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The stench of failure is soon covered by the smell of success

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 21 Aug 2014, 09:53
From E-Learning III

 

Fig.1 Education and qualifications. The fun of it. True or False? 

I paraphrase, no doubt from someone else paraphrasing, but it was said in relation to the results our children picked up last week and are getting today. I'm a parent in the camp of having one of each. We want them to do well, we want them to move on from. 

Results are always relevant to context and so often scrambled by personal circumstances; where you are 'at', family life, health, maturity and so on. 

The worst advice I got age 12 or 13 was to keep my options broad; I became a magpie, rather than a specialist. Whilst it is hard to expect a young person to know what it is they want to do, once they know it is this focus, having a goal, that motivates them to do well.

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Design Museum

Social Learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 15 Oct 2014, 07:11

Reading the biography of Dr Zbigniew Pelczynski is to gain a fascinating insight into a natural educator - an academic who is passionate about supporting and motivating learners. Faced with a cohort of students who were prodcing poor exam results he set up a couple of student societies where undergraduates could meet informally to here an inspiring guest speaker, have a drink and talk around the subject and what they'd just heard - it worked. Results began to improve in the termly and annual exam results.

  1. This is what it requires for social learning to work online.
  2. A champion to make it happen

The incentive of a great mind or celebrity academic to offer an insightful short talk as an incentive to the later discussion.

But what about the food and drink, nibbles and tea (it doesn't have to be alcohol). A couple of times in previous modules a bunch of us 'Hung Out' in Google+ and on one occasion we were meant to 'bring along a drink' while in on one memorable occasion, which was a giggle and truly innocent, one suggestion was to make it a pyjama party!

They key thing was to fix a date, which we co-ordinated in Google Events or some such, then be prepared to chill out, and keep the orientation on topic without the pressure of a formal tutorial.

How though to give it the continuity and impact of a student society? Given the session a name? How would we flatter, even pay guest speakers?

Or could we just watch a selected TED lecture first?

And why do results improve?

Motivation

Social cohesion and responsibility to the group?

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