I was privileged to sit in on JF’s NZ Dip Bus Contract Law class, and it was a bit of an eye-opener. This is blended learning in real time: delivered across two campuses mediated by video conferencing; Moodle lesson activity references the big text book the students all have; JF works through the lesson clarifying key points, answering questions, flagging up hazards. After the class there’s an asynchronous component: JF encourages students to share solutions in their Moodle blogs, and she posts model answers. This is really turbo-charged revision, as the students prepare for their final assessment.
Jottings: blended in real time
The whole class runs like a dream (these are highly motivated students). I realise the camera has zoomed in on me, so I introduce myself. Voices are clear, though for the rest of the session the camera remains zoomed out and rather static (a tutor assistant/camera operator would be a great asset here). Is the session suitable for recording for later replay? Possibly not… though it works very well indeed in this synchronous phase of the delivery. The lesson activity is a step through, with a review question in there somewhere. Maybe it would benefit from a review question for each section, but one must be realistic about preparation time for these things… JF reckons she is already full time + 30%. The students voice their approval of the Moodle component. Why don’t other tutors make more use of this, they ask. Self-effacing, JF replies that some subjects lend themselves to it better than others. From the institution’s perspective it makes the small cohort at the remote campus viable. One can see an opportunity — where the subject matter is sufficiently generic — to deliver a course like this to students across several campuses simultaneously.
Jottings: Moodle lesson references the standard text
The Moodle lesson references the course’s standard text, and also references some govt. websites. Could this be a real world application for the QR-Code bookmarking? One can see also an application for the electronic Smart Board here, with the tutor’s notes going straight down to Moodle.
Anomaly detection
Week 9 of the ML-Class and I’m full of excitement over this week’s topic: Anomaly detection. I spend hundreds of hours studying stuff (AI, AL, ML) that’s cool, but I can’t see how I personally will ever get to use it. I mean, I’m never going to build a diesel-engined robotic dog that can carry a 250kg payload while autonomously avoiding or negotiating obstacles and programmed to gain its objective or self-destruct. But I can see how I would use anomaly detection in student user modeling to authenticate online examination candidates.