Mindmaps and flowcharts

Here is Task 14 – On mindmaps and flowcharts.

I have been using both tools in my teaching without realising it, albeit using marker pens on the white board instead of ready-made softwares. I tried mind-mapping with this software. This is what I produced – a quick way to summarise the structure of a country’s economy.

Many years ago, I drew something similar to summarise the syllabus of Introduction to Economics – I thought that this was a pretty neat way of capturing the contents, regardless of whether one knew the subject matter or not. The mindmap would serve two purposes here – first, to provide an overview of the subject, and second to use the mind-map as a starting point during revision.

The following flowchart was similar to what I drew on the board few weeks ago to summarise a lecture.

I suppose that mindmaps and flowcharts are useful in introducing and summarizing content. But they are not helpful if one wanted to pursue a subtopic in greater detail. It is probably what I would use at the beginning and at the end of a class. I would recommend students to do the same when they are taking/making notes. For someone who is learning something new, mindmaps and flowcharts are perfect in testing whether one understood a particular lesson. If there is understanding, one would be able to depict a topic in a graphical form to capture the main elements.

Exploring Flickr

This is Task 13 – feel more energetic today so I’m going to write more than 1 blog posting today!

While exploring Flickr for photos, I found some interesting photos of Professor Dan Ariely.

Here is putting the face to the author who wrote The Upside of Irrationality. One interesting fact about the Professor is that he majored in physics and mathematics before venturing into psychology. He made a name for himself in behavioural economics although he had no formal training in the subject. Photo is by PopTech.

Photos are good for telling students how a particular author (whose book the students are probably reading) actually looks like – so reading the book may become a more personal experience. The contents of the book also becomes more alive if we know who the authors are. This picture is what I might use before telling students about behavioural economics.

Here is a photo from my Flickr account, which I have not used for almost 10 years. My neighbour’s cat, Bruno

He has been missing since 2007 and I still miss him – you’ve never seen a cat as lazy as him.

Open Educational Resources

As I drag my tired brain to blog about Task 12, I suddenly become aware of how fast time flies. We are almost half-way through the Teaching in a Digital Age course. The heat/humidity in KL has been awful in the past one week and I am glad I don’t have fur on my body.

In this task, I browsed Jorum, OpenLearn and OER Commons for a number of topics, including Game Theory (again!) and Hyman Minsky. The search in Jorum did not produce any meaningful results since the repository of materials are rather narrow in scope and there wasn’t much about the social sciences. Meanwhile, there wasn’t much information about Game Theory in OpenLearn, but the search for Minsky was rather fruitful, albeit the information procured was not that relevant (all search results related to staff and research student profiles). At least I found an interesting researcher, a certain Dr. Andrew Trigg. This may open up new research frontiers!

The most productive search of the day was from OER Commons, where I found lots of game theory materials – tears of ecstasy!  Some of the game theory stuff were part of the MIT OpenCourseWare. Suddenly my stiff fingers became trigger-happy and started clicking on the download button almost reflexively. But nothing on Minsky – however the disappointment is offset by the bountiful harvest in the game theory search.

Some post-search afterthoughts – The search for OERs tends to be more focused than a search for materials in Google or Google scholar, where the net is supposedly wider. If I did not know what I wanted exactly, Google would be a good place to search for information. However, if I already know what I want, a search in, say, OER Commons, could give me more relevant outcomes.

Copyright and Creative Commons

For the next task on the Teaching in a Digital Age course, I searched for contents licensed under Creative Commons. Using the Creative Commons search, I typed ‘John Nash’ under YouTube.

The outcome of the search is displayed here.

Some of the videos could be used for a lecture or tutorial on game theory. But I particularly like this one created by DoCumentary15:

My personal view is that making some contents usable to the wider public with minimal hassle is a good move. It balances the need to maintain the incentives to innovate (via protection of Intellectual Property) against the need to provide a greater access to materials that can bring more benefits to the well-being of society. However (if my understanding is correct), the effectiveness of ‘liberalising’ content seems limited, if the content that can be used easily are usually the lower-end type of content. The creator still retains the right to restrict the more lucrative parts of content from public view. But that’s better than nothing.

The issue of respecting copyright is a major challenge in the Far East, where intellectual property is frequently violated at the time of writing. While I do not have the statistics, I tend to get a wee bit skeptical about the success of this movement particularly in Southeast Asia.

What’s with all the Twitter?

For Task 10 of the Teaching in a Digital Age course, I explored the use of Twitter.

Twitter is a useful tool for following the latest research/ideas by tech-savvy academics. But academics who are not so tech-savvy are not captured by Twitter. Perhaps many people are still reluctant to adopt this particular social media tool, as suggested by this article here. After exploring Twitter for almost two hours, it became pretty clear that many prominent people whom I follow are not using this tool. I tried changing the search strategy by searching for research institutes/think tanks and academic publishers instead. To my delight, I found most of what I wanted to find. From my random search, I also noticed many academics (whom I do not know) tweeting about their own research. I’m pretty impressed by this experience – previously my impression of the tool was that it was frequently used by (1) attention-seekers to disseminate gossip and (2) by politicians to spin their propaganda. I now have a different impression of Twitter.

There are many similarities between RSS and Twitter – they enable information we follow to be placed strategically in one location. By accessing that location, we can view the latest updates from various sources. But I tend to prefer Twitter’s interface – it is also more interactive. Moreover, some websites do not have subscriptions to RSS feeds but allow visitors to Tweet about them – an example of this is the School of Economics and the Business School at University of Nottingham. So, RSS and Twitter can be nice complements!

As a tool for teaching, Twitter can bring more fun to the learning environment and break the monotony of weekly routine activities, as suggested by this article here. However, in many instances, face-to-face conversations can be more effective than virtual communication via social media.

Exploring social networking

For Task 9 of the Teaching in a Digital Age course, I explored the use of social networking. I was a regular user of Facebook, but about two months ago I closed my account. Initially, the purpose for joining Facebook was to connect with friends. But as time went by, I realised that Facebook had become somewhat intrusive – log into the site and you’d be greeted by an overload of useless information. I did not use even 1% of the tools in this networking site, so there wasn’t any point in staying on. Moreover, I was rather worried about the amendments to the Seditions Act in Malaysia. If someone hacked into my account and started posting ‘seditious’ materials, I could get into big trouble with the government. To have peace of mind, it’s best to quit.

I presently use LinkedIn mainly for professional networking – where everything is strictly business. So far so good – still have a pretty positive view of this form of networking. I connected with some former colleagues who were not on Facebook. I suppose this form of networking is useful not only for career progression but also for getting in touch with friends. There are lots of job vacancy advertisements if you are on the lookout for a job/career change.

I have yet to use Academia.edu. But based on the description of this social network it sounds like an interesting area to explore henceforth. I am not a fan of the publication game although I am an avid follower of some researchers (not all of them influential though). This form of networking is what I will be pursuing.

Using Feed Readers and RSS

For Task 8 of the Teaching in a Digital Age course, I explored feed readers and RSS. I used Feedly, logging in via Google. I managed to find five feeds from some sites which are useful, including Michael Pettis’ blog, IMF blog, Brad De Long’s blog, The Economist and Calculated Risk. Coming from a country where internet connection is not always reliable, I find the whole idea of setting up RSS feeds to be quite a hassle. One needs fast and reliable internet connection to add content and a lot of patience. It took me a very long time (and many attempts) to successfully perform these tasks.

I am not a habitual user of RSS. Due to the difficulties mentioned above, I am unlikely to change my habits, very much preferring to add my favourite sites into the Favourites folder of my web browser. Another way to access my favourite sites is to embed the URLs into a blog. By viewing my blog, I can also access these sites for information with a simple click of the mouse. RSS just isn’t an idea I can easily get used to although another person may have a different view.

Recently, I discovered another way to keep up with feeds from my favourite data sources. WordPress has an interesting widget that enables me to follow news feeds. You’ll find RSS feeds from various sources at the bottom-right corner of my blog. This feature is easier to use than Feedly.

Opening up access to readings

As part of Task 7 of the Teaching in a Digital Age course, I am posting a reflection on searching for resources online.

Since I am getting re-acquainted with the economic applications of game theory, I searched for ‘game theory economics’. Among the results I found were materials produced by Professor John Sutton, whose work I had to digest as an undergraduate student of Industrial Economics almost two decades ago. Going by his publication record, there is little doubt that he is an authoritative figure in this discipline. Another eye-catcher is this article. There is very little reason to doubt its quality, as it is a Financial Markets Group Discussion Paper. While I am not exactly a close follower of the authors, I am attracted by the topic they wrote about. It is definitely something I would include in a literature survey.

Next, I took a look at OpenDOAR to search for ‘world economic crisis’. I was drawn by World Bank articles, mostly because their research output (together with the research by IMF and BIS) is pretty useful. One article that I actually downloaded was this article here. A shorter version of the article had been accepted for publication in a pretty good journal ranked in the Chartered Association of Business Schools Journal Rankings.

Selecting good articles is a rather subjective exercise and I must admit that I haven’t given it much though prior to joining Teaching in a Digital Age. After some self-reflection, I suppose good papers are usually written by authoritative figures in their respective disciplines. What also matters is the content (having reviewed for some refereed journals, it is not so hard to tell a relatively good paper from a relatively poor one). Of course some articles can have good content even though the authors are not yet established figures. I also have an eye for where the paper gets published. I’m not exactly a fan of journal rankings, but every discipline surely has a couple of journals that are in the ‘gold standard’, and that’s where most of the good stuff are found.

Thanks to Teaching in a Digital Age, I am now exposed to more options to search for resources.

Using the web for inquiry-based learning

In this posting I will reflect on inquiry-based learning as a tool of pedagogy, which is Task 6 under the Teaching in a Digital Age course. I have used this tool for my Foundation students. I am planning to use this tool for my Introduction to Economics lectures also. In the past, I have given my Foundation students a few simple tasks. These tasks included (1) to search for some information on the U.S. economy and to report on some key economic statistics, (2) to identify some market-oriented vs. centrally-planned economies in some online world map, (3) to view a video in YouTube (on product innovation) and report on what they viewed and (4) to search for the key economics writers of the 20th century; here the students were broken up into two groups and one group had to share what they had read with the other group.  These tasks were for exploratory and confirmatory purposes.

The major challenge is to facilitate this activity to foundation and first-year university students who were so used to being spoon-fed in a rather ineffective education system. In addition, the students (unlike their Western and South Asian counterparts) are usually very reserved – it took a lot of effort to encourage participation. A task had to be split into very small parts, with the class teacher asking leading questions and breaking down research questions into even smaller parts to make participation easier.

My personal view is that for an average student in Malaysia, ‘pure’ inquiry-based learning is more suitable for research students or students who already have pretty good background in the fundamental knowledge (e.g. second-year and final-year students). Searching and filtering information requires a great deal of confidence, and usually more mature students handle these tasks better.

Use of library search tools, Google, Google scholar to find information

This posting reflects on the search for the terminology ‘Digital Native’ in various search engines, including Google, Google Scholar and the University of London Online Library. It is a response to Task 5 of the Teaching in a Digital Age course.

The search in Google produced a vast array of resources on the afore-mentioned terminology – the resources capture the scholarly and not-so-scholarly resources. Like anything on the World Wide Web, variety is the order of the day. The scope of the search is considerably narrowed with Google Scholar. A noticeable difference this time is that Scholar focuses on research papers on the topic. Meanwhile, the Online Library generates search results that are similar in scope to Google Scholar i.e. scholarly work on the topic. As Scholar scours a bigger information highway, it succeeds in producing more search results.

Gleaning the search results, it seems (as in everything else) that there are advocates and also opponents of the terminology. Looking at the historical perspective, the most amazing thing is how Mr. Mark Prensky pioneered this concept. Equally fascinating is how some sources take this idea apart. It reminds me of a story of how a pseudo-scientist made observations of swans swimming in a river. Having made his observation for a day, he concluded that all the swans are white. He’d probably see a black swan if he had extended his observation for another day. We have similar stories of attempts to fit people into boxes when the reality is more complex and nuanced. My personal observation is that many students (Google generation) are very familiar with digital technologies but are quite clueless about how to harness these technologies for learning. The applications are mostly concentrated in social networking and gaming. In contrast, the older generation of users tend to place more emphasis on the problem-solving aspects of digital technologies.

I tend to gravitate towards sources of information that are critical, paying attention to how insightful (and amusing) the arguments are. This is what I call good quality information.