Using On-Line Quizzes to Help Students Learn Probability and Statistics

Online quizzes can be an effective and flexible means of helping learners develop key skills in probability and statistics. Quizzes give instant feedback, to help reinforce correct understanding and eliminate fundamental errors at an early stage in learning. We will describe our experience of designing and using quizzes with non-specialist and specialist students, on several different platforms including, most recently, Moodle. We describe Model Choice, a tool that helps students identify from a brief scenario the standard family of probability distributions they should work with to solve a problem. We will emphasize key design aspects of a successful quiz system, such as the importance of giving informative feedback to the learner. Using a standard platform, such as Moodle, is likely to require some compromise on design principles but building a stand-alone system to implement ideal design choices is very time-consuming

Providing for the Priceless Student: Ideologies of Choice in an Emerging Educational Market

The growing popularity of school choice is typically linked to the spread of neoliberal ideology. Identifying four components of this ideology, we examine the rationales of providers in an emerging private school market. Data come from interviews and site visits at 45 “third-sector” private schools in Toronto, Canada. We find that only one of the four components has a strong resonance among these educators. Few private school operators sharply criticize public schools, compete via quantitative performance indicators, or are strongly business oriented. However, they voice a philosophy of matching their personal talents to the needs of “unique” children. Overall, rather than being influenced by neoliberalism, these providers are more directly driven by personalized rationales that prize tailored education in specialized niches. We draw two conclusions from these findings. First, they demonstrate how ideologies of choice are shaped by their market setting, in this case, small proprietorship, in contrast to a corporate environment. Second, they highlight how providers can be motivated by new cultures of consumerism and intensive child rearing when working in highly uncertain conditions. We recommend that theories of choice recognize the range of educational markets and the specific motives of their providers

Literacy and educational fundamentalism: an interview with Allan Luke

An interview on literacy at McGill University, 2003

Data-Informed Leadership in Education

Explores ideas, frameworks, and beliefs concerning the use of data in educational decision making and in the work of leaders at state and local levels as it relates to the improvement of teaching and learning

Riding the waves of policy? The case of basic skills in adult and community learning in England

This paper draws on data from secondary sources and in-depth interviews to explore the question: What is the impact of policy on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion in Adult and Community Learning (ACL) Skills for Life (SfL) provision? In particular, it focuses on the government’s use of five policy steering mechanisms - funding, inspection, planning, targets and policy initiatives (in this case SfL). The design of the study1 allows us to use evidence from four sets of interviews with teachers, learners and managers of ACL in eight sites of learning (four in London and four in the North East) over a period of twenty-six months of considerable policy turbulence. We argue first, that there is a symbiotic relationship between ACL and SfL provision and second, that while the combined effects of targets and funding have the most powerful effects on tutor and manager actions, inspection, planning and tutors’ and managers’ own professional values also have an important role in shaping the teaching of literacy and numeracy in ACL sites. We conclude by suggesting that professionals at the local level should be allowed to play a greater role in SfL policy-making to ensure effective policy and practice

Can a pill prevent HIV? Negotiating the biomedicalisation of HIV prevention

This article examines how biomedicalisation is encountered, responded to and negotiated within and in relation to new biomedical forms of HIV prevention. We draw on exploratory focus group discussions on Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and treatment as prevention (TasP) to examine how the processes of biomedicalisation are affected by and affect the diverse experiences of communities who have been epidemiologically framed as ‘vulnerable’ to HIV and towards whom PrEP and TasP will most likely be targeted. We found that participants were largely critical of the perceived commodification of HIV prevention as seen through PrEP, although this was in tension with the construction of being medical consumers by potential PrEP candidates. We also found how deeply entrenched forms of HIV stigma and homophobia can shape and obfuscate the consumption and management of HIV-related knowledge. Finally, we found that rather than seeing TasP or PrEP as ‘liberating’ through reduced levels of infectiousness or risk of transmission, social and legal requirements of responsibility in relation to HIV risk reinforced unequal forms of biomedical self-governance. Overall, we found that the stratifying processes of biomedicalisation will have significant implications in how TasP, PrEP and HIV prevention more generally are negotiated

‘A double-edged sword. This is powerful but it could be used destructively’: Perspectives of early career education researchers on learning analytics

Learning analytics has been increasingly outlined as a powerful tool for measuring, analysing, and predicting learning experiences and behaviours. The rising use of learning analytics means that many educational researchers now require new ranges of technical analytical skills to contribute to an increasingly data-heavy field. However, it has been argued that educational data scientists are a ‘scarce breed’ (Buckingham Shum et al., 2013) and that more resources are needed to support the next generation of early career researchers in the education field. At the same time, little is known about how early career education researchers feel towards learning analytics and whether it is important to their current and future research practices. Using a thematic analysis of a participatory learning analytics workshop discussions with 25 early career education researchers, we outline in this article their ambitions, challenges and anxieties towards learning analytics. In doing so, we have provided a roadmap for how the learning analytics field might evolve and practical implications for supporting early career researchers’ development