Study Day Evaluations

Here are the basic evaluations of the first three Study Days, in chart form.*

If;

• you would like the original data to work on, or
  
• you have additional comments to make (existing write-in comments have been noted)

--please comment on this blog.

Thanks

For geeks only:

*It's an Adobe Flash file, which is by far the most compact way of making PowerPoint available on the web. You sacrifice some of the animation and interactivity, but it is small and just one file. You can't export as Flash from Powerpoint, of course. However, just download (completely free--not even any ads) OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org/ I say "just" download--it will take a while because OpenOffice is a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, on all fronts. It is fully compatible with MS Office in all but a few esoteric respects (like custom animations), but improves on it in various ways;

• it is FREE
• it can save directly to Acrobat (.pdf) files
• and if appropriate to Flash...

I'm a fan, obviously; but not merely because of the above. For those of you teaching introductory ICT; why are you teaching MS Office? I know it is installed on all the college machines, but there is nothing to stop them installing OpenOffice alongside it. It is FREE, after all. And it is not flaky; it is the non-commercial version of Sun Microsystems office suite, StarOffice, which is the standard package for the German government... And you could legally and legitimately give it to your learners on a CD; saving them at least £120 (you might have to charge them 20p for the disc, of course).

Come to think of it, why Windows? OpenOffice is originally a Linux package...

Are fractions really threshold concepts?

The linked story concerns a maths professor who thinks that fractions can and should be abandoned (along with long division and some other topics) in early maths learning. They might be re-introduced after calculus, he believes.

I have argued that learning basic arithmetic consists of a series of obligatory threshold concepts, but I stopped at division. Fractions usually come next in the traditional school curriculum, and they too are regarded as a threshold concept; this mathematician obviously thinks they are not. Discuss.

A major threshold concept

Over coffee this morning, Peter, Juliet and I were discussing last night's TV; so of course we talked about Horizon on gravity. Peter pointed out that "spacetime" (clearly all one word and sometimes referred to as "the spacetime"), is clearly a threshold concept—and troublesome knowledge—for understanding post-Newtonian physics.

How did the programme do in getting over this critical idea? Do respond!

You can watch the whole programme again for the next six days, or download it and keep it for a month, from the link.

Schadenfreude

Or "hoist with one's own petard"? Dear Chris Woodhead's department at the U of Buckingham has been inspected by Ofsted (hardly worth the effort, with three students...) and got a grade 3!

"Schadenfreude"

(The opposite is "Erfolgstraurigkeit"!)

The Periodic Table as a threshold concept

Having had a discussion last week about the periodic table as a threshold concept in chemistry--which I am sure it must be... Well, that's a lame excuse for publishing this link to an animated version of Tom Lehrer's marvellous setting of "The Elements" (which I will also note on one of my least-visited pages). You will need your speakers on.

Evaluation data for last Saturday

You can now download the basic data from last Saturday's Study Day, in Acrobat format. We hope to undertake more detailed processing shortly. Thanks for the 178 questionnaires returned.

A strange and anomalous result!

You can't please all of the people all of the time? That may indeed be true, but it appears that the two Study Days for Year 2 students have significantly bucked the trend. At the moment we have not yet formally processed the evaluation questionnaires, but the staff review after the event suggested strongly that;

• you found the Study Days useful and stimulating,
• and the theme was helpful--even if you did not stick to it!

Many thanks for your enthusiastic participation and the really positive feel you brought to the proceedings on both days! Do look on BREO for the follow-up material and discussions, and many thanks too to those of you who are posting there.