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Education Research Research

Transcribing audio with less pain

forblogLike so many people I’ve never really liked transcribing audio, for example from interviews or focus groups. It is time-consuming and boring. Of course, you can outsource this but that unfortunately costs money. So I thought: “how can I do this quicker with available services.”

Last year with a colleague I wrote an article on exactly this: using the Youtube auto-captioning feature to more quickly transcribe audio. The quality of Youtube’s voice recognition has improved considerably in the last decade. The paper gives three examples, from interview audio, a classroom recording, and a Chilcott inquiry interview to show how useful this can be for transcribing audio ‘as a first transcript version’. I just posted the pre-publication.

DOWNLOAD PRE-PUBLICATIONS

To demonstrate the procedure, I applied it to my recent podcast with TES.

  1. You first need to get hold of an audio file. I assume you have it from your data collection. Sometimes you can obtain them like using apps in the browser like DownThemAll! (that one is for Firefox),
  2. Before being able to upload to Youtube, you need to make a video file out of it. For windows, I prefer Movie Maker. Unfortunately this has been discontinued, but you can still find it here. I make a video with an image and the audio as accompanying sound.
  3. Now this ‘movie’ (actually audio with one image) can be uploaded to Youtube. After a few hours Youtube should have created closed captions for the audio. Ensure that privacy settings are set correctly.
  4. The captions can be downloaded as text file via multiple tools like DIY captions or downsub. Some software is non-web-browser based, and some can also work with private settings (just as long as you are the ‘owner’ of the file, of course). The result might be a subtitle file, which could further be edited with subtitle software.
  5. You can see that this version already is pretty good. I think it captures it for around 80%. It took maybe 15 minutes of actual labour and some time for the Youtube captioning to do its work, for a 40 minute audio file.  This saves me a lot of time.
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Education Research Math Education Tools

Seminar at Loughborough University

Dr. Christian Bokhove recently gave an invited seminar at Loughborough University:

Using technology to support mathematics education and research

Christian received his PhD in 2011 at Utrecht University and is lecturer at the University of Southampton. In this talk Christian will present a wide spectrum of research initiatives that all involve the use of technology to support mathematics education itself and research into mathematics education. It will cover (i) design principles for algebra software, with an emphasis on automated feedback, (ii) the evolution from fragmented technology to coherent digital books, (iii) the use of technology to measure and develop Mental Rotation Skills, and (iv) the use of computer science techniques to study the development of mathematics education policy.

The talk referenced several articles Dr. Bokhove has authored over the years, for example:

  • Bokhove, C., & Drijvers, P. (2012). Effects of a digital intervention on the development of algebraic expertise. Computers & Education, 58(1), 197-208. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.010
  • Bokhove, C., (in press). Using technology for digital maths textbooks: More than the sum of the parts. International Journal for Technology in Mathematics Education.
  • Bokhove, C., & Redhead, E. (2017). Training mental rotation skills to improve spatial ability. Online proceedings of the BSRLM, 36(3)
  • Bokhove, C. (2016). Exploring classroom interaction with dynamic social network analysis. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, doi:10.1080/1743727X.2016.1192116
  • Bokhove, C., &Drijvers, P. (2010). Digital tools for algebra education: criteria and evaluation. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning, 15(1), 45-62. Online first. doi:10.1007/s10758-010-9162-x
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Education Research ICT Math Education MathEd Tools

Recent presentation: Mental Rotation Skills

I gave two paper presentations recently at the BSRLM day conference in Brighton. Abstracts and slides are below.

Bokhove, Christian* & Redhead, Ed
University of Southampton
c.bokhove@soton.ac.uk
@cbokhove
Training mental rotation skills to improve spatial ability
Prior research indicates that spatial skills, for example in the form of Mental Rotation Skills (MRS), are a strong

predictor for mathematics achievement. Nevertheless, findings are mixed whether this is more the case for other

spatial tasks or, as others have stated, numerical and arithmetical performance. In addition, other studies have
shown that MRS can be trained and that they are a good predictor of another spatial skill: route learning and
wayfinding skills. This paper presentation explores these assumptions and reports of an experiment with 43
undergraduate psychology students from a Russell Group university in the south of England. Participants were
randomly assigned to two conditions. Both groups made pre-and post-tests on wayfinding in a maze. In-between
the intervention group trained with an MRS tool the first author designed in the MC-squared platform, which was
based on a standardized MRS task (Ganis & Kievit, 2015). The control group did filler tasks by completing crossword puzzles. Collective ly, the 43 students made 43×48=2064 assessment items for MRS, and 2×43=86 mazes. Although the treatment group showed a decrease in time needed to do the maze task, while the control group saw an increase, these changes were not significant. Limitations are discussed.
http://www.slideshare.net/cbokhove/mental-rotation-skills
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Education Research ICT Math Education MathEd Tools

Recent presentation: digital books for creativity

I gave two paper presentations recently at the BSRLM day conference in Brighton. Abstracts and slides are below.

Geraniou, Eirini*, Bokhove, Christian* & Mavrikis, Manolis
UCL Institute of Education, University of Southampton, UCL Knowledge Lab
e.geraniou@ucl.ac.uk
Designing creative electronic books for mathematical creativity
There is potential and great value in developing digital resources, such as electronic books, and investigating their
impact on mathematical learning. Our focus is on electronic book resources, which we refer to as c-books, an
d are extended electronic books that include dynamic widgets and an authorable data analytics engine. They have been designed and developed as part of the M C Squared project (www.mc2-project.eu/), which focuses on social
creativity in the design of digital media intended to enhance creativity in mathematical thinking (CMT).
Researchers collaborating with mathematics educators and school teachers form Communities of Interest and
Practice (COI and COP) that work together to creatively think and design c-book resources reflecting current
pedagogy for CMT in schools. We plan to present a number of these books and discuss how they were designed.
We will share our reflections from using one of the c-books for a school study and highlight its impact on students’
learning, but also how c-books could be integrate d in the mathematics classroom.
http://www.slideshare.net/cbokhove/designing-creative-electronic-books-for-mathematical-creativity
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Education Research Math Education Research Statistical Methods

Presentation ICME13

This is the presentation I gave at ICME-13:

OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN maths: A curriculum approach with timss 2011 data
Christian Bokhove
University of Southampton

Previous studies have shown that socioeconomic status (SES) and ‘opportunity to learn’ (OTL), which can be typified as ‘curriculum content covered’, are significant predictors of students’ mathematics achievement. Seeing OTL as curriculum variable, this paper explores multilevel models (students in classrooms in countries) and appropriate classroom (teacher) level variables to examine SES and OTL in relation to mathematics achievement in the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2011), with OTL operationalised in several distinct ways.  Results suggest that the combination of SES and OTL explains a considerable amount of variance at the classroom and country level, but that this is not caused by country level OTL after accounting for SES.

Full paper, slides:

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Education Research Math Education MathEd

Slides from researchEd maths and science

Presentation for researchED maths and science on June 11th 2016.

References at the end (might be some extra references from slides that were removed later on, this interesting 🙂

Interested in discussing, contact me at C.Bokhove@soton.ac.uk or on Twitter @cbokhove

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Education Education Research Math Education MathEd

Presentatie researchED Amsterdam (Dutch)

Dit is de researchED presentatie die ik gaf op 30 Januari 2016 in Amsterdam. Enkele Engelstalige woorden zijn er in gelaten. Literatuur is aan het einde toegevoegd.

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Education Math Education MathEd Tools

Marbleslides

As some may know I’ve had an interest in technology for maths for quite some time now. Because of this I am very aware of what the developments are. One of the latest offering from the wonderful online graphing calculator from Desmos, consists of their ‘activities’. Although every maths teacher should stay critical with regard to integrating ‘as is’ activities in their classrooms, I also think they should be aware of this fairly new feature. That is the reason I flagged it up during some ‘maths and technology’ sessions I ran for the maths PGCE. But always as critical consumers.

One of the latest offerings is the Marbleslides activities. I first read about it on Dan Meyer’s blog. There are several version of it, with linear functions, parabolas and more. As always the software is slick and there is no doubt the ‘marble effect’ is pretty neat. It reminds me of a combination of ‘Shooting balls‘ (linear functions, Freudenthal Institute, progressive tasks), ‘ Green globs‘ (functions through the globs) and also the gravity aspects of Cinderella. It has already been possible to author series of tasks with the latter widget. I first tried the ‘marbleslide-lines‘. The goals of the activity are:

desmos1
The activity starts off with some instruction on the use of it. Many questions arise:

  1. Why do the marbles start at (0,7) ?
  2. Are the centers of the starts ‘points’? (this becomes important later on)
  3. Why several marbles? Why not one?
  4. Why do the marbles have gravity?
  5. How much gravity is it? 9.8 m/s^2?

Clicking launch will make the marbles fall and because they fall through the stars ‘success’ is indicated.

desmos_p1

I am already thinking: so is the point to get through the points or the stars? And if gravity is at play, does that mean lines do not extend upwards? Any way, I continue to the second page, where I need to fix something. What is noticeable is 1. yes, the marbles again are at (0,7), 2. the line has a restricted domain, 3. the star to the right is ‘off line’. I’m not much more informed about the coordinates of the star, which leads me to assume they don’t really matter: it must be about collecting them. ‘Launching’ shows the marbles only picking up only two of the stars (for movie, see here).

desmos_p2The line has to be extended. The instruction is “change one number in the row below to fix the marble slide”. A couple of things here: what is there to fix? Is something really broken? The formula has a domain restriction. Do we really want to use the terminology of this domain being broken? I removed the domain restriction. This is ‘just’ a normal line. But it doesn’t give all the stars so ‘no success’. Restricted to x<12 no. For x<9 marbles shoot over. x<7 and there is success.

desmos_p2_2This is very much trial and error, partly caused by the gravity aspect.

On page 4 there is a more conventional approach: there is a line with a slope. The prior knowledge indicated in the notes mentions y=mx+b should be known: “Students who know a little something about domain, range, and slope-intercept form for lines (y=mx+b)”. I wonder why this terminology is not used then. Again the formulation of the task is “change one number in the row below to fix the marble slide”.

desmos_p3Because it’s relatively conventional I guess the slope is meant. But am I meant to guesstimate? Or use the coordinates? Does it matter? I first tried 1 (yes, I know that’s incorrect) and I just keep on adjusting.

desmos_p3_2

0.5 seems ok, but 0.45 is ok as well, even 0.43. 0.56 does as well, but 0.57 misses a star because the line runs above it. May I adjust the intercept? I can, so this again promotes trial and error over thinking beforehand, in my opinion. In addition, it does not instill precision.

On page 5 the same thing but now for the intercept.

desmos_p5I’m still curious why the terminology of y=mx+b isn’t used. I guess -2 is expected as nicest fit but I can go as far as -2.7 to get ‘success’, yet -1.4 is ‘no success’. This could be seen by the teacher, of course (well, we can make any confusion into an interesting discussion, of course). It is interesting to see the marbles now start from higher up, by the way. The gravity question becomes more pertinent. How much gravity? And there is a bounce, surely the bounce is more if the gravity or hight is greater? Or not? Apart from the neat animation, what does it add?

Then on page 6 we go to stars that are not on one line (surely too quick?). There again are several answers, which in my opinion keeps on feeding the idea that points (but sure, they are stars) do not uniquely define a line.

desmos_p6From page 7 predictions are asked when numbers are changed. There still is no sign of terminology. It is a nice feature that the complete Desmos tool can then be used to check the answers. This is about functions, unlike the marbles section. Why is the domain still restricted, though? Throughout the tasks it seems as if domain and range are modified to suit the task, rather than a property of functions. Granted, a small attempt to address it is in page 11.

On page 13 the stars are back again. The first attempt with whole numbers is exactly right y=2x+4{x<5}. Some marbles fell to the right of the line though. Nevertheless, there was ‘success’. But there also was success on page 14 like this:

desmos_p14_2From page 15 there are challenges. The instruction says to “Try to complete them with ONLY linear equations and as FEW linear equations as possible.” These are a lot of fun, but I struggle to see the link to slope-intercept form y=mx+b. It is not mentioned explicitly. There is no real attempt to link to the terminology. I fear it will remain a fun activity with a lot of creative trial and error.

desmos_p17I’ve also looked at the parabolas activity. The same features are apparent here: functions are collections of points (rather: stars) and functions have to be found that go through them. The assertion is that transformations of graphs are somewhat addressed concurrently, but the trial and error aspect makes me doubt this. It also deters from general properties of graphs like roots, symmetry, minimums, maximums. I can see a role for playful estimates but in my opinion they must be anchored in proper terminology, precision and properties of graphs. Furthermore, I was inclined to sometimes just use lines. There was no feedback as how this was not permitted. One could even say a line also is polynomial, so why wouldn’t I. The trial-and-error nature might further incentivise these creative solutions. Great, of course, if you know transformations already but not if the activities are meant to strengthen skills and understanding (did I ever say they go hand in hand? 🙂

Some of these aspects might be mitigated by the editing feature that will be released soon, but surely not all answers to fundamental but friendly critique will be “do it yourself”? Another nice feature of course, also in other software, is that you can see student work. Yet I feel with some of these fundamental issues not properly addressed, misconceptions might arise. I think that the marble animation is at risk of obfuscating what the tasks should be about. It might lead to more engagement (fun!) but if it does not lead to learning or even might lead to misconceptions, is that helpful? Firstly, I think the scaffolding of tasks should be more extensive with a clear link to maths content. Secondly, I would reconsider the confusion between ‘points on a line’ and ‘stars to collect’. I hope Desmos can iron out some of these issues, because one thing is sure: the falling marble effect remains a joy to behold. However, pedagogically, I think as it stands it needs to be developed further.

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Education Education Research Games ICT Math Education MathEd Tools

Games in maths education

This is a translation of a review that appeared a while back in Dutch in the journal of the Mathematical Society (KWG) in the Netherlands. I wasn’t able to always check the original English wording in the book.

Computer games for Maths

Christian Bokhove, University of Southampton, United Kingdom

51iyzu1DTlL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_Recently, Keith Devlin (Stanford University), known of his newsletter Devlin’s Angle and popularisation of maths, released a computer game (app for the iPad) with his company Innertubegames called Wuzzit Trouble (http://innertubegames.net/). The game purports to, without actually calling them that, address linear Diophantine equations and build on principles from Devlin’s book on computer games and mathematics (Devlin, 2011) in which Devlin explains why computer games are an ‘ideal’ medium for teaching maths in secondary education. In twelve chapters the book discusses topics like street maths in Brasil, mathematical thinking, computer games, how these could contribute to the learning of maths, and concludes with some recommendations for successful educational computer games. The book has two aims: 1. To start a discussion in the world of maths education about the potential for games in education. 2. To convince the reader that well designed games will play an important role in our future maths education, especially in secondary education. In my opinion, Devlin succeeds in the first aim simply by writing a book about the topic. The second aim is less successful.

Firstly, Devlin uses a somewhat unclear definition of ‘mathematical thinking’.: at first it’s ‘simplifying’, then ‘what a mathematician does’, and then something else yet again. Devlin remains quite tentative in his claims and undermines some of his initial statements later on in the book. Although this is appropriate it doesweaken some of the arguments. The book subsequently feels like a set of disjointed claims that mainly serve to support the main claim of the book: computer games matter. A second point I noted is that the book seems very much aimed the US. The book describes many challenges in US education that, in my view, might be less relevant for Europe. The US emphasis also might explain the extensive use of superlatives like an ‘ideal medium’. With these one would expect a good support of claims with evidence. This is not always the case, for example when Devlin claims that “to young players who have grown up in era of multimedia multitasking, this is no problem at all” (p. 141) or  “In fact, technology has now rendered obsolete much of what teachers used to do” (p. 181). Devlin’s experiences with World of Warcraft are interesting but anecdotical and one-sided, as there are many more types of games. It also shows that the world of games changes quickly, a disadvantage of a paper book from 2011.

Devlin has written an original, but not very evidenced, book on a topic that will become more and more relevant over time. As avid gamer myself I can see how computer games have conquered the world. It would be great if mathematics could tap into a fraction of the motivation, resources and concentration it might offer. It’s clear to me this can only happen with careful and rigorous research.

Devlin, Keith. (2011). Mathematics Education for a New Era: Video Games as a Medium for Learning.

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Education Research Research Statistical Methods

Costs and Benefits of Initial Teacher Training Routes

Only recently did i manage to read the November 2014 report published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (but joint with the Institute of Education and NFER, funded by Nuffield) on the Costs and Benefits of Different Initial Teacher Training Routes. It is an interesting read; it would go too far to comment on all of the content, but it was striking that different media outlets chose different ‘slants’ on the report.

IFS had quite an extensive press release highlighting several aspects, while the NFER chose three of the findings. The report is an interim report from a Nuffield project (I noticed Nuffield funds the IFS for more ‘public spending’ projects).

It is fascinating to see how outsiders reported or blogged about the results. John Howson seems to emphasize the monetarization and quantification of ITT routes. I agree with him that this could turn into an issue: it’s shouldn’t solely be about numbers. However, for public justification of expenses in principle it is important to explain how public money is spent. The Public Finance website had quite a factual report, and among other points, noted how the issies around student loans and repayments. The University and College Union (UCU) also picked up this point but, in my opinion rightly so, asks attention to the longterm effects of the changing ITT landscape, and the hidden costs involved. They emphasize the threat to university education departments caused by reducing the direct allocation of training places to universities. A school-based teacher training provision prefers to highlight (and not suprisingly agree with) the result that a higher percentage of school-based ITT responded that the benefits of the route outweigh the costs. In a more extensive piece in Academies Week many of all these findings come together in one piece. It also mentions the ‘benefits’ of ITT routes. As this also got a mention in some tweets at the time, I’d thought I’d look into how this benefit (and costs of course) was determined in the report.

Chapter 4 of the report breaks down this topic. It first addresses the ‘central costs’ in 4.1, in which scholarships, bursaries, tuition fees and maintenance loans, maintenance grants, NCTL grants to schools, and NCTL contracts are taken into account. The key table is below. I was wondering who the recipients of these costs were throughout the report. For example, a bursary will be received by a trainee, a tuiton fee loan paid (back) by students but going to HEI’s etc. etc.

t42

After this the indirect costs for schools are caclulated in 4.2. Note that throughout the report focus is ‘Inner London’, but both primary and secondary education are looked at. This was done by, per term for primary and secondary education, looking at costs for mentoring, observations, lesson planning and other costs. This is where I feel the estimates become a bit vague. The estimates for the costs were obtained by asking respondents to report the time involved with the indirect costs associated with a specific trainee. This was combined with information on the pay category of the lead staff member involved, also representing the ‘opportunity costs of training’. The largest cost associated with ITT for primary schools is mentoring, with an average cost of around £39 per week. For secondary schools the highest was ‘observations’ and I was struck by the difference between routes: Teach First costs £29 per week, HEI-led £81 per week. I seriously wonder how this can be the case. It certainly explains the secondary schools differences in table 4.5 below.

t45Section 4.3 then describes the benefits. I was particularly interested how the report would calculate (monetize) the benefits. Apparently it started with a simple question: respondents were asked to report the extent to which the specific trainee in their recent experience brought a number of benefits to their school/department. These benefits, and percentages ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ are reported in tables 4.7 and 4.8.

t47t48The monetary value was calculated by asking an additional question “whether the benefit for their school or department was greater than, equal to or less than the cost associated with the route, and whether this was to a ‘large’, ‘some’ or ‘small’ extent. Now, this seems somewhat subjective, maybe captured by the report’s use of the word ‘perception’.

t49

For primary, it is reported, whether it is reported that benefits outweigh the cost is related to specific benefits, especially whether the school expects to hire the trainee. This seems understandable, because you would want a large (time and money) investment not to leave the next year.

For secondary to groups of people were asked: secondary subject leaders (Departments) and secondary ITT coordinators.

t410

t411

This is all quite informative, although interpretation is difficult. It’s the subsequent monetarization that made me scratch my head. This started with assuming that net benefit was a continous variable with the answers to the question whether the benefits were less, equal or larger and the extent, as underlying property. A next assumption then is that the benefit-cost ratio has a Gamma distribution. It is argued that ‘this is reasonable’ as it is flexible and because ‘it can approximate a large range of distributions depending on the parameters.’. I find this justification unconvincing. But the assumptions continue with the assumption that respondents’ interpretation of ‘large’, ‘some’ and ‘small’ extent is similar AND that the value for each is the same above and below benefits=costs. A final assumption concerns a margin of approximation (see p.49 and appendix D of the report). Then the gamma distribution was fit to the survey results, and then draws made from the optimal gamma distribution. The draws were averaged to provide average net benefit. For the three groups, primary, seocondary subject leaders and ITT coordinators the corresponding tables are 4.16, 4.17 and 4.18:

t416

t417

These tables seem to show what these assumptions do with the results. Take Teach First, the report mentions that, for ITT coordinators, the very high average net benefit is mainly caused by higher monetary costs as reported by the ITT coordinators, but also a higher estimated benefit-cost ratio. I thought the former was very strange as table 4.6 seemed to indicate that the costs were among the lowest. I find it difficult to understand what causes the difference between these observations. This is important to understand as high costs, combined with high benefit-cost ratio, imply more benefit. The calculation of the ratio also needs to be unpicked. I somehow feel that there are far too many assumptions here for such a conclusion, especially given the nature of the original questions. One could argue that it basically is a 7-point Likert scale with benefits to large extent less than costs, to, benefits to large extent more than the costs. With assumptions that these ‘steps’ are equal, Gamma distrubution assumptions, but also that it concerns the perception of benefits-costs ratio, seems problematic to me. Appendix D further explains the procedure and it seems that the first column is the average of the calculated benefit-cost ratios (those drawn from the Gamma distribution, I presume). It makes a big difference whether values are drawn to the right of the distribution or not. Now had I taken from table 4.11, for example, that benefits>cost percentage for HEI-led ITT was comparable to, for example Teach First. I have no idea why the benefit-cost ratio is lower. Overall, given all the assumptions I think the net benefits reported in terms of ‘monetarization’ are not really sound.