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Do we really need to measure everything? Week 10

It is seldom if ever that my professional life and my studies amalgamate so whole-heartedly. I don’t really know if this is a good or a bad thing because inevitably the short snippets in which my studies present surpass my professional life and leave it behind while I’m still grappling with the issues at hand.

Last week I posted about going on training on Moodle analytics. I thought this would really help me make sense of one of the courses I work on as well as contribute to my understanding of this course.

Unwieldy data, how do we manage it?

How does one make sense of a course that has over 2480 pages and 12 thousand students enrolled on it?

The Tweetorial was much easier to manage but it did make me wonder if there was any purpose to recording students’ activity in open educational spaces. How can we really know that they are engaged? What struck me in our hangout this week is that one of the participants had a different handle and gender than what I have come to recognise. Since he was not in the tutorial as himself, does that mean he didn’t participate?

I went to London and South East Learning Technologies Conference for Health Education. A lot of the discourse centred on ‘technology enhanced learning’. The first seminar I attended was on wearable technology. The speaker spoke of physiolytics, the study of the information retrieved from a device worn on one’s body such at a staff ID card and Fitbit. The doctor presenting spoke of a “smart condom” that measured one’s performance and then fed that information back to an app on a phone. I had to wonder at this point whether man’s obsession with measuring his performance has gone a step too far.

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Reporting bias and other biases affecting systematic reviews and meta-analyses: A methodological commentary

Abstract
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses often occupy the top of the hierarchy of evidence in support of evidence-based clinical practice. These studies commonly inform the formulation of clinical guidelines. Bias can intrude at several levels during the conduct of systematic reviews. The effect these various biases, in particular reporting bias, have on pooled estimates and review inferences are potentially significant. In this review, we describe several forms of selection and reporting biases that may occur during the conduct of a systematic review, how these biases might affect a review and what steps could help minimize their influence on review inferences. Specifically, we support calls for prospective international trial registration and open access to trial protocols as two potential solutions that may improve the methodological quality of systematic reviews and the validity of their results. © 2006 Future Drugs Ltd.
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This paper provided a tangible example of how bias can effect research. This is more clearly evident in the biological sciences than in social sciences.

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Tweet: Doteveryone

I was introduced to Dr Rachel Coldicutt at the LSE Literary Festival. She is a creator of digital content and she has worked in a number of educational contexts. She has created Doteveryone to try and make digital life more accessible to those who find it difficult.

 

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Instagram: Race, gender, sexuality and class

Donna Haraway in her ‘A cyborg manifesto’ (1991) claims that she does not ‘know of any other time in history when there was a greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘class”. I would argue that twenty-five years ago, when the paper was written, ‘we’ (the consciously coalesced) were probably better off; tolerance and understanding seems to be in short supply as societies break away and advocate to build walls. 📷 @natgeo January 2017 issue. #mscedc February 01, 2017 at 09:28PM
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Comment on Myles’s Week 2 Summary by Chenée

Such a cool idea, Myles! I really enjoyed hearing your perspective, just after reading Sterne’s (2006) deconstruction of cyberculture scholarship too. I frequently fall into the trap of wanting my work to be visually appealing without thinking about doing something which would be aurally stimulating.

I have often thought that as an educator I have to be creative, Sterne’s perspective has made me realise that there is an expectation for tomorrow’s teachers to not only be creative but to be inventors and artists too. Much focus has been placed on how technology can improve our bodies but I think we have not focused on how we have to adapt to accommodate the technology. In this instance (using sound as tool for scholarly thought), it forces us to improve those skills that were not necessary and not even thought about in our teacher predecessors.

Thinking about the future, I wonder if sound could offer a real alternative to how information is disseminated among the academic community and whether publishers could be by-passed more easily. Sterne (2006) criticises cyberculture’s scholarship towards ‘visualist bias’, I can’t help but wonder if the reason for this is because text is much easier to handle than a recording. I can highlight words, write notes, cross out and reference on paper and on my computer. I don’t know a way to do the same with sound – but then again there might be an app for that. I’ll just have to upskill! 🙂

Sterne, J (2006) The historiography of cyberculture, chapter 1 of Critical cyberculture studies. New York University Press. pp.17-28.

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