New Start

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.

Ownership

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. 

Automatic Classifying Personality Traits based on Writing styles

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

Dopamine and Education

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 !

Evidencing against predefined criteria

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.