Category: Trying tools

Learning Analytics yes or not?

s1690803/ / Is that the future?, Trying tools

During this week I have tried to collect main ideas to support the use of Learning Analytics as well as noting the arguments against.

There is a clear agenda to push for using more and more learning analytics, it is becoming more present in institutions and education. That forces us to be careful and explore the privacy issues and pedagogical problems that its practise carries.

LA promises to transform the way educational institutions will collect and analyse data. How it will be treated by administrators, teachers and learners. It seems to offer a benefit for all the characters involved.

First, teachers will use this data to detect and predict if a student is having problems to follow the programme, LA data will help to give support and personalized treatment. It can also benefit disadvantaged groups of students and help them to achieve their learning goals. Second, students will have more agency about their learning progress, allowing them to value and understanding the whole process, and also focusing on their goal and course completion. Finally, an educational institution can use all this to claim its ability to increase productivity and effectiveness. (Enron, 2013: 237).

All of this not only brings questions about privacy, accurately gathering of data, manage and storing issues, potential risks about getting predictions and profiling students. LA can also increase the dominate power relationship of institutions/teachers over students.

Considering all of this, I can see the benefits of LA when we are talking about personalising the learning process. However, I feel discouraged when this personalization is understood as a mear recommendation, copying the e-commere. Also, interesting that the Wilson et al article gives the example of Amazon to explain this, when Amazon is one of the worst machine learning examples, showing products that you already bought or not giving really good suggestion. It seems a long way to walk yet… and it shows that translating that to education can not really be much useful (yet!).

Anyway, what I was saying, is that this hypothetical picture offered by Learning analytics si quite grey and sad from my perspective. I feel that this idea of predictions, recommendations, standards, generalisations, etc. are robbing the opportunity to be spontaneous, creative and live the “here and now”.

Taking the Twitter activity we had last week as an example, we saw how the weigh of the learning process and leading the dynamic of the activity was on Jeramy and Ben. This is is good, as well as, the fact that many conversations were happening without their knowledge. In my opinion that is also an interesting undertaken, teachers can provoke a situation that maybe they lose a little bit of control.
With automation, we probably will lose this magic moment, were something that the teacher was not anticipating, it happens and the class becomes something better than what was planned.

Open vs. digital?

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Weekly task

Considering the fact that the link that was facilitated to do this week’s task is not working. Actually, it has not worked for the whole week, plus all the conversation that had happened on the formal forum and the other informal chats, I think it is safe to say, that Open badges are not in their best shape.

Also, reading this week articles didn’t help me make a real picture of what an Open badge, I felt jumping from one site to another without really figuring out what was related to the Ahn et al table. I have the feeling of finding better and clearer information on Wikipedia’s site (the open project par excellence) Reading information there helped me to understand and consider what is a real open initiative or, just mere use of digital badges.

I have to thank my classmates for this week because it is thanks to them that I am able to produce something. Thanks to the conversations and uncomfortable questions I had challenged my opinions and thoughts and I have been motivated to find information.

I think I have been very optimistic about the use of badges. Once again, I think my personal experience and my background in tech have created a biased view when considering the current use/success of open badges. I have to say, that part of my optimistic view has been demolished. I still believe that the use of badging is a tendency and it will increase. However, I wonder if it will be the use of OPEN digital badges or only DIGITAL ones.  Like Henry Jenkins (2012), I am a sceptic of open badges, especially for educational purposes, because many people in the field consider they don’t carry the same weight as other qualifications. As I mention, the culture and history of badges and the idiosyncrasy of the educational system is a barrier for the open badges to success. However, I think digital badges will be used as an extra validation, motivation and gamification component. 

Learning from informal conversations

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Who I am and what I think

This week I have discovered that there is a Whatsapp group of the IDEL cohort, as well as a Facebook group! I joined both of them and it has been nice to share thoughts and know people from the course beyond the University platform. This week I feel quite different than other weeks where I felt overwhelmed, intimidated and alone. being part of this informal context has allowed me to see that we are all in the same boat, struggling with the readings, time and blog post.

We have crossed the equator of the course and people are experiencing the pressure and tiredness. Probably because of that, we organised a Zoom call to comment on the MOOC task and share some ideas. I guess we all had the need to share and get ideas from others because our brains are starting to get dreined, I am sure we have been able to produce better individual ideas and blog post after that videocall.

 

In my opinion, I think we were being very critical with MOOCs, embracing the attitude learned from this week articles. At some point, I felt the need to take part in the positive side and here are some of my optimistic way of analysing open education.

  • We have to work with what we have. Reality is that the world is not fair, there are so inequalities, however, I believe that OER and MOOCs, in particular, are a good way to lower some high walls.
  • I think we were all having an education bias here when evaluating MOOCs, in general, everyone in the group comes from a similar professional background (working in education), and probably MOOCs don’t have a good offer here. However, I think they make a change when we are talking about technical skills like coding and programming. I have learned python and some coding thanks to Coursera and other platforms. That makes me positive considering the value of a MOOC and seeing the potential to improve my CV for example.
  • I don’t see MOOCs as the “fast food” of education, I think the conversation is more nuanced. Using the food metaphor I would say that MOOCs are the GMO products. It is not easy to take an extreme side when we are talking of GMO. Many people would argue that are bad because are genetically modified food, or maybe because there is a huge economic empire behind and it the food sovereignty is in danger. However, it cannot be denied the arguments that claim that GMO products are offering developing countries to sustain themselves and reduce worldwide hunger.

For me is difficult to have a strong opinion against MOOCs, because even though I am aware and acknowledge all the limitations and problems, I think they are not a bad idea per se. I think they can be a good ally to minimise the world inequalities.

 

MOOC critical activity

s1690803/ / Trying tools, Weekly task, Who I am and what I think

First of all, I wanted to use some open-source programmes to do the video, I was playing a little with OpenShot and Kazam, sadly my laptop died finally this week, and I needed to find other ways to record last minute. You will see in the video that appears the name of my husband… Long story short, I used his work laptop and an internal tool to record and his name is everywhere… sorry about.

Click the image to go to the video
        Click the image to go to the video

Find here the summary of the main ideas of the video, and the questions I wanted to raise. I know that 16 minutes of a not very fluid video are difficult to swallow 🙂

Structure, design elements:

  • It has all the ingredients you can expect from a MOOC
  • Overall, the platform has all the requisites to make good usability, even though I found some elements that bothered me. Constant notifications are visible that I am not able to close.
  • It has a free and certification option, but I am disappointed by the fact that audit access expires. When I enrol to a MOOC is because I want to check the information, and kind of keep it, like a book, something that is in my “virtual library” and I am able to check it when needed.
  • Content is correct, there is a clear lineal structure and video content is clear enough.
  • I am missing more clear objectives and information about the topics that you will be focused on during the course.
  • Information about the teacher and staff + Requirements of the programme, very helpful before enrolling to the course.

 

Thoughts and questions:

  • What is the framework that institutions work with?
  • Different institutions have access to different frameworks? more resources are given by the platform?
  • Is the data collected really useful and used to design and create the course?
  • By definition MOOCs has a massive audience, building a community and social network is not something expected, isn’t it? This probably clashed with part of the philosophy behind “open”.
  • How and Who is marking the quality baseline? in big platforms like edX or Coursera, are the courses being tested/rated by someone before going online?
  • Ideas of why people enrol to a MOOC: have access to resources, information and materials? curiosity?, check options to find areas of interest?, first step to making a career change, find a community?
  • Value of the programme. In order to get a certification sometimes is enough paying by the course. There a diverse kind of evaluations, some courses offer a better way to check progress. True/False or more complex questionaries, Peer review or just click to checkmark. How can we be sure that someone that has taken the course has the knowledge? Is the credibility of the platform enough?

 

On the other hand, I found the post I wrote last year when I was attempting to do the course for the first time. Find the text here, in case you are interested, I realise now it was not a deep analysis…

Knox, J. (2013). The limitations of access alone: moving towards open processes in education. Open Praxis, 5(1), pp. 21-29.

 

Closing spaces before “opening” the week!

s1690803/ / Is that the future?, Trying tools

I am already immerse to this week’s topic, but today something happened that deserves to be mentioned. My husband is a researcher and part of his job is to attend conferences. This year, for obvious reasons, all conferences have been cancelled and I have seen him attending virtual events, making talks and recording himself.

I guess conference organisers have been trying different ways to recreate what the conference means. Panels, conference, presentations of posters, workshops, etc. But also the social space, informal conversations,  networking… Because conferences are the perfect place to meet up and create connections that are beyond work. I have been lucky to attend some conference with him because he always has conferences in cool places like Japan, South Africa or Canary Island.  I know this kind of conferences encourage relationships and many of them organise activities, some with family members included! So, every year these conferences are the perfect excuse to do a holiday (after the conference of course!).

Anyways, with the “new reality” conference organisation need to be creative and today my husband joined a conference in which they have created a virtual space through Gather Town that we found very cool, and I wanted to share. Who has created the place wanted to recreate all the relevant elements of a physical conference This platform, though, it has the idea of not having a super realistic environment, ideas that we learn on the article: Virtualizing the real: a virtual reality contemporary sculpture park for children. Virtual spaces are less realistic and that allows the user to fill in the gaps with creativity and imagination Turner (2016).

In this conference we can find:

– Companies stands that when your avatar goes close, it gets interactive, showing a video, linking to their website or there is a person answering the question.

– Social spaces with coffee and cookies!

– You can walk around with your camera and microphone close or open(something that we realised after a while…) When you cross with someone their camera gets visible and you can open a chat.

– Avatar can be customised and we saw some zombies and mummies walking around.

– The big hall where the main conferences happen. With microphones to make questions.

– It is a virtual space but we observed how people keep social distancing while sitting to hear the conference 😉

– Conference in action, with people presenting their posters. I have seen this face to face and I can say that the feeling was quite similar. You could walk around and listen to the conversations people have around the posters.

A funny note, one of my husband’s colleague attending to the conference has said: “I spent some time walking around without talking to anyone, and I realised that is what I do in conferences, the only difference is the free food available.”

IDEL MAP

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Weekly task

 

Following your suggestion about trying to go further into exploring the use of different resources this week I have intended to use tools I never used before, for example, ThingLink, actually, I think it is the first time I do an interactive image.

In this image I am trying to express what is my engagement with the IDEL course, making special attention to this week’s topic: learning spaces.

I used the University ID because it is my personal connection to the programme. I wanted to make the ID the protagonist of the image story. I carry my ID everywhere, basically because I have it in my phone case. An interesting fact is that I don’t carry it in my wallet. When I got it, I decided to put it on the phone case where I don’t have many spaces for ids, but I keep the important ones: bus ticket, debit card and university ID. Why did I decide to carry it there? I am not sure, maybe I am giving some mysticism, but I have realised that this ID is what makes me feel connected to the course and makes me identify as a student, probably it what makes me feel to be in the campus, whatever I am, embracing the concept of new mobilities paradigm’ that is discussed by Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014), which supports learning in unbounded regions and terrains.

It has shown that the material campus continues to be a symbolically and materially significant ‘mooring’ for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus.

Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014)

With the image, I want to present the different places where I have engaged with the IDEL course and the different tools and resources I have used so far. I would say that my laptop has been my main moored item. It is quite funny because my laptop is not portable anymore, it only turns on when is charging, so it really moors me. However, I feel that my learning space has been fluid in terms that I move around my home depending on what is space is free and quiet to be. Usually, the headquarters is my living room, a comfortable armchair in a nice corner where I like to sit to read and, of course, to write all the post in my blog.

Sometimes, I go to use the uplift desk (usually when I want to keep my eyes open and don’t fall asleep), or a read in the bedroom when everyone is sleeping. On this week Padlet I have discovered that some classmates use a voice reader to hear the articles and be able to do another thing at the same time. I have been inspired by them, and I am sure I will use it in the future to brake more bounded and rigid container that is “reading”.

As you can see in the image, I have used a Kindle, which helped me to be freer and bring my learning space outside the house, for example checking the materials from a playground. But I have also used inside, reading in the Kindle and writing in the laptop. Many times I have found myself having two virtual places used at the same time, for example playing Minecraft on my phone while I was checking tutorials on the laptop. I can say that I have deflated the sedentarist claims.

 

 

 

Thoughts about my bot

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Weekly task

I have spent too much time deciding what kind of bot I would like to prototype. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was considering different ideas (FQA, math problems, grammar helper…). I realized that I was considering two types of bots, based on two different approaches.

One scenario would be “building” ca bot similar to the ones we have checked on Twitter. These kinds of bots don’t have a real bidirectional interaction. These bots are based on a code that tweets something every X time. For example, the one I talked about in the other post from the museum. We can see how this kind of bots are exposing a topic, publishing tweets with a concrete topic and there is no interaction with people that reads it. The majority of bots we have found as a class are in that direction, probably because the Twitter platform stimulates this particular use of bots.

Considering this approach, I liked the idea of having a bot that tweets problems that students would solve. Maybe instead of mathematical problems itself, the bot would tweet riddles where the knowledge of mathematics is needed, to make it more playful and nicer than a typical mathematical problem. Students could check the message – riddle and use a hashtag to expose their ideas and possible solutions.

 

A second scenario I have been thinking is a more interactive bot, where students can ask and get answers. Maybe this bot is more sophisticated and would need more code knowledge behind, but also are probably richer and can be really considerate a teacher bot*, as we see in the article of Bayne S. (2015). Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching, and their “botty”. In these bots we see how a student or, the bot itself, can start a short conversation tha will trigger a level of learning.

In my idea of having a grammar helper bot (to support the learning of a second language), we can imagine how a student would ask a question related to a grammar doubt,  for example: Tell me what is the conjugation of past simple for the verb to sign. The chatbot will understand the query and will give a correct answer. Therefore, the bot we could offer a sentence as an example of the use of this conjugation. Also, we can be more ambitious and the student would ask the bot to check the grammar of a short sentence.

 

Considering these two broad types of chatbots I wonder if there is (or it will helpful to have) a categorization that defines the complixity of the bot, how is the interaction between student-teacher-bot, and how this has a real impact o enhanceing the role’s teacher.