This post was originally posted on the closed ALT members list, it seemed to generate interest so I’ve reproduced it here.

The power of little data

Most of what I’ve come across in terms of Learning Analytics is thinking in terms of big data, an example problem:  We’re tracking our 300 first years, given the hundreds of measures we have on the VLE and hundreds of thousands of data points, can we produce an algorithm that uses that big data to identify those in danger of dropping out and how should we best intervene to support them.  Fine, a worthy project.  

However, it isn’t the only way of tackling the problem.  Could we visualize key milestones, say a count of how many of the key course readings a student has accessed each week so that the tutor can easily scan the students’ progress? It would look a bit like this:

At a glance, the tutor can identify non progressing students, she should then be able to drill down for more data (e.g. how much an individual student has been posting in forums) and intervene with the students in whatever way they think best.

The problem becomes one of deciding what key measures should be used (you could even make it customizable at the tutor level so THEY choose the key measures) and how to visualize it successfully.  I haven’t seen any VLE learning analytics dashboard that is up to the job IMHO (although I haven’t done a proper search).  When compared to big data LA I think this ‘little data’ approach is:

– more achievable, 

– has less ethical implications and 

– neatly side steps the algorithm transparency problem: its the tutor’s expertise that is being used and that’s been going since teaching was introduced.

The screenshot comes from a prototype system I built to help track progress on a flipped learning course I used to deliver at Southampton Uni, I found that telling the students I was tracking their progress proved an excellent motivator for them to keep up with the out of class activities.  Little data and flipped learning was the topic of a  talk I did in 2014 at Southampton Uni.

I am responsible for a set of online tutorials (video and audio) and I’ve found Skype unsatisfactory, problems include:

• not connecting students who are online to a multiuser call
• difficult to understand interface

I’ve done some research and hangouts seems to work well on all the common browsers and mobile devices.  My Geo-Google colleagues all swear by it and its also more intuitive which is a common characteristic of Google software IMHO.

So we’re piloting a tutorial using Hangouts.  I’ve prepared some notes for students to run through prior to coming on the call which I thought might be useful for someone thinking of trying out hangouts instead of Skype.

I went to some of the training sessions on accessibility run by JISC organised by University of Hertfordshire on 8/6/16.  I thought I’d write up some notes to share.

Legal Motivation

Universities have a duty of care to ‘make all reasonable accommodations’ to our teaching and teaching materials to make them accessible. It is advisable to be anticipatory about this, if an organisation has a paper trail of embedding accessibility that creates a better defence in case we are taken to court and have done nothing. Different Universities have done more or less, in general, the more effort made the lower the risks are.  Risks are low but the impact of them is potentially high especially to our reputation.

Range of users

There are a range of users of teaching materials, some are disabled but don’t want to admit it, some are on a scale that means they could benefit from accessibility but who wouldn’t explicitly ask for it.  Most students will avoid using usability tools if they can avoid it – they don’t like being seen as different.

What could be done by tutors

There are a range of easy actions that could increase accessibility of materials with low cost in terms of time and culture change.  A lot of these include good pedagogic practice anyway and can give rise to productivity benefits to all students. Examples:

• Any word document should have headings and sub headings marked using heading styles (HI, H2 etc. as has been done with this report). This creates a structure that is easy to navigate around using a screen reader and can create a navigation bar for all students (View > Side Bar > Document map pane)
• When transferring from word to PDF, there is a tick box to save the structure so adobe reader will act the same as word for screen readers.
• Add a caption to all images so that screen readers can get a version of the image.
• When adding a link, these should be named something meaningful like ‘Treves report 2016’ rather than ‘click here’ as screen readers scan through links sometimes converting the text to words.
• When discussing accessibility with students, term it ‘productivity’ as this is more attractive to students.

What could be done in induction for students

There are a number of things that could be offered to students in induction e.g.:

• Encourage them to install and use screen reader for word/chrome if needed
• Encourage them to add contrast plugins for chrome if they need it.

Harder Goals

Producing text versions of video and audio content is benefitial but clearly involves a big investment of time. Ebooks vary widely in their accessibility for students, PDF based images of text are impossible for screen readers to scan.  What format are our ebooks in and what can we do about it if they aren’t in an accessible format?

Discussion

A number of aspects of accessibility struck me. Inviting tutors to accessibility training is liable to be unpopular, why would they want to solve a problem they didn’t know they had?   Better if we drip bits of accessibility into other training and support given to tutors.

The big take away that occurred to me is the link between flipped learning and accessibility.   Students with common issues such as dyslexia, blindness and mental issues are all helped if they can access text versions of materials that that form the backbone of the course rather than have to learn by being sat in lectures.  Flipped learning can help them by providing the out of class work in text form which can then be read by screen readers or read at students speed rather than listened to at ‘lecture delivery speed’.  The class sessions of flipped learning are flexible so it also allows tutors to accomodate students needing more support.

Flipped learning often uses video, to be truly accessible, text versions of these need to be produced.  A quick and dirty way of doing this is by uploading to YouTube, you can enhance the experience further by use of synote which allows a transcript to be synced with the video. 

Useful Links

• Screenreader plugin for chrome, free
• High Contrast plugin for chrome, free
• Self Assessment tool for library resources (JISC)
• Assistive technology for accessibility (JISC)

Intro: So I’ve been busy writing papers recently and, after a lot of experimenting, I’ve come up with a workflow which I like using mind maps to collate the literature and plan the paper’s structure.  It would probably work well for other spatial thinkers so I thought I’d write it out:

1] Work out the topic area you want to write about.  Start gathering relevant papers as PDFs.

2] For each paper, go through it highlighting the relevant parts to the paper you’re thinking of writing (I use Acrobat Pro).

3] Create a mind map, Xmind free version is the one I use.   For each paper, create a new node on the left* side of the mind map.  Branching out from the node, summarise the paper relevant to your planned paper in a series of points.

4]  When you’ve got a fair few papers noted in this way, start planning the structure of the paper on the right side of the mind map.  Each major section, (introduction, conclusion, methods etc.) gets a node of its own.

5] Branching out from each of the section nodes, write notes on what you will write.  Don’t write actual text at this point.

6] Now start populating the right hand side with references from the left hand side.  This will drive you to rewrite the detail on the right hand side.

7] Now iterate adding new papers as needed, incorporating them in the paper structure on the right and editing the paper structure.

8]  When you’re mostly happy with the structure run through all the papers one by one reviewing their relevance and seeing where they could be fitted on the right where they haven’t already been added.

9] Now repeat but run through the structure on the right hand side reviewing every branch.  You should be moving structure nodes around in the structure, deleting them or adding detail as necessary.

10]  The paper writing is now just a matter of execution, write it starting at the introduction using the structure on the mind map as a guide.   The abstract should wait until last.

Structure first:  The advantage of this is that it encourages you to fix the large scale structure of the paper before getting into the actual sentences that make up the paper.  If you can decide a node is not needed and delete it in the mind map then you’ve saved yourself the work of writing it out in full and then having to delete it.

Map of your paper: I also like the process of panning around a mind map editing things, it appeals to me to work spatially in this way rather than the more ‘linear’ scrolling up and down a long document.

Short study times on the train: A final advantage was that I used iAnnotate to highlight papers (step 2) on my iPad writing notes on apple notes.  This can be done on a short journey such as a half an hour train trip.  I’d later import the notes into the mind map.   

*or the right, if you prefer.  You’d just switch the structure over to the left as well.

So for a while I have been interested in finding software that allows tutors with low IT skills to author web based material.  The tools within VLEs such as Blackboard and Moodle are clunky to say the least and leave a lot to be desired in terms of navigation design.

For a long time I advocated eXe, it allowed tutors to:

• Create text, embed images easily
• Create and manage structure of the pages (move page up or down, become a child page of a parent)
• Export as html
• Responsive design (looks good on a mobile device)

in a usable way while hiding the CSS and HTML code away from tutors.   However, it was limited because it wasn’t online:  tutors couldn’t collaborate on materials easily.

Over the last few days I’ve been playing around with OneNote class which is part of Education Office 365 and I’m really impressed with what it can do.  Basically it does all of the things eXe does but its a cloud service so course materials can be shared with a team who can work on it at the same time.  It allows course content to be viewed by students but not edited but also includes a wiki space where students can collaborate (pretending its a forum for example) on tasks.

VLE lite:  In fact, with One Note you have most of the ingredients of a VLE.  What its lacking is:

• Analytics:  E.g. what have students looked at in the content
• History:  There is no way to roll back changes to a previous version

but definitely worth considering.

Why

Screencasting is a technique where the screen is recorded with an added audio channel.  There are a number of reasons to use it in an educational setting I can think of:

• Record lectures to use as pre-session learning in a flipped learning style
• Mark students formative work as a screencast, look at their word document or similar and ‘ink’ onto the screen as you talk them through how they did
• Walk students through a tricky software problem, i.e. howto submit an assignment.

Here’s an example from Khan academy which I think works really well

How

The how I’ve covered in a recent post, my favoured tool (for non-techies) is office mix, an add-on to powerpoint (another howto tutorial).  I have recently found out that it doesn’t work on the Mac version of PowerPoint (Microsoft, please get a grip) and of course, you may not use PowerPoint.  If this is the case I have had good experiences of Screencast-o-matic with whatever the presentation software is that you want to use.