Cetis Blogs - expert commentary on educational technology » admin_cetis

Open Badges, Tin Can, LRMI can use InLOC as one cornerstone

admin_cetis — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 08:42:53 +0000

There has been much discussion recently about Mozilla Open Badges, xAPI (Experience API, alias “Tin Can API“) and LRMI, as new and interesting specifications to help bring standardization particularly into the world of technology and resources involved with people and their learning. They have all reached their “version 1″ this year, along with InLOC.

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#cetis13 highlights by @eventamplifier

admin_cetis — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:04:16 +0000

Anyone who organizes conference knows – it’s hard work. So for this year’s #cetis13 conference, we drafted in some help in the form of Kirsty Pitkin and her team from TConsult.

As well as delivering the live stream they did some reporting on sessions for us. To get a taste of the conference have a look at their highlights:

http://storify.com/eventamplifier/cetis-conference-day-1-highlights

http://storify.com/eventamplifier/cetis-conference-day-2-highlights

(recordings of keynotes and interviews will be available soon)

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CETIS13: Open for Education, 12-13th March

admin_cetis — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:15:28 +0000

Registration for this year’s CETIS conference Open for Education is now, er, open. It’s hard to believe that this will be our ninth conference, Jisc, CETIS and the higher and further education sector have gone through many changes since 2004. But some things haven’t changed, including our belief that open approaches (data, standards, software) have much to offer institutions, that’s why this year we’re focusing on the open theme.

As always the conference will be a combination of keynotes and parallel discussion sessions. This year we are delighted to have Josie Fraser and Patrick McAndrew offering their thoughts on Digital Citizenship and Open Social and Open Education respectively. The parallel sessions will be “unashamedly technical” offering an opportunity for the development community to discuss new technologies and opportunities. The full programme is available but briefly;

* On Day 1, Wilbert will be hosting a session on the IMS QTI v2.1 specification and exploring which assessment profiles the community wants,

* Adam will be exploring issues around how organisations use their data assets in HE Information Landscape – Seize the Day,

* As the UKOER programme comes to an end Lorna and Phil will be asking how do projects and the community build momentum and open practice,

* Paul and Li will be future gazing to look at the opportunities ahead both for the sector and for CETIS.

* On day 2, Scott will be asking what do Open Development and Open Innovation methods have to offer education,

* Simon and Adam will be asking what opportunities might emerge for skills and competence when standards have been agreed,

* In the Analytics and Institutional capabilities session Sheila, Martin and David will be exploring how analytic dreams can become realities for institutions,

* And finally, Mark will be hosting an Open Mic session for delegates who have something to say!

If that has whetted your appetite, join us (for free!) at the Lakeside Centre, Aston by registering on our Eventbrite page:http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3938857228

We look forward to seeing you in March.

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Eric Mazur – Confusion is Good

admin_cetis — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:59:28 +0000

It sounds counter intuitive but that was one of the messages from the opening keynote at this year’s ALT conference by Eric Mazur Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. Eric’s keynote began with a plea “Let’s not abandon the scientific method when teaching”. My colleague Martin Hawksey has blogged about some of the brain activity data that Eric opened his presentation with, and Sheila MacNeill has been thinking about conference tweeting. I’d like to mention some of the research Eric has carried out with students in his Harvard physics course around the question “Does confusion indicate a lack of understanding?”.

Students were asked to read a chapter of a textbook before class and then asked three questions about the concepts covered. The first two questions asked for explanations of the concepts covered while in a third feedback question they were asked to give details of anything they were confused about. What the student’s answers showed is that 75% of students who said they weren’t confused in the third question actually got the first two questions wrong. What the data revealed is counter intuitive – that confusion can be good – and may be an indication of deeper thinking.

Eric’s talk reminds me (I can’t resist a personal anecdote) of something one of my teachers said to me after one of my A level exams (many years ago). After asking how hard the exam was they added, “only the good students can gauge how difficult an exam is”. For me the comment relates to Eric’s conclusions about confusion, you need a certain depth of understanding to be confused, or understand how difficult an exam is.

Mazur’s talk also covered research on gender differences in tests and the best way to teach demonstrations, and is well worth watching.

His slides are available at: http://mazur.harvard.edu/search-talks.php?function=display&rowid=1815
The two other keynotes at this year’s conference, by Natasa Milic-Frayling and Richard Noss will also be broadcast live, links are on the conference website http://altc2012.alt.ac.uk/pages/watch_live_sessions.

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Facelift for JISC CETIS Newsletter

admin_cetis — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:15:09 +0000

I finally got around to giving our monthly newsletter an overdue facelift. In response to feedback we’ve cut down the content to the top 10 blog posts instead of the nearly 40 posts that we actually write in a month.

Here’s a screen grab of the new format:

JISC CETIS newsletter

I decided to use the JISCMAIL templates to create the new format and was really surprised how easy the templates were to use. I would recommend them if you’re doing something similar.

The other advantage is that we now have a nicely formatted web version of the newsletter that we can point people to on twitter etc.

So the million dollar question: What do you think?

Is the content more accessible? Are there the right number of news items? Are you more likely to read our posts now?

The full version is available at:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=CETIS-ANNOUNCE%3bf67485a2.1207p

I look forward to your comments….

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