If you would like to create a personalized e-learning experience, then consider the traits, background, level of expertise of a particular online learner. Persona’s give us the opportunity to understand our students, their behaviours, address their concerns and support their learning. Some course sites are conversational and enjoyable. They seem to be designed with real …
Author archives: Derek
MOOC’s to EdX to 2U to..
On the 25th Of July 2024, 2U announced that it was poised for growth, while it also declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to the Wall Street Journal, 2U inc had “….taken private in a deal that will wipe out more than half of its $945 million debt”. 2U’s share price crashed and then the share …
Telling your Ai Stories
Introduction This post is a redraft from 30 July 2024. I’m going to describe the workshop that I facilitated. The title – “Ai Literacy: Telling your Ai Stories”. The workshop was part of the Serious Games Symposium held on the 17 September 2024. The starting point for the morning’s session was an etherpad, a “synchronized …
Get Smarter
(Please note, this interview took place on the 06 March 2014. Details may have changed since the interview) For the past six years, the online educational company Get Smarter has partnered with the UCT Faculty of Commerce to offer a range of online short courses. UCT’s website lists the following short courses offered in 2014. …
Debating Learning Styles
Am I a little too late for the party? Sorry. I’m often delayed. I do see that I am permitted to build custom versions of ChatGPT. Thank-you. Before purchasing any package, I prefer to “try-before-you buy”. Yes, asking AI a leading question is a klutzy hack from journalism 101. Anyways, I asked Chat GPT two …
Academic blogs | Q & A
On Thursday, 16 May 2024, I ran a webinar about Academic Blogging for early career researchers. Prof Mpho-Entle Modise (from SAERA) arranged the event. These are my post-webinar thoughts. Dear academic bloggers, I am very grateful for your time and attention in this academic blogging webinar. Thanks so much for allowing me to both confuse …
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Academic Blogging
Updated sightly on 7 April 2026 Academic blogging has been an essential part of my ed techie / Instructional designer life since 2005. I’d like to suggest that academic blogging is a useful “bottoms up” strategy for creating digital footprints, for remaining accountable for your thoughts. In the neo liberal-university, where ” learning is only …
SWiP Workshops
I was so pleased to be invited to assist the SWiP language preservation initiative and contribute and facilitate on their authorship training programme. I joined the SWiP project team and we ran three workshops in the central region, where we honed our Wikipedia skills (researching, markup, translation). We brought together communities and (hopefully) began to …
Creative Commons Certificate
I’ve been awarded a Creative Commons Certificate after attending the June 2020 Creative Commons (CC) Copyright Course. (Yes, I realise that this is old news). I am a consistent advocate for openness. I find myself regularly recommending CC licenses as a viable alternative to traditional copyright protection. Open licensing allows ed techies to strengthen their …