STUDY LEARNING MEDIA LAB

2012-01-10T05:35:00.001-08:00

Busy with a proposal on creativity, a presentation in Dutch on learning analytics, the supervision van een master student, the quest for test persons, the re-reading of articles for the introduction and the setting of study 4.

2011-08-04T02:44:00.000-07:00

Busy with the position paper on dashboards

wait for christian guidelines regarding duplicates in the qualitative data

received from arnet two articles to review

good conversation with stefaan yesterday

picked up several words or idioms in the qualitative data. Dutch is an impossible language, even with intensive efforts. But I do not dislike all crazy things.

I think about asking G. Van den Boom as a labeller of the qualitative data.

2011-08-03T02:34:00.000-07:00

in the qualitative data (800 comments)

also contributions to arnet and avnet

i left the description of learning experiences out of the sample for christian's tool but i still think that it is the most interesting bit, and even connected to the reflection on context

Marcel has worked out rough evaluation of time spent in de cursus but not time for this. Actually no time to finalize the whole paper (and some new statistical hassles are opnieuw ahead)

with the qualitative data, i work in dutch language. A good point.

2011-07-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Het is fascinerend om keer op keer uitgedaagd te worden.

Ja, Monique, een goede samenvatting van het leven van een onderzoeker.

2011-07-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

- discussion with an just appointed Iranian. He's gonna work on the interpretation of facial expressions in games. Nothing to do together.

- marcel will at last provide a figure for each learner. He must be an "opposing" profile, starting with all possible objections (and he is right for all) before delivering something of course niet voldoende maar we zijn in een wereld waaring niets voldoende is.

- aad heeft goed gewerkt op de mirroring. Heel snel en goed. Nog een paar vorderingen en we een discussie kunnen starten over een eye-tracking onderzoek

- goed discussion with Wim W. Always his personal and relevant touch. I was lucky to have him as a supervisor.

- some Dutch today. Goed.

- preparation of the qualitative data started

2011-07-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Till the end I will suffer from these studies. Now this unexpected problem of discrepancy between subgroups and merged group. Fortunately, good discussion with Christian.

2011-07-06T08:19:00.001-07:00

control, satisfaction, and stil half a day on the selection of data regarding self-reported reflection. awful. a very small piece in each index but so little.

d

2011-07-05T02:52:00.001-07:00

The paper about your third experiment.

- quantitative data is processed: small significant differences between high and low annotators. In some combinations, pageviews can make a difference. This is not ground breaking but I am closer to what I am interested in: the cognitive engagement with learning and how to stimulate it.

- this week: does the cognitive engagement impacts perceptions of satisfaction, learning, reflection, control

sdfsdf

2011-06-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

- I fighted with with the difference between fisher test (and how to report it) and chi square.

- spent the day to finalize the quantitative analysis

- a few time on an IT ticket as well

- excuses not to attend the plenair, permission to order the book recommended by mike sharple, verlofdagen to take tomorrow of, verzameling of the articles to print (wired, jan van bruggen, beatriz, and the reviewed one)

2010-12-03T00:50:00.000-08:00

New conversation with Wim. We maintain fixed treatments (though I think that giving choice would remain an interesting experiment). We drop a specific metacognitive test. He comes back with hospitals. I'll give a trial. Many things to prepare (invitations, prequestionnaire, following the other Wim regarding technical developments, asking Christian the codes for the annotation tool, dupplicating the moodle course, calling Monique to fix the items for the shortened questionnaires, and all in Dutch which is very good but sometimes a bit harder).

lklkj

2010-09-30T02:25:00.001-07:00

k:hkl

2010-09-22T06:28:00.000-07:00

I see clearer for the next experiment. Wim agrees with this direction.
Good discussion with CG
I try to submit something on the "phd" track of the RED conference (http://www.red-conference.ch)
Preliminary contact with M. Bijker about a possible treatment of the metaco data. She make me realize that I did not use MAI in an orthodox way. It is frustrating cause I spent much time on selecting and getting familiar with thses instruments.

2010-09-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

One more full day to edit the article according to the journal requirements. Pfffttt...

2010-09-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

Drowning by numbers again (chi square, yard correction), following the hitching remarks of WW (the PhD owner is a survivor)

2010-08-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

The IEEE TLT was sent to CG
I am back on the paper on the study following a new top class review by WW. He is a mathematician and there is something of the mathematics even in the language treatment
Lost 1,5 h to find a free template of APA 6th edition for Word 2003. Failure. I learnt anyway the main differences with the previous version

2010-08-11T02:06:00.001-07:00

Why did I spend three hours to fall back on Moore's article on three types of interaction. Probably because it made me dive far in the past. I did this for the deliverable (thouch less reference could have been possible) and for my own identity. And all this reading about social presence theory which is not close to my immediate concerns... I spent one day on this icoper piece but I do not regret it and I feel that this fair research might bring (or not) some continuation. And this nice e-mail confirms to me that this was decent work: "Many thx for your very comprehensive and adeqaute input for D5.3. Overall, I appreciate your effort to "better" stick to the D5.3 DoW...this is great...congratulations!"

2010-08-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Tough work to scope the article down. Wim considers that there is one day of work left. He already said that.
Back to the TLT article (heavy revision and streamlining because I was less satisfied and sure about our acceptation than CG)
In between, work for icoper WP3 and an answer to MS regarding Mobile and Mol

2010-08-02T09:28:00.001-07:00

one more full day in statistical treatment (sign and p value of chi square, official apa notation for p value, for t-test, checks for paired/independant, one/two-tailed samples)
the two retreatments suggested by WW were good to performe (grouping of separate groups + learning loss scale)
wasted time to get the way to remove the rounding function in excel
no dutch, except one document on anova read in this language
finished the analysis part. Still much work on the discussion section

2010-07-28T02:57:00.001-07:00

The conclusion that I eventually left out in an attempt to avoid quarreling with colleagues (hello Marco Marsella) (though sometimes quarelling is a holy duty): It clearly means that an average instructor cannot, in the current development stage of the specifications, without an intensive support, implement confidence degrees in a unit of learning. Despite all these nice tools and the many engineers around, all heavily funded by European citizens, the following basic requirement still cannot be met: any assessment tool of the next generation should, for each question, provide an easy possibility to get three answers from the student a) the answer itself b) confidence degree expressed in percentages of chances c) comment or justification (a few sentences).
At last, I am back to my study, after hard (and probably useless) work for icoper WP5 and 6.
No Dutch today, very very bad. But too tired.

2010-07-27T23:27:00.000-07:00

Spent more time than expected on students' accounts of learning experience given on http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=159490209&gid=1790369&type=member&item=25711637&articleURL=http://goelsan.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/graduates-desired-competencies-some-classical-and-contemporary-recommendations/&urlhash=OFfD&goback=.gde_1790369_member_25711637 but could not figure out any regularity.

2010-07-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

Back from the mountains. Bad nights. The altitude or my concerns regarding next experiment.
Two days spent mainly in the final proofs for IJTEL, LICE and arrangements for TEFA
I had planned this week for the finalisation of the paper on study 2 but work for iCoper falls again on my head and I will spend two days getting rid of them. Who works in this Lab? For RK, what I propose is always good but I see for the first foreseen contribution (WP5) that the partner is not so easily satisfied. It means that my one-day job will probably be wasted.

2010-07-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

Again a super productive meeting with WW

2010-07-08T04:01:00.000-07:00

Two days on the dangerous knowledge tour with the usual problems with cg. We like each other but our relationship is crippled with misunderstandings.
R&O gesprek that is evaluation by the institution. The good moment: ten minutes in Dutch with a ww very relax (just after holydays)
today grapple meeting. not that easy.

2010-07-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

First full version of the article (including the section discussion and the conclusions)
Interesting website regarding academic writing: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/introductions.htm
Had a look at the table of content of a big book on narrative approach to learning but I eventually took the decision of not ordering it

2010-07-02T03:11:00.001-07:00

today, back to the discussion section of the article
I am proposed a conference in Malaysia. Never, for school, family, ecological and political (Malaysia is a dictatorship which mimicks democracy)
flash meeting icoper (RK seemed worrisome regarding our contributions in the final deliverables but during the whole year he repeated that partners were quite satisfied with us)

2010-07-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

yesterday, medialab meeting. I presented the knowledge dangerous tour and a good debate followed about the value of this IMS LD Recourse authoring tool
good conversation with ST about the evolution of Belgium and good conversation in Dutch also at the cantine
I took part for 1 hour to the mobile cluster meeting. I am officially in this cluster and this is a bit frightening because I did nothing about mobile so far and because, again, I feel that their concern are on the engineering side. Again this feeling that they are very kind with me but that I am an error of casting, not only in the mobile cluster but in the Lab in general
the day before, meeting of the PhDs. My article about the validity of using the mean in Likert scales still creates trouble. It was decided to invite some authority in the field to decide what is legible to do.
during the phd meeting, the guy who works on eye-tracking said that he was interested in learning fundamentals and not in "gadgets, like the lab members". I am afraid that I agree with him!

2010-06-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

Discussion and conclusion of the experiment, a tough work

2010-06-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

Submission of a position paper for the Workshop on Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) 2010 at Fifth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) 2010

2010-06-28T02:59:00.000-07:00

I take 2 days to read articles on experiments sharing concerns with mine
more Dutch these days
CG reviewed the article and suggested good improvements
ANOVA on the long term retention data

2010-06-23T06:07:00.001-07:00

grading of the long-term retention tests

2010-06-22T12:53:00.001-07:00

Working document "6 options for the next study"

2010-06-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finalized my submission to the workshop in Leuven
Today, I sent their licence key to the participants who chose as a thank you gift a 3 months premium account on Mindmeister
Today, I work on the different options for the next study

2010-06-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

All these hours spent on the IMS-LD authoring tool ReCourse. So much time to eventually obtain a not fully satisfying basic unit of learning. In addtion, I have to beg the help of CGL to get additional explanations. Yes, like a beggar.
Half a day for the review of an article by French researchers about indicators, for MS journal "Transactions in TEL" or something similar
Half a day to write down an abstract whose acceptation could allow me to take part in a very interesting workshop in Leuven
Rory cooks pralines. He offered me one. This was the sweetest moment in ten days.
CGL lives in pedagogical science-fiction. Whereas the recourse tool is already time consuming and plenty of cognitive load for the average teacher, he wants to add a layer of complexity by designing patterns. He believes that it will narrow down complexity! At least, not for me.
A bit more Dutch these days. Contact with the belastingen dienst.
Got my tee-shirt "Oranjes" for the world cup

2010-06-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

Back into the Recourse Authoring tool, R&O gesprek mat CGL, answer to HS about my presentation of yesterday, short online grapple meeting, test with some widgets available for blogs, connection to STOER

2010-06-01T05:43:00.001-07:00

presentation of my pht at the phd meeting. Minor but good remarks were:

I adress for type 1 a different target than for the other amplifiers
before networking you must be able to read a text correctly. No says SB, you can ask to the network what you have not understood. OK this is a strategy. The other remains to empower the individual
SB suggests also to shuffle the results into different conference papers and to get feedback
again this fundamental question: is it good to reflect? do you have to do that at nauseam... Advice: to look at research on portfolio, being aware that my reflection prompts are different
the question of cognitive load comes again

iCoper meeting

2010-05-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

Friday, I went ahead with the revision of the article. I want it shorter and restructured
Too much thinking is the acceptable quantity of reflection
One decidable way to define reflection is its contribution to a narrative of the learning experience

Game

2010-05-27T05:03:00.000-07:00

BS presented her phd proposal about patterns in game base learning. I already reviewed the document. Since Elektra, I more or less made up my mind about this gaming trendy discourse

Cascading confusions

2010-05-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

Tom thinks that Buddha is alive because he confounds him with Dalaï-Lama
Tom believes that God is violent. Its source: the Holywood movie "The Devil's advocate" (a good film, by the way)
Tom does not know that christian monks do exist
Tom cannot make the difference between litterary and symbolic meanings
Tom does not conceive that an invented story can hide true meanings (Poor Bettelheim and co.)
Tom grants equal value to claims coming from the novel "da vinci code" and claims by a historian who spent his life studying documents
Tom does not know that, in the christian viewpoint, Jesus is god
Tom is 15 years old
There are thousands of Tom
Tom has more or less goodwill

2010-05-26T05:58:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I spent the morning preparing the work of the secretary for the pre-treatment of qualitative data and for the delivery of the rewards to the test persons. The afternoon was devoted to the implementation of the Dangerous knowledge tour on Recourse. Er is not werk aan de winkel.
Today, I struggled with all necessary preparations of the individual yearly evaluation.
On Monday, I revised the article, following WW comments. I liked the celebration of 30th anniversary of PacMan by Google.

2010-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, CG delivered a very good training on the Grapple system, something of holiness in the way he was totally in adequation with his topic.
What I liked the most in this visit to the Leuven's team was the invitation of ST to pick me up at the station and the discussions in Dutch
Spent the day preparing the work that I will have made by the secretary (logs calculations)
LMP plenaries are getting better since some parts of them now take place in Dutch

2010-05-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

One week ago, some lab's members were in Leuven, visiting Phil Beauvoir, in search for synergies. I doubt that this will bring anything. A guy show us a table where you can create music by choosing sounds with a touch screen and visualisations. Nice craft aspect of the whole thing. But what for? I ask whether the two inventors ever asked a music teacher his opinion about this. No sound this time. My subconscious probably talked through my actions because I disturbed all the infra-red beams of the table when I tried it out. When asked later on what I thought about this prototype, I diplomatically answered "fragile". Nevertheless, this team is more focused than we are. Good discussions with ST

2010-05-17T12:00:00.001-07:00

Treatment of the qualitative data of the survey. Difficult. A bit inspired by the notion of "outputs space" coined by phenomenography
So sad that C. W. did not answer to my too e-mails. I do not see why, all the more so that I would have understood a "no time for this". But the silence...
Relieved of the preparation of the grapple training. I will attend as a participant. Time saved and good for the project since we have only 2 or 3 attendees. Tx to Dr. Fisch.

2010-05-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

icoper meeting
arrangements for the grapple meeting
arrangements with the secretary regarding the lice conference
phone call to the belastingen dienst (for Belgium and the Netherlands)
The morning is already behind with these miscelaneous
in the afternoon, I try to get rid of my dangerous knowledge tour, an url developed with the recourse authoring tool
usually, I am indifferent but today, they (6 colleagues) played about 2 hours at this halo game. It forced me to wait between the sessions for CG's explanations. And my nice Musica Religiosa was replaced by the sound of weapons and the dying cries (not realistic by the way, as usual). After two years, I am still waiting for their experiment on this game. Around in OUNL, and till Sint Meerten school, the Media Lab is more famous for this game than for its outputs.

2010-05-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

Finished "Meaning, internalization and externalization, towards a fuller understanding of the process of reflection and its role in the construction of the self", Alison Le Cornu. To be reread
Finished "Consultation as a framework for practice", Patsy Wagner
Finished "Learners' reflections in technological learning environments, why to promote and how to evaluate", Rimor & Kozminsky
Rewrote to Dr. Chris Watkins
My paper "Personal Learning Environment on a Procrustean Bed – Using PLEM in a Secondary-School Lesson" is accepted by the LICE conference (http://www.liceducation.org/Home.html). I am glad that this work won't be lost because it brings real data from the field and raise questions both regarding the use of complex technologies and regarding meta-learning
The Belgian daily La Libre Belgique published my column (Education, parle-t-on des bons sujets ?) about John Hattie's book "Visible learning, a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement": http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/article/578522/education-parle-t-on-des-bons-sujets.html

2010-04-29T01:58:00.000-07:00

Finished "Lodge, C. (2005). From hearing voices to engaging in dialogue: Problematising student participation in school improvement".
Lab plenary (very short)
Much more regular on dutch vocabulary training thanks to the wonderful Vokabel tool. The effects of this daily training go beyond vocabulary. I must stick to that pace.

2010-04-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

perceived contribution of the amplifiers to learning
anova on the metacognitive awareness inventory, maas, need for cognition instruments
status sent to MS
rejected at the SIG metacognition (http://www.metacognition2010.de/index.html)
not accepted for a presentation at the greenwich conference (http://web-dev-csc.gre.ac.uk/conference/conf62/index.php?p=659). I am offered a poster. I will not go.

2010-04-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Last reading of the IJTEL paper. I miss CG again. I wanted to reference his new paper. But as I did not see him on skype, I dropped the idea. Two minutes after my sending the paper, he was online. It strangely reflects our relationship.
I came back to the recourse exercise and realized that I forgot many things since the workshop. I did not want to go around in my notes and in the manual. I asked CG to allow me one hour to get explained the last bits in the quickest way.
I started the treatment of the prequestionnaire of the study
So sorry that Chris Watkins did not answer my e-mail containing a small, I think, request

2010-04-27T09:10:00.001-07:00

yesterday, I finalized the IJTEL paper. The whole task costs 3 or 4 days. This is probably too much.

2010-04-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

Finished "Explorations in metalearning from a narrative stance". This is clearly the field I want to be in. Major convergences but also a divergence: has really metalearning to change the school? Can't it be used to enrich and make more meaningful what we have, what we live?
WW complains that there are only males in the Learning media lab and only women in the learning and cognition service. He finds this unhealthy. But I guess that he would find perfectly healthy that homosexuals adopt a child.
I spend much time on modifications to the IJTEL paper.

2010-04-21T07:27:00.001-07:00

Column proposed to La Libre Belgique
Read the hot seat with Engeström: http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/index.php/forum/topic?id=27 I should have raised a question about the link between explansive learning and metalearning

2010-04-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Meeting with WW around the IJTEL article. Good pieces of advice from this sharp mind, as usual, especially the general recommendation to provide the right expectations straight from the summary
MS asks me if I would mind to have CG as a daily supervisor. Oh, yes, I would. I definitely want to keep WW till the end. And it would not be a nice present to Christian neither.
Afscheid cadeau voor TdJ
Genesis 1 in two languages
Photocopies of documents for belgische belastingdienst
Some Dutch during the icoper meeting
Enquête Bedrijfsrestaurant La Cour

2010-04-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, tough work on the IEEE TLT article. I limited my effort because I do not really need this paper for the PhD as the first conference version was already qualified to be inserted. My main concern was to put this behind me and to pass the stick to CG
e-mail to CW to ask him to send documents quoted in his article but not founded on the Web
found other articles documented the narrative approach
no Dutch, helas

2010-04-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Tough work the whole day long on the IJTEL paper accepted with modification
Finished C. Watkins article. I had this presentiment that this person would be important to me. And when I re-read this article, "je me trouvais, soudain, devant la porte d'une chambre dont jusqu'alors la cleft me manquait. Une chambre où j'avais toujours voulu pénétrer et où lui-même se mouvait pleinement à l'aise. Je me vis encouragé et stimulé : quelqu'un venait d'exprimer ce que j'avais toujours voulu dire sans savoir comment" (Ingmar Berman about Andreï Tarkovski).

2010-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Two hours spend on reviewing BS phd proposal
The rest on finalizing the draft of the article including first statistics
I notified my interest in becoming reviewer for "Computers in Human Behavior"

2010-04-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

still muddling about a "fascinating experiment"
printed the documents sent by the excellent Chris Watkins. Many convergence with my own article in Policy futures in education regarding the definitions and alternative approaches to personalised learning
meeting PhD. Again a colleague appointed by an educational institution forgets to raise the issue of what is learnt in her presentation. The only thing I take from these 2 hours: www.mendeley.com, to be teste soon because I am sure that something can do better than Endnotes
RK, again, cancel a meeting without notice
Prepared the work of the secretary (preparing my statistical treatment of some data)

2010-03-31T02:40:00.001-07:00

I replay the recording of my evaluation meeting with a mix of excitation and discomfort. This is an exercise which trains humility.

2010-03-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

I sent the last long-term retention questionnaires
I answered SK survey (1 hour instead of the 20' announced)
CW from my committee, after very good comments, send me additional documents
very intense evaluation meeting. Each committee member make important aspects showing up. I do not regret the time I spent on this meeting preparation.

2010-03-25T03:03:00.000-07:00

Dry-run for my presentation at the lab plenary. Two good pieces of advice.

2010-03-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

Found back a nice site for free clip art (www.clker.com). I had only one image coming from it. Strangely enough, my only move to this site was not recorded in my Google history. In the image features (tab "Web"), I found the name of the image but a search on Google did not return anything. The same for the image search engine Picsearch. But http://www.tineye.com, which work with image recognition, succeeded (1 result searched over 1.3717 billion images in 0.842 seconds).
Why do I decide to fetch Schön's book now? Because I masticated the information I had about this ladder of reflection. I could not close the loop. I found that results of my reflection were insufficient. I could have dropped the whole thing but I would have lost one hour. I am not sure that what I will find in the book will prevent this waste of time but maybe, so let's grab it (and maybe loose an additional hour or win the two).
Worked very hard and longer than expected on my presentation. Why is it better?

- Improvement of the "thank you" page;
- Concrete examples of amplifiers come earlier
- A rationale for the importance of reflection added (WW), with 3 illustrations
progressive presentation of the classification framework (WW)
- reference to the published article
- qualification of the type of study carried out: three-levels exploratory study (ww)
- rearrangement of the 4 last slides into clear tresholds: expected insights, future research challenges, study 3 and 4
- systematic articulation between options for study 3 and 4 and research challenges
- things turned to positive, and assumptions deleted or turned to research challenges orexpected insights

2010-03-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

As usual, WW gives me a brilliant feedback on the slideshow for Monday (1st year evaluation meeting). He is very skilled at turning negative things to challenges. He is very aware of the moment when it becomes confused. It asks me to learn not to say OK but I will think about it.
Copy of Butler & Winne (Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoreticalsynthesis), the n°1 reference of CG. I always try to create shared understanding and knowing him this article is probably excellent. I am grateful to him that he took under his responsibility the presentation to the German company.
SK tells me that he "passed" his first evaluation. It sounds strange to me when he says that he does not know anymore what the committee members said. For me it is first-class material to internalize.
BS asks me to review its final proposal. I do it gladly. I like reviewing. It is a teacher's job.
One problem with reflection is that you cannot easily measure it.
Downloaded http://www.antikoerperchen.de/vokabeltrainer/englisch/ for Dutch

2010-03-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

1,5 hour spent on the "marketing text" that each PhD must produce for a portal intended to attract additional external PhD students.
New battery for my computer

2010-03-19T03:04:00.000-07:00

Earli SIG 16 Metacognition came back to me and suggested that I submit a paper to http://www.metacognition2010.de/index.html Done this morning.

2010-03-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Liferay/stoer training: 3 full hours in Dutch. I feel good!
1,5 day to finalize the paper for http://www.liceducation.org/
Regarding the Greenwich conference (http://web-dev-csc.gre.ac.uk/conference/conf62/index.php?p=659) seems less open than last year. I submitted anyway (1 day)
It is tricky to manage these minor submissions. There is a true risk of having wasting time. On the other hand, it would be shameful that these results would not go public somehow.

2010-03-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

yesterday Recourse training. Good tool but I have in mind all the hours that I and four colleagues spent on a self-managed familiarization. In vain because we did not start from the basics, we got lost in flawed paths, we gave attention to details and had not not the critical things in sight. It was my impression that some kind of preliminary training was needed but no one listened. The same regarding our capacity to deliver new scenarios for Burgos. But we said yes and of course it was no. I liked that MS admitted this waste of time.
phd meeting. Opened on a quotation of Lao Tsi.
CG asks me which religion I teach.
Relieved that I do not have to spend much time on the workshop with this company Factor5.

2010-03-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

eta-square AND difference to Cohen's d It does not seem to worry many people. The presentation of the first result of the experiment (relation reflection amplifiers and performance) will have taken 2 days of investigation and cross-checks.
submission to http://www.gre.ac.uk/e-conference (half a day)

2010-03-12T02:35:00.000-08:00

I finalized the documents for the first year evaluation meeting
My PhD committee is really great (Terry Anderson, Maria Bannert, Dieudonné Leclercq, Paul Kirshner, René Van Hezewijk, Chris Watkins). MS did a great job. I am happy that my first article already quotes 3 of them. I read already papers from two others. And I will find and read writings from the last one.
One student complained about the lack of variety in the French course. He does not see any relevance in looking again and again for hyperbols in texts. He would be more challenging things. But this teacher is, and it is understandable, obsessed with the baccalaureat and drill the pupils with the same kind of exercises they will have at this occasion.

2010-03-11T00:59:00.000-08:00

"La formation de la faculté d'attention est le but véritable et presque l'unique intérêt des études". Simone Weil (Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires en vue de l'Amour de Dieu).

"The training of awareness-related skills is the genuine purpose and nearly the unique interest of tuition". Simone Weil (Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires en vue de l'Amour de Dieu).

2010-03-11T00:50:00.000-08:00

chi square for significance of frequencies
T Student for significance of means (2 groups only)
Anova for significance of means (multigroup)
Cohen d for effect size (but what happens to an effect size in a group where means and frequencies are not significant?)

1,5 day to prepare the first year evaluation meeting with PhD committee members. WW asks for an additional paragraph devoted to technological achievements

Lent Lunch at school

2010-03-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

a PhD student gives a presentation and lists all fields which are concerned by his research. I raise a naive question: "what about pedagogy?" Typical of this institution married to technology for the best or the worst
spent my whole day with anova and student test
i explicitely request not to come to a meeting because it is my only reason to waste one hour in my car and it does not seem to me an important meeting. The responsible asks me to be there. He arrives one hour late. The other does not come (he warned the responsible who does not seem to remember) and the last one send an e-mail this morning to inform of his non participation. Result, without t-test: I am the only one for the meeting.
i do my duty for the lab, spending two hours on mindmeister-related things.
a major work today: producing the needed documents for the first-year meeting with the phd committee.

2010-03-05T06:14:00.000-08:00

Finalization of the rewards (Mindmeister at last answers, and positively)
Export of the post-questionnaire results from Questback
Schedule of the last questionnaire (retention). Test persons must receive it 6 weeks after their filling in the post questionnaire. Use of http://www.timeanddate.com

2010-03-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

icoper meeting. Nothing taken. Two things offered (8 european key competences + tuning project). It is concurrently incredible and shameful that these European projets so seldom build on previous results. This guy is looking for competencies framework. Tuning carried out studies on curriculum with thousands of teachers in Europe, the european council has defined 8 key competences and he thinks he has to reinvent everything. But he had a good move: he asked ounl for help. But why if no participant to the meeting knows these works?
Also so often this ambition to develop very ambitious things that would resist times and places whereas they are not capable to provide any local working example.

2010-03-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

Discussion with MS on editing a book, writing a book chapter or answering to Brussilovski e-mail which gives a king of wild card because our article was among the best papers at ECTEL.
Time spent on making rewards/incentives for test persons concrete (e-mails to OF, NK, WW, MS, JS, Mindmeister). I hope it will be useful in the future, and not only to me.
It seems that I will supervise a student with WW. Good.

2010-03-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Celstec plenary: I learnt at a strategic level how you deal with weaknesses of an institution and the kind of solution implemented. This learning is partly useful now (how my own personal initiatives or Lab's initiatives are tuned to this compas) and partly useful for 10 years onwards, if I have to grapple with initiatives at this level. But the benefit of this learning might never be actualized.
phd meeting. I took one thing: www.nwo.nl/NWOhome/nsf/pages/NWOA_6KJDL5L And I hope that I also provided one or two valuable contributions.
workshop IMS-LD. The 5 of us spent much time on Recourse. Some of us found what appeared as smart solutions. But everything was washed away by one sentence of Rob Koper. Would have been possible to prevent this time and effort spending? We also seem to use a specific tool for very generic needs. This nice sentence: "I do not say you cannot do that. But I look for elegance".

2010-03-01T04:59:00.000-08:00

listing of all possible rewards for WW
mail of marcus about editing a book on personalisation for IGI Global . I spend 1 hour to really figure out what it is about
correction group 4
afternoon on analysis facilities embedded in questback (vergelijking, kruistabel, filter). This is like reflection. Very useful but very invisible (no direct output).
I wish I started this journal earlier (but souvenirs can come back)

2010-02-25T23:52:00.001-08:00

Today, a few hours on the final test correction (group 4 - reflection amplifiers type 2 : "I reflect by giving information).
I am thinking of possible rewards for my kind volunteers.

2010-02-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

yesterday, discussion with CGL. Difficult start. Good end (at last, I have the feeling that something has been shared, that common understanding and mutual knowledge improved)
yesterday, lab plenary. The rooms come back. It means one more thing to devote time to in addition to Recourse and the "consultancy" for icoper. Wonderful: 10 minutes in Dutch
WW finds that the master plan for the study is a good start. He rightly suggests some additional statistical tests.
Looked into the file where PKI has put some documents of interest for PhDs and researchers. And of course, I pick up some interesting things. When a great guy, with lots of experience, gathers resources he finds of high quality, it is always a gold mine.

2010-02-24T06:17:00.000-08:00

- Again too much time spent on these ims-ld things. the whole day on selecting, describing, visualizing (new nice tool: http://sourceforge.net/projects/prolix-glm), posting the three show cases

- re-sent my small contribution to icoper (reflective learning method)

- discussion with M. Bijker about the validity of the meta-learning related questionnaires

- not enough Dutch as usual

2010-02-23T05:02:00.000-08:00

Study closed

I correct the tests (reminders disabled by Steinn)

Workshop Grapple cancelled

CG scoped the objectives of the workshop down and nicely revamped the material accordingly

http://www.clker.com

http://www.openamplify.com

Howard says that "ik moet pauseren"

Spent time understanding the columns of Moodle item analysis table, especially discrimination index and coefficient

I see that the export to excel are nice but do not wrap up all needed information. It means that they can be grabbed only manually

PC accu

In search for participants in a 2 hours online course on Web usability issues

2009-12-07T02:02:00.000-08:00

As a PhD student of CELSTEC (Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies, Open University of the Netherlands), I am working on the topic of structural improvements of online courses. For my first experiment I focus on attention during learning.

As a test person, you will be asked to study – reading textual resources, achieving the best possible mastery of the content, answering a final test, thinking about your learning processes – in an online course of about 2 hours, delivered in English and covering material related to Web usability. The course will be accessible via the Web from January (see the detailed schedule below).

Should you decide to take part, you will:

learn about 5 fundamental principles of Web usability. Web usability is a quality attribute that expresses how easy Websites can be used. If you are advanced in that field, you'd better not go for this experiment, though refreshing and confronting your current knowledge to the content of the course could be valuable;
learn about your learning processes and profiles since you will receive your personal results for the psychological questionnaires used in the survey as long with the needed documents to interpret them;
receive a special diploma attesting your successful participation in this course;
receive the full report of the experiment.

Hereafter, you see the process in a snapshot:

From December 15th, 2009 till January 31th, 2010
a. You drop me an e-mail if you are interested to take part in the study.
b. As soon as I get your e-mail, I send you the link to the pre-questionnaire intended to establish some personal characteristics and preferences.
c. You fill in the pre-questionnaire. You will need 15 minutes for the mandatory part and 10 minutes for the voluntary part if you decide to take it.
January 31th, 2010 till February 19th, 2010
a.I send you an invitation to the Moodle course "5 Web usability principles".
b. You cover the course (2 hours), you take the final test (20 minutes). You fill in the post-questionnaire.
March 1st, 2010 till April 15th 2010
a. I send you an invitation for the last questionnaire linked to the course and you complete it in 10 minutes.
April 2010
a. You receive:
- a course certificate attesting your successful participation in this course;
- your personal results to the psychological questionnaires used for the study and the documents needed to interpret your results.
July 2010
a. You receive the full report of the study.

Please note that Internet Explorer cannot be used to cover the Moodle course. Other browsers must be used, with preference for Firefox or Google Chrome. With regard to the pre- and post-questionnaire, Internet Explorer is fine.

You want to participate? Great! Please, drop an e-mail to sergentvitamine@gmail.com

Many thanks.

Dominique Verpoorten,
CELSTEC
Open University of the Netherlands
Heerlen, the Netherlands