Commentary – Page 6 – A Learning Journey

Low completion: a killer of MOOCs?

The New York Times reported recently that the University of Texas System may be having second thoughts about its foray into the realm of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

There are three major concerns that were raised:

The completion rate of MOOCs offered has been languishing between one to 13 %;
Majority of the learners were not from the home state;
Of those few learners who have completed, the bulk of them were people who have already college education.

I think the decision makers need to think strategically about the objectives for their institutions being involved in MOOC.

Low completion rate: look at the total number of learners that passed

The nature of MOOC needs to be understood and we need to avoid comparing apples with oranges. MOOCs, unlike regular on-campus or traditional online courses are “Opened” in its enrollment. This means that anyone with the basic internet access will be able to enroll and un-enroll as they please. Many who enrolled may also choose (for whatever reason(s)) not to be active in the MOOC they have signed up for. Thus if we measure the completion rate of MOOCs based on the number of people signing up we will get a very low figure. If the completion rate is computed from the number of people who have “attended” at least 50% of the online courseware, I think this will be a better and fairer measurement of the completion rate. After all in traditional bricks and mortar setting, you do not count the number of students based on the number who applied to take the course but the number who have paid. Thus a even closer analogy for MOOC should be the number of learners who intended to complete the MOOC versus the actual number who passed. Professor Owen Youngman of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism provided a great insight into this issue in following the completion of the first run of his highly successful MOOC, “Understanding media by understanding Google“.

Analysis of passing rates of Owen Youngman’s maiden MOOC, “Understanding media by understanding Google” in Nov 2013. (Image source: http://qz.com/149406/how-two-thirds-of-my-students-never-showed-up-but-half-of-them-passed/)

In Youngman’s maiden foray into MOOC, which incidentally I was one of the 1,196 successful learners, if we measure the passing rate as the number of learner that pass versus the number who complete their homework (qualifying them to take the final examination), the passing rate was actually 50.1% instead of the 2.2% that the conventional calculation would provide. The fact that should be remembered is not the passing rate but the number of people who have successfully passing the MOOC, which in this case, at 1,196 is a great achievement by Youngman’s team in whichever way you measure it.

Majority of learners are not from the home state: does this matter?

People who evaluate MOOCs must bear in mind that MOOCs are, as the word “Massive” indicates, huge in number. While those who have approved the investments would want to see benefits shown for the institutions’ home state, these cannot be measured just on the number of “home” state learners who have enrolled or passed. MOOCs are meant for institutions to showcase their academic delivery expertise to not only those learners who come on campus but to the world at large. It should be catching learners in the “long tail” of the global learning community. It is meant to reach out to those who, under normal circumstances, never have the chance to attend on-campus courses due to many circumstances (financial, time or career constraints). If a course is meant to benefit only home state’s learners, then MOOC may be a wrong platform for it. Conventional e-learning delivery via learning management systems such as Moodle or BlackBoard would have been better. Thus the expectations of the decision makers and funding authorities must be realistic. MOOCs can be used to as a very effective means to project the brand of an institution, especially to the “long tail” end of the learner’s domain. Those who may not have heard of or know about your institution will, after taking a good MOOC from your institution, be impressed by the brand and which will have a positive effect when these people (or their offspring) are looking for a good college education. Thus I think many of the institutions on the MOOC trails are thinking along the same line.

In the time of great competition for the overseas students’ attention, the colleges with a good spread of MOOCs will gain reputationally in leaps and bounce to put them in a better position in the mind of these overseas students. The proof of the pudding is in its eating, so if a college’s MOOC is well delivered and the learners gain great knowledge, it gives those wishing (and thus may have the means) to study on campus a greater confidence to apply. The benefits to the home state will be in attracting good overseas students to their on-campus or traditionally delivered online courses. This is the under-valued payoff for MOOCs. So does it still matter if the bulk of an MOOC’s learners are not from the home state? I do not think so.

The bulk of the learners scoring a pass have college education: why?

If the bulk of an MOOC’s successful learners are those with some college education or higher, it could mean that the level of this particular MOOC is pitched at senior undergraduate or even graduate levels. It is not the fault of the concept of MOOC. In fact it is an issue of academic standard not the delivery system of concept. Thus if the MOOC is intended to attract mainly high school graduates or freshmen level students, it should have been designed as such. Sometimes the delivery of a course and its learning materials may both appear to be at undergraduate level, but when the assessment system is converted to MOOC level, it may appear too difficult (with lots of discussions, short essays type of questions and complex multiple choice questions) for freshmen but it would have been fine for those who have had degree level education.

To take MOOC successfully requires one to be very disciplined. This may also be one of the reasons that some of these MOOCs show a low number of freshmen learners who passed. Adult learners are much more motivated and are usually more focused. Full-time students may also have a full load of classes already and thus may be spreading themselves too thinly.

One other aspect of MOOCs that those funding authorities and decision makers must take into consideration is the “flipped classroom” concept that MOOC confers. In this context, on-campus students are directed to view the MOOC lectures prior to coming to class. In every class, instead of the instructor repeating the content covered in the MOOC’s video lectures, will use the contact hours to discuss, to further explain and to engage the students accordingly. I have attended one such MOOC by Stanford University (“Technology Entrepreneurship 1) where “flipped classroom” was reported by Assistant Professor Chuck Eesley to have benefited his on-campus students. In this case the class was run about the same time for both the MOOC and on-campus learners. So any decision on the effectiveness and benefits of MOOCs should not be evaluated in isolation. The number of people benefiting from an MOOC could be substantially more than the first run of an MOOC.

I think the disruptive effects of MOOCs to academic institutions have surely been over-exaggerated. This could be due to the lack of an holistic understanding of what MOOC can do and ignorant of the interaction between MOOCs and conventional delivery of learning.

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Dr. Chow YN is a “veteran” MOOC learner. He has already completed over 20 MOOCs and is currently pursuing two more. Dr. Chow provides consultancy in education management and technology commercialization. He also provides regular advising to parents and students seeking an unbiased advice on tertiary education.

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The trouble with input-centric education system

Input-centric education decisions have been hampering the advance of Malaysian learners.

The move in September 2014 by the Malaysian Ministry of Education to disallow private higher education institutions (PHEI) to use forecast results for the national high school examination, Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) as a provisional entrance qualification for high school graduates to enter college caused a big row.

The key justification cited by the power that be was that there were abuses by PHEIs and students who did not score the required SPM grades (5 credits for Foundation Studies and 3 credits for diploma, along with specific requirements such as credit in Mathematics etc.) were found to be allowed to continue their studies by some institutions. What was never mentioned in fact was the statistics of such non compliance and what was done to these affected students and PHEIs.

In my column in the first edition of Focusweek (October 17, 2014) I highlighted the issue of Malaysia’s obsession with inputs in all education policies and neglected to evaluate learners’ output, that is, what they have learned and can applied in policy decisions.

Using input-centric policy to be the sole deciding factor on learners’ suitability to be admitted to college is just but one of the idiosyncrasies of Malaysia’s education system. In this system, there is no provision for learners who marginally missed a cutting point for admission into college to have the opportunity for a “second” chance in proving their academic ability. While I was working for Pearson plc as its Regional Quality Manager, I was exposed to the concept of the “Challenge Route” practised by UK’s university for its very popular MBA programme. Anyone, regardless of their academic credentials, if he or she wishes, is given the chance to study for the MBA. Those who did not have the prescribed academic credentials would be given the opportunity to pass three of the 9 required modules as a condition for acceptance. The “Challenge Route” measures the output of these learners. The idea is, if anyone could pass these three MBA modules demonstrate that they have acquired the core knowledge to undertake the remainder of their studies. I think this is a better way to foster a learning culture and pulling down barriers to academic attainment for many people.

Another area I covered in my column is the other grouses of the PHIEs: the insistence of the approving and accreditation authorities on strictly prescribing the input-centric policy of the teaching staff must have a qualification higher than the level of the class that they are teaching. This doctrine of education policy shows that those policy designers really could not tell the difference between academic qualifications, teaching abilities and the value of industrial experience. The policy, at one stroke disallows the great contributions of master craftsmen, artists and designers from imparting their great skills, experiences and insights to younger generations of learners.

Having a PhD does not make one a great teacher. In fact when I started my career in Malaysia’s academia after my postdoctoral stint in Singapore, I did not have any training to be a lecturer. The only teaching I had done was when I served as a demonstrator in laboratory classes and later tutor for undergraduate students. I think the same goes for many PhD holders. People like me, learned quickly on the job and observed how experienced lecturers teach and emulated them.

In 1979 when I was studying for my G.C.E “O” levels at South Shields Marine and Technical College, UK, we had a very good pure mathematics lecturer by the name of Morris Gowland. Gowland did not have a degree. He went to a teacher training school. Yet, compared to other pure mathematics lecturers with Master’s and PhDs, Gowland was far superior in his teaching skills. One look at a struggling student’s work on a pure mathematics question, Gowland would say, “There, you have miscalculated this step,” As a results, most of us, 4 Malaysians and 5 Hong Kongers passed our mathematics with flying colours. On the other hand, when we were working on our G.C. E. “A” levels, our head of Department Dr. Croucher who holds a PhD in nuclear physics was struggling to teach us nuclear physics in our Physics class. Thus measuring a person’s teaching ability by solely judging if his/her has a degree, Master’s or PhDs is like measuring the size of one’s waist when buying shoes. Thus solely measuring the input (in this case the kind of qualification a teaching staff has) to determine a person’s suitability to teach is a very inaccurate way to reach a crucial decision. It is much better to have an evaluation of a teaching stuff “live” teaching ability rather than his/her having an academic qualification a level higher than the class he/she is teaching as the only gauge. Sadly this is what happens in practice in Malaysian PHEIs.

So why should we be alarmed every year when world university ranking by various systems are published with Malaysian institutions either languishing at the rear end or being “no shows” on the list.

We are not tapping into the vast expertise of our own people. Who would be best to teach business subjects especially entrepreneurships (even as guest lecturers for a few sessions each) than the captains of the respective industries? Yet unless these high flyers have the requisite academic credentials (at Master’s level at least!), the PHEIs would not be allowed to engage them. What a waste of talents! What a loss to the younger learners in Malaysia!

As I said in my column, unless we as Malaysians break free from our shackles of input-centric mentality, we will always be chasing the tail wind of our competitors.

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Why people are hesitant in registering for GST

Any one looking at the issue of the impending implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will notice the glaring lack of participation by the business community. In April 2014 there were reports about the low registration rate of 3.33%or 10,000 out of the potential 300,000 businesses that fall into the GST realm. As of September 27, 2014, this figures was raised to 56,000 or 18.7%, but it is still fall short of expectations. With only less than four months to the December 31, 2014 deadline, there has been reports that the authorities have indeed scaled down their expectation to less than 200,000 registrants only.

The topic of why people are not registering for GST in Malaysia is the cover story of the last print edition of The Heat.I wrote a supporting article to cover this story, bringing to attention the frivolous details demanded by the GST registration process and the many ambiguities which are made complicated by few and cryptic clues. Irrelevant details were asked from the registrants. This is made worse by the requirement for registrants to know the kind of inputs (called “Supply”) that they need to classify in order to compute their turnovers.

According to published reports, 90% of the businesses that fall into the realm of GST are small and medium enterprises (SME). The RM1,000 government grant given to companies to upgrade their accounting systems to incorporate the GST saw only 10% of the GST registrants claiming this benefit. It seems that the majority of business owners are adopting the “wait and see” attitude. It is obvious that both the “carrot” and the “stick” are not working.

Based on the various ambiguities, cryptic requirements, lack of instructions on where to obtain further information such as codes etc., one can conclude that it is a big challenge for the average small business owners to register for GST unless they or their staff has experience in accounting or tax filing work.

From this one can surmise that the printed version of the GST registration form is an “imperfect clone” of its online counterpart. It is also clear that the printed version (to a certain extent the online version as well) lacks usability and not at all user-friendly. The design and “transformation” from the online version to the printed version was not well thought through. A lot of the explanations and choices of codes etc. that appear on the online version were not incorporated in the printed version nor were these put in the GST Guide.

In view of the need to engage all businesses with or anticipating an annual turnover of RM500,000 to register for GST, Royal Malaysian Customs Department should:

link up the GST registration system with that of the Inland Revenue Board and Company Commission of Malaysia so that there is a chance to streamline the GST registration process.
re-evaluate the design of the printed version of the GST registration form to make it user-friendly with additional instructions and information as highlighted in this article.
take a leaf from the IRB’s success with the e-filing of tax returns by conducting workshops and creating labs to guide business owners to have a painless GST registrations.
give as much flexibilities and allowance for errors to GST registrants so that they do not have to worry about giving wrong estimations and specifically mention this fact in the form.

Finally, the power that be could also think less about using the “stick” but more about providing more appropriate “carrots” in the form of financial incentives for business owners who complied with the deadline for GST registration for example giving the first RM500 GST waiver to those who complied. The provision of a modest grant, say RM300 per small business owner to engage professionals to help them to register for GST could also be a good move to ensure compliance and adhering to the deadline which may allow the target 300,000 registrants to be reached.

Examleaks and public examinations in Malaysia

The primary school standard six’s Ujian Pencapian Sekolah Rendah (Primary School Achievements Examination or UPSR) science paper has suffered Examleak, and it was confirmed as this article was written that the UPSR English paper was also compromised. Now12 years old students at primary schools in Malaysia have to pay for the consequences of Examleaks this year.

It seems that nothing in Malaysian public examination system can be kept secret any more. The students and their teachers are the ones having to face the psychological and mental stress due either to the incompetence of those involved or to a system that needs major revamping.

I recalled that back in the 1970s, out of curiosity, my late father, a primary school principal who had never formally learned Malay decided that he should take the Malaysian Certificate of Education’s Malay paper. That year was the first I heard of the leaking of public examination paper. My father was not happy to have to take the MCE Malay paper twice. Nevertheless, he passed with a “credit” grade, much to his joy and unexpectation.

There were many Examleaks cases since then, but each time the lesson learned was quickly forgotten as if the various organizations charged with the duty to ensure fair conduct of public examinations have collective amnesia or have what I call a lack of “organizational memory”.

One of the most famous Examleaks cases was the 2001 leaking of the Certificate of Legal Practice examination papers. At least in this case the culprit was caught, prosecuted and punished. I do not recall anyone else from the many other Examleaks cases being caught least of all being punished.

In the late August 1980, I was just waiting to enter GEC “A” levels studies in the UK when I was asked by my former classmates to obtain University of Cambridge’s “O” level examination papers for Summer 1980 for them. I dutifully carried out this task and happily my friends received their papers. According to one of my friends (who related this story to me much later on) coincidentally, a few questions in their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations bore close resemblance to the questions of the Cambridge’s examination papers that I sent back to Malaysia. I was told that two students from another school that somehow got hold of the Cambridge’s paper that I sent gave near identical answers and Examleaks was suspected. I think that case was a “false positive” but it did show up the kind of sensitivities that Malaysians held to the integrity of public examinations. One would have thought, with this sort of sensitivities about Examleaks, very few cases would be seen after the 1980s. Well we have been proven wrong.

Normally in all strategic public examinations (and even for college examinations that I ran as a deputy principal) there will always be two sets of examination papers for each subject. In my case, I would, as the head of academic of my former college, be the one who would choose which of the two sets to use. I am sure in the latest cases, there must be “2nd sets” for all subjects. Thus one way to thaw the effort of those “Examleakers” is to print both sets and sent these to the relevant centres in advance. The decision on which of the two sets to use for each subject can be made on the day by the relevant Director General or his/her designated senior officers. This way, unless both sets of papers are leaked, the Examleakers have only at most 50% chance of getting the correct paper! We can then spare the suffering of the poor UPSR students of the class of 2014.

As the leaked UPSR science paper was posted on social media, it should not be long for those with the power and tools to identify those involved. Hopefully, someone will be caught and face the consequences of this misdeed.

To all the unfortunate UPSR students and their teachers, May The Force Be With You

If your business ain’t online, you don’t exist

If you run a brick-and-mortar business, you will do well to have a presence online. A small business delivering flyers and related business promotional materials in Ipoh, Malaysia, Flyersam solved its difficulties in gaining new clients as by being online with Google Suite.

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If you run a brick-and-mortar business, you will do well to have a presence online. Just over 5 years ago my younger brother who has a small business delivering flyers and related business promotional materials in Ipoh, Malaysia related about his difficulties in gaining new clients as his business, Flyersam was relatively new in town. As I was already very familiar with Google Sites and Google Apps (having used these extensively in my previous appointment as the deputy principal of a college), we decided to make use of what I know to put Flyersam online. The free version of Google Apps was still available in 2010.

With an investment of just US$9.90 which was the cost of registering the flyersam.com domain name via Google, we set to work. Sam’s job was to get me the relevant content and photographs to be included into flysam.com. I constructed a simple website using Google Sites. By March 2010, flyersam.com was bringing in about 2 – 3 enquiries per month from clients, many of whom found flyersam via online search and most were not even located in Ipoh.

The flyer distribution business requires the distributor to show proof that they have completed the job as assigned to clients by taking and sending relevant photographs to the clients. Thus it was easy for me to suggest to Sam that he should upload some of these “proofs of delivery” photographs to his website as updates. However, Sam was still not confident enough to post updates to his website regularly. But like most Malaysians, he and his sons were great users of Facebook.

My next project for Flyersam was to set up a Flyersam Facebook Page where Sam or one of my nephews could easily post “proofs of delivery” as updates. Sam himself having learned to use Wechat with his smartphone recently is now also posting similar updates regularly.

As flyersam.com is registered under my name, I routinely get at least a couple of calls a month from prospective clients. Thus for the yearly expenditure of only about US$10.00, Sam has been getting at least 5 additional enquiries per month, most of which are usually translated into sales. Sam buys the beer these days whenever I visit him in Ipoh.

Flyersam is a typical example of how a small business can leverage on a simple website and social media to generate sales. The Google sponsored Get Malaysian Business Online (GMBO) campaign of 2011 was a huge success with 12,000 businesses having benefited from it and having a web presence. Building on the success of GMBO, in 2012 the Malaysian Government set aside a budget of RM50.00 million (US$15.63 million) to provide small and medium businesses (SME) with RM1,000 (US$312.00) grant (GMBO Grant) to build their websites. The grant had been fully utilized before the end of 2013.

[Note on Apr 13, 2018: this campaign ended, I think after the grant was exhausted]

The entire domain name registration, web hosting and website creating business is so competitive these days, both locally and internationally, that someone with a rudimentary website creating knowledge can easily put together a simple business website for about RM100.00 (US$32.00) per year. Google Apps for Business which costs US$50 (RM160) per year for 1 user is another alternative that is very simple to use, if one is willing to do some trial and errors. Thus even if there is no more grant available, the cost of having your business website online is still very affordable.

However, I do not think everyone of the beneficiaries of the GMBO campaign or the GMBO grant would have the kind of success as did Flyersam.com which was created without GMBO privileges or GMBO grant. Many of these business websites do not receive regular or any updates after their creation and there lies the problem.

Having a business website without regular updates gives visitors very little confidence on the dependability of that business. The visitors have no way of telling if the business concerned is still active. Hence my insistence on having Flyersam.com linked to its Facebook Page and having regular updates at least on Flyersam’s FB Page is the crucial success factor for Flyersam. In today’s connected business environment, customers will not look up the telephone directory if they want their flyers distributed. They will most likely do a search online to find out who can provide this service to them.

For a brick-and-mortar business to have an online presence is just as important as for those running online businesses. In today’s internet age, if your business is not online, to most of your prospective clients, you do not exist! But having a business website but not bothering to update it is as bad as not having a website at all. People checking out vendors for services will look closely to see if your business is still active before they will be confident enough to try your services or products out.,

Plagiarize and risk getting stigmatized

No body wants to be labelled as a cheat. That is something given for granted. In the academic world, the worst sin is none other than being caught as a plagiarist. Getting stigmatized by your peers and society at large is the consequences of being caught.

In the days before the internet era and before the rise of the mighty search engines like Yahoo and later Google, the risk of getting caught if you lift sections of work from others assignment or even published work was remote. This is especially so if you are just writing a term paper or an essay that get filed (and later thrashed). But today, with the rise of the internet and more and more literature, thesis, even essays are published or made available online by authors, the life of the plagiarist is getting riskier by the minute.

I have submitted an article for my column in The Heat which deals with a few examples from my own experience as a research scientist and a college lecturer which I hope the editor will accept for publication.

The availability of many plagiarism detection services with access to huge databases, fast and effective search engines means that to cheat on one’s academic work now is a very risky affairs. Even those who had plagiarized and it seems that their bad deeds were not detected when the work was submitted and accepted, the freedom of information principle and the eventual inclusion of the plagiarists’ work in one or more databases will lay bare the fraud committed sooner or later.

On August 7, 2014, it was reported that prominent US senator John Welsh was forced to quit his re-election campaign due to the exposure of his being a plagiarist. Welsh’s 2007 act of plagiarism for his master’s degree assignment was only exposed recently. The plagiarism committed and uncovered was clearly detected and published in fine details in which the detection software not only picked up “blow-by-blow” the act of plagiarism committed by Welsh, it even pointed to which paragraphs, sections and entire page that were copied and from whom the relevant content was lifted. It was reported that Welsh’s alma mater may be rescinding his master’s degree. Hence being stigmatized by the academic community is just the beginning of Welsh’s woes, now losing his political career is far more damaging.

Once you are labelled as a cheat, in today’s digital world it means that you are forever digitally branded as a cheat. That is the peril of plagiarism. So those who have cheated in order to gain their academic degrees should rightly be worried sick now. This is because someone, somewhere and some time in the future will uncover your bad deeds. It is just a matter of time that you will be caught. There is no escape!

The M in MOOC stands for Massive!

Inside Higher Ed reported that the University of Wisconsin – Madison is revamping its Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) offering. It will put emphasis on MOOCs that have local interests. This was done at the back of 3.2% average completion rate for Wisconsin – Madison’s MOOCs. Although this is low, it still falls within the 3 to 7 % range that is the average for MOOCs in terms of completion rate.

As a “veteran” MOOCer, I think Wisconsin-Madison has missed the whole point about MOOC by going local. MOOC is the means by which academic and other learning institutions can extend their reach to learners at all corners of the world whose only criteria of participation (aside from prior knowledge specific to some courses) is access to the Internet. Local learners can well afford the time (and resources?) to take up on-campus courses. By “going local” there may be many consequences such as:

Lower sign up figures:

With an averagely popular MOOC, you can expect at least 30,000 enrollment. With local-focused MOOCs, you will bound to have a much lower enrollment figure as your subject will not have broad enough interest to the “Massive” part of MOOC. Hence a figure of 3,000 enrollment is already very generous, I think it will be more in the range of 800 – 1500. You will not have the kind of geographical reach that MOOC is designed to bring. Will you still be able to “qualify” your courses as MOOCs?

2. Lower total number of people completing the MOOCs: (Is completion rate more important than the number of learner benefiting from your MOOCs?)

The cost of putting up Wisconsin-Madison’s revamped MOOCs, IMHO will not be that much different from the previous version. With 4% completion rate of the “old” MOOCs and with say 30,000 enrollment, you would stand to educate and benefit 1,200 people. With an enrollment figure of 1,000 and a completion rate of say triple of the conventional 4%, you will only educate more or less 80 people. Hence your return on invested effort (the MOOC industry has still not figured out a business model, thus it is best to measure return on invested effort rather than investment at this point) will be very low.

To benefit 80 – 100 local learners, you might as well provide free on-campus delivery of the course rather than using the more expensive MOOC system.

I think what Wisconsin-Madison needs to do is to look into the delivery system of their “old” MOOCs and find out from learners or if possible engage a sample of learners (with incentives) to give them answers to what work for the learners and what elements are the “turnoffs”. By improving the completion rate by just 2 to 3 percent, a significant increase in the number of people benefiting from the institution’s MOOCs can be attained.

What elements of an MOOC that worked for me may not work for everyone. However in my case I think these are, for me at least the success factors in an MOOC:

(a) Clear and concise learning objectives and learning outcomes. The kind of pre-requisite knowledge and skills must be well specified as well. The syllabus must be well written and available BEFORE the course commences to allow learners to judge whether they want to or have the pre-requisites to benefit from enrolling and learning.

(b) Tie to (a) a series of short video lectures, “purpose-shot” (i.e. shot purely in MOOC fashion and not a class recording). Each video lecture should be around 8 to 10 minutes long, covering a learning point each. Long video covering many points will lose learners and it is not easy to resume learning if you have to take a break while watching a 1 hour lecture.

(c) Tie to (b) a good summary of the learning points to be achieved for the chapter, summarizing the key learning outcomes attained with glossary of new terms / concepts.

(d) A clear and easy to follow assessment regime. I for one is a kind “loner” when it comes to studying. I like discussion forum and will take part even if not required by the assessment regime if the conversation is interesting. I never like to work in a group in which the bulk of the assessment for knowledge attainment is based. In Stanford University’s pioneer “Technology Entrepreneurship” MOOC, I was let down by some of my fellow group members (we were from Malaysia, Singapore, and Pakistan) to the extent that we could not develop our project fully (luckily the assessment system made allowance for such scenario). I think group work should still be used but assessment of which should not occupy a significant chunk of the final grade. I also do not like peer-based-assessment for written work. This is because the system will not have the ability to distinguish the serious peer assessors from those who just want to complete the task and simply assign a grade. In fact, I have an idea: why not engage some of these serious peer reviewers as course monitors (a sort of class representatives) give them some Teaching Assistant’s privileges to “double mark” a group of learners’ work. In return these serious peer assessors can be given some incentives such as free enrollment into verified assessment (i.e Coursera’s Signature Track or edX’s Verified Certificate) which usually cost a fair bit of money especially if you are not earning US dollars like me.

In short, learners’ expectations and what an MOOC promised to deliver must tally. Some MOOCs look good on the introduction page but the content was either not suitable or too demanding of the learner. Some will have unrealistic assessment regime that drives away those who already enrolled.

The “we build it and they will come” expectation of some of the MOOC providers has to be erased from their vocabulary! What happens will likely be this, veteran MOOCers like me will come, even sign up and look around, feeling disappointed and dropout from the course!

Killing your ad with poor music

Some movies have great soundtracks which help to them to sell well, especially the snippets of video and soundtracks used in the trailers.

Great soundtrack can save a “so-so” movie

Some movies on the other hand are very “forgettable” if not for their soundtracks. The classic example is 2001 – A Space Odyssey. The soundtrack, “Also sprach Zarathustra” is highly memorable and those who have watched the movie will, upon listening to this piece music quickly recall scenes of the movie. But aside from the theme song and a few scenes such as the “spinning wheels” space station scenes, I did not remember much of the storyline. But I can always associate Also sprach Zarathustra with the movie. This is the strong influence that a good soundtrack can have on a movie.

(Picture from : http://www.imdb.com/media/rm261462016/tt0062622?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_sf_48#)

Catchy jingles rule the day

The creative people making videos as TV commercials had discovered the power of a good jingle or key pieces of a soundtrack very early on. Those of us who were around since the 1970s would have been exposed to the theme song of Coca Cola, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”. Through the years Coca Cola’s advertising people have been producing these “jingle hit” songs. More than both the TV and cinema commercials, these Coke songs were the driving force of the message that Coca Cola wanted to convey to its consumers and conveyed they did.

How to spoil a good TV commercial with crappy soundtrack

There is a TV commercial by a health drink company which has been running for over a year or so in Malaysia which tries to promote the company’s chicken essence. The message that this company wants to put forward to the viewers is that this product brings vitality and energy to the users which work to increase their brain power so that the whole world will be at his/her hands. A very good idea with reasonably good video that tells the intended story. But the let down is the sound track.

Towards the middle of the commercial the tempo of the song was changed. I remember that the soundtrack for earlier versions of this commercial (both the English and Mandarin versions) was reasonably catchy and not out of tune. But somehow the commercial’s was altered. Now the soundtrack has deteriorated to the extent that from the middle part of the clip, the song is out of tune. To someone like me who has a good hearing, it is a torture listening to this commercial now. This is compounded by the fact that the same out-of-tune soundtrack is also used in the company’s radio commercials. The singer now sounds as if he is so lethargic after consuming this brand of chicken essence that viewers will get an unintended message: drink it and you will feel tired! I will usually switch station when I hear this commercial while driving to avoid further irritation to my hearing.

I wonder why the people putting the commercial on air is not listening to their own advertisement! If they do, my guess is they are all tune deaf! I guess the people at the company that hires this particular advertising agency are all tone-deaf too!

This is a classic example of a good commercial being killed by a poor choice or poor quality of a soundtrack. Perhaps advertising agencies may want to consider hiring someone like me, with good hearing to evaluate their TV and radio commercials before these hit the airwaves?

Discrimination against the small guy on the Internet?

The first time I heard of the term, “Internet Neutrality” I did not understand its true meaning. After all the Internet is supposed to be the disruptive technology that have brought equality to users. Anyone now can publish without the need of being tied to a newspaper, magazine or a publisher. Freedom of expression is still very much in place (well, most of the places in the world anyway). Is this not an Utopian realm that we are in?

However Professor Stephen Wicker’s Massive Open Online Course, “Wiretaps to Bigdata” which I successfully completed in May 2014 had opened my eyes to the issue of “Internet Neutrality” (IN) . Why the tech savvy internet users, especially those of Professor Wicker’s intellect are up in arms against what is happening to IN? What does IN entail? Why having IN is essential to all Internet users, rich or poor, power or just men-on-the-street? An article in the UK’s The Observer (July 26, 2014) attempted to answer some of these questions. It mentioned the report on Youtube (HBO) about Internet Neutrality by John Oliver. Watch this hilarious video (warning: adult language is used but censored!) to find out more about the issue of IN.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU]

IN means that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is expected to treat all its subscribers as equals. Any packets of data sent and received by any subscriber will be done on an orderly queue or in practice many, many such order queues. No one is to be treated preferentially and the speed of data transmission is a factor of just how big is the “pipe” (capacity) divided by how many users are concurrently sending and receiving data. You can subscribe for a bigger “pipe” to have more data traffic to/from your site but each bit of the data that you send and receive are treated on the same way as the others. It is like travelling on a tolled highway, every car pays the same toll rate and travel at the maximum prevailing speed of the traffic at the particular stretch of the road.

Now IN is under threat! The court in the USA has just allowed a media company to be given a special treatment by its ISP so that data flow to and from this company’s websites are preferentially treated and given “queue jumping” right. Of course the ISP justifies this special treatment and negating the principle of IN by showing that this media company is paying extra for the service. At first, it seems there is nothing wrong. A passenger who is able to pay for a first class seat on an airplane is entitled to better service, flat-bed seat, caviar, champagne and the works compare to fellow passengers travelling on economic class seats. But internet traffic is not like travelling on an airplane where all the passengers, regardless of the class of seats that they have traveled will depart and arrive together. First class passengers on the same flight do not get to fly faster and arrive earlier. However in the IN’s case, now those companies who pay extra to the ISP are in fact given a different plane so that they could fly faster than the rest of the crowd. Thus discrimination of the type of users of the Internet has been created and allowed by the USA legal system with the Federal Communications Commission very likely to side with the ISPs.

Now it seems that if you have more traffic and willing to pay more, you can have a “special lane” on the information highway that the others are not allowed to enter. This discrimination against the common internet users is a bad precedent. It allows another form of censorship of the Internet at the hands of the ISPs. If people accessing your portal is experiencing congestion all the time, they will move on. Big businesses can virtually smother out the small guys by buying up the data flow available. That is the danger that the tech savvy people have identified.

If you have more vehicles and bigger vehicles on the highway, does that give you the right to take up all the space on the fast lane and forbid the other users from enjoying the high speed travel?

The way things are going in the US, it seems size is might and might is right and the ISPs and Big Businesses can have their cake and eat it.

Footnote: This article is contributed by Dr. YN Chow who thinks that the rights of internet users all over the world is in danger of being stepped on if Internet Neutrality is being dismantled.

How much of our lives revolve around the internet?

Two days ago when I woke up in the morning, after all the chores and usual morning exercises, I dutifully switched on the laptop. The internet speed was snail pace at first, then it drop to a crawl and virtually “died” within 5 minutes.

At first I thought it must have been my broadband router playing. After switching off and on, reset, reboot etc. access to the internet was still sporadic, all these while we could get our phone and IPTV services (which are tied to the broadband fibre optic from the ISP).

Then my son announced that he accessed his twitter account on his smartphone and found out that the main ISP in Malaysia which we subscribe to has suffered some issues on its DNS servers. Apparently the whole of Malaysia where this ISP is the main player was experiencing interruption in internet access.

For 4 hours I was only relying on my mobile internet to access my usual diet of information, emails etc. But I was not able to write much, which I usually do. Worse, I wanted to accessCoursera to take my MOOC class on “Genes and human condition” where some work/quizes were due. Although I have 5 Gb data plan from my mobile telephony service provider, tried as I had, taking a MOOC class using the Android apps from Coursera was not an enjoyable experience. I realised that I was suffering from withdrawal syndrome of “internet access denial”, albeit partially as I still had my mobile data to do at least some “minor” work.

A few things that I can conclude from this:

Our lives today is inextricably tied to the internet. A lot of work and business transactions cannot be carried out adequately without internet access.
There is still a place for the PC/laptop for work despite the advances in mobile internet and tablet/smartphone technology. You just can’t type or interact well on a tablet, especially if you want to take your MOOC classes. Try doing all those image editing on your smart phone and then export it to your blog, you will know what I mean.
It pays to have a back up in the form of mobile data access. But if these mobile ISP are tied somehow (the last mile syndrome?) to the country’s main ISP and if this ISP is suffering an outage, you are done. However, at least in Malaysia there are a few mobile ISP to choose from and access is usually not excessively costly.

This brings me to another point, since I rely so much on the broadband to do my work, why am I subscribing to a 5Gb mobile data package and using less than 1 Gb of it each month? It is about time I review this and when the contract ends, I should switch to a cheaper data plan!

Footnote: This article is contributed by Dr. YN Chow. It is also published on Linkedin.