I sign up to things. I'm a serial committer to learning. I'm up for a 'book study' kind of course, or one involving tasks and experiments. For now though I want to celebrate the achievements of the Zoe Blood Sugar/Fats study, and Couch to 5K from the NHS. I happen to be doing both.
We all know, surely, of the Zoe App and Dr Tim Spector from Covid Days. And surely, you've got wind of the 10,000 people in the US and UK who have now signed up to Zoe. I'm through the three days of formal testing and am on day 3 of the 10 day optional 'challenges'.
'The Five Stages of Elearning' by Gilly Salmon comes to mind:
Though these days where these stages and how the interaction occur has become seamless. Rather than a series of staging pools, or steps, the micro-learning of Zoe, for example, makes it far more intuitive.
Zoe learning comes in a number of forms: the box of kit and explanatory leaflets (not quite perfect), the App and the controlled steps and gates of Zoe 101, Zoe 102 and Zoe 103 which manages what materials are made available to you. The App includes BBC bitesize 'cards', dollops that are a phrase, or short paragraph followed by a prompt to answer a multi-choice question or to 'submit'. These an element here that triggers a timer, or calendar and prompt which has twice caught me out because the 'submit' implies you have begun a phase at that moment (twice I was reading ahead of myself by a day).
My appetite for further knowledge is only partially satisfied. This is not an academic course, articles in reputable journals are mentioned, but not cited: I'm not going to get a full reference or a link to that journal - which is just as well, as I love vanishing down distracting intellectual rabbit holes. This is something that has to be managed, common sense, the audience, the purpose and look and feel of the learning can all be upset with an abundance of footnotes and links.
