At a JISC meeting this Thursday I was reminded of the FREMA project. I had been aware of their attempts to map the domain of e-Assessment for a number of years now, but I was not aware of some recent developments. Most interesting to me was their use of a semantic wiki. I had never heard of the concept in all honesty, but I found the idea fascinating. In particular for the purpose of Knowledge management and dissemination I think the possibilities here are truly significant.
for the FREMA project in particular, one of the things they were able to do as a result of using this technology, is a gap analysis of their understanding of the domain, but also of the available solutions within the domain. Unfortunately there are still quite a few gaps to be filled in the area of e-assessment, but at least through resources like these we can maximize our efficiency in finding existing solutions, and focusing our efforts on those gaps where the needs are most pressing.
Friday, 12 October 2007
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
Can we just go back to learning please?
I'm getting a bit tired of the whole e-learning, eLearning, blended learning, learning 2.0 debate. The same goes for e-assessment, computer based assessment and computer aided assessment. All these debates seem to imply that there is a right mode of teaching, and a right mode of learning. And if there is one thing that does not exist for learning, then that's a magic recipe to make it happen. In the same way that I'm not in favor of the (ab)use of learning styles, I am also highly allergic to the vocabulary wars around the use of technology in learning.
As Clive Shepherd points out in his post on the subject: "the essence of good design for learning is to first develop a strategy that will produce an effective outcome and only then consider the media through which this strategy can be delivered efficiently." And the success of learning is not a result of the medium used. It is the result of the strategy, and the match of the strategy with the medium. Multiple choice tests aren't bad, nor are they good. They are a tool that can be used and abused expertly and inaptly.
As Clive Shepherd points out in his post on the subject: "the essence of good design for learning is to first develop a strategy that will produce an effective outcome and only then consider the media through which this strategy can be delivered efficiently." And the success of learning is not a result of the medium used. It is the result of the strategy, and the match of the strategy with the medium. Multiple choice tests aren't bad, nor are they good. They are a tool that can be used and abused expertly and inaptly.
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
Is web 2.0 dumbing us down?
As some of you might know, I'm an avid listened of podcasts (mainly to make my daily hour long commute seem a little less wasteful). Two of the recent casts I listened to grabbed my specific attention.
The first is a presentation titled Republic 2.0 by Cass Sunstein. In this presentation mr. Sunstein explains the risks of web 2.0 to democracy. While the increased access to the expression and consumption of information and opinion seems like a wonderful thing, there are downsides to how we engage with blogs, wiki's and social networks. Due to the vast amount of information out there, but also because of the nature of these new social artifacts, we tend to expose ourselves only to information and opinions from those that we are close to (ideologically or otherwise). Research has shown that in homogeneous groups like these, polarization takes place: views and opinions become more singular and extreme.
This is a concern in itself, and something to keep in mind when considering aspects of our education system, such schools based on subgroups of our society over dimensions such as religion, class or even geography. The concern got a new dimension for me however after listening to one of the seminars of the Long Now Foundation In his talk, Ignore Confident Forecasters, Philip Tetlock shares some insights from his research on peoples ability to make appropriate predictions about complex future events (in this case in world politics). He found 2 types of thinking, leading to 2 distinct patterns of predictions. one group was classified as 'hedgehogs'. These were people that had a single specialism or conviction, and tried to explain everything in the world from this single perspective. The second group, the 'foxes' were more broad in their thinking, and the constructs they applied to solving problems. Foxes significantly outperformed the hedgehogs.
So this begs the question: If we allow ourselves to be exposed only to those views and people that we have sympathy with, something the web increasingly allows us to do, are we really depriving ourselves of the tools for a balanced and effective mental development?
The first is a presentation titled Republic 2.0 by Cass Sunstein. In this presentation mr. Sunstein explains the risks of web 2.0 to democracy. While the increased access to the expression and consumption of information and opinion seems like a wonderful thing, there are downsides to how we engage with blogs, wiki's and social networks. Due to the vast amount of information out there, but also because of the nature of these new social artifacts, we tend to expose ourselves only to information and opinions from those that we are close to (ideologically or otherwise). Research has shown that in homogeneous groups like these, polarization takes place: views and opinions become more singular and extreme.
This is a concern in itself, and something to keep in mind when considering aspects of our education system, such schools based on subgroups of our society over dimensions such as religion, class or even geography. The concern got a new dimension for me however after listening to one of the seminars of the Long Now Foundation In his talk, Ignore Confident Forecasters, Philip Tetlock shares some insights from his research on peoples ability to make appropriate predictions about complex future events (in this case in world politics). He found 2 types of thinking, leading to 2 distinct patterns of predictions. one group was classified as 'hedgehogs'. These were people that had a single specialism or conviction, and tried to explain everything in the world from this single perspective. The second group, the 'foxes' were more broad in their thinking, and the constructs they applied to solving problems. Foxes significantly outperformed the hedgehogs.
So this begs the question: If we allow ourselves to be exposed only to those views and people that we have sympathy with, something the web increasingly allows us to do, are we really depriving ourselves of the tools for a balanced and effective mental development?
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