Everyone, we are back again with our eating up webinar series. Today, we are very much pleased to have with us Mary-Nik Jolavni Hill. She's going to introduce, present as a very interesting topic, something, an area for research and deepening where we are all involved some way, since making strategies for MOOC research. We really much thank you very much for your participation. I know you are at a conference or away from your office and anyway, you are available today to give this webinar with us. I will just steal a few moments to introduce the event, which is offered within the Eden NAP, Network of Academics and Professionals, to its membership. As you know, as Network of Academics and Professionals, we try to involve the community of our members, of the members of Eden Network of Academics and Professionals. Of course, we support networking of individual members also through these kind of events. We try to support effective meeting and communication among our members through different channels. The Eden Chat will follow this webinar at six, so don't miss it. And it is coordinated, of course, by a steering committee that I'm representing, but I'm glad that today also Alfredo Soeiro, who is the Vice President of the steering committee, is there with us supporting Mary Redd today. Here you have pictures and names of the people involved in the steering committee so that you can match your face to the names. We are all involved in promoting our activities. You have also the possibility as NAP members to participate in our platform, so don't hesitate and go to the NAP members area where you can find information about all the people connected there. Being a member includes a series of services and benefits that are listed here, different ones. I just mentioned the fact that you can delegate up to 30 individuals in the NAP and that you can attend conferences at reduced fees. And the incoming conference in Bruges will be a very interesting one, so I really support your participation in that. Our challenge is our involvement is aimed at professional development, first of all, so through webinars, through EdenChats, through communication, through networking events at conferences where we organize this road to an event where people can meet in a speed-up meeting, introducing their own research interests and creating new research groups. And this is very important, I think, when we meet at conferences. And so, I won't join for a still more time, but with this slide I really recommend you to register for our 28th Eden Annual Conference in Bruges, from June to 19th. And, if there is any discrimination in quality or if you hear some random people going by, we've tried to get a place in the hotel which is quiet, etc to do this, but as you know anything could happen, so my apologies that happened. So, the Emux conference was very, very interesting. We did this presentation, Kroger did the presentation earlier on today, and it's part of a wider research agenda that we have in the National Institute for Digital Learning in Dublin City University. We were very much focused on MOOCs and on research in general, but particularly because of this research agenda into digital that we've developed with Professor Mark Brown. I'm head of the IDEAS Lab, which is an innovative unit founded to particularly look at how we can ingrain digital innovations within to the wider university curriculum. So we get to do a lot of research, a lot of testing, and a lot of evaluation and working with faculty across the university. So we have a huge remit in my institution, but one of the things that we thought would be interesting to discuss today would be what we have learned through our last few years of MOOC research, and just to talk about how these things are very, very important. These have linked well actually into some of the main issues that have come true in the Emux conference, which was attended by most of the major platforms, both within Europe and globally. We had Coursera, we had edX, we had fun, we had future learn, we've had a wide range of inputs, and it was really interesting to see that some of the issues that they are now grappling with as they are moving into the next phase of development, and we know that development is linked around issues around recognition, recognition of short courses, then moving into the micro-gardensial space, space, and then moving into full stackable online degrees. I think from our point of view that was very, very interesting because I know our institution is very much going in that way and looking at that, and we will have a major announcement with respect to this in the coming weeks, but to give you context, it was very interesting to hear of the notions of, we know that Class Central in their last research over, they have identified nearly approximately 452 ways that badges and alternative digital things has been done by various stakeholders who are providing digital learning via short courses and by longer courses. So there's a shakeout happening in the field, which is really, really very, very interesting from that perspective of it. And I suppose our research agenda in DCU and in the NIDA is particularly to have, is particularly to look at issues where trying to shape the research agenda. So from that, this is why this research is particularly important. Now, I've spoken a lot thus far, but what we all hope to do is that the three of us will have a conversation. I'm sorry, I've just muted or I've still my video because I'm very cognizant that I'm on a Wi-Fi from the hotel. So just in case I know the audio will go through. So just in case anything happens. So what we'll do is Kruger is going to lead out on the PowerPoint that we have here beside us. And then Elaine and myself will join in with individual research that we have been doing. So Kruger is engaged in research, in his own research, and I might just let him say a few things about his own research agenda, and initially to start off and then allow Elaine then to come in and to introduce herself as well in her research. So just Kruger. Hi, everyone. And so, yeah, I'm a second year doctoral student and I research on the online courses that we have through the FutureLearn platform. My own research is geared towards the psychology and motivational aspects of language learning. So it's quite a specific field in one way, but it also has much broader resonance and is involved kind of usage of a lot of different methods and instruments. And it's been really interesting to actually grapple with those issues and design appropriate research. So a lot of what I've been looking at over the last couple of days has been to do with seeing how other people are researching, what the broader research agendas look like with other institutions. Part of our presentation today was talking about how we're in a kind of certainly unusual, if not unique position in the kind of MOOC that we run, the language MOOC, it's quite interesting and unusual in that regard. And so that's my kind of research, a blend of sort of psychology and then obviously the technological aspects as well. And I work closely with Elaine on that as well. So to bear witness because this is to Elaine and I'm going to freeze. Hello, so my name is Elaine and I am actually a final year PhD student in Dublin City University. I'm very similar to Croher. I'm looking at the psychology of learning, but specifically at emotions and the different emotions that people feel as they learn in a MOOC. It is obviously a very prominent area at the moment. A lot of people are becoming very interested in this in the wider educational area. And it's beginning. There's a good few studies now happening in the MOOC area as well. But kind of different, I suppose, to previous studies is I'm looking at self reports of learner emotions. So really getting it straight from the learner's mouth. What is, how are they feeling as they progress through a course? And also a little bit different from most studies so far is it's really embedded in the theoretical framework that has come from the field of education and that is the control value theory that Pekron designed in 2006. So it's very much relevant to a wider field, but I'm looking specifically at MOOCs and language MOOCs in particular, and that being our Irish 101 series. And I think Croher will tell us a little bit more about that as we go along. And I hope to input with some examples from from my approach as well as we talk through the presentation. So I look forward to that. So I hope that format works and we hope that the video link and that the audio link for today remain constant throughout. From my part of it, I've a particular interest into the macro and the micro implementation of innovation and change within higher education on a wider scale. So I think we have a breadth of experience and research that we engage in. So we're, we'll move on now to the presentation. But at any time, if you would like to ask us particular questions or you would like us to engage with some of your own responses, please use the chat and we'd be very grateful for, we're very grateful for questions on that. And again, if at any stage we fall off the Wi-Fi connection, our apologies. So we'll start the presentation now. Great. So we'll probably essentially follow the way we did present this at EMUX, it was an interesting discussion and we had actually quite a few comments as well. So I think it kind of did its purpose or did its job in that sense. But to introduce the topic itself, so you're seeing a slide here of the first of our courses and it's in a series of courses into the Irish language and Irish culture. They're delivered through the Future Learn platform and there's eight of them at present. Now, we launched them last year in January 2018 and since then they've been really incredibly successful. But also when you come to a conference like this, what's interesting is they're quite unusual. Elaine and Mourade have done an excellent study that actually looked at the number of language MOOCs that exist. And I think, guys, it was about 150 or something a few years ago. But the vast majority of those MOOCs that did exist were English, French, they were global languages. So by my count, I think we're one of only about three minority language MOOCs. There's a Friesian one and a Maori one in New Zealand as well. But I don't think there's another one at present. So we're in a... Yeah, and we're also, when we use the term minority language, we're talking about lesser use language. We understand that there are some global languages spoken by millions of people, which are termed that. So we understand that. So just with regard to the research that we did on those language MOOCs, one of the interesting things was that English, Spanish and Chinese were the main global languages, but it was English for particular purposes in very specific domains. So that was quite interesting. And also with respect to Spanish, I think we felt that from the research and the findings that Chinese was coming through, but it was coming through in more of a holistic way. I suppose with this series of MOOCs that we have relating to the Irish language, they're co-funded by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gweiltocht, the 20 year strategy for the Irish language. So we had a huge input, not only from funding-wise, but from our department, our government department. And the reason that they were put out was because of this global connection. So the government saw that MOOCs were means by which we connect to a diaspora as you are maybe aware. We have a huge diaspora of Irish people globally, most particularly sent to and sent in North America and in where you'd expect from England, Australia, New Zealand, etc. But I think one of the things we'll talk about is that a lot of data is given about MOOCs and it's all about how many registrations and that. And in the initial research on MOOCs, it was all about numbers, how many people are registered and the huge figures and that was the thing that was important. But I think what we found in this is that, yes, we've had those big numbers, but when we're going into a lot of the clickstream data, etc. What we've been mostly focused on and what we've been trying to do our research on is the interaction patterns and tying that up with other data formats that have come through the MOOCs, such as discussion where we've had textual analysis, etc. But we'll speak more to that through the presentation. But it's just interesting in that. And as well for reporting, you can imagine that our government is very keen on how many people have registered to do this, how many of them have finished it, etc. And what we've been able to report is on levels of interactivity, but also give them some research into what the global diaspora and people who are interested and who have taken on this, the sort of trends that they have with respect to their participation and their motivations. And I think that's going to have to do with your own research in that space. So we might move on to the next slide. Yeah. And actually, that sets it up really well for kind of what we were talking about earlier, which was when we're approaching from a specific perspective, I mean, we're researching on technology and MOOCs, but we're very well embedded in wider literatures, so linguistic literatures and the like. And one of the most interesting things about that is you can kind of put on a critical hat. And there has been actually a good bit of literature in the last couple of years that we've drawn upon pointing out this clickstream data and this in a sense, and it's something that you even see at the conference, massive emphasis on particular forms of data completion rates often very important despite the fact that there, you know, there's a wider debate about how useful that metric is, but even the likes of using data, these billion data points to actually say, look at what a typical learner is doing. But that it does link through to and it's always scary to use the kind of philosophical words, but a kind of neo-positivistic view where you're sort of measuring engagement in a very specific way, a static way, and that even though we have these massive reams of information, it's much easier to conduct a study in a MOOC in the sense that it generates so much data just through people participating in the MOOC, and both the actual interpretation of the data often when you read a report that's based on a MOOC or MOOC research is often a very narrow framework or it's essentially just looking at X and Y, seeing what the relationship is between the two, but that some of the more interesting things, as Morade says, actually relate to the social dynamics and the interactions and what kind of meanings people draw from things as well. I think that's very important. So we did put in this fabulous picture downloaded from Shutterstock, but just trying to talk about these theoretical bridges. So if you have a massive stream of information on the one hand, and it is in and of itself not necessarily useful if you don't have a particularly salient or good way of connecting it to some broader insight that you're trying to say. And it seems often with a lot of MOOC research also that there's not as big a focus on tying it to the wider literatures that already exist. So we did make reference to Martin Weller study, a very interesting one which was to do with the various literatures relating to open educational resources and the like and showed that if you actually cluster it out by references, citations, the MOOC literature is quite peripheral. It doesn't link through to where there's already been findings, maybe 30, 40 years worth of findings that are probably very relevant in MOOC contexts. So there's a danger as well that if you're not aware of that literature, that you're kind of reinventing the wheel, or maybe you're not drawing from these really rich and existing funds, things that people already know. So I think from the theoretical values are really, really important. And, you know, we do, we have and we've done quite a number of literature reviews, both systematic and scope. And there is, we have a plethora of empirical, of empirical studies, etc, which, you know, we have no issue with. But I think at this stage, as cover said, it's linking that that's the theory is re or two theories is very, very important, whether it's both from an inductive or a deductive process or both. Sorry, we can't hear very right anymore. Something might have happened.  And are you there? Something might have happened to them. The connection. Let's wait a couple of minutes and see what happens in the meantime, sort of survey here, which is your experience with MOOCs and actually more than attending MOOCs, which is your experience with design of MOOCs and you use of MOOCs within teaching and learning activities. I hope we're back. Are we back? Can anyone answer? So sorry, anyone answer this question? OK, so apologies for that. It was, as I said, I think we leave the video off because just in case we're running it too tight. So again, apologies for that. But as I said, we are in a hotel lobby, so we're doing our best with what we have. So we'll just take it up from there. I think we could probably go to the next slide. To entertain the audience. It's better that you go. Excellent, OK. So what we had started looking as well was, of course, at these different forms of research. So I think Moraid was mentioning about context and the importance of this and field specific findings and one that helped us as we actually started looking at this has been this distinction between variants and process based research. So obviously, when you see this at first, it kind of sounds like it's very similar to a split between quantitative and qualitative, but it's actually quite different in a sense. And variants, as a course, if we have, you know, could be 100 persons or could be 10 persons, but we're comparing them across case and we're looking for kind of an average and an aggregate and most MOOC research definitely seems to fall into this category. We look at interaction. We look at kind of social dynamics, how people are working with course materials using a variant based logic. But the other one that you can use that's equally valid and definitely there seems to be far fewer studies is this process based approach where you're looking at it actually across time unfolding. Weirdly enough, MOOC runs themselves are fantastic case studies because you could literally have the even as learners start to get used to each other, they start to interact with each other. But it's rare enough that a study actually takes that sort of lens and it seems that and even the last few days we've probably noticed a lot of this is to do with generalizability that a lot of learner or a lot of researchers I should say really want the idea of coming up with generalizable findings that can work across many different types of MOOCs and but there's actually ample space there to try and understand these process based contextual case studies using individual runs and the like. So it follows the course as well that I mean all of our research probably falls into the the domain of mixed methods research. We make use of a lot of different sources of data as we do conduct it and we've got kind of three examples that we'll use and of our research and kind of giving applied examples because it's always better and more useful I think for someone who's listening if we can kind of show what we mean in context so we will talk about that but we'll also talk about the importance of this concept of field specific knowledge so there's not just MOOC research it has to surely tether to something deeper and bigger also pragmatically for researchers I think it's probably better it gives you more kind of ways to pitch your research when you're talking to people as well and to interact with other researchers and maybe find collaborators as well. Okay. So these are our three examples as I was saying at the top this morning we can't claim who have invented any of these terms they're quite well established terms but also as I say talking about them in context might be useful for any other researchers out there also so we'll take each one in three. Yeah so I think I'll speak about the data triangulation because it draws very much on what I'm doing and it gives us I can show some examples from my work on how we've used this to really enhance our data collection until there's so much more than we would have got from just one method alone. So as I said before I'm looking at emotion in a MOOC and getting self reports to collect that kind of data. So if anyone I'm not sure if everyone's familiar with the method of experience sampling but this is when you collect feedback from individuals be that about their opinions their feelings their thoughts at regular time over time but within the moment that it's felt so in an educational context that would be wilder engaged in a learning process or in a task or activity and that's what I did I measured learners emotions at multiple points throughout the course and this was usually immediately following a task in that course. So there was our course itself was three weeks long and so I had 18 data collection points during that course so there was about six per week and these were these were kind of mapped against the different tasks types that we had in the course they were discussion quizzes articles which were kind of usually very text based and what was our other one videos. So they were kind of four different tasks types and I looked at people's emotions during these different tasks types and these were true very very short concise surveys that they answered following those tasks and from that we got a very big response thankfully so for over the 10,000 people who enrolled in the course over 3,000 responded to at least one of those surveys. So a nice large sample from which to interpret the data and they for one example we're referring back to the data triangulation was for a Pacific task learners were it was a video and learners were introduced for the first time to a conversation using the Irish language. They'd been kind of introduced to phrases prior to that but this was the first time that they heard two people speaking the language together. They responded to the surveys the sentiment or the emotions reported during in that survey were extremely positive high reports of curiosity enjoyment pride and these shown through really strongly and that was one that was from our survey results but when we went then and looked at the task or the task itself and the comments posted below that task they were extremely negative and this was not represented in the as clearly in the survey data but it gave us a new perspective from on which to look at this task and really see that it gave us something to think about with regards to survey results but also how people post in a course and maybe it is a truly representative of what people feel are the majority of people just happy to move on and they don't want to post and how much of those kind of high representative are the comments to the overall sentiment with the course. So you can see from those two we had very quantitative survey results for which people just were asked to report from a list of emotions to us kind of doing a thematic sentiment analysis of comments and we got two very different findings from that which both have have value depending on which way you want to look at them and kind of if you repeat that over time it's that's how you get the value of it as well. And I think then you also had a data triangulation designed into your research design. Do you want to have a little chat about how you did that? Yeah, of course. So I'd read actually a lot of the literature about mixed methods and kind of came upon a nice sort of phrase a little bit don't sound at first with this idea of using them dialectically. So that means that when I was designing my survey I knew straight away that it's really important in any sort of survey designed to really account for the fallibility of an instrument. And when I say fallibility I mean it can be statistically valid. It can come out with some great results. But where it gets very interesting is if you give people the opportunities and responses to actually comment on the survey itself. So for example at the bottom of the survey I specifically asked for feedback were there any questions that you thought were a little bit off or anything that you'd phrase differently and ended up with really a wealth of information from even little things that are actually very telling about the research. So for example I had a question at the start about what one's nationality was and I had a couple of responses from people saying that they were kind of offended that they could only pick one nationality because you had a lot of people who said well I'm Irish but you know I've lived in England all my life but I'm Irish so I should be able to use both. And that's very interesting straight away about the relationship between for example the learner's national identity and who they are and obviously in a motivational study that's very telling sorts of evidence and this is this kind of supporting evidence argument as well. And but also from the start I used kind of like a battery of responses to kind of measure people's motivations but I also left open boxes at the end aware that any scale I could create would not encompass every motivation there'd always be ones and so when I thematically analysed all those open responses came up with some really new questions that were then filtered into the survey design for the second one specifically because I was kind of saying from the start this is sort of exploratory it hasn't really been done before we kind of know a lot of reasons that people have been doing it but there's bound to be novel ones things you would not expect like people doing it for health purposes where they're talking about you know Sudoku I like learning a language that I find kind of difficult and I'm doing it just for fun I'm doing it because my grandkids can speak Irish they go to an Irish language school and I want to be the cool grandparent that was an actual response and so everything under the sun you can imagine it was there and it's important to account for that so that's another form of triangulation where we kind of exploit the weaknesses of the methods because for example with a survey what you ask is what you ask you don't get another you know chance to expand or elaborate on the data you have and that might be why data triangulation is actually really really important that it gives you that opportunity to delve into you know developing our teams etc that have horizon from one method which is very very important I think for my own research point of view and some of the research I've conducted related to this and policy implementation is that independent of whether it's textual data that you're mining or whether you're looking at interview data is that that triangulation is a really really important feature so I think for us in the MOOC context we decided that this was the an approach that we should use to validate not only the types of questions but also to allow us to increase the types of questions that we are answering because we wanted to ask a little bit more complex than what pure survey data would allow us and you can even from the types of things that Elaine is doing and what Corcoru is doing is that there are areas that yes you can have a very you can use a survey instrument and you will get that as you said today that table at the end absolutely and it's underwhelming and it's underwhelming so that you're able to sort of drill down more into that that was very very important but that also gave you the ability then to ask not only the question which the table represented but then to have deeper questions and I think when we were looking at MOOC research and doing our literature reviews and both of you have done quite enough in depth literature reviews and you're in the two areas we're looking at it's that there is an absence of that and that some question types are not being asked so I think data triangulation from that perspective is allowing us to ask is allowing us to engage with deeper questions and I think broader questions from a research point of view absolutely so we'll just move on to longitudinal research do you want to take this for sure so obviously the word is used a lot and I mean it literally means looking at something over time and but essentially the way we were looking at it I think from the start is this concept of change researching change and similar to kind of what we were talking about with the survey instruments anything you take if you take a single survey instrument is a snapshot at that very particular moment so that's that notion of as opposed to me change it's changing as it's an active form exactly and that's what's really interesting too is that and even when it's tracked over the length of a course or over multiple courses and that's where you definitely do see a lot of kind of longitudinal surveys studies which are very interesting but the way we were kind of looking at it too is we've noticed even on our own MOOCs when you see the same faces the same names over and over again and another way to look at it longitudinally is to flip it around and instead of saying you know a thousand learners this is server response at XYZ point individual learners and track them over time so for example I've only interviewed one person so far but I'm engaging in interviews and part of the plan it's about their motivations to earn the language but part of the plan I actually have is to get back in touch with them in maybe six months time because I'm really curious we have a series of MOOCs so they get kind of progressively more difficult and I'm curious to if these MOOC learners and the one interview I did do for example she's very positive she was ready to move on to the next steps will she actually be doing it in six months time she's atypical in that as we were saying about completion rates and stuff most learners don't in the kind of technical sense complete a MOOC there's a lot of literature as to why it's problematic to even look at it that way but most don't but the ones that do are actually kind of probably very interesting and unique just in terms of they're not being that typical and so sometimes we're kind of we always want to generalize our results and that is very important but the other side theoretically is actually the outliers or the less typical persons are actually also really interesting and we had a great discussion and actually a question came from the end about this concept of broadening the focus from say the platform activity the clickstream stuff what they engage in to actually looking at beyond the MOOC does that influence in my case say their motivations you know talking to people around them and things yeah and I think that's the point I think that we're trying to get we're not criticizing the studies that have taken place to take because in every field and in every burgeoning field there is a sort of a you know what seems to be a pathway that people follow as researchers follow as it becomes more come as the research becomes more refined and I think we have you know we don't and I think we should be cognizant as researchers in MOOCs that we're not a historical and we're not a contextual and we need to understand and that's why the broader focus and if we know that learning happens not just in the formal learning environment we can't just disaggregate that from the lives of the learners and also from the wider social context in which they are in and also from where they have come so I think that's it and just coming back to one of the points that Kuhn had made earlier I think we have in our Eden paper that's in Bruges we're looking at the serial MOOCs and the serial so you'll get to hear and plug in our own paper if you want to come self-promote and ask the Bruges conference and we'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the paper that we've developed looking at and trying to track learning over a MOOC series as opposed to just an individual MOOC we know that it's not just an individual MOOC because we are quite cognizant and we'll be I suppose theoretically we'll be aligned with steak for where you know where you case study and instrumental and intrinsic case studies and within that we would come from that sort of I suppose methodological standpoint and tradition so looking at the next slide and I saw the iterative for just redesign I think that's key isn't it really? Oh absolutely I mean and it's kind of it's something that I know that I can speak of as well but it's been so interesting seeing the talking about something frankly and organically as well so you'll notice that there's a little Irish there and that's a Shanukkel which means a proverb Neil Siegun lucht there's no wise man or woman without fault and that's an important one to for any researcher to probably bear in mind is not necessarily about a humbleness but it's about the fact that the way we actually move knowledge forward is by acknowledging where we didn't do as well as we thought we would or where you know we ran into like road blocks or speed bumps or something and we also like this concept of the logic in use that Maxwell developed so he pointed out and actually it's a lovely paper if anyone wants to look at the reference at the end he pointed out that whenever you're reading a study what you essentially get on the method logical side is a reconstructed logic it's a story of how it was done and it's very clinical it says everything about this was you know XYZ everything's very neat but that's almost always not exactly how it went down because the logic in use was that you made decisions at certain points you might have to chop a question out if you might have to looked at a different method of data collection that this logic in use is actually in a way the more useful for researchers because it shows that problem side also but it does tend to get cut out I mean often studies don't have enough space to kind of talk about these issues but where there's real kind of value in these kind of papers particularly in a budding field like MOOC research is that a lot of the kind of problems we face are probably quite similar you'll notice probably survey fatigue and respondents just won't maybe answer a long instrument there's actually probably a point an inflection point past which they're just not going to you know their legs that they need to serve and yeah so we've all kinds of like protects your own but that's a really cool thing though and I suppose with all the different survey instruments that we have that we can we now know where enough is enough hmm which question almost yeah and what questions they're falling down on so it gives you that iterative redesign where you can sort of say okay well let's really think about my survey instrument do I need to have those sort of two introduction questions or should I just cut to the chase and get to the really these are the really good stuff so I think that's been important and I know on our third point here I think Elaine has particular to just like talk to platform limitations because when we were going initially on to the I think we were one of the first universities to engage with this type of research and that was challenging for our platform providers yeah definitely it was something because when I when you come up with a research idea you have this idealistic view of how you want it to work and how you see it happening in the course and when I was coming up with my research design the course itself was only in the development phase two so it was a learning process all around but what I wanted to originally do was to have the surveys as a pop-up that would appear in mid-learning tasks so they'd be embedded in the course itself and they'd be it wouldn't rely on someone to have to do anything extra to answer the survey they wouldn't have to click somewhere else they wouldn't be moved off the platform to answer a survey and I think that's key when you want to get in the moment reports like I was I didn't want to interrupt the learning process I wanted this to be part of what they were doing and to be nearly a reflective step in what they were doing but because of the way the platform was designed this just wasn't possible and it was also the GDP or thing yeah so we had to have so many we had to have a very lengthy disclaimer in advance telling people that they were leaving the platform that they were now answering a survey that belonged to Dublin City University it was no longer part of the platform site and while this is all understandable it did inhibit the way that the survey came across on the platform it looked a lot more substantial than what was originally intended for it to be they probably spent more time reading the disclaimer than they did answering the survey oh they did yeah absolutely and so that was and it just it kind of it interrupted what I intended to be a very seamless process and I think it's something that we all kind of have to and platforms need to address if they really want research and more research that doesn't just associate itself with the background clickstream data if we want to hear from the learners themselves on the learner for you to sit and what we've seen in so many of our comments is that learners want to be heard they want to give us feedback and we very much phrased this the surveys that we conducted as can you help us can you give us something that you want us to know so we can help you and that was kind of and we really find that there were so many people more than willing to tell us what worked in the course what didn't work and many times unprompted in the discussion steps or just the common forums under each task people would converse and they would have discussions among themselves encouraging each other and not so after reporting what they felt but what I think is really interesting is that going back as well to what Cara Hur and Merade were speaking about there as people don't talk about often enough what doesn't work and it usually stops other people from making the same mistakes we were all tending to report on how great something worked out instead of saying well I actually didn't intend for it to be that way and that would it opens up conversations to a wider view and we know that there is a publishing bias against that type of framework I think there was a very good article recently that actually mapped that out where the positive findings were significantly more likely to be published than findings were indicated well there is no significant difference or they didn't do their hypothesis failed or whatever so I think that's a really, really important just to I suppose link into the Emux conference here it was quite interesting to hear and I don't know whether of course this could just be the rhetoric of the major platforms you know talking about they were going to look into more of learning behaviour and learning responses and they were certainly from what and it appeared that they were echoing each other so it seems to be something that they must have got back in the service that they are conducting and the engagements that they are having with learners because it was definitely a clear message that they were trying to communicate to the MOOC research community I think in the last day they don't know what you're talking about that was Yeah no it definitely seemed to be coming through that we can't just go off what we think we know we really have to open it up now and see what learners want from these things in any kind of field if you're looking to provide a service you have to hear back from the people that are using that service and that definitely seems to be the way that the MOOC platforms are now moving we have the basics now we know how to make the courses we know the kind of those basic fundamentals we now need to go beyond that and look at the learner but in that way it hasn't been that this has been happening in other areas either like things like emotion research are only coming to the fore these haven't been addressed elsewhere either but I think it's really important that we do jump on that trend as it comes up because this will help in so many ways to support the learner because it's like a 4G experience it's not just interacting with content it's enhancing the whole experience for the learner and I suppose it behoves us in the MOOC research community to keep pushing the boundaries with the platforms I know that when we first had the initial conversations about the type of research a lane particularly one to conduct it was challenging and there were tensions there because we were asking them when we need to have this particular design in place and we went through a very stringent ethical process on our review board in our own university but I was delighted that we did that because we were able to prove that what we were trying to do had value and was ethically sound and of course that is a very important key part of any research design and I think a lot of by facing challenges it doesn't mean you should stop because following what we did the platform has changed a lot of their disclaimer policies because they realise that more of this needs to happen and until you approach them and explain why this needs to happen a lot they just aren't, if enough people say it then it'll become more of a conversation that needs to be addressed but I think it was very, it's interesting though because platforms or any commercial platforms they're looking at the bottom line they're looking at selling the certificates people upgrading, etc, etc so whereas if you, it's simple it's very, very simple if you're the person who is engaged and it's the learner, it's satisfied they're more likely to stay on the platform then they're more likely to engage in other courses so they see, I suppose, the monetary yeah, it's the interest of the line they're much interested in the line and it just behoves us as researchers to keep that in mind and not, well not keep it in mind that they have a stake in the game as well but also that we have, from a research perspective we have a stake in that we are pushing forward the most robust and rigorous research designs where for particular questions and I think that is just something as research community relating to MOOCs that we have to keep doing and that's nearly sometimes independent of the platform but though it doesn't matter which platform it is but we just need to keep doing that and I think that was clear from some of the presentations that were done as well that there is a little bit of a movement towards that absolutely okay, are we yeah, I think we've done one slide yeah, so we've done one slide for implications and conclusions and I know we've chatted quite a bit so if anybody wants to throw up a question or anything, I know we're coming towards the end we'd be very happy to do that so I heard you want to yeah, so just to conclude kind of, I guess it's kind of a lot of this is what we have been saying but I mean, it comes from our experience or 15 months worth of kind of interesting journey and research is the first point is definitely about this role of theory that it is very important and I do think, I don't know what my colleagues think but I do think that my opinion anyway is that when you do read a lot of MOOC research there just isn't a strong theoretical framework or it's ignored or it's ignored exactly where it's not it's considered secondary or that it's just if some case is taken for granted that people just know that it happens I find that a lot with a bit of motion research was that people would make statements such as emotions play a significant role in the learning process without building on that or saying how and why do you think that yeah, or even why it's desirable like because you kind of got to think at that level having it as and tease it out properly and you know because then you actually function as well like yeah, you know I know it's so important and like this and this is where we've had an advantage probably is because we do read a lot on other subjects so it actually bleeds in quite well to the MOOC stuff because you see these kind of debates they're already happening in other environments there are a lot of these questions the things we were saying there about process of variance like these are foundational kind of social science questions across the board like nobody agrees necessarily on these so it's kind of interesting to see that process but it does appear that if you were looking at the literature and that Valetiano's paper is a very good review there does appear to be a heavy weight in the one direction which is that kind of variance-based thing so I guess the second point follows kind of naturally which is the importance of methods and also to look at some of those alternative designs that probably don't appear very frequently case studies they don't appear very often in MOOC research thematic analysis of comments is something that I would have thought it's like very easy to do and quite kind of foundational because you have that information but it's rare enough that you see that either or a real CAO exactly yeah and even like frameworks that you may not even necessarily agree with but like discourse analysis you could use that with you know comments and conversations so these things about the questions that aren't being asked as well is probably an interesting direction yeah and I think you know I think today there was a you were at the presentation or was it yesterday about the you know that there could be AB yes on edX on edX and that was very interesting because on some of the platforms again it's the tension at the platform infrastructure and limitations but they've come across and they're now moving into where you can do that type of control testing and I think that's going to be even from a variance perspective even if it's that it's going to be actually fascinating to see what comes out of that and the people and the universities that are using that for research how what they'll come out of it and will they change their questions so like will the questions get any more in depth I don't know will they just improve the quality of their findings this is a big question isn't it and I mean it does and it seems to come back as well to the functionality of a lot too which is you know the great thing about having a theory is you're feeding back into something course you know the study's not just about well I've shown the link between X and Y that's often very important but what does that link actually mean and are there ways to make does it follow that that makes something better or you know what are the kind of criteria this is something that actually came up in a research seminar that we had in the NIDL the National Institute for Digital Learning and Professor Mark Brown actually drew on this point where once you're finished a study that shouldn't be the end of the questions you should only be asking more questions then or what questions does this study now raise that I know this what else should and that's really it draws on all the different points that we've made on getting different types of data drawing out a process much longer as long as you do not research and also doing the iterative redesign of new questions where are we going now and that's kind of what that is not what questions are we not asking and why aren't we asking those questions and are they important are they not and I think one of the issues that came about one of the last sessions was you know the notion of scalability and I think that's where the MOOC platforms are in their head with regards to a lot of these issues so they're looking at it from a point of view of how can they scale even more complex learning experiences say in discipline where you have both the knowledge and the skills which is very much in language learning and how that can scale up to in those disciplines so I think that for us will be another interesting way when they start coming to grips with those type of issues because then of course then the learning design will change and then the learner experience will change and potentially then you know the areas that we're interested in the motivation etc that that will also change so I think you know we try to give you a flavour really of the research that we're conducting and also try to include some of the highlights and you know where the platforms are going because the platforms are leading us as well a little bit in this way because how would they develop and how they we know it does have but it does bring to bear and you know an influence on some of our research and how we do it so but I think interestingly enough I think it's always very clear you're on the right way when a platform tries to copy what you're doing or start getting very interested in sentiment and emotion because they they know that this is an area that they're going to have to think about because at the end of the day particularly the commercial ones they do all have a monetization agenda whether it's they are businesses you know Harvard and MIT told I get X immediately from the gecko that you have to come develop that sustainable business model and you know now with future learn with their venture which you know that they've got funding from and from seek we know now that they're also very much into looking at how their business model is going to be and of course even though all of them all of them and I say that they have a very good and that they're one of their rays on death is that of access to education and providing education at the end of the day they are businesses and that so we have to be very cognizant of what they're trying to do as well so just a very quick girmila mahogany which is thank you very much and if anybody has any questions we're happy to take that and take them and will I hand back to Antonella or Christine or are you okay so I don't see any questions coming oh see Monica in the chat you've had a few and come up I'm sorry and just apologies again for the break in the connection but hopefully you have a back and everything has been going fine so I think Monica has I think we need e-learning for our students and teaching process because we respect their time you know so thank you so much thank you so much thank you thank you for your availability in you know in difficult in a difficult situation for connection and for being away from your office but notwithstanding that you are you have been wonderful you and all your colleagues PhD students and so on and so forth but now I really would like to remind you the Eden chart at six so please if you have other you know thoughts or in these two hours you have the time less than two hours actually you have the opportunity to reflect on what we discuss today with Maria and her colleagues don't miss this opportunity on on the Eden chart where Meredith would be available again thank you so much for this hard day with us and I also would like to remind you that next webinar will be held and hosted by Alfredo Sorreiro and again a very interesting opportunity for all of us it will be devoted to portfolio and how to build a portfolio you know technologically supported anyway thank you so much to all of you and have a nice day don't forget also to register to our conference in Bruges Bruges is fantastic don't miss it here we have we have the title for the next webinar so I want to remind you the webinar hosted by Alfredo Sorreiro on June the 5th same time 330 Central Europe summer time possible use of a portfolio as European Development thank you so much bye bye


Well, everybody, welcome back to another dolly tutorial. In this one, I want to show you how to get a list of styles and aesthetics that you can use for your AI-generated art that you can use just right out of the box. It's awesome. Let's go here. What you want to do is you want to go to this website here. It's aesthetics.fandom.com. It's basically a wiki, and I'll show it to you. It's a list of aesthetics, which is kind of like a nice way of saying a list of styles. And if you go through it, it's basically set up by letter. So it's categorized by letter. And here you go. You can go through it and look at all the different styles. So for the one that I chose, I selected image of a French bulldog, steampunk style, photo realistic, AK looking at the camera. Look how awesome this is. This is an amazing image. I've got a bulldog, and I just absolutely love what it did. And I would have never really thought of this. Steampunk is something I'm familiar with, but hey, maybe there's another style that we'll try. So let's just take a quick look. I'm just gonna skim through it quickly here. Let's look at our, what in the heck is, let's see, range, rage core? That's a thing. Okay, rage core. It sounds pretty wild. Let's try it. We'll take a look here. You'll see here that it's got all these different groups and different people that use this style, whatever. Let's go back to Dolly. And instead of, I'm gonna take out steampunk style. And I'm just gonna type in rage core style. Copy, paste, click, generate. It'll take a few seconds. While we do that, let's just look at some of these people. Death Grips, Juice World, Lil Darky, Lil Uzivert. I don't know half of these people, but whatever. It's trap metal, rage core, whatever. Let's see what it gives us. Let's go back. Presto, okay, it's not my favorite style. Not gonna lie, but it's not bad. But this is the list of all the aesthetics and styles. Go through them. See which ones you like. Try them out. They've got examples here, scout core. That's how you do it, guys. Thanks for watching.


Gang, I'm scrolling down, I'm scrolling down. Felix Chichou. If you shoot him an email, he'll probably get back to you about the bit. Yeah, I'm not interested in contacting about it. They're really a watch or whatever his name is. Really, it's just... People contact me for interviews and stuff and I give them, but I don't actively seek out other people. Like the only people that I'm interested in talking to, really, are you guys. You guys who come to the streams, people on Discord, right? Like, I have my venue to talk about things, about world events and comic books and music and movies, right? We've created our little community on here and the different platforms I upload content on and especially our Discord page, right? So for me, I'm not trying to make a point.  And again, this is more of an educational thing for me, right? These are the choices I've made in my life and they have served me well, okay? And I'm just sharing that information. Do with it what you will.


Like a little bit after the no jump in interview comes out, okay, and it's going to do it's going to do Exceptional. I'm gonna tell you right now since you talking, you know when y'all start having a no jump in all it I'm gonna beat that anyway. Oh, you did beat it. I'm a bad nigga.  Yeah, we gonna take that man. Hey, we got a comedian Yeah, we got some stuff that's gonna come out But I really don't want to talk too much about cuz people one thing though I have my goddamn face, but Nick's was still popping up Y'all good They right here with it and you got dang me already been doing TV. All it takes is a little action.  I'm pulling up So one thing that's getting ready to come out that I expect that to be my next hit item thing that we're coming out with Well, whatever I don't know what the car. I don't want to say it without giving it away So I got something that's getting ready to come out and y'all be looking forward to that when a no jumper interview come out Wow, so that's what I'm gonna be about now It's out now cuz you know now it's gonna be like the future when you release this So you telling me you said something on no jumper that's gonna come out. Well, but you can't tell me well No, really? No, not that I'm saying I got something that's gonna come out like a little bit after the no Jumping interview comes out. Okay, and it's going to do it's gonna do exceptional I'm gonna tell you right now since you talking, you know, when y'all start hot enough no jumping all it I'm gonna beat that anyway. Oh, yeah, you did beat it. I'm a bad nigga.   All right, so go so tell them where to go now Okay, now go to my bio. What's your Instagram page now, Tony?  I can only imagine I see the three coming soon Seasons are doing cast a car auditions Bree and Kelsa and you gonna put Luchi on there. Oh I But but I definitely uh help with the with the show still something You know, you know, I'm I'm being real with solar lucha man. Y'all watched him act right Acting cold. Mm-hmm.  Hey speaking on handling business Shelley winners in J City been spinning our block and you like y'all even curts. Some people ain't good enough Jake bro, that's what they got. No cap man.  You know, it's just understanding energy You know what happened before you know what happened after you know Understand how to create the energy doesn't need it in that moment Yo, who is this? Yeah, I said Did you know I said did you watch? I went down to Houston watched the next generation dirty third Did you watch that? You know, we watched it. What about the one up here to what they call the one triple D You'll watch the one three move. Yeah, it is move. I think He ain't man The biggest the best move right now out the advice and courage everybody go see is they claw on top room Did you watch it all the way through? Of course You had to you had to because the best part was in it was just so they did it so clever, bro It was really all right So do you believe that thought about Papa chicken sandwich, did you think Jamie was was really?   Yeah Cuz why is it a question is somebody down the night, you know He went into a coma girl. Yeah He's okay. He's healthy. He's in the next movie.  I know you're bad motherfuckers man You can't act as nigga. You can tell the best part is in LA the best part is in LA But that nigga did but that nigga did stay out of pocket for a minute I love to have that wrist like where nobody can come see where I'm at and and don't call my damn phone They didn't have that kind of break in a long time. Yeah, you see what I'm sick of anybody would have called me Would have got out he doesn't want to talk to know That ain't see Jamie Foxx got a lot of active friends to be around them They're like let them live with him like I done been over there and they live there them like came for me Yeah, he done stayed with Jamie Foxx at his house. Yeah, the role I played in this TMG thing Canes from in society see me at the gas station was like I know you from somewhere He said I know you from somewhere. He said I seen your movie at Jamie Foxx I was Doug shoulders the movie He said you gonna get the net out against the road for the next 10 years when they see that and that was like one of the Biggest acting compliments I ever got in my life. He was like, yeah, you know, still there with Jamie I'm over there with Jamie They're what he told me so I done been over there and multiple actors and they be older It's like a gathering point. So somebody knew somebody new for sure holding them down You're holding them down because he a real one. That's hard. I mean that is good to have some real good good friends, right? Yeah Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. Yeah, we gonna talk


The curtain has risen at Central Lakes College in Brainerd as the Brainerd Community Theater is hosting this year's American Association of Community Theater Region Five Festival. Clayton Castle was there as the festival kicked off Friday morning. It's showtime this weekend at Central Lakes College as Brainerd Community Theater is hosting the regional festival of the American Association of Community Theatres. Everything you can imagine. We have plays, we have, they are adjudicated by national adjudicators, workshops, banquets. We have a lot of networking areas that we we are able to network with other theater companies and it's a really good time and it's a full weekend of theater. This is the first time the Region Five Festival has been held in Brainerd and organizers say that being selected to host is a high honor. Well we have never done anything like this before so just the enormity of it is somewhat overwhelming to us in a way but it's a huge honor to be selected for it. We had to put in a bid with the AACT American Association of Community Theatres and we were accepted as the regional host so there were others who bid for it. We were selected and we're very happy to have been granted that honor. The festival welcomes community theater groups from Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota for a weekend full of workshops as well as a performance competition. Each state selected one show at its state conference to compete at the regional conference. The region will then select one show to compete at the national conference being held this summer in Rochester but win or lose, comedy or tragedy, everyone is here for the love of theater and performance arts. Well I love theater because it begins to grab you. You find your own home, your own friends, your own group of people and I've met so many people across the United States. It's pretty amazing to see these people year after year after year so that's why I like theater. I'm an adjudicator in New York State so I see a lot of theater within my own state. I travel all over New York State to watch theater at the community level. The main activities of the festival take place today and tomorrow before concluding in an awards brunch on Sunday. Reporting in Brainer Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. And there are 10 regions to the American Association of Community Theater in each region will select one show from its festival to compete at the national competition which will be held in Minnesota later this year. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


We're looking at amazing neighborhoods all around the country if you're thinking of potentially renting or buying a property now The urban area of Soweto is located in Johannesburg and borders on the mining belt of the south meaning southwestern township This is a neighborhood that populates over one million people today We have Simon Bray private property CEO in studio to discuss this neighborhood with us Simon so good to have you here great to be back. Yeah now when I think about Soweto I think the best just in Yemen the world definitely but why is Soweto a great Neighborhood to kind of think of you know putting down roots Well, I think I mean you hit the nail on the head with that one comment community is a really really big thing there You know, you just have to walk the streets of Soweto and you get this real feeling of of vibe and and the people You know, there's a there's an energy there that maybe you don't get in some of the other areas Some of the other neighborhoods in South Africa I've heard it said that one in four Joe Burgers actually live in Soweto. So it's just an incredibly Vibrant rich area and I think it it can add a lot to the property market as well. Now talking about the property market What are we looking at? Interesting, you know, so it oh and and affordable markets in general because that's what we would classify so it I was emerging an affordable market this year was actually the first year that the growth rates of those markets superseded the growth rate of the traditional suburbs the traditional residential areas in South Africa So it's great to see that the affordable housing market and Areas like Soweto are starting to really kick There's a real energy behind the property market there and you're starting to see values increase I think there are a number of reasons for that, you know, a lot more people getting into the market lot more first-time buyers The affordability of that market is unreal compared to other areas in South Africa to give you an idea a Three-bedroom house in Soweto is under 600,000 rand still so there's a real great opportunity to go and get your piece of South Africa Yeah, I love it now You mentioned one in four Joe Burgers potentially living in Soweto, but what type of person am I going to find fitting in there? Well, I mean one in four. That's a huge subset of Joe Burgers, you know, you've got young professionals You've got people working in the city in particular because the arterial roots between Soweto and the center of the city are really good So it is actually quite a convenient commute for a lot of people going in and out of the city every day Great opportunity For people in the buy-to-let market as well, and I think that's interesting When you look at Soweto the fact that you can pick up a house for the price that you can And place tenants in that house you're seeing a lot of three-bedroom homes that have maybe two or three tenants letting Parts or rooms in the house. So great value option for buy-to-let investors Okay, so you did touch on it a little bit and we ask this every time we talk about Neighborhoods when it comes to buying or renting it seems to be really affordable, but what what should you choose? What what are the options look? It's a really big market and there are lots of opportunities and and what you often find in a in a market Is a large number of people renting as opposed to buying? I think Soweto is the type of market though that if you can afford to you should be buying you shouldn't be renting The rentals are very close to the cost of ownership in that particular neighborhood So it makes sense to go out there find a home that suits you Get a bond and get involved in the property market. It's got a rich culture Amazing landmarks. Is this an ever-growing neighborhood? It certainly is I mean, you know, Soweto is an intrinsic part of the fabric and the history of this country And I think that charm and that character is something that really comes through in the people that live there I think it can sometimes get overlooked in the traditional property market sense But we definitely need to shine the light on areas like Soweto and the growth that's happening in those areas because There's a there's a very exciting story to tell there. Do we have a very quick Simon break tip of the day? My tip of the day would be in these affordable markets buy-to-let investment is Really exciting. So if you're in the market as a property investor, you like to buy Increase your portfolio. Well, then you have to look at Soweto as an option. Awesome. Don't worry. I'm making mental notes of all of these Thank you so much Simon for being with us talking about Chesanya. I'm hungry just at the thought of it Well simply log on to www.privateproperty.co.ca and let them guide you through the right neighborhood for you


Hi, my name is Tim, and I was a victim of a robbery a few days ago, and it was very difficult to deal with. That robbery really helped paying my bills. I don't do it often, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I really don't feel secure about myself after this. I feel really violated. I don't feel bad whatsoever robbing that guy.  I'm not even sure how he was able to break into my place. I wasn't even locked. I just opened the door. Dumbass forgot to lock his door. I have three master locks on my main door. Just like that. I just went in. Couldn't have been easier. He stole all my paintings. Every single one of them. I barely made a profit selling those. No one was interested. I don't know who painted these, but... Five years in art school. I did five years in art school. My life's worth stolen. Just like that. Look at this. No perspective, no talent. And this must have been painted by a kid. He stole my phone. I'm pretty sure he made profit out of that. He has an iPhone 4. What am I supposed to get out of that? All my valuable memories were on that phone. My baby's first photos were on that phone. I look at them every day. The screen was all shattered. Couldn't barely see anything. That phone was priceless to me. I kept it for more than 10 years. Really priceless? Like they couldn't put a price on it. That's how old and broken it was. I'm pretty sure he's using it to take great pictures now. I trade it for this. Thinking of starting a bowling career. Nah, just kidding. It's gonna help me break into homes easier. Like, you know, with this, you can shatter so many glasses and windows. And if someone catches me, it's just bowling. I can never see life the same way again. I really hope he doesn't harm anyone after this. I will go rob someone else as soon as this interview is over. I really hope the police found him and arrested him. That unemployed nitwit. I'm a cop in real life. That's why I never got arrested. I arrested myself once, but then I let myself go. Cop by daylight. Rob it by nighttime. Cop by daylight. Rob it by night. He pissed all over my sofa. I took a big nap on his sofa. I jumped about swimming. It was pleasant. If I ever saw him again, I don't know what I would do. Wouldn't feel anything if I saw him again. He really hurt me. Yeah, I just feel really terrible talking about it. Hey, can you keep it down? I'm trying to answer some questions here. Why are you still in my house?


Strategy at Work 2020. Ask harder questions to solve bigger issues. Ideas can only bring results if they are transformed into reality. Inflection points feel sudden if you haven't been paying attention. The biggest obstacle to people's change is what goes on in their head, including the leaders. If you don't have metrics that actually track failures as well as successes, then what you're telling your people is they can never fail. Share the stage with experts on strategy, transformation and leadership. It's been my failures that have really shaped me as a leader and made me stronger as I moved forward. The most important and hardest disrupting you will ever do is to step back from who you are to slingshot into who you can be. It's what I'm doing, making a meaningful change. Am I contributing to something bigger than myself? Network with change makers around the world. Strategy at Work 2020. Register now at events.brightline.org.


One of the first rules of performance management is that performance is measured by results not by what you do. Commercial results only come about when you commit the necessary resources to do the productive work. Billy has enough money to take Betty to the movies. When she notes that she has famished, he spends some of it on a few slices of pizza. He won't be able to take her to the movies after all as he no longer has enough money to buy their entrance. This is financial reality. Once resources are expended on one purpose, they're no longer available for direction elsewhere. If the resources are expended on administration, not running the organization, they will not be expended on performance. And likewise, the resources that are expended on performance will not be available for running the organization. The commercial business needs resources to generate and deliver products to customers, and needs these resources to maintain and operate the organization while it accomplishes this. How do we address the division between these two valid purposes? Is there some way to sort this out? For the business of government, the technique to make sense of this is to return to the commercial purpose, to what our government and laws are to accomplish through management of commerce. This has already been addressed, and it is to promote the economic welfare of the people. We also have three segments of the people who are identified with commerce. We have business owners and investors. We have business employees. And we have business customers. You, by your valuation of what is available and by your purchase decisions, are the customer. You are the one who will select business products by your own decisions. You will also be the employee or person who commits time and effort to gain income. Even those who inherit their wealth still inherit what their parents and grandparents accomplished by committing their commercial efforts. You will also take part in part of what you have and you will save it or put it into retirement efforts or commit it to stock and bond ownership. You will be the owner and investor of businesses. The answer is that you are the one who is to benefit from operation of our commercial efforts. Ownership is in you and everyone who is like you in purchasing, in employment, and in eventual ownership. It is we the people who give purpose to our businesses and we the people who are owners of our government which is supposed to be managing our commerce for our benefit. As noted, there is only one real party in interest and it is we the people. It is most definitely not some American aristocracy that is supposed to survive and prosper on the labor and investments of others. Our personal prosperity is not different than the prosperity of us as we the people. Neither is our personal prosperity different than if we are employees or customers. Both personal and public prosperity are the same human purpose. The question of who is neatly answered by what we value and it is generally termed to be prosperity. Prosperity defines performance and it is further defined by what people receive from our commitment efforts and by what people must commit in time and effort in order to gain what they value. Prosperity is that personal sense of value in our time and effort and in what comes to us. It is we the people who receive and value what our economy is able to provide us. It is we the people who commit our personal time and effort to productive use as business employees. It is we the people whose investments or ownership in commercial businesses is our means of storing wealth and maintaining prosperity. We are both as individuals and as a body the only party in interest. Our universal question is how we maximize the value we receive from the time and efforts we commit to economic pursuits. We have two management answers to this universal question. The administrative management answer is that we improve what we are doing. If we do things more efficiently and more effectively then we can reap benefits from having improvement in our commercial performance efforts. The performance management answer is that we eliminate waste, that we cut costs where we stop doing things that do not contribute to desired performance. As a general rule, 80% of all real improvements come from ceasing to spend our time and energy doing non-productive efforts. Switching management from administrative to performance reduces costs to less than half. Focus on authority promotes authority, focus on results yields results. When a performance manager directs coordinated efforts, the focus is on people working together. It is elimination of the wasteful efforts that arise when people cannot rely on each other doing some other part of a larger performance. There is a performance cycle to any commercial effort. The business receives income from sale to customers and it uses that income to generate goods and services and it delivers to its customers. The customers in order to gain what they value, buy the output from the business giving it what it needs to continue in operation. This defines the performance purpose for any commercial effort and it is delivery of goods and services to customers in order to gain income that it needs to continue in operation. Customer decisions are based on how much they value the commercial outputs and what it will cost them to gain these. If you raise the price of goods and services, say by requiring your customers to wait in idleness for 20 minutes before you are willing to sell it, then fewer customers will decide to buy your products. Type one waste is requiring additional resources from customers and it weakens the performance cycle. Then there is a potential for donating corporate output to charity or other non-customers. These donations produce no income for the commercial effort. The only way to pay for these outputs is to gain additional income from the customers. It is in terms of higher prices, which again discourages customers. Type two waste is delivery of output to non-customers. So where is management in this? Is a cost of gaining performance through those who are doing performance. The internal purpose of management is supporting the corporate performance effort that completes the performance cycle. Expending on management is an internal investment and good management can remarkably increase what performance efforts can produce and deliver to customers. Administrative management addresses running the business as a purpose. This requires the time and effort of employees, but does not produce any output that goes to customers. It involves type one waste. Administrative management addresses the effective use of authority to structure the organization. This often requires internal services that do not yield any increase in productive output. Administrative management brought order out of chaos in the development of corporate commercial efforts, but it is of questionable value now that we have potential for focus on performance. By law, the incorporation of business efforts now supports administrative management shielding a corporate aristocracy from responsibility for wasteful practices. By law, government efforts have raised the price of labor through regulation, increasing the cost of performance without contributing to any corporate output. By law, the government taxes what corporations earn, which is output capacity that does not go to customers type two waste. By law, the administrative interference of sovereign government has limited the choices of citizen customers by insisting on product requirements that are not universally valued by citizen customers. Many of these interferences, as in the product safety requirements, have recognized value, but there seems to be few who address what such interferences cost the public and whether the regulatory requirement is a support for or detriment to either people. Taking the choices away from citizen customers is misconduct in office. It is failure to represent the public or sovereign citizen. The government service that would have value is empowerment of citizens so that they either have recognized the value and it is empowerment of citizens so that they can hold their corporate effort and corporate leaders personally responsible for any damages that they cause by their decisions. The difference is between taking economic freedom from we the people and providing support services to we the people so that the economy serves them. We also have a corporate government and it generally operates on the principles of administration. It is a corporate effort that consumes more than 30% of everything the U.S. citizens earn, even as it requires the efforts of many to be non-productive. True to administrative thinking, the concept of management is one of improving what the various elements of government are doing. It yields little benefit. Performance approach would identify and eliminate waste. Having 125 million taxpayers spend eight hours a year doing their taxes equates to a billion man hours per year in citizen expense that produces nothing. It is about half a percent of the total productivity of the American people. It is not the cost of operating the IRS nor the cost of the taxes collected and dumped into the Treasury. It is type one waste that this process puts on. We the people so that the government can take what it will use up in its operation. This is wasteful government process that can be eliminated by more sensible approaches. The general rule for bureaucracy is that the purpose of government is serving we the people. And where there is no service, the entire bureaucratic structure can be eliminated without reducing what people receive. And this is why empowering people is so scary to leaders. Having to serve the public instead of functioning as an aristocracy adds responsibility for what leaders do. It is not that these organizations can just be terminated. Many have functions that contribute reasonable support for we the people. And some do deliver value. It is just that the value is not being delivered to the people. The focus of modern administration is on running the government, not on delivery of goods and services to the sovereign citizens. Our investment in change should address what people value and how government is going to provide it. The empowered citizen focus will be on goods and services that people receive, not on authority structures and internal government operations. This course of study in law and government is an application of this empowerment effort. My function in preparation of this course is not to provide guidance and change, but to empower you as tomorrow's citizen owners of this nation to see what needs to be done and to come together with others who see the need to make it happen. There is nobody who can tell we the people what will have value beyond the general categories of freedom, prosperity and support for family. The changes that will increase the value of government and legal management of commerce are otherwise for you to determine. Is there more value in resetting the EPA to serve public instead of the environment? Or more value in redirecting the Department of Justice to serve the public instead of government leaders? Nobody can tell you where you will come to focus with others on improving the corporate business of government. Finding when and where you can achieve agreement is what you will learn as you work through the classroom discussions. You will learn it as you seek to find agreement with other U.S. citizens with whom you share ownership of this nation and its government. The burden of commercial law and government is on we the people, even if it is applied to the business entities that we own, or that employ us, or that generate goods and services for us to buy. We are the only party in interest and we are also the ones who are entitled to receive the benefits of both our commerce and our government. We are the ones who can, whenever we are agreed, step into management over both our economy and our government to direct benefits for ourselves. As a special case, we have the business of government. What the government costs comes out of our productivity, but we as owners can step into management whenever we are agreed. We as owners can initiate such changes as will increase the value we receive from government and can decrease what it costs us to gain that value.


Hi, this is Chip Rouse with episode two of the Mustang Success Trail. I'm the Athletics Academic Coach and I'm here to talk with you about getting organized with a planner. This year, we are again providing all first year Mustang athletes with a planner, the official Mustang planner, to help you manage your time and your assignments more easily. We found that often students have a hard time figuring out when their homework, assignments, and long-term assignments are due. So a planner in which you write down all of your homework assignments at the start of the year will help you stay on track. Once you have copied down all of your assignments into the planner, including your homework and including your practice times and game times, then the next thing to do is to look at it every day, share it with your coaches, and make sure that you carry it with you daily. Planning ahead is key to long-term success. Good luck, Mustangs.


Welcome to the Single Guy Channel. I'm Lloyd. Today we're going to be talking about does she like you or is she playing you? This is a pretty important topic because although women are gorgeous, beautiful, and compassionate creatures, sometimes, or a lot of times, they can be very, very manipulative. And if you're not mindful of this sort of thing, you're not smart about it, then you will fall victim to it. Unfortunately in this life with people dealing with people, people, if you are susceptible to being taken advantage of, people will take advantage of you. So in this video, I'm going to be talking about why women use men. I'm going to be talking about the behaviors to look for. I'm going to tell you a story about this as well too. And then I'm also going to give you the right mindsets to have this never happen to you again. So if you watch this video, you're going to have the tools to be able to prevent you from getting played ever again in your life. So let's get right into the video. All right. So the first thing that I'm going to cover is the reasons that women use men or play men. It's because they're trying to get something from them. Now, a lot of times in the common trope in society is that men use women for sex.  That's what we use women for. But women use men for a variety of reasons, whether you don't even have to be smart. You don't even have to be good looking. You don't even have to be rich, dude, because the most common one that that guy says that women are looking for money. Yes, a lot of women do that. But that's I don't even know if that's the most common reason for women using men. It could be that you maybe she's looking to get married. Maybe she's looking to start a relationship, have kids. Maybe she likes a certain lifestyle that you have. Maybe you are rich. Maybe she is looking for that. It's kind of related to lifestyle too.  And she's looking to get into certain parties or something like that. I've had all of these happen to me. Women will use you for a variety of different reasons. And they use their flirtatious and sexual nature because it works. So you got to be president smart about this whole thing. And the way you be smart about it is don't trust what she says. Pay attention to her actions. Do not pay attention to her words. Too many of the guys that I talked to about this, they'll give me an example to say, Lloyd, I'm talking to this girl. I'm having some problems with her. And I'm like, okay, well, what's happening? And they'll say, well, when we hang out, it's really, really great. She's happy to see me. I can tell she really, really likes me. But then when we go away, she doesn't text me quite as much. It's really difficult for me to meet her out. And then I'm like, stop, okay, stop right there. If you ignore what she says, do you think this girl's into you? By her actions, what is she doing? What is she communicating? Well, by her actions, she's communicating that she doesn't really see you as a priority. She doesn't really care about you that much. And she's just doing, she's just saying and acting the way that's going to make you like her in that moment, okay, to get what she wants, if she wants something from you. So you have to look at a girl's actions, okay, if they say one thing and do another, look at what they're doing as opposed to what they're saying. And too many guys, they fall into this trap because they want to believe what the person's saying. I actually have a story about this. So, you know, I was hooking up, this happened a little bit ago, but I was hooking up with this girl a while back who I thought was freaking super gorgeous. I was so into her.   And she was like really pressuring me to do this. And the whole time I'm like, no, I'm not really into that. I don't want to have a girlfriend right now. And she kept, she was like very, very persistent about it. And so like, finally, I decided that I was, that I caved in after about like six months, I caved in. If you know what, you've been seeing this girl for a while, you should be with her. Okay. So as soon as I did that, I got into a relationship with her. I'm not joking, dude. That same week, her behavior completely changed. Before she would show up when I texted her, she would like, you know, she would never turn me down for sex. She was always ready and happy to be seeing me. Her behavior completely changed. She was very tough for me to get out.  And on top of that, I started to pay for everything. Okay. So after this started happening, well, actually the withholding sex part was like enough for me. I'm like, as soon as that starts happening, I'm like, all right, I'm leaving. I'm done. So I broke up with her. And as soon as I did this, she called me up. She's like really apologetic. She literally said everything that I wanted to hear. She's like, I'm sorry, like I just get really scared when I'm in a relationship and like you're, you're really great guy and all of this stuff. And then I've after this phone call, I'm like, I'm like, all right. Okay. So I got back together with her. We were together for two weeks. And for those two weeks, her behavior went right back to the way it was before when we were in the relationship. Again, she was like, very tough to get out when we were hanging out. She was distracted all the time. Like all of these things that had happened to happen before, they happened again. So I broke up with her the final time. And I don't even think she tried to justify it to me. You really got to be, really got to be careful about this, you guys, because like women will say whatever it is they think you want to hear. And by that point in time, she knew me well enough. She knew what I wanted to hear. But what I should have been looking at was her actions the whole time, rather than what she was saying. So in order to help you guys out with this, I came up with a list of behaviors to look for. Okay. First thing, she's hot, then she's cold. Obviously my example, this happened. And by the way, these examples work for a girl that you're only seeing for a short period of time, not just for a girl that you've been seeing for a while. Okay. You got to watch out for these. She's hot, then she's cold, meaning sometimes she's like, she's like responding to you a lot or she's really excited to see you and other times you don't hear from her. She ignores your messages, she responds when she feels like it. And then you just don't know what's going on with her. Okay. That's a big sign. That means she's kind of just seeing you when she wants to. Or she's probably seeing other people too. She's expecting things from you and pressuring you. Obviously, this was an example where, you know, my girl was really trying to get me into a relationship. And I would say that's a big red flag.  And, you know, you might just be a surrogate for that. Okay. So you really got to assess whether this person is actually like interested in you. She wants to provide, you know, a good relationship for you. Or if she's just wants a relationship in general. She says whatever you want to hear. Okay. Women are pretty good at this or some women are pretty good at this. And they will say whatever they think that is just going to make you happy.  So you have to be kind of like the way to test this out is if they're consistent. Okay. So obviously women are going to try and be nice to you. If they like you, they're going to like be very attentive and stuff. And that's good. But if you, let's say you say, I like football. And then she just agrees with you. She's like, I like football too. And then later on you say, nah, I'm not really that into football. And she's like, well, I'm not really that into football either. Obviously, she just changed your opinion based off of whatever you said. Okay. So she's not being true to who she is. She's just agreeing with you and she's just saying what you want to hear. So that's a good test that you can see if she's just saying what you want to hear or if she's actually being consistent and being true to herself. Okay.  If she's like, if she only has sex with you when you buy dinner or when you take her out or when you do so you buy her present or something like that. Okay.  You got enough money.  You buy her present, get laid. Not a big deal. Okay. But if you're looking for someone, you know, someone who really likes you, then you got to watch out for this. Okay. Desire cannot be negotiated. If a woman is making you do things or using sex as a negotiation tool, that's not the right woman for you. Okay. This problem is never going to get solved. Find someone who truly desires you. You can't remember things you've said or details that you've mentioned in the past. If she doesn't remember anything about you, she doesn't remember that you have a sister or a brother. She doesn't remember what your job is. She's never taken the time to observe your, like your hobbies or congratulate you on things.  She only cares about what you can do for her. Watch out. She's always distracted when you hang out. If she's always distracted, like kind of looking around, seeing what's better, I mean, this could be just like you literally talk to a girl at the bar.  You pay for everything and she never offers or thanks you. Okay.  Like even just saying thank you is cool. But if she's never offering, she kind of expects you to pay and you've been seeing her for a little bit of time or you've been seeing her for like, you know, it's been like four or five days or something like that. You pay for everything. Dude, this girl is not she should at least at the very least offer or contribute something. She does things when she wants to. So this is kind of the back coming back so that when she's hot and cold, if she's hot and cold and she's just kind of like seeing you whenever she feels like, dude, like this, this person is not, she's only seeing your convenience. Maybe the guy that she really was interested didn't text her back and she needs someone to go out with Saturday night. You know, or maybe she's bored. Okay. That's not the right girl for you, man. Always talks about her problems and never cares about yours.   Like she's not cool. She only cares about herself and she's only looking to see what you can do for her. Some of these examples I listed are probably going to sound pretty obvious to you.  That's the solution. You know, I knew within the first five minutes of this conversation, now we've been talking for an hour about it. It's because you're too emotionally involved. If the girl's super hot or you're totally in love with this girl, you probably can't see straight and you're probably thinking that you try and rationalize things. You start believing what she says and all that sort of stuff. That's a bad place to be in, man.  Do a pros and cons list. And if there's more cons, man, you've got to get out of there and you've got to bite that bullet, chomp down and get out of there. The other problem in this interaction is so many guys are asking the question and they're like, but I know she likes me or like, I'm pretty sure she likes me.  That's a loser mentality to have. If you care about like whether a girl likes you or not, that's your main priority. Dude, you're not caring about yourself enough. Okay. You have to see if this girl is providing value for you. That's the biggest test. That's how a high value guy thinks is if this person is providing and contributing something to my life, that's what he cares about.  A high value guy has plenty of girls who like him. You have to be that kind of guy. So I think this comes back also too to having options. If you don't have options and you're in scarcity, sometimes you'll make a bunch of excuses to stay with a girl when there really should be only one answer and that's go out, find other girls. Okay. So be going out regularly, have options so you don't fall victim to this. And when you do find that girl that is providing value for you, that is contributing to your life, you will see her for who she is as a great, awesome, high value girl that you should get with. And that's the kind of life that I want for you guys. Okay. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Bottom line guys, I know this is a rule.  Okay. So a rule of thumb that I use, and this is a guy who's like, you know, been around the block tons of times. I've hooked up with a lot of different girls, but in plenty of different relationships. Look man, you cannot get emotionally invested in a girl until she's proven herself to you. Okay. Don't let your emotions get tied down to this. That's how you start having these problems. That's how you start having a problem like the one that I had. Okay. And I don't want that happened to you guys. Okay. I want you to be that high value mentality, have options.  So that's the mentality to have you guys hope this helped. If you have any questions about this, put them in the comment section below. If you've made it to the end, consider subscribing. I come out with videos like this every single week. If you're interested in my weekly one-on-one mentorship program where I teach you guys exactly about this and going out regularly, dude, hit me up. TheSingleGuy2017 at gmail.com. Thanks a lot. Good luck on there y'all.


Moving to the pool, Bemidji hosting Detroit Lakes, picking things up in the 100 butterfly. Laying two, Bemidji's Gabe Goodwin gets out to the early lead. He pull away down the stretch, finishing in first with a time of one minute and two seconds. Then in the 100 free picking things up in the last 25 yards, Bemidji's Luke Yards grabs the lead, earning a first place finish with a time of 55.68 seconds, just 8 tenths of a second ahead of second place. Bemidji wins tonight by a final of 185.