Self-Awareness

I am helping computer students at the Australian National University find a job. As part of that I have been working my way through the self-paced exercises the ANU Careers provides to all students. These help them think about what job they would like and how to get it. Somewhere along the way I did a reflection exercise. At then end of that I was emailed a certificate, which was a nice touch. It is good to know I have evidence I am self aware. ;-)

Mat and Buck Excellent Adventure in Computer Learning

Today I attended a presentation by Matthew Alger and Buck Shlegeris, students at the Australian National University, on "Reward-modulated inference". The topic sounds dry and technical, but Matthew and Buck's two person hyperactive performance was very entertaining, in the style of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure". While not qualified to comment on the technical detail, it stuck me that there are further insights for human learning which can be gained from machine learning. These include finding the right combination of supervised and unsupervised learning, rewards for reinforced learning, the value of preprocessing, deep learning in neural networks and advanced in extreme learning.

Helping Students with Self Directed Learning

Greetings from the University of Canberra where I am workshop a seminar on self-directed learning by Maria Northcote at Avondale College. She is talking about how to foster research for academic staff who previously mainly did teaching.One tool uses is "MOOBRIC: A rubric of Moodle skills and knowledge". She mentioned heutagogy, a term from Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon, for self-directed learning, but expressed some skepticism that it is at the top a strict hierarchy with pedagogy (teaching children), androgogy (adult learning) below.