Tea and Teaching

Dr Jinghong Zhang making tea 
Photo by Tom Worthington, 2023 CC-BY

Dr Jinghong Zhang, Associate Professor at Southern University of Science and Technology talked on "Gongfu Tea and Camera" a the Australian National University in Canberra, 25 January 2023. As a bonus they made tea after. There was a serious scholarly point to this. Dr Jinghong Zhang described an approach to anthropology where the camera becomes part of the introduction to people. In one of Dr Jinghong Zhang's videos, a family is explaining the local dialect, & that some learn it from TikTok. The parents were encouraging their children to learn local words through the use of TikTok. I thought this might be relevant to Manisha Khetarpal's study of learning language online.

ANU Innovation in Teaching Showcase

The Australian National University is holding the 2018 CAP – CASS Innovation in Teaching Showcase in Canberra, 4 & 5 September. The ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, and the College of Arts and Social Sciences will discuss teaching innovations. Highlights include ANU language courses with Open Universities Australia. The event is free and all teachers and academics are invited to register through Eventbrite.

Online Language Learning

The Australian National University is now offering online language courses through Open Universities Australia, with Hindi, Sanskrit, Thai, Tetum, Tibetan and Vietnamese available. These are full fee, for-credit university courses. This is supported by the ANU Digital Education Services (DES) team, lead by Grazia Scotellaro.

Free online language ebooks are also available from ANU Press:

The Joy of Sanskrit: A first-year syllabus for tertiary students by McComas Taylorand Grazia Scotellaro

Modern Japanese Online:  The first course to mastering modern Japanese, by Naomi Ogi and Duck-Young Lee

Measuring and Improving Retention of University Students

The Doubters' Dilemma:Exploring student attrition and retention in university language and culture programs, by Mario Daniel Martín, Louise Jansen and Elizabeth Beckmann (August 2016) is available free on-line from ANU Press. While based on a study of student retention specifically in  Language & Culture programs at the Australian National University (ANU), this work provides a useful analysis of the prob elms with measuring student retention in general and possible alternatives. It also argues that it is not just beginning students universities have to worry about retaining, but those in later years.

One issue which the study does not address is structuring programs to fit with student's working and family lives. A student who has to leave a three year degree program after six months, a year, or two years receives no degree. These students could be awarded a certificate, diploma or advanced diploma.

Why Languages Suck

Greetings from the famous room N101 at the Australian National University, where Professor Steve Blackburn of the Research School of Computer Science is speaking on "Why languages suck (and what we might do about it)". He started with the example of the "Patriot Missile Software Problem", which killed 28 U.S. soldiers 1991. A second example was "Hospitals' medication software likely to kill patients within month: Queensland Health report". This should be of concern to ACT residents as the same Metavision Intensive Care software is used at Calvary Hospital Canberra.

Professor Blackburn then gave apparently simple examples of code in PHP which give unexpected results. Steve went on to discuss the cost of inefficient computer programming languages which use more processing power and result in increased carbon emissions and global warming. He claimed that problems with languages occur because they involve difficult concepts and are difficult to engineer. Decisions made in language design get "baked in" to the system. This did not seem to me to be a new insight, when designing any new system trade-offs need to be made and have to be lived with.

An example is the Contact Wire System for the Gotthard Base Tunnel. At the time the tunnel was designed an over-head wire had to be used to supply power to the trains. Today an alternative technology is available which would allow the tunnel to be smaller diameter, saving many millions of dollars. But at the time the tunnel was designed the new technology was not proven and so could not be used.

ABSTRACT:
This talk looks at problems faced by many of today's languages, how those problems arose, what we could do to address those problems and what we could do to avoid history repeating itself. The basic question is why is it that languages like JavaScript, PHP, and Python are so important and yet have such conspicuous shortcomings, both in their semantics and their performance? The talk is part sociological (how do we as a community end up making such mistakes?) part big picture (what are the technological solutions to such problems and why is it hard?). The talk will include a brief description of the micro vm weare designing and building, (microvm.org) and some recent research that tackles the major barrier to high performance garbage collection in many managed language implementations.

Multilingual e-Learning Course

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where I am attending the "Showcase of  innovative use of technologies in education". The first presentation was about the multilingual course "Engaging India". Of the 11,000 students who registered 4,000 filled in an early survey (which is a high participation rate for a MOOC). About four hundred students passed the course (which is also higher than the typical MOOC).  This was the first edX MOOC offered in two languages, most students used English but those how did not expressed appreciation for it being offered in Hindi. The course also used "badges" (non assessment token rewards). This increased participation rates, but the quality of contributions was lower (students contributing apparently just to get a badge). The most popular topic was mobile phones and storytelling.

Surveyed students valued the videos, readings and tests.  Students also liked weekly introductions and summing up (something I do in my e-learning, but which this course had which other MOOCs do not).

As with other MOOCs the students were typically university educated and mature (not high schools as the proponents of MOOCs suggest). 

The course moderators did not have many disruptive "trolls" to deal with or questions to answer about the course, Most questions from students were about the platform described as "hideous" (I have a student researching how to improve edX). While Moodle forums are often criticised, it appears they are superior to edX.

The ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University proudly offers an event to showcase innovative uses of technology in education. The showcase is being organised by the Digital Learning Project to promote sustainable blended and online learning environments for education programs across the university. It will promote the creative use of online and multi-media resources to enhance the learning experience of our students. The Project aims to develop a community of scholars in which inspired undergraduate and postgraduate students interact with staff in an innovative teaching and learning environment.

The showcase runs until Friday afternoon at the Ethel Tory Centre, Baldessin Building ANU and there is plenty of space for anyone who wants to turn up.

Also, I will be presenting in the "Rolls-Royce Education on a Mini Budget: Using Customised e-Learning Packages" in the "The Shape of ICT Education" stream of the ACS Canberra Conference, 23 September 2014.