I am Renota. I am a UX researcher. I work for URA design to improve usability of open source software. I'm also a part of open source design and I started my UX research, doing UX research in 2016 through Outreachie where I did usability testing for GNOME. I am also a part of Fedora's diversity and inclusion team. So, designs are assumptions on developing with-hand users. What I mean by this is basically, when developers and designers are building a user interface, so what they have in mind, they build it on based on how they think. It's the best way for the users, but in the end most likely that's ends up being proved wrong by the users and so it becomes very hard for them to use, to actually use the software. So, in that case, what people do is they usually blame the users who are not knowing how to use the software. So, they label them as beginners, non-technical people and stuff like that, which is, and this keeps just going on and spiraling, so it becomes like a rat race where, and this happens also in every kind of software, but especially mostly on open-source software usability. So, there's a way how to stop the rat race and that is doing user research. What user research basically is, is connecting the end users with designers and developers. So, you just find a way to translate the user's needs and to show them to developers and designers, so they take them to considerations while building the interface. So, there are a lot of ways that you can do user research. There's AP testing, interview surveys, card tours, tree testing, and the list goes on, but today we'll focus on usability testing, because that's the main, the main method for conducting user research and it's the most effective one. So, but before we get into me explaining how to conduct the usability test, I just want to show you some use cases. So, on software that I've been working the past year, one of them is HTTPS Adware. So, on this side you can see this is the basic, the first design that they did and they had it for years. It's basically, it turned out to be not very user friendly. It's a bunch of turn boxes and just lengths and we did few iterations of user research and usability testing and we did some surveys and we did, after four iterations basically, we concluded this design which is the final design and will be implemented soon by HTTPS Adware. Another example is Thunderbird Preferences redesign. So, this was the original state of the design. When we did user research and through the usability testing sessions, we saw that the users could not be able to use the horizontal bar very well and the side bar was not very user friendly because it has so much components going on and they did not know how to distinct them. For example, they always messed up the security and privacy bar. They did not know which one has which options. This is after the design. This is a mock-up that we did. So, we narrowed down the options in the side bar. Privacy and security are not together and we got rid of the horizontal bar and you can see the interface is much clearer and it turned out to be much easier to use. This will always also be implemented. The third use case, I chose Briar. Briar is a secure messaging app. This is not actually a redesign. They just came up with a new feature which is adding contacts to the music. So, we had to come up with a whole idea for the design. So, we did user research first and we came up with the first prototype which is that one. After that we tested it and that did not go well on user testing because users do not know how to navigate through the screen very well. Then we decided to split the screen. This is the second prototype, by the way. This was better but we are now coming up with the third version which should be the one that gets implemented. So, hopefully you are convinced that doing the test and research, it is good and you want to know how to test it. So, how can you do it? It is fairly easy to do it. So, most people have a misconception of thinking that to do it is to do it. Testing the session, you need big labs and a lot of resources actually, a lot of testers and experience people to test them. But that is not the case. I think everyone can do that. You basically need just a few things. I am going to show you how you can conduct a usability test on only three steps. So, the first step is just choosing personas. What I mean by that is you should know the target users for the software that you want to test. For this example, I wanted to take software, because it is fairly easy to explain. But you can apply those things to whichever software that you choose. So, the first step that you should think of is who uses GNOME software. If we were to test right now again, we would think, okay, we should test with designers. So, we would include in our test our beginner designers, more experienced ones. But in this case, GNOME software should be used by everyone. So, we should make sure to include in our testing diverse range of participants. So, after we have come up with the target users, and now we can move on to scenario tests. What scenario tests are? They are basically tests that you give to each participant that they can accomplish. For example, so for GNOME software, the first task might be you choose an application and you tell the tester to install that application. And you watch how they do it, and you see you get to observe if it's easy for them to find the software that you're looking for and to install it. A second task might be to remove an installed software. And now, again, you can just watch them, how they navigate through the screen. And if they can find out how to remove the application, how do they find the option to search for the application and then remove it? Do they go to the installed application? Because there are a lot of ways that the user can get to the finish point, but you should just observe each user how they do it. Another task might be just to update preferences. So, here you can observe if the user knows and understands the text here. If they know what this means and how to use the screen. Another task might be just looking for updates, but you should be careful while doing the task, so you should not give hints to the users. So, when you make the task, on this case, for example, do not use the words like update, find an application, find updates. You can just say, like, can you find out the version of this application and then they should find out by themselves. Because if you give hints, then there's no point in testing usability of that. You can do how many tasks that you find using them. Usually, just five testers and five tasks, five to ten tasks, it's more than enough to uncover more usability issues. But if you want to get more specific and to get more details, then you can do more than that. This is another task that you could give, for example, if you want to find out if they know the version of Chrome software or how to contribute. So, after we are done with all the tasks and we chose our participants, now we can move on to the actual testing part. The tools that we need for testing are fairly simple. In our case, with known software, all you need to test is a quiet room with internet connection, a laptop with the software installed, and that's it. So, basically, you sit down on a chair on the side of the participant and it's important to not be remotely because that's a totally different way to do usability testing. This is more effective. And you get to observe the user while it's accomplishing the task. Another thing you might need is a notebook so you can take notes during the test. So, because it's important that when the test starts, you shouldn't start the test. So, you just set on a timer and measure each test through how much time each task is taking and you do not interrupt them. All the questions that you might have, you just write them down and wait until the testing session is done and then you can continue and ask them. So, after you've conducted all the tests, this is the most crucial part of the testing. So, it's finally getting the results. So, this is the connection that I've talked earlier. With the results, you're making the connection between end users and developers and designers. So, you want to find a way that all the usability issues that you found out in the testing that you made, you translate them to other people and make them understandable so that others can work on improving them. There's a lot of ways that you can show your results. So, the first one is a formal paper. This is basically you getting on details of everything that you got from the usability testing. So, screenshots and then explaining everything and also giving recommendations on how to improve those. If you do not feel comfortable or don't know how to give recommendations on improvements, you can easily just let them know about the results and the issues and then maybe someone else might have an idea on how to improve. Another format that you can do is a semi-formal paper or shorter paper. You can do a live presentation. You can also just file an issue of bug trackers and explain each usability issue and then other people can comment and help. So, a great tool to help with showing the results is actually visualization. So, you can use screenshots and just monitor points that have issues so we're not very easy for users and after you mark them, then explain in a text format underneath what the problem was. You can also use charts or tables or whatever visualization tools that you think would fit your own results. Heatmaps are a great way to show results also. So, basically, a heatmap is a table of each task and how each test is performed on each task. So, on one side of the table, you have listed all the tasks that you gave to the user and the other side is filled with boxes. So, every box, every color has its own name. So, for example, the green boxes represent the tasks that were very easy to accomplish. Then the yellow tasks are basically where the users had more trouble, more issues. The red ones are when they had the time limit. So, they took more time than they should to accomplish a task. And the black ones are basically the tasks where the user just gave up and could not get how to do that. And this is a great way to get the results for people who are not interested in reading the text format of everything, what everything went wrong. You can just look at the heatmap and get an overall feeling of what went wrong and what went right. So, hopefully, by now, you are able to and you know how you can contribute by doing user research and usability testing. We've talked about how to do user research, what is it, why it's important and most importantly how to present the results. So, hopefully you'll contribute to Fedora's experience. And thank you so much. If you have any questions, let me know. So, Fedora, I'm not very involved. I think Fedora has come in for the design and the user experience and usability testing and also accessibility go under the design part. So, it's not the same, I'd say, but it's under the design. So, I'm aware of the technical bugs like process and so on, but it seems to me that Fedora and I think improving user experience is not visible. So, do you have any overview or idea about the state of the affairs in Fedora? I'm not sure. Again, I'm not very involved. In the design for Fedora, I'm more open to the design and it's the same. I mean, the first thing, but maybe someone here has my experience in the design and they can answer. No? I do think they have a special pleasure instance like you design one and they are checking everything over there. There are some calls or some applications when you're testing, for example, when you conduct them, they made some user testing. And I think most European is done only by non-economic. Yeah, that's also true. But, yes, sometimes sometimes I'm not sure if they did well. Because they see the idea to just have active media people do just user testing. And because, like I explained, it's not very hard to do. It's fairly easy, minimal amount of people. So, by people, you don't need much things going on. So, it would be a good idea to have just how it was visibility was. So, the main problem is that you have to involve community. So, you can ask your colleagues if you're working there. But we are all programmers and it's not ideal to have only one sort of people. So, we have to ask community and mostly still, like, we did something like that on the university, but still programs. The problem is you have to involve some of the community. So, when we have, like, open house, you know, I think that they do, from time to time, they do some, like, one-side testing of, maybe, design. It's a problem that it's difficult. Yeah, I understand that. But the other thing from another view of you, that's why the reason why we just talked, to just show everyone that it's not that hard to do it, you don't need to be an expert, a designer, or something. You can just be a developer of whatever you do and still do the testing. So, you don't need any expertise to do this. This approach is the problem that you have to do. Because in Arizona, on the side, we had a lot of societies. And it's a compensator for that. Like, people who are doing goods and explaining it again and again that you don't have to wait, just ask the people who say you don't have to wait and if you want to help, there is a set of tasks. And then you get people to see that it's something for 20 minutes and you can't say again if you don't have to wait. But you get people who are not ready to go home and are not feeling like a city student looking for free food. That's the problem. Open house. And you can get people from all over the world. I like the logo. Just check people's health. That's true. There are some problems like, there is part is to be used as a process stuff. If there would be someone who would, there would be a computer and we don't take the session. There are ways, but I'm not sure. If there is a need-out or something, you can just organize it, take your laptop with you and whoever wants to contribute, they can do it. So I did that before open house. I just went with my laptop and I got some notifications with them and they were welcoming and they wanted to help and participate in the on-cast volunteer. So you can also do that. So when you choose it, does it happen where you are using this green and people manage to do it or... Do you need a kick-ass? Yeah, because there is always a problem with design, but did you ever get seen somewhere where nobody had an issue? Did everybody have an arm who always had an issue? So you mean the colors on the green boxes or when you were testing basically, you were sitting next to the user and you... No, no, no. You seem to show that there is always an issue. Did it happen that nobody has an issue? Yeah, I don't... From how much I've tested, I've never had an application that didn't have an usability issue. So there's always green and red, maybe black boxes, no, because they are very easy to use, but green, red, and yellow were always on the list. So I don't think there's such an application that's perfect and very easy to use for people, but we are striving to make it more green and yellow friendly and remove the red and black boxes, you see. Do you know, are there any open-source applications which do use automated use, experience, like measuring whether people take it and it's easy to accomplish something and so on?  I don't know if there is an open source, but there are a lot of tools to do that, but my recommendation is always to do it in person and not use other tools, other people's tools, because in person, you get other people's emotions, so you can just know when they are feeling frustrated with the task or if they are getting nervous or angry, and with automation, you cannot feel how the users are reacting to a certain task. So the best way that you can get out the most out of the usability test is just to be in person. Even if you remove this tool, that thing is not as effective as the first one should be, but there are a lot of tools to do. Are there any open source applications which do this? I agree it's definitely best to do it in person, but it seems we have no such... we definitely don't regularly use it for doing it. So if there is any application which is doing it automatically, I'm not familiar with the areas and open source applications but there are like design patterns, for example, as you know, has a human interaction with design patterns, they are on their website, and you can just, when you're building the application, you can just look at the components and realize they are useful for which use case they should use, so you can use that as a guideline to be a designer and to go to open source. I was thinking about something like the building application functionality which will allow you to say, I like this, I don't like this, I think I'm hoping for the automated material. So I'm not aware of any of the source applications doing this. No, no. They are not, but the point of the test link is to not let the users tell you what they like or what they don't like, but you should see it from that, because most of the clients, that's how you get the real experience and you realize what you're describing. There are tools to help reduce the risk. I think, for example, it was eye tracking, I know some of the tools that are open source that do eye tracking. I can't remember the name right now but if you're interested, I can tell you the name. They make the goggles and the software because you're going to just do eye tracking. That's all open source. They are also another two-side survey tools which you can use and they are open source also, but not particularly the normal software. Any other common questions? Thank you so much for coming.


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In English there are a lot of grammar rules. However, there are a myriad of exceptions. In this series I'm going to talk about those exceptions. So let's start with what you don't know about the present perfect. The present perfect. I love this tense, really. Why? Because it represents our lives. I always say this to my students. The present perfect is something that happened in the past and has an effect in the present. And there is a hint of the future. So it represents our lives, actually. And we usually use this tense with verbs such as live, work, study. So things you do repeatedly in your life. Yes. The first point that I want to talk about is actually this. The past and the present. Yes, this tense has an action that happened in the past but in the present. Yes, it refers to events that are relevant now but happened in the past. Let's take a look at my examples. He's moved to another city. That's why he can't come to the party. So which action happened first? He has moved, right? He's moved to another city. So this happened first and the action that is relevant now is he can't come to the party. Yes, he can't come to the party. That's why he has moved. So it's an action that happened in the past and is relevant now. For example, people always share the best advice they've ever received. Which action happened first? They've ever received. So somewhere in the past they received a message or advice and it's relevant now because I said people always share. So present simple, people always share. This is with the present simple and that's why we use the present simple and then the present perfect because it's an action that happened in the past but has an effect in the present. This is the first point about the present perfect. Now let's take a look at the second point. Yes, the present perfect is used when reporting the news. That's right. So let's suppose I'm a journalist and I'm telling you, this is the example. The Labour Union have decided to go on strike next week. Have decided. They've organised, they have organised a demonstration to protest against cuts. So these are present perfect and this is a piece of news that I'm giving you and that's why we use the present perfect. Now the third point I divided it into three parts. Why? Because we talk about the present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous. Let's take a look at the first point then. Present perfect simple versus present perfect continuous. One present perfect simple is a finished action. Present perfect continuous is unfinished. Let's take a look at my examples. She has made a cake. This means that it's finished. That she made a cake one minute ago and it's finished. When I use the present perfect it's not important when but it is important the action. Now the second one is with the present perfect continuous. She has been making a cake for the last hour. Here there is an indication for the last hour that it continues, right? So it's not finished. She has been making a cake for the last hour. Now the second point of the third, of the third point that I want to talk about is the present perfect is used, the present perfect simple and continuous is used with how long? How long have you studied English for? And this is maybe finished, we don't know, but probably is finished. Versus how long have you been studying English for and is still going on, right? Because we said the present perfect continuous is for actions that still continue up to now. Now the third point I listed here is with since and for. Remember that since and for can also be used with the past simple. But generally speaking we use it with the present perfect. Simple or present perfect continuous? Like answering to the question before, right? How long have you studied English for? I've studied English for five years. I used for to indicate a period for five years. So I don't study English anymore, right? Yes, the second one, how long have you been studying English for? I've been studying English since and this is a precise time. Since 2015. So that means that the person is still learning English, right? Or studying English. So for for a period of time and since for a specific time. Now if you want to watch a lesson on these points or these grammar rules you may click here. The fourth point that I want to talk about are agents of duration. What are they? There are words like briefly, long, temporary, overnight, etc. They indicate duration of time actually. So the two examples with left that town forever. So forever here is the agent of duration forever. With left we have left that town forever. We're not saying when. We're saying just forever, which is an agent of duration. Another example, I've always, always is the agent of duration. I've always liked the way you smile. I've always liked. And again this is used with the present perfect, right? And within the agent of duration always. Now there is another expression that we use and we use it with the present perfect. It is the first time that is the first time or this is the first time plus the present perfect. So the example here is the first time she's been to Rome. It is the first time she's been to Rome. And here is an indication of a past action. Now I'm going to erase this and I'm going to show you two other points on the present perfect. Right, so we are back with the two last points that I want to talk about today. The first one is when we use when. Yes, sometimes when can be used with the present perfect. Yes, I'm sure you heard that when is used with the past simple, generally. But there are exceptions. We use when with the present perfect, for example. Let's take a look at my two examples. When you've finished your test, hand it in. So this is the first conditional. And here the present perfect has a hint of the future. That's why previously I said that the present perfect can have a hint of the future. The second example. They'll apply for a job when they've prepared well the questions asked. They'll apply for a job. And here is a future, the second part of the first conditional, which is the result. When they've prepared well the question, the questions asked. And in this case we have they've prepared. And there is the hint of the future. So when with the present perfect, sometimes. The last point that I want to talk about is that in American English people hardly use the present perfect. They replace it with the past simple. So let's take a look at the examples I listed. She has worked at that office for a year. In American English they would say she worked at that office for a year. Or have you ever been to Canada? Have you ever been to Rome? In American English did you ever go to Canada? Did you ever go to Rome? This is American English. The third example. I've just washed the dishes. Or I just washed the dishes in American English. So that's it for today. Thank you very much for watching. If you have any comments, requests, or if you want to post your own example of the present perfect, you may do so under this video. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so. If you want to share the lesson, you may do so. One last thing. If you want to watch a lesson on the present perfect or the present perfect continues, you may click here. Have a great day and see you next week. Bye bye.


Well, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to this session. My name is Sheila McNeil and I'm delighted to be introducing Nicole Allen, who's going to talk about open education data analytics and the future of knowledge infrastructure. So without further ado, over to you, Nicole. Well, thanks so much. It's exciting to be here and I know that I have picked a very ambitious title for a 15 minute talk, but we're going to dive right in. And I want to know, I'm doing this talk without slides, but I did put together a slide deck with just a couple of resources and the framework I'm going to be talking about. So I'm putting that in the chat right now for anybody who wants to take a look after the talk. So two years ago at this conference, I gave a talk that was entitled holding the line on open and an evolving courseware landscape. And focus was all about how the traditional publishing industry in North America at least was starting to co-opt the open education movement as it began its sort of transition to the digital format. And starting about five years back, we started to see publishers starting to market their products using the same arguments that that OER has used for years, phrases like affordable day one access to high quality course materials or using the kind of statistics about high textbook prices were harming students, causing food insecurity or causing students to get lower grades, which of course are arguments that the OER movement has been using for over a decade. So, you know, recognizing that it's beyond ironic that the same texts with publishers who essentially priced a generation of students out of their course materials would be using that fact to sell more of their products. The fact that they have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on marketing allowed them to sort of get away with that. So the moral of the story, or at least in the talk that I gave two years ago was that the publishing industry is starting to steal OER's lines. And if they're going to do that, we need to start changing the script. At the time, I talked about how, you know, for the open education movement to continue to grow and benefit more students, we really needed to focus on the other things that that openness has to offer, that the traditional model never can, you know, from decolonizing education, supporting innovative pedagogical practices, expanding academic freedom. And this talk today, I wanted to sort of return to this idea of changing the script and talk about it specifically in the context of the need for action against the rise of unchecked data analytics and surveillance in higher education, using a solutions framework developed by my organization Spark directly about that problem to talk about what the opportunities for open education are to sort of be part of that solution. So I recognize that that's kind of a lot, but I promise this is all going to come together at the end. So, you know, I think we've all seen how data analytics has grown in higher education, whether we're on campus or off campus, virtually every aspect of campus life generates massive streams of data, you know, whether that's your behavior doing a zoom call or each time you swipe your key card to enter a dorm or classroom. And, you know, in some cases, universities have things like apps that track where students are on campus. And their vendors lining up around the corner to offer analytic services that analyze this data to predict things, you know, everything from like broadband optimization to energy needs.  So when it comes to the, you know, teaching and research processes, we're starting to see the major vendors in that space starting to snap up pieces of this data analytics infrastructure, you know, both on the collecting data side and the analysis side. And that's, you know, evident in things like the parent company of Elsevier acquiring things like Mendeley, which is a social networking site for researchers or B press, which supports library repositories. And, you know, that just collects a ton of usage and usage data that can be analyzed for trends that universities might not even be aware of, you know, for example, which researchers are collaborating with each other. So these kinds of processes are also baked into learning management systems and adaptive learning software and publishers and other vendors are in some cases, you know, again, able to know a lot more about what's happening on campus and teaching and learning than, you know, students or faculty ever would, you know, when, where students are logging in to do their homework, you know, their, how they move their mouse when they study, what kind of browser extensions they haven't saw installed in the computer and sort of so on. And with this push that the traditional textbook publishers have been making to move to digital materials, you know, using the OER rhetoric, their end goal is effectively to put a data collecting machine in every student's hands, because that's essentially what a digital textbook is or what digital courseware is. You know, we've seen a really aggressive push in the US from from textbook publishers and system offices and state legislators and, you know, even in the federal government to, you know, effectively set up systems that mandate a shift to digital through automatic billing, which, you know, not only forces the students to purchase the textbooks, but to effectively accept whatever terms of service the publisher has set for those materials, because if their only option is to use a digital textbook, or not take the class, it doesn't leave them with much of a choice. And Billy Meinke and others have pointed out that this is effectively signing students up for surveillance, and is only going to accelerate the amount of data these companies are amassing over time and what they're able to monetize with with data analytics. And of course, some of the surveillance in all of this is quite a bit less subtle, most notably the rise of remote proctoring tools like Proctorio and ProctorU during the pandemic, especially, you know, of course, they exist before then. And, you know, those tools put students through strict and sometimes, you know, mortifying procedures to prove that they're not attempting to cheat on tests and are just like deeply problematic, not just for the privacy issues, but because of the biases that are inherently built into the algorithms that are making decisions about whether students behavior looks like, quote, cheating, you know, which can penalize students for natural eye movements or even just their appearance. And, you know, as we know from from scholars like Safiya Noble, there's no such thing as an unbiased algorithm. Algorithms contain the biases of the humans who built them and the whatever, you know, errors are built within the data that they analyze.  And, you know, whether we're using these algorithms in academic assessment or the admission process or adaptive learning or, you know, other parts of universities, it's already showing how the unchecked use of data analytics is pushing higher education farther away from its supposed role as a, you know, a great equalizer, which is the way it's often described, at least in the North American context. So we've talked a little bit about how these tools are harmful to individuals, individuals, but it has a collective impact to you. When universities are allowing these kind of tools into various decision making roles, they're effectively seeding control over over how they're making decisions to companies like Elsevier and Pearson, who have a vested interest in making money off of this data. And without the ability to really see inside what's happening within algorithms, and of course, that's rarely possible because they're proprietary. It's really difficult to know how, you know, vendors are going to be collecting data or processing it or using it in ways that are harmful to students or contrary to the mission of the institution as a whole. You know, for example, there's increasing attention on reports by Sarah Landon and others that vendors like Elsevier and Thompson Reuters that regularly sell products to higher ed institutions and libraries are selling billions of data points that they've gathered through, you know, various products that they have to ICE, which is the immigration enforcement agency in the United States, which is of course, you know, deeply, deeply problematic. And, you know, there's no evidence that this is happening. But, you know, imagine if companies like Proctorio are doing that, you know, companies that have literally seen inside students' houses or seen their IDs in order for them to take a test and get a grade and get their degree. And, you know, what happens is these products and vendors become more deeply embedded in how institutions function. So all of this to say, there is a very urgent need for higher education to act around the use of data analytics and surveillance and take action to sort of get control of how these products are being deployed. And this is where I want to start bringing it back to open education and talk about how openness can be part of the solution. So this conversation really is an opportunity for open education because it's taking the conversation out of sort of the traditional space where we're just focusing on teaching and learning, and it connects it to infrastructure, strategic planning, you know, broader equity issues at the institution that, you know, aren't directly linked to the teaching and learning process. So obviously, openness doesn't solve all of these problems. But linking it to these larger issues can be a way to advocate for the importance of open education and sort of embedded in larger pieces of the institution's conversation. So my organization Spark has produced a landscape analysis and solutions framework for institutions to take back control of their digital infrastructure from the publishing industries, increasing attempts to acquire it. And the framework falls into three parts. And I'm going to mention what an open education can help address the framework. The first set of actions is risk mitigation, or actions that can be taken right now to slow down and mitigate the harms of these kinds of technologies, whether that's conducting a data inventory or updating your privacy policies, centralizing decision making, or contracting, you know, things, things that can be done right now to mitigate the risks of these resources. And in this category, I would say that the biggest opportunity for open education is to really present open pedagogy and open educational practicing practices as an alternative to proctoring. So rather than subjecting students to surveillance, invest in professional development and course redesign that assists instructors to develop assessments that leverage renewable assignments or discussion or other open practices that don't rely on proctoring. And institutions can also increase transparency by making sure that students are aware of the terms of service when they're signing up for a course. So the second category of actions is strategic choices. So these are the sort of, you know, ethical dichotomies that are presented by the use of data analytics and need to have a campus wide conversation about what's right for the campus culture, you know, for example, what is the right balance between human and AI decision making, you know, recognizing that that both are important and, and, you know, can help accelerate higher education's missions. And, you know, things like decisions between qualitative and quantitative metrics and research or evaluation or faculty evaluation. And we may have our opinions on this, but it's important for, you know, each campus culture to sort of grapple with them. And I think the debate where open education can play a role here is around the like trust versus verification and how institutions handle academic integrity. So does higher education start from the posture of trust, assuming that students act with integrity, unless it's proven otherwise, versus taking a posture of dishonesty, assuming students are trying to cheat unless you create an environment to make that really hard. So I see this very much as analogous to the decisions between openness and closeness. So, you know, you put a license on a material trusting that people are going to use it responsibly rather than keeping it locked down. So, you know, not even the well intentioned people can use it. So, you know, the ethos of openness can be very useful in navigating these difficult issues. So finally, the last area of actions is around community solutions, which leverage the collective needs and market power of higher education to really regain larger control over larger pieces of infrastructure. So, for example, like algorithms that could allow for some transparency under community governance and, you know, also developing common policies and contract negotiations strategies that could keep sort of the worst practices of vendors in check. And in this area, I think the biggest opportunity for open education is just to start talking about OER as content infrastructure. You know, curriculum is just important as the pipes and sidewalks that underpin our universities. And it's the necessary scaffolding on which teaching and learning is built. And it's I think we need to start talking about it that way. And the pandemic showed us how it's literally dangerous to count on external vendors to supply that infrastructure. You know, it's one thing when you can pass around a print copy of a textbook without any limitations, but when it suddenly becomes unsafe to touch objects held by another person, it's a problem when the gatekeeper to course digital course materials refuses to sell a license to a digital copy of the library, for example. So talking about OER is content infrastructure that can truly be owned and controlled by the community and not rented by commercial players is, you know, a really sort of exciting direction that we can take OER. It's not to say that it's simple. Certainly, there are examples like open stacks or the great work happening at Carnegie Mellon University. But, you know, higher education should be thinking about OER is critical infrastructure worth investing in. So just to sum up, you know, what I've presented here are some ways that data analytics and surveillance are sort of harming higher education in some ways that open education can be leveraged as a direct solution to those harms. And I'm happy to engage in any questions or discussion at this point. That was great. Thank you so much, Nicole, so much to think about there. And I think that reflects quite a lot of the themes that particularly from the opening plenary today as well. So thank you. We do have one question from Jonathan here. And he's saying, is it fair to say that a strong push for a floss and infrastructure classroom offices and student devices would be a big step in the direction that you've been advocating in your presentation? Yeah, so hey, Jonathan, thanks for the question. And I would say that it can be part of it. So the way that Spark has approached this question of like, what is community owned infrastructure? I think the first step is just like governance and making sure that the pieces of infrastructure are controlled by the community, regardless of sort of how they're built, how they're licensed, how how they're owned, or I guess possessed. How about that? So I think floss definitely is one pathway to that. And, you know, in many ways, like things, things like algorithms, making those open or, you know, having pieces of infrastructure that that can be locally adapted and used. And certainly in the case of content infrastructure, I think open licensing is very important. But I would say that, you know, it's one pathway, but not the only the only pathway. And I was really struck just while we're waiting for some more questions come through in the comments section. And by just that that notion of changing the script because of, you know, in some ways it's flattering in a way that some of the the narrative from where you are have been taken by the public shows because they're obviously working. But how we reclaim that then is really important. So you talked about community and curriculum. And I think this is more a comment than a question. But I think one of the things that we need to do now is actually there has been quite a lot of focus on technology over the past year. But also the importance of humanity, I think, has come through really strongly as well, hasn't it? So I think it's how we do that, how we say that, you know, you can't just buy the solution. You have to talk with people about how we are going to move forward, how we're all going to develop together and bring in these other things as well. Yeah, so thank you for the comment. And I think this is yeah, an area where open education really has done a lot of deep thinking about, you know, how to bring care and humanity into the teaching and learning process. And I think that's that's sorely needed in these conversations. And, you know, as with everything, it's a dialectic, it's a shift in one direction, and then a shift in another. And the pandemic certainly forced us to very rapidly adopt some of this technology, because it was the sort of easiest ready made solution that vendors were very happy to, you know, line up around the corner to offer. But, you know, now we need to start correcting in the other other direction and just like really understand the true harms and ways that they can be mitigated. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that that is the trick as we all go forward, isn't it? It's how we do that and how we get people to listen and I get this conference and presentations like this are just so, so important in doing that. But going back to I think also with surveillance, I think this there's a there's a wider issue there in terms of pandemic surveillance in general and how it's slipping in and lots of different areas here in the UK. We're talking about COVID passports quite a lot.  But that seems to be acceptable. And you know, I think that's kind of fighting back against what is actually set acceptable, what that's not really caring for the society. And also it costs so much. Sometimes the money we spend on these things, particularly in the UK with the UK government, this is a huge waste of money as well. But sorry, that's all right. But I think we've got to fight back that because surveillance is just kind of, you know, kind of coming in like the fog, isn't that just everywhere in cities? Anyway, well, we're almost at time. Thank you so much, Nicole. There was so much to think about in there. Fantastic presentation. And I know we've got another couple of questions there in the chat, but we can pick them up in the other conference areas as well. But if we could all give me, give Nicole a virtual round of applause. Thank you so much. And thank you all for joining this session. Thank you.


What is up guys? Joe Holland here. I am doing something a little bit different this trip I'm actually headed south. We are heading down to the world-famous some bago lake Gonna do some lake trout tow good fishing and also fish for my favorite fish to eat the cusk or otherwise known as the maravet or Mariah, eel pout, lincod I don't even know what else they call it. They all taste incredible So we'll be fishing for those mostly at night. Gonna meet up with my buddy Brandon Possibly some of his family too. Gonna spend a couple days down here on the water First things first gotta make a stop at one of my favorite ice fishing stores some bago bait Gonna pick up a new Lower for my auger system That I'm gonna try out a 10-inch auger on a hand drill I'm gonna try it without a gear reduction Just like my good buddy Cameron ran when we were on Chamberlain Lake during the Chamberlain Lake series So thanks Cameron for turning me on to this idea We're gonna see if it works and you guys will be the first to know on my channel Sobego Lake second largest lake in the state of Maine By far the deepest is 316 foot deep average depth of a hundred and five foot deep It's 14 miles long covers 45 square miles and is a crystal clear Beautiful body of water the last bunch of years. It's been sketchy with the ice a lot of people fall through this lake They get on it a little too early and it hasn't frozen really well for a long time It's always in question whether it's gonna freeze at all the big bay It's home to the world record landlock salmon over 22 pounds But that was caught probably a hundred years ago now and since then the state has managed to beg a lake into Not a great salmon fishery anymore and also not a great toke fishery Not a good white fish fishery anymore. They've pretty much bungled the management on it now There's no limit on toke Lake trout under 23 inches And they want you to keep everything that you catch under 23 inches and you're allowed one over 23 inches they've also stocked it with L wives and The smelt population I think is hit or miss in here whether it's taken a dive or not Which is a primary forage of the landlock salmon if you catch a landlock salmon while ice fishing You're not even allowed to lift it out of the ice. It must be released immediately Same with brook trout. I've been here and reports lately of guys seeing a lot of fish on the electronics But having a hard time getting them to go whereas there's just so much feed in the lake and they're on the L Wives so hard that it's really hard to get them to bite a lure Being fairly close to the Brunswick naval air station, which is not operational anymore The lake was used a lot for training military pilots on flying over water Several planes were lost in Sebego Lake during World War two a grumman tbf Avenger from the Lewiston Navy Auxiliary air facility ditched and sank near Raymond on August 16th of 1943 Two low-flying British Mount Corsairs from Brunswick were lost after a mid-air collision Over the lake in Raymond in 1944 and have never been found and a third Corsair flew into the lake that same year alright guys This is what I'm getting right here This is what I call a Cameron special because he's the one who introduced me to it He saw it on the internet somewhere first, but this is a 10 inch for a hand drill and it's light It's made out of that flat type of plastic that doesn't break I guess or I hope and it's got a good blade to it Joe hey, what's up man?  Oh, where are you lower rank pond state park? Yeah, just hit the Derby two weeks ago with my Buddy son he came out brought him out was his first fishing Derby ever how do you guys do? He did good. He got like 10th place. He's able to pick up a prize. He was excited So it's a first fishing Derby, so I'm right into it. Awesome. This is a little day. This is big day Oh, what's up, Joe? How you doing? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Yeah, do you get it together? All right, so this is the pistol bit laser, which is also the Well, that's nice if you're not rechecking all the time so you just chuck this into your drill and you're done Right, that's a problem.   So the truck is just a complete mess disaster Throw that in there make sure I closed everything. We're good there We're good there Subego Bay Wayne always takes good care of me Now we get to head to the lake. We got one quick stop for gasoline Then we're gonna head to the lake and shoot some good vids. I hope Nice made it. I'm here at the giant Lake Subego Let's roll, baby. I Have a lot of stuff a lot of stuff gonna take a little while to Unload get everything packed up just because I'm pretty scattered coming off that last trip Literally just getting home late last night and getting on the road this morning And not really taking the time to unpack and get everything all cleaned up So it's gonna take me a minute to get everything loaded into the sled get the sled out Figure out exactly where I'm going and what I'm doing gonna meet up with my buddy Brandon and his family today and Get set up for tonight Little windy down here already. Holy cow. I got a mess back here Gonna be a little while Man, she's ripping hard coming across there straight sideways What's going on out here ten I literally just got out of 40 inches of snow and slush And come down here. There's nothing I was surprised. Oh, really? Oh, no, I like the sound of that Joe Joe nice to meet you Smell like fish in here. Oh You lucky. Oh, man, I tried to get here. I couldn't Beautiful Yeah, how they biting for you Joel Man this shack is awesome Holy cow, there's a fish number 12 nice, man, they're fat aren't they? Okay Found a good spot here behind Indian Island It should block me from the wind if we got north northwest for the next two days tomorrow It's supposed to get into the 20s blowing so gonna get behind this big rock wall here in this island and Set up it's pretty glare ice conditions out here It's crazy night and day difference from what I was on yesterday up the Lobster Lake and Moosehead Lake with 40 inches of snow and anywhere from six to ten inches of slush So great big difference there, but I'm gonna set up right over here. It looks pretty good in this area It'll look pretty with the background and Definitely be out of the wind. So that's the key. Let's get set up I think this is the first time that I've ever done the winter ice camping where I took everything on one load So I got a monster load there. I have stuff. I definitely don't need Well, I have stuff. I definitely don't need but I didn't really have a lot of time to get stuff together coming out See what cams gonna look like for this week Table grilled Got some cooking stuff up there got a bunch of cooking stuff and various food in that tote Couple hand-off of bags they out buddy heater going food dryer and Extra tabletop got a Milwaukee life day here got another one over here There's my bed With a cot a foam pad and sleeping bag a couple hangers up here and Various fishing stuff and electronics right there for now And that's about it.  So I'm not too worried about it But I might do that anyway, but pretty over here behind this island Nice wind blocker and I'm sure you guys are as curious to see how that 10 inch bit It's gonna do on the Milwaukee drill as curious as I am about it. So let's give it a rip I wouldn't say she's any quicker than the eight inch, but she's not far behind it That's the ion G2 bottom on a Milwaukee drill 12 amp battery. I don't know how much that matters, but and then I got the deep freeze quick connect And that sucker will rip 10 inch hole on a drill All right, all set up pretty quick pretty slick everything looks good Eaters running I'm gonna leave my totes behind and jump on the snowbeel grab a jig rod and see if I can Get a bite before the end of the day with the boys before they head out of here for the night And then we're gonna be set up for tomorrow ready to roll. She's pretty cold. She's pretty windy It's always fun on this lake Let's go Okay, it's a little change of plans It's pretty bad out there. That's that's a pretty tough group of guys I've seen them in some rough weather and they've had enough of the day They've been out here all day and there's only about two hours left of sunlight and that wind Picked up a lot since I came in to set up so You hear that ice it's gonna be pretty loud sleeping tonight making some serious ice and some ice ice quakes coming through tonight So change of plans I got Oh Almost two hours for dark. I think so I'm still gonna get set up anyway for cusk I'm gonna set five cusk lines right now Cusk are coming up in these gravelly rocky areas with that full moon or just about full moon starting To spawn this time of year. So the big females are coming in.  I gotta put my winter hat on and Get out of my traveling shoes. I got my slippers still on from driving But I thought I was done with these things for the year But apparently not because we got some pretty good glare ice conditions down here But I'll I'll show you a little trick that makes it easier and Put these things on pretty sweet Anytime any of the ice creepers that you guys use They go on a lot easier without your foot in there And and you can get them nice and snug and good proper fit on them If you put them on up here first and then put your foot in your boot just like normal But I started Using these a little bit more religiously after after a pretty bad fall Couple years ago.  They were worried. I think it knocked me out, but I'm not a hundred percent sure it's lucky I had my sweatshirt hooded sweatshirt on too to Protect my head a little bit or it would have been even worse But that was pretty bad one So since then I've tried to be a little bit better about wearing these things Anytime there's glare ice. You could you know, you can walk around like you're 90 years old But you could also still fall and that's what happened to me. So So there you go. I got that on the right foot Nope, that's on the wrong foot Yeah, do it on your lap Mommy That looks a little bit better You definitely go on better when you get them on the right foot too I don't really like those little plastic or rubber ones that you got to Pull super tight They always seem to come off and they're paying the neck and I I wear size 13 boots So I got a pretty good size foot on me. So it's hard to find a decent pair of creepers That that fit my boot and works and is still pretty comfortable. So I really like these It's a simple design as is most things that are made in Maine That's the stabilizers Gravity is always working to try to bring you down. It'll do it for the rest of your life It's been doing it since day one Then you add a little slippery to it and I don't care how agile you are. I don't care how much time you spend on the ice Gravity's gonna win one of these times add some slip to it. So that's why I wear those things and Hopefully it'll save a broken arm broken shoulder broken head and what little brain cells I got left because that last fall I know I lost some brain cells on that one As you could see from me out here winter camping all the time All right, I think I'm ready To keep from losing these fish in the rocks or getting hung up or having to fight them for too far I tied a rubber band to the line and then I wrapped the rubber band on the reel just like that So I'm gonna let him fight I'm gonna let him run for about five feet or so And then he's gonna have to fight that rubber band If he breaks the rubber band, we'll fight him after that But we're setting that right on bottom dead shiner That's about 12 feet of water. You can catch these cask anywhere from 4 to 34 right now. They're starting to move into the shallows. You're getting chilly out here folks I got too set. I had to go back in the shack and take a break there I loaned my traps to some buddies up north and When they put the hooks back they decided to jam the hooks Way deep into the nylon on the reel. So I ended up having to cut most of the hooks out and Then go way back in after the point. That's two in we're gonna set. I'll probably set five tonight for cost And in Maine you got to check them every hour That one pretty shallow We're gonna set probably Three shallow and two deeper Three shallow and two deeper Deep deep water here I decided to go deep with it old-time cost fishing I didn't have anything over 30 bucks. I want to get something out a little deeper. I'm glad I'm fishing right now I love fishing.  So I do hate to wear my Ice creepers in here because it marks it up pretty good, but It ain't a showroom floor. It's more like a dancing floor So it is what it is. I don't mind too much, but we're all set up. I'm gonna unpack You know go through everything unpack some groceries and Some cooking stuff and some spices get camp all stowed away and ready for tonight And then I'll go out and check the traps At night the lawn main I believe is once an hour For cusklines I don't ever wait a full hour because I like to catch fish And I figure if you got one on you can't catch a second one So I like to catch a lot of fish So I check them a lot sooner than that, but I got a short little round about here I'll jump on the sled and check all five and bring you guys with me Hopefully we get a flag and catch a cusk tonight Probably not gonna fish all night, but once I get Dressed down is usually when I pull them. It's about time. I'm ready for bed and dress down. All right first check time. It's only been about 25 30 minutes, but I love catching fish. So let's go check see if we get a flag up. Let's hopefully do down Oh for five no flags yet That's all right. We still have hope not even sure if this is a good area, but we're fishing We're fishing. That's the key Would love to pop a giant cusk Or any for that matter. Okay guys, it is 7 40 at night and we're gonna go out and do another check on the cusk And after that come in and probably cook up some dinner A little bit later than normal when I'm cusk fishing Let's go He dropped it when he hit the rubber band That's not what we're after She's been cracking hard all day Shoot Had one miss Dang it I hate a miss It could have been possibly because I didn't give it enough Rope to hang itself with that rubber band being only five foot a run And we'll keep trying it and if it does it again, we'll give him some longer rope and if it does it again We'll even get rid of the rubber band But right now it's about time for some dinner All right dinner tonight is going to be some meat some steak tips Some potatoes we're going to saute up some mushrooms An onion and a cubanella pepper Throw it all together in a pan. See how it comes out If there's room. Yeah, there's some room. We'll throw some okra in there There's always room for a little bit of okra That'll cook down Beautiful We are looking good Just put some olive oil in there She's still kind of frozen All right steaks on Give it a couple flips color good Hopefully it's a good one Got some Idahoan potatoes some sour cream and chives We'll drive a couple of them into me Got some water going over here for Some hot tea and for the potatoes But it looks pretty good. Looks like it's gonna be a heck of a meal I'm gonna hammer that Do another round of checking the traps And then think about pulling them for the night after that once I get this food in my belly and Start thinking about that bed I don't know how long I'll last got a long day tomorrow We're gonna do some cusp fishing tomorrow night on a much better spot with a lot less wind Let's take a peek at that Maybe just a little bit more There's some wicked crackers going on out there. That's a nice plate of veggies right there mushrooms, pepper And onions with some okra mixed in Pretty darn good On top of some steak That could be better. It's pretty tender Yeah, it's good. Yeah, that'll fill the void tonight She's bleeding a little bit. It's pretty hot All that's cooling down a little bit. I'll tell you guys I just came off a trip up north just got back last night actually and and uh went home showered and Charged some batteries and came right here And normally I'll get home from a trip. I add it upload But I don't know if I got the footage to make a video to be honest with you. It was It wasn't a failure of a trip because I had a great time And I had a great time with some good with some really great friends But the fishing part of it It just didn't work out. We were trying something Tough we went to lobster lake way up, you know northeast the moose head And lobster is tough anyway, even though it's a blue ribbon trout fishery in the state It's got some really hard regulations on it. And I guess it can be super slow. I never fished to before We had a really hard time just getting into camp because there was like 39 to 44 inches of powdery snow I was able to make a trail with my snowmobile And then the next day we weren't able to make it into lobster lake that way So we went to moose head and fish for a couple hours Pat caught a couple tog And then the next day we we made it in the lobster and it was a slushy mass Had another group come fish near us a big group of people that knew what they were doing And I think they caught six real tiny 12 inch tog. We ended up just catching two 12 inch tog And it was like really slow and then The next day we decided just to call off that part of the trip Because we didn't have any live bait to go fish moose head with the slush was making it Really hard for the older snowmobiles to get around in our group And it was a good time, but I don't know. I don't know if I got a video or not If that's something you guys would be interested in seeing or not You know, whereas there wasn't really a lot of good fishing and it wasn't camping either So I'll have to really look at the footage at the end of the year and see or maybe if I if I have a Little downtime and see But if that's something you guys think you'd still want to see regardless of the fish catching and And um regardless of not having any tent camp and you know, we were staying in a pretty old woods camp Then it then it's something I'll I'll debate about Putting it together for you Seeing if I can put together a good film on it But sometimes you strike out. I mean I don't go to the Always to the best fishing lakes in the state of Maine And going to lobster is a challenge and I think it's It's a challenge that I'd love to take on But it's not A one day challenge where you're you get out there and you you get out there an hour after a light Because of the travel ends real hard and you leave an hour or two early I think it's a place where you'd have to go spend a week and really jump around look for those fish And find them to be able to get one of those great big ones All right dinner is put away Right there We're gonna go make another check out there and see how it goes come back in and probably get down a layer and Do one check after that and that that check be the one where we pick them up This one's down Nothing brewing on that check so I think I'm gonna get into some more comfortable clothing Do a little bit of reading And do one more check Pull them pull them in a little bit Get some sleep and then go at them a little harder tomorrow All right, let's do a final check. It's 9 30 at night final check and pickup I'm dressed a little light so I won't mess around That one is All right, let's go check We got a flag didn't make it to my rubber band. I'll had a couple flags, but no cusk for me tonight Don't really know it's good cuskery or not or I don't know but Didn't work out. It's pretty late. I'm pretty tired Lot of driving the last two or three days not a lot of sleep. So I'm looking really forward to climbing into that bed and Cozying up and getting snug as a bug in the rug Which will be nice Thanks everybody for tuning in had an awesome day Uh had a lot of fun over there. It's a begobade. I spent a little bit more time there than I probably should have I could have got fishing a little bit but hey seeing people and meeting people and And uh talking ice fishing's Always a lot of fun. So not a bad day when that happens Looking forward to tomorrow gonna get after it hard with the boys, especially with brandon And gonna do some jigging for tog in some seriously deep water


With the plan of a third force as an alternative for the two major political parties in Nigeria, ahead of the 2023 elections, a political analyst and professor of political science, Bayero University, Kano State, Professor Camilo Fagge, who was a guest on the breakfast spoke of the possibility of a third force ahead of the general election. On how credible they are and how serious they are in trying to actually form a third force, if we can call it, because from the look of things, they haven't come out clearly to say that they want to form a party, but they say they are trying to have like a greater group, composing of people from different parties, so that they will come and make sure that credible people are elected in 2023. The time is rather a little bit late, but it's like replicate what happens in 2000 and to convert support to form. The usual, I said it earlier, this is the only party that brought electoral acts reform as part of its manifesto and promises. The razor holds eye with House House acts and dashes into our face and still blaming us that we are not, we are too docile to even act. It shows them the lack of love for a nation. It shows the laxity of our political gladiators, the sincerity of our system. We elected you to serve. You are not to give us an excuse for your non-servants. National Assembly that ought to be the checkmating institution is more or less a rubber star. In democracy, protest demands are part of the correctional value that the people hold as trust. This is one of the significance that they give people the opium of respect that they own the government. They employ the government. They give the government the legitimacy. This is what sovereignty really represents. It should even prove himself as a man of integrity. Of course not to have an election. Notified about fresh news updates.


Okay, what is agile leadership? You've probably heard a lot about the term agile leadership and it's something that I spend a lot of my time on working with people in all sorts of organizations to help them develop a sense of agile leadership. So I thought I'd spend just a couple of minutes explaining my take on what agile leadership is all about. So when I say agile leadership, I'm not talking about a particular style of leadership. For example, servant leadership, where the aims to serve first and then lead or serve through the enablement of others. I'm not talking about autocratic leadership, that kind of style where the leader tells people what's needed and sometimes even tells them how to do things. When I talk about agile leadership, I'm also not talking about leaders at the top of an organization adopting a more agile mindset, something that you might get from the agile manifesto or something like scrum. When I talk about agile leadership, I'm talking about servant leadership and autocratic leadership and other styles. I'm talking about leaders at the top of an organization adopting a more agile mindset and leadership being spread throughout the organization so that everyone is both able to and confident to lead when it's appropriate for them to do so. Now that's important now. I might even say essential for many organizations because of the complexity and the pace of change. So I help organizational leaders establish what I call a more resilient and coherent culture. Now that's a culture where everybody knows the appropriate way to act and the appropriate form of leadership for the particular context that they find themselves in at the time. And that ultimately leads to a level of standardization because everybody's making decisions and adopting behaviors based on a common understanding of context, but it also leads to autonomy because everyone's making the specific decisions appropriate to their context rather than escalating things up looking for a decision or looking for processes or documentation to instruct them how to act. Now a lot of people come to me wondering what their role is now as a leader in a more agile, empowered or resilient and coherent organization because it's one where it's not about knowing all the answers or figuring out for yourself or telling people what to do and traditional leaders, leaders who've had success already think well that's what I have done. Dealing with people, dealing with teams who have different levels of autonomy and confidence requires a lot of leadership flexibility. It'll call on lots of different personal attributes as well because sometimes you'll be directing, sometimes you'll be guiding, sometimes you'll be enabling, sometimes you'll be coaching and a lot of that stuff will be happening multiple times with multiple different people in multiple different contexts every day. So leaders need to be a lot more agile in terms of their flexibility of their leadership approach and making sure there's coherence through their behaviors and the rest of the organization. So that's what I mean by agile leadership. I hope that made sense and I also hope it sparked a few questions or some conversation threads. So let me know what you think. Get in touch, add some comments, email me, whatever.


In this presentation, we will take a look at the stages of an audit. We're going to take the full audit process. We're going to break that audit process down into stages, into chunks. And then as we consider and study the audit process, we will be studying them within these chunks. So we're just basically going to list out the chunks at this point. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Those stages at this point and then as we move forward, we'll be concentrating in on specific stages. Now, as we do so, we do want to point out that many times when we consider the audit, we're thinking about the completed financial statements and we're trying to think about whether they have been completed in accordance with a set of rules. So in essence, we're basically thinking about the end product drilling down on it in some way to try to see if it's structurally sound or put together in accordance with some type of rules. If we were going to go about doing that, the first thing you probably do is say, hey, give me the financial statements. Let me look at them. I'm going to take a look at the balance sheet and I'm just going to start it from top to bottom. Just give me that trial balance. I'm going to start from top to bottom. Cash is that accurate? Accounts receivable is that accurate? And I'm going to then go through and think about tests for me to test. Cash accounts receivable accounts payable. Property plan equal. I'm just going to go through the trial balance and start testing them. And so a lot of times we might be impatient to do that or think that that's going to be the first thing that's going to happen. However, that's not going to be the first. That actually going to be happening down here. At least that's when we go through the detail of something like that. That's going to be way down here. So we have all these activities happening before this process, before we get to the audit of business process and related accounts, before we basically say, hey, I'm just going to go through the balance sheet top to bottom, look at cash, look at accounts receivable, look at property plans and equipment and so on and so forth. Now that can be a little bit frustrating because of course, when we think about the audit, that's one of the things we probably think about doing. And when we have a really small type of audit, if we're auditing like a small type of company, we may get to this process relatively quickly. But when we think about a larger type of company, remember, we can't rely just on the testing of certain accounts because there's too many transactions. We just can't do it and therefore when we plan the audit, we're often going to have to consider and plan more strategically and that planning process will be strategically planning internal controls. So if you have a really small company that we're auditing, then in other words, you might get to the point where you can basically go through and do a lot more testing on just a substantive test as we'll go through and we'll consider when we go through the planning process. But just recall at this point in time, especially if you're talking about a large company that actually just going straight to those accounts and trying to put together substantive tests related to them is not something that's going to happen until later on in the audit process. It's also actually one of the more kind of interesting components because when you're thinking about the financial accounting, that's usually what you're doing. If you're preparing for an audit process, then yeah, you're going to be preparing your internal controls and whatnot, but those are already in place by the time the audit usually is happening at that point. Well, you might you might actually be going through and when we're thinking about how to apply our skills that we've learned related to audits, this is often some of the skills that we might think about. Well, how can we test for ourselves the in balance? In other words, if I'm a small company or a large company and I put together the financial statements and now I have my financial statements. If I don't if I don't have an audit, how can I use my auditing skills to then give myself some assurance that these financial statements are indeed accurate that these numbers represent what they should represent? Well, normally we would go through these type of activities that we will see in the auditing process. We're going to say, give me the balance sheet. I'm going to go from the balance sheet top to bottom and look at those accounts and look at the related type of income statement accounts as I look through those balance sheet accounts. That's usually what we would do. So when we get to this component, then it's going to be very useful for us, even if we're not in the audit process, even if we're GL accountants, we'll get to this component here. But note, larger companies, of course, are going to be dependent on internal controls. We, as auditors, are more dependent on internal controls. And therefore in the audit planning process, we're going to spend a lot of time in the audit planning process and in the process of considering the internal controls because we have to rely on them with the larger companies before we can just go into the testing process. So the stages that will be involved, the client's acceptance or continuance, two types of things could happen with a new client. Either we have a new client, completely new, where we're going to take it, the new client process and accept the basically the engagement. This is usually, of course, done by the partner. So if you're talking about a large firm, the partners are often the ones that are going to be taken on basically the new process, the new type of engagement, setting up the terms with a new potential client, a new potential engage. Or, of course, and actually possibly more common once we have an established type of relationship is going to be the continuing clients, that we have audited in the past, especially if you're talking about publicly traded clients, those are going to be needed to be audited every year. So we possibly have a continuing type of process. And that's going to be a lot easier, of course, because we would think that the new audit for the following year, we want to make sure that everything is rolling forward and that we're taking into consideration any new information, of course. But you would think that we would already have some of the preliminary type of information down and we would have the continuation process then. So those can be substantially different. Obviously, a new audit going to take in a lot more work. We'll talk about more of the details between those two than a continuing audit that we have done in the past and therefore have some idea of what the needs are of the company. Then we have the preliminary engagement type activities. The preliminary engagement activities include the perform procedures regarding the continuance of the client relationship and specific audit engagement, determine compliance with independent and ethics requirements, establish an understanding of the terms of the audit engagement with the audit committee in accordance with auditing standards. Then we're going to have the planning of the audit. We're going to go through the audit planning process, the nature and extent of the planning activities that are necessary depend on the size and complexity of the company, the auditor's previous experience with the company and the changes in circumstances that occur during the audit. The audit plan is going to be a very important process and often one that's overlooked when we start to think about the audit and how to put the audit together because the plan is going to help us to be more efficient. We want to put the plan together so that we have a roadmap so that we can be as efficient as possible as we actually conduct the audit. So we're going to talk about the audit plan in some depth as we move forward. Then we want to consider and audit the internal controls. Once we have the plan note, we're going to audit the internal controls before we do what we wanted to do or we talked about in the first part of this presentation, which is to jump in and just look at those financial statements and start testing doing substantive tests. So notice what we've done here. We've gone through the engagement. We set up an audit plan. Part of that audit plan is going to include us first looking at the internal controls. Now, the reason we're going to do that, of course, is because better internal controls checks and balances just like with the government. If you say, hey, the government has some system of checks and balances in place, that should make it less likely that there's going to be a type of problem that we're looking for, because those checks and balances are in place in order to regulate against those types of problems. Therefore, if the checks and balances are properly in place, then we should be able to do less substantive testing. So now that once we have the audit plan, we have to consider the internal controls and basically the relationship that we will consider and we'll discuss this more as we go is that if they have a good system of internal controls and they are in compliance and actually implementing those internal controls, those of the two things we're typically looking for, do you have a system of internal controls? Is it good? Does it work? Will it work if implemented? And then of course, did you actually implement it? Once we've determined that, then we can consider what the audit tests that we will need. So then we go into the actual things that we would want to do from day one. If we were just starting out an auditing, give me that balance sheet and let me start testing top to bottom cash and whatnot. Now we can take a look at that balance sheet and look at it more objectively. We could say now we've tested internal controls with relation to cash. We tested internal controls with relation to a counter-receivable property, plant and equipment. Given those internal controls, we can now think about the types of transaction and number of transaction that we need within say sample sizes of transactions in order to get to the level of assurance necessary for an audit without basically overkill, without spending all of our time doing substantive testing here, hopefully spending our time less time doing internal controls that will restrict or limit the amount of substantive testing that we'll do here. So that's why it's always going to be in this relationship. We got to do the internal control testing, then the substantive testing. Note again, if you're a small company, if it's a small company and you don't have a lot of internal controls, I mean, if you're talking about a sole proprietor, you don't have internal, you don't have many because, you know, if it's just one or a couple people in turn, they don't have any separation of duties and we'll talk about more, you know, that relation of separation of duties and internal controls with regards to it. But just it's something just to keep in mind because as we look at an audit process went for a large publicly traded company, we start to get in our mind that that's just the way things are again, and not and learn what the procedure is rather than the principle. Then when we look at these small companies, it's, you know, auditors of large companies tend to say, well, that's small companies doing it all wrong. They're just a mess. They don't have any internal controls. And that's just obviously that's I mean, if you think about it, that's because they're a small company. It's not wrong. It's just that's they don't have the resources to be doing internal controls.  So if you're auditing or doing some type of review or testation agreement for a small company, you would expect the internal controls to be far less because there's less controls needed. If you had too many controls in a small company, you would not survive in the industry because it would cost too much. The internal controls wouldn't be cost effective. So in that case, if you were to audit a small company and they weren't publicly traded for something like a bank loan or something like that, the bank needs an audit, you would expect to have fewer internal controls, do more substantive testing. You would expect to be doing something more like, give me your balance sheet and let me just test it from top to bottom, actually looking at more transactions within our sample size, basically in that case. So there's always going to be that relationship between these two within a large company. Our expectation, if it's publicly traded, is that they have a good set of internal controls that they've implemented the set of controls. We expect its internal controls to be good. If they're not, we're in big trouble because we don't have enough time to test all the internal controls. So we're hoping that that should be the case where their internal controls need to be good in order for the audit to go well. Small company, we're actually expecting that the company is not going to have the best internal controls. They can't. They don't have the resources to do that. That's OK. We're just going to note that and we're going to say, well, we're auditing a small company, one that doesn't have those internal controls and therefore we're going to be reliant more on substantive type testing as opposed to internal controls. Then of course, the next stage is to complete the audit. And once we do that, we'll evaluate results and issue the audit report. So once we have the evidence, we've gathered our evidence like our detective work. We've got it all put together. We're going to evaluate it. We're going to put it together. We're going to then put together the audit report. And of course, the expectation of the hope is that the audit report is confirming that the assertions being made by management, the assertions that they have made the financial statements in accordance with whatever regulations they said they were doing it according to typically generally accepted accounting principles for US type companies that the evidence does indeed confirm that assertions. And hopefully we can then issue a clean audit report saying that they did this financial statements are representing within a material, you know, taken into degree audit risk in accordance with the assertions that they said they were going to issue them with. Now, of course, it could quite be possible that we came up with evidence that says that that's not and that's not the case or that we couldn't get enough evidence to support that decision. And therefore we can't really we can't give a clean decision on that. We'll talk about those situations. But obviously the hope is that we gathered evidence in order to prove the assertion being made by management, correct financial statements then being reported in accordance with whatever regulation that they said they were going to be reported with. And that would be the opinion that would be presented in the audit report.


This church was built in, oh, I imagine in the 50s, maybe 60s, used to be a dance hall, a Selito lingo dance hall, and right here was the first church which was like the hall, and now they have a new church and a new hall, and this is where they have catechism. This was my mother's parish, and she was my mother was an acquirer. My mother was a cop's leader here, and father when father Hugo used to be here, he used to bring David in the San Juan de los Lahuas from Mexico. They used to come in tour here in the in Texas in San Antonio, and father Hugo would always bring it over here, in this space would pack up with people coming to build images and things. For the lady of San Juan de los Lahuas, la virgencita.


final thoughts. Thanks a lot Chris Coos. Let's get it done. Big time come from behind victory. It wasn't a late crazy fourth quarter comeback but the way they looked early in this game and the way that they were able to grind it out really says something about where this team is at mentally. Yeah and I think we've talked about the fact that this team is showing they could win in different ways. I think we've seen the same way the last couple of games and grinding things out and really trying to clean up some of the miscues and the attention to detail and that first quarter they certainly didn't have it in a lot of areas whether it was on the offensive end or the defensive end but started to piece together and figure things out and so much of that came from the groups that were in there in the second half and lineups that brought energy they brought intensity and we could focus on what happens offensively seven players for the nets and double figures. Everyone was hitting some timely important baskets but defensively they were moving on a string and you could just tell in watching regardless of numbers and regardless of stops is how they're able to communicate off of those switches the way in which they're rotating and how getting those stops forcing some misses gets them some runouts allows them to flow into their offense more easily. That's a lot of what we saw in the fourth quarter and a lot of James Harden once again being so special. James Harden said after the next game in order for this next team to be successful they have to rebound better they had a season high in offensive rebounds they have to take care of the basketball did a great job of that in the fourth quarter and then defensively they need to be solid. On the offensive side as long as James is out there you're in pretty good shape 40 15 another triple double for James Harden. We saw it in the look of Nicholas Claxton's face when you brought up and he didn't even realize he had 40 from the bench Kevin Durant Kyrie Irving everyone's celebrating when he got that final rebound. I think that is just the enthusiasm and the connectivity now we see of this team not only how they play on the floor but the chemistry amongst one another. And when it comes to James Harden he keeps defenses so off balance because of how he's a threat in all areas. They don't know if he's going to look to score and get his own if he's going to facilitate make plays for other. And when it comes to Harden for him he just looks at is I'm making the right play whatever the defense gives me I'm going to make a playoff of that and he's always one step ahead because of it. It has just been masterful to watch how he's able to manipulate a defense and we saw it once again tonight especially here in this fourth quarter net still without Kevin Durant Blake Griffin. No Kyrie Irving tonight Kyrie expected back in the lineup on Friday when the nets take on the Orlando Magic looking for their ninth straight road win again extending a franchise record if they can do it. It has been a stretch of where everyone I think feels so involved and so invested. And so now you get Kyrie Irving back the different roles that individuals have had to play. We saw the big game out of Tyler Johnson. It goes down the list of this roster. I think it's just the collective nature of OK what do we need from each player and how do we understand the roles we're going to have to play. And to me that's another example going to Orlando at Eastern Conference team that is struggling but it's more about this Brooklyn group. It's more about ways in which they're trying to get better. And the focus is just to keep on building this momentum this juice this energy that they feel and that's a lot of what I think they're trying to ride out here as they finish off the second half of the season. Tip off at 8 o'clock on Friday Ryan Ruko Sarah Kustak yours truly on the call looking forward to that one for now we sit back in the studio with Kristen Frank.