As new technologies come along every day, we sometimes forget just how bad is the experience we still get from many an established web site.
Take my frustrations last Saturday when I wanted to make an online donation to a charity. I started from the home page of the company I use to make charity contributions, wanting to specify a charity and then log in to my account.
So I searched for the charity - a well known one, the Disasters Emergency Committee. It wasn't found, nor were any abbreviations for it. Today in talking to the charity company I found there is indeed an error in their search subsystem. But in small blue type on the home page were the words "Pakistan Flood Appeal". So I should have found those words by reading the home page? Not on your life. It's well established that people don't read web pages so much as scan them - see the interesting eye tracking pictures in this article by Jakob Nielsen:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html
So twelve years after the idea of banner blindness was first raised it seems that many web designers aren't aware of it.
Then I tried to log in to my account. I got a "web server error" message. Obviously the server for the user accounts was down. It was back up again on Monday. I was told that the server is always available at the weekend. Yeh - right. Perhaps they hadn't thought about (or couldn't afford) hardware to ensure uninterrupted running.
My third Saturday morning problem was a curious one. I went directly to the charity and tried to make my donation by phone - an automated system. All went well until I was asked to give the 3 digit security code on the back of my card. I was making my donation from my charity account, for which they had issued a special card. I turned over the card. No security code! On Monday I checked with the charity company. Yes there had been a problem. When the charity had updated their automated donation system they had forgotten that the card for my charity company did not have a security code on the back. So talks were now underway to resolve the situation.
The lesson from these experiences? There are still many organisations that don't have useable websites.
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Wednesday 22 September 2010
Blended Learning - interaction between classroom and online activities
There several kinds of e-learning. One is distance learning, where all interactions between tutor and students and between students themselves are electronic. So students never see one another face to face. By contrast are traditional classroom based courses which are augmented by access to a repository of information held on a VLE. In between are many blended learning courses which augment their face to face interactions by various forms of electronic communication.
Blended learning is often described as though there was no interaction between the face to face and electronic components of a course. Which is surprising because the culture within a classroom affects educational outcomes, as does the culture which exists within online facilities such as forums and wikis. We should not be surprised then if in a blended learning course the online and the offline cultures interact.
This is what a colleague observed recently. She asked the students in a class she met every week to add summaries of papers on defined topics to a wiki . The wiki allowed all students to see and edit each others contributions. There were no marks for completing this exercise. And yet all the students made their regular required contributions. This was even though, as some evaluation responses showed, some students thought that posting to a wiki was not a useful activity if they were not to be given credit for it.
The reason for the engagement of all the students with the online activity seemed to lie in what went on in the classroom, the offline activity. At each weekly meeting students were reminded that they should be contributing to the wiki. In a small class it was obvious who had and who hadn't contributed. Students were told that the final wiki would be of help to the whole class when it came to revision for the final exam. So those who were not contributing could be seen as letting down the other students. In short there was social pressure.
Social pressure also manifested itself in the use that was made of the wiki. Students posted, as they had been asked to do, summaries of papers. But they were also told that they could comment on each others contributions. There were no such comments. There could be several reasons for this. One might have been that since there were no marks for the postings, students simply put the minimum effort into the wiki. However another possibility was that students didn't want to criticise in a public forum fellow students that they met with on a daily basis. If this was the case it raises the possibility that the use students make of online facilities will be influenced by the nature and extent of their offline interactions. One might hypothesise that the contributions to a wiki or forum for a distance learning course, run completely online, would be less concerned with their affect on the feelings of other students. Of course, such an effect might fade over the duration of a distance learning course, as students got to know each other through electronic interaction.
It seems that the delivery of blended learning courses requires more than simply adding electronic facilities to an existing course. The interaction between the online and the offline can be quite subtle.
Blended learning is often described as though there was no interaction between the face to face and electronic components of a course. Which is surprising because the culture within a classroom affects educational outcomes, as does the culture which exists within online facilities such as forums and wikis. We should not be surprised then if in a blended learning course the online and the offline cultures interact.
This is what a colleague observed recently. She asked the students in a class she met every week to add summaries of papers on defined topics to a wiki . The wiki allowed all students to see and edit each others contributions. There were no marks for completing this exercise. And yet all the students made their regular required contributions. This was even though, as some evaluation responses showed, some students thought that posting to a wiki was not a useful activity if they were not to be given credit for it.
The reason for the engagement of all the students with the online activity seemed to lie in what went on in the classroom, the offline activity. At each weekly meeting students were reminded that they should be contributing to the wiki. In a small class it was obvious who had and who hadn't contributed. Students were told that the final wiki would be of help to the whole class when it came to revision for the final exam. So those who were not contributing could be seen as letting down the other students. In short there was social pressure.
Social pressure also manifested itself in the use that was made of the wiki. Students posted, as they had been asked to do, summaries of papers. But they were also told that they could comment on each others contributions. There were no such comments. There could be several reasons for this. One might have been that since there were no marks for the postings, students simply put the minimum effort into the wiki. However another possibility was that students didn't want to criticise in a public forum fellow students that they met with on a daily basis. If this was the case it raises the possibility that the use students make of online facilities will be influenced by the nature and extent of their offline interactions. One might hypothesise that the contributions to a wiki or forum for a distance learning course, run completely online, would be less concerned with their affect on the feelings of other students. Of course, such an effect might fade over the duration of a distance learning course, as students got to know each other through electronic interaction.
It seems that the delivery of blended learning courses requires more than simply adding electronic facilities to an existing course. The interaction between the online and the offline can be quite subtle.
Tuesday 14 September 2010
Montaigne on Liars
Book One Chapter 9 On Liars
Montaigne talks about having a poor memory. I sympathise, having a memory that blanks out both the important and the trivial. But I don't need to be too envious of those with wonderful memories for as Montaigne says “ excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgements”. And then again the worse the memory the briefer the speech.
Then he comes to the main point – if you are going to lie then you had better have a good memory. I'm reminded of modern day politicians when he talks of liars being tripped up when those they have told different lies to come together and can compare what they have heard. In times past a politician in the far reaches of his constituency might say something to appease his constituents, knowing that it would hardly get to a wider audience. But these days it will rapidly appear on national television or be picked up by his/her opponents to be used as ammunition at the next election.
Montaigne talks about having a poor memory. I sympathise, having a memory that blanks out both the important and the trivial. But I don't need to be too envious of those with wonderful memories for as Montaigne says “ excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgements”. And then again the worse the memory the briefer the speech.
Then he comes to the main point – if you are going to lie then you had better have a good memory. I'm reminded of modern day politicians when he talks of liars being tripped up when those they have told different lies to come together and can compare what they have heard. In times past a politician in the far reaches of his constituency might say something to appease his constituents, knowing that it would hardly get to a wider audience. But these days it will rapidly appear on national television or be picked up by his/her opponents to be used as ammunition at the next election.
Sunday 5 September 2010
The very first blogger?
You might ask who was the first blogger. Quite by chance, on holiday and looking for something to read in a pile of books in a rented apartment, I came across a book I had always wanted to read – the essays of Montaigne. Sporadically I had come across references to it and they had often seemed intriguing. But I had never read it. Now was my chance.
I immediately realised that these essays (essais = tries) of Montaigne were in fact nothing but blogs; fairly lengthy blogs perhaps but nonetheless blogs. Each essay addresses a subject and tells us what Montaigne knows about it. Sometimes that isn't very much; at other times we get many pages. Always there are many quotations from the classical authors such as Senecca, Horace Virgil etc. But what makes the reading worthwhile are the opinions expressed: always positive and clear and often saying things that are as relevant today as when they were first written over 400 years ago. A single sentence will leap out of the page with a quintessential curtain-lifting thought. It is Montaigne's opinions that I am going to comment on in this and following blogs. I know that over the centuries many people have have written about Montaigne, so I don't expect to produce anything that is new. But Montaigne's own introduction to his essays starts “my sole purpose in writing this book has been a private and domestic one”. In that spirit I am simply recording my immediate reaction to some of his essays, to help me (and maybe a reader or two of these blogs) understand how they might have meaning today.
The edition of the essays that I found was the Penguin Classics one: Michel de Montaigne, Essays Translated with an Introduction by J M Cohen (1958). This is only a partial edition of about 1/3 rd of the essays, but certainly adequate for me to get started. The essays were published in three books, additions being added in each successive edition. You can download the complete works, in a 19th century translation, from Project Gutenberg. This is often heavier going than the Cohen version; 19th century English can be rather elaborate. But it does have some exquisite translations such as: “a man's accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never” which in Cohen is the more leaden “what [a man] says in his disfavour is always believed, but when he commends himself he arouses distrust”.
There are certainly sections of the essays that strike no chords with me: a comparison of Seneca and Plutarch or an analysis of the strengths of Tacitus. But leaving these aside there is much that seems of relevance today, even if you have to take account of social context. I'll try in a few brief blog entries to point out some of the Montaigne's thoughts that I find intriguing.
I immediately realised that these essays (essais = tries) of Montaigne were in fact nothing but blogs; fairly lengthy blogs perhaps but nonetheless blogs. Each essay addresses a subject and tells us what Montaigne knows about it. Sometimes that isn't very much; at other times we get many pages. Always there are many quotations from the classical authors such as Senecca, Horace Virgil etc. But what makes the reading worthwhile are the opinions expressed: always positive and clear and often saying things that are as relevant today as when they were first written over 400 years ago. A single sentence will leap out of the page with a quintessential curtain-lifting thought. It is Montaigne's opinions that I am going to comment on in this and following blogs. I know that over the centuries many people have have written about Montaigne, so I don't expect to produce anything that is new. But Montaigne's own introduction to his essays starts “my sole purpose in writing this book has been a private and domestic one”. In that spirit I am simply recording my immediate reaction to some of his essays, to help me (and maybe a reader or two of these blogs) understand how they might have meaning today.
The edition of the essays that I found was the Penguin Classics one: Michel de Montaigne, Essays Translated with an Introduction by J M Cohen (1958). This is only a partial edition of about 1/3 rd of the essays, but certainly adequate for me to get started. The essays were published in three books, additions being added in each successive edition. You can download the complete works, in a 19th century translation, from Project Gutenberg. This is often heavier going than the Cohen version; 19th century English can be rather elaborate. But it does have some exquisite translations such as: “a man's accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never” which in Cohen is the more leaden “what [a man] says in his disfavour is always believed, but when he commends himself he arouses distrust”.
There are certainly sections of the essays that strike no chords with me: a comparison of Seneca and Plutarch or an analysis of the strengths of Tacitus. But leaving these aside there is much that seems of relevance today, even if you have to take account of social context. I'll try in a few brief blog entries to point out some of the Montaigne's thoughts that I find intriguing.
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