CEdO535 Week 2 - Social Media as a Learning Platform

This week we started talking about Wikis and other social media that could be used as a way to delivering training material. I also had an opportunity to attend a 1 day workshop in Chicago called We-Learn. These two experiences gave me a lot of good ideas that I can apply to our company and some upcoming training challenges. We are getting ready to replace the main software that runs our company. This is a huge undertaking and the project is expected to last at least 3 years. In the course of this we are going to have to change the way everyone in the company works. Making it even more challenging, we are going to have to train some people who have been working there for 30 or more years, and who have never used any other software than the one we are replacing, and who will expect formal training. Then we also have younger Gen Y employees who are used to learning new software, and who like to find their training and information on their own. The workshop and this class both have stressed the use of other means for delivering training, especially ways that will allow people to find information at the moment they need it, rather than sitting in a class and passively receiving it. The workshop recommended the following ratio: - 10% Classroom Training - 20% Peer to Peer Interaction and Simulation - 30% On the Job/Experiential Training with Support It is this last category that has the most applications for the software we are talking about. Some of the ideas include: - Having early adopters create video blogs of their experiences with the new software - Letting early users create tips and tricks - Recording short videos that show a single function or work process with the new software - Having experts available by chat to answer questions - Making all of this searchable so people can find the answers they need, when they need them Also I would recommend creating cohorts of learners, so they can support each other through this change. There is certainly a lot to be done, but using these ideas we should be able to get through this change smoothly.

CEdO535 - Blogs, Blogs, and more Blogs

There is something strange writing about blogs in a blog. It is like you have created a loop in the time space continuum and the universe will cease to exist. OK maybe that is being over dramatic, but it still feels like it violates one of the basic rules of English class - Never use the word you are trying to define in the definition itself. However when we were asked to come up with one idea from class that we could use, Blogs were the first thing that popped into my mind. We have started using blogs at work as a way for people to share ideas, especially as they relate to a big project or program. They are a great way to get people's opinions about something, or to share an idea with an audience. People can read them at their leisure, take time to think about the response, and post what they are truly thinking. Multiple ideas can be combined from posts in a single thread, and anyone can go back and reference the information at any time, making it a great reference. The biggest problem with blogs is also contained in the sentence above, namely that people may take a long time to come up with ideas and post, or may not reply at all. That is why it helps to have some kind of expectation that people will read and respond to blogs. In this class it is part of our grade. In a work environment you have to be more creative, such as giving a small reward to the person who responds with the best idea. And although blogs are a good way to collect information and ideas over time, there are still many occasions when you need to have a face to face meeting to decide something right away. Those kinds of conversation are not suited to blogs. Fortunately we have Skype and other instant communication methods for those conversations.

CEdO 540 Week 5 - Summary Report and Sources of Data

Our Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings survey uncovered 3 very interesting trends:
- Women preferred Harry Potter 2 to 1, while men preferred Lord of the Rings 2 to 1.
- People below the median age of 34 tend to prefer Harry Potter, while Lord of the Rings fans had a more even age distribution.
- Older readers are more likely to differentiate between aspects of the series, while younger readers tend to like all or nothing from either series.

It is hard to draw any great conclusions from this, but the broad age appeal of the Lord of the Rings means it might have a greater effect on literature in the long run, while Harry Potter will be more of a fad. It would be interesting to repeat this survey every 5-10 years and see if Harry Potter fans retain their preference. The fact that the last Harry Potter movie came out at the same time we are giving this survey may have also affected the results. Lord of the Rings still had a strong showing even though the last movie release was 6 years ago.

Our other assignment was to look for sources of statistical information on the internet. The best site I found was fedstats.gov. This site contains an index to all other federal sites that publish statistics, and has several search tools embedded in it.

CEdO 540 Week 4 - Survey Results and the final report

Our group has come up with a very unique idea for a survey. Most of the idea we came up with at first revolve around the political situation in the state. Given the prevalence of TV commercials around the recall elections this is not surprising. However after talking about it we all wanted to do something less obvious (maybe we were all just tied of the political fighting). In the end we came up with a survey around which is better, Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings. Although this seems like a frivolous topic, it is actually one which might have a big impact in the classroom. These two series have been some of the biggest grossing movies in the past decade. Understanding the preferences of a group might help a teacher to make a class more interesting. It might also give some insight into what people value more, characters or plot, and show some differences by age or gender.

We developed the questions for our survey in the group, making sure to keep them as unbiased as possible. We then created the survey in Google Docs and distributed the link to as many people as possible. We have received a total of 41 responses, and we found some very interesting trends in the data. The next step will be to compile a report that summarizes the findings.

Week 3 of 540 - Survey

This week we are starting to plan a survey where we can analyze the results. As mentioned last week, the hardest part will be in designing questions that do not bias the answers. We will need to select a question that will be interesting to the people that we can get to participate. Once we have that topic, we will need to design neutral questions that do not cause the participants to select one answer over another. Once we have the topic and questions, we then will need to administer the survey and analyze the results. This is where the real math begins, and where we can start using the science of statistics to interpret the answers.

WE also did more work this week to look at the differences between mean, median, and mode. Our homework really drove home the point that two data sets might have the same mean (average) but may in fact be completely different. One might have a very closely grouped set of data, and the other may have a huge range that happens to balance out to the same average. Usually you want more consistent results, although of course that depends on the questions you are trying to answer.

CEdO540 - Week 2, Samples

This week we really started looking at the ways to evaluate a sample of numbers using statistics. WE evaluated several samples using the common ways of measuring central tendencies, Mead, Median, and Mode. It was interesting to learn that the Mean is not always the best way to evaluate a sample, as it could be thrown off by a single outlying value. You should also look at the median and the Mode, as they might help you find out is the data being affected by one or more values on the ends, or if the data is closely grouped around the center.

Comparing the central tendencies to each other can also give you a lot of information, for example if the mean is to the right or left of the median, then that can tell you something about the data. It is obvious that we will need to do a lot more evaluation and comparison of the central tendencies, as well as look at the data sample as a whole, in order to get the best picture of the results.

In the future we will be looking at how to collect data for evaluation. I can see that designing a survey that will not bias the results is going to be a challenge.

CEdO540 - Statistics

Due to a schedule change we are jumping right into CEdO540 and we will be taking 535 in September. 540 is all about Statistics. I have never actually had a formal statistics class before, so much of this subject will be new to me. I have had enough science and other classes though so I think I will be able to keep up fairly well.

I have used statistics many times in my job, including calculating the reliability of computer systems, figuring out the capacity of a system and projecting it into the future so we know when we will have to upgrade, and of course figuring out budgets. However I will need to spend some time learning all of the formal terms around it, such as mean, median, mode, and of course standard deviation. My biggest problem is just keeping all of the "m" words straight. Hopefully I won't confuse them. I think this will be a good course however. As they said in the video, statistics can help describe any part of your job or life. You just need to figure out what you want to measure, and how best to collect that data, whether it is grades, class performance, research, or anything else. This class will help to do those things.