Yearly Archives: 2006

Technical hitches

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gill-banff.jpgMy pilot interviews are throwing up lots of things that didn’t happen last year. I guess, as I’m adding about 25% to my knowledge of this technique, that that is only to be expected.

Gill sent me web links and attachments – thus demonstrating that you can use these interviews in that way if you want. She also replied to my questions from a laptop in Canada, thus demonstrating clearly that the interviews are neither time- nor place-dependent. (The photo shows where she emailed me from. I downloaded it from her Flickr site, and it’s copyright Gill.)

So that’s the good stuff. On the other hand, I filed one of Sali’s answers in the wrong place, and then thought she hadn’t answered so sent her another copy of the question and then found she had answered so sent her another question. Then the OU server went down. So now I’m not clear whether she got fed up with me messing things up and decided to stop participating, or whether she did get back to me – but Outlook didn’t pick it up. So that’s annoying. Specially bad timing because now it’s awkward to email her without looking as if I’m nagging her. And I don’t want to nag her – if she wants to stop being interviewed that’s fine. On the other hand, if she thinks I’ve just stopped then that’s no good either 🙁

 And I’ve been back to look at my Outlook archive of my interviews. It’s lost Martin’s responses to two questions, and a couple of my emails. I can access them via Google Desktop, but otherwise they’re not there. So, again, Martin may have responded and his reply may just be lost in the ether. Luckily, I’ve only sent him that question once, so I’ve just emailed him again to explain what’s happening. Hope he gets back to me, cos we’re up to question seven and it would be good to have a complete interview.

Writing up

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Inspired by Anesa’s recent blog posts, I have started to write up my thesis!

Karen did suggest a couple of months ago that I could bank some sections of my PhD which I was feeling confident about. Accordingly, I’ve written 1000 words on the ethics of online research, which wasn’t too complicated, as I drew heavily on last year’s U500 presentation. Then I dragged out my mini-viva presentation to use the section of units of analysis. That needs to be added to – I’ve got a couple of articles that I need to reference. Oh, and I’ve done a piece on episolary interviewing. It needs to be tidied up but most of it is in place.

That’s 3000 words or so – hey, I’ve written 5% of my thesis. How cool is that?

DZX222 Tutor Day

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Interviewing Gill via email reminded me, indirectly, that I ought to blog about the DZX222 tutor day at the beginning of the month.

Some of the points raised included: the virtual sumer school is not a break from everyday life for students like a residential school. Students may feel isolated and vulnerable to both doubt and distraction.

A week online equates to a day at residential school. Tutors need to get students to summarise their progress regularly. They shuld encourage discussion of ideas and suggestions. They should avoid providing instant solutions.

Tutors also need to remember several things. One student can tend to take over a  group – there is a need to be on the alert for this. It’s easy to think you are replying to one student but others will read replies and may be daunted by a complex answer – even if that answer is appropriate for the student you are addressing. On the other hand, students may not read replies to other students, so important information needs to be put in bold with a changed header.

There are three major causes of argument amongst students: (1) students have the perception that they are carrying others (2) the chosen project is too complicated (3) an unofficial grup leader emerges.

There is also a danger of bullying. If postings make students feel daunted or overwhelmed that is a form of bullying. There is a need to investigate student silences. Are the students unhappy? Do they understand what is happening?

Group size

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Martin LeVoi referred to ‘critical mass’ – the size that an online group needs to be in order to be effective. Thought I’d go and check this out. ‘Critical mass’ doesn’t appear to be a technical term in regular use in the literature, but there is some discussion of group size.

Glass and Smith looked at 80 studies of F2F classes which concluded that smaller clases were better with respect to student achievement, classrom processes and teacher and student attitudes. Hayes suggested that distance learners need small groups so they can share and critique project work. He felt that a group of five would allow students to enjoy a rich exchange and feel part of a learning comunity without wasting time sifting through umpteen postings.

A virtual community must have enough participants to allow a significant level of interaction. Gilly Salmon suggests that an ideal size is up to nine.

Four is often considered the ideal in F2F situations because the group is large enough to hold diverse opinions, to draw on different experiences and to approach the subject in different ways. It is not so big that someone can hide and not pull their weight.

Rice suggests a critical mass of 8-10 – generating sufficient volume of interactions without being overwhelming.

How I destroyed Peter Brown’s world

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Picture 1.png Picture 2.png Back in the Eighties, when you thought yourself lucky if you had a 16K Spectrum instead of a 1K ZX80 or a ZX81 with a 16K RAM pack which fell off at the slightest touch, I used to edit Sinclair Programs magazine. Kids wrote programs and sent them in on cassettes, I played them all and the best ones were printed off and listed in the magazine. The kids made £25, the publishers got the editorial content of an entire magazine for about £800 (actually twice that, cos we had an illustration drawn for each picture).

You can still find Sinclair Programs games listed on the Internet if you’re keen on shoot-em-up games written in elementary Basic.

Why am I blogging this? Well, I lust found an interview  with Peter Brown, executive editor of the Free Software Foundation http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,39263218,00.htm

Must be one of the best things anyone has ever said about my work:

“When I was a kid, I had a Sinclair ZX-81, with 1KB of memory. At the time — back in 1984 or 85 — if you wanted to play a game you couldn’t buy a CD, so you had to buy one of the listing magazines, like Sinclair Programs.  You had to look at the listing of computer code and type it into your machine. The keyboard was terrible — it was simply a flat piece of plastic. At the end you would try to run the program, and if it didn’t run you would have to correct any syntax errors.
“Over time, I slowly worked out why errors occurred and started to learn how to program in Basic. At one point, I sent a game I had written to Sinclair Programs, and they accepted it for publication and sent me a cheque for £25. As soon as I sent off the first game, I started writing the next one.

“So, the magazine arrived and my game was inside and they’d drawn a nice big cartoon for it. Unfortunately, when I flicked to the editorial for magazine it said, ‘this is the last ever edition of the magazine.’ It was basically saying that in the future people will not share source code and won’t type code into computers — they’ll buy games on physical media instead.

“What was funny was that this was the September 1985 edition of the magazine, which was a month before the Free Software Foundation was created, in response to the fact that people were taking [open] computer code and turning it into proprietary code.

“Looking back at it now, overnight my world was destroyed, because the listing magazine was destroyed. It just became about playing code, rather than writing code. That was the last time I ever did any programming.”

Second Life

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overheard.jpg

 At the DZX222 weekend, Martin LeVoi gave a very interesting talk on how the virtual res school had originated (1994: 12 students, 14 staff, all the students had to have computers and mobile phones shipped to them). Now that it’s been running annually since 2002 and is attracting 700 students in one year, Martin is still thinking of ways to be at the cutting edge. One is obviously Moodle – everything at the OU is going to have to adjust to the VLE in the next few years. 

Martin also raised the issue of Second Life http://secondlife.com/ which is a virtual world where you go and live a second life in avatar form. I’m torn between thinking this is pointless and thinking it might be good fun. It’s obviously very lucrative – the onscreen currency can be converted into hard cash and there are people who make their living in this virtual environment. I read in the New Scientist about one who earns his living as a hitman. Anyway, that’s off the point. Universities are starting to appear there. The OU could construct a virtual campus and students could meet and discuss in avatar form. At the moment it’s rather clunky, partly because there’s no lip-synching on the avatars, but this could be where the Jennie Lee building goes next time it is demolished and reconstructed.

Oh, and they like you to note that their pics are copyright:

Copyright 2006, Linden Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Hotting up

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Research process is hotting up. First of all, the DZX222 help conference went live yesterday, and there’s already a lot of activity as the students get involved. There are now 701 students on this presentation, which just keeps on growing.

And I’m starting my two student pilot interviews, so that’s an important part of my research underway.

I’d feel happier if the course team had definitely said I could go ahead. I’ve emailed Kathy about that today, so hopefully she’ll get back to me soon.

And I have got SRPP approval, so that’s a move in the right direction.

Blog my research?

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How would it be if I gave every student on DZX222 access to this blog? Or to another blog, created for the purpose? Then I could put in my musings as I go along and get student responses. It would be another source of data and a whole new use for my blog.

Of course, I’d have to be really careful about referring to data in order to protect anonymity. And if students could access my research, would it affect how they act? Would that matter? Would I be seen as interfering with the learning and teaching? Would I have to write myself some specific blogging ethical guidelines before I got going?

Heatmaps

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libHeatMap.gifCan’t work out how to link to individual entries in a blog. Anyway, if you go to http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/ and look for heatmaps, you get something about a new piece of software which you can apply to websites to see where people have clicked. The hotspots come out red, the less-clicked turn out blue. There’s an example of the OU library’s homepage heat map.

Can’t actually think what I’d do with it, but it does seem like a useful tool for web page designers, and gives a very clear picture of how people are getting around.