I'm John Wilson. I'm the CEO at Agenta. We're a technology company that focuses on education and learning. We build, manage and operate platforms for education for video collaboration. Externally we prefer to work with what we feel as ethical industries. Obviously education, teaching, learning, healthcare. We feel that we can really contribute to these industries by creating exciting platforms, easy to use platforms, and secure platforms that people can utilise. What we feel is one of the most important things for Scotland to boost economic growth is investing in rural areas. By investing in broadband in these local areas we can attract more talent, we can attract more companies and we can drastically improve the delivery of education and learning within these schools, within disparate regions, within Scotland. Like an on-time session is a good session. My name is Peter Bryant. I am the Chair for this session. I'm currently the Associate Dean of Education at the University of Sydney Business School, which you might pick from the accent. For those of you who have seen me around here for many years, I've worked in a number of UK universities before moving over there. We've got three papers to be presented in this session. They'll get 20 minutes each, so there will be an opportunity to ask each of them questions at the end of their papers. Of course, you can do it through both the completely non-traditional app when you hand up and ask a question with a microphone, or you can use the very traditional analogue MeToo system, which is up there on the big screens, and the presenters can go with that. Without further ado, we shall introduce our first paper. It is actually my great pleasure to introduce Leo Harbourman, who is now at UCL. My brain automatically would just go, but no, it's in UCL now. Presenting a paper to you today, and I was going to look up on the screen, but I'll have to read it off this, because I am a person who can't read without my glasses up. From under the radar to under review, digital learning in a face-to-face university in Equitation Marks. Over to you. Thanks, Peter. So, yeah, thank you all for being here. And thank you to two of my co-orders from also being here, who will help me answer the questions, but I'm just going to sort of rattle it off. So, this really is a story of what I've been up to quite recently in the last few months of my previous role at Birkbeck, and in a way also the story of what I've been up to the whole time over the last ten years that I've been working at Birkbeck. So, it could only really be down to me to present this, I suppose. And so, it's the story of a review, a review of technology-enhanced learning that we did in the college. And it's still a bit of an unfinished tale, I must warn you, and a bit of a trip down memory lane. It began with an institution-wide student experience review and various findings pointing to the need pointing to the need to increase support for digital approaches to learning and teaching. And to make a long story short enough, this resulted in doing a tale review to look into what we are doing, what other institutions are doing, what we think we should be doing. And so, as in so many of these kinds of stories, the context is king. So, I should tell you a bit about the context of the institution, which is Birkbeck University of London. So, Birkbeck was actually established in 1823, then as the London Mechanics Institute, by somebody called Dr George Birkbeck, so that was where the name actually came from. For the purpose, the exposed purpose of enabling working people to study in the evening, which was also known at the time or referred to as spreading the seeds of evil. And the same mission continues today, so really of enabling working people to study. And so really, who are our students at Birkbeck? There is really no typical Birkbeck student. Overwhelmingly, for the most part, everyone is evening taught between six and nine p.m., studying across all levels from certificates of higher education through to doctorates across many and varied disciplines. The majority traditionally have been part-time students who have entered via direct application to the college, but increasingly, and with an average age in that kind of mid-thirties, but increasingly we've been seeing the more people coming in through UCAS, the average age getting younger, more students actually studying full-time while still in the evening, so actually working, sometimes even working full-time and studying full-time. We have a lot of non-traditional students in the sense that they're mature, working, it's their first degree, possibly first person in the family to go to university. Also higher-than-average rates of students from throughout the EU, students with disabilities and specific learning difficulties, and also higher-than-average numbers of taught post-graduates. So it's quite a mix, quite a lot of contrasts. So doing the tail support in a small or what I like to call a small to medium face-to-face university of this kind of unusual and quite specific nature is quite a challenge.  So the tail team in 2008, when I joined, before I joined, consisted of one learning technologist and one IT trainer. They're joined by one more learning technologist, which was me in 0809 to support the process of migrating from WebCT to Blackboard. The IT trainer role didn't get replaced when the person who was doing it left. But there was a decision at the time to start rolling out lecture capture and so a post was created for the purpose of doing that. So it's been a pretty consistent size throughout that history. Considering that, much has been achieved. So we had the migration to Blackboard, rapid growth in the number of modules that were using the VLE and using learning technologies, migration again to Moodle, a huge growth in online submission and marking, a lot of changes being made to the data integration and improvements to it, lecture capture, lynda.com, all of this kind of work that needs to go on to just kind of keep the platforms ticking over and keep services running and enable the possibility of doing some kind of technology enhanced learning was being done. And at the same time, even some surprising things managed to happen around the edges. So some work on developing blended, mostly online provision to support skills development, work on developing resources to support inclusive practices, accessibility of learning resources and also some projects with the Bloomsbury learning environment like the assessment and feedback project which resulted in a book that Sarah and I co-edited on assessment feedback and technology. So some great practice was happening, but very much like when there was kind of a little bit of extra time to do it because there was not a lot of capacity. Unfortunately, instead of seeing this as being proofs of concept of the kind of great stuff that we could do, it seemed like this was kind of enough. So was this just a case of don't ask, don't tell? I think what was going on here was that we had various Birkbeck, what I call tell myths in operation which were somewhat born from these ideas of Birkbeck exceptionalism that as the college is so uniquely different, we simply don't need to do things in the way that other people do them. And so one of these key myths was we're not the open university. So we're the one institution to do this kind of work. The academics don't want to do tell, that was another key one. So we basically have the wrong staff for doing that kind of stuff or our students are not digital natives. So in other words, we have the wrong students for doing that kind of stuff. So all these kind of things were sort of circulated and seemed to support the narrative that we didn't really need to. There wasn't much demand to go further with this. So it was only really when the student experience review came along and said there was actually need to look at this in more depth that there was an opportunity to talk about how we were going to go beyond business as usual. And so what we decided to do with this review was to do an external strand which would pull together some data from surveys like youth size and health and some sector data that was out there and also that we're going to reach out to contacts in other HEIs. And we had hoped at the time that we were proposing how to do this review to have longer than we were given. There was quite a long time waiting for whether we would have the green light to go ahead and then when it came it was like, yes, great, do it and do it in seven weeks. So that meant that we couldn't actually really do all the things that we might have wanted to do and reaching out to contacts at other HEIs became quite a focused process of looking only at these three. In fact, the initial thought that we had, I don't know if Julie's in here, was reach out to other HEIs, talk to Julie. Julie Vos, who's the head of educational technology at Citi because she's also a researcher in how institutions support technology-enhanced learning as well. And it was Julie who recommended that we talk to Sussex and that proved to be quite useful because it was more of a similar size and kind of institution to Birkbeck with similar kind of problem of not having really had a lot of resourcing in this area and that had built up a team over time and was now seeing a lot more success with it. So for the internal strand, we had intended to do more things than we understood to do so we wanted interviews with staff, surveys of staff and students, user testing of staff and students, focus groups and usage data we cut some of those things and stick to what we thought we could get done in the time available. Also user testing actually proved to be quite complicated to work out exactly what we were going to test and we think that would be something that would need some more thought further down the line. So in terms of the external strand, immediately it was clear and for those of us in this kind of alt community, I don't think this is going to be all that surprising, a lot of our findings are not that surprising but it kind of needed to come out through an official process. So we found that we were already using the most standard or most popular platforms so it was unlikely that there was a fundamental kind of technology lack that we needed to fill with some kind of other tool or that would be a fix to the issues. And also the USISA surveys point out that the availability of tele-support staff is the largest driver of adoption of learning technologies which is not that surprising but it still is. Some people apparently find it surprising. So in terms of speaking to people in other institutions, our external strand wanted to ask questions about their television strategy and policy, their governance, how they do development and innovation, what kind of team structure and roles they have and also anything that we hadn't thought to ask but that they regarded as the good, the bad and the ugly things that are simply that they need to change or that are on the horizon. Or just really great that we had not elucidated. And so what sort of things did we find out? Sorry, these finding slides are a little bit text heavy. I need some water if I'm going to continue. The only key finding here was that across the sector, face-to-face teaching is actually a bit of a misnomer in the sense that you might have face-to-face classes but that teaching is generally regarded as blended for the most part now. There's always some kind of use of technologies, you know tools, platforms and services that are involved in campus-based, classroom-based teaching kind of mode. And that this understanding is now forming, really forming part of institutional strategy and key processes. And so it's feeding into things like quality assurance and assessment policy and that kind of thing. Education technology is a fast-moving field as well where things need to be reviewed and updated. And institutions often have a governance structure which oversees the links between the TEL strategy and its implementation, something that we lack. So a key overall finding, of course, there is no magic formula, otherwise we probably all would know it by now. Everywhere is kind of different in the structures that have evolved organically and responded to the local priorities. But there is a tendency to separate staff from student support, to separate pedagogic and technical support and have dedicated support for distance learning, all of which we felt were worthwhile lessons for a perfect. So those were useful findings. In terms of the internal strand, we found learning technologies are being used across all the departments. The top 20 most visited Moodle modules were spread across nine. Students appreciate having online resources and studying materials. They love when you use video, but high production value is not really required. They are very consistent with other findings, but this is the voice of our students. They said we want content that is relevant, timely and authentic. Staff actually did not agree with the myths, fundamentally. They said we need a culture shift, we need strategy and governance of this that feeds directly into policy and investment decisions. Most staff who are OK with the idea of standardisation having some kind of baseline or templates or evidenced guidance that then would be implemented locally in line with their needs. They know that lack of support and making small modest improvements is a significant break on considering innovations. Staff and students regard our face-to-face mode learning and teaching as in fact blended to varying degrees of intensity. So very much we are actually pretty much normal compared with what's going on around the sector and not an exceptional land of nothing digital after all. The main recommendations emerging and there were various sub points here, but just the headlines are that we would need to develop a digital education strategy, establish a governance structure, build a digital education service and then there will be a few other key actions. So what's the result? Well obviously I'd hoped when doing the abstract to have very much more finalised kind of result to report, but as we know institutional wheels sometimes are slower to turn than we had hoped. Also there was a financial situation because the college has been hit by the sector-wide slump in part-time study and while we are seeing conversion of students into full-time students, there is still a bit of a financial squeeze. So we feel that our review was very well reviewed and has done significant work to dispel some of the tell myths and indicated a way forward for digital education at Burtbach, but in this context of resource scarcity will those at the helm wonder if they can afford to invest? On the other hand, can they afford not to? That's it, thank you. Thank you Leo and perfect timing right on the 15-minute mark. I practiced it so many times. Do we first ask, is there any questions in the room with their hands up questions? Well there is a question there for you to go on the me too. There is a question there and it's kind of what I was, I guess what I was talking about in the final point. I mean I think it has moved things forward in the institution, sorry maybe I should repeat the question, I'm not sure if that's necessary, has producing this data to help to move things forward within the institution and gain support for senior management. So yes, I mean I think to some degree yes, I felt that when we presented the findings that people felt that they were very reasonable and very logical, there wasn't really a lot of resistance to it. On the other hand to actually gain implementation of the recommendations is another whole kind of layer of kind of arguing over resources and priorities and that's something that, no I'm not going to be there to be doing but do you have any thoughts on that part? Elizabeth, one of the co-presenters. One of the people who were on both of the strands. The wills do turn very slowly but I'm certainly having sort of been right in my beginning will continue to push for this so I am already drafting my next email as the master of the college on the follow-up because he is the one who gave me the go ahead to set up the steering committees in the first place so I shall follow on and say what a wonderful experience it was when we were going with it so I will be pushing on that for stuff that's going to happen. Are there any other questions in the room with the roving mic running around? I'll ask one if that's okay with you. So what I found really interesting is the notion of how you explored blended because one of the critical problems you often have in these sectors is this kind of dichotomous thing.  How did you sort of contextualise that spectrum of blended? Well, so this was very, the way that I talked about it now was very summarised from a lot of actual kind of more granular feedback from focus groups and interviews with staff and that kind of thing. But what we found was that nobody thought that technology isn't in use already and that they actually highlight the fact that they're using it in the classroom as well so even in the face-to-face moment they're projecting, they might be showing video or trying to play audio against us that are not totally reliable and then this makes you wonder if you should try other things. There was really a strong feeling that blendedness is actually quite normal but the extent of it is really a continuum. It wasn't really something that we asked people to reflect on that much so much as just more sort of what are you actually doing. Cool. We've got one follow-up question here. Thank you. Thanks very much, Leo, Elizabeth and all. I know that open education is practical in these sorts of universities. I just wanted to open the course of those interviews if open practices emerged as part of the discussion around talent and working beyond VLE and how that reversed itself. The open practices have emerged now and then much more actually in kind of over time that I've been there talking to different people about the kind of stuff that they do. Very much I find that they are reflected in things like when the college gives awards for teaching. It's very much in relation to some kind of digital and open practice that they're engaged in but one of the curious things that I find about Birkbeck as an organisation is that it doesn't generally address the idea of openness very kind of directly. As I mentioned, one of the kind of core tell myths was this one about we're not the open university and I think that this this is quite ironic because in fact we were sort of the institution most similar to the open university but simply doing it through kind of a different kind of mode but actually they're entirely for the same kind of reasons and with the same type of profile of students. So that's quite fascinating to me how the people who are doing open practices unless I've already been kind of on their case about do you know about all of this or do you really call it that? Well, I'd like everyone to thank Leo and Elizabeth and Sarah and on to the presentations to that paper. And we will now move on to our next paper in the run as he lifts the glasses in the old man fashion. And we've got Andrew Lee who's presenting and while he sets up just remind people if they have come in a bit late, we have got the me too running all the details to add to the session on your table and as you saw the questions can go up there and the presenters can see them as they come up and they can answer your questions if you don't feel like grabbing a microphone. So our second paper as I said is from Andrew Lee and the paper is entitled upscaling learning technology the evolution of e-learning in a university hospital emergency department. So I will... There's one there. It's about the only one. Talk about yourselves. It's not recognising the drive. It's not coming out. Do you want to just plug your drive in here? So this is your pass. Thank you. Sorry for the delay everybody. My name's Andrew Lee and I'm presenting today from Nottingham, from the University of Nottingham and I'm talking about a collaborative project between the University of Nottingham the School of Health Sciences and the Nottingham University Hospital Queens Medical Centre. The project in question is the development of a website that I've been working on and today I'm specifically talking about the educational component in that website with a view to how that's evolved and the e-learning that's been involved. The first question really is what is the dream department? The dream department is the department that the website has been built for. And dream stands for the department of research and education in emergency medicine, acute medicine and major trauma. It's serving about 400 people in the ED department and educating them and it's ethos is that it combines the education and research that it conducts into clinical practice and advances patient care based on that. The department has several functions two major departments education and research the education has internal components the 400 or so people within ED and other members of Nottingham University Hospital Trust it also runs external courses where people external to the trust can come in and receive education in dream. It has a simulation function members of the public can become simulated patients take part in scenarios and various workshops and it has a big resource area ECG banks, radiology banks podcasts and many others. Most of the education in dream is conducted in a classroom environment traditional classroom teaching but a multitude of other types of workshops scenarios and simulations that I've already alluded to and that's great teaching is ideal for a lot of what they do it's fine, it's engaging and it's flexible. There are however limitations with classroom education you can't in terms of numbers there's a limited number of people you can teach there's a problem with the flexibility of space if you want to teach three people you're using the space that might be designed for 30 or 40 people. Classroom teaching traditionally is time consuming takes a lot of effort to create the materials teaching can't be saved and there's a specific issue in emergency departments of coordination so for example you may arrange for a classroom event and then there's a major accident a member of the public can present with medical issues that require the person that they've engaged in teaching obviously the public always takes priority and so coordinating education is very difficult. These issues with classrooms are the issues of dream the challenges of dream when it needs to upscale it needs to teach more people it needs to find an answer to the problem of the inflexibility of space it needs to have much more direct education with the learner so that it's faster and it's more responsive then needs to be much high productivity so that education can be recorded and saved and then learners can see the recordings and they need to an answer to the coordination problem so that the teaching that they're providing fits in with the lives and the work styles of the people that they're there to serve there's two other very big issues involved with medical education one of which is into professionalism for those of you not unfamiliar with this term it's about clinicians not being fully aware or not being fully confident to comment on the behaviour of other clinicians it's attempting to deal with an issue term siloing nurses when they go to university to learn to be a nurse are taught wholly with nurses doctors when these clinicians are thrown together they need to work together and understand one another in the ED department and so that's an added challenge that dream needs to confront there's also the speed of change of medical research which is happening at an alarming rate it's reached the point now where doctors and nurses when they begin their career in ED their base knowledge is already out of date and their education really begins on the first day and they need to be re-educated from the get-go there's been three previous websites where dream has attempted to answer these various problems they've fundamentally been passive websites and obviously websites answer the problem of teaching in terms of numbers of people because they reach everybody and they answer the problem of inflexible space because of their own flexibility so you can educate whatever numbers you want the biggest drawback with this type of website is that it requires developer input and that's time consuming and that's always been a problem faced with those challenges and the desire to upscale at this point dream approached the school of health sciences at the university and specifically a department called Helm which is the health and e-learning media team in the school of health sciences it's a specialist department providing learning materials, resources and objects for the school of health sciences and the people who work there are specialists in web development multimedia audio, video and those things and then it was at that point I was seconded to the dream department in the role of project manager and developer and at this point I can just make quickly be able to show you the website ok this is a dream website and it's a work in progress at the moment we are adding modules to it it's a Drupal website I'll explain what that means in a moment so we're adding modules to it we're also seeming it, we're also mentoring the members of the dream department so that they can use it but I just thought I would just give you a little bit of a this is the team or part of the team this is the beginnings of the educational components the cause components current research projects archive research projects information about simulation radiology banks ok and it's address is dream.ac.uk so it's an accredited site now it's a Drupal site now for those who are unfamiliar with content management systems Drupal is one of the big three content management systems along with WordPress and Magento it's free to use it's open source and it's very similar to other VLEs like Moodle Blackboard in the sense that it's modular and you can add whatever functionality you need to to improve the upscaling problem I decided on multiple content authors which is an important aspect of the website there's a bus array of different roles in clinicians and they need to be taught by clinicians similarly spread out so nurses taught by nurses doctors obviously taught by doctors but the other array of roles taught specifically by people with those roles in the education department upscaling is aided by the modular aspect of the site so that it's responsive as you need to add new features it's very easy to do an example of one of those modules is paragraphs which adds greatly to the functionality and the editing capabilities of the site so content authors can create the kind of pages that they want to create something familiar to everybody who's used Moodle is the idea of books there's of lessons self-contained learning objects with contents pages, index pages and books now is a part of Drupal 8 so in terms of upscaling it allows learners to access via a library their learning easily one other important feature of this new site is that the content authors will become developers and that means that they'll be able to actually create the architecture and the design of the site and not just to create the learning resources that's important in terms of ownership if they feel that it's theirs then they'll be much more motivated to work with it and finally I would just like to mention the changing roles now between developer and user in this context Helm has become more of a consultant providing pedagogical know-how maintenance of the site help with technical issues that are particularly technical but the members of the dream department now have taken on much more of a role of developer so they are able to upscale the site and the site's architecture in the way that they want to to summarise the upscaling of the educational component of this website is alleviated in terms of accessing numbers and flexibility of space purely by being an interactive website all websites answer those issues there's wide departmental content of the ship which gives direct connection between the teacher and learner so there's no recourse for developers to be involved in that process modules aid upscaling through the wide variety of functionality and access to resources that they offer and finally content authors now have much greater ownership of the website because it's been specifically engineered so that they can design the architecture of the website as well as add content in closing I think my final remarks would really be to consider a virtual learning environment in the same sense that you might consider Moodle particularly if you need to design a website for a department such as Dream that has all other components but the educational component is very good and is getting a lot better Moodle for instance was fully integrated into Drupal 7 and I know that's planned with Drupal 8 and that concludes my lecture about the evolution of e-learning in the dream department and I'd like to thank you for your time and I have a few minutes for questions so I've got one question on me too I've had this very stable we have uptime of 99.8% the site is hosted with a company called UK Fast it's an excellent company and that's their uptime it's at that point it's at that level is there any question in the room that's made in the presentation I just have a question and it follows on from Amber's talk this morning where she talked about the business case as learning developers I'm just wondering what's in it for the university this is not a fee paying or they're not getting students in to particular programs so I'm just wondering this kind of request is it a project, a specialist project or how this is managed if this is happening increasingly where I work in health sciences our stakeholders are asking us to get involved in these types of projects so I'm just wondering if you can put some background to that there is money involved the external cause component of dream means that there's a revenue stream that way so that external students have to pay to come to dream and there are other revenue streams with dream in terms of the school of health sciences this is kind of it's a great learning vehicle for them this is quite entirely new it also gives a tremendous platform for a lot of the resources that are being created at Birmingham and it's an opportunity for a great deal of improved collaboration between dream and between HALM and the school so I mean there's a lot in it really for both parties Excellent alright we will need to keep to time so thank you Andrew if we could have a note of appreciation for Andrew Right we're on to our final presentation and we have from Queen Mary Maria Toro Trachonis and she is going to be doing her presentation on does learning design have an effect on student performance aligning learning design with learning analytics and without further due over to Maria Thank you very much sorry I'm wearing my coat but I think really cold yesterday and today I'm not hiding anything underneath it's just that I'm a bit cold so apologies for that This presentation I gave a similar presentation at the M25 meeting and some of you were there so apologies for that I'm going to emphasise the learning design more so you're going to have a look at the framework in more detail so you know and you don't leave the room now but so I'm Maria Toro Trachonis I actually work at Cambridge Education Group Digital and my colleague Anthony Alexiv is not here today unfortunately but he's from Queen Mary University We at CEG Digital we partner with different universities to develop online fully online programmes and these are some of our partners and that's why I'm presenting this paper with Queen Mary today because they are one of our partners and we tend to create also research collaborations with different people within those institutions but today really when we think there are two things to this paper learning analytics as well as learning design and I really want to emphasise the learning design aspect of that because as we've been hearing today and yesterday the context of learning analytics is really important and I think if we emphasise where we are coming from from the learning design point of view we will be able to understand better where we are going with learning analytics so that's why today I'm going to go deeper into the learning design framework that we work on so the learning design framework that we are following is based on the co-design framework that we developed at Liverpool University this framework is open source I'll give you a website later but it's being designed for CEG Digital and that's what we are using now with the partners the co-design framework feeds from the blended learning design framework that we developed at Imperial College this few years ago now at the time we partnered with City University with UCL and Kins College and we pilot the use of the tool but I want to tell you today what we are taking from that framework into the new co-design framework and it's basically as you can see there on the right hand side when we designed the framework we were thinking about how do we do blended learning how do we know how much what activities lend themselves to self-directed learning and what activities lend themselves to collaborative learning and that was a big question at the time so we as you can see on the right hand side that graph is showing when we mapped the learning outcomes we can see where you fit the graph so you see the x axis is showing you the instruction is approach, the self-directed approach and the y axis is showing the collaborative approach so you can see where the blend goes and the self-directed learning can be face-to-face it can be online, it can be a mix the key components are self-directed something that you do on your own in any kind of mode and the collaborative aspect can be also face-to-face or online so the key really for us to identify that blend was the use of learning outcomes because at the end of the day you need to know what you want your learners to be able to do in your activities so that's why we use Bloom's Taxonomy so basically at the end of the research what we established was activities that lend themselves to self-directed learning for example in the psychomotor domain to develop skills you need a mix of both you can't rely on medical surgeons to be doing just online learning and then being able to operate and performing in the theatre the cognitive domain if you are within the low end of the cognitive domain you can use self-directed learning so if you need structural information procedural information you can use self-directed learning but if you move up the level of conceptual and metacognitive you need to have collaboration you need to give space to students to verbalise what they are learning and being able to explain what they are constructing and the effective domain again changing people's behaviours and attitudes we can't just rely on a self-directed learning self-directed module to be able to do that sometimes you can see that in the corporate sector for example with changing people attitude to diversity you need to sit down and click click click and then you've done that and you've changed your perception of diversity and health and safety so that's why we say the effective domain we need to have collaborative activity so this is what we're taking from the blended learning framework and it's basically how we accommodate the driver for the learning design depending on what you are the effective and the psychobontor and also within the co-design framework we are using two frameworks which is the layout framework, the learning types and you can see there for example acquisition one of the learning types is when you're reading or you're consuming some content listening to a podcast watching a video clip discussion when you are obviously discussing with your peers, with your tutor practice when you're putting into practice what you're learning using something tangible probably a digital artefact or something in a tutorial or something like that enquiry when you're looking for information where you might be searching on the internet looking information in the library and here there is another learning type that we don't mention there which is the collaboration because we embed that in the production side of things that's why it's not listed there the other framework that we use is basically so we say okay we know that coming from the problem taxonomy we know where we are my learning outcome is telling me that my learners need to be able to explain something and that means conceptual level within the cognitive domain now I'm going to use a mix of things I'm going to use a bit of acquisition a bit of discussion I want them to practice and so on but how much of that do I put together that's why we are using the 70-2010 so basically the 70-2010 is telling us a little bit about how we can balance the learning activity now that we know where we are coming from what we are trying to achieve from a learning outcome point of view we know what kind of types a type of learning we can use within that to deliver that learning outcome how much of that can we put together so we use the 70-2010 it's not set on stone it's something just to guide us so if we are designing a week how the balance is going and this is something that Leonard is there he created these six steps at the beginning of the company where we have at the beginning of every week so if we are developing a 30 credit module we have 12 weeks every week we'll have these boxes these sections and the first section is basically the introduction of the topic that's when we link practice with the topic to engage the learners guided practice is more the lecture material challenge activity something to produce something to practice on reflection and webinar the webinar is a face-to-face it's an online life activity with a tutor so you can see if we go back to the 70-2010 the 10% the acquisition is mainly going on number two on guided practice although it might go somewhere else if there is a reading in the challenge activity and so on so the 20 and the 70 are spread around the other sections but that's helping us so if we are designing that week we can see wow that week has the 10% has gone up to 50 and if we apply this probably to our traditional delivery in higher education at the moment we can see probably the 10% and that's the challenge for us to really challenge that approach and introduce more collaborative learning but this is basically how we balance the learning activities so this is the framework and all of these frameworks are basically included in the co-design framework and this is how we are basically navigating the learning design aspect of the project so the cards basically this is these printed cards that we have and we share with academics and you can see on the left-hand side those are six faces that we have and on the right-hand side is two piles of cards one green and one blue and I'm going to show you now the faces, the six faces on the left-hand side so face one basically when we sit down we talk about the scope of the project so if we are designing a module we talk about the main learning outcomes what they want to achieve problems in terms of capabilities, digital skills these kinds of things in terms of the target users face two is really key and this is the one that links to blended learning framework and here is when we then go down to learning outcomes and we need to specify what they need to be able to do and then you have verbs in the blue and the green boxes and that's how you identify the activities the blue and the green cards activity descriptors, different things I'll show you later, I don't have much time now learning descriptors, learning types as well as the it has to be updated it's advanced HE framework then you select all your learning activities and then you analyze the learning applied in the 70-2010 so as you can see here this is one of the cards, the blue cards so that means that when you went through the faces you've identified a verb within that box and that means high level cognitive domain probably or the effective domain and this is an example, so we have different examples from different partners, in this case this one is from Falmouth University and it's for enquiring, producing, practicing and discussing and it's contextualizing what we are saying with the framework you can see there the different components of the activities that I mentioned the 70-2010 with the learning type so you know what you're targeting using that type of activity you can see here that it's an online activity individual and group work and also you need a VLE to deliver that and these are the advanced HE domains so if you're applying for the fellowship you know that how you map that activity as a teacher in your practice this is another example from Queen Mary and also producing all the different components but I think, I mean it's nearly over the presentation but now it's going to the learning analytics so having a systematic way of designing the courses it's easier for us to actually think about how are we going to interrogate the data how are we going to do learning analytics to help and to inform our learning design and this is what we are doing with Queen Mary so this is a very small project a very small sample only 22 students and two assignments on that module we had over 4,000 entries 4,000 entries that we analysed and we applied a logistical regression analysis our dependent variable was a pass mark over 60% so we were looking if there was any association between the participation in forums or the entries in the reflective portfolio because that's happening every week or there was any association with access to content pages with the overall pass mark or the overall performance in the course and we were thinking that probably people that participated more were doing better but we didn't find any significant difference in that area whereas we found a significant difference the p-value is not too low but it's still significant in the use of the clinical reflective journal so we identified for our students having 6 entries in their critical reflective journal the probability of passing the module with a mark over 60% is about 80% obviously it depends on all the variables this is just a very small analysis that we did we need to look at a bigger sample more data and cross check all the variables as well but it's just interesting for us to see I think the main goal today is really to show you that for us to really do some learning analytics we really need to contextualize what we are doing we need to in terms of learning design if we are doing learning design systematically without losing track of how pedagogically we are doing it we can then think about how learning design can help us and help the learners to achieve their outcomes and that's me thank you very much that's my contact details someday there's no questions on the me too at the moment or have any questions in the room the question yep over there hi thanks for your talk I was really inspired by the last finding the reflective journals and seeds to have this correlation to enhance the grade but of course is there any way we could determine if those students were going to be more likely to succeed anyway that their fact of doing reflections was related to the fact that they were already good students and it was not the journals or their engagement with the online platform that made the difference how can we disambiguate those findings yeah that's a really good question that's why we need to be doing a bigger analysis and also we need to be careful about also the data that they're using in terms of demographics and things like that but I think that's a really important point I mean we can't generalise with the findings that anybody that will be more active reflecting will do will pass the course with high pass mark but that's why this is just the beginning of the research and that's something that we are thinking about as well thank you thank you Mary, a very interesting talk I'm really interested in the way that you used the 70-2010 model because we are doing the same at the Royal Australian College of Physicians but of course there is a bit of discussion about the fact that the 70-2010 model is not really supported by evidence of data so are you going to publish any research on the way that you use the model to start collecting evidence about it? yeah that's a really good question thank you and what we want to see really is when we are designing the courses really the 70-2010 is never spot on so we can see for example courses on law the 10 becomes higher because of the nature of the course so what we are really interested in is really to look at how the foundation of the 70-2010 is there but is how the disciplines how does that variation is happening and why I think rather than just saying the 70-2010 works I don't think in teaching and learning we can't really apply the formula to anything I think that's just the foundation for us to give us guidance and then to have a more constructive analysis of the data that we can collate but yeah hopefully we will be publishing something along those lines thank you I know we are now pretty much on time and we've got a fairly tight bump out to the next session so I'd like you to thank all three of our presenters and also Maria who hasn't had her own individual course but thank you for that off to you next session, thank you thanks Maria I'm John Wilson, I'm the CEO at Agenta we're a technology company that focuses on education and learning we build, manage and operate platforms for education for video collaboration externally we prefer to work with what we feel ethical industries obviously education, teaching, learning healthcare, we feel that we can really contribute to these industries by creating exciting platforms easy to use platforms secure platforms that people can utilise what we feel is one of the most important things for Scotland to boost economic growth is investing in rural areas by investing in broadband in these local areas we can attract more talent, we can attract more companies and we can drastically improve the delivery of education and learning within these schools, within disparate regions within Scotland


You're sad. It's been a long day. You're down and out. But you know that the one thing that could turn all that around? Some good quality memes, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, it's been a minute since I've done this. My family. Can the kids play 2K on your PlayStation? Me.  Ah, you can't even say no because you don't really have a good reason. Why? I'm using it. No, you're not. You're out here with us. Uh. 2K sound effects are like... AAAAAH! There. When you turn off music on 2K, I have to do it because I don't want to catch copyright cases. All of a sudden, you just hear random sound effects. They don't feel like they fit because it's just a harsh cut. It's just a harsh cut, 2K. Have it fade in and have it fade out. You'd be just a harshest of cuts, man. Just... AAAAAH! Chris Moove really plays splash music in GTA. What's up? That's behind the fence. I don't know if they ready for this behind the fence. Chris Moove's been streaming recently. Me too, by the way. My link is in the description if y'all want to catch it. But that's hilarious. That's funny how he found a way to... Yannis reacts to his viral clip. Damn, he's not happy whatsoever. Hey, Yannis is a cheat code in 2K and he has been since 2K18, okay? Yannis is such a wholesome guy, bro. You guys follow him on Twitter? He just tweets the most wholesome things. P.O.V., you don't pass the ball to the level 40 and sold the game. Yo, did y'all hear that? This video right here is sponsored by Fortnite. To celebrate the re-release of the beloved Jordan 11s, the iconic colorway is taking it to the court, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, in Fortnite. Test your skills in the Jumpman Zone where six portals will take you through a scavenger hunt and then on to complete quests and earn rewards. After completing the scavenger hunt for the iconic Jordan 11 cool grays, you'll unlock wavy VIP rooms such as the museum and the basketball court. From there, you can complete trick shot challenges to unlock outfit styles and receive the deep in the paint spray. So get in the zone with the Air Jordan 11 cool grays set from the item shop which includes the hang time outfit, switch outfit, cool gray back bling and dunk on them emo. I swear Fortnite finds a way to just always have the coolest collaborations and this one right here is no different. So speaking about content, check this out. They have an actual basketball court within the game where you can meet up with your friends and do trick shots and just have fun hooping in Fortnite.  So you receive a reward once you complete six and 10 trick shot challenges. But if you manage to complete 12 of them before December 4th at 3 p.m. Eastern, that's when you get the deep in the paint spray. So there's plenty of great rewards to unlock fantastic new content and the item store is going to be active with some cool new additions as well. This Jordan 11 cool gray drop is not the one you want to miss. Hop on Fortnite right now to experience the greatness. I'll leave my link at the top of the description, man. So appreciate y'all who always show support to the brands who help support this channel. And it's a huge thank you to Fortnite for helping sponsor this video. Hey, whatever sound that is, it hurts to hear. Y'all be dragging it, bro. Like when you hop in game chat, the stuff you hear is so crazy. You wouldn't think you're playing a basketball game. You think it was life or death. That move was not overpowered, guys. That move was not overpowered, bro. In 2K19, a developer in NBA 2K Studios thought it was a good idea to add pushing. That is a hilarious decision. And it stayed in the game for like five, six months. Why is everybody looking at him? And the whole team is just staring him down. What am I missing here? How people expect us to react to their drippy face, guys? That's good. There's always that one friend in the group who gets dunked on. I was supposed to support him, man. Yeah, they got a five-second violation because it was laughing at their friend. That's hilarious. With the first pick in the 2013 NBA draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select Anthony Bennett from Toronto Cavaliers. It's almost like you just unlocked the memory. The video that killed NBA Live. And they tee up. Yep, I remember that. I remember this. I remember this. I remember this. You know, I did a little bit of 3D modeling when I was a bopper. That position that Shaq was in is called, I think it's called anatomical position. And when you're modeling player in a video game, usually you model them like that. You have to add their hinges, like their shoulders, their knees, their elbows. At least that's how it was when I was doing it. I don't know if technology got better. But this was bad, bro. People saw this and everybody packed up and went to NBA 2K. I remember this. When you and your real close homie play 2K and he's some dog. That's good. That's a 9 out of 10. Way to bounce back, Twitter. People on 2K20 on the My Player build tester with the 99 overall. Put together a series of lowlights for the mellow ball. That's it.  Because he had some good moments in Chino Hills. Besides the point, guys. That is true. Y'all be putting up these 99 overall players and just chucking up anything. Like, is this build any good? Let's find out by attempting six half court shots in a row. When the people in the party start getting mad because you're not passing the ball, but you're scoring every possession. Okay, so first of all, let's establish you're one of those. Who gon' check me? Who gon' check me? Yeah, that's it. He's all right. All right, 5 out of 10. When it's late and you lag out of a My Park game, you was about to win.  Such a odd thing to put on the dead homies. When you pull up on your homies to drop them off but you lose and you see a joint party notification from him. That's a good meme. Is that Shaq? Shaq's reaction at the chiropractor? Whoa. Is he okay? Is he okay? That's exactly how I envisioned Shaq being at the chiropractor. That has nothing to do with what we're about to do today. I just, wow, okay. Still one of the worst tweets of all time. We have gravity here saying, LeBron is 30. This won't go on for much longer. Thank God. Yo, he is a certified hater. That is an all-time bad tweet because he's still pushing. Yeah. The Warriors to every team they beat without Clay Thompson.  This isn't even my final four. Y'all think they're going to get better with? Can you imagine? Clay Thompson. Oh, Steph. Hey, I'm so happy that the Warriors is nice again. Mainly because Alaya was non-stef saying he needed help. This is the same dude who did this. Luca through his. Why are you beefing with Luca Daunted's dog? Who are you? Stop. You will not make a name for yourself this way. Cut it out. This beef is inappropriate and nobody knows who you are. If Westbrook is your teammate, just know he always got your back. Here's Dwight Howard beefing with KD. You need teammates like this though, bro. No cap. You do. And Russ Westbrook's been playing better. So, you know, we could lay off the jokes for a little bit. He might blow a wide open Frito shot from now and then, but he's been playing significantly better, man. You love to see it. LeBron looks like he already. God damn. Every meme has to be about LeBron James. Do other players exist? LeBron looks like he already knows who he's going to trade. The commissioner, Legio. I wonder who's going to trade though. Hmm. When the manager tells a customer the exact thing you told them. This is good, man. This is a 9 out of 10. We're doing good today. Hey, NBA memes. You're not disappointing. I like it. Kyrie in 2050 telling us why LeBron was never the code. I can see it. I can see it already. Yeah. No, it's a Scotty. You're ruining your own legacy, brother. Please quiet. That's great stuff. I knew Ben Simmons wasn't that guy when he let Jared Dudley do this. I mean, you're not wrong, right? I actually vividly remember this moment too and memes were going crazy on Twitter that night. Hey, these are creative, man. I haven't seen this photo be used as a meme ever in my life. I like this right here, man. Good work.


Are you ready to see how it works? Translation in action. First of all, what are you looking at? Go ahead, Pictionary.  Charades, but I'm not acting it out. What game is this where you have to guess what that is? I know you already know the answer.  Ribosome rigs, it's a ribosome and you are totally broken. It is a ribosome. You'll notice that it has the A site, the P site, and the E site. Now, oops, let's go. Who's coming? You know who's coming because check out the five prime cap. The mRNA is arriving to the scene ready to party with a ribosome. Who else is arriving just out of curiosity? What do you think that thing is up there? It's who? It's a tRNA molecule. The tRNA molecule carrying an amino acid. Now, if I were really amazing, I would go back and I would actually figure out what amino acid this was and make sure that it actually matched and I am just not that cool. Bummer. But look, this anti-codon is U-A-U. Is that the anti-codon? Who's just my example in the last thing? I'm just really curious. I want to know if it is. Oh, I was close. It was U-G-U. Okay, I'm almost that cool. Okay, U-A-U and it matches with the codon A-U-A. Let's see if it indeed works. Hey, and where does the tRNA bring the amino acid in the ribosome? To the A site, to the arrival site or the amino acid site. Okay, and then we form a bond. Now, this is the cool part. The ribosome is actually like an enzyme. It's a machine that once these molecules bind, the ribosome changes its shape slightly and it moves this whole thing along to the P site. So let's check that out. Here it goes to the P site. Now, we only have one amino acid. This is pretty much worthless so far at this point, but somebody else is arriving. And look at how the, whatever this is, matches. The anti-codon matches with the codon and brings in another amino acid. Now we've got two amino acids. Now this is where the ribosome is doing its magic. What happens is that the ribosome, again, it's just a chemical reaction. The ribosome manipulates things so that that first amino acid forms a bond, a peptide bond, pow, with that second amino acid in the arrival site. But now this is a chain. It's a chain of two amino acids. So technically, it's a peptide. The ribosome says, dude, get out of the arrival site and move to the peptide site where the peptides hang out. And now you've got your growing amino acid chain at the P site. Speculate. What's going to happen? What's going to happen at the A site? We're going to get a new arrival. What's going to happen at the E site? Dude, peace out, pound, you have nothing. You have nothing to offer us anymore. What's the matter with you tRNA molecule?  This tRNA molecule is going to have to leave. Look, it listened to me. It decided to go out and make something of its life. That's good. I'm glad it's listening. I hope my children someday listen as well. Here comes a new amino acid to connect with the anticodon, the anticodon and the codon match. The ribosome says, hey, we got somebody in the arrival site. Let's attach, pow, make a peptide bond, move everything on over, peace out, empty tRNA molecule. Go make something of your life, please. Come on in, new tRNA molecule. Now, this is something that I'm not sure that you realized. Some tRNAs do not have amino acids on them. If that tRNA is coded for, guess what? There's nothing to attach to. The ribosome says, I'd love to attach this chain to your amino acid, but there's no amino acid there. So what happens? It falls off. It's done. That means that that protein is ready to go and guess where it's going? It's going to go out and do something. It's probably going to be deposited into the endoplasmic reticulum, where it's going to get folded into a nice little shape and then exocyte toast out into the cytoplasm to go make something happen. Thank you for all of your work, tRNA molecules. You really did do something with your lives and now we literally have a protein. Are you happy? Do you understand that whole process? I wonder how long it keeps going. I think we're done. I know we're done. All right. How cool is that? Of course, you now have all the pieces, but none of it is ever that simple, ever. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how the whole process of protein synthesis is regulated and how we can end up with some diversity of stuff. And then we're going to look at critter diversity, like actually how critters can be really, really, really similar in their DNA and yet look really, really, really, really different. I'll be right back. Oops. I mean, I'll be right back. At least I caught it this time, right?


Welcome to the MarketWatch podcast by Amplify Live, where you can access the latest market insights with me, Anthony Chung, the Head of Market Analysis, and joined by Head of Trading, Piers Currin, getting you up to speed on what mattered in markets this week. Okay. A very good morning to you. It's Friday, 28th of May. As ever, I'm joined by Head of Trading, Piers Currin, and we're going to talk over a couple of the major themes in markets this week, namely the latest initial jobless claims falling to a new pandemic low. We're going to talk about the White House's new proposal for a $6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year. And then from that, we're going to talk about some of the geopolitics that have been going on, Belarus, Russia, and we're going to talk about China as well. So that's what's on the agenda, but Piers, how's it going? Good. Good morning. I'm looking forward to the chat, but you've just sprung a surprise on me because you've just told me that we're not going to be actually videoing this as in the visual side. Obviously, the audio is getting recorded, but we're not going to be actually videoing it. I made a special effort this morning. Yeah, you've got your baby blue ironed shirt on. Normally, these days, you're in your hoodie. Yeah. Well, I've got a meeting, post-meeting. This is actually, it's weird, actually, this is the first time I've worn what you might describe as a work shirt since, yeah, it must be February 2020, I guess. Yeah. It feels a bit weird, but yeah, I'm going to see a guy with big, big, big cheese at Morgan Stanley, actually. So you've got to tie yourself up, though, because it's like date night. Yeah, I've got to be sharp. Well, I actually ventured into town yesterday. I had to deliver at a business school that has an entire floor in the shard. I think they've got two floors, don't they? Got two floors. Wow. I believe. They didn't show me the VIP room. They just showed me the standard lecture theatre. So what was surprising was these students that I met, they were MSc students. They'd studied entire year, just about to do their final exams, and this was the first lecture they had received. What face-to-face? Face-to-face. Yeah. Incredible. But I spoke to the students, and also I spoke to the faculty, and the technology now is incredible. They had these, so they had cameras. Everyone sat there, it's like the UN conference, and they all sat there in these glass shields. I have my facial visor on, and there's a camera above my head as they deliver at the front. And every time, everyone's got like one of those stents or old school kind of microphones on their desk. And when they click the button, the light goes off on their desk so I can see, the camera automatically facial recognition picks them up and pivots to their spot. So virtually people around the world can interact both online and in person. Did you have people tuning in online as well as those face-to-face? That's what happens when we go global. OK, we need to up our game here for these podcasts. I won't tell you how much it costs to get out the one that actually hits it. You might have second thoughts in it. But yeah, it was really great to interact with some of these students, and I definitely sympathise with students all over the country, all over the world. They've had like a very unique 12 months for sure, but I just wanted to kind of convey to them, look, it never feels like obviously a good time to be coming into the workforce. I remember one of the guys I was talking to, he graduated 2008, I think when I graduated that was just when 9-11 the recession happened then as well. So I mean, you've got to think that in a pandemic time, right, that there's new opportunity, new innovation, the greatest thing that humanity has is our ability to adapt, right? Absolutely. It's definitely a bad mindset, I mean, because the problem is students trying to get jobs at top, global institutions, you're aiming for the top and you're going to get masses of knockbacks and refusals and rejections. And it's just having the right mindset to get through that and just pick yourself up onto the next and say positive, stay confident, it's very difficult and, yeah, sure, you can't control the time that you graduate and hit the workforce, that's your parents' fault for giving birth to you. Not dear to the economic cycle, I'm like, how could you do that to me? So you can't control that. So there's no point worrying about stuff you can't control. I know it's easy to say that, but sure, I mean, I graduated into a into a recession as well, the post.com bubble bursting. And I found it tough. I think I probably said in a podcast, I'm not sure I can't remember now, but I I applied to all the banks and I got rejected from all of them, apart from one. And you only need one, you know, you only need that half door open. You just got to smash it down and take what you can get and go from that. Good. That's it. Who needs Wayne Gretzky when I've got Pierce Curran? All right, well, let's crack on with things and kicking things off there. We had filing new claims for unemployment benefits in the US dropped by 38000 to 406000 last week as the lowest level. Now, since the pandemic first hit the labor market overseas since March 2020, below expectations. So combination, I guess, of the vaccination campaign continues, albeit the pace of vaccinations is slow. But we were kind of anticipating that on the supply of vaccines and that should pick up. But restrictions on businesses are being lifted. The other interesting thing, because this goes back to a previous podcast and you were talking about McDonald's and how McDonald's were literally paying people to come was it 50 bucks to come and have an interview? Just for an interview. Yeah. Just for an interview. And one of the kind of things that wasn't top level apparent, but was interesting, I thought, was that many states recently have decided to withdraw from federal unemployment benefit programs following these reports that it's been more difficult to hire because benefits that have been going out for the government pay more than most minimum wage jobs. Yeah. But this is important, right? For this whole idea about the second economy and transitry, all these types of things. So any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, that's right. The stimulus checks plus the unemployment benefit bump up. Yeah, it's just meant people, you know, they don't want to do they don't want to stack shelves for minimum wage. You know, who enjoys that? So if I've got the opportunity to earn more money, well, earn to receive more money and do nothing, well, then, you know, people are naturally taking that, right? And so it's caused a massive issue. So companies can't hire there's not even though the unemployment rate is higher than it was before the crisis. Companies can't find anyone who want to come and work for them. And it's have it is causing real issues with the recovery. And, you know, that's contributing to the temporary inflation spike. So what some states are doing, and I absolutely I think it's the perfect policy there, they're now rejecting that federal unemployment benefit and saying, right, that's not available to people in our states now to just kick people off the sofa and say, look, come on, there's jobs out there. Get on with it. Get out there.  Yeah, and from a from a context point of view, what we're still seven and a half million jobs away from returning to pre pandemic levels. So there's a huge gap there. And obviously, this is like the Fed are looking at because beyond temporary or not inflationary conditions, we're a long way off on that side of things, which is obviously a key focus. And on the jobless claims front, so that was the figure yesterday. And it was like, wow, that's a really good figure that's dropped much further than was expected. So obviously here that this is an unusual data set whereby the lower the number, the better it is, of course, so the fewer people claiming jobless benefit, obviously, the better. So it dropped to four hundred and six thousand.  So I just want to remind myself because, you know, pre pandemic. I was looking back the last time we were at four hundred and six thousand. You've actually got to go all the way back to twenty eleven. And hang on, let me explain between twenty eleven and twenty twenty the jobless claims number was below four hundred thousand. So even though this is a really good number, it's actually if you take out the pandemic, it's still the worst number since twenty eleven. So and actually we went down to yeah, we're training down at two hundred on this figure through sort of twenty nineteen. That was the kind of lowest point. So even though these states are, you know, blocking this federal support, the jobless claims figure is still high in in kind of post, sorry, pre pandemic terms. And so there's still this output gap, there's still slack. And, you know, there's still there's still work to do here. Yeah, and and Joe's aware of that. So what does he do? He puts his hand deep in his pocket and finds and finds six trillion dollars and says, you know what, guys? It's OK, I'm going to I'm going to propose six trillion dollar twenty twenty two budget to Congress, which would be the biggest federal spending push since the Second World War. Obviously, we're getting into a period now where midterms start to come to the forefront in terms of political positioning. Let's call it. And if you think about actually what is in this domestic agenda for for Biden, and we'll talk about domestic and then foreign affairs, because these are important things in markets this week because you've got China, Iran, sanctions, Belarus and Russia is a lot going on. But with Biden combating climate crisis, investments in social services, reduced poverty, expand housing. This sounds like like a kind of a ticket for success in order for performing at the midterms and to give people a bit of context with that. Because as I was saying to you earlier, I think people really remember in 2010 when Obama first came president and he had his first midterms, it was the worst democratic midterm election defeat in 70 years. And Biden's name was on that ticket as well as the team as well. So and Biden's 105 years old. So he's lived through a couple of these. He knows the deal. He needs to strike big, hard and fast. And that's that's only accentuated in my mind by a pandemic because there's a lot of people suffering.  There's other people still facing incredible difficulties. So now's the time to over promise. And we know what they promise and what gets fulfilled is completely different. I mean, I can imagine it were democratic officials yesterday when they heard that figure going, what in his own party ever mind opposition? So, you know, I just I just thought that the market. What surprised me yesterday? I don't know about you, but the market rallied on this news. And I wasn't taken aback by that. Well, I mean, yeah, it's on the one hand, it's the classic game of.  But let's we just put that to one side for a second.   No, thanks. But then, you know, OK, then we kind of march towards some kind of middle ground and a deal can be done. So I guess the point and maybe the market's reaction yesterday was more about just increasing their expectations of how much stimulus there's going to be by no means pricing in six trillion, but pricing in slightly more than they were perhaps thinking beforehand, because Biden has set out his stall, you know, further away than where they were expecting him to start from. I think I think that's probably the market's reaction. I mean, obviously, Democrats have only got a slender majority and so it's going to be an interesting battle in Congress and it's going to take some time. But then I see I thought I'd step back a little bit and just think about this in the longest term context as well. Because the academic world has been quite divided on this. So there's a guy called Paul Krugman, who you'll have heard of, of course, economics, Nobel Laureate, no less.  And he puts forward some interesting arguments. And that is actually that governments have really been failing for decades to actually, you know, stimulate the well, actually to reduce output gaps entirely and get economies growing at their full potential. So what happened in the 1970s is kind of a hangover from there. In the 1970s, we had massive inflation spikes in the early 80s and inflation was up at 10 plus percent, 15 percent. And it was an absolute killer for the economy. And ever since then, governments have, you know, been very conscious of that period and, you know, wanting to not see a return to it. OK, so one big argument about too much stimulus, of course, is that it will generate, in the end, it will generate an inflation spike and will be back to the 1970s crisis. So naturally, governments have been fearful of stimulating too much. And I think so that's partially it's the fear of inflation. But the other thing is measuring the output gap is notoriously incredibly difficult. And the output gap is just simply, you know, the difference between the economy. How fast is it growing now compared to how fast is its full potential growth? It's incredibly difficult to calculate. But as time's gone on, it's become increasingly obvious that actually we've been underestimating the output gap for like 20, 30 years. So governments have been, their fiscal stimulus strategy has been dogged by a fear to the return to hyperinflate or not quite hyper, high inflation and a thought that the output gap is actually not that big anyway. So here comes Biden and maybe his, you know, this is the moment to kind of pivot and snap out of that sort of 30, 40 year lethargy misguided conservativeness and actually now step up and get, you know, can he get this economy growing at its full potential? This is Krugman's argument. And, you know, it's interesting. This is probably, it depends how much he gets through, but it will probably be the biggest experiment of maybe the biggest economic experiment of our generation. And it's just interesting to see how it'll play out. But I do agree on the inflation front. I do think we are over obsessed and over fearful of inflation. And I think that has influenced policy in a negative way for actually too long now. It'll be interesting because when I think about it and the nature of Western politics and it being short-tism in its focus, like four, five year stints, why not experiment? I mean, you might say, well, what about the future and generations to come? But I think that things like debt and accumulation of debt, you know, I remember when the financial crisis happened and the period thereafter and everyone was freaking out when the USA lost its triple A rating and it's like, hang on, things have got materially worse if you're looking at it with that angle. And yet no one mentions this stuff anymore because we are desensitized and this is the new norm and balance sheets being what they're at doesn't make people panic anymore. And why can't that continue to grow and be okay? Well, an interest rates is zero, right? So if you're going to have a lot of debt, that's the time to have a lot of debt. But yeah, I mean, look, it's the ultimate risk.  So my job is calculated risk. And this is calculated risk.  I mean, I don't know if I had long, right? And sure, it could fail. And all right, then we've got a problem because there'll be a generation or two after us that are going to have to pick up this tab and pay for it. Or it actually might succeed. And we could kind of kick onto a growth trajectory that actually meets an economy's potential. So, okay, so with all this then, there's obviously a strong emphasis for the administration to focus on domestic issues for the things we've discussed. But this week, there's a lot of other things going on that involve the administration. We'll get on to China. And then we'll discuss a few things to do with that. But I guess the, in my mind, the one that's lowered down is Iran. There's been lots of discussions with Iran about trying to rekindle that relationship that they had with an agreement back in 2015, which basically Trump just kind of tore up at the time in regard to their nuclear development of enrichment of uranium and so on. Surprisingly, I found myself, oil was selling off last week. I mean, that's completely been taken aback. And in fact, oil's trading right back up there again, towards $67 a barrel. But the idea that successfully establishing a new relationship with Iran was going to be easy. It was a little bit wishful thinking, I think. And I was surprised to see oil come down last week. And I think it's back in its right place to be quite honest. The combination of that not materializing quickly, but also with the whole reopening demand side of the equation, I think oil is well supported at these levels. So that was the Iran thing. But then Russia was obviously a big one because of the incident that happened with the Ryanair flight and the a lot of geopolitical tension that's been between the EU, Russia, Biden's been involved. And so just wanted to briefly talk about that. Because I guess with a trading perspective, you see all these headlines. And that's very mainstream media because it's like, what? There's Russian secret agents on a plane and they grab this guy and they down a plane. The Ryanair guy starts coming out saying all sorts. You know, it's tantamount to like terrorist activity and all these sorts of things. But is it important for markets? I mean, that's I guess the question in terms of trade. I guess there's a difference between trading or geopolitically important that could have repercussion more long term. Right. Exactly. It's short term or long term. I think that on the one hand, those that are coming to markets now for the sort of first time, this isn't unusual where we've got a Russian sort of Western political incident here. But in fact, rather than it being abnormal, it's very normal. And I was just looking back at some of the incidents like, don't forget in 2014, Russia invaded the Ukraine. You know, they also shot down a Malaysian airline, passenger plane and 200 odd people died. There's airstrikes in Syria. There's poisoning of former spies here on UK soil. They've been poisoning the opposition leader last year. Alexei Navalny, you know, this is my point is that this is just another episode. So it's not a brand new thing. That's that's one point to say. The other point there from a trader's point of view, I mean, I can't help it. When something happens, I'm like, all right, is there an angle here? You know, is there an edge? Is there something? Is there a trade here? And what I've come to my thought process, I thought it might be interesting to share. I'm like, OK, Belarus. OK, so there's potential. There's potential sanctions going to happen here, right? Between Europe and Belarus. And we'll talk about the pipeline, the oil pipeline in a minute, but just talk about Belarus specifically. So what people may not know is Belarus is a massive producer of something called potash, which is a key component of fertilizers, which is used by the farming industry globally. And so they're actually the second biggest producer behind Canada, believe it or not. And so if there's sanctions against Belarus, well, then obviously the potash industry would probably be the most effective target for the West. That's because the Belarusian government is incredibly reliant on revenues coming from their state-owned potash producer. And it's a huge industry there. So hitting the potash industry would be quite an effective tool. So if that were to happen and they restrict the supply of Belarus and potash, well, then you got a potash supply drop, which therefore perhaps the prices of potash goes up, right? So how can you trade that? Well, who else produces potash? Well, actually Canada is the number one. So I'm straight away, right? Who are the Canadian publicly listed potash miners? That's my thought process. And the biggest of all of them actually, the biggest in the world is a company called Neutrion. So I'm like, right, okay, there's your... That's interesting. Do you buy Neutrion shares off the basis that sanctions against Belarus will restrict supply sending potash prices higher? So that's a great thesis, there's only one problem. Neutrion share price is already trading right at its all-time high. It's testing a monster technical resistance level. The 2018 high, $74.50, it's right there. So actually it could be an interesting breakout trade. So how long has it been going bid, though? Is it a reason? So like a lot of commodity producers collapse in price when COVID hit, and then it kind of bottomed out summer of last year down just south of $45, all-time low. Well, since they publicly listed, by the way, which was only back in 2018. So low, and then they've rallied all the way back from $45 up to $75 to test right now at the 2018 high. Sorry for the noise. So my trade is, right, monitoring that, are they going to be sanctions against Belarus? Is it going to evolve potash? How's that potash price going to react? Is this the time to buy nutrient shares on a breakout trade as it kind of breaks that 2018 high? Okay. Well, the one thing I would say on that thesis is Russia is the largest supplier of crude oil to Europe. Okay. So in fact, the largest shipments go through a pipeline called the Drusper pipeline that crosses Belarus. So if you sanctioned Belarus on potash, if I was Mr. Belarus, I'd say, excuse me, you do realize that I can just push this big red button here, and all crude oil stops going through that pipeline that serves Europe from Russia that you are dependent on. So don't do that. Absolutely. They've not the ultimate kind of retaliatory when, which is why I'm not buying nutrient shares yet. I'm certainly on my radar, but yeah. Well, on this discussion point, one of the main things we wanted to emphasize here, we're going to get to China was that these things have dominated a lot of the news sphere this week. But when you think about then the involvement of the US, it's kind of where is their energy being deployed? And that's what we're kind of insinuating is that this Iran or relationship to Russia, because Biden is going to be Putin in the coming weeks and with China, as we'll discuss, is these things are going to kind of simmer, I would think, in the coming year or so, while these other geopolitical risks get managed and the domestic focus is taken care of in my mind. But an interesting report out of BlackRock that came out this week, and they have a proprietary geopolitical risk indicator. And it's one of these models that they run and it's far too long of variables for me to comment on what makes the model. But the point being, it fell to a four-year low as of the latest reading they put out this week. And what they were saying was that investors are not attributing a great deal of attention to geopolitical risks because everyone is so focused on inflation and this economic recovery narrative. And they said that actually their analysts noted geopolitical shocks is the one major thing that could catch investors more off guard than usual because of the market kind of positioning, if you like, at the minute. The three top three risks that they looked at were separation of US and Chinese technology industries. So that's pretty cool to the whole entire trade battle that's been going on in recent years. A major cyber attack, which we've seen, we discussed in a previous podcast, the colonial pipeline. And then a political crisis in emerging markets as a result of countries inability to control the pandemic, the coronavirus, which you could quite easily see happening when you look at countries, I mean, even like India. Thankfully, the situation in India is improving from the worst it was at just a few weeks ago. But you can see that these lesser absolute countries, it's incredibly difficult to control, particularly mass populations like that. So yeah, just quite an interesting thing there, an observation I saw, but that does lead us on to China. And this is the final kind of thing to talk about because they had a phone call. It was the first kind of top level official phone call that they've had under the new administration to try and resolve these differences on trade. And they were kind of referring to it as being candid conversations, which I guess is the PR polish to say that they kind of had a discussion, nothing really happened. They're not particularly happy with one another, and that was it. But I guess China at this point, their position in this new dialogue is, look, you've got to roll back these tariffs if you want to have a relationship. And obviously, Biden's now, I don't know, was anyone thinking Biden was going to be softer on China than Trump? I don't think that they were, were they?  Oh yeah, yeah. Because a four-year low for global geopolitical risk. I don't know what they've got in their Black Box, but I could have told you that. Do you want to know why? What happened four years ago? Trump got elected. Then you had four years of Donald Trump, and now Trump's gone away. Full stop. There you go. Why do they hire all these, like, pay all these analysts so much money? Anyway, I think Biden, in some ways, Biden has got, he needs to thank Trump for one thing. Trump certainly resets in quite an aggressive way. He reset the trajectory of the relationship between the US and China, entirely repivoted it. And now that Trump has reset it, Biden can come in and maintain that much more sort of, well, let's just call it anti-China sort of approach, and that fear of China and how large they're becoming and how influential they're becoming, and taking them much more seriously as a threat, rather than Obama that was much more about being pals and matey. So I think Trump obviously reset that, and Obama has him to thank for that. Oh, sorry, Biden has to thank you for that. Now Biden is going to maintain this harder approach. So I think these talks, fine, they're underway. Candid talks, what does that mean? It means absolutely nothing. It just means what? They didn't lie to each other? I don't know, but they're talking fine, but nothing's going to happen with regards to tariffs. And not this year, I wouldn't say. And so right now, from a trading point of view, whilst, yes, it's a risk still, these tariffs, remember the whole world was freaking out about these tariffs a few years ago, these tariffs are still there. It's just everyone's forgotten about them. And they've forgotten about them because there's way more powerful things on world economies now than those tariffs. And so it's not the biggest thing to worry about. And so it's kind of all gone under the carpet, but it's still there. And obviously China want them rolled back, but it's not going to happen. Shaping that Biden agenda heading into the midterms, what was quite interesting is when you actually looked at that $6 trillion he proposed, or he's going to propose today. Interestingly, $715 billion Department of Defense budget is going to be shifted in order to take old systems to modernize the nuclear arsenal that the U.S. has specifically to deter China and also develop, they said, their future warfare capability. Hang about. Are we talking Biden or Trump at the moment? Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, well, Yeah, throw in as well earlier this week. The other headline in the news, of course, was the administration requesting the origin of COVID report.  Just call it what it is. This is the let's out China report. Yeah, and it's all domestic politics, in a way, as you're saying with the midterms coming. Yeah, that harsh hard line against China is a great domestic political line to take for a U.S. president. Yeah. And look, let's look at China, because this week has been quite meaningful because the Chinese Yuan extended its gains against the dollar. It's going to head for its best weekly performance is November at the moment. But when the Chinese currency starts to strengthen, as it has done and starts hitting multi-year highs, trainers get very aware of commentary coming out of the state of China and the PBOC about what are they going to do about this? So why is the strength of the currency such a thing for the Chinese government? Yeah, well, that's just all about the fact that China's economy is geared up for manufacturing and exporting. It's like a classic, it's not an emerging economy anymore, but it's a developing economy. But of course, it's all about exporting to the developed economies of the world. Okay. Now, if you're selling goods, if you're an exporter, then the cheaper your currency is compared to the countries where you're sending these goods, the cheaper your currency is the better, because the price of goods for those customers in other markets are cheaper. Okay. If your currency appreciates and appreciates and appreciates, then the goods become more expensive for your international customers. Also for companies, let's say global companies that use China as their manufacturing base, you know, the cost of manufacturing for that global enterprise increases if the yuan appreciates in value. So again, that means these big companies perhaps might start looking elsewhere other than China to kind of have their manufacturing base. So an expensive currency for China is bad, a cheap currency for China is good. But then you flip the argument entirely on the other side. Trump was calling China a currency manipulator for the entire time he was in office.  So the classic story of US jobs being lost to China, go to Detroit, it's been in a depression for like 30 years. Okay. And it's China's fault because all the manufacturing jobs have gone over there. Okay. So it's all part of this bigger argument. So that's the history behind it. So yeah, the yuan has been strengthening you know, for the last, well, 12 months actually, but it's accelerated a little bit this week. And there's a big sort of, I'd say level which is around about 6.27, which was the low in the start of March 2018 that people are eyeing up. But what I would say is this yuan strength it's not yuan strength, it's dollar weakness. The dollar has been weakening against all currencies. And so actually, you know, in my mind, it's actually more a dollar story, this move in the dollar yuan than it is a yuan story. But it might become a thing if the Chinese government starts stepping up and going, Oi, this currency is getting too expensive here. And if the Chinese authorities can just hold firm and there isn't a breakout of further acceleration in yuan, surely this is just a timing disconnect of the reopening process because China are ahead of that. I mean, they were kind of the first to get back up. We don't know exactly to what detail. But the point being is that the Fed are going to have to start talking tapering. They are going to have to taper and they are going to have to lift rates at some point. It's just the fact that we're not quite there at that point as of yet. And so right now, I don't know if China can just maintain it. And as they do, I guess it's not like they intervene and bang, it moves strongly. It's just about management, isn't it? More of the currency than...  That's the last thing anyone wants, that's the last thing China want. So stable currencies. This is why Bitcoin is not a currency, by the way. But anyway, that's for a different reason. OK, on that point then, let's talk the EO1. Ah, yes. My best Jamaican accent there. So the electronic UM, a digital currency powered by blockchain technology. Feels like I'm doing an advert for it. But a bit of background then. The EO1 works through a two-tier system. And through that system, the People's Bank of China will be in charge of distributing it to authorized commercial banks. And from there, banks will be tasked with spreading the currency to their own customers. The overall execution of the release of EO1 is to set closely or resemble the existing digital payment methods that are actually already in use. And I think that's where China is quite different from here in the UK, for sure, and in the US, where we're almost victim to legacy systems. And it's very hard to steer the Titanic away from an iceberg when you've just gone through this very established banking system of hundreds of years. Whereas China don't have that. And China have really embraced financial services in new technology. And that's predominantly being things like WeChat and WeChat Pay, Alipay. And what I found fascinating reading about this week and just doing some research for this podcast was about, I was kind of thinking, what's happened to Jack Ma and Financial and all these things? Jack who? Jack who? It's like he's disappeared. And certainly he was on like a meteoric rise, wasn't he? Up until probably the last 12 months. And it just seems to me, reading between the lines that the Chinese government are very aware about individuals like him. And in actuality, if you can understand and track people's payments via a digital mechanism, or that's a lot of power in that information. And I don't think the Chinese government want it in the hands of a third party entity like Jack Ma. Hence the EUN. He's a victim of his own success, Jack Ma. His own unbelievable success, which has put him in a position of power. And it's all about power. And the Chinese government want to be all powerful. And hang on, here you've got this guy who's threatening that. In a non-political way, or at least initially in a non-political way. So it's an interesting threat for them. And yeah, they've slapped him down. No question. What do you think about these central bank digital currencies, though, compared to, say, Bitcoin? Okay. Now, well, first thing to say is that China aren't the first government to issue a digital version of their own currency. Do you know who was the first? Bahamas. Yes. That's the first time you've got one of my questions right. I think in 18 podcasts. No, I did know that your man crush was Paul Gascoigne as well. Okay. Yeah. The Bahamas, right? But look, this is the first big economy to kind of go down this path. And so on the one hand, you're thinking, well, hang on, most of China pay for stuff electronically anyway. So kind of what's the difference here? And okay, this is a digital currency, but the reason why it's not like a crypto is because, of course, the whole point of crypto currencies is not controlled by a central government, right?  They're controlled by Elon Musk. So this is a central government-controlled digital currency. So it's like, okay, what's the difference then? And I don't think there is much. So here's the thing. I think actually the government, I think this is this is a currency that's going to have a place in their system, but it's not going to have a big place in their day-to-day economic system anytime soon. I think it's a play that just further kind of gives Jack Ma a slap on the wrist, but the problem they have with the problem governments will have with digital currencies is what the last thing they want is savers to switch out of bank deposits on mass, switch out of my bank deposits into this digital, new digital currency. The problem with that is your banking system will collapse. The banks need these bank deposits to be able to operate. And without a banking system operate, you know, an operational banking system, go and have a look at what happened in 2008 when the banking system stopped working. We had a global crisis. So it goes back, it's all about legacy. So at the moment, the banking system requires bank deposits to operate. These digital currencies would replace those bank deposits, which is why they can't be replaced in any big way. I mean, some of the predictions are saying that it might go up maybe 5% of the monetary, the money in the system might end up being this new electronic yuan. No more than that. And anyway, they've done some studies, right? And they've been giving people some experiments, I should say, and they're giving people free yuan to see what they do with them. And great, they're going, okay, this is all novel. All right, I'll just buy something with this. Great. And then the feedback afterwards was, okay, well, yeah, that was interesting. But I'll just go back to Alipay, please, because it's just way more convenient for me. And it's tied into commercial and social messaging networks, and it's just way more convenient for people to operate their day-to-day consumption via an Alipay than it is to have to go via this. Hang on, what is this government digital thing? No, not sure. So you're not a buyer of Alibaba and Tencent shares anytime soon then? No, I think that story's played out. And I think the government now, firmly, firmly, it's not only on their radar, they're now acting to curb their influence. Yeah, yeah, they've been handing out some sizeable finds for anti-competitive practices for sure. But look, let's wrap it up there. Wish you luck on your date in the city. Yeah, thanks very much. And if you've made it to the end of the podcast, thank you very much as ever for listening. We'd hugely appreciate it if you're listening on a platform like Apple Podcast. If you could rate and review, leave a comment. Get in touch with us if you want us to cover something. Specifically, just email info at AmplifyTraining.com. And we'd be happy to take on board your feedback. But enjoy the long weekend. Yes, absolutely, aren't you? All right, take care.