments

2009-06-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

The Institute of Quarrying in conjunction with the University of Derby has been working on a project called the Virtual Quarry. This project has been designed to showcase the capabilities of using a virtual environment to simulate real world scenarios and without doubt the project has shown what is possible.

With the help of SME's and second life developers we were able to sit down and work out different hazards which could come into play in a real life quarry, this ranged from fawlty traffic lights, to full on torrential rain and also included things like unsafe roads and blast sites. In reality in my own opinion I did not see the second life having chance of being able to complete this as I saw Second Life as a play area for novelty, but I must admit my eyes were opened.

From what I gather what you can do in second life mainly depends on the quality of SL developers at your disposal and your own imagination.

A step back to go forward?

2009-06-11T02:17:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I have posted to a blog, mainly due to circumstances cloading my judgement and thoughts.

I thought I would kick it back of with a thought on some end user tools we are piloting. The first one I will talk about is XERTE (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/)

Now academics currently use a system called Wimba Create to create webpages etc and we are looking at other supportive tools to help with the process.

XERTE

Now xerte is something familiar to myself having worked with Authorware for years I have heard of the main developer of Xerte. It to me seems to have taken some ideas from authorware and transferred them to flash. What is bothering me is that we seem to be taking a big step back in time to enclosed learning objects. This does not take into account the functionaility and flexibility of the web (hyperlinking etc). I myself find it difficult to navigate a Xerte project and find the menu structure unworkable sometimes. I dont disagree it is a useful tool to create enclosed learning objects, I am questioning though whether taking that step back in time is worthwhile for the student. Especially losing functionaility like tag clouds etc regarding importance and a whole lot of other web related features.

The problem we had with Wimba Create was the opposite of Xerte and that is that it is very difficult for academics to create quizes/flash interactions. So personally I think neither is the solution and we will have to wait for an ideal system.

So the question is do we take that step back in time to go forward.

Changes within our Educational Development Unit

2008-12-18T01:32:00.000-08:00

Well I thought I better blog on some changes going on within the department and how that is going to influence the University. The department now sits at a healthy 7 developers two co-ordinators and one manager, for us this is a big step up with regards to the services that we can offer.

Without going into to much detail the teams where split with 4 in one department and 4 in another. This caused direction problems which we are no trying to fix.

We have setup several roles within the team which will focus on certain aspects of the development.

Software / System / Application developer

Courseware / Interaction / Graphics developer

Server / Database administrator

Project / Service / Resource Manager

Business Analyst / Customer Advisor / Solution architect

and

Split these roles into

Bespoke Content Development

LMS

END User Tools

Assessment

All developers where allowed to choose where they wanted to place their skills and were most evenly distributed, this resulted in an empowerment of the developer and refreshes the interest and focus of the team.

Automatic Classifying Personality Traits based on Writing styles

2008-12-08T03:32:00.001-08:00

In one of my feeds today from http://www.readwriteweb.com/ I came across a very useful and quirky tool that is available from http://www.uclassify.com/browse/.

These guys seem to have created an api to classify traits on written text, it is quite fun to have a play with and since they created an api, it could also be useful in adding this to our peer review/essay marking programs, as another benefit to the student.

With regards to this post I am

1. happy (99.6 %)
2. upset (0.4 %)

Heh

Self evaluation

2008-11-18T05:26:00.001-08:00

Well its drawing near the end of the week *ahem so I thought I would write up a list of some general software I use and what I use it for. Boring I know but it is what it is...and it gives me another post for the week :)

So hear goes

Gmail
Microsft Outlook
Microsoft Hotmail

RSS

Snackrss
Google Reader

Surveying

Yahoo Answers
Limesurvey

Groups

Facebook
Ning
Yahoo Groups

Digsby
MSN

Music

Amarok
Songbird

Prejudice in the learning community

2008-11-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

Having worked in the e-learning trade for a long time, I know the sort of things to expect to sell and advise lecturers. Generally that involves something electronic....

Now if I only offer electronic services, do lecturers only expect to use electronic methods. My conundrum is this, if we are advocating and shouting off the roof tops to use e-tools why are we not shouting off the rooftops for methodology/practical etc.

Why are we not investing in real time simulations etc, sure the marking is a lot more, but students do get a lot more out of realtime simulations experience etc.... Sure use e-simulations that cannot be done outside like disease sims and chatbots for language.

There are no departments for that yet there are e-learning departments. There are no learning experts yet there are learning technologists. All other information is hand me down with usually no drive.

There are a lot of lecturers who are new and afraid to try stuff, why only point them in the direction of e. I think we are still missing an important aspect of learning specialist's.

Next Generation Chat-Bots (search?)

2008-10-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

Next Generation chat bot's sould be able to link into places like wikipedia, so that you ask a question and then using the semantic web a bot is able to answer the question,

It would be cool if you had something like google, where you could ask a question through chatting and it replied in english with a list that saying the most clicked on or the most valuable reasons because....

Sort of like ASK Jeeves but waaaayyy more powerfuller. Using intelligence to mask its flaws.

They are getting a lot more powerful though with the http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html taking place each year.

Dopamine and Education

2008-10-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

While we are all running about trying to getas many e-learning applications out there, a method to think about is are we producing e-learning materials that are enjoyable and educational.

After all whoever says education is dull is obviously not learning as much as some who is enjoying their course. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter which tells our body to experience pleasure among other things and it is noted and researched that we can trigger these dopamine transmitters by challenging and rewarding students on an action, the question is by how much should we reward someone? and everyones threshold is different.

How can we bring excitment and change to an e-learning application after all, the real world outside education is all about change. In order to prepare the mind for the outside, after all not every job you get a month to research.

Here is some research on parkinsons disease and learning

"As it turns out patients with the higher levels of dopamine learn better from positive stimuli and patients with lower levels of dopamine learn better from negative stimuli. Although I was hoping for something a little more exciting, in the case of this experiment a positive stimulus was "Correct!" printed in blue, negative was "Incorrect!" printed in red."

Question is how do we determine whether a person has high levels or low !

Using Data visualization within Education

2008-10-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

With the high end graphics and data manipulation the internet/ computers today can handle and process a lot of data. What has been progressing over time, is an increase in the knowledge and easiness to create data sets and visualize the data in an easy to understand format. The most common of which and is dying slowly is the tag cloud.

The tag cloud is just one example, others include the advanced communication world map which was released recently. Imagine if you could create that on a small scale see, use it to see which departments communicate with others, which student access materials the most etc the list goes on. I feel that does not happen enough within the University and would help in the change that technology gives us.

GoAnimate

2008-09-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Recently I joined a social netowrking group called http://newtoolsclub.ning.com/ created by Jane Hart. This group is designed to review e-learning and development tools as they are known. There seems to be quite a varied change of individuals in the group so it should prove quite topical.

Also this is the first group "that I know off" that is built for educational designers/technologists/academics to discuss ideas.

Anyways on doing a little noseing about the group I came across a comment regarding GoAnimate. This website/tool enables people to create their own basic simulations, which you could put to students to create. An example could be how they go about planning something between set people or interaction etc.

Personalized Student Images

2008-09-04T03:28:00.000-07:00

With the emergence off virtulization into mainstream Universities etc. It would be useful if IT technicians could create custom student images for a particular module/subject.

This would enable students to have easy access to sites/applications etc with out being bloated with stuff not relevent to them. It would also allow staff to support opebn source application and especially with the new google chrome rollout web apllication that might be beneficial to a students course for example report writing using the firefox plugin for references ..etc. It would also allow students to install their own software though that is a comepletely different matter.

Facebook - Social Ego Learning

2008-08-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well ive just bought a facebook applications book and Im going to give it a try to build an application that tests students. The app will allow for students to show the facebook app on their profile with a grade. This will allow students to compete while learning about who has the highest 'Socio Grade' for their module for those that want it.

Im not to sure on what the impact that would have by allowing students to show their formattive grade to each other.

Anyways its an experiment, so Ill see how it goes.

Any suggestions ideas and feedback is welcome.

E-Learning - - A one off ?

2008-08-21T03:40:00.000-07:00

Repeat business is difficult in any industry, e-learning is no exeption.

The role of our department is to try and encourage and develop e-learning materials for lecturers to bring the quality of the service the University offers to its students higher. We are generally trying to offer new services to academics all the time generally bringing them on board for multiple tools and facilities.

What I have observed, is a trend to get the academics on board, develop stuff and then let them go off. There are e-assessments which have not been touched for five + years. There is not much communication between old customers and staff, we generally treat an e-learning application as one off, until an academic comes in and requests changes. We should be treating applications as lifelong products and adding yearly product/content reviews. We should treat a customer not just as a customer for one product, but try and review their course with them to explain any technologys that they could use.

It would be interesting to find out what is done in other Universitys etc with regards to customer service and recurring reviews ......

Chatbots and ESL in Second life

2008-08-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

While doing some research I came across chatbots, there seem to be quite a varied range of bots out there for use.

The technology seems to be progressing well with people integrating the chatbot with other forms of simulation for example second life. http://www.chatbots.org/chatbot/mike. A downside with the second life bot is that it is not readily accessible to students.

For example you have install second life >>>> create avatar >>>> then find the avatar before you can begin. One use of second life which I find particularly interesting is the ability to hold pretend events and simulations. For example the Second Life English island has a holodeck area, which loads up different scenarios for the user like ordering food from a takeawsay etc.

Chatbots were originally started using text editors from which the bot would reply in text format. Currently the bots can take on many forms like allowing the user to type in a sentance and reply by voice. The use of this in ESL is very useful as it allows the student to practice on someone at anytime. Notice I said someone in the previous sentence, it honestly feels like there is someone on the otherside.

What is currently missing is a bot on which a student can practice speech.

Would you like a cup of (TEA)

2008-08-11T04:31:00.001-07:00

Technology Enhanced Assessment

From the past we have had

CAA (Computer Aided Assessment)
CBA (Computer Based Assessment)
E-Learning
Learning
Assessment

I think we should change it to TEA (Technology Enhanced Assessment) that would include any assessment that includes technology to be politcally correct.

Question Based Exams Vs Virtual Reality Testing

2008-08-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

First post in a while, but I have some issues that I thought I better get off my chest.

Currently at our University we are going through some major changes with respect to joining two departments together to form an Educational Development Unit. With the joining of the two departments we will increase the skills and experience to enable us to better provide a service.

This will enable us to develop more advanced interactions/simulations.

Here are a few questions, if anyone has any answers then I'd be happy to hear.

The question is what is more beneficial to the lecturer, to assess students in the time old way of question based exam papers or to try and test knowledge by application using simulations etc.?

Should Applied Simulations ie Virtual Reality be used in summative test's on their own/with QBA etc

Should we provide formative tests in VR in order that students are not shocked when they first encounter one.

How do disabilities affect simulations, should they have another form of testing.

Should we tag an assessment on the properties that it assesses? recall, application etc

Will VR increase Academic involvement in the development of their test's?

Due to time contstraints should we only offer VR/Simulations to a select few ?

Google Web Design

2008-03-18T02:30:00.000-07:00

Google

Visual appearance

The visual appearance of the Google website is very minimalist. The main purpose of the site is to allow the user to search the web. The design is very effective in conveying this with the Google logo above the search box in the middle of the page. The size and placing of the logo focuses the users attention there, thus the eye to click time ratio is very high.

The Google applications that are available are found in the top left hand side of the screen. They are easily accessible and a downward arrow represents a drop down menu. The only problem I see with this drop down arrow is that it does not stand out from the hyperlinks even though it is a button rather than a link. Another problem with the Google web site is all one it’s benefits, is that all the links are Blue, there is no definition with regards to applications .

Information structure

The information structure of the Google website is well laid out with respect to positioning, though there could be more added detail with rather than saying ‘web’ in the top left of the screen instead say ‘apps’. What could be even more useful is if the user could decide what links could go into the top left box and decide how their Google page looked without having to sign into the iGoogle. I don’t mean with lots of boxes all over the place like but having a clean UI with the apps on the top.

Navigation

As I mentioned in the Visual appearance section, all the links are blue so it is not clear what options are available to the user, there is not discolouration with respect to which links are more important or diverse. What is even more problematic is that lets say a user clicks on ‘mail’, the list of apps at the top of the page disappears. This is crucial with keeping the site design consistent. As now there is no way to go back to the main Google search without re-entering the URL. This is basically a problem with most of the ‘apps’ that they allow you to browse to. What is stranger is that the bars come back once you sign in??

Ease of finding information

With the design of the website it is possible to easily find the information and links you need on returning to the website and luckily most of the applications look the same so are easy to use.

Google Lookup -- The next step

2008-03-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

I came across a blog today which mention the new feature that google has added to their documents called Googlelookup. This really is an innovative step that takes the wiki onto the next level.

It would be really amazing if google developed a method like wikipedia, of users being able to upload their own stats and information, though the steps that wikipedia have taken would have to be implemented to ensure the integrity of the data. Even better if the information could be implemented in our own software via an api.

Pretty impressed.

Word Play

2008-02-06T05:42:00.001-08:00

Does the way we phrase questions affect student results, read the question below.
Usually I see questions written like the one below ....

Read the paragraph on the left hand side, then answer the question below.
Place the labels shown in the correct order for brain surgery.

Now what I am wondering is if I was to ask the question like

Study the information displayed on the left of the screen, then answer the question below.
Having thought and decided upon the information given, place the labels shown in the correct order that you would use to carry out brain surgey.

Does more direction for the user acheive better or worse results, or do they get in the way and is less more ? Do we encourage more thought or let the user decide that for themselves.

Just a thought ,

Defining Personal Learning Styles

2008-01-28T00:34:00.000-08:00

Recently I read an article called "An interview with John Lombardi". Within this article John stresses the importance of not mass producing graduates but focus singly upon a students individual learning style.

The problem with that is of course University's have financial targets which have to be met and other targets to achieve, which at the moment in time is hard considering the current financial climate. Now I can speak from my own perspective of the University I currently work at and possibly give some ideas upon improvement.

At this moment in time (as far as I know) at enrolment we do not actively survey (yes another survey) the student on their individual learning data. If we were to catch that at the start we would be able to give that information to the lecturer and see for example how many students prefer distance learning to one to one, and informatively develop materials to match.

Biometrics

2007-12-12T05:09:00.000-08:00

Recently I viewed a blog post by Alex Iskold which highlighted the fact of security within e-learning in which he mentioned biometrics.

I think it is a great way to securly link a profile (account) to an individual. For one it would at least get rid of a few cards. On searching the web I came across this site.

http://www.eyenetwatch.com/biosecurity/biometric-security-buy-hardware.htm

I had not relised that this technology was at production stage. The technology could make it so much easier to take out library books, code bespoke programs tailored to the student and generally make the students life easier.

The Electronic Dustbin

2007-12-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

Feeling a bit green today

With all the talk and practices taking place to clean up our beloved planet, a question could be .. Arnt we just transferring that problem elsewhere.

I would hate to think of the amount of energy wasted with non-useful websites or spam e-mail. Somewhere in our world there has to be computer or harddrive which stores this data. Now we should all do our bit and have a clean the spam day. For mostpeople, (im guilty of this as well) we do not see typing rubbish as a waste of energy, but rubbish has to get stored somewhere.

So while we go about cleaning our real world problems, lets not waste it by dirtying up the virtual one.

Easy install of OS software on Linux.. Whatever next

2007-11-22T03:39:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine, introduced me to a piece of software yesterday called Redmine. This little beauty of a product is an open source project management tool and is developed in Ruby using the rails framework.

Since I had to move to Ubuntu to replicate our delivery server for developing applications I have been getting to grips with how to use Linux. Now you would have though implementing this kit of software would not be easy on a linux sysem, thanks to a site called BitNami they make installation a heck of a lot easier. I had this installed in under 15 minutes and only had to enter a few details during the process.

They also publish these easy installs for windows and the Mac.

Open Sourcing GPS

2007-11-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

Now I've probably missed the boat on this one ... wouldn't it be amazing if phone companies opened up GPS locations.

To be able to program programs effectively for a given environment would take personalization to the extreme. Look at how the web has developed allowing communities to form to develop software. Now there is alot of ethics in this that would come into play such as authorization from the end user.

Currently there are companies offering limited services, just think if this sort of service was opened up to other institutions. For example a class field trip where we could produce certain materials for a given environment. And let people explore. Or audio files which kick in for tourist attractions, like they do just now with the tape and headfones.

With the ifone we can now program ourselves new integrated services.

By the way if this is already out there, make a comment as I would be interested to see what is being done within this area.

J

The wind of change

2007-11-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been working on a project to develop a web based question exam system. While there are few in the market at the moment, they are quite costly for institutions to implement. The system I am working on is created using PHP 5 as the base language but incorporates other languages including Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML and MYSQL.

Many commercial companies only develop for Internet explorer and use 3rd party plugins like flash/java. The goal of the project is to create a web based system which will hopefully fingers crossed be made up of pure web technologies. Many people have wondered for such a project why we are not using Ruby on Rails. At this moment in time Ruby on rails is still in development and seemingly is slower than PHP with regards to server processing. I will eventually hopefully learn how to program using MVC though that is a bit down the line.

The other plan we have in mind is using a system like PRISM for running summative web assessment which lock the user out, though more though needs to go into this.

The structure of the assessment engine will read in XML documents containing question/assessment which are located within an assessment directory. The XML is formatted in a way which is easy to ready and easily adaptable. (I am at the moment in time trying to stay away from techie lingo). Within the assessment directory will be a folder called the assessment name. Within that folder will be a configuration file containing the assessments configuration.

If anyone has any info on how they developed a system or any ideas, feel free to drop the department a line at ciad@derby.ac.uk.

Adios for now,

J

Engineering silent brainiacs......

2007-11-08T02:23:00.001-08:00

With the use of using technology as a means of communication and assessment, we seem to be going down a road of using technology because we can. Take the flow of an example program from a lecturer below

student picks question >>> student writes critique>>> student picks up critique of own work>>>student then writes response>> student then picks up someone else's response.

Now above does not all seem to out of the norm, what is out of the norm is that this is all done electronically, the student does not interact with any other person. Rather than learning how to behave face to face using emotions, the system handles this part for them, allowing the students to hide behind their screens....

Although student's will have to electronically critique others throughout their life, they should also learn the skills before they hit the work place on how to debate and take critique.

Versioned ... 0

2007-11-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

My eyes have been opened -_- previously versioning software relied upon using text files with dates and date stamping everything. We installed subversion and trac last week and already the department is running more efficient with regards to secure updating and retrieval.

I would definitely recommend using subversion if you are working with web technologies. The ability to easily roll back to previous versions and retrieve lost data is brilliant!!

At the moment in time tortoise is the GUI of choice and is again recommended if working with windows.

The Plunge !!

2007-11-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

At the moment in time we rely on a piece of software called Authorware which was developed by Macromedia. Authorware was made redundant earlier this year and since then we have been debating on how re engineer our *redundant* assessments on the web.

We deliver summative and formative assessment's at the moment in time, to service the University's students. Recently due to the lack of support of Authorware we have been having sporadic crashes in our labs.

Since Mozilla announced they were going to be developing an open source method delivering Internet application on the desktop called prism, the office has been buzzing. Not only does this mean we get to learn web development, but it means that we can make our assessment engine a lot more stable and platform independent. The prism will be very useful for delivering summative assessments while in a controlled environment.

Evidencing against predefined criteria

2007-10-22T01:36:00.000-07:00

With the JISC eApel project underway within the department, I have an opportunity to look at it from a side perspective.

The process to evidence oneself against predefined criteria using e-Portfolios is in itself, very innovative. The methodology could be used for so many subject and in so many different way's.

Take for example Job Applications, if you have ever applied for a job, you will have noticed that you have to evidence yourself against the criteria, the employer is looking for. It would be a lot easier if an application listed the predefined criteria and forced the prospective employee to write against them. At the moment in time, this process is done in a generic way which judges the skills that are being advertised along with the hidden skill of reflection. The e-Apel project focuses the reflection and allows the weaker writers an opportunity to easily show their experience.

Patchwork Text Assessment

2007-10-17T04:07:00.001-07:00

Last week myself and one of my colleagues attended a staff development session provide by academics from the University of Anglia on the topic of patchwork assessment's.

A patchwork assessment is basically a collection of sub task's that are given to groups or individuals which can then be used within a final synthesis. Even though this method is not new, it does focus the academic on preparing each task. The ability to drop one of the task's gives the learner a feel of control of their their learning without compromising learning quality.

One example was shown included group work in which students are split into groups and then have to write a really short essay on a particular subject. The students are then given the opportunity to constructively give feedback to each other. In terms of moderation, the lecturer 'drop's in on group conversations.

Currently this is done manually, but this would be an ideal opportunity to develop an online commentating and critiquing system, that would allow for students to copy each others work and get inspiration without plagiarising, so rather having one teach, have multiple...!!!!

Paperless Office

2007-10-11T01:21:00.000-07:00

An e-mail has been doing the rounds this morning regarding, climate change. With the improvement of academics using electronic documents, are we at a stage were we can drop the paper and save the trees (im really a hippy in disguise ;) ).

With regards to the department that I work in, we could possibly turn all our document's into electronic format especially the forms....

Imagine that, a zero paper department !!

We already seemto be heading down that route, so why not give it a little push......

Assessment Engines

2007-09-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

While there are numerous programs out there for developing assessment's, there is still no current opensource/easily accessible engines. While there is numerous software out there ie questionmark, there is not one that is developed using core webtechnology's that can be easily accessed/ Inutuitive UI and is pedagogicaly sound.

To achieve this there would have be a joint collaboration between different Universities/College's, and commercial companies.

The ideal system, would encompass tools such as,

Full Assessment administration
Full Item Banking
Results Anlysis
The ability to be platform independant
The ability to support diagnostic, formattive and summative exams
The ability to plugin and develop custom question styles

One day we will have such a system, but by then we will have probably moved away from question based exams........

Centralisation vs Individuals

2007-09-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't this be a good topic to have a debate on,

Do you believe in centralisation for support teams within Higher Education, if so what is the reasoning behind your belief ...

Coming from a centralised team within a University here are my thoughts,

An ex colleague of mine took up post as a learning technologist within a department and has solely worked on their material. This not only has raised the departments use of technology, but has played a part in significantly improving the quality of the training materials. This impacts not only the student but the perception of the department and the University as a whole.

The time that an individual can spend with the team is much greater than that of a production department. The intimate relationship that the learning technologist has with the academic is much greater than that of a department and as such can promote and advise to a more receptive audience.

With department production comes a level of generalisation, that can affect the quality of the training materials especially when dealing with large numbers of academics.

Supporting Research

2007-09-10T09:57:00.001-07:00

Since Im on a roll today and am getting addicted already, I thought I would write up about a piece of software I am currently trialling at the University of Derby.

A lot of University's around the country already offer support to students wanting to produce survey's for research purposes and it was felt that it would be beneficial to bring this service to Derby.

The software is called Limesurvey and can be found at http://www.limesurvey.com/. This brilliant piece of software is an open source project developed by a group of student's in their final year. It is fully customizable and is updated very frequently.

Would recommend this to any1 wanting to produce surveys and handle the results analysis.

Cheereo

Alt-C

2007-09-10T07:24:00.001-07:00

Having recently attended the Alt-C conference in Nottingham, I was thoroughly impressed on how the view on supporting education has changed. Most notably was the keynote on the second day by Dylan Wiliam called Assessment, learning and technology: prospects at the periphery of control.
The keynote came as a shock and reminder to me on how not to focus learning towards technology, but on focusing technology to learning.

Many times recently I have been looking at tools and greedily thinking of how can get a hold of and use these tools. When infact I should be looking at does the tools acutally enhance and make value of the content.

Having attended the CAA conference this year, I was noticbly more impressed with the demonstrations and ideas being put forward at the ALT-C. This is probably due to the ALT-C conference being more generalized in regards to Learning.

First Post

2007-09-10T02:50:00.000-07:00

Well since this is my first outing into the realm of blogging, I thought I better open it up with some background info.

Name: Christopher Jack
Work : CIAD (Centre for Interactive Assessment Development) University of Derby
Years Exp: 8

My blog posts will be from a personal persepective within the workings of a university department, tho commenting on tools and apps will take place.

Adios for now

C