The End Is Nigh!

And so the end is near…Incredibly this is my final blog post. I know those colleagues who have submitted comments to this blog will be sorry (all two of you:-0). Now, therefore, is a suitable time for reflection and discussion.

Summer time on campus is like a parallel universe ‘there is life, Jim, but not as we know it’. It is the same thing for this course. Over the academic year we have experienced so many facets of the new technologies (and as Dr Darina rightly said in her final lecture) we now have a whole range of skills that we did not have before. From next week we will all go off to different venues and start to apply those skills. In a way we will be distance learners from then on.  

I recently completed my final thread on the virtual team project which went very well whether by chance or design. Personally, from a class building point of view the use of threads for discussion created an excellent group dynamic and I feel that it might be better employed in term one in future years.

There is a definite market for this type of postgraduate programme and I expect to see it going from strength to strength. There is also a definite market niche for a course that is application-based and not just programming-based. Social media are increasingly used by companies and have great revenue generating potential.

So as you sail off into the sunset do not forget where it all began for you. No matter whether you become a ‘Sage on the Stage’ or a ‘Ride (or was that Guide?) on the Side’ there are no former students of the University of Limerick only present ones.

Team Building Is Not Just For The Birds

An unusual piece of research published in the journal ‘Current Biology’ has revealed important insights into the nature of group work.

Dr Dora Biro and colleagues from the University of Oxford studied the flight paths and direction   finding of homing pigeons using the latest GPS tracking systems.

Amazingly, the Oxford team found that the birds adopted similar team building techniques to those taught on many postgraduate courses (including this one).

Pigeons (like many birds that flock together for the purposes of   safety and navigation) must decide on the best   route to their destination based on many possible alternatives.

The research showed that single birds faithfully   reverted to a habitual   route which was hard-wired into their memories. When flying   in pairs, however, this route was challenged by the emergence   of a credible   alternative.

Faced with the possibility of conflict three strategies were employed in order    to decide   the best   route   to take. Each possibility weighed the difference in distance between an innate memorised route and the conflicted route.

The first option   involved each side compromising and   choosing the least worst option if the differences between both routes was small. This involved accepting a ‘group decision’. 

The alternative involved ‘compliance’ that is   bowing to another’s   leadership and following that route. Finally, when a conflict could not be avoided the pair decided to split and   make their own way home following different routes.

The scientists used a mathematical model called the ‘many wrongs hypothesis’ to test their belief that pairs of pigeons were better able to   negotiate the best route home. They found that for Pigeons, as for humans, leaders must demonstrate superior knowledge if they are to be followed.

Two Shakes Is A ‘Wonk’

The media friendly science journal ‘Current Biology’ reveals fascinating ‘cognitive parallels’ between man and his best friend the dog.

Deep Learning ‘Wonks’ currently studying the ‘Three Component Model’ might be interested to hear about parallels with our furry friends. You see dogs, like humans, observe and interpret external activity before learning to imitate a new action.

In a study of 54 dogs charged with opening a can by pulling a lever, the natural inclination was to use their mouths. One dog, however, was taught to use its paw. The others followed his example (Trigger) but only when they interpreted it as being a deliberate choice (Exploration). For example, when a ball was placed in their mouths they   believed that they had no option but to use their paws (Integration).

Like dogs the human brain is wired ‘asymmetrically’ that is the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain and vice versa. Birds, by contrast, use their right eyes to search for food while watching for predators with the left. Does this leave them cross-eyed when trying to catch hares?

Know That Who You Meet You Are

Women are attracted to men who most closely resemble their fathers say researchers published in the journal ‘Evolution and Human Behaviour’.

The study could have widespread social implications and favours the influence of ‘cognitive theories’ over ‘behavioural’ ones in the learning process. Falling in love is a complex business at the best of times but the study indicates that females further complicate the process by involving their family history.

Formerly, women had been shown to prefer men for their emotional intelligence and such qualities as caring, trustworthiness and commitment. What the psychologists have now found, however, is that women are in fact basing such choices upon ‘prior learning’.

While men are known to place a high premium on visual stimuli when choosing a partner, women by contrast, show increased activity in an area of the brain called the  ‘Caudate Nucleus’. In Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans this area has been shown to be strongly associated with learning and memory.

The study may encourage certain unscrupulous individuals to try and fool   ‘Mother Nature’ by undertaking cosmetic surgery.  Changing our facial characteristics allows us to project powerful psychological   cues which appeal to potential mates.  Of course having studied ethics intensely none of our colleagues would dare resort to such an underhanded approach or would they?

Has Technology Taken Us Over?

Research published in the journal ‘Personality and Individual Differences’ has highlighted a growing   tendency to apply human qualities to machines.

Jacob A. Benfield and colleagues from Colorado State University   looked at the personality inventories of some 204 undergraduate drivers. Amazingly they found   not just a strong tendency to name (34%) and apply gender (55%) to   vehicles but also complete   unanimity   in their willingness to discuss a vehicle’s ‘personality’.

Indeed, ‘vehicle personality’ may   one   day   be employed as a tool in predicting the aggressive predisposition of certain drivers. Moreover, future legislation could be employed to create more agreeable road vehicles or to confine certain personality types to certain vehicles only. Changing cars, for example, may be a help in reducing a driver’s levels of aggression. Cars, like pets it seems, tend to take on the characteristics of their owners both for good and for ill. Prospective technical writers please take note.

Online Learning and Modernity

The latest developments in online learning are having a profound effect on the world of education. Indeed change has been so rapid that a schism has developed between two philosophical groupings namely ‘Humanists’ and ‘Scientists’. The latter advocate a rational computer driven basis to education, while the former fear the supplanting of traditional curricula with more cognitively based systems. C. P. Snow (1959) for example, warned of the dangers of such educational disparities; “it is dangerous to have two cultures which can’t or don’t communicate”, (C.E.R.I.,1986).

Keizenbaum (1976) also warned: “the computer can become part of a person and alter his way of comprehending reality” (ibid).Scientists, however, insist that educational advantages will offset any such disadvantages. Echoing the ideas of Maria Montessori they state that drill and practice will be replaced by the concept of learning as 'personal discovery'.

The startling fact today  is that children as young as eight years old today may know more about the new information technologies than their parents. This certainly marks a ‘paradigm shift’ on previous models of learning but is it a good thing?

Learning To Write On Campus

With reference to our recent assignment on distance education it is interesting to note how conventional means of improving writing skills remain dominant.

The ‘Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre (RWC)’ was set up in 2007 under the auspices of the ‘Centre for Teaching and Learning’, directed by Professor Sarah Moore, the associate Vice-President of the University of Limerick, and was initially funded by the Higher Education Authority’s (HEAs) Strategic Initiative Fund.

 The RWC offers group and one-to-one peer (face to face) tutoring to students of all disciplines from humanities to engineering. It takes a fun approach to the topic and this has paid dividends in terms of improving once problematic areas like grammar, style, sentence construction, vocabulary, essay, dissertation and even Ph.D work. The RWC believes that anybody can improve their writing skills by examining the strategies used to achieve  writing goals.

Behaviour Is Still Important

Despite the emergence of rival theories about how best to train people. Psychological ‘behavioural’ theories are not yet redundant. Scientists writing in ‘The Annals of Epidemiology’, for example, have linked personality to an increased   risk of contracting serious illness in later life.

The study looked at a sample of 2000 men over a 30 year period until 60 per cent had died. The deceased death certificates were matched to a psychological questionnaire they had filled out years before.

Amazingly   the shyest   respondents had a 50 per cent greater chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke. The authors hypothesized that personality may actually alter the efficient operation of our brains and create the conditions for illness to develop.

Keeping Stress Levels Down

With assignments building up in academia a timely piece of research reminds us how important it is to keep stress at bay.

Dr. Jean-Philippe Gouin and colleagues from Ohio State University were writing in the journal   ‘Brain Behaviour and Immunity’. They   looked at a sample of   98 volunteers who agreed to have a standard blister wound inserted on their forearms via a vacuum-pump.

Amazingly   the most stressed   respondents were 4.2 times more likely to take longer than the estimated four days to fully heal.

 The authors suggest that relaxation and cognitive therapy may assist with stress management by lowering levels of the hormone ‘Cortisol’ in the bloodstream. ‘Cortisol’ is a hormone that acts as a bio-marker for stress.

‘Subliminal Images’ Beware

Our love-affair with technology should come with a health warning according to a recent study.

‘Subliminal images ‘   are defined as   brief graphical displays   hidden inside conventional media products such as television programmes and films.

Like a ‘Trojan Horse’ unsuspecting viewers only ever sense their presence   subconsciously.

Hollywood films like ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ (1995)   and ‘Fight Club’ (1999) make reference to ‘subliminal   technology’. The   technology itself is not new and has been available since the 1950s. Indeed, the UK government has banned its use in advertising.

Now, ‘functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging’ (fMRI) has revealed that an area of the brain called the ‘Primary Visual Cortex’ can store such images.

The findings suggest that the human brain faced with relative inactivity will attempt to fill the void   by storing whatever   visual images it can, even if they are covert ‘subliminal messages’. In future, such images may be used by advertisers in order to convince us to buy their wares.

Freedom and Collaborative Technologies

Our recent ‘Virtual Team Project’ has shown how collaboration and the new media technologies are inseparable. Indeed, a new initiative at the University of Limerick (UL) aims to take this process a step further. The ’Rosetta Project’ was founded at UL by Reinhard Schäler in 2009 to promote information sharing and involves non-profit organisations in providing localisation and translation services to Less Developed Countries (LDCs).

The project involves 140 contributors globally. In 2009 the’ Irish World Academy’ held a concert at UL to raise funds for the venture and the remaining seed capital came from benefactors and MNCs themselves.

Mr Schäler, established the 'Localisation Resources Centre' (LRC) at University College Dublin (UCD) in 1995 before transferring it successfully to UL in 1999 where it was reconstituted as the LRC.

There are a total of 300 translators working globally on a voluntary basis for the foundation which is a worldwide community providing technical support and machine translation. The foundation is working on specific projects globally using ‘Not-for-Profit’ translation and localisation tools to improve access to information.

The ’Rosetta Project’ works with localisation, translation and technology developers, ‘Not-for-Profit’ and ‘Non-Governmental Organisations’ (NGOs) and seeks volunteer translators, project managers, donors and corporate sponsors to assist the process.

Traditional means of addressing information deficits in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have failed and need to be replaced by more radical models. This can make the difference between prosperity and poverty, freedom and captivity, life and death for millions of people living in LDCs who speak minority languages. Currently they cannot afford to pay for the information they require-a situation which the project intends to change.

UL Backs Open Access!

A new project is being trialled at the University of Limerick (UL) as part of a joint response to support Open Access (OA) publishing by all seven Universities in the Republic of Ireland.

The new approach allows for online publishing in websites called Institutional Repositories (IRs) and became operational at UL comparatively recently.

The Irish Universities project was launched in 2006 when the very first submissions were made to the Irish University repositories. The official launch took place two years later on May 16, 2008. IRs are populated by academic research ranging from special collections like the ‘Limerick Chronicle’ to postgraduate theses for research masters degrees and Ph. Ds. Students are, however, allowed to embargo the uploading of their work. This allows them a valuable breathing space to publicise and write articles based on their own copyright.

In 2006 the EU published an independent report showing that the price of academic journals had risen by 200-300 pc in the period 1975-1995 amounting to a staggering 11 billion dollars. Libraries, face increasingly tight budgets and are, therefore, attracted to the cost reductions offered by OA technologies. Not surprisingly Green OA is very much supported by libraries and academic institutions.

Indeed, there is now considerable momentum on the side of OA enthusiasts for change. US research has indicated that 95 pc of authors would self-archive if mandated to do so by their institutions. Nearly 100 pc of authors have done so, using the arXiv server available to physicists and computer science researchers, since the 1990s.

Legislation encouraging ‘self-archiving’ exists in 37 countries worldwide and in the USA the Obama Administration plans to advance similar laws. The world’s largest funding agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and most Universities, fully support OA.

If adopted widely the process could also generate substantial savings for those in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) who struggle with the costs involved in purchasing elite journals.

The UL initiative, taken as part of a national commitment by Irish Universities to self-archiving, represents a valuable first-step on the road to Open Access publishing.

Creative Commons Licenses and Open Access (OA) Publishing

Recent class discussions on the subject of ‘Creative Commons Licenses’ brings nicely into focus the increasingly contentious issue of  ‘Open Access’ (OA) publishing. OA means free, immediate and global online access to scientific and scholarly research. Currently it does not exist in its purest form but two methods of attaining this Holy Grail are being pursued vigorously, namely, Gold OA (called the ‘Gold Road’) and Green OA (called the ‘Green Road’).

The former involves authors’ paying to publish in specific OA journals and the latter involves authors, themselves, self-archiving on so called ‘Institutional Repositories’ (IRs) using free software available online. Publishers fear unrestrained access to either model but have managed to avoid the worst excesses of a wholesale changeover.

OA supporters plead that taxpayers should not have to pay millions of dollars to make government funded health research results free online after paying tax contributions already. They have campaigned successfully to allow governments mandate publicly funded researchers to upload documents to freely accessible online archives. The legislation, though, is confined currently to the USA and some universities who have mandated their own academics to go down the ‘Green Road’.

Patients who want insights into their condition currently have to pay over $35 to download a single article. OA threatens that subscriptions base. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2005 compromise to publish results online within six months resulted in less than four pc of authors taking up that offer.

The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) supported by Democrat Joseph L. Lieberman (Connecticutt) and Republican John Cornyn (Texas) hoped to tilt the balance towards OA. The US Government currently gives $55m per annum towards ‘Research and Development’ (R&D).

The Act envisages that Federal Departments and Agencies (Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Environment Protection Agency, National Science Foundation and NASA) that invest greater than $100m (£54m) on R&D should insist that the research is published online within six months of it appearing in a traditional subscription journal.

The Research Councils UK (RCUK) is the research body that oversees eight research councils in the UK. In a watered down measure to placate the OA campaign the RCUK has backed the placing of taxpayer funded research on the web for free. Self-archiving is supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The Commission of the EU has allocated $85m (£111m) to promote OA over two years and financially supports the infrastructure needed for archiving, digital storage and the promotion of online accessibility. In 2006 the EU published an independent report showing that the price of academic journals had risen by 200-300 pc in the period 1975-1995 or $11 bn (£5.6bn).

The Bundesrat-Germany’s second parliamentary chamber- responded to the EU Commission’s declaration on ‘scientific information in the digital age’ by agreeing that OA increases knowledge dissemination.

Canada also has a new science and technology strategy and is increasing tax incentives for ‘Research and Development’ and OA initiatives. The Canadian government will also back OA financially.  The government will further identify raw research data suitable for archiving and will liberalise licensing laws. The tax payer will get free access to the research it has funded, for example, topographical data maps and so on.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) give annual grants of $1 bn to assist OA and the council insists that researchers explain to them why they do not self-archive. All in all some impressive work is being done to promote OA and with it the increasing use of ‘Creative Commons Licenses’.

The Great Copyright Debate

In the world of international publishing content is king. Search engine giant Google is on a corporate mission to organise the world’s books and make them universally accessible. It is a utopian vision with countervailing public interests which include the right to privacy, security and ownership of property. Those who are against this development ask if one organisation should control the entire world’s information.

‘Google Book Search’ also involves deals for this content with major academic institutions. Millions of books, many still under copyright, are being digitally scanned for access by search engines generating huge potential revenue from advertising. Some are challenging Google’s copyright policies (established by in the courts in order to protect writers, photographers, composers). Google makes over $90bn profits per annum and is the only company that could attempt such an ambitious scheme.

The great library at Alexandria (built in 300 BC) was once designed to hold the entire world’s knowledge written on half a million scrolls. This represented 30-70 pc of the books then in existence. Google’s high tech scanning booths are creating a similar ‘Universal library’ one page at a time. Begun in December 2004 Google is scanning the contents of the world’s major research libraries. Existing technology makes this possible and is, in theory, a truly democratic idea. The goal is to have the entire work of humankind from the beginning of recorded history in all languages available to all people all the time.

The world’s biggest publishers create and sell such content for profit. As such Google’s project poses a threat to their ability to retain copyright and sell that content on. It was Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd who introduced the first Copyright Bill in 1837 and it has hardly changed since. Google Book search is not, however, seeking permission from copyright holders to ‘sample’ copyrighted works but it fully intends to sell advertising on the back of that content.

Currently there are 25,000 journals worldwide each of which publishes 40 articles per annum and one million new articles are produced each year with a rejection rate of nearly 50 pc. The numbers of scientists have increased by nearly three per cent per annum over the last 300 years and journal numbers by 3.5 per cent.

Web spiders are continually trawling the web searching for access to valuable metadata held online. Metadata on ownership and accessibility is embedded in new types of copyright devices called ‘Creative Commons Licenses’. Closely associated with these new licenses are so called ‘Addendum Engines’ which increase the rights of the author to reuse their work.

Self-publishing has expanded exponentially to 200,000 titles in 2005, an increase of over 25 pc on 2004. We now live in an age where agents and marketing specialists are no longer needed to sell the product of one’s talent. Anyone can publish online. There is no cost to upload a book and specialised websites can print pages and sell them to their   customers on demand. In comparison traditional models of publishing are cumbersome and involve expensive literary agents. Digital technology has transformed the way we read books and is threatening our traditional views of copyright protection.

It’s The ‘Tongue’ That Guides Education!

An interesting addition to the vaults of ‘Cognitive’ learning theory is research currently being undertaken into how we humans start to learn. Amazingly, it appears that the ‘tongue’ and not the brain is the key.

For babies the ‘tongue’ is a singular   means of orally exploring the world around them. Until the middle of the first year of life the   ‘tongue’   more than   ‘vision’   is the chief vehicle by which we learn. While previous research has seen a dichotomy between the roles of ‘imitation’ and ‘exploration’ in infant tongue and mouth movement recent research has found that   these processes are in fact one and the same.  

According to Indiana University researcher Susan Jones writing in the journal ‘Infant Behaviour and Development’ ‘mouthing’ and ‘tongue protrusion’ are basically comparable strategies of ‘information gathering’.

Babies are born knowing nothing about the world which they have entered but they do have a mental model which   helps them to learn. ‘Imitation’ is used to create pathways in our brains that help us remember how to do the   repetitious   things that make up so much of our lives. These pathways are laced with intricate neural connections (so called ‘Mirror Neurons’) that help us execute imitated actions in the pursuit of our goals.

‘Imitation’ is, therefore, vital as a means of ‘Cognitive’, ‘Perceptual’ and ‘Social’ development. A baby will try and mouth and imitate auditory sounds just as it does with any interesting visual stimuli such as adult tongue movements and facial expressions.

This process according to Jones is ‘bidirectional’ in that   infants explore the objects of the external world while also learning about their own behavioural abilities and relations to them. Imitation and exploration produce information that the infant retains until the emergence of a more sophisticated ‘Behavioural System’ (which is independent of ‘oral exploration’) at approximately five to six months old.

The infant’s   tongue is a mass of muscle fibres covered by a mucous membrane and laced with taste buds called ‘filiform papillae’. Neonates imitate the facial expressions presented by adults or study the outlines of unfamiliar objects by   mouthing, thrusting the tongue against the cheeks and gums and creating   tongue protrusions via open lips.

Although one week old   chimps are behaviourally identical, at birth human babies are unique in their ability to continually develop this gift of   imitation. In this process the tongue   acts like a  tool activating our sensory system and causing the ‘Proprioceptive brain cells’ that control movement in the joints, tissue and muscles of the Central Nervous System (CNS) to grow and develop.

The response, however, is not   ‘learned’ it is innate and species specific.  The human tongue is not just a means of   ‘imitation’ but rather a device for establishing dialogue between one’s own behaviour and that of another person.

Better Grades Do Not Make For Better Lives

In reference to my previous post about ‘performance anxiety’ are we getting overly anxious about the need to find jobs through education?

Shouldn’t education really be about experimenting and absorbing the creative ambience of college rather than merely getting grades? So much of our time is taken up with studying the best way to learn (Behaviouralism, Cognitivism, Constructivism) rather than why we choose to learn at all.

In this I am reminded of research published in the journal ‘Intelligence’ which explains why wealth and success at college may well be incompatible.

Dr. Jay L. Zagorsky, from Ohio State University, was cited in the learned journal on the subject of IQ and wealth accumulation.

Even though previous research had linked IQ and income positively Dr. Zagorsky stunned readers with the news that, in the USA at least, the relationship between the ownership of wealth and the level of IQ may well be inverse

The study used a sample of 7403 respondents, so-called ‘baby boomers’ (those born 1957-1964)  who were interviewed  over a number of years starting in  1979. Although income had been seen, in previous studies, to rise  between $234 - $616 per annum for each extra point of IQ scored   those with higher IQs were in fact more inclined to end up in financial difficulty.

Dr. Zagorsky explained his motivation for undertaking the research;   “Most of my grandparents grew up very poor.  As a result I have spent years trying to figure out what makes people rich or poor and how these financial states can be changed.”

 The study found that income correlated positively with IQ (100 being an average score with 130 confined to the top 2 percent) however wealth (which is the difference between assets and liabilities) did not. Indeed, a higher proportion of those on high IQs have bills they have not paid, credit cards that are defunct and little or no financial security.

What does this say about education generally? Going to college improves IQ alright but those with higher IQs also tend to be poor wealth accumulators. Where does this leave wealthy socialites like  Paris Hilton?

Performance Anxiety May Be Impacting On Learning

Speaking of differences between learners have you ever wondered why some people no matter how talented fail to attain their own educational expectations? A joint research team from Texas and New York believe that it is down to fears we all have about stereotypes.

It seems that the more conscious we become of our own failings the less  likely we are to do well   in tests and this can  hold us back in life. The report’s author Dr Matthew McClone said: “There is clear, consistent evidence that has piled up over the years indicating that measures of intelligence and scholastic aptitude - which are ostensibly designed to measure enduring traits and dispositions - can be dramatically influenced by situational factors”. 

The researchers, Matthew McGlone and Joshua Aronson, cleverly primed the test subjects with cues that triggered latent fears. Women for example were made aware of supposed male superiority in mathematics, African Americans and Latinos were tested on verbal skills. Caucasian males were pitted against the supposed analytical superiority of Asian Maths students. The primal fears aroused were enough to lower their ability to perform and thence their IQ.

Oddly enough those same fears could just as easily be turned around to enable the same groups to perform above their potential. Women could be reminded that they were graduates of elite private colleges, Asian women were told of innate superiority in mathematics and men were well, just reminded that they were men, and that was enough, it seems to raise their IQ considerably.

“The   results suggest that the positive performance expectations associated with certain social identities (e.g., private college students are smart) can mitigate the threat caused by negative performance expectations associated with other identities (e.g., women aren't good at math)” explained Dr McClone. 

What this research clearly shows is that a positive outlook about learning can take us a long way towards achieving our goals!

Are Females More Computer Orientated?

I have noticed in my MA in E-Learning class that female students have different perceptions about the new technologies. In my view they are attracted largely to the communications value of them whereas male students tend to view computer technologies like shovels (that is tools for doing things with). Is this heresy?

Here is one possible explanation and you can tell me if you agree. A study by Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock (Vanderbilt University) claims that a woman’s brain processes, manipulates and displays information far faster than a male’s. The study may shock feminists but will come as no surprise to educationists who increasingly see, that in learning capacity at least, women clearly hold a mental edge.

Some scientists believe that hormones like oestrogen and testosterone play a huge part in deciding how our brains are structured. Males and females therefore think in decidedly different ways. Processing of information is governed by an area of the brain called the ‘Hippocampus’ while language comprehension takes place in the ‘Parietal lobes’. Further research may be   needed to see if there is any increased thickening or myelinisation in these sectors of the female brain. Geneticists   are convinced though that   men and women differ in their mental outlook   particularly in relation to learning.

Other possible explanations include an evolutionary based need by females to process information quickly in order to take on more responsibility at an earlier age. Males with greater physical bulk could possibly get by on broad knowledge alone while using their superior verbal skills to attract a mate (a phenomenon known as a Lek).

Although the research points to overall equality between the sexes, in terms of general intelligence, feminists  may be perplexed to learn that in a number of key elements at least  women are in fact   superior!