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How Online Education Is Increasing Gender Diversity in STEM

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How Online Education Is Increasing Gender Diversity in STEM

By Emily Glassberg Sands, Head of Data Science at Coursera in collaboration with Alan Hickey and Vinod Bakthavachalam, Senior Data Scientists at Coursera

At Coursera, we strive to unlock life-transforming learning and credentials for anyone, anywhere. Seventy-five percent of high-school-aged girls say they are interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), yet only 28 percent of the graduates of U.S. STEM degree programs are female.

On Coursera, 30 percent of our U.S. course completers in STEM are female — far from full parity but higher than the share of STEM degree graduates in the country. In honor of International Women’s Day and this year’s theme of #BalanceForBetter, we reflect on how Coursera and online education as a whole can contribute to advancements in gender diversity:

  1. Scale female instructors. The online medium provides a unique opportunity to scale the reach of individual instructors — including those who are members of historically under-represented groups in their fields —  and provide broader access to diverse role models. Our research shows that courses with female instructors attract a significantly higher share of female enrollees, even when we control for the subject area of the material. In an experiment varying instructor gender and gender salience through use of first names and gendered pronouns, we further found that the effect of instructor gender on whether or not a learner chooses to enroll in any content in the field is substantial. Female learners who received an email about a Machine Learning Specialization emphasizing a female instructor were 26 percent more likely to enroll in a STEM course on the platform than those who received an otherwise identical email about the same Specialization emphasizing a male instructor. 
  2. Design course material for inclusiveness. Creating a curriculum that can appeal to all learners is not just about finding the right instructor. The majority of the content in the Google IT Support Professional Certificate on Coursera, for example, was written by women and contains the personal stories of Googlers, including female executives who talk about how they’ve struggled with imposter syndrome and work to overcome it. These measures have helped to increase learner diversity within the program: 30% of learners are female compared to 20% in IT content generally on Coursera. 
  3. Use machine-learned interventions to drive persistence. The scale of learning made possible by the online medium and the data generated as learners move through their learning experiences opens a unique opportunity to better meet the needs of every learner — including historically disadvantaged groups. Powered by machine learning, our personalized in-course interventions reach learners with just-in-time guidance, support, and encouragement to persist through courses. One example is the targeted review material intervention, which recommends videos or readings to struggling learners; this intervention disproportionately aids female learners in persisting and completing content.  
  4. Launch new features to support a diversity of learning strategies. The recently piloted video highlights feature allows learners to save checkpoints in their lecture videos and add notes directly, empowering a more active viewing experience and facilitating review. In STEM content, female learners are 36% more likely than male learners to take at least one note. While early, these results are encouraging because facilitating the review of course material has, as noted above, been found to significantly increase the rate at which female learners persist. 
  5. Enable university experimentation and iteration. Through our AB testing functionality for partners, instructors and researchers can rigorously learn what types of teaching works best for which learners: enrollees are randomized into different versions of the same course to reveal the causal effect of different chosen teaching inputs (such as videos) on key learning outputs (such as course completion). Many researchers are leveraging the technology to learn how to advance equality of opportunity. For example, Chris Brooks from the University of Michigan wants to know: Do subtle gender cues impact female learners in STEM content? He randomized the appearance of male versus female workers in the background of some videos, and found that learners post more messages in the same-gendered condition.

At Coursera, we are committed to pursuing research, product innovations, and partnerships that enable us to create a welcoming environment for each and every learner. Through testing and scaling initiatives like these, we are making progress toward closing the gender gap in STEM on the Coursera platform directly, all the while building a stronger collective understanding of the strategies that might move the needle across learning contexts.

4 Workplace Problems and What You Can Do About Them

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4 Workplace Problems and What You Can Do About Them

Mar 8, 2019

By Omar B.

There’s no such thing as a perfect workplace. No matter who you are or where you work, there will be something that makes your day a little (or a lot) more difficult than you want it to be. Some of these workplace problems are things we just have to deal with, but there are some things we don’t have to accept. The question is, what are we supposed to do about them?

We can’t solve every problem, but in my experience there are certain things that we can improve if we approach them in the right way. By applying a few strategies and techniques to different workplace problems, you can make your working life a little easier, improve your productivity, and ultimately just enjoy your day a little more. So, here’s a few things I’ve learned over the years, I really hope they’re helpful for you.

1. Too many demands on your time

If you feel like you can’t keep track of all the things you have to do, then one of two things is happening. On the one hand, might need to gain a few more time management skills, which could make your day a little more organised. On the other, you may just need to calmly explain to your boss that there is too much on your desk. Don’t worry, your boss doesn’t want you to be overloaded. If there is too much for you to do, they will understand.

2. Bad relationship with a colleague

An annoying or disruptive colleague can make your day so much more difficult than it needs to be, and really impact your productivity at the same time. Of course, if the colleague does something truly awful, you can report them, but most of the time it’s not that simple. Try learning a bit about conflict management, and using these techniques to smooth out your workplace relationships.

3. Can’t find motivation

This is one of the most common problems people have at work. After a while working the same job, it’s just difficult to remain excited about it. Try remembering that almost every job becomes a bit repetitive after a while, and that losing motivation is something that can be fixed. Check out these tips for finding motivation, and re-find the energy you need to get through your day.

4. It’s just not the right job

Certain workplaces can’t be fixed. Either you’re in the wrong profession, the wrong department, or just the wrong company, you may just need to think about some alternatives. Don’t worry, almost everyone has to switch jobs eventually. This is a scary process, but you can handle it. Check out a Career Guide, identify the right profession for you, and then start training for the job you’re really supposed to be in.

Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

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Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

wp-header

Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)

Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.

What are some of the projects you worked on?

I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.

As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.

Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.

One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.

“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”

What got you into the data field?

I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.

Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.

What does your tattoo say?


The ultimate cheatsheet.

This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.

I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.

A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.

Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:

select
    transactions.date as transaction_date,
    sum(items.price) as total_cost,
    count(*) as number_of_items
from
    transactions
inner join
    customers
    on
    customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
    transaction_items
    on
    transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
    items
    on
    items.id = transaction_items.item_id

Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.

I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.

Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.

with transaction_summaries as (
  select
      transactions.date as transaction_date,
      sum(items.price) as total_cost,
      count(*) as number_of_items
  from
      transactions
  inner join
      customers
      on
      customers.id = transactions.customer_id
  inner join
      transaction_items
      on
      transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
  inner join
      items
      on
      items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)

select 
        * 
from 
        transaction_summaries
where 
        first_name = 'beyonce'
        and 
        transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by 
        total_cost desc
limit 
        5

If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:

  • Lon Binder, Chief Technology Officer, Warby Parker
  • Maddie Tierney, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
  • Kayla Robbins, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
  • Kaki Read, Senior Communications Manager, Warby Parker
  • Isabel Seely, Senior Brand Manager, Warby Parker

It’s been an absolute pleasure. And of course, the fam at Codecademy. You know who you are. Couldn’t do it without you.

Ask a Software Engineer: Airbnb Edition 🏡

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Ask a Software Engineer: Airbnb Edition 🏡
A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer (via Life of Luba)

With Airbnb came a revolution of sorts in the world of vacation travel and culture. We sat down with Luba Yudasina, a YouTuber, an opera singer, and a Software Engineer on the Airbnb’s Homes Platform team, to discuss software engineering and her programming journey—from Codecademy to Airbnb!

Hey Luba, let’s start with the basics! What does a Software Engineer on the Platform team do at Airbnb?

Homes Platform’s mission is to create the building blocks to power all Homes categories. Any project undertaken by our team should be reusable and extensible in some way. This means that as a backend engineer, I have a lot of opportunities to work on impactful technical projects that create systems and services to support Homes, as well as collaborate across teams to come up with the best architectural decisions and designs.

Recently, our team wrote a blog post on classifying Room Types into categories using Machine Learning and computer vision. The room-type classification problem largely resembles the ImageNet classification problem, except our team’s model outcomes are customized room-types.

After a few experiments with various models, the team chose ResNet50 due to its good balance between model performance and computation time. To make it compatible with our use case, we added two extra fully connected layers and a Softmax activation in the end.

Categorizing listing photos into room types (via the Airbnb Engineering & Data Science blog)

What languages/frameworks do you use at Airbnb?

At Airbnb we use Ruby, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, Swift, Ruby on Rails, React for frontend, iOS and Android for native development.

Let’s rewind a little bit. Coming from a chemical engineering background in college, how did you make the switch into programming?

I went to the University of Waterloo in Canada—a university with the biggest co-op program in the world. Co-op means that to obtain a bachelor’s degree you must complete a certain number of internships. If you are in Engineering at Waterloo, you must complete 5 internships to graduate.

In my first and second years, I interned at chemical engineering companies and afterwards I couldn’t see myself working in the field full-time. That’s why I’m particularly grateful that I studied at Waterloo: if not for co-op, I probably would not have realized I didn’t want to work in chemical engineering until getting a full-time job after graduation.

I happened to have a lot of friends in Computer Science and Software Engineering right when I realized Chem Eng wasn’t for me. They really encouraged me to try coding, and when I decided to follow their lead I never looked back! My first online programming course was Web Development on Codecademy 🙂

“It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being ‘one of the dudes.'”
-Luba Yudasina

How did you land an internship at Yelp?

When I decided I wanted to learn computer science on my own, my goal was to get an internship in the field because working as a software engineer at a tech company would be the best test to really know if it was for me.

I happened to be in Munich, Germany on academic exchange for a whole year when I was learning how to code, so I hustled as much as I could while being there to get experience to learn quicker and have something to put down on my tech resume.

Almost immediately after arriving in Germany, I got a part time job as a developer at a game publishing company. I had a good friend in Computer Science at my German university: her and I ended up working on an Android app as a side project, etc. When I was ready, I started preparing for technical interviews. I then leveraged my network to refer me to companies and do mock technical interviews with me.

Yelp was really random though—a Yelp recruiter looked at my LinkedIn profile and didn’t even message me, but I messaged them anyway asking about internship opportunities, and that’s how I got my interview there!

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Airbnb HQ in San Franciso

What is an essential app/item in your day-to-day?

Code searching! A lot of software engineering is problem solving and a lot of it is understanding other people’s code and the reasoning behind writing it a certain way. Searching through the codebases is almost essential to my day to day. Whenever I build something new or build on top of already existing tech, I need to understand how it works and is written, and code search is vital to this.

At Airbnb we use Google’s Codesearch for these purposes, but developers (myself included) also frequently use their IDEs to search for relevant code. I mostly use RubyMine or IntelliJ (depending on the codebase I’m working with).

In your videos, you’ve mentioned the intersection of gender and technology. Can you speak a bit more about that?

It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being “one of the dudes.”

I think it’s particularly important to redefine the stereotypes, and I hope that with my own example I can show young girls and women interested in the field that you don’t have to give up your feminine side to be a software engineer and still be into fashion, or makeup, or art (I personally sing opera) and have other interests outside of coding and be successful in the field.

Before we wrap up, do you have anything else you would like to say to our learners?

Don’t be discouraged, learn and absorb as much as you can! If you don’t understand a concept or can’t build a project right away, know that with practice, perseverance and concentration you will get there!

Take advantage of such amazing tools as Codecademy that are there for you to take and learn. Learning anything new can be frustrating, but knowing that you can do it, staying curious, asking questions and not losing your motivation is the key to success.

Huge shoutout to Luba for this insightful interview. It’s always incredibly moving to see a Codecademy learner go on to do bigger things. Go subscribe to her YouTube channel, Life of Luba.

And thank you to the whole Homes Platform/Engineering team at Airbnb for the support. Check out their wonderful open source projects on airbnb.io.

Film Club: ‘Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture’

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Film Club: ‘Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture’

What is the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation?

“Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture” is a seven-minute film that touches on themes of cultural exchange and appropriation. It follows the New York Times reporter Walter Thompson-Hernández as he travels to Japan to find out how Chicano culture, a subculture of Mexican-Americans living in places like Los Angeles and the Southwest United States, has spread to a country halfway across the world.

Students

1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.

2. After watching, think about these questions:

• What moments in this film stood out for you? Why?

• Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew?

• What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? Why?

• What questions do you still have?

3. An additional challenge: What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?

4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

6. To learn more, read “How My Southeast L.A. Culture Got to Japan.” Walter Thompson-Hernández writes:

What I found when I got there is that, while most instances of cultural appropriation completely disregard the original communities, the people whom I met did the exact opposite: They are in constant communication with Los Angeles lowrider communities. To me, it was more of a form of cultural exchange. Although many people I met in the scene were born and raised in Japan, they pride themselves on appreciating lowrider culture, while also creating something new and adding their own touches through their own cultural experiences.

_________

More?

• See all the films in this series.

• Read our list of practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries in the classroom.

• Our next Film Club will take place on Thursday, March 14.

What’s Going On in This Graph? | March 13, 2019

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What’s Going On in This Graph? | March 13, 2019

NOTE: Join us for our free webinar about teaching with graphs from The New York Times. Date: Wednesday, March 20 at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Register here.

1. This graph shows the sources of electricity generation in the United States. The graph originally appeared elsewhere on NYTimes.com.

You can visit this article to find comparable graphs for each state, such as California, Maine or North Carolina.

After looking closely at the graph above (or at this full-size image) and possibly your state’s graph, think about these three questions:

• What do you notice?
• What do you wonder?
What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the graph?
• What might be going on in this graph?
Write a catchy headline that captures the graph’s main idea. If your headline makes a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim.

The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order. Start with “I notice,” then “I wonder,” and end with “The story this graph is telling is ….” and a catchy headline.

2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

3. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say or they can have their students use this same activity on Desmos.)

On Wednesday, March 13, our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Time to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.

4. On the afternoon of March 14, we will reveal more information about the graph at the bottom of this post. Students, we encourage you to post an additional comment after reading the reveal. How does the original New York Times article and the moderators’ comments help you see the graph differently? Try to incorporate the statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets in your response.

Have You Ever Been Left Out?

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Have You Ever Been Left Out?

Imagine it’s a Friday night. All your friends told you they were busy, so you’re sitting at home, alone, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. But then you see a post that stops you in your tracks. It’s a picture of all of your friends hanging out together — without you.

Has this ever happened to you? If so, how did it make you feel? How did you react? If it has not happened, how do you think it might feel to be left out by your friends? What would you do?

In “They Left Me Out, and I Saw It All,” Hallie Reed, a college student, writes about a time when this very thing happened to her:

It was my first semester of college, and I was still finding my footing. I rushed and pledged a sorority. I also joined an academic program, all in the hopes of being socially engaged and establishing genuine friendships I could rely on during college.

There were still lonely days, but things were looking up. A group of us were having semiregular game nights and restaurant outings, which to me was the very definition of college besties. One Friday, I joyfully announced to my mom over the phone, “I think I finally found my friend group!”

Later that afternoon, my three new friends told me individually that they would be out of town that weekend. I assumed they each had plans. No big deal. Then I checked Instagram the next day.

They were spending the weekend in Chattanooga together. How did I know? Every facet of the trip was documented on Instagram. There they were, eating ice cream and having a photo shoot in front of a pink polka-dot wall. There they were laughing on a bridge and there they were playing in the leaves. There they were, having fun without me.

We tend to talk a lot about having FOMO when we scroll through our social media feeds, but fearing you’re missing out and knowing you’ve been left out are different. We can let our imaginations fill in the gaps about other people’s lives, but sometimes it doesn’t take much imagination at all to see that people are doing awesome things without you. That’s the cost of living with social media.

It seems like everyone has a story like mine. Savannah Elliott, another student at my school, Samford University, remembers asking a friend if she wanted to hang out one weekend. “She said she was sick with the flu,” Ms. Elliott said. “I saw later on Instagram stories that she gave a party and didn’t invite me.”

Laura Asher, a junior sociology major from Kentucky, recalled a time her freshman year when she asked her friends what they were doing that night. “Nobody texted me back. I assumed that they were just staying home for the night,” Ms. Asher said. “Later I checked Instagram and saw they had all posted pictures and Stories of them at a country concert.”

Research shows these negative reactions to our social media feeds aren’t limited to us few. One study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed that young adults with higher social media use seem to feel more socially isolated than young adults with lower social media use. Even worse, the journal Computers in Human Behavior found that for young adults, the use of more social media platforms is linked to higher risks of symptoms of anxiety and depression.

You’ll never be invited to everything. But it can be hard to not feel hurt and betrayed when you see exactly what you’re missing plastered all over social media. So what can you do?

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— Have you ever been left out, as Ms. Reed was? How did it feel? What did you do when you found out?

— Have you ever excluded someone else from something? Did they find out? How did being on the other side of this situation make you feel?

— Do you ever have FOMO, the fear of missing out, when scrolling through social media? How do you handle it?

— After reading Philip Galanes’s advice, how might you look at the reasons you were left out — or felt as if you were missing out — differently?

— What other tips can you use from this article for the next time you are (or feel) excluded? What suggestions would you add to Mr. Galanes’s list and why?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Learning With: ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex: The Once and Future King’

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Learning With: ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex: The Once and Future King’

Before reading the article:

Were you fascinated by dinosaurs when you were younger? Are you still fascinated? Do you have a favorite dinosaur?

Two large museum exhibits on Tyrannosaurus rex will open in the next few months to celebrate the world’s most popular dinosaur. What do you know about T. rex? Have you ever seen a T. rex fossil in person?

O.K., now take this T. rex pop quiz:

(Don’t worry … it’s not graded.)

• Fast or slow?

• Smart or dumb?

• Social animal or loner?

• Short or long life span?

• Hunter, scavenger or both?

Final bonus question: Which is now believed to be a characteristic of T. rex: fur, feathers, wings or stripes?

Next, before you read the article and find out the answers, how do you think paleontologists go about verifying what they know about T. rex?

Turn to a partner and share your thoughts.

Now, read the article, “Tyrannosaurus Rex: The Once and Future King,” and answer the following questions:

1. The article begins: “The king is dead. Long live the king!” What evidence does James Gorman, the author, provide to support the idea that T. rex is the king of dinosaurs?

2. When were the first T. rex bones discovered? Why does the author say that the newly discovered dinosaur could have turned out to be a mere curiosity?

3. What notable changes in the study of dinosaurs have occurred in the past 30 years? How do these changes support the claim by Gregory Erickson, a leading paleontologist, that “the golden age of paleontology is right now”?

4. Who is Sue the T. rex? What was significant about its discovery in 1990? How many discovered T. rexes have been identified as female?

5. What are examples of new knowledge that scientists have gathered about the behavior and sensory abilities of T. rex? Which did you find most interesting and why?

6. New research suggests that T. rex was not always the top predator among dinosaurs. In your own words, explain why. Why does the author write, “It could be said that T. rex lucked out”?

7. Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist, said there was some resentment toward T. rex:

People who study non-dinosaurs say dinosaurs get all the attention. … People who study dinosaurs say theropods get all the attention. People who study theropods, say, oh, tyrannosaurs get all the attention.

What do you think of this criticism? Does T. rex deserve all of the attention it gets? If not, make a case for another dinosaur that you believe deserves a greater spotlight.

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

— What did you learn about Tyrannosaurus rex from the article? Is there a specific fact or new theory that stands out? Return to the quiz from the top: How did you do?

— What more would you like to know about T. rex or dinosaurs in general? Does the article make you appreciate the work of paleontologists? Would you want to be one?

— What are your personal memories or experiences with dinosaurs? Would you like to see the exhibit in New York or Washington?

— Design a poster for either museum exhibition. Include at least three facts you learned about T. rex from the article.

‘The Writer’s Block’

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‘The Writer’s Block’

What do you think this image is saying? Can you relate to it personally in any way? What is your opinion of its message?

Tell us in the comments, then read the original headline to see how the cartoonist Grant Snider views it.

Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan.

One on One with Jonathan Satchell, CEO, LTG (EXCLUSIVE)

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One on One with Jonathan Satchell, CEO, LTG (EXCLUSIVE)

Greetings and welcome to my debut One on One interview series, where I interview corporate executive leaders in the e-learning space. Future One on One interviews will be available exclusively on findanlms.com, my learning system search engine platform that is 100% free to use for anyone looking for a learning system.  To learn more about PeopleFluent, visit FindAnLMS.com

For our debut post,  I met with Jonathan Satchell, CEO of the Learning Technologies Group (companies they own include LEO, Rustici, Gomo, Watershed LRS, PeopleFluent, Eukleia, PRELOADED, Vector VMS) to ask questions about LTG and the space in general.

Craig:  I know that you are a big fan of CMI-5 what are the benefits for folks who build courses and for training and/or L&D folks who have a learning system with CMI-5? 

Jonathan:  Firstly, let me clarify that I am not a learning standards expert (there are great people in the Group who hold that knowledge). What I can say is that CMI-5 expresses learner activity using xAPI, which gives systems a consistent way to express the things people do. This is very useful, both in reporting and in causing other things to happen in a learning ecosystem. CMI-5 is an important extension of xAPI in that xAPI doesn’t specify how content should be launched (including a lack of authentication in that scenario), so cmi5 fills a crucial gap.

Craig:  xAPI was supposed to be the “be all” for mobile, and it just hasn’t come to fruition in terms of usage and need across the e-learning space. There are some learning system vendors though, who are xAPI only and offer nothing else.  What do you see as the ramifications of going all in “only xAPI”?

Jonathan  – In some ways, xAPI was substantially oversold at first, and now it’s settling into its intended (and important) role. xAPI is simply a shared language for two systems to talk to each other about the things people do. In that sense, it’s an important enabler for mobile applications that want to communicate with systems in a standardized way, but many just opt not to.

For those that do, it’s an elegant way to simply express things people are doing and that really is useful. Applications that opt to support only xAPI are able to do things they simply couldn’t in a SCORM world, and that holds benefits for the learners serviced. Going ‘all in’ on xAPI does run the risk of problems or delays in working with systems that are further out on the adoption curve. For some, that’s a reasonable and calculated choice. For others, it could be a tougher decision.

We also see adoption of xAPI being driven by the pressure to prove the business impact of learning. Three years ago the pressure was low but this has been steadily increasing, as seen in the yearly research conducted by my colleagues at Watershed and LEO Learning. We’re excited to see the trajectory of the results and an elevation of learning at board level.

Craig : While I like Watershed LRS, I feel that it is not as robust in terms of data visualization compared to Yet Analytics.  Equally, I admit I was surprised to see the number of vendors in the learning system space building their own LRS, rather than going 3rd party and integrating it.  

Jonathan –  I’ll answer the second part of the question first. There are two important areas to address when talking about LRS implementations in practice. First is what’s outlined by the xAPI specification — how to capture, accept, and export data in ways that are standard and interoperable. Generally, whether bought or built, wide adoption of these capabilities across vendors should facilitate standardized data flows, which is good news for tools like Watershed that can easily accept and further leverage that data.

The second area to address is reporting. Vendors are trying to fill the gap of reporting on data as best as they can, but we see a large space between what most LMSs/LXPs do and what we can do. One major hurdle is the ability to handle data from external sources. LMSs have been reporting on data they originated for years. However, reporting on unstructured data from other learning systems is a real challenge. This is precisely how we’re different from LMSs and arbitrary BI tools.

Our people and our software understand learning in detail. Our pre-built reports present details about questions and answers and other learning-related topics natively, as opposed to someone using a BI tool who would then have to interpret that unstructured data. This is a huge difference in approach-ability.

In terms of Watershed’s data visualisation, every experience we’ve had indicates that there’s far more capability available in Watershed than its competitors. In particular, our report builder makes it possible to create a significantly greater amount of different data dashboard views than we see in our competitors. In addition, Watershed recently released an exciting UI refresh, with new features and functionality designed to improve the user experience.

Craig: How as the CEO of LTG and thus Watershed, will you counter that? In other words, what you can you do to say to vendors, go with our product rather than build your own?  

Jonathan – While we might agree that many have been tempted to start building their own capability, we’re also finding that companies are now realising the level of complexity and size of investment they will need to make.

As a specialist in this area with some focused and substantial R&D, run by a world-class technical team in Nashville, we believe it will be at best uneconomic and at worst impossible for others starting out to now try to build the depth of capability required. The level of investment needed to keep a product current and moving forward with market demand is not for the faint hearted. For that reason I suggest people come and partner with us. Our partner commercial models are designed to support this route so that the economics are attractive.

Craig: LTG owns quite a few companies including Rustici (makers of SCORM Engine and Watershed), NetDimensions, PeopleFluent and gomo.   I easily see a complete ecosystem wrapped around PeopleFluent. What are your plans going forward in 2019 with PeopleFluent from a learning/training perspective?

Jonathan – This is exactly our intent and we have been talking about our ecosystem of capabilities for some time now. We believe we have pulled together and integrated a set of technologies that can help organisations span the full range of their learning needs. Helping organisations create and distribute content in the workplace, while maintaining the capability to manage organisation’s traditional training requirements (such as face-to-face courses).

We envision a world where learning (and talent) is at the heart of business strategy. Our ambition is to continue to enhance and further integrate these solutions to be able to take this ecosystem to the market but also leverage an open architecture that allows for us to connect into any organisation’s existing ecosystem. In addition, LTG is providing the services wrapped around the technology so that our clients can derive (and properly measure using big data approaches) true business impact.

Craig – Are you surprised at the growth and usage of LEP/LXPs in the learning system space?  As a company that sells an LMS, what can you do to counter that? How can you say to someone interested in an LEP/LXP – here is the better route to go (i.e. buy an LMS)?

Jonathan – Surprised? No, we’re very excited about it. We do see that there’s a lot of overlap in capability between LMSs and LXPs. In fact, we see lots of companies trying to play in both spaces. We believe they’re similar products with inherently different sensibilities. And that’s why we plan to go to market with something akin to an LXP this year.

While we understand the reasons for the way current entrants in the LXP space are presenting themselves (i.e. extremely learner focused, potentially at the expense of the businesses’ needs), we believe there’s an opportunity to offer something different in the LXP space. We’re still defining it and listening to our prospects and customers, but we’re excited to offer an LXP solution with a different perspective this year. The product we will release is based on real work being done by four LTG companies for a global oil and gas company, so it will be fully road-tested when we do come to market.

Craig – Speaking of LEP/LXP, I know it is one system that LTG does not have, at least not yet.  Are there any plans to acquire an LEP/LXP in the coming year?

Jonathan – As a publicly traded company, we can’t discuss specific acquisitions. However, on the subject of LXPs, as discussed above, we believe we have the right components in-house to go to market with an offering in this space soon.

Craig – VR hasn’t really taken off yet in the consumer marketplace, let alone training/L&D. CES moved away from VR and hyped AR at their show.  What does LTG have on their map to address AR, or are you betting on VR to regroup and lead in training/L&D in 2019?

Jonathan – For a Group focused on learning technologies and, more recently, talent management solutions, exploiting new and innovative technologies to solve learner and business needs will always be important to us.

While VR and AR have not yet gained widespread traction, we are seeing an increasing relevance for our customers. As a Group, we have deliberately remained platform agnostic in order to give freedom to our service businesses to engineer the right solution for their customers.

To your point on consumer VR, this hasn’t landed because it doesn’t naturally fit into our daily lives. However, in formal training and when used on the right project, it’s one of the most powerful interactions you can deploy, because of how immersive it is. For certain clients, VR has always been and will always be the right tool for the job, but as the technology and delivery mechanisms evolve, we believe we’ll see an increasing relevance to new markets.

Whilst VR remains powerful but specialist, we believe AR and MR (Mixed Reality) offer the greatest opportunity today for organisations to transform the way they deliver on-site. Thanks to smartphones, almost everyone has an AR-capable mobile devices these days. With Apple and Google’s commitment to their respective technologies, AR has moved beyond a gimmick towards a friction-less, and increasingly powerful way to support digital learning content in a physical world.

Craig – Finally, What do you see as the top two “hot ticket items (example Machine Learning, etc.)” in the learning system space in 2019? And what about one dud? 

Jonathan – We have always focused on the practical application of technology to deliver business results. While we’re excited about the future benefits of AI in learning (and are keeping a close eye on this with some interesting partnerships and R&D), we have some hotter items that will deliver immediate return on investment in 2019.

First is a medium that has swept the entire web (and made YouTube the second most popular search engine on the planet) but is still lagging in learning: video. Businesses have struggled to unlock the value of video in learning for good reason. Historically, it has tended to be an impenetrable and mostly one-way medium.

With our new gomo video capabilities, we believe video and user-generated content will be increasingly important in 2019. We have integrated pervasive video throughout our solutions and believe it has made a difference in how organizations share, track and capture knowledge. We are really proud of the social capabilities around our video solutions that allow for powerful search, feedback and commentary, which facilitate collaboration and mentoring

Another area we continue to invest is in learning analytics. With our PeopleFluent acquisition, we can now leverage Watershed to help our clients correlate learning and people data to the business impact of their investment in new ways.

I’m not sure I’d characterize any of the technologies as duds, in so much as the market is organic and evolutionary – technologies are tested and adopted and then adapted. So we spend an enormous amount of time examining these new technologies before we invest and either build or buy. We want to make sure it aligns to our core beliefs about what our customers need to be successful. Curation systems, machine learning, VR/AR etc all go through this cycle of testing, early adoption, hype, adaptation and then application and scale.

We are really interested in anything that helps scale learning in large organisations. Very often this is more about proper adoption, integration to working processes and good user-centred design. We see the whole LTG product and service offer helping organisations to “put the best people in the right roles becoming the best they can be” with data-driven decision making at the core.

And to do this in ways that help our clients solve the challenge of current and future workforce capability in a world where Gartner predicts 80% of job roles will need to re-prioritized by 2022. And of course this pace of change will not slow down in 2022, so we see the effort to link learning and performance as crucial, with the ability for our clients to then use predictive analytics to plan and equip the workforce for the future.

Final Takeaways – from Craig Weiss

Since this interview, a few items

a. NetDimensions has been rebranded.  They are now under the name of PeopleFluent Learning

b. PeopleFluent Learning is the Net Dimensions LMS (being updated), and Gomo. Watershed LRS is available, but it listed as a standalone and not included as part of the PeopleFluent Learning. 

c.  LTG is launching an LXP, the name yet to be defined.  The LXP will come with Gomo (as a SaaS tool, which it exists – and always has been), Watershed LRS and a very impressive video player with video editing functionality and bookmarks.  

I equally believe that the future will be Mixed Reality, but we are far from getting there.  The latest version of the HoloLens is targeted towards business, and costs $3,000 USD per headset.  

Our next interview will be with Apratim Purakayasth, CTO, SumTotal (Debuts in April). 

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