Category Archives: LDT – GSE – Stanford

LDT Seminar – Week 1 – Notes

Nice to see everyone again and to hear about all the progress people are doing with their projects. As for my project, I think I am going to stick with the original LXD idea rather that Graph Learner. Let’s see how it plays out – going to talk to Karin and Paulo about it. Have to consider how the nature of the project is aligned with my future career goals and life objectives.

Formed our ‘peer review’ groups again which will start sharing project updates next week. Main deliverables for this quarter: design a test procedure for your Master’s project and try it out. Yikes. Getting closer and closer to the real deal 🙂

 

All Electric Week

1. Adriana’s tricycle is still going strong with no problems, as Kim attested:



2. Tesla launched the new Model 3, priced at US$ 35k, before rebates. Very nice… dream car.


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3. Took my bike to the shop and came out with the Specialized Turbo bike to test for 2 days. Very cool guys at Calmar Cycles!

The ride is amazing – you feel like superman zooming by even the fastest road bikers. Unfortunately they limit the top speed to 28 mph (45 km/h).


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4. Not to mention the constant sightings of Google’s self-driving electric car!



Internship – Week 1 – Notes

Thursday:

Had a great update session with Grace going over the comments I had on completing the To Do list items, what to do next, and quite a bit about my Master’s project. This will be a great opportunity to understand how I could better serve the needs of online instructors.

Friday:

Early in the morning the LDT students who are doing internships this quarter met with Karin. Shared out what each one is doing, questions, support, and check-ins. Amazed by the variety of things people are working on. Virgin Airways, Google, Alt Schools, d.School, and Canter Museum to name a few.

In the afternoon went to VPTL and continued down the To Do list…

VPTL – Weekly Event

Participated in VPTL’s weekly update meeting. Was fascinated to understand more about their role on campus, which ranges from setting up the classroom’s technologies all the way defining the course evaluation and teacher assessments all students and all professors on campus use. The latest change occured last quarter where professors are now able create custom questions to better understand how well their course is perceived by the students. A general question about meeting the learning objectives of the course is placed for the students in case the teacher does not customize the question.

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Internship @ VPTL

One of the requirements to getting the Master’s  degree at LDT is to get internships over 2 quarters. This quarter I am going to work at Stanford’s Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning (VPTL), assisting Grace Lyo, Associate Director of Instructional Design of the Digital Learning Design Team. 

We will be working on updating and creating content for the “Designing Online Learning Experiences at Stanford” (DOLES). The course “was created to guide Stanford faculty and staff members through the process of creating online learning experiences. This includes full online courses, flipped/blended courses, instructional resources, and more.” 

Already started on the first day of class and now ramping up the production – very excited since it is very well aligned to my Master’s project.

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And here’s my office, with a full standing desk and rotating monitor to edit long texts!!

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Lytics Seminar – Week 1 – Class Notes

Great initial class going over what the Lytics Lab does: looks at data provided by online education and contributes to the emerging field of Learning Sciences. Sounds like it will be a perfect match for the the Engineering Education course which looks at the ‘front-end’ of education while this class looks at the ‘back-end’.

Terrible picture – got into class early – class is packed actually!

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Brazilian Education – Week 1 – Class Notes

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Had a great talk about Bolsa Familia: here’s the call for the seminar:

Nadejda Marques, PhD

“Bolsa-Familía, healthy familia? Bridging the gap in health outcomes by linking school-based health care to conditional cash-transfer programs in Brazil”

With approximately 50 million beneficiaries, Brazilian Bolsa Familia has been considered one of the main programs to combat poverty in the world. The program seeks to reduce income inequality and expand access to education by providing a minimum level of income (cash transfers) to the poor, those with monthly per capita income of up to R$140 (US$35) with children of 0 to 17 years. Studies have demonstrated that the program has had a significant role in reducing extreme poverty in Brazil and reducing income inequality. The program has also succeeded in increasing school enrollment and attendance rates. However, it is not clear that the program has had significant impact in improving children’s health. What lessons does the Bolsa Família offer and how can it evolve to respond to challenges and health demands of the poor? 

Nadejda Marques is a research coordinator with the School Health Evaluation Research Project and a specialized researcher for General Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in human rights and development and has worked on issues of human rights and the right to health for over a decade. In 2011, she co‐authored the book “The Cost of Inaction” on the impact of HIV/AIDS in children with the François-Bagnoud Xavier Center for Health and Human Rights based in Harvard School of Public Health.

Engineering Education – Week 1 – Reading Summary

Readings:

  1. Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons.
  2. Nathan, M. J., & Wagner Alibali, M. (2010). Learning sciences. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(3), 329-345.

Summary:

I was very pleased to learn more about what Learning Sciences are. It is a profoundly interdisciplinary field and vast in reach that seem to strive for a culmination of several theories, research methods, design approaches, and implementation strategies. The readings provided me with a cognitively cohesive way of looking at all that I am learning over these past two quarters at LDT. The field proposes to look at both the macro and the micro, providing a common thread and a more holistic approach to education.

Furthermore, the shift in focus of the definition of learning from something a teacher does to a student towards something that the learner does themselves, provides a new lens to both research questions, design approaches, and instructional strategies. If the field could come up with a truly generalizable framework that would help teachers share knowledge, it could benefit the society as a whole. If we are able to understand how to better share knowledge, everyone can potentially become a teacher or a knowledge disseminator. The technology is available, but are the methods aligned with our society’s new way of communicating and interacting with each other?

Finally, the biggest takeaway from the readings was that our current theories of learning or cognition are still not easily transferable to a teacher’s everyday practice. Inline with bridging the gap between research and practice, providing tools for teachers to better carry out their mission is extremely important. My personal interests lie in this arena of using research findings to better aid instructors when creating online courses. I always feel that instead of blank templates available on LMSs, the tool itself could interact with the instructor directly in order to provide scaffolds, techniques, and suggestions for creating better learning experiences.