Happy 82nd Birthday Dad!

March 31st means only one thing in our family - my Dad's birthday. He was born on this day in 1931, and this year his birthday fell on Easter Sunday, so it was time for a family get-together to help him celebrate. We had a great day and sang "Happy Birthday" with gusto. Dad certainly enjoyed the occasion and looked great for 82 years young.

Happy Birthday Dad from all your family!

Good Friday - a day off or a religious day?

Today is Good Friday and I am at home this morning because the College is closed and there are no classes or work today. Many other businesses are closed as has been the practice on Good Friday's for centuries. Luckily for us it is not counted out of our holidays even though it is not a Bank Holiday. It is a religious day that the custom is that it is also a company holiday. Added to Easter Monday, this makes for a nice long weekend (personally I would rather have the days off in the summer).

Image source: Calvarya.Org.

Days "off" for religious occasions are now a bit dated to my mind. Later this afternoon I will be joining my fellow choir members for Good Friday Prayers in a church that will be no more than one-quarter full. The vast majority of people who have today "off" will not set foot in a Church. Should the day be given "off" for those not attending church? Should you get a card stamped by the priest to prove you were at Prayers so that you can claim the day "off"? If you are not a Christian, should you get the day "off"? What about other religious days like Christmas?

As religion is paying less and less of a role in people's lives, perhaps it is time to declare days like Good Friday as official Bank Holidays and call it what it now is - a day off. WWJD?

Flipping Classes and Flipping Academics

No - I'm not cursing or cooking! The concept of flipping classes has been around for sometime - at its simplest it is about doing homework/exercises in class, and taking the class at home (perhaps via a video). Sounds good to me and could make better use of class time. But I don't do it, and at the moment don't plan to do so. It could work very well for me in Project Management classes - this subject can be a bit boring (see my previous post about this - You can't polish a turnip). I already have some short videos that are available to students to prepare for tutorials - however I have noticed that quite a lot do not view the videos beforehand, preferring instead to view them in class, which of course defeats the intended purpose of the videos in the first place.

Claire Shaw, writing in The Guardian, in an article The flipped academic: turning higher education on its head, asks the questions "Can we also flip academics – or even academia itself?". She discusses how teachers and lecturers can "add value" to their classes in an age when it's "very hard to find a topic taught in universities for which there isn't also a free lecture available from someone world class". So this challenges us to think about how best to use class time, especially if a student can access top class content on-line.

Here are some useful items to remember from high-school teacher John Sowash that he wish he knew about flipping classes before he stared:

Khan Academy Video Content in Class - Official!

In the state of Idaho in the USA, a new initiative seeks to revolutionize learning by partnering with the Khan Academy to improve Mathematics skills in schools. The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation is funding the project to the tune of $1.5 million, the Northwest Nazarene University’s College of Education in Nampa, Idaho, will manage and facilitate the project. It is expected that more than "10,000 students in nearly four dozen schools across Idaho will log into newly created Khan Academy accounts during the 2013-14 school year as part of an initiative that aims to infuse technology into instruction and supplement teachers' curricula" (see EdWeek). The project is also aimed at teachers to equip them with videos, exercises, incentives and a data dashboard to monitor student progress - there is funding too for technology from the Foundation.

What a simple and great idea! If you have not already checked out the Khan Academy, I recommend that all students and educators should do so. I don't use the videos in class, but I have recommended individual videos in my Statistics classes, and I have use them in preparation for class. Salman Khan is an excellent teacher and is very skilled at doing so on-line. I see myself using it, and many other on-line educational resources such as YouTube EDU and iTunesU, a lot more. If there are excellent educational resources out there - let's embrace and use them. I don't think we have anything to fear from them.

Watch and listen to some Idaho teachers enthuse about the Khan Academy and what it means for them:

Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin in action (via @risketto) @YouTube

It's nice to know that other people are making use my YouTube Channel - I get some great (and some not-so-great) comments on the channel. One of my favourite comments, including a photo, comes via Twitter from @risketto (Angelica Risquez):

@eoloughlin http://t.co/7r1xYrm4 using your great presentation on project network diagrams at GAC Academic Forum workshop at UL ;-)

Learning about Project Network Diagrams.
Image source: Photo by Angelica Risquez (via Twicsy).

That's my video playing on an iPad, with an attentive audience! It looks like the group had a task to complete involving using a Project Network Diagram. I hope they found the video useful. 

This is why I do this.

The daily view figures passed 7,000 for the first time last Tuesday (19th), and did so again on Wednesday. Viewing figures continue to grow slowly, even though I haven't added any new videos for quite a few weeks now. Video is gaining a significant place in education, a topic I'll write about some more this week.

UPC Broadband - First Impressions @UPCIreland

It's exactly a week since the UPC engineers switched our broadband connection from Eircom to UPC and my first impressions are largely very positive. The 100 Mbps package does exactly what it says on the tin. I am getting 100 Mbps plus over an Ethernet cable from the router to my desktop PC in my home office. And it is consistent - I have run several speed tests over the past week and it comes up over 100 Mbps every time. Very happy with this - it is 25 times faster than our old Eircom connection, and it is cheaper too. This is a really fast connection - it is really noticeable when working with large files in Google Drive and SkyDrive.

UPC Broadband - Rápido!
Image source: WorldOfGnome.org.

However, WiFi within the house was poor. The UPC engineers told me to expect a 30% fall off to about 65 Mbps, but it never came close to this in any part of the house. It was as low as 4 Mbps upstairs, and my iPad could not pick up a signal in my bedroom. I tweeted about this to @UPCIreland who arranged for a Tech Support call. We checked and changed some settings, but to no noticeable effect.

This morning I moved the router to the centre of the house. This meant extra coaxial and Ethernet cabling. Despite never having worked with Ethernet cabling before, I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked. The WiFi is a lot stronger in the house, ranging from 20-40 Mbps - even upstairs. There are extra Ethernet slots on the router, so I'll probably hook these up so that my daughters get the best speed possible upstairs for their laptops.

The verdict? Very happy with UPC so far!

MOOC2Degree - another changing face of education

Nathan Ingraham, writing in The Verge, tells us that Forty public universities will offer free online courses with full credit starting this spring as part of an initiative called MOOC2Degree. As anybody working in education will know, MOOCs have gained huge publicity and traction of the past year or two, but have always lacked formal accreditation - a huge disadvantage compared to traditional degree courses.

Image source: Online Learning Insights.

These MOOC2Degree programmes will be "free online courses with full credit". If this works as a process, and I predict it will, free on-line education will finally pose a serious challenge to third-level Colleges, and perhaps 1st and 2nd levels in the near future.

Getting a degree on-line for free, from some of the top universities in the world will soon be possible. The cost of a laptop and a good Internet connection will always be way cheaper than tuition fees or going to College. The MOOC2Degree folks claim to be working with 40 public university partners in the USA. It's still in the early stages of development, but already looks very good to me. We educators will all be affected by this as courses will have to be restructured and developed for on-line delivery. There of course will be follow-on effects for College administrators and IT Depts - in short, the Learning Technology revolution that we have all been waiting for might actually be about to arrive?

Check out the following video from the www.mooc2degree.com and see for yourself what it is all about:

Compulsory Attendance at Lectures?

The Guardian Education blog, in a post by Joshua Feldman, this week poses the question Should university lectures be compulsory? Feldman writes that allowing "students to skip class undermines the sense of academic community that is so important to universities – especially in fields where there is an emphasis on sharing ideas". He also argues that missing classes undermines students' "own studies because it allows them to miss class if they haven't done the work, are too hungover, or simply can't be bothered. Although there are times when students productively miss class — to work on an assignment, for example — there are many when they do so against their better judgement". He finally concludes that "enforcing compulsory attendance is the only solution".

An almost empty lecture hall.
Image source: The Squint.

I have never been in favour of making attendance at lectures/labs/tutorials compulsory at third-level. In some of my classes which are marked - needless to say, attendance at these classes is only compulsory for students who want to get a grade (absence = 0%). I strongly feel that students are responsible for their own education, and if they choose to not attend a class, then that is their decision. I regularly teach to classes with attendance less than 50%, it even drops to 20% or less on occasion. Rarely do I see a full class, so I know that many students from my classes are elsewhere when I deliver a lecture.

I am perfectly aware of the many reasons why students do not attend class - I was a student once myself. It is also possible that a student might learn more from half an hour in the Library than attend one of my two-hour classes. Students learn in different ways. The main thing that worries me is that I know from anecdotal evidence that many students choose to skip my classes because they do not think the subject is important, and that it is easy and not requiring much effort or study. It also gets up my goat when students complain about their lecturers or that they did not know that something was coming up because they missed the announcement in class. Frequently I am quite harsh with students in a tutorial when they tell me that they do not know what's going on and I ask them "Were you at the lecture?" - and their answer is "no". 

In my recent posts I have criticized public bashing of our graduates, and in the matter of attendance - they may have a point. However, by staying away from class does not mean that students are always in bed sleeping off a hangover. It is a life lesson that if you skip a class that you are taking a risk of missing something important or learning something new. Failure/pass rates do not match absence/attendance rates. While of course there are students who are simply not bothered to show up at class, much of what students do is calculated. I don't think any of us can look back at our college days and say that we attended all classes. By missing some we did not become lessor people or less valuable to employers.

Wrong Again - "No-show students missing a life lesson" (via @IrishTimes)

The "To Be Honest" (TBH) column in the Irish Times from the 5th March last blasts that our "third-level system is a bubble that is divorced from reality" and that students seem "to have no interest in what industrial leaders want from them". This moan is in response to a low turnout to an event organised by a "professional institution that works to further the sharing of engineering knowledge". Furthermore, the article goes on to bitch and moan that "third-level institutions do not seem to be too bothered about trying to give our graduates the type of insight needed to get gainful employment". Strong stuff indeed, and followed by what Louse Phelan of PayPal thundered last week about our graduates having a "sense of entitlement", it has so far been a month when our third-level sector is taking a battering.

Employers view of our graduates.
Image Source: WordWatch.com.

In my response to Louise Phelan: Why PayPal boss is wrong about our graduates, I pointed out that students of very mixed variety and ability arrive through our doors in first year and leave four years later a much different person than when they arrived. The TBH column moans further that the "private sector finance third-level education in Ireland" - of course this is only partially true as both public and private sectors fund education through taxes with a large dollop of help from the good people of Germany and the UK.

I'd first question how attractive the event organised by the TBH writer was to students in the first place. 70 registered and only 10 "bothered" to show up - this can't all be due to lack of interest by the students. Promoting events to third-level students is a very competitive space where there are lots of other attractions. So please, don't think that just because you organise an event that students will be packing your talks so that your ego does not get hurt. It is a tough task to get people to any type of event - try the following three tips: Promotion, Promotion, and Promotion.

To Be Honest, I am feed up of people bashing the third-level system and moaning that our graduates are not fit for purpose. The Sunday Times University Guide (2013) reports that the National College of Ireland with a rate of 96% is "best for employment" of all our Colleges (read more about this here). If our graduates are so bad, why are they being hired? We must be doing something right?

Finally, I'd really like to know what kind of activity did the Louise Phelans and the TBHs of this world do while they were at College. Were they model students? How easy/hard was it for them to find a job when they graduated? Did they go to all the employer events? Did they study all the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace? Were they 100% productive in their first day on the job?

"Let the person among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone" (John 8:7).

Meet the Web's New Celebrities: Teachers (via WSJ)

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) earlier this month produced a video report - Meet the Web's New Celebrities: Teachers by Kelly Grant in which she reports that "the new web celebrities aren't pop stars or funny cats, they're teachers". Teachers and professors can "reach a huge student and fan base by moonlighting on-line". All you have to do is check out YouTube EDU to see how Google has a huge number of partners (including yours truly) doing exactly this - there are perhaps thousands more teachers/educators who are not YouTube Partners doing the same thing.

The WSJ report tells us that what is happening is that on-line education is "validating and creating a market for good teaching" and talks about teachers creating brands and earning extra money, including one teacher mentioned who earned $250,000 last year on via Udemy - Wow! Also there seems to be a opportunity for University professors who don't make much extra money to benefit by being invited to seminars and to speaker circuits. Check out the WSJ video for yourself and see what you think:

In my own modest way I have been doing this for almost 7 years now. Apart from once being reported on Silicon Republic in 2011 as a "YouTube Hit" for reaching 500,000 viewers, I have yet to reach celebrity or rock star status. What I think I am, and thousands of others are too, is a "micro-celebrity" - Clive Thompson (writing in Wired back in 2007) describes this as a "phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group". In the world of the Internet this is the most that many of us can aspire to. Many on-line educators have financial support behind them through sponsorship or from their Colleges. Most of us simply create videos that our own students need and make them available to others for free. The Internet is the great modern day judge - if the videos are good, people will watch and learn. If they are not good, they will not watch and will go to learn somewhere else.

Still - I'd fancy the idea of being an education celebrity - maybe as former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman might say: "(Si Si) Je suis un Rock Star"!

Finally - Hello UPC, Goodbye Eircom!

Great excitement in our house this morning with the arrival of UPC engineers to install fibre-optic broadband. They were very efficient and were in and out of the house in less than an hour. They connected the fibre cable to a co-axial cable which runs through the wall of our house - this is connected to a new modem in our office at the front of the house. As you can see in table below there is a stark difference between what Eircom were able to offer and what we now have from UPC.

Before (Eircom)	After (UPC)

But......

...they don't tell you when you order broadband that you can lose up to third of the speed over WiFi. I checked the speed on a laptop right beside the modem and sure enough it measured 74 Mbps - still impressive, but quite a drop over a few inches. The modem is at the front of our house, but 15 metres away at the back of the house the download speed drops to 34 Mbps. But much worse than this is the drop to 2.9 Mbps upstairs. I was not expecting this! So I'll be onto to UPC Tech Support for some advice on what to do, though I expect that this will mean extra cabling to move the modem closer to the centre of the house.

This also marks the end of our time as customers of Eircom. According to the UPC engineers today they have a full schedule and are very busy doing exactly what they did in our house - moving customers from Eircom to UPC. In the meantime, Eircom are sitting on their arses letting this happen - good luck with that business plan guys.

Why PayPal boss is wrong about our graduates

Peter Flanagan of The Irish Independent reported last Tuesday that the "PayPal boss says graduates are not hungry enough to succeed". Louise Phelan is quoted as saying that "A number of graduates don't seem to understand how to carry themselves in a workplace, but more importantly don't show an interest in learning how to do it", that they have a "sense of entitlement", and that there "is a sense that because they have a degree, then we should be grateful to have them". Strong stuff indeed from Phelan! She does point out that PayPal have some "superb graduates" working for them (I know this - some of them are graduates of NCI) - so at least it is not all doom-and-gloom?

Image source: ClipartPal.

Universities, Institutes of Technology, and other third-level Colleges such as NCI do have a duty to turn out the best graduates that we can. Our courses are aimed at providing the best education within our means - NCI's own mission statement is "To change lives through education", and I and my colleagues do our best to live up to this mission. 

One of the proudest moments for us all in the education system is Graduation Day. For me this is when I see young men and women graduating with pride three or four years after entering the College as boys and girls. The transformation is obvious to us all as these graduates embark on the next stage of their lives.

Here's my point why Louise Phelan is wrong...

We take in students of mixed ability, with different levels of intelligence and achievement to date, from different backgrounds, with different learning styles, with different levels of commitment and engagement in learning, some are juggling family life and part-time jobs with their study, some can barely afford to go to College and are living on the poverty line, some struggle with difficult content - and all this is done in cash-strapped Colleges. We have a very diverse student body in all senses walking in our door on the first day and leaving on the last day every year - and long may this continue I say.

So how do we turn this diverse student body into the perfect high quality graduates that Louise Phelan wants? The answer is that we can't! I'd love it if everybody got a First and that each graduate had a queue of potential employers lining up outside the door on Graduation Day - but I don't think is either possible or desirable. It is Louise Phelan that has the "sense of entitlement" to think that our third-level sector should be turning out perfect graduates every time.

For bosses to think that any College can take a person for three or four years (less than a sixth of the average 22 year old graduate's life) and make them perfect for their needs is living in fantasy land. Every organization is different (we teach this in our Organizational Behaviour modules), it is up to them to take our graduates and bring them to the next level. All we can do is help each student prepare themselves for the workplace as best we can in the short time that we have them. We are not factories turning out drones that don't have "their feet up on their desk" or "looking like they were out all night" all the time.

Habemus Papam Francescum!

I like the new Pope - Francis I. Like millions of Catholics (and non-Catholics) across the world I was glued to the News yesterday evening when the "white smoke" appeared over the Sistine Chapel. The drama of the time from the white smoke to the new Pope appearing at the window of St Peter's Basilica is hard to beat.

Today I hear that the former Cardinal Bergoglio is a humble man with modest tastes - he even took the bus after being appointed Pope instead of a limo. Perhaps this level of humility and common-touch is just what the Church needs. It would be good also if he did away with things like kissing rings and bowing before him. He has a lot of work to do to restore the Church (if this can even be done) to some respectability.

The crowd in St Peter's Square really looked like they were enjoying themselves and there seemed to be a great deal of excitement and anticipation. It was hard to believe that I was there only last Friday and missed all the excitement - I'd love to have been there.

The new Pope and I have something in common - the name Francis , which is my second name and his new Pope handle. I was given this name after my Grand Uncle Monsignor Charles Francis Hurley who I have previously written about here.

Weekend in Rome - Day #3

Sunday in Rome, only one thing to do in the morning and that is attend Mass. Our hotel (The Artimide on Via Nazionale) is close to the Santa Maria Maggiore church and off we went in search of some spirituality in the home of the Catholic Church. Mass had already started when we got there, this was just as well because everything was in Italian. This basilica is beautifully decorated in Byzantine style according to the guide books. It was quite busy and there were several priests on the altar backed up by a brilliant male voice choir who sang beautifully.

After Mass we wandered down towards the Colosseum again for another look - still awesome! This time we walked all around the site from the outside and made our way down to the nearby Circo Massimo which is now little more than a park, it was once a chariot racing and sports arena during the Roman Empire period (think of the Ben Hur movie). We continued past the Circo Massimo and checked out a local food market where there was delicious looking fresh food on display - a pity we were heading home later in the day.

We stopped at the In Roma café for a beer across from which is the site of the Tarpeian Rock (behind me in photo below) where the Romans executed criminals and traitors by throwing them off the rock. Rome was indeed a bloodthirsty place 2,000 years ago.

For a short while we separated - Roma did some shopping while I toured around a few more sites. At the Piazza del Quirinalle the President of Italy's palace is located. This was once the home of Popes and Italian kings. There were a lot of policemen and armed guards patrolling outside the building - this was a feature of a lot of Italian places where there seemed to be a lot of police. In one location I spotted eight policemen standing around together having a chat.

Back together we finished off our stay in Rome with one last delicious pizza near our hotel. We very much enjoyed our stay in Rome and vowed to return some day for a longer stay. It was a pity that we were not in Rome during the election of the new Pope, I'm sure St Peter's Square would have been quite the place to be for the "Habemus Papam" moment.

Weekend in Rome - Day #2

Today was a fine day weather-wise and we decided to check out the main ancient Roman sites at the Colosseum and the Forum. Our feet were tired from yesterday, but there is so much to see in Rome that we didn't mind.

First stop of the day was to the Collosseum - an almost 2,000 year old monument to the skills of the ancient Romans that mesmerized us both. As I walked up Via Dei Fori Imperiali I wondered what the Gladiators and other "those who are about to die" folks must have thought of it. It must have been terrifying. After yesterday's experience with the "Skip the line" touts we opted to join the queue and wait our turn. The queue did not seem very long, but it took 30 minutes to get to the top. It was €12 each with no audio guides available.

Even though the inside is a ruin, it is magnificent to behold. I enjoyed every second looking around the different levels and viewing the exhibits on the upper level. The place is steeped in history, some of it of the most savage kind. It was capable of seating over 50,000 spectators and it must have been a great atmosphere when lions were tearing the condemned apart or when the gladiators stuck swords and spears into one another.

After the Colosseum we visited the Roman Forum. This is less spectacular as it is basically pile of rubble with a few standing columns to keep some interest. We walked about and wondered what it must have been like in the days of toga wearing Roman Senators when they held court here. I'd liked to have spent a bit more time here, but we decided to head off for some lunch. 

The Victor Emmanuel monument is a spectacularly lavish memorial to the first king of Italy. It is so big you can see it from many streets around this part of Rome. It took over 50 years to complete. I first thought of how pompous it was to have built this for a king, but it is also in honour of the young unified Kingdom of Italy. You can go right to the top (final elevator costs €7 but is worth it) and get brilliant views all over Rome.

After this we made for the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain - two of Rome's most famous locations. At the Steps there was a huge crowd just chilling in the afternoon sun. There's not really that much to see except a lot of steps. We climbed them all and had a welcome beer at the top. The Trevi Fountain is much more interesting, and a lot more crowded. Despite being difficult to get past the crowds, we managed to get to the edge for some photo opportunities. This place must be mad in the summer?

In the evening us two exhausted tourists with sore feet relaxed at the Ristorante "LA TAVERNETTA" di Pepi Claudio where I had a most delicious pasta in a very friendly and pleasant atmosphere. The staff could not have been nicer to us - highly recommended.

Weekend in Rome - Day #1

As a Christmas present to ourselves last year Roma and I decided to spend a weekend in Rome where neither of us had even been before. We arrived late on Thursday evening and immediately went out for pizza - when in Rome...!

Our first full day was very wet - rain almost all day. We headed to the Vatican (photo to left is on the Victor Emmanuel II bridge over the Tiber) and took one of the tours (€25/head) from the numerous touts that greet you at the entrance to St Peter's Square - the queues were very long. I have to say that our guide was very good, knowledgeable, and entertaining. St Peter's Basilica is everything you expect it to be - very big and awesome. Bodies of Popes, wonderful frescos and mosaics everywhere. It was packed with people of all nationalities, and perhaps different faiths. The highlight for me was the magnificent Pieta by Michaelangelo.

It was raining quite hard when we came out (see photo in front of Basilica), so we decided to take in the Vatican museums while we were there. Once again we were hooked by a tout - this time our experience was not so good. We were kept for nearly an hour before the tour started ("Just a few more minutes....") as the touts argued over/discussed us. Clearly they wanted some more tourists in our group and we stupidly waited. There was no queue to the museum and at €40/head we very much overpaid. Our guide this time did not have great English and she certainly wasn't nearly as good as our previous guide. The museums are definitely worth seeing, but avoid the touts and enjoy it on your own. The highlight should have been the Sistine Chapel, but it was closed for the Conclave to elect the new Pope.

On our way back towards our hotel we stopped for a very expensive coffee and a glass of wine at the Piazza Navona. It too was very busy, but it was nice to be sitting outside and watching people go by. Close to this is the Pantheon - a magnificent Roman building with a hole in the roof.

"Boring" Classes - You Can't Polish a Turnip

I student recently came to me during a break in one of my Project Management classes to tell me that he found the subject "boring". At least the student was honest - his body language throughout class suggested that he would rather be anywhere else than at my lecture. The topic was time management and we had just completed a class discussion on estimation the duration of a task (during which almost all the class engaged). The exercise I use is common to both my Project Management and Business Systems Analysis classes and I usually find that it works very well. My satisfaction was quickly deflated with the "boring" comment.

Can you polish this?
Image source: Best In Season.

I responded to the student that "You Can't Polish a Turnip" - an expression I heard many years ago. Even I who have been teaching it for many years know that Project Management is not an exciting subject. It is worth five credits on the way to achieving a degree, it is a mandatory subject, and arguably it is a very important subject to prepare students for the "real world". My module is based on the PMBOK methodology, so there's not much I can do about the content.

I have often heard colleagues in my own and other Colleges say that lecturers are "not entertainers", that it is not our job to make courses "interesting", and that we have a job to do to cover a syllabus. We know that not everybody in any of our classes is excited by the thoughts of coming to our lectures.

So the challenge to us educators is - how do we cater for the student who is finding the subject "boring"? Should we attempt humour? Should we sing and dance? Should we find ways to make even the driest topic the most exciting thing possible? Should we be aiming for smiling student faces when they leave the classroom? Should it be compulsory for us to achieve a 100% rating on student satisfaction surveys?

On the other hand we do have a responsibility to avoid being boring if possible. I have been at many dreadful lectures where the "lecturer" simply read from slides and did not engage the students. I try not to read from slides as much as possible (this is based on the fact that students can do this themselves) - my slides are (I hope) an anchor for class discussion. There are many different learning styles in my classroom, so while some students will be interested in a class discussion - others just want to sit back and listen without being asked to get involved. While my colleagues and I try to vary our teaching styles to cater for different learning styles, we can't please all of the students all of the time.

Road trip, and learning from others

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking part on a Review Panel at another College in Cork. This involved an early start on a cold morning. I had planned to take the train, but idiotically set the alarm for the wrong time and had no choice but to ride down to Cork dressed like the Michelin Man with several layers of clothing to keep out the cold. For the main part this worked, though my feet did suffer a bit from the cold (reminder to self - buy woolly socks to wear on the bike).

Riding to Cork is a very pleasant experience on the M50,  M7, and M8 motorways. Lots of room to speed up and I made good time getting to Cork from Dublin in 2.5 hours. The problem with this route is the lack of service stations. My bike has a petrol tank capacity of 18 litres, this was enough yesterday for 157 miles before switching to the 10% reserve tank. The only service station is at Junction 14 Mayfield, but this is very close to Dublin. Tourists must be very annoyed at this. The distance I had to travel was 168 miles. Before arriving at my destination I had to search for petrol and inevitably I got lost in South Cork and arrived late for my meeting. Coming home I made it as far as Goffs near Naas before stopping for petrol again. Another Service Station on the M8 is badly needed.

I enjoy learning how other Colleges do things like develop new programmes. The programme team works hard to ensure that a balanced course is developed that is attractive to both students and employers. Documentation, process, procedure, and of course the skills of the development team are all different from College to College. Being on a Review Panel you get a unique insight into the thought processes behind each new programme. Hopefully I can put this to good use the next time I am on the other side of the table in front of a Review Panel.

Dublin 2-14 Mayo 0-16

Last evening Roma and I went to Croke Park to see the Dubs take on Mayo in the Allianz League. As Roma is a Mayo native there were no prizes for guessing who she was there to cheer on. We had been at the All-Ireland semi-final between these two sides last September when Mayo came out on top by three points.

Both sides served up a great football match, with Dublin deservedly coming out on top. For the Dubs, Alan Brogan who scored 1-10, was the star of the show - he also missed a penalty. Mayo were very good in patches, leading twice - but were in the end outclassed. Dublin were reduced to 14 men when Ger Brennan was rightly red carded for a stupid kick at a Mayo player on the ground. At this stage Mayo were leading, but the Dubs stormed back to win comfortably in the end. Even though the crowd was a healthy 21,156, Croke Park still looks very empty as it holds four times this number.

On our way home we stopped for a pizza at That's Amore in Monkstown. This is a relatively new place that I had not been to before. It is very small with seats for only about 20 people. The pizza is delicious and the service excellent. Recommended for both hungry football fans and everyone else!

New term (to me) "Grade grubbing"

I read with interest an article in yesterday's Times Higher Education where Chris Parr wrote the piece "Please Professor, I want some more". The term "grade grubbing" is used and I had not heard it used before. However, the practice of students coming to me questioning/complaining about their grade is very familiar to me - now it has a name.

Not a real student.
Image source: www.quickmeme.com.

It is common that a student will be disappointed with a grade whether it is for a short assessment, a project, or a long exam. Many feel that they put in a huge effort and have performed well in an exam only to get a moderate grade of (say) 50%. I'm always mindful that any grade I award is my professional opinion of what the student's work is worth - others may have a different opinion and may even award a different (higher or lower) mark. That's why we have second marking and external examiners. Despite this, sometimes a student will approach me for feedback on their work. Like all colleges, NCI has strict rules on following procedures for requesting feedback. Most of the time, students want to know how and why they lost marks, and I have to say - most of the time upon reflection, students accept the grade I have awarded. To date, I have never changed a grade - but am open to it is a student can demonstrate that their work is worth more marks.

One piece of advice I was given when I first came to NCI after I said to a colleague that I had "failed" some students in an exam - he said to me "you don't fail the students, they fail themselves". It is a nervous time when marking papers. A poor or failed result may have drastic consequences for a student when they go to the job market. I feel a certain empathy with students who fail because I myself only passed 1st year by compensation (in the repeats) and failed 2nd year which I then had to repeat the year. I can blame absolutely no one but myself for this poor performance, but I managed to overcome and learn from it.

WikiHow gives some sensible advice to students: How to Get a Professor to Change Your Grade. It may not work, but it should get students thinking about what they should do before going down the road of trying to get a grade changed.

Amazon Author Central Features

Amazon have improved their Author Central site where book authors can get some some data about sales sold through Amazon. Since I have only one book, An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis, I don't have much to look at. But I thought I'd share two pieces of information available: Total Sales, and Sales by Geography.

The information is for the United States only. First below is a chart of weekly book sales going back to February  2011 (about a year after the book was published  by The Liffey Press) - a very modest 57 books in total have been sold during this time.

Next is Sales by region. The numbers are small, but New York comes out on top with 10, Chicago next on 5, and Phoenix on 4. The map that the screen grab below is taken from is an interactive one - you can scroll over each state (on Amazon.com only) and see how many books you have sold in each one. I bet J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown have great fun with this!

All this is part of a greater trend to provide information for authors to improve their own sales and perhaps target new markets. I'm sure that it will also help advertisers to target ads better. I like seeing tools like this as I can check for myself how my book is doing rather than relying on other courses. The book sells for $30 on Amazon.com, this means that it has made $1,521 through Amazon. I have not yet received any royalties - must check that one up!

Academia, and working from home

I read a headline today from The Telegraph for an article by Katherine Rushton newspaper: Yahoo! boss bans working from home, and I wondered how that would work in academia. Rushton writes that Yahoo!, in a communication to all staff, state that it "is critical that we are all present in our offices" and that "best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings". I can't argue with that - I find informal chat with my colleagues to be some of the best discussion that I have in the College.

Many academic colleagues from colleges all over Ireland and abroad choose to work from home at times when they do not have classes - for some it is a necessity. Some like to be able to prepare classes or correct assessments at home rather than come to the office. Others may be writing research reports or work on an academic publication.

Whether you agree with the Yahoo! move or not (some critics have said it is an effort to force resignations from employees who will not/cannot change) it does raise many issues about control, accountability, responsibility, and productivity. For some these will be greater if allowed to work at home, for others the office works best.

Image Source: WiSER.

I have always consciously decided to have a clear separation between work and home, so I am one of those academics who prefers to be in the office. I rarely do College work at home. I do not check work emails and in the main rarely use my mobile phone for work related issues from outside the office. For me, this work/life balance works. I do not have the discipline to work at home because there are far more distractions - the fridge being the biggest one!

To get an idea about what an academic gets up to during the day read this article, Early starts and late launches, lectures, laughs, in today's Irish Times by Professor Diarmuid Ferriter of UCD. You'll see that he spends quite a bit of time out of his office, but I think you'll agree that he is a very productive and busy academic.

New "How To..." @YouTube Video - my first using @Microsoft Office 2013

Yesterday I made a new video using the new version of Microsoft Office 365, and featuring Excel 2013. For my first video in this series I decided to make a new version of my existing most popular video: How to Create a Basic Gantt Chart in Excel 2010. The procedure to create a Gantt chart is almost the same in both versions of Excel (2010 and 2013) - here's the end result:

I created this video at home, and it was the first time I had done so for my YouTube channel. I used the 30-day trial version of Snagit and my own installation of Office 365. It is not possible for me to create these videos at work where I have made all my previous videos. Since I have created Gantt charts with Excel many times I thought that this video would be a piece of cake to make. But... I made many errors and had to restart many times before I got it right. Also, home is a lot noisier that my office at work - every sound in the house seemed to be magnified at my desk.

I hope to redo all my most popular Office 2003 and 2010 videos (I skipped 2007) as the next series, and then look at some more opportunities to create videos using new material.

Practical tips for academics who want to start engaging with the wider world through social media by Salma Patel

One of the things I've noticed over the past few years is that there is an increasing number of academics using social media like blogs and Twitter. However, many still don't and Salma Patel, writing for the London School of Economics asks the question: "I’m an academic and desperately need an online presence, where do I start?" Patel provides some advice for academics who want to start to use social media as follows:

1. Set up a Linkedin profile
2. Set up an Academic.edu profile
3. Use Twitter
4. Start a Blog
5. Start to use some of the many other "curation and sharing platforms" such as Delicious, SlideShare, Pinterest, Scoop.it, Pearltrees, Bundlr, Paper.li and Storify, Mendeley, Citeulike and Zotero

Quite a list!

I'm certain that in the future academics will find themselves providing details of all the above profiles when applying for positions on Colleges. Linkedin is now like an on-line CV, Who are you following on Twitter in your field (and who is following you)?, what topics are your blogging about? Your academic on-line presence will be just as important as how many publications you have!

"The lesson sticks" - Lecture Theatres without Lectures

The New England Journal of Medicine in an article entitled Lecture Halls without Lectures - A Proposal for Medical Education (Prober & Heath, 2012) reports on an interesting study conducted in a Physics class. An undergraduate Physics course was divided into two: one part had traditional lectures from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, while the other part of the class used on-line material and classes were led by teaching assistants who got students to engage in real physics problems. This comparison in itself is not innovative, but the results were staggering. The first group had a test average of 41%, the second 74%. Here's a quote from the end of the article:

Imagine first-year medical students learning critical biochemical pathways by watching short videos as many times as necessary in the comfort of their personal learning space. Knowledge acquisition is verified by repeated low-stakes quizzes. Then, in class, the students participate in a discussion that includes a child with a metabolic disease, his or her parents, the treating clinician, and the biochemistry professor. The relevant biochemistry — so dry on the page of a textbook — comes to life. 

As the article states: "The lesson sticks".

The empty Nelson Mandela Lecture theatre.
Imnage source: Wikipedia.

Does this mean the end of lectures? Will all our lecture theatres be converted into ski slopes (or some other useful purpose)? Will on-line classes replace professors and lecturers? Will I be out of a job?

Despite being someone who has embraced technology for learning since 1989 when I started to work for the e-Learning company CBT Systems (which became SmartForce and is now SkillSoft), I am not sure that the answer to any of the above questions is "Yes". It is still the overwhelmingly dominant form of teaching in my own College - only labs and tutorials can break the monotony for our students. Man educators see value in "flipping classes" where lectures are recorded for viewing outside the classroom, while class time is used effectively for homework. This is a great idea, but needs new pedagogies and methodologies to make it work. Perhaps the next generation of digital natives can revolutionalize teaching with technology?

Why are Sky bothering? But still waiting for @UPCIreland

I received a letter today from Sky asking me to "Be the first to enjoy our new Unlimited Broadband"! The offer is for unlimited broadband usage with calls for €40/month. My current Eircom package is €59/month, so on the face of it Sky are offering a cheaper package. Saving €19 a month equates to €228/year - not to be sneezed at.

When I first heard that Sky were coming to Ireland I thought that this might be the way to get away from the shitty broadband service that Eircom offers (see my speed check taken just now to left - this is supposed to be uncongested 8mbps!). But I have since discovered that they plan to use the same telephone line that Eircom use, which has a maximum capacity of 4mbps in our area. This means that Sky will only be able to offer the same service - so why are they bothering? How come they can't discover what the areas are in Ireland have poor broadband infrastructure? I will not switch from one rubbish provider to another. They are wasting their time with me.

On September 5th last I wrote about UPC installing new cables in our neighbourhood. Now over 5 months later there is still no sign of any service. All I get from @UPCIreland on Twitter is that they will be contacting everyone in our neighbourhood when the network is live. Still waiting.....

And now 3,000 subscribers to Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin @youtube

Hot on the heels of reaching 2,000,000 views on my YouTube channel another milestone has been reached. Yesterday the 3,000 subscriber mark was passed (and yes - I know I'm boasting again!). Once again I am humbled and gratified that so many people subscribe to my channel and view the videos. I have noticed a recent surge in subscriptions as I get an email every time someone subscribes. The chart below shows this growth since the channel was set up in 2006:

The subscriber who made it as the 3,000th was "dperika" from the UK. There are subscribers from all over the world, for example: 6 from Kenya, 2 from Honduras, 2 from Cambodia, 1 from Mongolia, and 9 from Iraq. The countries with the largest numbers are: 903 from USA, 315 from UK, 189 from India, 180 from Ireland, and 105 in Australia.

My next series of videos will be remakes of my existing ones for the new version of Microsoft Office 365. Unfortunately this cannot be installed at work, so for the first time I will be making a series of videos at home. I'm starting with a free 1-month trial of Snagit which I will probably purchase once the trial is over - this is what my most recent videos have been created with.

Once again - a huge THANK YOU to all my subscribers!

2,000,000 views on my @youtube learning channel - WOW!!!

Earlier this morning my YouTube channel, Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin, passed the 2,000,000 views mark. I am so thrilled that so many people have viewed my videos and hope that most will have learned something from them and found them useful. 

On the 30th April last year I wrote about reaching the 1,000,000 views milestone - it had taken just over 6 years to reach that mark. The second 1,000,000 occurred in just over 9 months, and if the current rate of views keeps up it will pass the 3,000,000 mark before the end of the year. Even though 2,000,000 is a very modest number of views in the overall context of YouTube, I continue to be astonished at these figures and to have reached so many learners. More in the next few days about the analytics that make up this figure.

In the meantime, a HUGE THANK YOU to all my subscribers (soon to surpass 3,000 in number) and viewers. This is fantastic encouragement to keep creating and publishing videos. 

Image Source: YouTube Channel screen shot.

Should Students Use Twitter?

We had a discussion about the use of Twitter in the classroom today and in general I am in favour of students using Twitter as a learning tool. I get so much information and links to interesting things from the people and organizations I follow that it is like having a private news feed of stuff you want to hear about.

Image source: Twitter.com.

The edudemic blog has a post by volunTEENation, about Why Students Should Use Twitter from December last year. Three reasons are given why: 

    1:  The importance of access

    2:  Connect to a wider audience

    3:  Students can tweet for good

Students can connect to professionals and other students in their field, promote volunteer work, improve traffic to a website, and use Twitter as a free way to market and promote a new business ideas. For the Computer Science students in my classes I recommend that that they should follows technical Twitter accounts like @siliconrepublic and @slashdot.  It's a great way to keep in touch with developments in any field, especially technology.

Twitter provides a wealth of information for students and everyone else - it is a fantastic educational resource whether used inside or outside the classroom. I'd like to see us educators embrace it some more.

Map of Educational Tweeps

Here's an interesting tool to show on a map the location of people involved in education all over Ireland and Britain. It is available from the ICTmagic wiki (which was the Edublog Award winner of the best educational wiki in 2011). As more and more educators and learners use Twitter, it's a nice idea to see where we are all actually located. It's sparsely populated so far, and it took a couple of weeks from when I added myself to finally being added to the map. As I write this I am the white dot over Dublin. If you use Twitter, why not add yourself?

Using Google Translate to Beat Plagiarism Detection Software

Last week I tweeted about about "Five Ways to Defeat Automated Plagiarism Detection" and have got some reaction about this from both inside and outside the College. One of the ways was to use a translator to change original text from one language to another. Taking this a step further I decided to conduct a small experiment and use Google Translate to translate some text from English to Spanish, then to French, Polish, Chinese, and back to English. The results are in brown and italic text below.

The sentence I chose was from Wikipedia - I copied word-for-word the first paragraph (removing the hyperlinks) of the Wikipedia page about US President Abraham Lincoln. After the translations had been done, I submitted all the text in all languages to Turnitin. Turnitin correctly detected that the first (original) paragraph was copied from Wikipedia. Interestingly, only a short piece of the Spanish version, and NONE of the French, Polish, or Chinese versions was detected as being similar to anything else. The final paragraph, in English is of course not the same as the original after being translated five times. Here's the before and after Turnitin report:

Before Translation:

After Translation:

As you can see, the translations has had an effect, but not enough in this example to clear a paper of plagiarism. If this second example was presented to me in an assignment it would be referred to the Plagiarism/Discipline Committees. If you are a student reading this post to learn how to beat tools like Turnitin, I'm afraid to tell you that you are running a very high risk of still being caught. Turnitin has done a good job in detecting cheating like this. The message is: DON'T DO IT - YOU WILL BE CAUGHT!

Complete Text of Translations:

English (copied directly from Wikipedia)

Abraham (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.

Spanish

Abraham (12 febrero 1809 a 15 abril 1865) fue el 16 º Presidente de los Estados Unidos, sirviendo a partir de marzo de 1861 hasta su asesinato en abril de 1865. Lincoln éxito llevó a los Estados Unidos a través de su mayor crisis constitucional, militar y moral - la guerra civil americana - la conservación de la Unión. Criado en una familia pobre en la frontera occidental, Lincoln fue principalmente autodidacta, y se convirtió en un abogado del país, un líder del Partido Whig, legislador estatal de Illinois durante la década de 1830, y un miembro de un solo mandato de la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos durante la década de 1840.

French

Abraham (12 Février 1809 au 15 abril 1865) a été le 16e président des États-Unis, servant de Mars 1861 jusqu'à son assassinat en Avril 1865. Lincoln a dirigé avec succès aux États-Unis grâce à sa plus grande crise constitutionnelle, militaire et morale - Guerre de Sécession - la préservation de l'Union. Élevé dans une famille pauvre sur la frontière occidentale, Lincoln était essentiellement autodidacte et est devenu un avocat de province, un chef de file du Parti Whig, la législature de l'Illinois état pendant les années 1830, et membre d'un mandat de la Chambre les représentants des États-Unis pendant les années 1840.

Polish

Abraham (12 lutego 1809 15 april 1865) był 16. prezydentem Stanów Zjednoczonych, obsługujących od marca 1861 aż do jego śmierci w kwietniu 1865 roku. Lincoln sukcesem przeprowadził Stany Zjednoczone przez jego największego kryzysu konstytucyjnego, wojskowych i moralnym - Civil War - zachowując Unii. Wychowany w biednej rodzinie na granicy zachodniej, Lincoln był głównie samoukiem i został prawnikiem kraj, lider Partii Wigów, ustawodawca stan Illinois w 1830 oraz członkiem mandatu izba Reprezentantów Stanów Zjednoczonych w trakcie 1840 roku.

Chinese (simplified)

亚伯拉罕（1809年2月12日1865年4月15日）是第16美国总统，直到他的死亡在1865年4月，从1861年3月服役。林肯成功地领导了美国通过其最大的宪政危机，军事和道义 - 内战 - 保护联盟。提出了一个可怜的家庭在西部边境，林肯大多是自学成才，并成为一个国家的律师，辉格党的领导，在1830年的立法机关，的状态，伊利诺伊州和一个成员的商会代表美国在1840年的任务。

English (again)

Abraham (1809, 1865, April 15, 2011) is the 16th President of the United States, until his death in April 1865, serving from March 1861. Lincoln successfully led the United States through its greatest constitutional crisis, military and moral - civil war - Conservation Union. A poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln is mostly self-taught, and became a country lawyer, Whig Party leadership in the legislature in 1830, the state of Illinois and a member of the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the United States in 1840 the task of the year.

A Treat at Clarke Railway Station in Dundalk

Today I was in Dundalk Institute of Technology for a short meeting, DkIT is a place I like visiting as it is a wonderful spread out campus with its own giant windmill for generating electricity - some day most institutions will have a similar source of power.

Today's weather from met.ie.

I had planned to make the 160 km round trip on my bike, but due to bad weather I decided to take the train instead. Sleet and cold were forecasted and this would not have been enjoyable on two wheels. I took the 9.35 Belfast train, and it was my first time to travel North in this way. The (almost empty) train was very comfortable and free WiFi allowed me to get a bit of work done. This trip took 50 minutes and it is a pleasant way to travel.

On  the return journey I spotted that there is a small museum in Clarke station. I had been informed that the train would be 1 hour late, so this was a fine opportunity to while away some time. This museum is a little gem and does not take long to see everything. There are plenty of photos of old scenes from the station, old railway engines, and of people who worked there. The oldest photo I saw was from 1903 of the staff at the station - pity to think that everybody in that photo is now dead. There are some railway mementos and stories of lines now closed. Almost all photos are in black and white which lends a historic air to the place.

Outside the museum are two metal plaques containing the full version of the 1916 Easter Proclamation - I honestly don't recall ever having read it in full before. My Mum used to tell me that she had to learn it off by heart in school.

Clarke railway station in Dundalk is a surprising treat!