Personal Blogs

Innovating Pedagogy 2024 (open.ac.uk)

Mobile collaborative language learning: State of the art (wiley.com)

- Benefits of collaboration in mobilelanguage learning. 

- But still know little about the processes and steps that are essential for mobile learning design. This should be examined further, especially in terms of collaborative mobile learning. 

- Further research should also delve into how learners communicate and interact with each other through their everyday use of mobile technologies outside educational contexts and MALL (Mobile-assisted language learning) researchers and practitioners should take this understanding into account when designing mobile CL activities for second and foreign language learners.

- Recent developments in animated agentsand virtual tutors (eg, Mohamad Ali, Segaran, & Wee Hoe, 2015) point to a near future in which 3D talking heads or whole body avatars will join the ranks of participants available for assistance and collaboration. These developments will bring new challenges around the integration of technology to support learners and enhance collaborative learning which will need to be researched.

Affective Support for Self-Regulation in Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

https://www.igi-global.com/viewtitle.aspx?TitleId=318226&isxn=9781668492062

- Highlights that there has been little research on supporting affect in MALL and identified why this topic is vitally important. 

- Out-of-class learning contexts put the onus on MALL app users to self-regulate their learning. We argue that self-regulation is more effective when it is explicitly supported through MALL app/system designs that incorporate affective learning analytics and AI, and through appropriate support provided by teachers. This type of support includes teachers providing affective SRL training when necessary, as they can raise students’ awareness of the range of tactics, strategies and metastrategies they can employ in their learning trajectory. Facilitating collaborative dialogue among students, in which they can share experiences and voice their ideas, has also been identified as a valuable addition to the teacher’s role in MALL. 

- In the future will require experts from different disciplines to work together more closely in order to understand multiple perspectives on affect in mobile language learning and to develop innovative learning spaces and designs

Affective Support for Self-Regulation in Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

Playing with AI to Investigate Human‐Computer Interaction Technology and Improving Critical Thinking Skills to Pursue 21st Century Age - Muthmainnah - 2022 - Education Research International - Wiley Online Library

- In today’s ever-changing and complicated world, critical and evaluative thinking based on rational decision-making is essential. Conventional schooling does not adequately prepare students for this. Student questions, self-investigation, and open-ended inquiries have been found to considerably boost students’ CT skills and related capacities. This study indicated that CT requires cognitive, behavioral, affective, and social engagement activities applied in an intentional and inquiry-oriented manner to relevant information. 

- Our findings can be used to improve teacher training programs that need more advanced thinking, technology engagement, and social-emotional engagement as innovation is increasing in CT. As shown by a wealth of research, students’ ability to develop higher-order thinking skills is highly likely to be fostered in the classroom. This discovery should be a central part of any effort to change teachers’ attitudes and practices in this field. 

- We believe that professional development programs should be structured in a way that helps instructors better understand higher-order thinking. This study implies that teachers should be encouraged to use a variety of instructional strategies and increase human-computer interaction to help their students with tasks that require higher-order thinking in general and computer or ICT skills specifically to help them with those tasks. 

- In hybrid classes, AI is used to build human-computer interaction, and the study suggests that CT has a specific effect.

- The development of RALL-AI (robot-assisted language learner) based has encouraged a new way of thinking about accelerated education in languages. RALL’s pedagogy offers tools for real-world education tailored to Gen Z’s needs to each student’s interest, skills, and background. The results showed that if students increase their interaction with RALL, their critical thinking skills will improve for the better. If English learners want to really show their CT, this is a great resource for them.

- This research contributes to informing educators about the utilization of AI to enhance CT with instruction enabling them to support their students better as they use RALL-based learning plans during the learning process. As a result, they can learn to fend for themselves and take responsibility for their education. In addition, these findings can be used by curriculum designers to incorporate RALL training in learning strategies into existing courses that can be applied to all disciplines. This allows them to make better use of learning strategies overall. 

- Improving students’ cognitive and meta-cognitive-linguistic abilities in English as a foreign language is another area where this research can help. Educators can gain insight from findings that emphasize the importance of student center learning that can assist students in improving CT and monitoring RALL in modern learning.

Beyond Personalization: Embracing Democratic Learning Within Artificially Intelligent Systems (wiley.com)
- Meta-analytical evidence shows that personalized education, which uses AI toadapt the content to the level of individual learners, is of greater learning value than simple technology-supported personalized learning. 79 However, if personalized education augmented by AI is to work in the long term and holistically, the question becomes when to apply and when to restrict personalization, and when to combine it with pluralization.
- The current AI models lack sympathy,empathy, and common sense, which are necessary for establishing trust. 80 While self-aware and conscious AI robots cannot be considered a real competitor to teachers’ guidance in classrooms, 81 the importance of human intelligence in optimally implementing personalization and pluralization cannot be denied in the age of AI.
- Inge Molenaar 82 specified six degrees of automation in personalized learning, ranging from teacher’s full control to AI’s full control (full automation). Students’ own choices could be conceptualized in a similar way. Although many current AI designs remove choice-making through automatic adaptations, AI could, instead, both personalize (adapt to the child) and pluralize (expand the child’s choices) the learning environment. The child’s agency and AI’s automation in the process are both represented in the PPAE framework, which we have described as a collaborative, dynamic process. In other words, we conceptualize the child’s agency as both shaping and being shaped by the AI automation process, yielding an inclusive participatory process that enhances both human and artificial intelligence. That is why we propose changing the language from AI-driven learning to AI-enhanced learning. Sophisticated personalized learning systems underpinned by artificial intelligence need to strike an optimal balance between the roles played by humans and AI in the learning process. They need to do more than deliver a canon of curriculum knowledge while assessing whether it has been suitably absorbed by the learner. They need to be flexible and responsive at a human level, respecting the differences between individuals, and this requires extensive engagement at the design
- Yet AI can also add value to learning, particularly for groups with limited access to teachers, mentors, and educational resources. We argue that if innovative AI education systems respect the principles embedded in the PPAE framework, then learning stands a better chance of maximizing civic participation and human flourishing.

Scaffolding and dialogic teaching in mathematics education: introduction and review (springer.com)
- Such narrower and more specific foci are important to make progress in research. However, teachers and researchers searching for pedagogical approaches that work in such a complex setting as the mathematics classroom also need concepts that help to structure teaching and learning in a coherent way and orient teachers on the bigger picture. Learning theory should offer such a coherent big-picture understanding (Shepard, 2005)
- Teacher awareness (Mason, 1998; Smit & Van Eerde, 2011) and teacher judgement accuracy (e.g., Krolak-Schwerdt et al., 2014) seem to be crucial as the basis for adaptive, contingent or responsive teacher action. More research on these topics is certainly welcome, because adaptivity requires accurate judgement.
- We hope that scholars who now concentrate on relatively isolated bodies of literature on the aforementioned or similar topics will collectively take the effort to engage in conversation. We expect that such endeavour, along the lines of networking theories (Bikner-Ahsbahs & Prediger, 2014), will prove productive for gaining precise understanding of the narrow foci as well as gaining a better understanding of the overall picture. We think that scaffolding, when enriched with ideas from dialogic teaching, would be a suitable candidate in providing such a picture to both researchers and teachers.

How to stay curious while avoiding distraction (ft.com)
One solution is defensive: avoid noisy TVs. Delete your social media account (or, at least, remove the app from your phone and install two-step verification to make it annoying to log in). Don’t sleep with your phone in the bedroom. Switch off all but essential notifications. We know all this, and if you can make yourself do it, it works. But a second approach focuses more on the positive. As well as trying to cut out mere novelty, we should seek out things worth being curious about. This is easier than one might think, because thoughtful curiosity builds knowledge, and knowledge builds thoughtful curiosity.

As Ian Leslie explains in his book Curious: The Desire To Know and Why Your Future Depends on It (2014), human curiosity usually requires a reasonable base of facts to underpin it. “The curiosity zone is next door to what you already know,” he writes. That seems right. I am vastly more curious about new ideas in fields about which I already know a bit, such as economics, table-top games or callisthenics, than I am about subjects in which I have no intellectual toehold, such as anthropology, knitting or hockey.

So the plan for both distractible members of the Harford household must be the same: keep learning. The more you know, the more you will prefer something in-depth, rather than the next thumbnail recommended by YouTube.

Dialogic: education for the Internet age - Open University
Wegerif, Rupert
Dialogic education and technology : expanding the space of learning - Open University
((Need to get access to these))

Mental Health, Academia, and the PhD journey | Graduate School Network (open.ac.uk)

Studying at The Hotel Continental...I realise I enjoy studying in hotels or cafes more than at home.  It's gonna be an expensive next few years, but I seem to be less distracted here.  Mind you having said that I have been googling 4star hotels in Switzerland, and playing around on the blog lol.  But I'm less distracted here than at home atleast.

I realise I need to re-read the material from November, get more organised, sort out neat revision notes...and get into a routine.  November as I said was experiment month.  Rather than feeling a huge relief once this first TMA is done, I'm going to push myself and just keep studying so that I can get as organised as possible and work much better during December.  I've had my experiment month, now I need to make things happen more.  I'm looking forward to my Skiing Holiday (Dec 7-11), but I will take my books even if it's a few hours here and there I want to read and keep learning.  I'm very scared about my TMA 01 result, so even if I get a rubbish grade I want to make sure I re-read the material so atleast I've learned from November so it's not a complete waste.  I'm making assumptions now as I'm scared of getting an awful grade.

I hope to finish my Report within the next few days, as I have to hand it in early before my December ski trip. We had our first face to face tutorial group yesterday, it was great to meet my tutor and fellow peers.  It was interesting observing various characters within the group, and whilst there is a wealth of experience within our TGF I really enjoyed working through the case studies analysing how different people handled different situations and most importantly how did they communicate this?  Everyone has their own frustrations, worries etc -but it's how we choose to handle or react that I think sets you apart.  We can all come up with solutions, and we can all be smart in our own ways, but how do you choose to deliver your message and how appropriate is your delivery?  If you think about who you would like to work with, what type of leader or manager you respect, and what type of leader or manager you want to be...I guess it's different for everyone.  I feel a humble approach can work well, and an aggressive approach can be a turn off, but most importantly don't lose control.  It's inspiring seeing people handle situations well, and it's also a learning curve to observe those who allow their assumptions to not work in their favour.

social collaboration software

http://mashable.com/2012/09/07/social-collaboration-tools/

what co. looking for

http://jobs.mashable.com/a/jbb/job-details/769258

collaboration improves efficiency

http://mashable.com/2012/02/05/tools-collaboration-agency-client/

1. downloaded the books in pdf

2. emailed to myself

3. opened My email in ipad

4. used PDF Expert (very good software, as you can write on pdf, highlight etc.)

5. Everythinh works fine so far (Angelo Maruca).

But for last two OU courses I downloaded it in .pdf and opened by using Good Reader in which you can make notes, underline etc. And by setting the chapters as bookmark it is very convienient to find the chapters. (Petri Wallenius).

Afterwards I can also synchronise everything with Dropbox. It really works for me. (Paul Jovero).

Models are designed to provide insight on the issues that we face as managers. Sometimes they provide a different way of looking at the same issue and you get an "a ha" moment and sometimes not. The point of the exercise is to get used to applying models rather than necessariy getting an "a ha" moment (Graham Baker).

I did adapt it to all 4 and it helped me with Activity 5. ie identifying the context, similarities and differences etc. It was worth the extra time and thought. I found an interesting article about how historical context shapes current thinking - this activity echoed some of the sentiment in there (The Relevant Past: Why the History of management Should be Critical for Our Future; Cummings and Bridgman, if anyone is interested!) (Martina Baugh).

I used it as a thought provoker rather than doing a deep dive on each layer. From this a drew some overall conclusions.  (Sue Scarfe).

I am not sure how to structure this blog!  Do I edit each entry to add in new info relating to the title header, or do I simply keep this log in date order and add the subject in the tag below?  Brain dead.

Anhow, an interesting article Martina Baugh posted in the cafe today, have saved it on my usb:

The Relevant Past: Why the History of Management Should Be Critical for Our Future (Stephen Cummings, Todd Bridgman - Victoria Uni of Wellington)

A random thought about the EBI - so we're all studying via long distance learning.  10 years ago this was sneered upon, but now we're all very tech savvy it's easy for people to connect with others all over the world via social networks such as facebook, twitter etc.  We're pretty familiar with Skype, Google Chat Rooms, Salesforce etc so how can I relate this to my EBI?

So I work in Direct Sales, and I am managed at a distance.  I only see my boss every few weeks, and I get to work from home.  I spend more time interacting with my clients than the company I work for.  I wonder how I can share best practice amongst other offices all over the world, by utitilising the technology we have today.  Whether it be sharing client photos, testimonials, case studies, category mailers etc via a network.  Our IT system always crashes internally, so let's not rely on that.  We have huge IT issues within our company.  Literally to the point where laptops, phones, our systems crash every few days.  For the world's largest outdoor advertising company, it's pretty suprising that we have this huge issue.  So, as an alternative tool how can we use the cloud?  The company won't explore amazing tools like Sales Force which is incredibly successful in the U.S (I know this having worked in California).  So if budgets are restricted to by extra software etc, I have to consider that too.  How can our Direct Sales Team utilise apps, and social media to share best practice?  So it's all about COLLABORATIVE LEARNING, how can our teams across Europe all share best practice?

I love the way there are MBA students from all over the world in this cafe, sharing notes etc.  They feel open to express how they feel too, are we hidden behind the computer and feel more comfortable to express our thoughts perhaps even moreso than sat face to face in front of our boss?  How can we utilise technology to bring out the best in our teams?  Are there management busines models re: long distance management?  Isn't the world going that way anyhow, with satellite offices etc?  It's cheaper for people to work from home and takes less time.  I remember doing A-Level Geography, and even back then we were writing about how Working from Home would be the way many businesses would go?  I have no idea actually, I'm just thinking out loud and maybe even one sentence in this blog maybe useful.  But hey, I've got to start somewhere and I guess the first stage is simply to THINK!!

....BOOK 1: EXPLORING MANAGEMENT, page 30

However, in an increasingly global environment this becomes even more important, a point made by Anders Dahlvig, president and CEO of the furniture chain Ikea:

The world has changed enormously in the past decade...All of us now act in ways we did not 10 years ago.  Gobalization means stakeholders and responsibilities everywhere, which have to be managed.  It's quite a different level of complexity.  (Dahlvig, 2000, cited in Neely et al., 2002, p.4)

(although this quote is relating to stakeholders, it reminds me how the world has changed so much, if we think of how social media has changed the way we communicate, interact etc, how we study, how we do business etc.  Also, in the activity where we had to analyse how we have been managed - it reminds me of a boss who always says some people have 1970s style management, yet if we look at some of the earlier theories actually he could be more of a late 1800s style manager attempting to perform in the 21st century.  It could be an example of how some managers really need to change the way they manage, to succeed in this era, and that can be subject to the company culture.  Very different from when I worked in California where they are far more forward thinking).

I think the major thing is to prioritise and understand what are the must dos and what are the optionals and if time allows do all the readings and activitiies, if not must dos will come first. I have contacted my tutor and heard back from him, and based on his advise here are some updates:

1.) we are in week 1. 2) Dummy TMA is optional, but its helpful to understand how the it works and to get used to the format, I guess. 3) the must dos are - to read the guide, introduce yourself on in the group and read introductory activities and the guide to the activities on the website. My tutor informed that he will be setting threads in the group so that we can see what others are up to. 4. "substantial account and analysis" should be completed by 15th of November 5. MDA 1 starts Nov 15th and is allowed 2 weeks for completion 6. The timelines in general are just there to guide us, but for TMAs and exam I belive the deadlines are must haves.

Zhala Mammadova (4 Nov 2012, 09:15)

Important notice: Forthcoming Day School.

On B716 “Management: perspectives and practice”, your individual learning and TGF discussions are supplemented by two Day Schools. Day Schools are not compulsory, but previous students have found them an invaluable part of the module. The Day School is designed to enable you to:

• familiarise yourself with the module and its learning design
• build your confidence as managers, ‘knowers’ and learners
• get to know your tutor and one another better, to build group cohesion
• develop your understanding of the forms of learning the OUBS MBA can deliver, and how module, programme design and resources support these
• appreciate the value of group learning, and practise learning through dialogue
• appreciate the possible diversity of thinking styles and perspectives in a group and develop your abilities to exploit this
• start to challenge the evidence and assumptions in your own and others’ thinking
• understand the importance of individual and collective reflection for professional learning and practise different ways of reflecting
• understand the EBI process and its key elements and get you thinking about TMA 01.

Tutors will run their Day Schools face to face and you will have been informed at the start of the course of the dates and times of these. If for some reason (e.g. clashing engagements, personal reasons, work schedules, or travel difficulties) you cannot attend your tutor’s Day School, you can either:

-     ask to attend another tutor’s face to face Day School (you can find these by searching on Tutorial Finder, which you access via the “Tutorials” link under the heading “Tutorials” on your Student Home page)

-     or join an online equivalent (called a workshop, normally run by a tutor other than your own and with students drawn from several tutor groups and from all over the world).

B716 Students who want to register for the online workshop instead of their face-to-face day school should send an e-mail requesting a place to

FBL-Masters-Workshops@open.ac.uk

The online workshop (alternative day school) will run for just over two weeks from Wednesday 14^th to Friday 30^th November 2012. During this time you will need to log on regularly and take part in some asynchronous working (in a forum similar to your TGF) and two synchronous sessions (using Elluminate, which uses real time meeting software with audio, text, application sharing, etc).

If you want a place on the online workshop you need to email

FBL-Masters-Workshops@open.ac.uk with the following information:

Subject Header “B716 12K online workshop 1” + YOUR NAME + OU Personal Identifier  + OU Computer User identifier (OUCU) by midday (GMT) Friday 9^th November 2012. Please note that your OUCU is the code you use to sign in to StudentHome.

After this date it will not be possible for you to be linked to an online group for the workshop.

If you do choose an online workshop, it will be important for you to participate fully throughout the two weeks, otherwise fellow students in your allocated group may find their own learning is reduced.

If you have any queries about the workshop/Day School, either face to face or online, please do not hesitate to contact your B716 tutor. Otherwise, please do make sure that you meet the deadline above if you wish to attend online. And enjoy the workshop/Day School - however you decide to do it !

So, if you are intending to attend your own face to face school (and this is the default option, if you can) and have not already done so, it would help your own tutor if you let them know, so that catering can be properly planned.

If you are intending to do the online option, then you need to sign up to that by Friday.

The online version will run from 14 to 30 November, and assumes that you will spend about half an hour a day on most days during that period.  There will be Elluminate sessions on Friday 16th, Tuesday 20th, and Sunday 25th, all at 8 p.m.GMT.  A recording will be made available for those unable to join those sessions.  The remaining work will be done in a dedicated workshop forum.

Whichever version you choose, have fun

http://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=152038

Successful vs Effective Real Managers (optional reading)http://ehis.ebscohost.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e882c2a3-5761-4059-963e-527716a4ae1a%40sessionmgr10&vid=2&hid=27

and more...

always refer to....