Piz Memoir, Woolpeace and the Derry Journal. Pat, thank you so much for coming in and joining us. It's really great to have you in studio. Thanks very much Greg. So where does this book sit? You didn't want to necessarily write specifically about individual characters or political figures, though you could. It's not an autobiography as such, but it covers your life. So where do you, where does this book sit then? That's good. No, Greg, I had a simple rule. When I started I said, right, if I couldn't remember it, I wasn't going to write about it. So it's a memoir. And that's, and it's all the stories in my life. Well, it's called War, Peace and the Derry Journal, but I'd say a third of it's set in Donegal or from stories from Donegal. Like, I am from Leta Kinney. I grew up here. I had a joint. I went to, I went to St. Junans and after St. Junans, I ended up at Leta Kinney, RTC as it was known in. And like I could see the people there were sort of underwhelmed by my leaving certain results in the sense that I failed maths and my Irish wasn't that great. But anyway, I ended up doing business studies. I was going on for an accountancy. And as you Greg, you know me reasonably well, you would know I'd be the world's worst accountant. So anyway, Sean. Doesn't stop many others. That's for sure. I was there and anyway, very strange thing. Patsy McGonigal, who's a contributor to this place. Patsy was the PE teacher out at the RTC at the time. And he wrote a column for the Derry people. And he was sitting there again. This is how circuitous my life goes. He was sitting in Sean Corn, who ran the Derry people at the time. And Sean says we're looking for a young reporter, a cub reporter. And he, Patsy was very friendly. We got a guy called Jerry Darney, who I believe got a who did qualify as an accountant. And I think he works for De Beers somewhere in America or somewhere. Probably much wealthier than you make it out of. I was a lot wealthier than I am. So Jerry wasn't interested in being a cub reporter, but he knew I was because I had been editing the student magazine. And so cut the chase. Jerry came to me and said, Patsy's on about somebody, there's a paper looking for a reporter. He says, I don't want the job. But he says, I think I might suit you. Yeah. So I joined the Derry people. And I spent what was it basically six years there with Sean Corn and so on. And it was the best, Greg, without question, it was the goodest experience. But there was obviously something in you that was motivated by what was happening at the time or the search for, you know, the search for truth, or wanting to get stories out there. Did you see that in yourself? Ah, yeah, absolutely. You were already applying that in the college there. Absolutely. They also helped. I was good at about three things, English, economics and history. That's what I got my honors on. Perfect. So that was, I should have really been going there. But I worked with Sean. And then, but the other thing, Greg, just running parallel with that was the troubles in the north were really at full swing. You know, I started in 74 and the Derry people, the troubles in the north were really, and 20 miles up the road from me, I was, I grew up another Kenny, 20 miles up the road in Derry. There was British Army, there was REC, there was the B Special, there was John Hume, there was Martin McGinnis, there was Bishop Daly, there was Bloody Sunday, there was all this going on, there was the World's Media there. It was the epicenter. It was the epicenter. Yeah, absolutely. And that fascinated me. And after you see what happened then was Sean Curn, letter Kenny took off like a rocket at that time economically because Courtaulds, as it was then, came in and they promised, I think it was between 600 and 800 well-paying jobs. The RTC came in and there suddenly there was X number of students, I can't remember it's there, 400, 500, all of a sudden. And letter Kenny, which had been a backwater town before that suddenly took off, you know, you could have literally had your dinner on the middle of the street on some days because there was no traffic. Look at it today. Yeah, it was a totally different place. But that was the background and I in 1974 and June 10th, 1974, I joined the Derry people, which is the Donegal News now. Were you in any way cautious about moving to Derry at that time? Were there any in your family saying that, you know, it's a lot going on there? Let me put that in context. I left the Derry people and went to RT. You got a job in RT. And can you imagine the local boy getting a job with a big nice podcast? Yeah, of course. My mom and father were very happy about it and so on. But anyway, I was my dear Mrs. Rosie. We were in RT for about a year. And she says, hey, look, we have to go to my aunt's 50th and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary in Cairndonna. And we were in Dublin on time. And she says, look, it's not a we're half it to go. It's not going to be your choice. We're going to. So we drove all the way down from Dublin, went to Cairndonna, went to this thing. And Larry Doherty, who was the chief photographer with the Derry Journal, I had known Larry and I was sitting having my dinner and he came over and started set. And he says, how do you like Dublin? I says, so so. And he says, hey, you know, there's a job coming up on the Derry Journal, etc, etc. Now, I said, I might be. And he says, look, I'll let you know. So he said, the D-list, they're looking for a chief reporter, but he says what they're really looking for is an editor. So I basically said, I took note of it and so on. And anyway, when the advertisement appeared, Larry rang me up and he says, hey, look, you should apply for us. Now, I don't think I applied for it, but I got a, I sent off a letter to Colin McCarl at the time who was the sort of general manager of the Derry Journal. And then fast forward about two weeks later, I'm sitting in the aisle in this one of the uniformed guys there come up and tap me and tap me on the shoulder. And he says, look, there's a guy from the Derry Journal on the phone on the in the aisle at the press room looking for you.  So I took and he says, the next time you're down, come and come and talk to me. So I came down and I went in and I talked the column and I took the job. But my mother's famous first words were shades of John McEnroe. And I told her it was moving to Derry says, you can't be serious. No, leaving RT going back to going on to Derry. At that time, the hunger strikes were on. There were shootings, there was bombings and she thought you're going to get end up getting yourself killed. You know, because that was the perception. And you were working in news.  And we've seen the risk. Absolutely. You know, over the years, you do get the odd threat like I can't even repeat the language on there.  And there is there's I've got on the phone, like Greg, there was shootings and they like there was all that sort of stuff. And you were right in the middle of it. And of course, you were dealing with, you know, heavy the big piece like John Hume was the what the man of the century, he was the top politician in Ireland. I actually saw him on my office one day. He rang Ben Bradley of the Washington Post. He was able to and he was able to get through and he was on first name terms, so presidents and prime minister. And that was I remember one week he rang me on, I think the Monday, he rang me from America for he wanted to John always wanted the lead story. So he wanted a lead story in the Tuesday's journey on the Wednesday, he rang me from Brussels. And on the Thursday, he rang me from from Westminster. Like John ended up with dimension. I would wonder all that travel on the compressed the air on an airplane. I wonder how much that I do because the man was absolutely just just in relation to your move back from from Dublin to Derry. What motivated you to do that? Because, you know, there is sort of like a pathway, isn't there where you start somewhere, then you move there and eventually you're heading, you know, you want to go national, you would got that move. Yeah, you were in the heart of democracy in the doll and what have you, do you know what I mean? So box tick box tick, you could have spent 40 years doing that. Yeah. But what was it? What was it that swung the move back to Derry? I was fascinated by the troubles in the north. There's no doubt about it. Do you think you did a job to do? I'm not, Greg, I really can't answer that question. I gotta admit, the day of Bloody Sunday, we had gone, my father and my brothers, we had gone to believe it or not, a match at Fun Park and the way back, we had my dad on the radio. And it just started coming in about four o'clock with shootings and the Derry and the other. We came home that night and we sat, the whole family, nobody moved. My dad switched from RTE to BBC to UTV and we listened to that coverage. And for some reason, almost by osmosis, it's steeped under him. But I have to tell one other thing, my father was an absolute news junkie. When he'd get up in the morning, he would put on RTE and then he would put on, before he left, he'd put on the headlines. He used to go to work at eight o'clock, he'd have on the headlines. Back in those days, he was able to get home for lunch and he would put on the one o'clock news on RTE and then he'd put on the six o'clock news and then the nine o'clock news. In the morning, he would buy the Irish press and in the evening, he'd buy the evening press and Sunday, he used to buy the Sunday independent, the Sunday press and later on, Sunday work, now my mother didn't like the Sunday work twice, but we're not going to, but for various reasons. I'll not mention why. So here's the thing, the first morning I was supposed to be doing training on RTE, I went down to the sub-editors desk and the chief sub says, right, Pat here, right, this story and we'll see how you get on. I wrote the story and he's just gone ahead and that's just why. He says, you don't need to, and I didn't realize, now I was an old genius, don't get me wrong, but I had been listening to so much RTE that I knew their style. I didn't need to be trained, you know, because there was a couple of other people and they took them all a week to get into the style and I literally wrote one story and said, no, you can go ahead. Now, the way I sort of framed the RTE experience was that it was the center of, you know, you're in the dull, the center of where decisions are made for the Republic and RTEs. And on first listen, it might have sounded like I was talking of moving back to Derry's a backward step, but I don't believe that because that was where the news was. You were at the heart of the and actually feeding news into BBC, into RTE, because the paper of record for Derry, they'd be saying, well, what's in that? You know, quoted in court, so I'm sure, you know, seen as the record of on the ground. So really, you know, in a way, it was a huge advancement of your career in returning to Derry at that time to that paper. Absolutely. I was in first hand now with people who were sent their stage, you know, like Hume, as I said earlier, was the man. It was quite like the Americans, the first person they rang Ted Kennedy. He was, Hume was his go to person for for advice on Northern Ireland. Kennedy introduced then Hume to Tip O'Neill, who was the speaker of the House. Reagan, apparently Ronnie Reagan after a first meeting with Margaret Thatcher, and as they were closing their books, apparently one of the first things he said to her was, and what are you going to do for my friend, Johnny Hume? You know, that's the influence. The claim was that when many other people were showing, showing in the back door of the White House, Hume could go in the front door. Was that a two way relationship? Because, you know, you talked of John Hume being ringing you up and saying, look, I'd really like the lead on this one. But that works in another direction. He's got some contacts book. Hasn't he? Did that work to your advantage? Yes and no. By the way, I never quite got the same John and he was a brilliant man and other, but he could be pregnant. He could be. When you really, really know people, you know, when you have a relationship that's not that goes a little bit closer because you're from the same area, ish, you know, you know the ins and outs, like it's a bit different. I think he knows someone a bit better than the rest of the world. Yeah, exactly. There's a, like I want to put it on the record. John was the architect of the whole piece by absolutely. But he, you know, this St. John, one that I read about, John could be very difficult to deal with. Now he was under a hell of a lot of pressure and all the rest, but he also and he was a genius, like he had a brain the size of a planet and so on.  You weren't. Yeah, I think he thought you should sort of follow on question. And like, as my dear brothers will tell you, I'm not quite that type of person. I feel I'm entitled to my own views. But I'm sure you are very much respected above other people for that, because people in Paracan have respect that, don't they? But then you had courses like Martin McGinnis. Yeah. If Hume was young, Martin McGinnis was young, like Hume was sort of the peace man and Martin was allegedly the war man. So there you go, Greg. So in terms of particularly when you became editor of the newspaper, how did you present the news? Because a reference to this earlier on, you know, you could have the army reading it from one perspective, you could have the Protestant community from another perspective, the Republican community from the loyalists and, you know, different eyes on the same story. So how what was the editorial policy? How did you present your stories so that you didn't feel like you were excluding any any particular group? Greg, I have to say that's a brilliant question, because that was one of the first problems I ran into. Before I arrived, the other before me was Frank Corn Frank was of the old nationalist tradition and so on. And the brilliant man too, he was very good. But the pepper was very traditional. And you know, the hunger strikes were on and I remember chatting to people and I could see things were changing. So I started, but the traditional thing in the diary journal was, if it wasn't John Hume, it was Bishop Edward Daley. And if it wasn't Bishop Edward Daley, it was maybe the mayor and so on. And I started putting in statements from Martin McGinnis and started putting in statements from Gregory Campbell and any of the DUP and so on. And I remember one day I got, I'd reached ahead one says, you're turning this pepper into sort of like the, on public because you're publishing other people's statement. But at that stage, Sinn Fein, we're getting about 30% of the votes on the big houses. I remember one reporter said Pat, there's them and us and I thought in terms of the North she meant Catholics and Protestants. That wasn't what she was referring to at all. She was referring to the fact that there's what they call the Colmore set. And then there's the people who live in places like the Bogside and the Craig and that's generalization. But that's what, what she meant was the Colmore Catholics were the Catholic people who were nice middle class, the doctors, the lawyers, and she says, they don't speak for us. So the British, the British army weren't creating their houses. They're reading our houses there now. So there was a dichotomy there than which a lot of people were the Catholic community, what just wasn't sort of homogenous. There was a lot of different views. Was the balanced approach a red line for you? Clearly, obviously, because you maintained that. Yeah, I got into a fairly big row with the proprietors, the directors. And I said, look, here's this. And by the way, I was very nervous about it. I was only in the job about a year. And here it was a young editor telling the people who owned it, I am changing everything. And I said, look, here's the rule, as far as I'm concerned. It's the best story every week. I don't care for every edition. I don't care whether it's from Sinn Fein, the DUP, SDLP or whatever. The rule is it's the best story. Did you have to change a culture then within the news? Yes. But Frank F.E. McCarls, the proprietor, it was a brilliant man. I kept saying, but he was really, and he looked after me. He said, right, Pat, as long as I can stand up, and anybody rings in this door or anybody comes on to complain, that that's the best story that's in each edition, that's our lead story, our respective, he said, I will support you all the way. And he did. Not that it is the, not that it is really how you test the success of something, but the new approach, did it have an impact one way or other on circulation? Absolutely. A couple of things happened. A long came Dairy City into the League of Round, but the Tuesday paper doubled circulation. The Friday went from someone like 1920 up to about 27. And at one stage, I remember, on a couple of pages, about 29,000 paper sales on a Friday. Now, that was special occasions. But it worked very well. The Dairy Journal was actually at one stage earning more money than some of the Nationals. And we, and it was very, very influential. Greg, when you consider the fact that between Dairy and any show, and we parted on it all, a paper was selling 29,000. Like you look any paper and I wouldn't get anywhere near that. So Pat, at the height of the troubles, you're living in, you're working in, on a really important newspaper of the time, covering all the issues of the day. And then of course, you know, you're from Letterkenny, so you're coming down to Letterkenny as well. How different was Dairy to Letterkenny? And how bizarre was it to sort of step from one environment into the other, yet them so close together? It was day and night. It really was day and night.  I remember the first, one of the first days I drove up the Strand Road in Dairy. And I noticed, for some reason, I noticed all the street lights had been shot out. And I asked somebody, what happened? She said, I shot them out so dark their active service units could move around. The hunger strikes were on. And every gable end had support, the hunger strikers and all. And I remember thinking, have I made the right decision here? And the other thing is back then, we had two kids. I remember a lot of weekends, I would leave Dairy. We were living in Dairy, and I'd move back out to Letterkenny and stay with me parents just to get away from it all. And anyway, I remember one Sunday morning, I got a call from one of the reporters, and she was really, really upset. Our lead story on Friday had been about a young fella who had gone up and he had confessed to being an informer. And anyway, she was really upset. His body was found, he had been executed by the IRA, and his body had been found not too far from our home. The thing was, she was the only reporter at the press conference where he admitted is. And she was really uptight. She said, we were sort of used to justify the execution of this young fella. So I remember, I met a couple of senior Republicans, I said, we will never, ever go to a press conference like that. We're not here to justify no of the execution. That wouldn't have happened in Letterkenny, you know, but that was the reality of life in Dairy. And I remember one day, we had a guy from the British Army, and we had John Human, and we had Martin McGinnison, and I thought to myself, this wouldn't happen, you know, in Galway or Kerry. It couldn't happen. You know, he was the colonel from the British Army. It used to be funny, but a well-known Republican in Dairy told me what used to happen was, the British Army guy would come in, and there'd be two big Land Rovers come in first, and everybody would say, oh, that's the colonel arriving. But about ten months later, this little sort of incident, now if I can care, would come in, and that was the colonel. You know, in other words, they were watching their security, but a Republican guy says, we know that the colonel comes in and we care that's following. So that's how the up to speed they were, you know, they knew exactly what was going on. But you had all sorts of people coming. I remember at Greg, we used to get, I remember there's a guy, a French guy, often wondered afterwards, was he a secret agent or something, because he used to come in regularly. But my best story about that, Greg, was I was sitting one day, and there's this guy called Kathleen Greenover, I remember her name, she worked for the American Embassy, and she rang me, and she said, Pat, can I bring this guy down to DC?  So that was, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, and she rang again. She rang about three times, and the third time she was almost begging, she says, look, can I bring this guy down? So she brings this guy down, and I stood out of central casting, he was about six foot four, teeth, you could see your reflection and blonde hair, and so on. And he wore those type of coats that the American Secret Service. So the guy sat down, and he started asking me about Martin McGinnis, and he started asking, but I was so busy, I wasn't paying attention, you know, and so on. And he stayed for about an hour and a half. I actually had to say, look, you people have to go, I can't keep doing this. So because it was Thursday, because we had a paper. Anyway, following Monday morning, or morning, Martin McGinnis came down, and I was chatting with him, and I was getting up to leave, I said, by the way, Martin was a guy from the American Embassy, or American down here the last day, asking a lot of questions about you.  And I said, what do you mean? He says, that guy is from the CIA, and so on. Now, how Martin knew this? I don't know. Now, I remember the guy's name at that stage, I don't remember it now. Understood. What they were doing was, Bill Clinton was checking out whether to give McGinnis and Adams visas to come to the States. Oh, wow. And your man was checking out what, whether the bona fides of McGinnis and Adams were worth giving. Did he get the visa? He got the visa. Well, you didn't get it. So that was my rule of peace process. And it really doesn't get the attention it deserves. Now, obviously, you know, you can oppress people with bad news all of the time, right? And then eventually people can, I'm not picking up the paper because it's draining me, right? So was it a difficult process to balance light and shade with features, with talking about positive stuff, maybe featured articles or collumes or what have you? Greg, I remember one day you'd need happy polls to read this paper, because it was so depressing, there's bombs, shootings, court cases and all around. And one day I remember thinking, this is, I remember one Friday I was going through it and I said, this is really, you know, it was dark all the time. And why would you bother? If you knew there was a bomb up a town, I'd kill the couple of people. Why do you want to read the journal on Friday to tell you the same story? Yeah. So I had this idea one time. I was out walking one day and I heard there were two teenagers, a boy and a girl walking ahead of me. And the wee girl was definitely the brains of the outfit without question. And anyway, they were slagging each other.  And I thought, wait a minute, the dairy people, you know, the old joking dairy, what's first prize is a weekend dairy, the second prize is two weeks, you know, and they had a great self deprecating sense of humor. So I had this idea, I came up with this idea called the Jude, the dead column. And I deliberately put it on page two, because our editorial was on page two, and it was always serious. And I thought, right, here's a wee bit light and shade. And I remember the management were the directors, weren't sure about this, because the Dairy Journal was quoted in parliament, it was quoted in courts, it was quoted back in Emmett. And this sort of, you know, do I do this? Does it trivialize that? You've got it. You've got it. And I thought it was dodgy. But anyway, I remember they were sort of panicky, sure about this. And I see I didn't discuss it, well, they would just put it on bottom line. It took off like a rocket. Dairy people just loved getting their name mentioned in jail. It was because it was interaction with the community. The only time anybody ever got mentioned in the Dairy Journal was either whether they were shot dead or in court.  So suddenly here, and we started, we started doing a lot more features, and we tried to get away from the sort of the doom and bloom of the trophy. And I suppose if it came, it was to reflect the community, to hold them here up to it. And that is light shade, the humor, the dark humor, and all that kind of stuff. Time, I wish I had another hour. Is there a piece you wrote, an interview with someone, a moment that's easy for you to identify as a stand out?  Nothing to do with, one day this wee woman came in to see me. She was called Peggy McFadden, and she was from Melbourne, Australia. She was sent out as a child, as a child migrant. On the way out, they took away sort of her birth certs and all the rest of it. They changed her name. She spent 50 years looking, she had one brother in this earth, and she spent her time looking for him. And the story she came back in, normally somebody would come in to see me and they'd get 10 minutes, because it was so busy. She came in at about 11 o'clock one day, and the deputy editor was what Gerard Colchivon, Michael Iney, she rang in about three times. Peggy was still there at two o'clock, she was been in. But she told me the story that she spent 50 years looking for her brother. She came to a dairy, she went to the Nassar's house, nobody gave her any information. Anyway, the law changed in Australia, and she got an information where her brother was, and his name was, she said he was working on a farm by a people called, belonging to people called Daley in Ballabafé. So the only person she knew with that name was Bishop Daley. And so she wrote to Bishop Daley and said, Bishop, can you find this, this is my brother, I've been looking for him for 50 years. He says, Bishop Daley says, yeah, of course, and he rang up the parish priest in Ballabafé, and the parish priest says, look, there's nobody here called Daley. And Bishop Daley went, who was a totally decent man, says, wait a minute, Ballabafé, and he said, Ballabé. So he rang the parish priest in Ballabé in Monhan, and they asked, was there a Patrick McFadden working there? I said, Bishop, there was, but he's dead, he died two years ago. Now Peggy came in and told me the story, and she's, no, the real kicker, the real, when I was looking for my brother, she says, we're going to Dublin one day, and the bus that we're in, or whatever it was, broke down. And they took everybody off the bus into this wee cafe, and where? Ballabé. And she said, she sat for two hours, and she said, did my brother walk past me? Did he, did he, you know, and she said, she got a break, she said, after she got the letter, she had a nervous breakdown. But there's a lot more to the story. Is it in the memoir? I mentioned her in the memoir, yeah. I was going to say, there could be a whole book on its own. Listen, I've kind of got, just to get access to you and just chat about your amazing career path, and I kind of, it is all really about the memoir as well at the same time, because much of that is contained within Warpiece and the Dairy Journal. 12 years ago, you started this, why did it take so long, why did it take so long to get it out? That was my fault. Kevin O'Darty was the parish priest and Newton, and he was a friend of mine, and one day I met Kevin for a coffee, and we were sitting chatting, like me and you were chatting now, and he says, Pat, why don't you write all this down before you forget a type thing, and so on. I says, write, Kevin. So I started work the fall on Monday morning. I worked until about Thursday, and then I took a break for 12 years. So I don't know why, but I met Kevin, who's of Colin Kilpress, and I met him one day, and he says, Kevin was subtle. He says, Pat, write it all down before you get Alzheimer's. That was the, and then I said, wait a minute, several people said, Pat, even if nothing else, even if you don't publish it, why don't you leave it for your kids? And that was the motivation then to do it. Yeah, and it's kind of your memoir so far, because of course, you still write for the paper, you still commentate on matters, you've got your podcast with Jude twice a week, you're teaching with writing groups as well, so it's not over by any stretch of the imagination. So the journey that you take the reader on is it's similar to what we've been doing here, it's the highlights, the important parts, and you tell a lived experience, not just a working experience of wall piece and working in the paper. I started off, and a guy called Sean Corn, and I want to put on the record here now, what I learned in journalism, I learned from Sean Corn, and I owe him everything. But like, I used to travel to the courts with Justice Larkin, you know, like he wouldn't do that now, you know, and you'd end up in all sorts of ways. Like Larkin one day, I remember he made a total mess of a case. And when we got back into the car, he says, Pat, what do you think of my judgment in that case? And I said, Justice, you got that wrong, because one guy totally contradicts us, and he didn't speak to me the whole way home. Then about a month later, he asked me, what did you think of my decision in that case? And I said, brilliant judge. And that he was happy. Right. Okay. I don't, I haven't got a hold of the book. Some kind of going off. It won't be out until the first of the first week in November. Are you proud of it? Absolutely. I'm not. Greg took 12 years. And I know I'm glad I did it. That's, I don't know. Prod's the right word, but I'm glad I did it. Yeah. And as you're reflecting, those conversations you had, those relationships you had, the role you played in being a paper of record, which we don't see as much anymore, we're not getting nostalgic. Did you miss it whilst you were doing it? And as you look back now, you realise, wow, okay, something really, really important happened. I was engaged and involved with really important things with really important people. I think sometimes when you're living it, you don't get it as much. Yeah. What was it like reflecting back on it all? I don't remember who told me this, but I was told there's three jobs in Dairy worthwhile. The MP, the Bishop and the editor of the Dairy Journal. And I never knew, I never thought I would be the third sort of cog in that or the third leg of that particular stool. And yeah, see when I retired, Greg, I really didn't miss it. There wasn't an adrenaline thing of being involved in the Dairy Journal. You were the center of the universe. Like Garvin Downey, who's the publisher, as I mentioned earlier, he made the point, there were silos that British Army didn't talk to Sinn Féin, the Sinn Féin didn't talk to the SLP, the SLP didn't talk, well, you know, but they all talked to the Dairy Journal. So you were getting it from every side, you know, but that being said, the Dairy Journal has to be established and run and edited in a way that keeps those lines of communications open. And often that's the real challenge. That was the real challenge. And you know, but we went out, we had a rule, you left your politics at the front door, and we published every, every side and we didn't, and we've without fair, Gregory Campbell, who's the DEP guy was on regularly. And Wally Hay, who's a senior figure in the DEP said that I actually said it on the record that Dairy Journal was one of the first papers they had come across. And I was very proud of it. Well, I've about an hour of more questions that I don't have. It's been described the book as revealing an insightful memoir. MacArthur reflects on a life devoted, a life of devoted service to the people of the Northwest Ireland, recalling the triumph and the tragedies, the villains and the heroes. And it's out when? I think it's the first week in November. Okay, well, we'll make sure to remind people then stocking filler alert. Okay, thanks, Pat. Thanks very much.


Thank you Can I first I think I'm in for a fantastic introduction and can I think once was and where's Mark sitting? There he is for inviting me. So I feel very honored. I'm a little a little bit feeling under the weather So if I'm not so enthusiastic as I'm normally I'm just Shout so the reason why I like interaction is that I hate lecturing I come from a master's university and we do problem-based learning at master's university So standing in front of a crowd is really boring so There's going to be lots of interaction you can choose what we're going to discuss today, which is quite interesting So just to pick your brains also to get to know who you are and to understand where we're from Every do you know what formal informal learning is? Yes, you know, I guess what social interaction is Between two people or more people. What is what is learning analytics? What is learning analytics? What's the what's the word that comes up? Data Sorry, I didn't Okay, what more What do you what's the feeling that you have from learning analytics? Yeah, so it's not only student learning. It's also about a process. Yeah Yes Yeah, so is Dublin City University using learning analytics Okay, it's quite interesting. I always do this kind of exercise and I've done this version in different versions I think now five or six times and you're the first audience That hasn't mentioned negative elements yet learning analytics. So I'm very happy to be here Yeah, I just saw a fantastic piece. Sorry, I forgot your name Mark's. Yeah, I didn't know it was mark because but they can't be too much And yeah He's he's marked to Yeah, yeah, yeah 2.0 He's doing some interesting stuff and he's already targeting students based on their behavior. So that's really so You don't really have a negative feeling with learning analytics are you doing Mm-hmm. Good question It I didn't how does it work here? Have you informed your students about this? Did students opt out how many Okay, okay Yeah Okay, yeah, why? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm because where's the boundary of Where's the boundary of what happens in terms of learning inside the classroom or inside of yearly and outside that's yeah But what's new in what way? Yes, we've been yeah When I applied for this readership in learning analytics people were like, yeah, but you're an economist why I Mean I I've only started publishing and learning analytics with learning analytics in my in the title one year ago But all the I mean in the 60s people were already collecting loads amounts of data and trying to help our students Interpret the data Yeah Yeah, yeah We are we think at the open University that we are the first Institute in the world to have an ethics policy for Learning analytics and we tweeted this and it's in times higher education. That's far. No one said the contrary But many people at least at the open University are very concerned About learning analytics and when we did a consultancy with a hundred students Many students on the one hand were like yeah I don't want you to follow me and I don't want you to know that I'm posting Something on the internet or that I'm disabled or that I'm Particular collar or that I'm a woman with three children now I'm divorced or whatever, but at the same time many students indicated Yeah, but I've been dropping out and I'm failing with my course and I was really surprised that no one contacted me So there's on the one hand this concern about privacy and yet the other hand this need at least in the open University of a kind of I Need this personalization that there's lots of tensions and I'm if I can find remote remote which I Have no idea where I left Did I put it in my pocket? Here we go So today I want to have a debate with you and to start the debate. I mean So the definition of learning analytics the classical definition It's the measurement which you set before collection analysis of reporting of data about learners and their context For the purpose of understanding and optimizing learning to help them to learn In an environment that is a code. That's a classical definition that was only listed in 2011. I personally think it lacks the kind of Social-cultural elements so my colleagues and my team Rick Ferguson Says that we should focus on social learning analytics. That is basically how do people build knowledge together within the context of their social-cultural environment and actually quite like that definition, right, so Has anyone seen a picture like this? I mean you have because you've been to the Euro call anyone seen this What's the story of the picture? Yeah Cool, I should I don't have to come here. It's cool. It's cool. So the problem I have With this picture is with the VLE or the LMS system and all this analytics and then a kind of a visualization and the teachers then Reflecting on all these visualizations and then comes up with some kind of informed judgment what students should do I like it as a simplification But I think the real power Would come if we would start to link Student To this and what you're doing. I think links to links is one also linking The students to the teacher so so the one of the principles of the Of the learning of the ethics policy that we designed for learning analytics is that students are not a number students and learning analytics is a moral practice so Teachers When they're judging students, they're not just numbers in their graph There are stories behind this and I think we all agree so we all so I'm normally I have to explain what learning analytics is and I always take a metaphor of football Who is this guy? Everyone knows this guy No for the people who don't know this who this guy is who is he? Louis van Gaal yes and The story in terms of learning analytics and to show you in a kind of layman's and what learning analytics all about I'm gonna focus on my hero The and basically the rise and fall of my hero So I have a very short YouTube movie and given that I'm from the Netherlands. I'm just gonna share this Do you remember this goal? What a bull go I Was sitting in France with my wife on a on a on a on a square We were the only Dutch people on the square all the French were supporting the Spanish And I we were one nil down and I was like, oh, this is the most fantastic moment of the day And then we scored another time and we scored another time And we after the fourth or the fifth goal people were tapping my shoulders You know, you shouldn't you shouldn't celebrate so loudly so No one guessed that we would even make it to the next round because we thought already have an awful team They they lost the previous previous European championship. So we thought they're never gonna win. So when we the thing which you probably don't know is that Footballers are continuously tracked in terms of learning analytics So you can see exactly what Robin van Persie is doing Continuously and you can do this real time with a service called squaca So this is This is learning analytics 2014 so what what what do you see in this particular picture? You're nodding like what No, no, so it's an all the players movement and where the passes are going and whether they're going back and whether they're going forward But it's it's lots and lots and lots of data. It is data useful To interpret who is going to win or not Yeah, you keep This this is real. Well, okay, this is screenshot after the match So this is like after 90 minutes, but you can do real-time analysis when when you're playing and especially if you pay a certain fee Then you can watch it real-time Yes, yes, yes Me neither me neither. So this is a simplified picture And what was again, I forgot again what was so this Spain is playing that way. They have one goal in that direction from that position and they had loads of I mean That even one went completely off target here and the Dutch had fantastic goals on that side And then the analytics allows you not only to drill on a kind of course level But it also allows you to drill on each individual player And you can see in this predictive modeling from Percy is comparative from Percy Previously so continuously what his performance is and then initially he was well not great Or just similar to what he's done before but then he scored his magical goal And then he came he went from strength to strength in terms of his performance And there is this other guy I in a Robin. I don't know if you know him He's allows you play but from Percy. He was like he was my he's my hero So the fundamental question is then of course We lost in a semi-finals So I'm just wondering He got he got five stars during his first play and during the semi-finals He got only one and a half star and if we have all this learning analytics all this data to our disposal Why didn't this fantastic world-leading coach intervene? So what I would like you to do is to talk to your neighbor For one or two minutes. This was a this was the match against Argentina this fantastic screenshot And what I would like you to do is to discuss Where if you would be Van Hal if you would be the teacher Where would you have intervened in the performance of Robin from Percy? One minute go ahead I Do you remember the answer I Okay If I asked the group over there where where Should Van Gaal Van Gaal apparently you pronounce it in English, but it's weird. He's Van Gaal Why why should he have intervened according to you over there No, no, no, you're preparing you're comparing him to the previous from Percy So all the all the dates you have about from Percy and how well he's in terms of you know the positioning and how well He's playing so it's like and the history of his previous from Percy You're using that and in comparison to the previous history of how well from Percy plays That's his benchmark That's right. The thing is if you're comparing you to Robin, which is here or not But if you were the performance of Robin might be Unpredictable and it's that unpredictability. Yeah, that is what swings the game. Yeah, I See some puzzled. No, I disagree Yeah Yeah Yeah Okay, so you're saying after 15 minutes Yeah Why not So for me to understand what that means I need to know what the other players around him are doing and how the performance Yeah, he is dropping relative to his teammates. Yeah, then maybe there's something to be read about that But I wouldn't be satisfied to make decisions just on that individual Mm-hmm Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean if we if so until until a certain point in time he was under par he And these genius players, you know, they just need one chance and then they score So, I mean it's what I think it's nice as a kind. This is a metaphor of teaching, of course is on the one hand data is extremely messy and It's only what you actually can measure, you know, the number of passes the positioning where people are walking But you don't really know What's what's in the minds and hearts of people? And you don't know what you're saying is the the interactions between those and also you don't really know You know the informal part of learning that is not captured so What I'm gonna talk to you today about is on the one hand my title says that I have to be very positive About learning analytics and I am But I think at the same time there are some caveats that I would like to discuss and we know for example In hindsight that from Percy like me was a little bit under the weather that day and you could have He scored a brilliant goal on Saturday the other week Yeah, nearly nearly the same but then he then he missed and then ten minutes later He scored just fantastic or so so it's like it's very difficult to to go into the psychology and that you need a little bit of luck Etc. Etc. So I'm gonna propose something really weird. I'm gonna give you a menu option And I only have one hour and there's so much to talk. There's so much data we can share I also have loads of things which I didn't put on slides, but we can discuss so we have a kind of Interaction so you can choose three courses Or you can say I want to have something else and just shout what you want so I could show you one of the studies we did on the power of Formal and informal learning So I'm just going through the menu now at the moment I can show you the power of formal and informal learning between teachers and How they learn inside and outside their practice I can show you a couple of studies That show how do students actually make a mix? How do they pick and choose in terms of all the VLE tools that they have at their disposal and how does that relate to? their behavior and performance I Could show you a fantastic study. This is this is the main piece of this is a In an adaptive mathematics online environment with over a hundred twenty different variables that we measured Over a period of time or I could show you a study Which is not yet published, but it's at the OU how we compared 40 modules and Looking at okay, how does learning design of those 40 modules link to the experience of students? but also how that linked to performance and What's underlying all of this so if I can just do a very simple show by hand so you can select three courses? given the time and then if there's time left over just to dress and so Three courses you can choose. So I'm just gonna who who wants to see a number one One two three four five six seven eight nine ten twelve. Let me just remind myself Because we're in analytics twelve. Yes Number two who is interested in number two One two three four five six seven eight nine Okay, who's interested in number three? One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen. Yes I can only vote three times. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not and I'm not checking if you're actually yeah number four One two three four five six seven eight and Number five who is interested in five? Oh So you're gonna skip the most interesting study Well, let's see how far we get and then So the power of formal informal learning So I have a kind of provocative question Which is basically and this is linked to the informal study that we did If 80% of our students learn more outside the classroom than they learn inside the classroom or inside the VLE What are we measuring? right The next one which links partly to This the third study is what kind of data is actually useful to collect in terms of VLE and the third one Which you haven't chosen so I'm not gonna discuss this then Just a little bit of context in our latest study we distinguish between Learner data and learning data so learner data we it's about From Percy how tall he is how fit he is how which size shoe he has what kind of shirt he's wearing You know the kind of baggage that you bring Before the plague before you come to the ground and learning data is what some of you also mentioned You know the process what's what's actually happening when there's him when he's on the page and plays all those balls And how can you then measure those and we think that learning analytics? There's so everyone talks about learning analytics, but what are you actually what are you trying to measure? so this is a study we did in a Face-to-face institution so not really learning analytics in a way So one of my PhD students who was interested in a medical program using problem-based learnings a problem is learning everyone's Is working in small groups of 12? They continuously meet for half a year in those groups of 12 and then the assumption is is that they primarily learn Within those groups of 12. That's the assumption, right? So then we used a principle called social network analysis to see okay, are they indeed learning? Only within the group or I'll see are they also learning outside the group So this is the picture What does what does the picture show you? It's very similar to the football pitch, you know with all the passes, but it's something different Any idea? Yeah Yeah so this student Has indicated of the 400 students in my medical program. I'm learning from one student and All the other 399 students independently from that student verified No, I'm not learning from him or her Well people who are very central in the network are people that Many people go to but it's also they might go to many people to discuss their learning So what do you think the colors are? the color yeah the colors Black and white and gray. Sorry. It's not a it's not a color indeed Yeah achievement data. Yeah, it's achievement data And what does it what does it show you? mm-hmm so if you look with a Quite weird angle. You see there are lots of white students on the fringes and More you get to the center the relatively more darker the colors so the higher the grade Yes, so Yes, so it's not and that's again this learning analytics. This is Data on the general picture So we then thought okay, but there are loads of other factors that influence this So we'd look Darker when you get to the middle Because you always find on the extremes of the thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah It's sort of what we would expect somebody who is unconnected with their yeah Yeah, there's There's a person here, which we talked about before who only has two friends But they're very dark Yeah, so I like modeling so The size is the kind of betweenness effect so are they sorry, that's a social network jogger It's like how many people are connecting to you and how many people are you connecting to others? So the bigger the size the more you're a kind of bridge builder Yeah, that's a very good question Yeah, so this is just one model to look at it So we try to for example control for prior knowledge. We try to control for motivation We didn't look at this particular case introvert extrovert, but in other studies. We've done this We looked at what extent they feel feel academically integrated into the and then you get into this weird thing called structural equation modeling So we looked at okay What actually predicts student learning and of course previous performance on modules heavily influences how well you're doing over time No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so so that's also what there isn't in in a structural equation modeling way We can then control for the city the direction Walks in that way if it's the other way around then so it's it's an assumption we make in the data modeling So what we found quite surprisingly was that you know the way students whether they are feel integrated or not or whether they are Motivated or not didn't influence but to our largest surprise The number of people that people were in in terms of the network was the best in terms of the number The best predictor for performance So it's like it's it's weird in a sense. So with whom your networking Has a massive influence on Your performance Yes, so we I should have explained this in a little bit more detail so we asked them Who are your friends and we specified you know going for a beer or going to the movies or discussing personal issues And we asked them with whom do you give information in terms of well how to solve a particular medical problem or Where to find a good article on our drosses or whatever and to whom do you give information? So we have a kind of fine grained Quantitative understanding of this And then Juliet afterwards did loads of qualitative studies as well to further impact those reasons So we were initially surprised that there was this massive social network effect So then we look even further and we went back to the to the these small groups of 12 and we assumed That most students would primarily You know learn this is one group this is another group and this is another group etc etc and We were in for a surprise So there are approximately 40 groups And you have to bear with me a little bit. This is an another graph, which is difficult to explain Everything which is below zero Means that people in a group are more inward focused than output focus everything Above zero until one that's an index. They are more outward focused And not inward focused in terms of whom do they give information? They seem to be mostly Outward focused, but also from whom do they get information? It's mostly outward focused. So what we found that the vast number of groups except these three learned more Outside their group Then they learned inside So the only thing they did was they had once a week a lecture on I don't know what heart Functioning or whatever and then the rest of the time they always met with a tutor on this small groups So Designated So it's really it's Yeah, so in terms of via Lee activities They are assigned to a particular group So if you would track via Lee behavior You would only track certain part of the learning if if the largest part of their learning occurs outside the classroom You know when they go to the library when they're sitting here having lunch, how do you? How do you measure that? Yeah, thank you for asking this I Don't have to study here with me, but If you just google me This is a Spanish woman. We did exactly the same study in a classical Spanish University And you find exactly the same that most students or even if they're Allocated in traditional lecture rooms and they work in small groups. They mostly learn with people outside a designated room in Finland with konfirman's a primary school children same mechanism We did lots of studies in in in the UK of course and again you find that most most groups Even if they're working together for half a year They continuously maintain informal links outside those group because we're human creatures If you decide we're in one group together, I will still publish with My mates from the Netherlands and from Spain and I still have my friends from Sweden where I was in God knows one ago So it's it's it's quite intuitive This goes against learning analytics in a way because you can't collect that data unless you do social network analysis I mean as anecdote many football players when they go from one club to the other the first thing they do is call Their mates who are actually playing there is actually a good thing to go there So, you know, it's it's part of life networking is continuously important And they sit at a different table every month And he's very good memory so he remembers everybody's name in class Yeah But so he every month they sit a new table, but every when I can extract this information extracting the data But he has the same Small number of friends. Yeah on yard. Yeah switching tables. Of course, of course and Research by Juliet and it's published in plus one. She she measured this over a period of two years afterwards and The first group that students were in is still the same group after two years. It's like 80 percent prediction accuracy So we're gonna skip the next study given time. So I will just give this slide later on So most students learn 80 percent of the students Yeah, I like to link with Pareto Have there been attempts to Yeah, we Such a great crowd here Another study which I haven't included here is we we try to manipulate this So Juliet for example the next study she did the 400 students 50 Two groups of 50 were continuously assigned with the same people and the other 300 were randomly assigned and you could see over time that there were two separate islands of these 50 people just by the way we assigned people over time and another study we Mixed people based on our social networks And then you can just see you can manipulate of course The network and it has a profound influence over time So you we as teachers can change that and particularly in a cross-cultural settings if we put students In a mixed cross-cultural group and we put them together for a very long time suddenly. They're all friends So that's really cool. So you can influence this From the students themselves they're saying the timing of that intervention is very important Yeah, and all the variable variables of the idiosyncratic nature of lecturing Yeah, you know who uses technology and yes, but the fact that when they get together in first year They're going to pick Facebook for their social network Yeah, as you can get in with an intervention before that they will do their forming Yeah So in a way it's it's creepy because similar in learning analytics We can manipulate this But nonetheless, it's So Yeah, so what what our research seems to indicate but it's still I mean work Consent the one of my PhD students is doing this again on Monday. She's manipulating students in a different group So if you put good students together with slightly weaker students Then the weaker students over time become better because they're in this smaller group So you could then start to play around with those kind of variables While the if you if you if you believe for God's key You learn more from teaching then from learn from learning in yourselves in a way They also learn from it, but the evidence at least is a little bit Yeah It is it is it is fascinating and in a way and that's why I don't like this initial learning analytics Picture because it's learning is much more messy Then you would expect so I skip to study twos go to study three This is an online course. So you for those who came for the learning analytics Element. Yes, there is data and there's online behavior So these are students again in Maastricht relatively small sample mostly international students and they in contrast to Dutch students who didn't most international students don't have Economics in secondary education. So we give them a kind of online crash course before they start and in line with my own philosophies of learning Those were social so they had to meet online in discussion forums to discuss economics problems and Work on it and at the same time every Every week we had video conferencing and then one of my PhD students He coded, you know that they use webcams that they use the whiteboard that they use chat You know that they use audio and then he looked at That's how students choose those technologies does that actually influence How they're learning and does it actually influence performance? So coming back to a question to you because I've been talking already way too long So this is a kind of the structure of the course. They met online synchronous and then asynchronous and again online synchronous asynchronous Which one which element do you think is the best? predictor for How well students are performing over time Asynchronous you read my paper You read this paper. Why do you think it's asynchronous? Yeah Yes Yeah, and we thought that you know the fact in the community of inquiry model Teaching presence is very important and also social presence is very important and Initially in my PhD. I only focus on discussion for but it's quite difficult to give The social feeling of learning and we thought oh you can actually see you know a teacher here I am with a slightly different haircut You know that that That the ability to to to help your students is much better in synchronous environments So then we again did a path model and you again see then You see a picture like this. So what do you see in the picture and this is amazing because I actually see people counting and looking at It's like normally when I give this like oh my god, this is way too complex So on this side we have we knew what kind of motivation students had Extrinsic motivation is I I study economics because I want to be rich or my parents told me if you study economics You're gonna be rich Intrinsic is oh, I really want to know why we're still so much in a difficult economic situation And I really like economics and a motivation is I literally don't give a toss why I'm here So why do you think that intrinsic motivation is the only line that links why do you think that is the case? Yes So students who are really intrinsically motivated to study in this case economics They're engaged They don't probably don't need to tutor even and Why is it that? There is this line going through from posting behavior and Why is it that? There is no link with the video conference you think no significant links, sorry But why isn't it not important to be present in this case at a video conference at least not in the first model So the weird thing is I mean exam dropped out for some reason on the slide So intrinsically motivated students do well they post a lot They post more over time and they then do well And of course they attend more video conferences after time But what about those extrinsically motivated students what what what kind of what do they do? Yeah Yeah, and and they unfortunately are more likely than to to drop out And That's quite Difficult and then I think in many online environments. You see that the ones who do extremely well are People who are who have a particular kind of motivation that is encouraging them to learn So you're sure you don't want to see the fourth study Let's go first to the fifth one because I have to finish at two Okay, yeah, okay, I will quickly skip through and I can always come back So just ignore this for the moment Okay, okay, okay So this is not published yet, so please don't cite this or turn off your large part So this is at the OU who are actually working so it's nice to link it with my own real world So we have this thing called learning design Where we have an online tool which I can show the link later that maps what what the learning design philosophy is of each individual module and Then a learning design specialist together with the module chair goes through each of the design decisions that a teacher makes and Loads of stuff. This is I think a health health course But I can't tell this because it has to be anonymous and then we we we basically tag the kind of activities that Students are expected to do based on the learning design. So in this case 40% of the activities are assimilative so reading You know learning and a bit of writing 2% is finding new information in this particular module 5% is discussing with peers 21 is productive. It's like in health care It's actually trying to you know to put on a wristband or to to I don't know put in a needle You know to to learn what it's like They didn't use any experimental stuff here Very little adaptive and then of course assessment. So for each of these modules we had That's how we've mapped around a hundred We mapped. Okay. What's the learning design? Do you have something similar in your Institute that you do it in this way? Because one of the things in the innovative pedagogy report is that we say okay learning analytics is great But if you don't know what in terms of data, you're actually looking at it's quite difficult to make Link so taking the metaphor again a football you would expect that the graphs of the Spanish team Will be very different than the graphs of a German team Right. So the way the German coach designs the the team play or the way we design is very different from the ones Okay. Yeah Who very difficult question it depends on on on the size of the module so in the in the large level one Course a year one courses. Let's say 4,000 students each Course has a specific tutor we call him an associate lecturer who works with a group of 20 very intensively together And but at the same time they get support from well from one or two teachers over this 4,000 students Oh, sorry, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I should have mentioned this And this is people from my institute from the Institute of Education Technology So learning design Specialists are working together with module chairs. Sorry. That's jargon from the OU with with Module convenes To map all this out So this is a very this this takes our learning designers three days per module So it's a tremendous amount of work But we think in order to understand learning analytics. We need to understand the strategy behind Yeah So then what we what we did and I'm hoping that you can see kind of a narrative is we try to see okay our teacher designing Unique courses or are there kind of patterns that are fairly similar? So we found out four different Categories and I will explain them in a minute So the first category is what we call constructivist Clusters so people have lots of things in terms of content. I See not in yet where lots of reading that students have to do very limited experiential stuff and Assessments, that's one category of courses then another recipe of courses is loads of assessment activities during the module and then limited other things and then there is a mix of well, a relatively more finding activities and lots of experiential learning and The fourth one which we call a social constructivist, which is lots of communication lots of these productive activities Moodle yeah, yeah No, so this is basically how the the module confeder has designed the module Based on the kind of the blueprint Yes, yes So perhaps I shouldn't say this in front of a camera, but it's quite surprising at the vast majority of our courses are Classical Knowledge-driven Yes, yes, yes, you should come and work at that at our university and tell us I'd like to know how Moodle does Yes No, no, so this this is purely based on on the kind of battle plan the recipes that that Module chairs have produced in a way they could use any kind of combination You know have ten from Percy's in your group and then or have none of them It's basically it's whatever people decide to do Just to add yeah, my own thesis is on work in a college, which is a non-line Yeah, I found that despite what the literature is saying Learning should be social construct. Yeah, it was mostly transmission. Yeah Yeah, so information. So let's let's okay. Let's Which one do you think is the is more beneficial for For learning in terms of performance of these four who thinks that one is the most beneficial Constructivist so loads of reading Who thinks that too is loads of assessments continuous assessments? One Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Learning Yeah, but performance and by by how many people actually met in the OU one of the things is that many people drop out because of distance education So you would hope that a learning sign would help students to continue to study. So learning is being measured by the achievement Yeah, fine number of people who passed the course and with the number of grade Which one who thinks about a social constructivist is the best way Okay, let's have a look. This is this is very tentative. This is only again a health and safety warning only 40 modules This is not the truth. There might be other designs. So with all this health and safety This is what students think so we I've linked this with 20,000 20,000 students so typical student surveys and linked this with the design of the course And what you see is that if I mean, it's not always significant because there are only 40 modules But in general if there are lots of assimilative activities, it's always positive. So students like this If there are lots of finding information activities in it or lots of communication activities They report They who fill in the survey Hmm Of course, they don't know that, you know, they can't compare it But at least if you compare all the surveys of all the modules together, it's quite puzzling to us I probably have to turn off the camera So one of the things my criticism I'm not criticizing my fantastic institution is only students who Pass a certain amount of activities then get the invitation to complete this so Some students who who drop out in the beginning are not asked this questionnaire so You have to take this with a pinch of salt. So then let's look at we like objective behavior, right behavior of people so then we looked at VLE behavior, so this is the number of minutes that students spend on a weekly basis and Just ignore the third one because this is very weird It's we only had one module at this point in time that we could link with VLE behavior So what do you see any patterns in terms of VLE behavior in terms of this design of how modules were implemented Yeah, so she constructivist is like Extremely high And then over time Similar right so lots of activities to do Yeah, yeah Yeah Yeah, yeah, and of course I have to again take it with a pinch of soul because these are averages and certain modules Finish after 12 weeks certain finish after 40 weeks some continue until 60 weeks At the light the degree at the green the gray the solid gray Yeah, but that's that's due to an odd thing. This is only one module. So there is and This is probably when students had to complete an assessment. That's where they go back to the VLE So if you look at individual modules, you see this is a constructivist so hardly anyone spends more than 200 minutes Per week in the VLE and it's mostly, you know, it goes with peaks and troughs linked to assessments. This is the social constructivist So loads and loads and loads and loads of activities pursuant to the sum one actually goes until 1400 So immediately you see okay to just by designing the course The behavior of students is completely different and that's intuitively logical, right? if you then link this to Again the seven categories same picture So the seven categories and then how students Over time click and behave You see that in contrast to the one we said before finding information and communication They didn't like it if there are lots of finding and communicative activities students spend tremendous amount of time online And then the crucial bit and that's what our provice chancellor likes. Let's look at performance Same same way of portraying If you have loads of assessments, it's relatively negative in terms of the number of minutes spent online so performance You get a completely different picture than the first picture from the students so students liked a Simulative in terms of experience, but if modules have loads of assimilated activities the number of people who passed the course is Substantially lower and also in terms of grades which we which I didn't show Then modules who have other activities so in a nutshell what I'm trying to say very inarticulate and this is very much work in progress is learning design seems to have a very strong influence on behavior and performance so we can again manipulate So to come out to my conclusion and I you didn't see this But I will send you the paper is that VLE data the raw one doesn't provide very good Proxies for learning and if you would have selected study number four you would know why So the implications of learning analytics to partly you can't understand this because you didn't select study four but What we continuously seem to find in learning and it is just clicking behavior doesn't really explain Learning it's primarily if you link it to assessments and if you link it to emotions that you can understand it perhaps social network analysis could be a good way to measure this informal learning and Then a fundamental question coming back to this when Van Gaal should intervene I think what I'm trying to show you over time is it's very complex There is not a clear point in this if I take a random graph like this where should you Intervene if this suddenly goes tremendously down from 1400 minutes to does it that mean that the course is not successful So it is it is I mean, I think we're at the at a kind of Crossroads To be honest, I'm not that familiar with Yeah Oh, sorry Yeah Yeah, and also if we would collect more courses it probably would become significant and also a link which is quite intuitive is the more workload you have The lower the performance Message where people just don't yeah Yeah Yes, if you would if we would have selected study for But I will post this all online and you can you can read it afterwards Yeah, yeah, and then and study for it actually shows that emotions were the best predictor for learning Yeah Yeah And I think that's also one of the things which is so important is that this Learning analytics is a moral practice is that behind the numbers are so many complex elements And Well, it's Thank you for your time and attention and thank you


Uche Seconders loses as appeal court or case PDP's national convention and candidates of the same religion won't fly the APC presidential flag says Deputy President of the Senate of the U.N. This is Plus Politics. The National Chairman of the People's Democratic Party PDP Uche Seconders suspended has lost his bid to stop the party's planned national convention. PDP's national convention is now scheduled to hold on Saturday, that's the 30th of October. Reading the judgement, Justice Gibral Kalaouli describes the suit before it as an afterthought and an abuse of the court process. The court blamed him for not acting when his ward and local government suspended him until now. Joining us to discuss this is Duran Odeyemi, he is the Deputy Publicity Secretary of the People's Democratic Party. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr Odeyemi. Thank you very much for having me and happy to be with you. Here we are again talking about the PDP and the planned national convention and of course the embattled national chairman of your party, Prince Uche Seconders. From the court ruling and the outcome of this judgement, what does that say about the chairmanship of Prince Uche Seconders going forward? We greatly believed by that judgement because we were very apprehensive and many of us would not know what it would be like to be the outcome of the judgement. But when eventually it was pronounced, we were extremely happy and we had a meeting this evening. Congratulations to ourselves that the convention will go ahead tomorrow. Well, Prince Uche Seconders still having many issues in court against the PDP and we are only waiting and we see each to the end. Whereas the party, we are moving on. When you say as a party you are moving on it means that you are going to conduct your national convention which means that you are going to have a new working committee which also means that you might or might not retain Prince Uche Seconders until his tenure expires which should be expiring in December. I am part of the national officers that is directly involved about the terminal dates of our administration. But many of us believe that there is no sacrifice that is too much for us to make for the party. If the national executive council of the party decides on the new dates that this administration, this new working committee should commence, we have no any objection to it. It is just a matter of days because we were supposed to win this administration by December 9th. So even in the wisdom of the national executive council, it is decided that our term ends on the 31st, on the 13th of October and we have no question about it. We are happy to go. So let's talk about what this court judgment means. I am going to start with someone who is from the state where Prince Uche Seconders is from. He is a member of the House of Representatives, Kingsley Chinda. He is the leader of the PDP caucus in the House of Representatives. I would like to quote him directly. He has said that neither Seconders nor the PDP has won this case. He is saying that the victory was for all Nigerians. How does this benefit Nigerians? We are here discussing PDP. Nigerians are looking forward to the new working committee of the party. There has not been any other political party in the user than PDP. And that is why the credible opposition to APC, that we take over leadership from APC in 2020, matter concerns over Nigeria, that is why you are bringing me on. That is why we are in the news. So we are congratulating Nigerians because we now have a political party that we enjoy a little peace and with the prayer towards providing a credible candidate, a presidential candidate in 2023. So that is exactly what it means by congratulating Nigeria. And I join in congratulating Nigerians that by Sunday morning, the names of the new executive committee of the party will roll out and they will give PDP an upload that we know how to manage whatever is passive to be our internal crisis. I want to take you back to a conversation we had months ago on the same issue with Prince Uche Sarkandis, who is claiming that there has been some level of high-handedness and then there are people who are trying to destroy the party, hence this whole embryo which has led to a cult ruling and now that you are about to have your convention. Who is to say that this puts a pin on all of the infighting that has been happening within the party? And who is to say that at the end of the day when the new working committee emerges that, as in your words, the party is going to be successful in enthroning good leaders or the leaders that Nigerians want? Who's to say? At no time do we stop talking among ourselves. And the essence of a good political party is to be able to manage its crisis. Still as much as we believe we still have matters in court which Prince Uche Sarkandis has against the party. The new administration, the new National Working Committee, we make it a point of duty that we still need him as one of the leaders of the party, not only him, whoever is aggrieved with whatever has happened within the party. We will continue to talk among ourselves and we continue to explore the internal mechanism of resolving issues. So the new administration, the new end of the U.C. will not stop at talking to Prince Uche Sarkandis and all members who are aggrieved. So it's part of the duty that they are going to inherit. Let's talk about the inner workings of the zoning process if that's even going to be the order of the day for the PDP this time around in preparation for 2023. I remember when we talked about this issue of zoning at the time, Prince Uche Sarkandis said that all are welcome. All are allowed to throw their hats into the ring. But is there going to be a zoning process? Will the PDP be honoring zoning issues in terms of who the national chairman will be and who the party flag bearer will be at the end of the day in terms of the presidency? The issue of who is going to be the chairman is already concluded because at this night we are only going to the convention tomorrow to ratify the election of the little Yasha Ayu as the national chairman. And concerning the presidential issue, by the time the zoning was being done, it was expressly stated that all other zones in the country will be allowed to present a candidate or whoever is interested in the presidential candidate should come out. When we get to the bridge, we know how to cross it. Right now we are concerned about having a very good sense political party. After that, we then look at the issue of the presidential where they come from, will be determined by the party and they will be given a very good opportunity to access our candidate and eventually present a candidate to them. Isn't there a laid-down rule of sorts where if the party chairmanship is zoned, for example, to the south-south, and then of course the presidential candidate cannot come from that same zone? I mean, now you're telling me that every other region can present a person to run for presidency. Does that not in any way impede the idea of zoning within the PDP? Correct me if I'm wrong. In PDP, and let me say in politics generally, 24 hours is a long time, the more you look at the generalist, the less you see when it comes to politics, that we are choosing our chairmanship from the north is never an indication that we have foreclosed the issue or we have a search that the candidate cannot come from the north. It can come from the north, it can come from the south, it can come from anywhere. What I'm telling you now is to wait until we get to that stage, you will see how we are going to progress. And how do you intend to do this with that? Again, your party does have rules and regulations that are guiding it. Are you going to not do those things within the confines of those rules and regulations? Again, we see a lot of people who seemingly are interested in running for the presidency. How many candidates have already indicated interest so far? This is me prying. I wouldn't know, because as I'm talking to you right now, I don't know anybody that has indicated interest. But I want to draw a conclusion from the last experience we had in Portugal. Almost 12 incidents came out that they wanted to be present to be a flag bearer. At the end of the day, Adiku Abu Bakar emerged as a candidate. And if you remember BPDP, even Senators Bukalasa that see who participated in that election, so long as they are to be the campaign manager for Atiku, that is the piece we are doing at PDP. So whatever is going to happen, let all these athletes and children come out. That PDP that we saw has obviously met a more force in so many ways. That is not the PDP that we have today. So I'm trying to compare today's PDP with yesterday's PDP. It's not necessarily fair, is it? PDP is the same. The mode of operation is the same. The people who are there are the same. The system and the constitutional remains the same. All that you need to do is wait until that time when we want to choose our president. Then you will see a new dimension of PDP contrary to your opinion that things are changing PDP. Nothing that changes our politics and will continue to change. And finally, on the issues or the other issues that are pending, how does the PDP intend to deal with those cases? Of course, so that it doesn't raise its ugly head while you are preparing to fight the opposition. Good enough, the new ledger advisor that is coming on board is the senior advocate of Nigeria. And that is not to underrate or to undermine people who are not senior advocate. What I'm saying in agent is we have a good ledger team that will be able to undo whatever is the ledger matter within PDP. And apart from that, just as I said, we continue to dialogue among ourselves and we believe all the people that are benefited in this party will listen to the words of people and allow peace to raise. Talking about peace, I did promise I was going to end it there, but let's look at states and local governments where they're still teething problems in terms of who's leading the party, who's not. And I'm going to use Cross River State as an example. We saw the governor move to the APC and right now, if you ask me, the PDP in Cross River is struggling. We do have the former deputy governor leading the Ketecha committee for that party up until now. What are the plans of the PDP to build a strong legacy within that state to be able to fight the APC if there be any fight left in them come 2023? Which state do you mention now? Cross River. Cross River. As far as we are concerned as a party, we virtually all the state matters to us. And you will do with me that the expiration of our term ends in two days. It is part of the new assignment or the assignment of the incoming National Working Committee that Nigerian as a component body belongs to PDP and we just must do everything within the compliance of the law to ensure that our candidates and our people remain and keep the loyalty to the party. So whether Cross River or River or wherever, we see Nigerian as AO as an institution or where PDP must contest election? I don't think you really answered my question. Yes, we know that PDP will contest elections, but do you stand a chance because the party structures were taken over by the APC. They took almost half of, if not 80% of the party structure. They all moved to the APC. Your party secretariat at the time was taken over again by the APC. We saw the former governor, Donald Duke, coming to somewhat to the rescue of the party. The former governor, Liali Moki, was almost nowhere in sight. And it seems more like a scramble. So again, I ask you, is there hope for the PDP in Cross River State? You have two days to go, but then you do also have in hindsight, what would you be telling those who are succeeding you to do to deal with that issue? Can the PDP build itself back to be able to stand against the APC? Nobody is bigger than the party. And that is why our mutual remains power belongs to the PDP. The absence or the exit of the present or present crop of legal that you are mentioning gives an opportunity to order other party members to emerge as leaders. And they only needed that opportunity, which they are sitting right now. And they will be adequately represented at the conversion tomorrow. And apart from that, they have started reducing the party in such a way that PDP will remain a force to be recon with in Cross River. Okay. Dural Dayimi is the National Deputy Publicity Secretary of the People's Democratic Party. We want to thank you for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm happy to be with you. All right. Thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a quick break. And when we come back, the Christian Association of Nigeria has assured, I've been assured of the balance in the religious selection for 2023 APC ticket. We'll take a short break and then we come back when we're talking about it.


I've started asking three questions when I meet any coach that's potentially wanted to work with me. The first question is, how much money do you want to take home every month? Like, can I actually build that for you? Like net profit, what do you want? Number two is like, what do you want to do? But most importantly, what do you not want to do? We need to build a box and we need to operate inside of that box. And if I don't think I can operate with you inside of that box, I'm just going to tell you I'm probably not your guy. But most of the time I think I can. And then it's, who do you want to work with? But again, most importantly, who do you not want to work with? And it's like, if we start and we reverse engineer the whole process, most people are working from the front to the back. I like to work from the back to the front. If we reverse engineer from how much money do you want, what do you not want to do and who do you not want to work with? Then it's like, we're probably going to end up in a place where you're very fulfilled in what you're doing. And if you're fulfilled and you're doing the right things at the right speed, there's very low probability that you don't win. Yeah. And you'll love it the entire time. That's it. And that's what makes trainers good is when they love what they're doing.