Reflections on agile product development

/ agile, product management, tech leadership
Reading Time: 10 minutes

I recently moved teams and role following a company restructure and merger, which led me to reflect on my last three years. One of the reasons I had taken the role was to gain more experience in agile product development. I’d worked in open source product development for over a decade, and on a number of agile projects, but in order to grow and develop as a software engineer and technology lead, I wanted more direct experience of product development and technology leadership with a small, agile scrum team. 

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Reflections on agile product development Read More »

A vendor view of Learning Technologies 2017

/ analytics, artificial intelligence, data, immersive tech, learning analytics, learning technology

Reading Time: 5 minutes

I spent two days last week at the Learning Technologies 2017 exhibition, working on the LEO stand (below). This annual event is split over two floors, with a paid conference upstairs and free exhibition downstairs. The stand was really busy for both days and the whole team came away absolutely exhausted, but I did manage to wander around the exhibition looking to see what the trends were this year and seeking out interesting new products.

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A vendor view of Learning Technologies 2017 Read More »

Algorithms and echo chambers in the world of learning

/ artificial intelligence, data, learning analytics, learning technology
Reading Time: 3 minutes

There has been lots in the news this past year about social media bias and echo chambers, which started gaining prominence when algorithms started meddling in your news feed. The major web companies collect a huge amount of data about you and in doing so are building a detailed profile comprising demographic data, likes and purchases and other data that has been captured and purchased. As you ‘like’ posts and pages, so the algorithm delivers similar content back to you. Your friends like certain things, or ‘people like you’ like certain things, and the algorithm delivers more of that content to you too. You search for and purchase certain things, and you get delivered content related to that. Maybe you even give away valuable data via an innocuous-looking Facebook quiz,  which is then sold to highest bidder and fed into yet more algorithms to target you with stuff you might ‘like’.

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Algorithms and echo chambers in the world of learning Read More »

The quantified cyclist: analysing Strava data using R

/ analytics, data
Reading Time: 6 minutes

This post was edited on 09 May 2017 to add some clarity around authenticating with the Strava API.

In 2016 I made a commitment to myself to record every cycle ride I made. As both a leisure cyclist and cycle commuter, I was keen to know how far I rode in a year, what was the accumulated distance of my daily commute, what distance did I cover on my leisure rides. I already recorded my weekend rides in a phone app called Strava, so it was pretty easy to get into the habit of clicking a button on my phone every time I set off on a cycle commute too.

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The quantified cyclist: analysing Strava data using R Read More »

UK and Ireland MoodleMoot 2016

/ learning technology, lms, mobile, moodle, open source
Reading Time: 5 minutes

MoodleMoot UK and Ireland 2016 showed yet again that the Moodle ecosystem is in good health, with lots of new community members attending for the first time, plenty of old timers coming back, major institutions reaffirming their faith and Moodle HQ showing how the product itself is adapting to the future with new features and new sectors in its sights.

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UK and Ireland MoodleMoot 2016 Read More »

#LTMOOC16 – Success in a MOOC

/ MOOC

Reading Time: 2 minutes

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8avYQ5ZqM0]

I started the Curatr ‘elearning…. beyond the next button!’ MOOC this week, facilitated by Craig Taylor. I found the introductory ‘Success in a MOOC’ video really useful. This is a video by Dave Cormier from 2010, shared under Creative Commons on YouTube and pulled in to the MOOC to provide some orientation / guidance. I’ve completed a few MOOCs over the years and have dropped out of many more and found Dave’s advice really useful. He suggests that success in a MOOC can be achieved in 5 steps.

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#LTMOOC16 – Success in a MOOC Read More »

Building a learning analytics platform

/ data, learning analytics, learning technology, lms, moodle, open source
Reading Time: 4 minutes

As learning analytics continues to rise up the agenda in the corporate learning & development (L&D) sector, one thing is becoming glaringly apparent: we should not expect a one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf approach to learning analytics.  This is a specialist discipline that cannot be bottled up into a single product. Sure, there are products such as Knewton, a Product as a Service platform used to power other peoples’ tools. There are also LMS bolt-ons like Desire2Learn Insights or Blackboard Analytics but even they are not sold as off-the-shelf products, for example the Blackboard team “tailors each solution to your unique institutional profile”.  There are just far too many organisational factors at play for an L&D practitioner to be able to implement a learning analytics programme using an off-the-shelf tool.

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Building a learning analytics platform Read More »

xAPI Barcamp – a Learning Technologies fringe event

/ analytics, data, learning analytics, learning technology, moodle, open source
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The xAPI Barcamp at the end of the first day of the Learning Technologies conference attracted around fifty people, eager to talk xAPI over a few free drinks at the local pub! I was one of five invited experts alongside Andrew Downes from Rustici (@mrdownes), Mark Berthelemy from Wyver Solutions(@berthelemy), Ben Betts from Learning Locker (@bbetts) and Jonathan Archibald from Tesello (@jonarchibald). Moving around five tables in turn, each expert began by talking for a few minutes about what they were doing with xAPI, then the table held an open discussion.

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xAPI Barcamp – a Learning Technologies fringe event Read More »

DrupalCampBrighton does the business!

/ open source
Reading Time: 6 minutes
dc_logo

I attended DrupalCampBrighton today for their Business Day, the first day of a three day Drupal extravaganza! LEO were sponsoring the business day which I was really pleased about, we do a fair amount of Drupal work and it’s great to both give something back to the open source community and to get involved in supporting local events. The event was attended by about 60 people at Brighton Media Centre, with the rest of the weekend focussed on more developer-oriented stuff. Today was all about case studies and keynotes though, a bit more at my level! It was a really great event and I came away enthused and energised for all things open source. A great way to end the week!

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DrupalCampBrighton does the business! Read More »