By virtue of its title Innovations in Education and Teaching International sets its aspirations very high. I’ve just been browsing the latest printed edition where Stewart and Stewart’s article ‘Teaching Bayesian Statistics to Undergraduate Students through Debates’ grabbed my attention. Like most people I have been educated in classical (or frequentist) statistics and have virtually no knowledge of Bayesian statistics—hence the title caught my attention. The article has therefore reminded me to rectify my ignorance.
The title gave me no clue to what I was about to read about though. The lecturer (second author Wayne Stewart) performs debates between ‘frequentists’ and ‘Bayesians’ using two ventriloquist dummies—Freaky the frequentist and his opponent, a doll depicting Thomas Bayes (c.1701-1761) in his persona as a Presbyterian minister (photographs appear in the article).
Personally I find ventriloquist dolls pretty sinister. However as an approach worthy of the label ‘innovation’, it’s going to be hard to surpass. Most of the students found the dummies funny though and claimed to have learned from them.
Giving feedback to students on html files can be a nuisance, whether on websites or on eportfolio software. This video shows how to convert html files to pdf files with the Firefox plugin 'Print pages to PDF' which can be annotated using the Foxit Reader to give feedback to students.
I put this video together for next semester's module " LY750 Effective Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education". Got a bit overenginnered and messy so I'm looking for other ways of doing things in the future.
Nearly 15 years ago I submitted my first ever article to a peer reviewed journal. That paper was a version of “Motivation for volunteering on heritage railways”. The fact that the paper is now self-published on my website indicates that the paper was never published. It was never actually rejected, but after six years under review I’d had enough.
I won’t name the journal or the editors involved. Although this is not an area I publish in now, (or am likely to) I am somewhat risk adverse. The three editors involved in the process are no longer editing the journal. My memory on some points might be a bit hazy, especially regarding the order of some of the events, but here goes:
I submitted the paper in January 2000. It was based on my MSc dissertation. This was the days before electronic or online submission (at least was for this journal). I sent the paper (2 printed copies plus a 3.5 inch floppy disk) to the editor at a UK university.
I heard nothing. I tried to contact the editor but could not find a phone number or email. I got in touch with the press. Still nothing. [Submit somewhere else which desks rejects it. My PhD supervisor assured me this was OK since I hadn’t heard anything after about a year.]
Two years later (!) a new editor gets in touch by email with a single review of the paper. The reviewer makes helpful comments. I spend a couple of months responding to the comments. I then send the new version to the editor by email.
Interlude: Strange twist here which is nothing to do with the process. My MSc supervisor forwards me an email from a postgraduate student who wishes to read my dissertation. I get in touch with him and he comes to Bristol to read my dissertation in the library. We arrange to meet up and have a cup to tea together. It turns out that his supervisor was the reviewer and guessed that I was the author. Reviewer suggested to student that he get hold of my dissertation as it might be useful for his own work. I now know the identity of the reviewer and know that the reviewer guessed my identity.
A few months later I get a second review from the same single referee. Comments were mostly helpful, but referee says that a lot of new work has been published since he/she last read the paper. (This indicates that the review was probably done soon after I submitted the paper, but I was not sent the review until about two years after it was conducted.)
I revise the paper again and send it to the editor. We are probably up to about mid-2003 or 2004 by this point. The editor and I exchange lots of emails. Editor makes lots of helpful comments, helps me with matters of writing style etc. Indicates he/she is keen to publish it. No further reviews are conducted.
Correspondence with the editor comes to a close. He/she recommends that it should be published in one of the 2006 editions. However, there is a catch… he/she is stepping down from the editorship and won’t be editor in 2006, so it’s not his/her decision.
2006 arrives and I hear nothing from the new editor. I email the new editor (not a name I know) who gets back to me fairly promptly. He finds my paper in the trail left by his predecessor. He informs me that it is now journal policy for all papers to be reviewed by at least two people. Mine has only been reviewed by one person so it can’t be published. Editor also informs me that that they want to publish more things which are not about railways.
Get fed up and withdraw the article.
Sit on it for a while then put it on my website.
Lessons learned.
Fortunately I now have many positive experiences of the publishing process to share. It has not been all plain sailing, but even the worst experiences have not come close to the ludicrousness of this article’s journey through peer review. Here a few lessons I would pass on.
NEVER EVER let any journal not get back to you for one year, let alone two years. You are perfectly within your rights to submit elsewhere.
Try to be clear on whether your article has been accepted or not.
If you are not sure if the editor agrees with the reviewers, ask.
I think I let the new 2006 editor off the hook. It seems a bit strange that a new editor would feel able to apply new rules about reviewer numbers retrospectively and ignore the recommendation for his predecessors.
My father was always trying to persuade his own father to write his memoirs. My grandfather wasn't one for writing, but he did get some of his memories into writing. As it is Remembrance Sunday today I thought I would share his early experience of life in the Army in the Second World War. It is a humbling experience to remember that the people who fought this war were not professionals, but ordinary men and women. Although he spent most of the war in North Africa and Italy his first brush with death was in the Cornish town of Falmouth. Everything that follows is his own words.
In 1939 preparations were being made for war – conscription was being introduced for twenty year olds and then twenty-one year olds had to register for national service followed by older men up to the age of forty in stages.
War broke out in September 1939 and everything changed. The blackout and rationing were introduced and shops had to close early at about 5pm.
I registered for service in October 1939. In November I had to go to Worcester for a medical examination.
On Thursday 15th February 1940 I had to report for military service at the barracks of the Worcestershire Regiment at Norton, near Worcester. We all thought the war would be short and were looking forward for the holiday with pay! As things turned out this was far from what was going to happen.
On the morning of the 15th I left home and made my way to Evesham railway station where I met a chap named Arthur Locke who was also going to Norton Barracks. However we decided we would have a drink in Worcester before going on to Norton but the army had other plans. As we got off the train at Shrub Hill a big burly seargent wearing a red sash came up to us and said “Are you for Norton Barracks?”. When we said we were he directed us to a waiting bus. We got on the bus for our “holiday” and never had freedom from that point for six long years.
I did my initial training of four months learning how to kill 1914-1918 style and I did a further two months barrack guards at depot HQ. During my time at Norton the evacuation of Dunkirk took place and we were moved out into billets to make way for the survivors who had to be re-kitted and re-posted to their appropriate units. I stayed in a garage at Norton Vicarage for this period. What a sight these chaps were unwashed unshaven some in civilian kit, navy uniforms, French uniforms all sorts of attire completely demoralised and not a pretty sight. From that point it was obvious the war was going to last a lot longer than we at first realised.
After the six months at Norton we were posted to the eighth battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment who were in camp at Kington in Herefordshire. There we joined what was left of the original battalion 100 men out of the original strength of 1000 men. All the rest were either killed, drowned or taken prisoner in France. The reinforcement consisted of 500 from Norton Barracks and 350 from the Welsh Fusiliers from Wrexham Barracks which more or less brought the battalion up to full strength.
Incidentally I was posted to B Company which was formerly the Territorial Company for Evesham and Pershore so a lot of the survivors were chaps that I knew.
We were under canvas at Kington it being summertime.
It wasn’t long before we moved to another location one of many which was subsequently made. However this last move was to Castle Cary in Somerset where we were housed in the former Territorial Drill Hall. After about three weeks were on the move again this time to Lanhydrock in Cornwall. We were under canvas in the woods which gave us good cover as a German invasion was expected at any moment. We had a fleet of Western National busses standing by to get us to any given area quickly. We were standing to every morning at dawn and at sundown which were the times that the expected invasion would be attempted.
However thanks to the RAF and the Royal Navy he never made it although he did make attempted large scale raids as it was reported that a large number of German soldiers bodies were washed up along the Cornish coast.
We moved from this God-forsaken area to Budock just outside Falmouth in fields under canvas again, but still doing the standing to routine as the expected invasion was still a possibility.
However as Autumn approached the powers that be decided to move us into Falmouth into commandeered houses by the football field.
I had my first brush with death while in Falmouth.
The Methodist Hall was turned into a canteen and games complex for servicemen and it was run by the WVS. We could get a cup of tea and a cake very cheaply and have a game of table tennis or darts and it was run by lovely Christian people. When I went into Falmouth I made it my first port of call.
One evening I made my usual visit and had my usual tea and homemade cakes and after I had a game of table tennis with one of my mates from the same room I was billeted in by the Wylde – a young lad from the Black Country. However after we finished the game he asked if I wanted another game. I said I wanted to go to the cinema, the Odeon, which was just across the road. So I said cheerio and I’d see him back at the billets and made my way into the cinema. However after I’d been in there for about a quarter of an hour there was a terrific explosion. It was thought at first that a bomb had hit the cinema and panic broke out temporarily, but the audience soon calmed down and continued to enjoy the picture. After the show we went outside into the street and had a shock. They had the Methodist Hall cordoned off. A bomb had drifted into the hall completely demolishing the ground floor and killing everybody in there including young Wylde, my mate. For the next few weeks we were getting nightly bombings of Falmouth. The target was the docks.
However Autumn was approaching and we were preparing for our next move which was Truro, twelve miles away where we marched to with full pack. We arrived at our new billets which was the school on Fairmantle Street right in the centre of the city. Our dining hall was the Regent Annexe a hall at the back of the Regent cinema on Lemon Quay. During our long stay in Truro (9 months) we attended St George’s Church every Sunday for church parade; fired our rifles on Idless Ranges, foot and arms drill on Lemon Quay and night exercises. At that time I didn’t think that Truro would play such a huge part in my future. It probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t met a certain young lady by the name of Doris Gallie whom I happened to bump into in the Blackout who would bring Cornish pasties around to Farmantle Street to keep me sweet. One of the duties while in Truro was guard duty at Truro martialling yard (railway).
During this time Plymouth was being bombed nightly with huge casualties. We used to use a railway coach as a guard room and one night I remember they shunted a passenger luggage coach into a siding near us and when they opened the doors it was full of coffins which were the dead from the previous night’s bombing in Plymouth. Just after a fleet of hearses drove up and carried them off.
We spent Christmas 1940 in Truro where I visited and was introduced to Doris’s family. Truro was to become a second home to the 8th Worcesters as quite a number of chaps married Truro girls.
Over the past two weeks I’ve been making my way through a series of lectures on the Reformation by Carl Trueman of the Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. I understand the lectures form part of a masters’ degree. They are available free through iTunesU.
The first thing I should say about the lectures is that I am enjoying them. They are well presented, full of interesting facts, contain some interesting and sometimes funny stories, and contain a great deal of Trueman’s own scholarly analysis. The course is also very broad covering the reformation from a historical as well as theological perspectives (not that Trueman would suggest the two approaches could be divorced). I’ve listened to the first seven lectures, which have focused not only on the person of Martin Luther himself, but also the geo-political situation of the German states and Holy Roman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Occasionally students ask questions which try to relate Luther’s experience and views to trends and movements in contemporary Christianity. While this may be expected in an evangelical Christian seminary where the students are in or are preparing for ministry, Trueman resists any attempt to draw such parallels and always falls on the side of constraint. Luther himself is a complex individual, his theological and political thought evolves over his lifetime and he lived five centuries ago.
However, I did not start this post with a view to discussing the Reformation, Martin Luther or Carl Trueman, but the nature of the traditional lecture. There are an astonishing 33 lectures in this series, most just under an hour long. I don’t know how the lectures fit into the Seminary’s (orthe accreditor’s) credit system, but 30 hours strikes me as a huge amount of the contact time for one ‘module’. The students ask occasional questions, all of which Trueman thoughtfully answers.
My own practice as tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate course for new lecturers could not be more different from the traditional lecture. My own input is generally short, activities tend to be group and discussion based, and assessments are varied. I’m well aware that some new lecturers would quite like to come to an hour long lecture where they could take notes, not be called upon to discuss as a class or in groups and write an essay and/or a traditional exam for the assessment, but such passivity goes against what I believe about learning.
My own undergraduate study was very lecture-based assessed mainly by unseen two-hour exams at the end of each module. There was some ‘coursework’, but the exams probably made up around 70% of the assessment. Most of those lectures were actually very interesting, but it was the small group tutorials which encouraged me to learn think independently and develop intellectually into the sort of person who could undertake postgraduate study.
Listening to and enjoying Carl Trueman’s lectures has presented me with an intriguing dilemma about teaching in higher education. Trueman lectures are incredibly detailed. Each time I listen to one I look forward to the next. I almost feel I am walking in Luther’s shoes. However, I really need to ask myself whether this is the best way for Trueman’s students to learn? It is tremendous that I can sit in East Sussex listening to fascinating lectures from Pennsylvania, but I will not be taking the exams and writing the essays. If I had to write an essay, a project or exam I would be somewhat overwhelmed that I could possibly produce anything interesting or original. If I taught about the reformation (which I don’t and never will as it’s not my area) I would be very tempted to tell students to listen to these lectures., and use my own time in the classroom differently.
Perhaps it is the enthusiastic amateur (like me in the case of the reformation) who benefits the most from freely available online lectures like these. I listen to ‘sage on the stage’* drinking his wisdom in a way I could not possibly comprehend if he was in my area of expertise. Trueman relates stories of email arguments he’s had the various (named) individual scholars. He tells of how one of his book reviews exposed so many factual errors it led to a whole edition getting pulled.** This is a teacher and colleague to fear!
Note: I’ve picked on Carl Trueman because that is what I’m listening to at the moment. I’m sure my feelings would be the same of a lot of other publically available online content.
*King, Alison. ‘From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side’.College Teaching41, no. 1 (1 January 1993): 30–35. (Not open access).
**Carl Trueman (2012) You Cannot Judge This Book by its Cover: A Review of Evans, G. R. The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence and Rupture. IVP Academic, 2012. The publisher brought out a second edition with corrections.
A technical note to myself here, but may help others as well. When I imported .mp3 files from my Olympus Digital Voice recorder WS-831 to my PC it was no longer possible to play the files. The solution is to go to Windows Explorer and change the extension of the file from filename.MP3 (MP in capitals) to filename.mp3 (mp in small letters). Then they should play on the PC. They can also then be imported into other applications (e.g. audacity) without any problems.
Default saving of files on recorderRenamed file extensions
Coincidentally I was reading through the Chronicle of Higher Education Forum yesterday and came across this gem from 1994. “A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves”, Mary M. Tai, Diabetes Care, 1994, 17, 152–154. The paper outlines a ‘new’ way of measuring the area under a curve by adding up areas of rectangles and triangles which the author calls Tai’s method. In fact the method described has been understood for centuries as is known as the trapezoid rule. (I use this method in statistics for humanities for calculating the Gini co-efficient.)
I’ve not heard about the paper before and the journal quickly published responses pointing out that this method was not new. However, the paper continues to be cited… and not only by people talking about it.
There is an interesting discussion of the paper on Stack Exchange about what should have happened to the paper. The first question might lie in wondering why no one out of the author, her colleagues, the reviewers or the journal editor had ever seen this before or something like it (I first remember coming across it in A-level Geography—pre 1994). On the other hand this demonstrates that it is perfectly possible for someone who has never seen as wheel to ‘invent’ the wheel, and the technique has been brought to a new audience, albeit about four centuries late.
This might be an extreme example, but I’m sure it’s not the only one of its kind. It begs the question though how much published research is genuinely innovative and how much is non-innovative stuff discovered independently.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing though is that twenty years later the paper is still being cited, and not just by people pointing out that this paper is nothing new. This paper from 2009 reads "Glucose and insulin areas were determined using Tai's model" (p.1046).
Yesterday, I was fortunate to attend a talk by David Pencheon of the NHS’s sustainable development unit.
A few of Dr Pencheon’s questions, thoughts and observations I noted:
1. Climate change not always best entry point for talking about sustainable development. We need to listen to what people are saying. He showed some of the usual graphs about past and projects CO2 emissions etc. – these don’t really engage people.
2. Intelligent life from another planet would be surprised about how much we know about ‘fouling our own nest’ and how little we are doing about it.
3. Climate change is a public health issue.
4. People have difficulty with numbers smaller than 0.5 and bigger than 25. Using huge numbers to provoke reaction not helpful.
5. Humans find it difficult to deal with things a long way away, things in the future and things which happen incrementally.
6. In the Paris heatwave of 2003 the biggest predictor of death was social isolation, not age. Even couples were found dead together.
7. Most surgical instruments used by the NHS are produced by child labour in Pakistan.
8. Hospitals are paid for activity, not outcomes.
9. People in ‘caregiving’ professions are no better than people in other professions. Often feel they are going it in ‘day jobs’. He includes educators and faith groups in this.
10. We need innovation, not increased efficiently. Increasing efficiency often means doing bad things differently.
11. Dr Penchoen visited a community in China where the people paid a small amount for the doctor only when they were well. This gave a the doctor an incentive to keep people well—in the NHS GPs and rewarded for doing certain sorts of activity.
12. Dying well – good health practices to extend the middle of life, not the end of it. Dr Pencheon was recently at a conference where GP’s indicated that helping people to die better was something of a priority.
