More links that I liked

Everyday I see loads of interesting things on the internet via Twitter and different blogs. Typically the articles or posts get a quick scan and then saved to Evernote. I was tagging and sorting some links today and found a few nice ones from the last week or so to share:

• From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, some research that I am also interested in for the South African contex: Do big cities help college graduates find better jobs?
• The Guardian Africa Network has an excellent post: In search of the African middle class. It is something that is punted everywhere as a key driver of growth over the next few years, but the post shows that this has to be taken with a good grain of salt. Yes, many people are getting out of extreme poverty, but the middle class is only the middle of a very skewed income distribution. "The Africa Bank of Development defines "middle class" as those spending between $2 and $20 per day. By its own admission though, about 60% of those only spend between $2 and $4 per day".
• Via Marginal Revolution blog Andrew Oswald has some good advice for young researchers:

If everyone likes your work, you can be certain that you haven’t done anything important. Conflict and pain go with the territory –

that of changing how a profession thinks and furthering what we know about our world. The pressures on young researchers are to conform, to accept fashionable ways of analyzing problems, and above all to please senior professors and their own peers. Unfortunately this is bad for scientific progress.

The main difference between world-class researchers and sound researchers is not intellect; it is energy, single-mindedness, more energy, and the ability to withstand what will sometimes feel like never-ending disappointment, tiredness and psychological pain. Tenacity is almost everything.

•  I am still planning that ultimate MOOC post, but this one by Nathan Heller in The New Yorker comes close to drawing together a lot of the views out there: Laptop U.
• Inside Higher Ed reported on a new test of non-academic predictors of academic success - a suite of attributes that some researchers have dubbed "grit".
• And finally Edudemic had a nice post on using badges in your classroom. I still ant to try this in the second semester.

That's it for now. Enjoy.

A few first thoughts on games and badges

At the start of the new academic year I am reading and thinking about the so-called gamification of education. I have not read enough for a proper overview, but want to get some thoughts out there. Put very basically, the idea is that learning can occur through play. That does not mean that there has to be some kind of simulation, on-line or in-class game, rather it is about a way of structuring the learning experience. The ideas behind game-based learning are:

• learning-by-doing,
• focus on problem solving, and
• engagement of students.

A nice post on the Inside HigherEd blog explains how something like the Fitbit brings gaming elements to fitness and what that may mean for learning. (Fitbit is an activity and sleep tracker, similar to the Nike Fuel Band). You can set your objectives, in the fitness case, in terms of calories or steps. Measuring steps taken or floors climbed adds motivation. The data can be tracked and analysed, but there is also immediate feedback and recognition of milestones reached. There is a social element and you can share the process and the results. It is of course all very much mobile.

For teaching an Introductory Economics course this could mean:

• finding a way for students to set their objectives, 
• regular measurement of knowledge, skills and competencies gained, with quick feedback,
• adding elements of sharing, collaboration and competition through badges and leaderboards, and
• ideally it should all be easy to access - electronic and mobile.

I don't know how to tackle all this yet, but it is being done. HBR blog network reports how Deloitte made learning in their leadership programme a game with great success.

I'll keep everyone posted on the progress.