Fortnightly Mailing

Google explains its "mobile user experience strategy"

Via Clive Shepherd and someone who commented on Clive's recent post about Mobile Learning, I came across this informative piece by Stephen Wellman - "an upfront look at how Google designs its mobile applications" - reporting from an event addressed by Google's Leland Rechis in New York on 10 April 2007. The three categories - 'repetitive now', 'bored now', and 'urgent now' - that Google breaks mobile users into when designing services are certainly striking:

• "The 'repetitive now' user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.
• The 'bored now' are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behaviour group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.
• The 'urgent now' is (sic) a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries."

The Scotsman reports that the Interactive University is to shut at the end of May

Updated with footnote, and with link to 2004 report by Sara Frank Bristow,  on 28/4/2007

On 17/4/2007, The Scotsman reported that the Interactive University (IU), which has been held up as one of the few UK examples of apparently* successful large-scale provision of on line university-level education, and which was recruiting staff until recently, "is to close its doors at the end of next month", after "it failed to attract participation from the majority of Scottish universities and a bid for a lifeline £1.5 million from Scottish Enterprise was refused". For a detailed review of the Interactive University, written for the UKeUniversity before the latter had the plug finally pulled on it, see this 2004 report by Sara Frank Bristow, edited by Paul Bacsich [180 kB DOC].

* I say "apparently" as I am very sceptical about the approach to content development described by the IU. In my experience "ensuring that the whole content production process is completely independent of the end method of delivery" is neither a realistic nor a desirable endeavour.

Effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products in schools

The US National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) is funded as part of the Institute of Education Sciences by the US Department of Education. One of its roles is the evaluation of federal programmes. Last month NCEE published the first of two reports on the effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products in schools. Over 100 schools and over 400 teachers were involved, with the focus of the evaluation on learners in the first and sixth grades. The study's 2 main findings are summarised as follows.

1. Test Scores Were Not Significantly Higher in Classrooms Using Selected Reading and Mathematics Software Products. Test scores in treatment classrooms that were randomly assigned to use products did not differ from test scores in control classrooms by statistically significant margins.  
2. Effects Were Correlated With Some Classroom and School Characteristics. For reading products, effects on overall test scores were correlated with the student-teacher ratio in first grade classrooms and with the amount of time that products were used in fourth grade classrooms. For math products, effects were uncorrelated with classroom and school characteristics.

Open Source software in education

A useful series of contributions about Open Source software in education is building up on Penn State University World Campus's Terra Incognita web log, edited by Ken Udas, who is Executive Director of the PSU World Campus. There is a project description and a schedule of recent and planned contributions on the Commonwealth of Learning's Wikieducator wiki. For example there is a two-part interview by Ken with Ruth Sabean, UCLA's assistant vice-provost for educational technology, about why the University of California Los Angeles selected Moodle as its VLE. Future contributions, are set to be published at roughly fortnightly intervals for the next 6 months or so, and prospective authors are invited to get in touch with Ken.
 

Chris Lightfoot - obituaries and some of his wonderful software

Chris Lightfoot was a gifted and committed software developer, who died in February aged 28. You get a good sense of his talents and achievements from this obituary by MySociety's Tom Steinberg and from this one in The Times. Chris was the developer behind the previously featured Pledgebank and WriteToThem (which provides a reliable way to write to your elected representatives), and other systems, for example the Downing Street on-line petition web site, Political Survey, as well as the system that generates maps like the one above, which shows travel-time "isochrones" around Edinburgh. For an explanatory essay, and some other travel-time isochrone maps, see this page on the MySociety web site.

SCORM's stewardship to be transferred from the US Department of Defence

Kevin Donovan

In February, Mike Collett wrote a Guest Contribution about The Global 2007 conference, which took place in London on 19 March. Kevin Donovan was there, and has written a report from the event for the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) - for which I work part time. An edited version of Kevin's report, with photos, will appear in the next issue of the ALT Newsletter. In the meantime, an unedited version, in plain text, is on the ALT web site. Here is the article's introductory summary.

The Global 2007 conference was held in London on 19th March. Sponsored by the DfES and ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning – the organisation responsible for SCORM), and with support from all the key interoperability standards organisations, the event was held to discuss good practice relating to the use of technology in "learning, education and training". But more importantly it was the start of the process by which the stewardship of SCORM is transferred from the US Department of Defence (which manages ADL) to a new body.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson on Jam, in October 2006

I came across this 11 October 2006 speech by Mark Thompson, BBC Director General. The speech ranges widely. This section on Jam, the BBC's online learning service, which the BBC will suspend tomorrow, with its challenging assertion by Stephen Heppell about the "lack of agility of the UK software industry", indicates just how much the BBC had staked on Jam.

"The third priority was education. I've already mentioned the massive investment we've made in specialist factual output – programmes like Planet Earth and Ancient Rome on TV alongside extensive commitments on both radio and the web. But the centrepiece is undoubtedly the Digital Curriculum, or BBC Jam as it is now called.

After a difficult and contentious birth, I believe this is shaping up to be one of the most important services the BBC has ever launched. Over the past seven years, the BBC's exam revision service Bitesize has grown to the point where it is used by nearly three-quarters of all students taking GCSEs.

In time Jam may enjoy a similar reach. Not just because of its imagination and flair, but because it has been designed wholly around children and can be used just as easily by students and parents at home as in the classroom.

Jam has already had other benefits too. Professor Stephen Heppell from Bournemouth University is a world class expert in online learning who has been working as an independent advisor to the BBC. This is what he has to say of the creative and technical process that has led to the launch of the service: 'what Jam now offers is a uniquely agile, really quite organic, large scale development model that is without equal anywhere in the world. My belief is that we will need to document and share this agility – apart from the Jam partners, the UK software industry lacks it and can learn so much from it. This is an unexpected contribution.'"

Note. Other posts about BBC Jam:

• 19 March 2007 - BBC Director General Mark Thompson on Jam, in October 2006.
• 17 March 2007 - BBC Jam. We need usage data.
• 14 March 2007 - BBC suspends Jam, its flagship online learning web site.

BBC Jam. We need usage data.

Post updated (see italicised and struck-out text in paragraph 2), 21/3/2007

I've updated a piece I wrote on 14/3/2007 about the BBC's decision to suspend/scrap its £150m online learning service for school pupils. I started off pretty sceptical about the value of the service, and so far I'm not convinced by the assertions being made that more recently released content was of a much higher standard than the earliest Jam material, and that some amazingly good content was about to be released by Jam, which would win over the doubters.

Of particular interest is the actual use to which the content that has been released to date (a subset of what has been produced) has been put. To access the main features of Jam see Jam at all you needed to register, so not much can be read into the fact that 170,000 user accounts on Jam had been created.

What matters is data like:

• the number of users by stated age and role;
• their distribution across the country, and by language (BBC Jam had content in Gaelic and Welsh, as well as in English);
• the number of sessions that different classes of account-holder have had, over what period, and whether, for a particular content component this is rising or falling;
• the pattern and volume of use made of different parts of the materials by different classes of account-holder.

And, separately from this kind of data, which you would hope could be provided quickly and easily by the BBC from its logs (and is probably already known by people inside the Jam machine - who could post a comment here, or send me data privately), we need a feel for the extent to which teachers have been building use of Jam into course provision, if indeed that has been happening.

If learners in large numbers are dependent on a service that is being suddenly switched off, that would put the BBC Trust's decision in different light from if they are not. But how different? The average spend, for a service that has been available for over a year, has been around £500 per registered user. I'd be surprised if even 25% of the registered users are "real users", rather than users who were just taking a look. Thus an average spend to date on Jam of £2000 per real user, and possibly a great deal more, may be a more realistic figure: on a par with, say, what the state spends to teach a school pupil for one year.  Of course the intention was that the content would be in use for more than a year, and that the number of real users would grow, so the average annual spend per user would have fallen. But on the face of it I think that when and if the usage date is made available it will serve to undermine the case for Jam, rather than to support it.

Note. Other posts about BBC Jam:

• 19 March 2007 - BBC Director General Mark Thompson on Jam, in October 2006.
• 17 March 2007 - BBC Jam. We need usage data.
• 14 March 2007 - BBC suspends Jam, its flagship online learning web site.

 

BBC suspends Jam, its flagship online learning web site

Amended 15/3/2007; update (below) 17/3/2007. Correction and amendments to 17/3/2007 update, made on 7/4/2007, in response to a request from Lewis Bronze, CEO of Espresso Education Ltd.

Donald Clark and the Guardian Online note the BBC's decision to suspend Jam, its expensive, ambitious, error-ridden and strangely designed e-learning web site. From the beginning it smacked to me of adults imagining what children like, and seemed to have been produced with an eye on visual complexity rather than on effective on-line learning. Notwithstanding that around 170,000 people had registered to use it.

"The BBC Trust has today decided to suspend the online education service, BBC Jam, with effect from 20 March 2007. The Trust has requested BBC management to prepare fresh proposals for how the BBC should deliver the Charter obligation to promote formal education and learning, meeting the online needs of school age children. Once completed, the Trust will subject BBC management's proposals to a full Public Value Test, including a market impact assessment by Ofcom."

"The Trust's decision follows extensive discussions with Government and the European Commission about how to address allegations from some in the industry that Jam is damaging their interests."

But there are 200 jobs at risk, 170,000 registered users will lose a service that (?) they've been making use of, and any work that they have saved, and a lot of procured and ready-to-launch content, developed with, say, £75m of public funding, may now never be used. 14/3/2007 BBC management press release. 14/3/2007 BBC Trust press release, from which the above excerpt is taken.

17/3/2007. There is plenty of interest (puns notwithstanding) on the Web about the BBC decision, some of it highly critical. See, for example, BBC in a fruitless jam, by John Connell, and Why does toast always land with the Jam side down?, by Ewan McIntosh.  And you may also be interested in the stance taken in 2002 by the companies that originally objected to and won stringent conditions in the January 2003 BBC/Government decision for the BBC to become a major producer of on-line learning content, funded by the public through their TV license fees. For example here is a quote - reported in The Register - from Lewis Bronze of Espresso Education Ltd from that time:

"The opportunity provided by broadband technology should allow a torrent of educational content to flow - instead, the BBC's current proposals will give us a desert. The BBC's current proposals for their free to air digital curriculum will massively curtail the choice available for schools. Using £170 million of the public's licence fees destroys a competitive market, deprives children and teachers of choice and diversity, and kills off the UK educational software industry."

Note. Other posts about BBC Jam:

• 19 March 2007 - BBC Director General Mark Thompson on Jam, in October 2006.
• 17 March 2007 - BBC Jam. We need usage data.
• 14 March 2007 - BBC suspends Jam, its flagship online learning web site.

Listening to learner voices - views from the other side. A workshop from the authors of the LEX study.

 

Image from LEX Report

I wrote about the excellent JISC-funded LEX study in Fortnightly Mailing last November. The Association for Learning Technology (for which I work half time) is running a workshop featuring all 4 main authors of the LEX study (Doug Gowan, Linda Creanor, Carol Howells, Kathryn Trinder) in Glasgow on 26 June. This will be relevant to anyone involved in e-learning, including commercial content developers. If any reader who attends the workshop would like to write it up for Fortnightly Mailing as a Guest Contribution, please get in touch with me.