Addressing Aging with AgeTech

Greetings from the IEEE AgeTech Aging and Longevity Webinar. This is early in the morning for me in Australia, so I was reluctant to attend. But being an IEEE Life Member I am in the age bracket for the topic. I am of an age where I have to deal with an increasing number of health, financial, and other issues, so Interest in how tech can help me. In recent weeks I have been to clinics, hospitals, transported by ambulance, scanned by CT & MRI devices, hooked to computer monitors, struggled to use health apps.

The webinar has good speakers, but is a little frustrating by being very US-centric & also having limited feedback. One speaker described the coming presenters as "pinch hitters", which I assume is a baseball term, so lost on Australian participants brought up on cricket. ;-) In the Q&A I asked about this, but did not get a reply. The chat forum is turned off, which limits the ability of participants to have a discussion. 

Speakers have covered some of the issues to do with the need for agetech to address the interfaces needed for people aging, the potential for technology in the home to provide more independence (and lower costs). 

I suggest we also should look at the positives. Smart phone offer the opportunity for better interfaces for those with a disability. These applications also help others, via the "Curb-Cut Effect": an accessibility feature introduced for one group can help other people. 

From purely self interest, AgeTech also has a group of increasinly wealthy & powerful customers. Older users represent a group whom many have disposable income & will vote for government funding to be spent on services for. 

One problem with this webinar is that it is taking a long time (44 minutes so far) to get to the call to action. So far none of the speakers has said what I can do, as a technologist, educator & IEEE member. Eventually I found a form to express interest for IEEE SA Industry Connection: IC24-010: Technology Standards for Aging (Age Tech). 

IEEE AI Ethics and Governance Workshop in Canberra Hosted by the Australian Computer Society

Ruth Lewis, workshop facilitator

Greeting from the Australian Computer Society Canberra office, where I am taking part in an IEEE AI Ethics and Governance Workshop. Over the next few days we will be looking at ethics and technological development. Obviously AI is going feature prominently in this. Last week I attended a seminar on weaponizing Chat GPT with defence & AI experts from around the world. This makes me think I need to produce a new hypothetical on the ethics of AI in warfare. 

IEEE have produced the 294 page "ETHICALLY ALIGNED DESIGN" (2019), and a suite of standards: 

1. 7000-2021 - IEEE Standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns during System Design
2. 7001-2021 - IEEE Standard for Transparency of Autonomous Systems
3. 7002-2022 - IEEE Standard for Data Privacy Process
4. 7005-2021 - IEEE Standard for Transparent Employer Data Governance
5. 7010-2020 - IEEE Recommended Practice for Assessing the Impact of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems on Human Well-Being

IEEE has been producing ethics standards for many years, but these do not appear to have had much effect on practice. The current public, government and industry interest in AI, and Generative AI (such as Chat GPT) is a good opportunity for IEEE to kindle interest in ethics. If there is an area needing consideration of ethics is AI.

An interesting issues, I suggest, is how standard largely developed by western couturiers will be seen in China, and Asia. In standards development the Golden Rule applies: "Those who have the gold make the rules". As China's economy expands, they will have more influence over global standards. 

While considerations of ethics in computing and engineering development is useful, it has its limitations. As an example, application of IEEE standards would not have stopped the RoboDebt system, as those in leadership positions had an different ethical framework. This held that persecution of disadvantaged citizens was acceptable, provided it boosted the government's ratings with its supporters. This approach was described as Authorized System Harassment in the UK dystopian TV series "1990" ("Ordeal by Small Brown Envelope", 1978), and the possibility of it resulting in suicide was explored. RoboDebt was not ended because it was clearly abhorrent to the ethical standards of most Australians, but because it was found to be technically illegal.

IEEE Life Member

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sent me an IEEE Life Member certificate in the mail. With this comes free lifetime membership. At first I thought this a scam, as it is unexpected. While I am grateful, I am not sure what I have done to deserve this, apart from paying my dues for 39 years, and helping out on the occasional standards committee, or conference. I joined IEEE after coming across their work with the Ada programming language.

Use Cases for Learning Metadata

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. The current standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. This week's call (I am using a smartphone for the audio and WebEx for the visuals), was on use cases.

The group has a formal meeting every other week, with an agenda, minutes and voting. This week  it is less formal with presentations. This is part of the process of the participants getting used to each other as well as their approach to the topic. This is important in standards work where a global disparate group has to agree on something. 

Some example of a use case I suggested were:

The importance of defining levels in education. One is the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) with ten levels,  with 10 the highest (a doctorate). 

Another use case which might be useful is micro-credentials, mentioned in the Blockchain Challenges for Australia report from the Australian Computer Society (ACS, p.22, 2019). There may be many more micro-credentials defined made up of components, with different institutions involved, than conventional qualifications. This could require the automated handling of these, for example to check if a student has the prerequisites for further study, or they are qualified to do a job. 

One I am working on now is the tools needed for assessment. I want to have students maintain an electronic logbook which records when they make an entry with a tamper-proof timestamp.

Professor Rory McGreal, who taught me open educational resources (OER) at Athabasca University, has proposed the use of blockchain for their dissemination. It would be useful to be able to automatically assemble a set of resources using search parameters.

The Australian government maintains a database of 1,300 recognized vocational qualifications, the 16,000 units of competency they are assembled from and who provides them. 

An item of metadata which might be more controversial is the quality of a unit of education. Universities obsessively monitor their rankings, on the assumption this influences enrollment.  

What is learning?

Mike Sosteric

Greetings from a meeting of the meeting for the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. At this meeting we went back to fundamentals, starting with what is a "Learning Object". This then raises the question "What is learning?" and should we be discussing education, rather than learning.: if the student doesn't learn anything, is it still learning? At this level of abstraction it is difficult to avoid vague and somewhat circular definitions.

The Wikipedia entry for learning objects starts with the current definition from the standard: "any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training".[6] That is a vote of confidence in the standard, which is heartening, but doesn't help improve it. Other definitions given tend to be longer and more technology specific. 

Also I did a quick literature search. A paper which featured prominently was Sosteric and Hesemeier (2002) in IRRODL (my favorite educational journal, as it provides HTML as well as PDF versions. They also start with the IEEE, asserting '... a definition that includes “everything” is not a definition at all ...'. They also question if "digital" is useful. In my view qualifying leanring with "digital" is little more than window dressing.

Sosteric and Hesemeier (2002) describe as "counterproductive" the use of terminology from computing science. This is my own field, and it can be annoying when a computing term is taken and used, not quite correctly, in other disciplines. However, the authors have a more fundamental objection to learning objects, as it implies that learning can be chopped up into reusable, interchangeable "chunks". However, I suggest, to some extent, this is what learning designers and educational systems, do. An extreme example is the Australian vocational education system, where 1,300  qualifications are made up from 16,000 of "Units of competency", all listed in a database.

References

Sosteric, M., & Hesemeier, S. (2002). When is a Learning Object not an Object: A first step towards a theory of learning objects. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v3i2.106

Courses Made of Courses?

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata (P2881) being held online (at 6:30am Sydney time). The discussion today was on defining possibly defining learning materials using RDF entities in W3C's SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). One point I brought up was that learning and qualifications are being defined in more detail. Australian universities are now offering micro-credentials of only a few weeks duration, the components of which are also used in certificates and degrees. The vocational sector uses an even more fine graded form of learning tracking. At this point I got to quote Terry Pratchett's"Its Turtles all the way down". ;-)

Someone gave the example of a pencil: is it learning resource? Then what is learning? This may sound very esoteric, but the standard will be used to define how learning materials are defined and so how students, staff and administrators find the materials.

ps: My favorite line today was "For the next ten minutes lets assume lawyers don't exist". ;-)

What can Esports teach us about an engaging online learning and fair assessment

As a member of the IEEE I have been invited to take part in standard development for secure and entertaining e-sports: P2946™ - Guide for Electronic Sports (Esports) Integrity & IEEE P2947™ - Guide for Broadcasting Electronic Sports (Esports) Events. Products such as Twitch have been used for large scale online education. Perhaps methods for securing esports can be used for ensuring students are not cheating in online assessment.

"Esports events need to be fair and equitable. IEEE P2946™ provides the technical procedures to maximize the integrity of Esports. This includes procedures for preventing identity theft, match-fixing, unauthorized use of devices and other methods of cheating, using biometric, signal, and data analysis methods such as facial recognition, position detection, voiceprint comparison, plug-in detection, and spoofing detection. 

Audiences of Esports events desire an immersive viewing experience during live broadcasting (casting/caster) and relaying of the events. IEEE P2947™ addresses the technical and management aspects for broadcasting live Esports, pre-match preparation including network, video and audio testing, in-match action including the coding, transmission, recording, content protection, source, communication and station fault tolerance, and contingency management including data backup, user profile backup or synchronization."

Metadata for Learning

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata  (P2881) being held online (at 6:30am Canberra time). The discussion today was on the Semantic Web and Resource Description Framework (RDF). This is a very technical area, but is important to the practical concerns of keeping track of e-learning content. The problem is that there are many forms of learning and learners which we want to accommodate. There are existing standards, such as Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) which do some of this.

What is Learning?

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Meeting (P2881) being held online. This is my third meeting. The group is still working its way through what the new version of the standard needs to do, which other standards about learning don't already do. This can be very frustrating, defining the definition of definitions, and asking questions such as "What is learning?", "Is a competency a learning Object?". But also some more practical questions: "How much are existing metadata standards actually used?". These are important questions, as he world's students have been forced to use e-learning this year due to COVID-19 and there is a need to bring some order to the resulting chaos.

However, the mechanics of the meeting process still cause me some difficulties. With summer time, the meeting has moved from 4:30am to 6:30am in Canberra, which is an improvement. But I am still not at my best with metaphysical questions at this time in the morning. ;-)

The meeting is using WebEx, which I have not used for years and again had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface. This is far slower and less responsive than Zoom. It is like using video conferencing from ten years ago.

Learning Objects and Metadata

Greetings from the second meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. We are starting with the basics with what a Learning Object is: something more formally defined than materials normally used for teaching and intended to be reused by many. The metadata describes the objects and allows them to be easily found and managed. While this can be applied to any type of learning, it is particularly relevant at present with large scale use of e-learning due to COVID-19. This provides a way for educators, institutions and systems to share the millions of new learning materials being developed, to provide better, more cost effective education. 

The current standard uses a rigid  data model. The problem is how to make something more flexible, but still allows widespread easy use. This is a difficult balance with global standards.

Other work in this area includes the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), based on Dublin Core, which come from the library community.

ps: The meeting this time is at a slightly better time, 5:30 am, rather than 4:30 am in Canberra, but it is still early. There are 34 participants (up from 24 participants at the inaugural meeting). Most are from the USA, but a few of us are from around the world. The meeting is using WebEX again. I have been able to get the audio to work reliably and had to dial in for sound, with computer for video. As with other video conferencing systems, the computer client provides a code to use when dial in for audio, to link the voice call with your online identity. 

IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Update

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Kickoff Meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. The standard, was released in 2002 and is due for a refresh. One possibility is to generalize to learning "resources" rather than objects, with more details of what the learning is for, rather than technical files which make it up. It is a good time to consider this with e-learning suddenly being used on a large scale due to  COVID-19. As with any standard, one of the tasks is to work out why we are doing this: what is the problem we are trying to solve? An example would be micro-credentials, where there would be many more small components to learning to keep track of.

The meeting time is not exactly convenient for me (4:30am in Canberra), but there are there are 24 participants around the world, so it can't be good for everyone. This is a formal groups with membership, an agenda and voting (I am an individual IEEE). I haven't taken part in a formal meeting for years and the chair is showing considerable patience going through the process online. This may seem cumbersome but is necessary for standards meetings as passions can run and there was conflict with the previous group (I was on the balloting group in 2002, but did not attend previously).

The meeting is using WebEX, which I have not used for years and had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface in Firefox, but might use the Android client next time.

Design Thinking for Higher Educaiton

The final speaker at at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, was Chathura K. Sooriya-Arachchi, Institute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka on Design Thinking Approach to Higher Educaiton Teaching and Learning.

"We live in a world that demands creative problem solvers, creative thinkers who can come up with innovative ideas and solutions to situations. However many believe that creativity is a trait one needs to be born with, whereas creativity is a muscle that needs training. There is great potential to incorporate creativity in teaching and learning. This interactive workshop aims in sharing a number of Creativity and Design
Thinking methods, tools and techniques that can facilitate teaching and learning, along with inspirational examples/case-studies from the real-world."

This was a useful overview of applying design thinking to creating better education.  However, I suggest that those teaching at university require basic training in how to teach, assess and design courses. Otherwise university academics waste a lot of time reinventing well established patterns of learning, or worse still training out approaches which are known not to work. I suggest the level of training which vocational education and training teachers are required to have, would be a good place to start (I noticed that Chathura is a Certified Trainer).

Australian Papers at TALE 2019

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference. Papers will be published, but in the interim, I have searched though the copy we were provided looking for Australian presenters and topics.

English Vocabulary Levels of University Engineering Students in a Sino-NZ Collaboration, Kerese Manueli, Victoria University of Wellington:

'Abstract—Internationalization of China’s higher education has been widely documented. A New Zealand university entered the crowded market and found that some things have not changed. English Medium Instruction (EMI) is the buzzword but are the engineering students at a “provincial or local university” ready for it? This paper will discuss an
exploratory study on the English productive vocabulary levels of the engineering students in a Sino-New Zealand collaboration. Students’ written work were analyzed using the online vocabulary profiler (VocabProfiler). Preliminary results suggest that participants’ productive vocabulary levels were below the authors’ expectations. This was consistent with other standards described in the literature. Pedagogical implications include the review of teaching resources and more emphasis placed on the vocabulary development of students, particularly for the academic and engineering words. In addition, more research needs to be conducted to identify other challenges faced by the engineering students.'

Capstone Project Implementation Using Infrastructure as a Service: The Learning Experience, CQUniversity:

'Abstract—This research paper discusses the learning
experiences during the implementation of a postgraduate
network security capstone project using cloud services as the
technical infrastructure. Using mixed methods, interpretations are drawn from students’ voices in a medium-sized Australian university, about the convoluted challenges and issues associated with the learning redesign of an advanced unit consistent with technology trends and industry demands. Despite finding the IaaS platform challenging and difficult to use, students perceived the learning experience to be highly rewarding and current in the development of their technical skills and job readiness.'

Sentiment analysis of preschool teachers’ perceptions on ICT use for young children, Mohd Ridzwan Yaakub, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and others:

'Abstract—Sentiment analysis in gaining more attention as it is increasingly used in multiple domains, including in interpreting educational data. The article uses sentiment analysis technique to understand the early childhood educators reported beliefs (perception) on young children’s ICT use. The dataset was obtained from a comparative study of early childhood educators from two countries, Australia and Malaysia. The result shows a similar outcome where most teachers agreed upon the benefits of ICT use and conclude more positive sentiment polarity. This paper summarizes the findings using sentiment analysis
as well as comparing it to the quantitative data obtained from the survey.'

Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students, Tom Worthington:

"In addition to technical knowledge, graduates in computing and engineering disciplines are expected to have communication skills, and the ability to undertake lifelong learning. These skills are difficult to acquire using conventional lecture and tutorial based teaching. Final year international graduate computer science students at the Australian National University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, were found to have particular difficulty when asked to write about their learning. In response, lectures were replaced with online exercises, group workshops in a new purpose-built flat floor classroom, and peer-assessed progressive assessment. This approach was trialed with eighty students in 2019. Preliminary results indicate students performed at least as well as with conventional lecture-based instruction."

Teaching Generic Competences in Software Engineering via E-Learning

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Marco Klopp from University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg (UASA), just talked on on "Teaching Generic Competences in Software Engineering via E-Learning". This described  a Moodle based e-learning module added to a group project software engineering course to teach communication and other "generic" competences.

"Abstract— The discipline ‘Software Engineering’ is difficult to represent in higher education, because of the complexity of software development projects and the variety of skills required. In addition to specialist skills (professional competences), generic competences are increasingly becoming the focus of education. This paper deals with the training of generic competences in the software engineering module. For this purpose, an existing didactic concept was enhanced by E-Learning with the help of a Moodle course."

This was of interest as last year I was asked to develop a similar Moodle module, and delivered it to about three hundred students in the ANU TechLaunhcer program this year. Marco's analysis found their module did not improve student competencies. I had a slightly more positive outcome, in that the Moodle module was no worse than traditional classroom teaching. The difference was perhaps because the UASA module did not count towards the student's final grade, so they may not have studied the material as diligently as they should. In contrast the module at ANU made up 20% of the mark for the course.

Nanny App to Remind Students to Study

Muztaba Fuad,
Winston-Salem State University

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Muztaba Fuad, from Winston-Salem State University, is speaking on "Dysgu: A Tool to Keep Students Engaged Outside the Classroom". He characterised this as a nanny app, which checks a student's schedule, and if they should be studying prompts them to. As well as this killer feature, the app also allows the the instructor to monitor the studnt's enguagement. The app is built, and piloted, but it is a bit early to tell how well it workswith a large class. I suggsest it would be useful to be able to link the app to the Learning Management System's calandar, so the app would remind students as what they need to do, at a more macro scale.

"Abstract— This paper presents Dysgu, a mobile software to
facilitate skill generating activities outside the classroom. Dysgu presents an innovative approach to such out-of-class activities by combining multiple dimensions of best practices from different spectrum of student learning into a coherent idea and delivering such activities with personalization and adaptation. The goal of the Dysgu system is to study the impact of allowing students to perform frequent and interactive activities outside the classroom on their learning and engagement, given that students can compare their progress with the rest of the class and the activities are smaller (in scope) with scaffolding support, and delivered via a mobile platform. Initial usability tests and software engineering quality matrices show that the software is easy to use, manage and extend."

University as a Supply Chain in Japan

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Dr. Taku Jiromaru, from Kurume University, talked on the "University as a Supply Chain in Japan". Dr. Jiromaru suggested a "satellite" between the university and society, to provide more real world input to the university. I asked Dr. Jiromaru why not simply reform university programs, he pointed out that such attempts had been difficult in the past.

"Abstract: We can take much information if we consider university as the last part of the supply chain in education. This talk will cover my communication experience of the following person; high school students, university students, parents of the students, staff of universities, professors and the person in charge of employment in company. I hope it will be an opportunity to think how your affiliation functions as a supply chain"

Incorporating Industry into the Curriculum

Ryan Kirwan,
Singapore Institute of Technology

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Ryan Kirwan, Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) is speaking on "Incorporating Industry into the Curriculum: Applied Learning in Computer Science". Ryan described how they have students undertake team projects for industry. 

"Abstract— Singapore Institute of Technology’s (SIT) Integrative Team Project (ITP) uses Applied Learning to expose student teams to industry’s cutting-edge projects and industry-ready evaluation, combined with academic supervision and assessment. Industry propose projects that fulfil real industrial needs, while SIT ensures projects meet students’ academic learning objectives. ITP affords students an integration of theory and practice coupled with the acquisition of specialist knowledge and development of professional skills in their respective industry. This paper serves as a case study, beginning with the pedagogical underpinnings, moving through the
various assessments and evaluations, and finishing with a discussion of issues encountered with corresponding preventions and mitigations. The aim is to provide a blueprint for course organization and assessment that incorporates academic excellence with industrial relevance."

This is similar to the ANU TechLauncher program, which I help teach. Students work in teams of about five, with an academic supervisor, and someone from industry. The teams submit project work, including details of who in the team is doing what. Students also produce an individual reflection, which they then provide peer feedback and a mark for. There is then marking of the team project work by the staff. There is then the problem of consistency between different markers. This is addressed at SIT by having the markers meet and come to a consensus. I suggest this consensus building activity is unnecessary and harmful.

Different assessors, be they students, or trained professional educators, will come up with different marks for the same student work. This is difficult for students to accept, but is inherent to the assessment process. For ANU TechLauncher students this year we had students peer assess each others reflective work, Each student assessed three (first semester), or four (second semester), reflective works. The Learning Management System calculated the average. In general, the result were consistent. If there was a wide spread of marks, or the result was not consistent with the studnt's previous work, this was remarked by staff.

Misconceptions and Challenges with Open Educaiton Resources

Dave Towey,
University of Nottingham

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Dave Towey, University of Nottingham is speaking on  "OER: Six Perspectives on Global Misconceptions and Challenges". He identified the issue of costly US textbooks as one of the sources of interest, but also misunderstandings, with Open Educaiton Resources.

"Abstract—Open Educational Resources (OERs) are freely accessible materials for teaching, learning, and research that have been made available such that they can be freely used, modified, and shared. Prompted by the potential positive impact that OERs can have, a growing community of OER enthusiasts
has been advocating for their adoption in higher education, and elsewhere. The growing demand for computer science education and training (especially in areas related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data) has led to speculation as to how OERs may be best leveraged to support such teaching and learning. The recent occasion of an international OER workshop at the 2019 IEEE Conference on Computers, Software and Applications (COMPSAC) allowed for six OER enthusiasts, all with extensive OER experience, to reflect on the status of OER adoption and understanding. These reflections, addressing misconceptions and challenges, form the basis for this paper."

The six misconceptions are (this is my interpretation, not the author's words):

1. MOOCs are open
2. If its on the Internet, it's open
3. If its open it's free
4. Lazy educators use open stuff
5. OER reduces cost
6. OER is low quality

At question time I suggested one way to promote OER is to apply the techniques provided in the start-up entrepreneurial centers at universities. OER done as an ad-hoc cottage industry will not be able to compete with for-profit professional publishing output. So I suggest applying the entrepreneurial approach used to set up new industries. This would look at how to produce a product which appeals to educators, how to obtain funding to grown the business. This is does not necessarily require a for-profit corporation, it could be a not-for-profit organization.

Problems with Using Flipped Classroom a Programming Course

Hrafn Loftsson,
Reykjavik University

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Hrafn Loftsson from Reykjavik University talked about "Using Flipped Classroom and Team-Based Learning in a First-Semester Programming Course". They replaced conventional lectures with videos and textbook readings, followed by classroom quizzes, and work on programming exercises, individually and in groups.

"Abstract— The use of the flipped classroom (FC) approach and team-based learning (TBL) has gained popularity in recent years by instructors in introductory programming courses (CS1), due to increased emphasis on student success and active learning. In this paper, we present an experience report about using FC and TBL in a CS1 course. We present the motivation for restructuring the course, the specific implementation, the results of two student surveys, and the outcome of several exams. We discuss the results, present what actions were taken during the course period, and what changes will be carried out in the future. The results from the surveys show that 47% of the students were pleased with the organization of the course, whereas up to 33% of the students were displeased (in particular the female students). About 60% of the students liked the TBL in class, but about half of the students felt that the course lacked traditional lecturing. Finally, it was surprising that 44% of the students never or seldom read the textbook before class, while 74% watched the videos."

 The results were surprising, in that students admitted they tended not to read the textbook (not surprisingly, they did watch the videos). Many students did not like the elimination of lectures (even though many students do not turn up when lectures are offered). The satisfaction level and completion rate was lower than previously. In response the externally sourced videos where replaced with ones featuring the instructor and shown at the start of each face-to-face session, and the number of programming exercises the students have to hand in was reduced. This restored the student satisfaction ratings, and the successfully completion rather also went up to around the university average.

At question time, I suggested that the in-class individual quizzes be administered before the face-to-face class, rather than during it. This is to encourage the student to read the materials provided and watch the video. In contrast another delegate suggested having the quiz at the next face-to-face class, to give the student more time.

Children’s Book on Engineering for Qatar

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Ghada Salama from Texas A&M University at Qatar is speaking on  "Engineering Education: A Children’s Book to Support STEM Outreach in Qatar". A&M have produced very attractive children's books for introducing children to engineering topics. I suggested they produce an e-book version as well.

"Abstract — In recent years, increased attention has been
placed on improving STEM curricula to promote lifelong
learning to children at a young age. Integrating STEM
topics in children’s literature is an effective way to convey
knowledge as it combines creativity, motivation and
inquisitiveness. Due to the lack of children’s literature on engineering in the Middle East region, stories that young children can relate to – in terms of their traditions, culture,
and region – and at the same time introduces them to the
field of engineering would be of great value to the educational system. With that in mind, a model program was initiated at Texas A&M University at Qatar where undergraduate engineering students worked on a yearlong project to create an illustrated storybook about how drinkable water is produced in a desert nation where fresh water is scarce using engineering. This paper discusses the process of how this project came to fruition."