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## Creating equations in online environments

I am currently working on a project, where I am creating web based resources (using Moodle) to teach maths. As part of this process, I need to create properly laid out formulas (or formulae if you prefer the alternate acceptable plural of formula). We are using what is becoming a widely accepted standard of MathJax which in turn supports the use of something called LaTex to create the desired formulas. So for example if I wanted to create something that looked like:

$y = 3x^{2}+5x+\frac{2}{3}$

I would enter this into the editor using the code:

$$y = 3x^{2}+5x+\frac{2}{3}$$

or

$y = 3x^{2}+5x+\frac{2}{3}$

At first I started to learn the exact syntax and would translate what I wanted into either of the codes above. This proved to be both time consuming and prone to mistakes. Then I discovered an excellent website that helps me do this:

https://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

This website gives me a box into which I construct the equation that I want – above the box is a huge suite of grey buttons which each represent a different mathematical function or options. These take a bit of time to learn, but quite quickly one gets the hang of this, and using the buttons and adding the numbers / letters that you require you can quite quickly create the desired formula that you want. Underneath the white box, your formula is displayed as it will appear, so it is possible to see what you are doing, and check that this is correct.

Once you are happy with what you have created, at the bottom of the screen (in a cream coloured box) is the option to choose the export style that you want – so if you need LaTex, you choose that, if embedding into WordPress, you choose WordPress etc. You then copy the code beneath this, and paste into the editor of whatever you are using.

One of the facilities within the editor, is to create correctly aligned equations:

Which in LaTex is created with the code:

\begin{align*} x+3 &= 7\\ x &= 7-3\\ x &= 4 \end{align*}

This is very hard to manually write out, but quite easy using the codecogs website. The button for this, is the bottom right button on toolbar (letters n and r in brackets) – then under that is a button that has “y=…” as the text, and when you hover over it, it tells you that it is the align tool.

For anyone who is using mathematical formulas regularly this is a really neat tool.

## #FELTAG – Considerations when buying off the shelf resources

In my previous post, I introduced the idea of ‘to buy or not to buy resources’. In this post I will be looking at considerations if you choose to buy resources. The next post will look at the considerations for not buying.

There are certainly potential advantages to buying resources, but I have experienced a lot of places wasting a lot of money on the wrong resources, or buying them for the wrong reasons – I hope that this series of posts will help organisations to make a more informed decision before deciding one way or another.

There are two very strong arguments in favour of buying in resources:

1. The quality of resources should be of a much higher quality than what an average teacher could produce as part of their average working week.
2. It doesn’t make financial sense for every teacher in the UK (and beyond) to produce what are in essence the same resources to cover the same criteria, for the same qualifications. Pooling resources and letting a content creation company produce these for all providers, and people then pay for what they need, on the surface seems to make financial sense. If we look at the non-technology analogy, each teacher doesn’t go and write their own text book, we buy a selection of core texts from publishers, and fill our libraries with them, the teacher then uses their skills to signpost to students the key pages and activities at the appropriate time during the course.

From a practical point, some organisations simply don’t have the skills and support mechanisms in house to support teachers to create the standards expected. Or if you have a teaching team that is very small, there may not be the capacity or skill within that team to develop the online elements, and in these cases buying in may become more attractive.

So, if an organisation chooses to purchase off the shelf resources, there are generally two options:

1. Buy the resources outright with a single payment, and then own them forever.
2. Pay an annual fee for the right to use the resources.

Resources

Method 1, is akin to buying books upfront, and is the easiest to account for and plan ahead (there are no unexpected increases in price in the future), however at some point in the future the resources will become out of date, either due to qualification changes, changes to the topic, or the technology used becoming defunct (e.g. Resources produced in Flash). This then requires further purchases down the line.

Method 2, will benefit from resources being constantly updated, but financially once you have used the resources for a few years, the provider will be able to increase the annual fee, so difficult to plan ahead, and overall the cost long term will become significant. Usually with the annual fee model, the resources will sit on their server, which means users either need different login details to their usual logins, or the resources need to come with an integration mechanism into the organisation VLE, (which some provide) however these are sometimes not as straight forward as you would expect, and the ways that the resources can be used may be restricted by this mechanism. Another problem is that quite often they will only work when online, which again isn’t ideal for teaching rooms that aren’t connected, or students wanting to work in an offline environment.

If an organisation is thinking of buying off the shelf packages, there are some considerations or questions to ask:

1. Ask to see a sample of the resources before buying. Each provider of resources will have demo units or similar available, but these will be the best quality ones they have to offer. Ask to see a unit of your choosing, and make your judgement from that – you will be very surprised how much difference there is between the two at times. If they refuse to give you access to a unit of your choice, walk away – they are obviously embarrassed by the quality of that unit.
2. If you are going for the annual licence option, check where the resources are actually stored, and what would happen if the publishing company went bust next week. The ideal scenario is for the resources to be hosted by a specialist hosting company, and one which has been paid for at least 12 months in advance. This way if the publishing company goes bust, you still have access to the resources for the duration of the contract.
3. Check the accessibility of the resources – many of the resources being produced are sadly very poor accessibility wise, and because the resources will be ‘locked’ by the seller it will be almost impossible to adapt them – resulting in the teacher having to recreate all the resources again, which defeats the purpose of buying the resources in the first place.
4. Check what format the resources are in. Any resources that are produced in flash or with flash elements are not going to work on iPhones, iPads, many Android devices and in the future possibly other devices, so flash based resources should be avoided altogether. If resources include other file types such as Word or PowerPoint these should also be provided in alternate formats (e.g. PDF, Open Office etc.) and if videos are included, these need to be tested on multiple device types and shouldn’t be excessively large.
5. Check the subject accuracy of the resources. I recently reviewed some anatomy resources for the teaching of sport, and was horrified by the number of errors the resources contained even though the resources had been proof-read by teachers and endorsed by one of the major awarding bodies. I wasn’t specifically looking for errors, but these jumped out at me, so I expect there must have been many less obvious mistakes as well.

One disadvantage (which many don’t consider) of using the entire courses or units that can be purchased off the shelf, is you actually make it very hard to ever become ‘outstanding’ – as the term outstanding means ‘standing out’ from the rest. If you have bought such a course or unit, you are unlikely to stand out from all the other people who have bought the same course or unit. Obviously there are things that the teachers could do to enhance or enrich the use of these courses, to get up to outstanding level, but reality is that the attraction of these purchases, is managers can then reduce the amount of money spent on teachers time, and even if teachers have the desired amounts of time, many will find it very hard to enhance or enrich an already ‘complete’ unit or course.

And finally – make sure the right people in the organisations are making the decisions – e.g. the teachers need to be involved to make sure they are appropriate academicaly, technical people need to be involved to ensure they will fit into organisations systems/VLEs etc. and strategically the budget holder has to make the decision as to not just the initial purchase, but on going maintenance, updates, CPD requirements etc.

The next post in this series, will look at the considerations of not buying in external resources.

Whereas I welcome comments on my blog posts, please don’t use this blog post as a way to either promote or criticise any particular companies or products. Any such comments I will delete.

Image source: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/925347

In the last 12 months, one of the key discussion points in Further Education has been FELTAG – which when first released by the Government in June 2014 included the notion that all funded FE courses had to have a mandatory 10% online element in order to get any funding, and initially this was going to take effect as early as September 2015 – sending most FE providers into a blind panic as they frantically tried to meet this magical 10% element in a very short space of time, whilst also managing huge reductions in their core funding. One of the options that was available to FE providers, was to simply buy ‘off the shelf’ online courses or resources to meet this 10% element. When the FELTAG recommendations were first announced, one of the first noticeable consequences was the number of communications that came from various content creations companies to providers, trying to get them to purchase their wares.

As it turns out the Government confirmed in February 2015 that it has no plans to actually enforce this 10% mandatory element (making it an optional mandatory element?) – but there is still a need and expectation for providers to increase the amount of online learning in order to get the best ‘blend’ in order to meet the expectations of their learners – so there is still a case for looking into whether to buy ‘off the shelf’ content, or to develop content in house.

money

I have worked with a few providers over the last few years, who have asked me to review the quality and suitability of various ‘off the shelf’ resources – and the range of quality between different offers is huge – with some sadly being very poor quality indeed, and others being much better quality but not necessarily in a format that fits into the existing infrastructure and systems in place. Some are ridiculously over priced for what they are, whereas others are more reasonable.

The decision of whether to buy or not to buy, is hugely significant for providers – getting the decision wrong could cost huge amounts of money, or looking at short term gains, may impact on long term options.

In my next two blog posts in the coming days I will be presenting the advantages and disadvantages of buying or not buying, and if buying what considerations and questions to be asking before making a financial decision.

My hope is to help providers to make informed decisions on this particular area of work.

Whereas I welcome comments on my blog posts, please don’t use this blog post as a way to either promote or criticise any particular companies or products. Any such comments I will delete.

Image Source: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/847454

## If you want to get FELTAG right – forget the 10%

This may seem like an odd title to a post, and I expect that some readers will find this post uneasy – but I feel that there is a need for a reality check here, and urge people to read the entire post before judging.

Anyone working in FE in the UK should be aware of the term FELTAG (Further Education Learning Technology Action Group) – who submitted a series of recommendations to Government to improve the quality of FE. There were many recommendations submitted, most were accepted (some with ammends) in the Government response but the one that has got everyone’s attention is the idea that all funded FE courses have to have 10% online to get any funding, and here lies the problem.

Over the years I have run many training sessions or presentations on the notion of blended learning – and always start with an activity to define what we mean by blended learning. My definition is “The optimum mix of online and face to face delivery” for a particular situation. The key word there is the word ‘optimum’ – for some situations it may be 5% online, another maybe 25%, another 50% etc. There is no magic percentage that is the optimum value as every situation is different, so in only a very small number of scenarios is 10% going to be the optimum. What most FE providers are doing at the moment is scrabbling around desperately trying to get all of their courses to this magical 10% number, and as resources are so tight, there is no incentive or reason to go beyond the 10% – and this is what worries me. The purpose of FELTAG was to raise standards of education, and the report included many recommendations and actions covering the whole gambit of use of technology in teaching and learning – the 10% element was only one small part of it – however the term FELTAG has accidentally become synonymous with 10% and rather than being a quality improvement exercise it appears to have turned into a tick box activity driven by the funding mechanism that itself doesn’t appear to understand what online learning is or isn’t.

Following discussions on Twitter and other blogs, working with FE providers and talking to key individuals in this area it is clear to me that this has become the reality. Looking at the titles of various webinars and training courses being offered by different bodies, they all seem to focus on the 10% issue, rather than the potential quality issues, or potential financial gains issues.

I appreciate that most providers have small learning tech teams and many have never had, and still don’t have full SMT support – so this is a huge and real problem. My prediction for September 2015 is we will have lots of courses that do have the mandatory 10% online provision – but most of these will be of poor quality, with over stressed teachers, stability issues with the systems, and the 10% being an expensive tokenistic gesture that isn’t integrated into the whole teaching and learning process and culture. The other problem is that we don’t even know what 10% means – so some will create something that they think is 10% only to find out it isn’t, or others will go over the top investing too much time and effort artificially doing things, when in fact they may have already been meeting the 10% criteria.

## So – what do I propose?

This brings me back to the title of the post. The best way to get this right (in my opinion) is to stop thinking about and talking about 10% – but instead to focus on identifying what the best mix of online and face to face each course would benefit from (and don’t try putting percentages against this). If we focus on this we will in almost all cases easily cover and surpass the 10% requirement, without it being an issue in itself. This approach also negates the problem of not knowing how big or where the financial goalposts are (and that will also keep moving) – if we provide something that is genuinely good, it doesn’t matter where the goalposts move to the provision will either be on target or easy to adapt slightly to get on target. If we aim for the magic 10% there is a risk we could miss altogether, and having to re-engineer something later on could be very expensive, and time consuming.

Firslty we need to make sure the snior managers are clear about what they are doing and why – there are various different models that can be employed when developing blended learning courses – and we need to get the right ones for the right purposes. We also need to ensure that we get staff buy in. Senior managers simply asking teaching staff to put 10% online (without any financial gain)  isn’t going to get staff buy in. A model where staff see reward for their efforts and benefits to them and the learners need to be found. Then we need to invest heavily in the staff work force – that has been identified on numerous occassions. There are plenty of opportunities available from the various support organisations involved, as well as many people like myself that has extensive experience of creating blended learning provision in FE and HE.

Some FE providers are shouting out that it isn’t possible to achieve any of this with the resources that they have – yes it may be difficult, but anything is possible if there is a desire and a will from the teaching staff to make it happen, and clear strategic leadership from above.

I have written this post as a ‘food for thought’ article. I hope that people don’t perceive this as a negative post – I am genuinely passionate about this area of work, and believe that great things can come from it, but I fear that at the moment, too many people are heading in the wrong direction – and a bit of feather ruffling will be benefical.

If any providers are interested in how I could help them with this area of work, then please get in touch via http://www.a6training.co.uk/contact.php

Image source: https://flic.kr/p/aXLEc

## FELTAG – Natural selection within FE?

FELTAG is an acronym for the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group – a group that was formed at the request of Matthew Hancock, the minister responsible for Further Education. The group was formed to advise Government on what needs to happen in FE to ensure that FE is making effective use of learning technology, and properly equipping learners for the demands of the current digital World.

Many would argue that FE has been doing a great job with regards learning technology, but the sad reality of the situation is that FE has had millions of pounds invested in it for this area of work since 2000, and in 2011 when Becta carried out it’s last annual survey, they deemed that only about 30% of Colleges were using learning technology effectively, and I would argue that the 30% using learning technology effectively probably got there as a result of very keen individuals taking the initiative and driving things from the bottom up, rather than as a result of the millions of pounds of tax payer money spent top down.

Many FE providers think they are doing great things with technology, but many are just using technology to do the same things as before without radically changing the teaching and learning process (e.g. writing on an Interactive whiteboard isn’t significantly different to writing on a blackboard with chalk; Putting a series of word based questions on the VLE for students to access at home isn’t significantly different to printing the word document out and taking it home in a folder).

In the last 10 or so years many colleges were engaging in a huge re-building programme as Government invested in colleges for the future – part of the rebuild process was the total teaching floor space had to be 10% less than before to take into account the fact that in the future more learning would take place online so colleges of the future would need less classrooms.

One of the headline grabbing recommendations is that all centrally funded FE courses will have to have 10% online delivery in order for the course to receive any funding, and financial incentives for courses to be up to 50% delivered online. It hasn’t been clarified by Government exactly what they mean by 10% (e.g. time, learning outcomes, weighting of units?) nor how will this be measured or enforced – but the 10% online element is now part of the language of FE planning.

Is forcing providers to have 10% online delivery the right step forward? Ideologically I would prefer it if people engaged in ‘blended’ learning because they saw the quality benefits that it brings, rather than because there is a financial gun held to their heads, however we have spent the last 14 years trying to encourage people to move in this direction, with only very limited success, so it probably is time for the funders to be financially more persuasive. Over the last few years I have worked with various providers including colleges, Work Based Learning (WBL), HE and charities wanting to increase and improve their blended provision, and one thing that I have suggested to them is rather than try and change a whole organisation in one go is to work with one area first and get it right there, then work with a few more areas, then work with the rest. This gives the organisation time to learn, time for the support mechanisms to establish, and if you make mistakes (which you will) you can learn from them, rather than affecting the whole organisation negatively. One problem with the FELTAG recommendations is this model is not an option, as the changes need to happen more quickly, so organisations will have to tackle whole areas at the same time.

One of the underlying principles of the FELTAG recommendations, is this is not about saving money – instead it is about raising quality of provision. In reality it will cost providers more money (certainly initially) which is not an easy pill for some to swallow. I have worked with various providers where the management are seeing the 10% online element as a simple way of reducing costs, by asking teachers to make 10% of their teaching online, and then expecting them to do an extra 10% of teaching (and marking) in its place. I am trying to reinforce the fact that to make this work, we have to get out of that mindset. All that would happen with this model, is low quality provision, overworked teachers (causing the good ones to leave) and low student satisfaction, that would in turn reduce intake in future years. To make this work there needs to be strong and clear strategic leadership from senior management, proper and managed investment to make this work, and teachers need to be an active part of the process, not just the whipping boys (and girls) at the bottom of the pile being dumped on from above. If organisations can get this right, then the rewards could be very fruitful, If a provider can create a high quality product – this will attract higher numbers of students, which will then bring an efficiency in numbers which is where there will be a cost saving element in the future for those that do get this right.

## My predictions for the future in Further Education, as a result of FELTAG are:

• Lots of providers will get this wrong, and will either fold or get taken over/merged with another provider.
• Providers will start to be more specialised in the areas that they deliver – and will drop their weaker areas.
• There will be an increase in the number of learners (I think we will see more short courses, and part-time study, and less full time provision).

I therefore see this as a form of natural selection – the stronger courses at the stronger providers will thrive and pick up students previously covered by other providers, and weaker courses and weaker organisations will naturally fall away, which in general I think will be a good thing.

I think that WBL and Adult Community Education (ACL) are likely to be concerned by all this. Many don’t have the same infrastructures and investments that colleges and Sixth form colleges have, which is likely to be a disadvantage to them, however there are many WBL and ACL providers who are doing good things, and they could really thrive in this environment, especially if a large FE college for example were to fold. It will be interesting to see if there is an expectation of the prison service to provide an element of online learning, logistically they cannot as the internet is banned in prisons, but not doing this would even further disadvantage the young people being detained and reducing their chance of employment on release, thus increasing their chances of re-offending. And finally specialist colleges – online learning is totally inappropriate for many disabled students, but may be very appropriate for other disabled students. This could be very good for some disabled learners who have found mainstream education difficult (for whatever reason) – if there are courses with say 50% online, this may open doors for them, as they can study at their own pace, with their own adapted equipment, with the ability to take regular breaks etc.

From a personal perspective, this is an exciting time – the fact that I have been so heavily involved working on large successful blended learning programmes in FE, means that I should be in high demand in the coming months and years (I have already noticed a huge increase in bookings in the last few months as a result of this). I feel a little sorry for the teachers and the students at providers that don’t get this right, I just hope that the good teachers move to the good providers, and students vote with their feet where necessary.

I hope that providers have the sense to seek outside help early in the process, rather than waiting until it is too late.

Going back to the title of this post – I do see this as a form of Darwinian natural selection (survival of the fittest) – in a way that we haven’t seen before – and the saying “..It is not the strongest, or fastest species that survive, but the ones that are most capable of adapting to changes in their environment that thrive…”

## If you are serious about blended learning – give teachers a mobile phone

In 2002 when I was working as an FE/HE lecturer at a college, the team leader made a decision to provide all staff in the team with mobile phones. The team in question was a PE and Sport team, which due to the nature of the subject, we were often teaching on the field, in the sports hall or at non-college facilities. Health and Safety had insisted that when in these locations the teacher had to carry a mobile phone – so we had a bank of (I think) 4 such phones for this purpose – but logistically this was a nightmare. No-one took ownership of the phones, so they weren’t set up for individuals with useful numbers stored in memory – they were often not charged, and the mechanism of having to return phones after the session (when you didn’t always go straight back to the college after a session), was a nightmare, as well as someone having to co-ordinate a booking system to make sure staff took the right phone, to make the logistics work.

So to partly overcome this problem, and to try and improve communication within the team (which had expanded so much we now occupied 4 staff rooms rather than 1) – the team leader managed to argue the case to provide all staff with a mobile phone. At first it sounded very expensive, but the college managed to get a deal with their provider, so the handsets themselves were quite cheap, and the package was basically a pay as you go – but at a reduced rate due to the number of devices. Any private phone calls that staff made – they paid for themselves – and all in all this was a highly successful model of working.

What we realised very quickly after deploying this model, was because these were work mobile phones, we could pass the number onto students. This had numerous advantages:

• If a student was running late due to traffic, bus broken down etc. They could text the tutor with an apology/explanation – which saved you disrupting the class to deal with their late arrival. They could now just sneak in, without the tutor having to stop.
• If a student wasn’t understanding part of an assignment – they could either text or call – even out of hours. The beauty of a work mobile phone was I (as the tutor) had the choice as to whether I wanted to take that call, or to ignore it. If I was happy to take the call, and I could help the student, this would probably save me (as the tutor) time in the long run, as the assignment would be quicker and easier to mark, if it had been completed the way I had wanted it.
• Logistically – if for example a venue changed at short notice – we had various mechanisms to get messages to students (email, VLE, SMS bulk messaging system, notice board) but we didn’t have a mechanism for the students to easily reply to these messages to enter a dialogue. Having the mobile phone in our possession meant we could pick up these queries even when not at our desks.
• There are then the numerous teaching and learning things that we can do with mobiles (which I cannot cover here, but have discussed previously on this blog).

In 2002 I knew that our team was ahead of the game in this way of thinking, but I thought that within a few years this would be norm, it horrifies me that in 2014 with the cost of mobile telephony being as cheap as it is – hardly any institutions provide their teaching staff with mobile phones. We waste huge amounts of money setting up complex landline based systems with a phone on a desk, then ask teaching staff to spend 28+ hours a week teaching – not at their desk. They come back from a 5 or 6 hour stint in classrooms at various locations, to find not just a mountain of emails, but also half a dozen voicemail messages from parents, students, other colleges etc. all needing a response a few hours ago – and now they have to spend the next 45 minutes trying to chase things up. Had they been able to take the call in the 10 minute gap they had between lessons – the issue could have been resolved quickly and instantly which is better for them and better for the students.

As FE and HE institutions look to increase the amounts of online learning within the provision – one part of being an online tutor is we need to have as many methods of communication between student and tutor as possible – as different students will have different preferences as to how they communicate. Not all will like using email, and even less will want to use the inbuilt communication tools within the VLE. I recently worked with a college that conducted a survey asking learners what their preferred method of communication was, and as I expected – SMS (texting) still came out as the learners preferred method of communication. For them it is cheap (most contracts will offer at least 2000 text per month), it is quick, and they have a record of the conversation in their phone. When we offer online learning we need to provide students with the ability to communicate by phone (and a proper number not a 08 number to a switchboard that costs the learner), email, and SMS as a minimum.

We don’t have to provide top of the range phones. A basic mobile that does calls and texts would actually suffice, and cost hardly anything – although for a little extra you could get a basic Smartphone which would then cover the email, VLE and Skype communication options as well.

If teams are unsure how to fund such an initiative – here is an idea: Most teams that I talk to have weekly meetings, that last at least an hour. If we assume that the staff time at that meeting is worth (estimating low here) £10 per person per hour – why not agree that in the first week of each month, there is no meeting. We could then get a contract on a basic Smartphone for £7.50 per month, leaving £2.50 per month spare to cover any out of contract calls, or data usage. If there is any really important information that staff needed to get at the missed meeting – why not write this up as a summary and send to the team to read on their new mobile phones.

As colleges start to seriously look at elements of online learning – the provision to staff of mobile phones is the easiest, and cheapest thing we can do – the efficiency benefits it brings, easily outweighs the costs, and should be a no-brainer for management to see and action. I hope that in the coming months and years there is a wake up in the sector that paying lots of money to tie a phone to a desk that a tutor is hardly ever at – is absurd, whereas spending money to provide a communication mechanism that follows the tutor around, is what students and tutors want, will increase efficiency and staff morale, improves health and safety and is an essential thing that needs to happen.

If anyone would like to discuss further then please comment below, or via my work mobile phone 07922115678.

## How to locate images on Wikimedia and embed into Moodle or Blackboard

There are lots of people that work in education that sadly think that Wikipedia is the work of the devil, and think that it will undermine academia as we know it, and should be banned at all costs. There are others that think Wikipedia is a wonderful source of information, and there is no point of looking elsewhere for facts.

Regardless of your viewpoint on Wikipedia (which hopefully is somewhere between the 2 extremes above), one aspect of it that is very useful, is that there is lots of high quality media (mainly images, but also videos and audio) available on Wikimedia – that can be easily (and legally) embedded into a VLE like Moodle or Blackboard.

As organisations scramble to set up online courses, the reality is that most people won’t have the time or money to generate their own high quality media – and I don’t think we need to, seeing as there is so much media out there that we can easily and legally use – the key is the academic structuring of this information and the asking of challenging and stimulating questions around this available media and information. e.g. the image below identifying a muscle in the human body – I couldn’t draw this myself, and it would be a waste of my time trying to.

The video below shows how easy it is to find an image on wikimedia and embed it into a VLE like Moodle or Blackboard