January 2012

LAK12 Reflections – Week One

Reading Time: 4 minutes

So, I’m having another attempt at attending a MOOC! I registered for the hugely popular Stanford AI Class last year but those attempts were scuppered by the predominantly video-driven course being delivered as Flash Video only, which made it impossible for me as my main learning device these days is an iPhone. Then last week I stumbled across Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012, or LAK12 for short, an 8 week introduction to Learning Analytics led by George Siemens and hosted by the Society for Learning Analytics Research.

Research into open source software quality

Reading Time: 5 minutes

My first decade in software development was in software testing and test management and despite moving away from that discipline it remains a special interest. As an open source practitioner I maintain a keen interest in where the worlds of software quality and open source meet. It goes without saying that quality is managed VERY differently in open source projects than it is in traditional closed-source projects. How differently, and how project attributes positively impact on quality, has been the focus of an increasing amount of academic research, especially now that the open source phenomenon is mainstream.