Journal Club, lack thereof

It's ages since we had a journal club and I really miss it. I miss the weekly discipline of reading a paper knowing that I have to be able to say something intelligent about something new. I miss the chance to practice of critical thinking skills. I miss the differing viewpoints. I miss the opportunity for synthesis. I really miss picking holes in other people's data  analysis techniques. The p-value problem. The "What does the line mean?" problem. The conclusion versus discussion problem.

The world has changed. Opportunities to talk in real life have faded away. Shame.

The Marked Benefits of Learning Analytics

I want to bring together three things I've read or heard so far in the #LAK11 course to make a point about letting students see the data we hold on them. In a miracle of joined-up thinking this post picks up the point I was making in the last paragraph of my previous post in which an Amazon in a parallel universe couldn't see the point of letting its customers see the data on their previous purchases.

The first of the three: I liked the depiction of the 'knowledge continuum in Baker (2007):
Data -- Information -- Knowledge -- Wisdom.

I'd like to get as far as wisdom but, as my last post suggests, unless there's a sudden outbreak of common sense I'll struggle to get as far as data. I want data driven decisions for improved educational outcomes but...

The second of the three: "Academic culture favours analysis over action; institutions have placed a high degree of importance on their reputations rather than on improving the academic performance of their students." (Norris, 2008). Oh, how true that is! But in an ideal world...

The third of the three: John Fritz in his Elluminate session talked about using activity analysis as a predictor of success (as opposed to an indicator of success).

All of which brings me to the thought that if we have data, and we have predictors of success, are we not ethically obliged to share those data and patterns with our students?

Here's an analogy. We all know that there was a high correlation between wearing a red shirt on Star trek and coming to a sticky end on an alien planet. Even though it was just a correlation, and there was absolutely no suggestion of causality, did the guys in the transporter room not have an obligation to share this information with the young man in question and perhaps have a few spare mustard-coloured shirts on hand just in case?

I'd like to thank my friend Keith for the pun in the title.

Edited on Sunday 6 Feb: Added link to Analytics According to Captain Kirk

Learning analytics and how it differs from business intelligence

I'm taking an online course in Learning Analytics : http://learninganalytics.net/syllabus.html

The course documentation defines learning analytics as: “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs.” I'm finding it challenging but fascinating and timely.

Everything I've read about Learning Analytics so far says that it has grown out of Business Intelligence and Web Analytics. It's a growing field and, according to Baker and Yacef, 2010, may bring "to educational research the mathematical and scientific rigor that similar methods have previously brought to cognitive psychology and biology." That sounds like something I need to know about.

But back to this analogy with business analytics. Consider a parallel universe in which Amazon is run like an ancient HE institution. Here's a guided tour from the Director of Sales: "We keep Karon's Name and address over here in this database and the records of the books she's bought this academic year over here in this computer. The two computers can't talk to each other but a secretary has access to both so that's OK. The marketing department can apply for access to the database of books sold this year if they wish but they'll have to ask the secretary to give them records from previous years because the data in the database is deleted every September and the secretary keeps copies of old records in a number of Excel spreadsheets on her C:drive. Of course, Karon can't see a list of what she's bought in the past. Why would she want to do that? She can see the data from some special offers we ran last year because it's been put in the WebCT gradebook for some reason. We must make sure that doesn't happen again."

Time to blog

This is an experiment. It works for housework, so perhaps it will work for blogging and I have so much in my head that needs to be put down in words I have to try something or I'll explode. So I'll repeatedly set my kitchen timer to 30 minutes and start writing. There will be a theme - the uses and abuses of data in education.

But then I took a photo and spent time looking for the power lead for my laptop and then I checked my email - look there's an article called the "unreasonable effectiveness of data" I must read... isn't that funny I've just reread Wigner's seminal article "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" and I've only got two minutes left and I've got to upload the photo yet...

A letter to my MP

I have signed the Science is Vital petition. I sent this letter to my MP:

Dear Mr Lazarowicz

The Science is Vital [http://scienceisvital.org.uk/] coalition, along with the Campaign for Science and Engineering [http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk], are calling upon the Government to set out a supportive strategy, including public investment goals in step with economic growth.

My job at The University of Edinburgh is to nurture the future generations of physicists and I would like to share my professional perspective with you.

If the investment in physics research is cut, the experts will follow the funding abroad and take the next generation of physicists with them. We know this because it has happened before. Many of my contemporaries left the country in the brain drain of the early and mid eighties. Margaret Thatcher’s cuts took a whole generation of physicists away from our institutions and made them unavailable to our young people. The world-class researchers who left in the 1980s have only just started to return – several of them live in your constituency - and they attract the very best students to the UK. These young researchers move to the UK to take advantage of the expertise that is here.

If the UK withdraws funding from the big fundamental science projects, it will lose the current generation AND the next generation for small, short-term ‘savings’ that will quickly result in a loss of expertise and a very big loss of GDP. It is estimated that a cut of £1bn in science investment (approximately 20%) will result in a loss of £10bn to GDP. As Sir Patrick Moore (a supporter of Science is Vital) says: “If we cut funds for science we’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Without investment in science research the UK risks its international reputation, its market share of high-tech manufacturing and services, the ability to respond to urgent and long-term national scientific challenges and the economic recovery will falter.

Please
•    sign EDM 767 – Science is Vital (http://bit.ly/edm767)
•    sign the Science is Vital petition – (http://scienceisvital.org.uk/sign-the-petition)
•    attend a lobby in Parliament on 12 October (15.30, Committee Room 10).

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,
Karon McBride
11/10/2010 17:20:33

An email to my father

This post continues the theme of keeping control of your public profile(s) that I began in the Peas and Potatoes entry. It came about because my father, who has come the the Internet somewhat late in life, found my name, and the names of other family members, listed on a website in juxtaposition with the names of neighbours. To his eyes, it looked as if someone was making claims on our identities to which they were not entitled.

Here is an edited version of the email I wrote to my father. The email finishes with an exploration of the real problem, which is that my father feels disappointed that the Internet in theory provides a mechanism through which he might track down and contact some of the people he knew as a young adult but it doesn't work as well as hoped in practice. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Hi Dad

The company that listed the names of our family alongside those of our neighbours is called 192.com. They appear to have combined the 2002 electoral role with the 2009 electoral role. 192.com market themselves as a people finder and a directory enquiry service. The positive side of their services is that people or companies can check the bona fides of, say, customers or prospective romantic partners. The negative side is that their computers link people's data without any thought to the distress this might cause.

192.com used to have access to the full electoral roll but when the law changed in 2003, and we could all opt out of being in the public register, 192 took the Government to court to claim that the new law was 'irrational.' The company lost the case: http://www.out-law.com/page-3865. You and I (sensibly) opted out of the public register from 2003 onwards, but some of your neighbours have yet to choose to do that.

As a result of the change in the law, the only full register to which companies like 192 have legal access is the 2002 electoral roll and some have chosen to continue to use it. That decision probably made sense in 2004 but less so now and their competitors make much of how out of date some datasets are these days.

192's privacy policy is here: http://www.192.com/misc/privacy-policy/. As you can see, 192 is a UK company so we can do something about this problem on this occasion by downloading the form C01.pdf from the website and sending completed copies by recorded delivery to the address on the form. I doubt they'll act very quickly to remove the data but the recorded delivery should concentrate their minds a little. I will fill in a form on my own behalf.

The wider problem is that the Electoral Roll 2002 is a public document and other companies may get hold of it in the future. If they aren't UK companies, or are operating without a traceable postal address, there will be little you or I can do about it. However, I'm going to take this further and see what might be done to stop the councils in the UK from making old data available.

On the positive side, it would be a very, very odd combination of circumstances that would bring someone to the Google search that you found. However, if for example a neighbour decided to change energy supplier or you changed your car insurance then conceivably the 192 data might turn up in a standard credit search. But in cases like that companies will want to see a full address and so will use a proper credit agency to check that you really exist. I'm sure banks, energy companies and insurance firms know all about 192.com.

People don't believe everything they see on the Internet but companies and government agencies are becoming increasingly suspicious of people who have no internet presence at all. It is therefore probably a good idea to put an internet profile out there yourself on a reputable professional contacts site. This would be a profile over which you would have full control and it would turn up higher up a Google search than the rubbish datsets put together by the mindless computers of directory sites. This way anyone from your past who is searching for you, just like you're searching for them, will find proper, useful information and a secure contact form - people can send you a message through the website but aren't given your email address.

I think the best site to use is Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/. It's free and has a very good reputation. It is secure and they won't do anything naughty with your information but admittedly it is set up for workplace contacts so you may have to be a little inventive when filling in the data fields. There are other options but give Linkedin some thought.

Having a prominent profile on a well-Googled site like Linkedin in certainly a step towards making yourself findable. Of course, those of your contemporaries less Interweb-savvy than you won't have a web presence at all so we're back to relying on old copies of the Electoral Roll. Most unsatisfactory. Perhaps a tv programme or a tv presenter could help to start a Linkedin revolution among the retired population. Maybe they could start a campaign against 192's use of old data. What programmes are most likely to be watched by the people you're trying to reach?

I hope this helps to put your mind at rest. I wish I could think of cleverer ways of helping you catch up with the people you've known in the past. I can see that it's like having read the opening chapter of lots of books - it would be good to know how the stories end.

All my love

Karon

Keeping the peas away from the mashed potatoes

Photo of peas by Jo Richards

If you live online, as I do, it's not easy to keep your personal life (i.e.,  Facebook postings) from contaminating your professional persona.

Or, as Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6 quoted by Zachary Sniderman on Mashable in his useful article '5 Ways to Clean Up Your Social Media Identity' puts it,

"You can’t keep the peas from touching the mashed potatoes."

Does it matter?

I have been worried for some time that when it comes to social media I might not be taking sufficient care to separate the personal from the professional (or the peas from the potatoes). I don't draw a sharp line between work and play in real life either but I respect those who do and think I owe it to my colleagues to make my online writing and resources available to them without requiring them to sacrifice their privacy.

I eat my peas with honey; I've done so all my life

My use of Facebook, and later that of Twitter, started out as a a work-related experiment and only later on took on a social dimension as friends and family members found my Facebook account and joined in the game. Being something of a solitary wasp, I suspect I wouldn't have felt the need to sign up with Facebook just for the social contact. In that respect, I wouldn't miss Facebook if it disappeared tomorrow but I would miss the professional contacts I maintain through social media including Facebook, Twitter, blogging and microblogging.

So there we were at ALT-C 2007 in Nottingham. I was enjoying spending time with colleagues from the my department (the School of Physics and Astronomy @ Edinburgh) and in much the same line of work but with whom I had little contact in the ordinary run of things because I worked by myself on a project that was largely outwith the department. Could Facebook allow me to keep in contact with these colleagues whose input and support I valued?

I can now report that the experiment had a positive outcome, at least for me. Not only have I shared information of professional interest and kept in touch with people but, more importantly, I know my colleagues much better than I would otherwise have done and I have received a level of personal support that has, at times, saved my sanity.

Three years on, the project on which I was originally employed is winding down, I've been redeployed to mainstream activites and, in one of those strange quirks of fate, I now share an office with some of the people who were there at Nottingham at the start of the Facebook experiment. From my point of view at least, it's been a painless transition and I think that's largely due to the Facebook relationships I developed and maintained with my 'new' coworkers during the experiment.

It makes the peas taste funny but it keeps them on the knife

Three years is sufficient for a trial phase and my approach to the use of social media has matured. I sense a sea change in the academic use of social media and an emerging realisation of the dangers of not having an online presence - it looks downright suspicious these days if you google someone and find nothing. In addition, I contend that a professional presence is not enough - people want and expect to be able to see something of the person behind the persona.

Facebook worked for me in the days of innocence, when few of my colleagues were online, but it isn't the right tool for me now and I wouldn't recommend it to others. The big problem with Facebook is its reciprocal nature. You're welcome to look at mine but you have to accept that I get to look at yours in return. Some of my colleagues created dummy accounts to avoid giving offence by refusing to be my 'friend' on Facebook and this is a shame because I really didn't want to pry or judge but I did hope for something more personal than a waxwork stand-in.

I need a professional presence online. It's no longer an experiment, it's a requirement and I think I have to accept that some cross-contamination between the peas and the potatoes is inevitable and might even improve the palatability of both. Indeed, having very little personal information about you out there on the web may be more dangerous than having a lot. For example, if this blog post was the only piece of writing by me online, a prospective employer might be concerned about my 'solitary wasp' comment. Perhaps I wouldn't play nicely with others? As it is, there's plenty of evidence out there about my sociable and collaborative nature.

Yes, it's possible that a someone might look at my Ping profile and wonder if someone who likes everything from Bach to Boogie might lack focus (probably true). And what I would like to call a quirky sense of humour might be seen as a tendency towards flippancy (also true). But what counts is that you understand the peas and potatoes problem and are seen to be addressing it in an informed and systematic way.

Improving my table manners

I'm working my way through '5 Ways to Clean Up Your Social Media Identity'. I'm paying attention to developing my personal brand and  I've started to divide my accounts into those that are personal and those that are professional. Where the purpose of accounts has become muddled, I'll either abandon them or divide them into two.

To facilitate stealth followers (those who wish to follow without reciprocating), I pledge to add RSS feeds to my blogs and microblogs. In October I'll jump ship from Facebook to Diaspora in the hope that it will give me more options and better levels of control.

Above all, I've decided that, within reason, I'm not too worried about the peas touching the tatties. I blame the gravy.

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Professional links
My LinkedIn profile
My professional Twitter account

Personal links
My personal Twitter account