This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.Filed under: Curious David Tagged: PSY205, ScreenCasting, SPSS, Teaching Statistics

Words …even normal, daily yakkings … carry scars, culture, history, and a family lineage with them…much like people do.  If one is an over thinker like I am (not a badge of honor, to be sure…like Aristotle once said, you must consider the conversation only to the degree that is appropriate for the subject matter), one tends to look just a little deeper at things than the surface level. Being an over thinker, I tend to at least think, if not take conversations, intentions, assumptions waaaay beyond anything that resembles reasoned or "normal" levels.    As such, I’ve learned how to say "I’m sorry" and "I apologize" for the wreckage my mental disease can reek. I always used the two terms as identical notions.  I thought they both conveyed regret.  Not so much… An apology is a verbal defense of a wrong doing.  Etymologically speaking, apology stems from the latin apo-to do or from and logos-speech or thought.  So an apology is a speech with the intention of the speaker to defend themselves or it’s a type of "self justification". To say "I’m sorry" is different.  Sorry comes from an Old German term, serag, which means to feel pain both physically and mentally.  Tracing this word all the way to its origin, it means to be full of painful sores or to suffer. In a sense, the two words denote opposing ways to view a mistake done.  If you apologize then you are defending your decision even though you might recognize that it was a mistake.  If you are sorry, then you are denoting the pain brought to you and/or others by a stupid, short sighted decision … which implies deep regret. To this end… I’m sorry you had to read all this to get my point.  Filed under: Political Philosophy Tagged: apologize, apology, I'm sorry, sores, sorry

    So as part of my new job at Bath Spa University I got a Mac Book Pro and an iPad Air. I leave the former in the office (after a disaster two weeks into the job when I spilt liquid on the first Mac Book Pro). The latter I take everywhere with me. I have noticed that using the iPad Air is changing my behaviour. For example, I have got into the habit of using it first thing, surfing the web, fb and Twitter; to find, share and comment on useful resources and links. I realised that I needed a curation tool to keep track of the things I was finding. I asked on fb and a number of suggestions came back: Scoop.it, Diigo, evernote, pocket, livebinders, pinterest, sight & screenshots, and pearltrees.   I decided to give pearltrees a go and set up an account this morning. I have already created a number of collections: Digital Technologies, Digital Literacy, Online and Distance Education, Learning Design, Social Media, Educational Videos, and Mobile Learning. It was quick and easy to set up, and has a nice interface. For some reason I don’t use curation tools on my laptop, but there is something about the affordances (Gibson 1979, Conole and Dyke 2004) of the iPad Air interface and the peartrees App that makes curation easier. So for me there is definitely a correlation between the affordances of digital technologies and user behaviour.   References Conole, G. and M. Dyke (2004). "What are the affordances of information and communication technologies?" ALT-J 12(2): 113-124 %U http://oro.open.ac.uk/6981/. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associated.  

I read a good blog by Matt Walton the other day - FutureLearn, MOOCs and digital disruption to higher education It’s a really interesting look into some of the thoughts behind MOOC development and provision. There are several parts I found particularly interesting. One being where Matt stated: "The innovation in user experience of a MOOC is that they create an event and introduce scarcity and a sense of jeopardy into an on demand world." The idea being that a deadline, and the pressure that brings, will motivate people to push on with the course, and that educational resources without deadlines can go unused. It’s an interesting thought and one that I can see being true for some people. But I’m not certain what proportion of potential MOOC users that would be. I started one of the FutureLearn MOOCs - The Secret Power of Brands -  and was impressed with what I saw. Unfortunately my working life and home life are currently full of scarcity, deadlines and pressure. Adding more of the same with the MOOC was a bit too much, and a particularly busy few days dealing with a project at work and a sick toddler at home meant I quickly fell out of the loop with my MOOC. I knew I wouldn’t get back on track. My course was over. Does this mean I lack motivation? Well, I currently subscribe to Treehouse who do tech online learning. Not free, but reasonably cheap. My study time there ebbs and flows, fitting in around my life. The learning is going well. As is my learning on Duolingo, the fantastic free app that teaches you a foreign language. I find them both a pleasant escape from the pressures of work, and feel a nice sense of achievement when each new target is reached. I suspect there are many ‘cash rich, time poor’* learners, looking to develop themselves, who want to study, but in a manner that fits around their lives. And they will be willing to pay for that opportunity. Of course, if MOOCs are seen by their providers as being ‘on ramps’ to traditional courses then the experience of deadlines would be useful in ‘weeding out’ those who may not be ready for a more taxing and in-depth course. I hope they’re being seen as more than that. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what develops, but I think non-deadline, free-form learning will form a big part of the future of online learning. * I’m actually ‘cash poor/time poor’, but you know what I mean.

I’ve been reading Medium a fair bit lately. One of articles suggested for me today was Ramya Gogineni’s item on growth hacking Uber, the ride sharing start up. Uber, a service that started in 2009, has seen massive growth and is now worth over $3 billion. Ramya explains how Uber grows users by customer acquisition and customer optimisation. Customer Acquisition - this is essentially getting customers through the door and onto your site. Customer Conversion - this making them a real customer. Letting them have a worthwhile experience that will make them come back and time and again. Acquisition is pointless without conversion. Conversion can’t happen without acquisition. It made me think of the current wave of MOOCs. With myriad articles about MOOCs pointing out the massive initial enrollments in MOOCs it’s clear that customer acquisition is not proving much of an issue at the moment. A situation most organisations would kill for. However those same articles also highlight the massive rate of non-completion on these courses. Clearly customer conversion not going brilliantly. (My own course hasn’t shown any interest in the fact I haven’t logged on since the first week.) Is this lack of focus on conversion a concern at this early stage? I think it is, and for this reason; customer acquisition may easy at the moment, but that may not last. As large numbers of people try and give up on their first MOOC they’re less likely to try again. The number of enrolments will likely fall. This gives any future attempts at customer conversion a smaller number of customers to work with. Tomorrow’s ‘MOOCs’ may find students harder to come by, particularly if up against new educational start ups. However, a successful push for customer conversion at this early stage may limit the decline and help in any future competition against new entrants to the market. I believe ‘MOOCS’ should be allowed, and encouraged, to evolve rapidly in a way that helps more students have a meaningful interaction with the course, even if they don’t complete. They need to make hay while the sun shines.

I read yet another article today stating how MOOCs are a disruptive technology. But are they? Simply doing something different from the norm with technology doesn’t make it disruptive. Disruption doesn’t start with a technology. It starts with a customer whose needs are not being well met. Successful organisations are honed to satisfy the needs of their main and most profitable customers. The organisation, its hierarchy and philosophy are set up to achieve this aim. They can be unwilling/unable to release a product to meet the needs of the unsatisfied niche customer. A new organisation may develop a technology on a small scale specifically to satisfy the needs of this niche. But if this market is a market on the rise the providers can see terrific growth. This can often be at the expense of the traditional big players. This is how big, successful organisations can fail. The ‘post-traditional’ learner is that customer whose needs are not being well met. Who is being over served by the traditional HE set up. Who doesn’t have the time to commit to a traditional course. Who doesn’t feel the high cost will provide the returns. Who needs flexible courses, both in terms of timescales and content. Who the traditional HE sector is unable or unwilling to satisfy. A product/technology that satisfies those and other needs may well become the product/technology that disrupts HE. As it stands MOOCs are not that product. The are generally a marketing exercise to entice people onto the traditional courses. They aim to sustain the current model, not disrupt it. If the traditional HE providers, particularly those involved in distance learning such as the Open University, are looking to avoid losing their prominent status then I believe they need to meet the needs of this new market. And they need to meet those needs before other providers do. Traditional players rarely fair well when entering a disruptive market late.

Is LinkedIn pushing fake traffic towards blogs to encourage more bloggers to post there? After posting a link to one of my blogs on LinkedIn I had a sneaking suspicion they might be. As well as writing on this blog I occasionally write the odd article on Medium.com. It’s a nice site that provides a ready made audience relevant to the topic you choose to write about. Even if, as in my case, that audience might be quite small. One of the really useful things about Medium is that it gives some simple statistics about your articles. How many views they have had. Where the viewer was referred from. And, importantly, how many viewers actually read the whole article. Earlier this month I posted a link to one of my Medium articles as part of a group discussion on LinkedIn. This resulted in a moderate increase in views/reads with a satisfying 75% view to read ratio (or is it read to view ratio?). A few days after that there was a surge in traffic. For six days the blog received between 285 and 290 views a day. That’s a surge when you’re only getting 30 or so views a day beforehand! The overwhelming majority of these views came from LinkedIn. On the seventh day, around mid-morning, it stopped. The other curious thing about this surge? None of the viewers read the article. Now I know I’m not a great writer, but a read/view ratio plummeting from 75% to 9% seems a bit fishy. Was it automated traffic without any real readers behind it? Possibly, but why would LinkedIn do that? Well, LinkedIn is hoping to become a destination for content consumption. Not just a place you pop into now and then to check on old colleagues. It wants you to go there to read interesting work related content. For that to happen people need to want to post content there. If bloggers see a solid increase in views after posting on LinkedIn they may well be encouraged to post again. And again. And again. Maybe I’m being cynical, or maybe I’m hurting from the crash of my view/read ratio. But, the suddenness and consistency of the surge, along with the absence of readers, makes me think something is not right. Having said that, whilst writing this post I have received a reply from LinkedIn. They state that they do not push automated traffic to third party sites. They’re not quite so certain when it comes to explaining the surge of no readers though. Either way, I’m not sure I’ll risk posting another of my own articles to LinkedIn.

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.Filed under: Curious David

Apple have announced Home Kit. This is their bid to be a major player in the world of the Internet of Things (hereby known as thingynet) and the Connected Home. An education provider, such as the Open University, should be looking to make a similar announcement. Not to be a major player in thingynet of course. To be a major player in the future of education. How are these two things comparable? Apple, along with the rest to the technology community, know that thingynet will be big. The Open University, along with the rest of Higher Education, know that the future of online education is huge. The Nest thermostat and incredibly cool and cute smoke detector are leading a wave in innovative hardware. Some more successful than others. But the potential of the new thingynet market is clear. MOOCs are much maligned but, along with other educational technology start ups, have shown they have a market. A market for revamped education delivered through innovative means. But what will be the products that really define the thingynet market and capture the consumer? And what will be the edtech products that really capture the nascent new markets for online learning? Apple may provide some of the products that connect our homes and lives. But how do they ensure being a major player? By being the platform on which everyone else builds their products. And this is what Home Kit is. And this can also be true for the edtech market. Build the platform upon which all the other edtech products sit and interact. Will edtech products fit into such a model? Well, we will see more and more ‘vertical’ education start ups. The start ups who concentrate on one thing. And who do it really well. Imagine a way of connecting these narrow start ups. Banding the ones you like into one coherent group. Being able to develop your own path of learning using your favourite learning systems. Imagine building upon this learning, year on year. Adding new provider. Adding new materials. Adding new tools. All as and when they suit you and your developing learning needs. Real life long learning. Imagine curating a collection for learning for yourself or others. And building this from the best content from the best, most relevant providers. Imagine doing this while all the while adding all your attainments and achievements to your one student record. Imagine having the freedom to study this at a time that best suits you and at a reasonable price. Now try and imagine a traditional Higher Education institution trying to deliver this model. Do the traditional institutions need to reinvent their role when it comes to distance learning? I think they do. I think that role can be to build the platform and standards upon which others build their products. Helping to define the standards of a new way of delivering and consuming learning. And who is to say that they can’t then build ground breaking edtech products of their own upon this platform?

During my more youthful years there were two predictions for the future that excited me. Partly due to the exciting future they offered. Partly due to the fact I thought they were actually achievable. One was hoverboards. The other was living our life online. A virtual existence where anything was possible. An cyber life so satisfying that we didn’t have to go out into the harsh realities of the real and unforgiving world. Except to use our hoverboards. Well, hoverboards haven’t happened. But intriguing new tests by NASA and others suggest they may be on their way. And when they do get here, creaking bones permitting, I will be wheeshing all over town like I’m Marty McFly. But what about the online life? Where is the digital diaspora? The technology has certainly arrived. It just turns out we weren’t too keen to spend our entire existence in an online utopia after all. It seems we quite like the world we live in, despite all of its quirks and its flaws. We do enjoy elements of that virtual existence though. Doing things that were often never imagined by the futurists of old. In the early years of the internet, we did enjoy splitting our time between online and offline existences. The advent of mass mobile technology has changed that. We don’t really have an online and offline life. We have a life. Some of it online. Some of it offline. And a lot of it overlapping between the two. The differentiation doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s more of a technology enhanced real life. A Technology Enhanced Life We interact with our real life friends online. More and more we have started to meet our online friends in real life with meet ups and conferences and the like. Our professional, work based networks are not limited by geography. Shared interests and views are leading to people developing global networks. Sometimes we search for goods online but buy from a shop. Sometimes we browse in the shop but buy online. At times we’re ordering online but picking up in store. We’re even browsing in the shop, checking reviews online while in the shop, before deciding to go ahead with the purchase (or not). We use online info, reviews and recommendations to guiding us to where and how we socialise. How we entertain ourselves in real life. And the shenanigans that take place in these real life social occasions? We’ll they inevitably end up online. Unfortunately. The various aspects (or nodes) of your online life now merge and interlink with with each other. And, significantly, the online nodes interact with the various nodes of your real life. This is could be described as your personal ecosystem. The Personal Ecosystem And you know what? We have the onset of wearables. There is the growing allure of the internet of things. This is only going to increase the number of nodes and interactions that make up your personal ecosystem. It will be an ever changing array of apps and experiences. Your technology enhanced life in the bubble of your personal ecosystem. An ecosystem that is curated with the aim of producing the most satisfying, productive and fun life for you. So what will be the make up of these personal ecosystems? Some of the nodes will be an almost permanent part of your ecosystem. For example, today they may include Facebook. Or your job. Perhaps going to watch a stupid football team get beat every other week. Twitter and Amazon quite possibly. Others nodes may move in and out of the ecosystem. Like that time you used Runkeeper for a couple of months. And then for a couple of months a year later. And you’re going to start using it again soon. Honest. Some seem like they’re candidates for your ecosystem but never quite work. For me that’s Evernote. Its just doesn’t quite work for me. Much like going for a run. So what it is the relevance to education? Learning and the Ecosystem Well, we already realise the method by which learners will consume education in the future is going to change. It’s changing now. A growing number of students are accessing ever more online content. Already they’re accessing it more and more on mobile. And they’re doing this in shorter bursts. Education is going to be designed differently in the future. The process of redesigning learning for the future has already started. It will be worth bearing personal ecosystems in mind when developing these new designs. The learning systems of the future need to be able to sit nicely within a learner’s ecosystem. And be comfortable and beneficial enough that it it becomes a long term part of it. Not a flitting in and out part. And not a part that doesn’t quite work despite the best intentions. They need to give a learner all the tools to complete their learning. But at the same time, they must allow a learner to use their existing existing ecosystem tools as and when they see fit. Provide an online annotation tool. Provide a social aspect. Provide a communications system. But allow the learner to use their own if they choose. But still ensure that everything still interacts and connects nicely. The experience must remain seamless. Develop for the Ecosystem, Not the Individual The learning delivery systems of the future will need to have a broader remit. They will not just need to satisfy the requirements for delivering learning to an individual. They need to be developed so they play well with other nodes within a learners ecosystem. Get it right and the benefits will be huge. A learning system that becomes a constant part of a learner’s personal ecosystem has huge potential. It has the opportunity to deliver something truly transformational for the individual. And that is genuine life long learning.