Imagine rocking up to a small classroom late in the evening after a long day at work and having to listen to a dude rabbiting on about means and standard deviations for three hours. Does that make you want to be violently ill, or run in the complete opposite direction to the classroom at the speed of Usain Bolt? It would me usually, but unfortunately I’m the person tasked with being this dude. What I wanted to talk about in this article today is how a teacher set with this task goes about it.

I’m a lecturer within the University of Sydney, Business School MBA program in the subject “Data Analytics and Modelling”. I lecture on a Tuesday night from 6pm for 3 hours. When you hear this topic it clearly doesn’t tug at your fun strings. The problem I have, however, is that in my view the key to an excellent teaching experience in a topic like this, and probably any topic, is that you have to make it fun. And the fun doesn’t have to relate to the subject matter. It could be anything.

I do a few things to make my lectures and the teaching experience fun. I am a naturally effervescent and bubbly kind of guy (no I’m not a Schweppes dry ginger ale) so a high energy and fun approach comes relatively easily to me – I understand it may not be for everyone. I have what is called a jokes penetration ratio target of 20% meaning that one of five jokes provokes a laughter response from at least one student and I find that even attempting to make them laugh can be entertaining.

The key to a great classroom experience is that students will actually enjoy coming to class and that won’t happen in most cases unless you make the classroom fun. I do a few things to keep it fun aside from attempting poor jokes. The first is to ask the students lots of questions. This keeps them engaged, active and awake. There’s nothing worse than listening to the same voice for hours, even if it has dulcet tones, so it is good to hear lots of different voices. I sometimes ask questions that are completely off topic just to add a bit of variety and spice to the lecture. I remember in one statistics lecture a couple of years ago we talked about banana allergies for around half an hour in a three hour lecture.

The second thing I do to keep it fun is to have the students perform in-class activities that are relevant to the curriculum. In my case this involved chasing up data and presenting it in particular formats. And get the students doing it together in groups. Activities like this get the blood flowing a bit and activate conversation. I also always ensure that my examples or illustrations are fun and suit the demographic I’m teaching. We would look at interesting things like the demand for bacon and egg rolls and a can of coke on a Saturday or Sunday morning or models describing the removal of pickles from McDonalds burgers.

I always make sure that I have breaks at the right time and play cool music during the breaks. In my data analytics class we had prize giveaways for those who could guess the correct song. The giveaways were things that I really liked and so the students got to know a bit about me. For example, one giveaway was four Weetbix biscuits with one banana and full fat milk – I explained to the students that this is what I ate every single morning, and that if I couldn’t access a banana because of a tropical cyclone hitting Far North Queensland then I would consume only 5 Weetbix biscuits with full cream milk.

Another key to excellent lecture and course experience is to come down to the students level. Picture yourself listening to you talk about standard deviations and work out whether you would enjoy that experience. If students ask a question don’t give up until it is resolved. Ask the student different questions to establish if it resolved. Read the body language of students. If they are dozing off or fiddling with their phone then you need to try something different. 

Like anything you buy, the after-sales experience is important. The same applies to lecturing. The best lectures provide the best after lecture support, whether that be taking phone calls, emails or students rocking up to your office. There is also nothing better than a speedy reply.

These are just some of the things that have made by lecturing experience work with a dry topic. I’m sure there are many other things that can be tried and work as well.

Ever Wondered How the Good Stats Teachers Do It? by Dy Tony Webber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Imagine rocking up to a small classroom late in the evening after a long day at work and having to listen to a dude rabbiting on about means and standard deviations for three hours. Does that make you want to be violently ill, or run in the complete opposite direction to the classroom at the speed of Usain Bolt? It would me usually, but unfortunately I’m the person tasked with being this dude. What I wanted to talk about in this article today is how a teacher set with this task goes ... read more

A new year brings with it a fresh page, one filled with new hope, new goals and new opportunities. It is also a reminder of a year that’s come and gone. It’s amazing to think what any of us can achieve within 365 (or 366 depending on a leap year!) days. 2014 has been a big year for OpenLearning, full of many milestones, new partnerships, courses and students from around the world.

We’ve grown from 30,000 to over 100,000 students, which wouldn’t have been possible without our growing team that more than doubled in size! We welcomed amazing new partners, including: the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education, Guokr, AGSM, InteGlobal and several MOOC portals. Some of our team found themselves in China, Singapore and Malaysia this year meeting interesting startups, universities and students. On a local level, Adam participated in the CEO Sleepout, we helped sponsor and mentor the Sydney Edutech Startup Weekend and started embracing healthier habits within the office (no more M&M’s for us)!

Those were some of our highlights but it’s your stories and experiences that helped build this learning community. Over this past year, we’ve kept up with your successes, the day-to-day challenges you’ve shared and witnessed new friendships. Now, we’d love to hear from you.

The crazy thing about time is it passes so quickly, we sometimes forget to stop and appreciate how far we’ve come. With 2014 coming to an end, lets reflect, celebrate and support each other into another great new year. 

So, how was your year? What were your highs, lows and everything in-between? Share your year through stories and pictures in the comments!

Happy (early) 2015 OpenLearner’s – thank you for making this our best year yet!

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A new year brings with it a fresh page, one filled with new hope, new goals and new opportunities. It is also a reminder of a year that’s come and gone. It’s amazing to think what any of us can achieve within 365 (or 366 depending on a leap year!) days. 2014 has been a big year for OpenLearning, full of many milestones, new partnerships, courses and students from around the world.

We’ve grown from 30,000 to over 100,000 students, which wouldn’t have been possible without our growing ... read more

I have spent the last six years thinking about and creating open educational resources. I have had two very important guides over this time: Stephen Downes and Leigh Blackall.

 Guides are very important if we are to venture out from closed information networks. I have felt emboldened by the advice I have received from Stephen’s OLDaily newsletter and by Leigh’s embrace of the public Internet. 

I have four examples from the last six years through which to advocate for an ‘Open All Hours’ approach to sharing educational resources.

I was fortunate to be a participant in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge open online course (CCK08) in 2008. This was the first time I had engaged in what was to be called a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). I was staggered by the wisdom shared in that course and felt very fortunate that Stephen Downes, and George Siemens directed my learning journey. The course was a transformative time for me when I came to understand the potential of self-organising networks of learners able to access open resources.

Gordon Lockhart (2013) summarises my experience in his account of his involvement in a connectivist open course (cMOOC):

it dawned on me that, contrary to what was on the tin, a cMOOC wasn’t a ‘course’ at all. Instead, a heady amalgam of ‘massive’, ‘open’ and ‘online’ was leading to a quite extraordinary place where the normal rules of learning engagement just didn’t apply. There were a couple of facilitators but no teachers. Participants were encouraged to create and maintain their own blogs. Social media was used for discussion and sharing resources. Topics were explored together, connections made and groups were formed and maintained long after the MOOC was over. cMOOCs never die …[1]

I met Leigh Blackall a year after CCK08. He enabled me to explore the potential of Wikimedia tools to create resources that would be available when learners chose to access them. Together we developed an online course on Wikiversity for Business, Politics and Sport. Our most exciting project was to propose a Wikipedia history of Australian Paralympic sport. Others have taken the lead on this project but it is fascinating to learn that as of November 2014, 814 Wikipedia articles have been created and that there are 1.4 million visitors to these pages annually[2].

The confidence I gained from Stephen and Leigh enabled me to extend my zone of proximal development in 2012 when I facilitated a small open online course in partnership with OpenLearning. The Observing and Analysing Performance in Sport course attracted 900 registrations from 82 countries during the four weeks it ran. It continues to attract visitors as a legacy course on the OpenLearning platform.

The final example I want to mention is another open online course I am developing at the University of Canberra. The Sport Informatics and Analytics course is running for four weeks in February and March 2015. All of the content for this course is available in the Cloud. This is an introduction to the course.

These four experiences have helped me understand the opportunities created by open sharing. I do believe that we have an exciting future in working cooperatively to create, curate and share educational resources. Martin Weller (2014) has suggested we are living in a time when open education has begun to occupy a place in mainstream educational practice.[3]

It is a time for me when it is possible to be ‘Open All Hours’.

Open All Hours by Keith Lyons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I have spent the last six years thinking about and creating open educational resources. I have had two very important guides over this time: Stephen Downes and Leigh Blackall.

Guides are very important if we are to venture out from closed information networks. I have felt emboldened by the advice I have received from Stephen’s OLDaily newsletter and by Leigh’s embrace of the public Internet.

I have four examples from the last six years through which to advocate for an ‘Open All Hours... read more

The integration of ICT in education has been the subject of an intense debate for many years, especially regarding rationale, method, teacher training and evaluation. In this contribution, I would like to focus on the rationale: the justification we provide for using a specific technology in our learning and teaching contexts. Real or fabricated, conscious or subconscious, we can group the reasons for doing so into the following approaches or angles of attack.

• A technology-driven approach promotes the use of a technology based on its innovative features. 
• A demand-based approach simply responds to needs mentioned by teachers and students.
• An affordances-based approach looks at perceived new activities for language learning and teaching.  
• An acceptance-oriented approach focuses on the mental acceptance of a technology based on its perceived usefulness versus its ease of use. 
• A motivational approach looks into how technologies can help to satisfy universal or individual psychological needs. 
• An attribute-based approach analyses cognitive aspects such as the processing of visual, auditory and textual information. 
• Finally, a pedagogy-based approach starts from a pedagogical theory such as socio-constructivism in order to justify the choice for and integration of a specific technology.

Seven approaches: two pragmatic, three psychological and one pedagogical. They almost never occur in pure form, nor have they succeeded each other over time. None are inferior in themselves, not even a technology-driven approach, which is now being regarded as less acceptable on an academic level. But, what is wrong with just using a new technology for testing purposes, as long as we are honest about it, explain it to our students and involve them, have fun, and build some 'wowledge'? Far worse would be if we claim some magic effect on the learners’ brain, if we need technology to give us a reason to exist, or if we need to find problems for a given solution.

On the other hand, the pedagogy-based approach has acquired an aura of reviewer-proof scholarly rigor. More and more authors are eager to state in their research papers that they adopted a pedagogy-based approach. However, many quickly refer to some pedagogical theory without any correct reasoning, and most of them seldom forget to refer to the perfunctory Vygotsky. Scholarly lip service, which is not always reflected in the actual research design.

With this contribution we want to point out that educational engineering as an instructional design model might lead to a new approach which we have coined Distributed Design[1]. Without going into detail here and now about the specifics of this model, I would just like to explain why it might entail considerable consequences for the roles of technology and pedagogy in design.

No technology carries an inherent, measurable and generalizable effect on learning. This effect can only come from the entire learning environment as ecology, and it is proportional to the extent to which it has been designed in a methodological way. Technology is only one of the elements, which may contribute to the realization of the learning goals. As the eventual shape of the designed learning environment heavily depends on the context, the needed technological functionalities will also vary considerably according to local circumstances. Design creates the need for technology, but you never know in advance what the outcome will be. And that can be fun!

There is also no pedagogical model that we can apply as such in any context. Pedagogical theory is only needed during the pedagogical specification phase. You only know which knowledge or model you need after designing the overall concept as a compromise between often conflicting personal and pedagogical goals[2].

We need technology and pedagogy in order to create the most optimal (‘powerful’) learning environment. This need is the outcome of our conceptualization, and not its starting point.

This Distributed Design approach is still a kind of experimental treatment, or formulated in a more scholarly way, still in a phase of ongoing theoretical and empirical validation. For teachers, it is often being perceived as an inconvenient truth which does not seem to stand a strong chance against the reassuring lies conveyed in pervasive but persuasive terms like ‘blended learning’, ‘flipped classrooms’, ‘digital pedagogy’, ‘virtual worlds’, ‘digital natives’ etc.

Inconvenient truth, but emancipating at the same time. Teachers should become designers. Designers of their own learning environment. As designers, they become able to determine for themselves which technologies to use, how, when and with whom. As designers, they become able to explain why. By describing how they analyze their context, how they design their optimal learning environment in a methodological way, and how they specify the required technological functionalities and the pedagogical models (teaching, learning and evaluation models) they need in order to realize them. But teachers should also be enabled and empowered to do so.

Nor Technology Nor Pedagogy Should Come First In Design by Prof. Dr. Jozef Colpaert is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The integration of ICT in education has been the subject of an intense debate for many years, especially regarding rationale, method, teacher training and evaluation. In this contribution, I would like to focus on the rationale: the justification we provide for using a specific technology in our learning and teaching contexts. Real or fabricated, conscious or subconscious, we can group the reasons for doing so into the following approaches or angles of attack.

• A technology-driven ap... read more

Education is unarguably fundamental to every society. While this point is not contended, the way we assess students, organise schools, funding, and implement different technologies relating to education is heavily debated. As we continue to spend time focusing on the details, we begin to neglect the high level learning philosophy that drives those decisions. Such philosophies impact the way we teach and explain how present learning structures come to exist.

As stated by Sir Ken Robinson, "people can spend a lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning". In an attempt to solve this, OpenLearning is proud to announce the launch of The Educationist.

The Educationist is an email publication dedicated to improving the quality of education pedagogy and conversation. Our aim is to build a community of diverse individuals sharing ideas, opinions and academic work on education discourse.

We hope this will enable in-depth discussions on current trends and complex issues, encouraged by sourcing articles from authors with proven credentials and expertise. 

Education technologies, including innovations like OpenLearning, provide tools and support to help facilitate effective learning. However, the core to great learning is in its philosophy, the discourse it forms and how it is then implemented. The Educationist, aims to decipher our current education dilemma and encourage change through open discussion and greater access to information.

The first issue written by Stephen Downes, who is best known as the originator of the MOOC, discusses the role of technology, innovation and depleting education at present. The second issue has just been released and will be followed by ongoing weekly contributions. The latest piece written by Prof. Dr. Jozef Colpaert, Editor of the CALL Journal and Professor of Instructional Design at the University of Antwerp, explores the role of pedagogy and technology in educational design.

Join the conversation by following (@EducationistThe) and subscribing to The Educationist here. 

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Education is unarguably fundamental to every society. While this point is not contended, the way we assess students, organise schools, funding, and implement different technologies relating to education is heavily debated. As we continue to spend time focusing on the details, we begin to neglect the high level learning philosophy that drives those decisions. Such philosophies impact the way we teach and explain how present learning structures come to exist.

As stated by Sir Ken Robin... read more

Umair Haque, who is perhaps the only economist I can read without suffering indigestion, quite rightly condemns today’s penchant for addressing social problems with yet another app. “If you believe that Ubers, tacocopters, and dating-slash-butler apps…change the world…especially this world,” he writes, “you’re not just clueless. You’re hopeless.” [1]

So what does matter? “Make a vaccine for Ebola. Give the half the world missing it clean water, education, sanitation. Fix global youth unemployment. Give women and minorities a way to use the web without being harassed.” Stuff like that. Concrete, tangible good produced that measurably and meaningfully improves the lives of people and propels us toward higher aspirations.

This is a bit of a challenge for a web-monger like me. For the last twenty years or so I’ve been scripting my own versions of things I think would help – a learning management system here, an open website on the logical fallacies there, learning networks, open online courses, and most recently, personal learning environments. It’s hard not to wonder whether I’m not just serving up more of the same slop that has led us to where we are today.

Haque is pretty clear about what is not useful. “Apps, gadgets, hearts, likes,” he writes. “Taps, clicks, swipes, screens. These numb us with comfortable titillation.” They prevent us from aspiring to something more. “Things that make people…butlers, chauffeurs, maids, courtesans…debtors, sharecroppers, zombies…don’t change anything.”

He’s right, of course. The best inventions are liberating. They give us life, they nourish us, they advance us, they engage us, they empower us. They are not things that help us to become better workers, better servants, better employees.

That, if I may share a secret, is what has always bothered me about my work in education. In so many ways, we are either working to keep in power those who are already in power, providing them elite educations at exclusive universities, or we are perpetuating the servitude of the working people, teaching employment skills and vocational trades to the children of factory workers and farmers. And educators themselves, especially in today’s outcomes-based environment, are so often cast in the role of the butler or the maid, pandering to, rather than enlightening, the children of our employers.

I’ve always aspired to something more. I’ve always believed that at the end of my career, when I looked back, I would look on a body of work that led to something more significant than an app or a servlet.

That is why I am engaged not merely in the development of learning technology, but also engaged in the development of means, methods and mechanisms to deliver open learning – with ‘open’ being thought of in the widest and most liberating sense. And when I design educational systems – even when I am working with partners in government and industry – I am first and foremost thinking of my client as the students and learners themselves. And that is why I think in terms not of pedagogy and learning design, but in terms of self-management and personal development.

Educational technology is meaningless if it is not also liberating technology. The purpose of education is not to serve certain social objectives or as a means to employment, but rather to place in the hands of the learner the best and most useful set of tools possible to enable him or her to choose and forge the best quality life for themselves, or as John Stuart Mill would say, to pursue their own good in their own way. Because I believe the best society and the best employment are not those defined by one person over another, but those chosen and built by the people themselves.

We need to remember this when we are building our trinkets and baubles. We can build a better world out of the simplest elements, but only if we image what a better world is like, and refuse to be swayed on our pursuit of it.

Umair Haque, who is perhaps the only economist I can read without suffering indigestion, quite rightly condemns today’s penchant for addressing social problems with yet another app. “If you believe that Ubers, tacocopters, and dating-slash-butler apps…change the world…especially this world,” he writes, “you’re not just clueless. You’re hopeless.” [1]

So what does matter? “Make a vaccine for Ebola. Give the half the world missing it clean water, education, sanitation. Fix global youth... read more

The skills and knowledge required to save a life can seem complex and intimidating without years of medical school or specific training. The revolution in online education is bringing opportunities to learn anything to people everywhere, including the education necessary to save a life. Modern healthcare education is evolving with new technology, making it accessible from the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere you have a high-speed internet connection. 

Life support education has been available for fifty years, but until recently it has required spending an entire day or even two days in a classroom, taking you away from your daily routime. In an effort to bridge this accessibility gap, NHCPS has developed Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Basic Life Support (BLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) certification online courses, delivered 100% online and free to anyone with Internet connection. The courses are designed by physicians and adhere to the most recent American Heart Association Guidelines. 

Now, NHCPS’ newest course, CPR, AED & First Aid, is the world’s first online CPR course, teaching 8 fundamental lessons. Each lesson includes comprehensive visuals, including videos, graphs and step-by-step images, along with lectures that can be paused and reviewed at the student’s inclination. Along with the online lesson, students enrolled will receive a complete PDF manual, which follows the entire lesson accordingly. All NHCPS courses are enhanced with study resources such as online practice testing and specific knowledge assessments.

The CPR, AED & First Aid course teaches students the essentials of life-saving practices. The 8 lessons cover: First Aid, Medical Problems, Injuries and Trauma, Environmental Injuries and Illnesses, and CPR & AED for Adults, Children and Infants. Enrolled students will learn everything from simple wound cleaning procedures to saving a choking victim using the Heimlich maneuver.  The total course, aside from review material and the final course exam, may be completed by experienced providers in less than an hour, however no on-site training or prior knowledge and testing are required. A final exam leading to formal certification is available for purchase after course completion through NHCPS. After successfully completing the online final exam, students will receive a customized certification card which can be downloaded and printed immediately, as well as a paper card shipped next business day. 

NHCPS also offers newly improved and redesigned ACLS, BLS and PALS courses for more advanced healthcare professionals. These too are taught and designed by real practicing physicians and adhere to the latest AHA guidelines and standards. There has never been an easier and more convenient way to fulfill any certification need or requirement in the fast-paced world of healthcare. Completing any of NHCPS’s openlearning.com courses will give all students the experience and skill to save lives while improving their own. 

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The skills and knowledge required to save a life can seem complex and intimidating without years of medical school or specific training. The revolution in online education is bringing opportunities to learn anything to people everywhere, including the education necessary to save a life. Modern healthcare education is evolving with new technology, making it accessible from the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere you have a high-speed internet connection.

Life support education ... read more

What’s the big deal with poetry? What’s so incredible, awesome, or powerful about learning poetry? Robin Williams, playing the role of John Keatings in the cult classic Dead Poets Society stated poetry’s purpose perfectly:  “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Here are our top five reasons to keep poetry alive:

Find the rhythm, find the sound.

Ever find yourself walking down the street, a bounce in your step and a jiggle in your beat? Most likely, there’s music playing somewhere near by. Your body can feel the sensations and sense the rhythm, picking up the sounds from yards away. You may not hear all the words, but you’ll feel the rhythm, and maybe even make up your own style and words. You’ve just created poetry. Poetry, like music, activates your senses, feeds your heart and soul; it moves you, just like music.

Feed Your Mind!

Poetry paints a rich picture of life, a story that is juicy to the core. No matter your age or association with poetry, creating poetry in anyway is an art form. The thought and skill you put into the poetry that you create will always reflect who you are, and give you space to feed your mind in ways you never thought possible.

Connect With Others

Poetry offers a means of communication and connection that is rarely offered in other art forms. The gift of poetry is one that always gives back. Learning poetry opens door to connect with others; it builds a bridge over gaps of culture, race, and language.

Get Creative!

Poetry is an art form. Give your brain the paint brush, and take off on a wild adventure through the art of creating a language that is yours. Get creative! Bring it to life in the way that you know how to. After all, no two poems are ever the same.

Contribute Your Verse

Poetry can be created by all.  Short, long, simple, complex - there is no end to how to write a poem.  Look for the voice in poetry that you’re drawn to, and bring it to life in your own way. What you create will most certainly inspire your inner poet, and others.

Whatever your field, whoever you are, and whenever you are, bring poetry into your life. Let it feed your soul, and bring passion forth in your life. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Interested in igniting a passion for poetry? Join OpenLearning’s Great Poem Series

What’s the big deal with poetry? What’s so incredible, awesome, or powerful about learning poetry? Robin Williams, playing the role of John Keatings in the cult classic Dead Poets Society stated poetry’s purpose perfectly: “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But po... read more

PUTRAJAYA: The Education Ministry has announced that OpenLearning.com is now the official MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform for all public institutions of higher education in Malaysia.

Visit the Malaysia MOOC Portal >> ← show less

PUTRAJAYA: The Education Ministry has announced that OpenLearning.com is now the official MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform for all public institutions of higher education in Malaysia.