Hello and welcome to the CMC Markets Monday weekly market update webinar with myself David Madden, market analyst here at CMC Markets. Today's date is Monday the 27th of November. At the time has just gone 12.15 p.m. We're kicking off the webinar in less than one minute's time and as always what we will be doing is we'll be leaving the risk warning slides on the screen here in front of you to have a quick read through before we actually proceed with webinar itself. It's a matter of standard procedure and it is something that will keep our compliance department very very happy. It's all very straightforward it just effectively states that anything that is covered in the webinar today is no personal views and comments and opinions and should not be construed as explicit trading and or investment advice. It's all fairly straightforward stuff. If you just want to have a read of that I'll leave it on the screen a few seconds per slide for you guys to have a read over and then after that we will be then kicking on with the webinar. So it'll be the usual rundown where every quick talk quick chat about what has gone on in terms of the news over the last few days. We'll also be looking quickly at the week ahead the economic and corporate calendar of what's potentially going to be the big movers of the week in terms of news events and corporate events and then finally we're then be looking at the bulk of the webinar looking at the major markets a few indices a few commodities a few currency pairs keeping an eye on those and looking at the potential price action that we could see in the next few trading days. So if we take a look at how things are making a fair enough at this weekend it's been a relatively slow news session I suppose the big news over the last few days has been that the Social Democratic Party the SPD in Germany stated that they were at least open to the idea of a grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union Party which is headed by Chancellor Angela Merkel. The meeting is to take place on Thursday and it would seem a bit more optimistic that certain forms are met in relation to the SPD's agenda. They will be open to the idea of going into a grand coalition with the largest party the CDU in Germany and that has helped a bit of political stability along and that has had somewhat investor sentiment. We also had some sentiment numbers out from China overnight in relation to the kind of steel industry and also some of the sales managers figures. It's sort of a kind of a frontrunner to the PMI the purchasing manufacturing numbers which are later chewed out later this week but the indication did state that there were some kind of slow down or concerns about the state of the economy. China is out to do really well but proposed that the rate of economic growth in China is slowing down and that is no secret. So we have seen some of the mining companies like the Andrew Resources and Artificasta which are exposed to China via metals trade lower on the session. Taking a look now at what's ahead at the big events of the week. If you go to our website here and under news and analysis, click on the news analysis section. Some of the articles that we invite every single day here on the market analysts team get posted up. Others will be posted into Insight which I will show you later on. Under the section Wiki Outlook if you filter by third option down you then bring up the week ahead article which gives you a snapshot of the major economic and corporate events of the week. So this week ahead you can see here it's in the headline with an OPEC meeting and also we have UK Bank Stress Test. Coming up tomorrow is the details of the UK Bank Stress Test. On Wednesday we have third quarter GDP from the United States. On Thursday we have a couple of corporate updates Green King the public chain operator here in the UK. They have numbers coming out and as to the Daily Mail and General Trust on Thursday. Then Friday we get the last of our manufacturing PMI numbers because quite a few of the we have quite a few major countries reporting their PMI numbers throughout the week but we get the last of it on Friday. Scrolling down to your corporate calendar we can see here it's been a reasonably quiet week in terms of numbers coming out. If we have pets at home in the UK our first half number is coming up tomorrow. We also have a full year figures from top tiles tomorrow. Moving further afield to Wednesday having a scroll down I think Wednesday's numbers. We have a half year figures coming out from Penham Group here in the UK and also Telford Homes. What's going to be interesting to watch out for retail stock in the United States. Definitely you'll have third quarter numbers out. Scrolling down on Thursday as I mentioned Daily Mail and General Trust numbers out as the Green King but we also have numbers coming off of Express in the United States and Barnes and Noble on Thursday. Paypoint of numbers out. Half your numbers out on Thursday from the UK and scrolling down if you don't have two particularly popular companies reporting their numbers out on Friday from the United States. So I'm looking now at some of the major markets. It'd be the usual rundown for myself. What we're going to do is talk about, we'll talk about very briefly the corporate calendar on our website. If you've got a market pulse, fourth option down, market calendar. We touched on some of the major economic indicators coming out but this actually is a bit more detailed. It gives you the actual what's announced. It gives the forecast and it gives the previous. This way of showcasing you some of the, so where some of the information is available on our website. So tomorrow the big one to watch out for is going to be consumer confidence numbers, the confidence board numbers out of the United States at 3 p.m. Moving on to Wednesday. We have CPI numbers coming out of Germany around lunchtime on Wednesday. We also have the gasoline figures in relation to US crude oil stockpiles. We have the OPEC meeting which is going to be on Thursday. It's going to be, which could provide quite a bit of volatility for the energy market. In the early hours of Thursday, we have the manufacturing PMI numbers coming out of China overnight. We also have house price numbers coming out of the UK early doors on Thursday morning. We also have other indicators throughout the day. For example, Spanish GDP and we also have unemployment numbers coming out of Germany early Thursday morning. We also have personal consumption and spending from the United States at lunchtime on Thursday and we have Japanese CPI and very late hours of Thursday night. Then pushing on to Friday. Friday the 1st of December. Where is the year gone? Can you believe we're approaching December already? Taking a look at the economic indicators coming out on Friday. Like I mentioned already, we've got a few PMI manufacturing reports from all the major Eurozone countries. We also have from the UK. We also have from the United States and we have both growth and unemployment numbers coming out of Canada at lunchtime too. Just to let you know, some of the economic indicators, some of the reports that we write here at CMC Markets get put up on the news and analysis section on our website. Others will be in the Insights section, which is if you click on Market Pulse. Second option down is Insights. So some of the written articles that we do and politics in relation to economic releases get put up on the Insights and the chart forum, which is also under Market Pulse is the third option down. So it'd be a quick snapshot of a particular chart and within a few other characters we'll discuss some of the potential price action we could see on a particular chart. Speaking of price action, I'll get into the main body of the webinar and look at some of the major markets and discuss what we potentially could see in the next few days. So in early November, we did have quite a large sell-off in global equities. As you can see here, the first 200 had a fairly decent sell-off. But for the last week or so, we have been kind of grinding higher on 30,000. It hasn't been really running away with itself. We've had a fairly clear, precise series of lower, sorry, higher lows. So notice how the market, each time it creates a low, it's actually higher than the previous low. So the market's nudging higher. We're just north of the 7400 level. And what you can see here is on the MACD histogram, on the MACD indicator, we can see that negative momentum is clearly declining. So the setting pressure that was in play in early November is declining. And the market actually has been pushing higher. So we're resting fairly comfortably on the maturity moving average in around 7400. If you can hold north of that, and we could see a continuation of the bounce back. So should we see a bounce back, continuation of the bounce back? The first level the market would take out is this high here from late November at 7,460. And if you go beyond that, we could see go ahead and back up towards 7,500. And then beyond that, we could be looking up towards, we saw a lot of consolidation in around this area here at 7,561. And then north of that, we would have come towards 7,600. But if the market doesn't, if this bounce back manages to run out of steam, obviously the market turning over on itself again, what we could do is we may find support to the downside here in the mid-November low of 7,350. And then if you go below that, we could be heading back towards 7,300, or even the late September low of 7,233. As always, I'll go to the major indices, major commodities and currencies. Any markets that you haven't, any markets that you haven't, or haven't covered, please feel free to type in the chat box. I sent a few messages to the chat box here in Iran. And if you want me to cover any particular markets, just stick them in there, and I'd be happy to do so. Send a lot of pattern to the Germany 30, the Bax, whereby the market came off quite aggressively in November, in early November, but has been pushing, has been grinding higher here. Similar with the FTSE 100, the Germany 30 is creating higher lows. So the market is pushing up, is pushing higher here. We can see what once was quite substantial, negative momentum is in a fairly clear decline. So the setting of pressure is waning. And all the same time, the market is ever slightly kind of grinding higher, it's not running away with itself, but it's certainly creating higher lows. So we could see a continuation of this positive move. And if you do get a continuation of this positive move, the next level to watch out for would be the kind of late November high, the late November high of 13,211. And then if you go beyond that, we'd be looking at this level here, but the gap was created at 13,316. And the move beyond that could send us up to the all time high of 13,534. So it would appear that the selling pressure is running our steam. And we could look, we could see a disbalance back turning into another retesting of the all time high on the decks. But for the time being the fifth day moving average, just in around this area here, sort of at 13,000 even is acting a support for now. But if you do see a move itself of that, we could be heading back to the kind of mid November lows of 12,847 this area here. And if you go south of that, we could be heading back down towards just north of 12,700. This price action here. The American markets are in a much better shape than their European counterparts. Take a look now at the Dow Jones. It hasn't called up with the likes of the S&P and the Nasdaq 100 where it's been continuing to kind of post record highs, but it's really within within the earshot of it. It's an ice slide of it. It's quite close. So the Dow Jones, the US 30, has been trading at a fairly narrow range here. The market has been pushing higher. So we have seen markets make move towards the recent record highs. At the same time, we are seeing a fairly clear and concise decline in negative momentum. So the actual histogram, the negative something the negative component is in the client. So selling pressure is running out. We're approaching the recent all time or approaching the record high. So we could be looked to the Dow Jones could be looking to play catch up with the S&P 500 and actually go on to set a series of further record highs as the S&P has been doing. So should you continue to move north of here, we'll keep it up towards 12,000, sorry, 13, 23,700, 800, 900, so on and so forth. So but if we do see any pullbacks in the Dow Jones in the US 30, we may see fresh buyers enter the fold because if you look over the last few months buying on the dip has been a very popular strategy with some traders. So if you do see any pullbacks in the Dow Jones, we may see some buying support in around here at 23,400 or even as low down here just south of 20 of us in around 23,250 in this 5C area here. The S&P 500 chart looks fairly similar whereby it's the one kind of concise difference has been that the S&P 500 that should be going on to hit record highs only last Friday. So as you can see here, it's been a fairly solid upper train constantly ratcheting up fresh record highs along here. So the sentiment is fairly bullish and the bias is fairly to the upside. You notice here how even when the market did see a bit of a pullback and a bit of a market correction, we saw a steady increase in negative momentum and then the kind of warning sign was that the selling pressure was coming to an end. As the markets started to creep higher, we saw a very distinct decline in negative momentum and that was actually swung ever so slightly to the positive side. So we could be in line for another rejuvenation of the bullish sentiment that we've seen basically for the last number of months on the S&P 500. So we could be heading up towards 2,610, 20, 30, and so on and so forth. And if you do see any declines in the S&P 500, we may see fresh buyers end of the fold like with the Dow Jones because it's basis of the last number of months buying the pullback has been a popular strategy for traders on the S&P 500. So if you do see any pullbacks, we may find support in around here at $2,591 or $2,580 or down a fall is $2,570 or perhaps even if you see a deep correction, it could even go as though as a fifth of the moving average, this price here at $2,560. So while we've had quite a decent considerable push higher on the US indices, what we've had on gold has actually been quite boring to be honest. We see the market kind of grind a bit higher, but it hasn't really, it's been able to kind of make a kind of a decent attack on the $1,300 level. The broad movement of gold throughout 2017, this is here, this is us here and kind of almost nearly about a year ago. From the lows to kind of mid December 2016, causing broadly been pushing higher. Hit a few multi multi-month highs was kind of range bound between the kind of around 12, 19, kind of low 1200s. We're down here in September to hit a 13 month high, kind of come off that high here. And it looks like we're back in the kind of general slow instead, you kind of grind to the upside. It's been a fairly uninteresting market for the last number of weeks, but what you can clearly see here is a slight gradient to the upside. It's been a fairly, fairly clear and concise series of lower highs here, even though I've really seen an obvious series of higher highs, but the bias would appear that should be upside. The market really hasn't kind of failed to have a decent test on $1,300, but what we have been sure of is we have seen a series of higher highs. So we have seen buyers stepping whenever the market does move lower. So the next level to watch out for on gold, we're currently trading around 12, 49, 1300, a psychological level, keep on there for that one. And if you do take out 1300, we're going to be looking towards possibly the mid-October high of 1306, 1307. And then north of that, we could be looking towards this price action here. We saw some consolidation in around here at 1316. And then beyond 1316, a bit of consolidation price action around here at 1334. And if that's taken out, then the level of 1358, which is the 13 month high would then potentially come into play. But if we do see any drifting lowering in gold, we may find support at the one or two day moving average this price here, which comes into play at 1283. It has been kind of almost like a magnet to the metal over the past few weeks. Gold really hasn't moved a whole lot further away from the one or two day moving average recently. So but if you do see a drop below 1285, we could be looking towards support at 1270, this kind of mid-November low here. And then if you go below 1270, we could head back towards the October low of 1261. But notice how the market is grinding higher, a series of higher lows. Also, we're seeing fairly, even though the price action isn't ratcheting up majorly, but we are seeing a steady build in positive momentum. So the market is grinding higher and the momentum is with the buyers. We'll take a look now at what's going on in the old markets. As I mentioned on Thursday, we have the OPEC meeting for the last few weeks now. We've been hearing more and more chatter that OPEC are looking to extend their coordinated production cut beyond the end of March 2018, potentially the end to potentially all of 2018. So pushing it out for the nine months as a way of actually keeping a cap on the global supply. So taking a look, that's actually the copper church. My apologies. I'll bring up Brent Crude now. I started out by looking at the weekly chart of Brent and then zoom in to the daily church. So there is talk that that OPEC are going to extend the production cut deadline from the end of March 2018 out until about the sounds of at the end or say December 2018. So a full nine month extension, that's been the market chatter. You could argue that a lot of that is already actually priced in and depends on what it was actually delivered on the day itself and depends if they could do it, any get a gift, any forward guidance towards 2019. So what we saw here on the WTI on the Brent Crude chart a few weeks ago had managed to make a decisive burst north of the 200 week moving average, results in a big site, a big important indicator and a parameter of how strong the market is. So it moved north of the 200 week moving average, then the following week we saw a correction, it drifted back below it. Now we're kind of firmly above the 200 week moving average here. So as a broad indicator for north of the 200 week moving average, that's a positive sign. And then I'll zoom in now and as you can see here for the last few weeks and months from June here for the last five months there's been a steady increase in positive momentum on the weekly chart here. You could argue that we're seeing a bit of a tapering off so we might see a bit of a pullback. So if you do see a pullback on Brent, we could see a head back drift back towards the 200 week moving average in around $62 a barrel or perhaps even on towards $61 but the trend for the last six months or five months has been to the upside. And if you look at it here on a daily chart, this is from the lows of June. It's a very clear and concise upward trend, higher highs and higher lows. Your classic definition of an upward trend. This is when the market here hit its 200 week moving average and then of course we saw the market drift lower as a bit of profit taking setting and now we're seeing the market push higher again. As we're seeing the market push higher, we're also seeing the fairly obvious decline in negative momentum. So we could be heading back up towards $65 a barrel or $66 to the upside and then beyond that, obviously the big 70 bucks will then become the big level to watch out for. But if you do see any pullbacks in Brent Crudall, this area here has provided decent support recently so we could be in around the kind of 61 50 level. So 62, 61 50, 61, these areas we may find supporting and even if you go south of that, we could be looking heading back towards the kind of the September high of $59 which $59.51 which coincides with the 50 day moving averages at the moment. Taking a look now at WTI. I'll start off with the weekly chart. So WTI played a bit of catch up, but I managed to get there. So WTI is actually now above is 200 week moving average. So it's obviously a big kind of important barometer of market sentiment being north of that particular metric. So we're currently trading just north of $58 a barrel. So 60 bucks a barrel is going to become a psychological number to keep an eye out for north of this because the direction and the trend for the last six months since the June low has been clearly to be upside. Like with Brent, it's been a series of higher highs and higher lows. Although the oil market is quite choppy, so just be careful in relation to where you put your stop losses because if you're trading short-term derivatives, you need to get the direction and the timing right. So keep an eye out where you potentially see pullbacks heading to. So the market has been pushing higher here. We can see that on the maxi indicator of the histogram. It's swung to the momentum. It's swung from negative territory to positive territory to the pressure and the momentum is with the bulls. If you do see any pullbacks, you could see some pullbacks in around here, in around the kind of $57 a barrel, $56 a barrel region, but only quite a large correction will potentially take us below this area here at $54.63. I'll go up now to some of the currency pairs. Take a look now at the euro versus the US dollar. So the euro versus the dollars has got quite a decent roll in the last few weeks. We saw a fairly tepid, poor US dollar last week, which helped the euro no ends. Not to mention, it's also because of the economic indicators on Germany and also France last week. So we've seen the euro push off here. We haven't seen the euro at this level here. It's currently north of $119. We haven't seen it north of $119 since late September. So we're talking basically at two months high for the euro versus the US dollar. So as you can see, as the market was pushing higher here, we saw a fairly steady increase in positive momentum. So the momentum is with the bulls. So we could see a continuation of this positive move on the euro. So currently at $119.36, the next big psychological look out for the upside is going to be the $120 level. And then north of $120, we look into the September high of $120.92. As you can see yourself in the last few weeks and within the wider trend of 2017, kind of finding the dip has been a popular strategy on the euro versus the US dollar. So if you do see any pullbacks, we may find support in on this price here, which comes in the mid-October high of $118.79. And then below that, even down as long as potentially going to have $118, we could see some support in around there. Or even down where the 50 and the 100-day moving average seemed to cross over at $117.65. We're looking at the pound versus the US dollar and the pound has also had a decent month versus the greenback, especially in light of the week US dollar over the last few weeks. I started off with a big picture from the March lows, throughout that through the August low. You can clearly see here that this trend line was tested quite a few times and we did see a few punctures of it. But broadly speaking, the market, the pound, managed to kind of always, whatever it did below that particular trend line, managed to get back above it. We can see here that only on Friday we hit a level on the pound versus US dollar, not seen since, well, since very, very early October. So we're talking about seven weeks highs on the pound versus US dollar. It's above the trend line support. It's hitting multi-week highs. We can see here that this push higher here on price is confirmed by the steady increase in positive momentum. So when the price and the momentum are moving in the same direction, you can be more confident the move is going to last. If you see divergence in the two, that could be an early warning sign that there might be a bit of a turnaround in the price action. But while the market's pushing higher, let's take a look to the upside. We could see potentially this area active resistance, quite a lot of consolidation in price action in around here from mid-September, which is coming to play in around 134.52, 134.50 region in around here. And then if you go north of that, some traders could be looking towards the September high of 136.59. And to the downside, if you do get any moves lower, the trend line support comes into play and now it probably comes into play in around the 132 region. So even if you go as low as, even if you stay north of 130, I suspect we could see a continuation of the wider upper trend on the pound versus the greenback to stay in place. I'll just do a couple more charts now on the euro sterling, the euro dollar and then to wrap it up. So we could see here is it hasn't been quite as clear or concise, but the euro has certainly gained quite a bit over the against the pound over the last few months. We have been looking, we've been trying a tightest range to the month of November on the euro versus the British pound. What we'd see here that whereas we perhaps on occasion see in the 100 day moving average active persistence, it's still pretty much trying to crack that level. And the 100 day moving average is pretty much in around these areas here, in around the zero spot 8945 region. So if you're making a slice of break north of that and take out zero spot 90, we could be then be looking towards this price area here from the middle of September in that was zero spot 9049. And then if you go beyond that, looking towards 91 and zero spot 91 and zero spot 9160 in around here. As you can see, as America was kind of grinding higher here, you didn't have to see a kind of pickup in policy of momentum. So like I said, when the momentum applies from the head in the same direction, you can be more confident the move will last. So if you do see any move to the downside, we may, we may see the fifth day moving average active support again. And that will be in that zero spot 8878. And then below that, we could see it, we could see the 100 day moving average active support in a zero spot 7989. This will be the last chart of the day session. It's going to cover now the US dollar versus the Japanese yen. So looking at the dollar versus the Japanese yen, we can see here that since early November, it's been a quite a considerable move to the downside. It took off the mid October low. So it could even be a sign that we're going to head south again on the dollar versus the Japanese yen. One thing I can say is that as the market was pushing lower here, there's a steady increase in negative momentum, but negative momentum has cooled somewhat here where this area here at 111 could be decided whether the market bounces off that level. And I should continue in the wider trend that it's been in since September, or whether if 111 is taken out, we could see an increase in a negative momentum and we could see an increase in selling pressure.  The mid September low, this price here at 109.55. And if you go south of that, the next really big level to watch out for will be the September low down here in at 107.32. But we seem to be on the last few trading sessions in quite a narrow trading range in around here on the dollar versus the yen. So if we do move higher, the first level we need to take out to the upside will be the tier D moving average in at 111.71. And then beyond that, the 112 region will be the level to keep an eye on. And should we move north of 112, the fifth that they move the average, which previously provided support in November, may actually resistance this time around, should the market move higher. And the that price area comes into play in at 112.80, spot 81. Right, now that I've covered the major markets, I very quickly show you other seminars and webinars that we're holding. So if you go to our website and under the the learn section where you found details for this webinar, I'll give you give you details of other events that are hosted by ourselves and you think that that's your feel free to come along to and sign up for. So later tonight at 7pm London time, UK time, we have the webinar trend development program part four, the live trading Q&A on Wednesday the 29th of November with this one with this webinar here at 7pm UK time, a guide to modern technical analysis. And then next Monday the 4th of December, I'll be back in the hot seat at 1215. I do appreciate your patience. And also this work pointing out that a recording of this webinar is going to be tweeted out by myself. And it's also going to be put on the inside section of our website and inside is under market pulse. Second option down is where insights market insights is and that will be available on our website within the next hour or so. From all of us here at CMC markets. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for listening. Have a good trading week and good luck.


So I am back with the latest news surrounding Cyberpunk 2077. And today it's pretty bad, I mean it was already bad, but it just got a whole lot worse people. News has just come to light of Cyberpunk 2077 being removed from the Playstation's digital store. How's it going guys? My name's DPJ and if you enjoyed this video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you're seeing and want to stay up to date with all things Cyberpunk be sure to subscribe. So news has just hit the internet of Sony removing Cyberpunk from the Playstation store due to issues with it. They pull out a statement saying the following, SIE strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction. Therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via the Playstation store. SIE will also be removing Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation store until further notice. Once we have confirmed that you purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via the Playstation store we will begin processing your refund. Please note that completion of the refund may vary based on your payment method and financial institution. Now this is solely due to the way it performs on PS4. Now I spoke about this in my last video about how I play on the Xbox Series X and to be honest the game's fine. It is bugs but it's fine it's a great game. I question many people who play it on older consoles like the Xbox One and the PS4, the standard versions. And I told everyone I would pull out my original Xbox, clear off that dust, load Cyberpunk up on it and test the waters. I recorded a live video of me doing this which will be on my channel sometime soon. And let me tell you, I'm pretty certain now Xbox may pull it too. But he's saying this, what does this mean for the game and CDPR? As let's not lie to ourselves, Sony make up a massive chunk of the gaming industry, bigger more so than Xbox in terms of sales. So this being pulled is going to affect CDPR. To what extent I ain't sure. Now I don't have a PS5 so I can't check to see if you can still purchase the game on there. It would make sense that you can't due to them pulling it from the store but I don't know if the stores are different from the PS4 to the PS5. And also I'm pretty certain the game runs quite good on the PS5 like it does on the Xbox Series X. Because I'm seriously enjoying the game and like I said I play on Series X. But this news guys is truly bad. CDPR have apologised about the way in which it performs on older consoles. I experienced it myself first hand now and I can say for certain that apology was needed. I understand now why they didn't want anyone testing it on these older platforms. Because for what it is guys it's probably the worst experience of any game I've ever played on the original Xbox. It should have never been released over there. Just no. And I never thought I'd hear myself saying that with true intent. It should never have been released on these older platforms. And I'm talking here about the original Xbox One and the original PS4. But because there was money to be made it happened.  One of the most anticipated games for years since I can remember gaming hyped up like crazy. Yet the game is now being out a week. Hundreds of bad reviews. They having to make an apology and now the game being pulled from the PlayStation Store. And to be honest people I think it might get worse before it gets better. Now before we end like I said I played this on the original Xbox One earlier today. I know CDPR said they are going to pull out performance patches. But honestly I don't know how to fix that to make the game playable. And more importantly enjoyable at the same time. I mean I just can't see it happening. And on that note guys we have come to the end of the video. Let me know your thoughts down below in that comments section. If you enjoyed this video leaving a like really helps out. If you're new around here and want to see more Cyberpunk vShow2 subscribe. And if you never want to miss a video upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button. But guys thanks as always for stopping by. Hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one.


All right, we're here with evocative effect, which I want you to think establishing operation So the evocative effect is the occurrences of the behaviors because of the establishing operation. Hold on a second so You've been deprived established of water the behaviors Are going to increase looking for water. That's the evocative effect is the certain behaviors That are required to get the now increased value of reinforcement I do have a question Just does this only with things like water and food or can it would be other like other operant type behaviors? No, you can have tangibles and activities and So I could deprive you of say an activity. Yeah, and I would make it more valuable and you would seek out that activity That's exactly it.  All right


Hi, I'm Sergeant Steve Wernicke with DPDTV. There's bike lanes already in Denver, but there's a new type of bike lane exclusively dedicated to bicycles in downtown Denver. Today we'll tell you where it is and we'll clear up some of the confusion surrounding the rules. It's Denver's first bikeway. I think it's long overdue and I'm thrilled to have it. Russ Nipper is a local Denver biker. I cycle and traffic quite a bit wherever I go. I haven't owned a car in 30 years. It's going to be an adjustment for motorists and bicyclists. People trying to get used to it.  They're trying to turn and everything else.  Besides no parking anytime, even to unload, there are laws that you need to know. The bike lane on 15th Street, we call it the 15th Street Bikeway. What the lane is for is it's for bicycles only. Now in the background you did see a car to turn left. As you're coming down 15th Street at each intersection that you can turn left on, there are signs saying left lane, left turns only. Bicycles accepted. What that means is as a motorist, as you're driving down 15th Street, you can get into that bicycle lane to turn left once you reach that sign. However, prior to doing that, check the area and make sure that there's no bicycles around. The 15th Street Bikeway is a benefit to everybody on the roads in Denver. The bicycle lane was put there for the safety of the bicycles and the safety of the motorists. The motorists don't have to worry that the bicycles will be weaving in and out of them. We ask that the bicycles stay in the bicycle lane, obey the traffic laws. We ask that the motorists stay out of the bicycle lane. But the bottom line is... The bicycle has the right of way at all times in the bicycle lane. A car must yield right of way when crossing the bicycle lane to a parking lot or to get into that lane to make a left hand turn. If you're interested in taking advantage of this dedicated bike lane, it exists downtown Denver on 15th Street between Cleveland and Larimer. Everybody, please beware of bikers.


We've all heard about it, but few of us can quite put our finger on what it is. For a number of years now, the metaverse has garnered increasing media attention, not least because it has become the strategic focal point of some of tech's biggest companies. By some estimates, the metaverse will give rise to a multi-trillion dollar virtual economy by 2030. In 1999, there was about a thousand headsets in existence. In 2021, in the United States, about 15 million headsets were sold, just in 2021. So we're on a trajectory here. But between dire warnings about the virtual overriding what's real and the hype around the metaverse's revolutionary potential, it can be difficult to tell what this technology is really capable of. In the metaverse, you can look in a virtual mirror and you can be older. You can have a different body shape. You can have different skin color. You can be a different gender. We use the metaverse for these intense experiences that solve hard problems. Joining this episode of Experts Explain to help make sense of it all is Stanford University's Jeremy Balanson. He's been researching the metaverse and virtual reality for decades. He started Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab and co-founded the VR-focused tech company, Stryver. The metaverse is a term a lot of us are hearing, but we can boil it down to a simple definition, which is people, places, and things. So there's a digital world and in that world, there need to be people. If I'm going to enter the world, I need to have an avatar. So there's a lot of technology and a lot of communities that are building avatars so people can come together in an online world. The next thing is places. There's a virtual world where you have to go and that virtual world has got to be two things, consistent and persistent. Consistent means if you go there and there's a grid and I brought a plot of land and it's next to another person, it's got to stay that way. The next thing it's got to be is persistent. Even if I leave, the world's got to still be there. The final part of the metaverse is things. You have to have 3D objects or 2D objects, just digital assets. And so when we think of things in the metaverse, we often think of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, and these are 3D models or pictures that are digital that we can verify. Right now that market is being driven mostly by collectors, people that just want to have the sword that killed the dragon in a particular video game or have the first tweet from Jack Dorsey. And so currently, there's a genre of people that are doing collecting there.  There are plots of land that's sold in Second Life 15 years ago for a million dollars. So that's not a new thing, but it's a very niche thing. So how will the metaverse evolve from this very niche thing to a huge virtual economy? A big part of the answer is virtual reality or VR. Combined with the economic framework that allows people to interact with the places and things in the metaverse, VR is already drawing in millions of consumers. People always say, Jeremy, why isn't VR taken off? And I say, when I started doing this work in 1999, there was about a thousand headsets in existence. In 2021, in the United States, about 15 million headsets were sold, just in 2021. The goggles that now cost $300, 10 years ago, I was paying $40,000 for them, and they were nowhere near as good. So the hardware, in my opinion, is amazing. A headset is only one-third the price of a smartphone. So leverage sight, sound, and touch. So you get to turn your head and look around. You get to have spatialized sound. So if you're underwater and there's a corals that are bubbling, you get to hear them in your left ear, and it gets louder when you move towards it. And we have haptic feedback. And our headsets now at Stanford, we've got sent generators.  And you get haptic feedback as that chainsaw cuts the tree. And then you get this gasoline smell as the chainsaw emits. It's multi-sensory. We're now doing four senses, sight, sound, touch, and smell. You can put on the goggles, and you can look in a virtual mirror. And you can be older. You can have a different body shape. You can have different skin color. You can be a different gender. And what you then do is you have an experience while wearing another person's body, and you get to walk a mile in that person's shoes. And we've worked with governments and companies and schools all around the world where we are building VR simulations to increase empathy and to do diversity training. Even without a fully realized metaverse, on-the-job training for things like empathy is one of the most widespread and promising applications of VR. The reason we have VR is because of training. People learn by doing. You make mistakes. You get feedback. And then you repeat. And that's how all of us learn. The moment where VR goes mainstream in the United States is actually with Walmart. Over a million associates have now put on the headsets, entered the metaverse, and trained to get better at their job. And we've got incredible data on return to investment. And they train more quickly. They train more effectively. And, of course, they enjoy the training because they're in virtual reality. The whole model of VR training is we do things that if you did them in the real world, it would be hard to do. And one example that's going to stand out is if I've got to give you a bad performance review, that's going to affect you. And if I can deliver that in a way that's more skillful, you're going to respond better.  And you get a prompt. You're working at a company. And you find out that this person has had some problems recently. They've been showing up late. And you get some information about things they've been doing wrong. And you talk to them in a simulation. That person then replies back to you and says, well, there's a reason I was late. And you get that news, and then you iterate. And so that goes on for about 10 minutes where there's a really good conversation. And then you swap. So we've recorded all of your utterances, your audio, and your nonverbal behavior. So then you sit where the employee was sitting. And you then get to watch yourself delivering that news. And you relive the conversation from the employee's point of view. Then after you get that hard feedback, which is watching yourself, you then go back and you repeat it. Great learning has you try something, make some mistakes, and then you do it again. With VR, it's on demand. And employees can just go and get a 10 minute training dose whenever they want. Beyond just training, the metaverse and virtual reality also let people work remotely in ways that weren't previously possible. Where the metaverse earns its keep is when you're doing collaborative tasks that are spatial, where if it's a small group, and it's important that when I look to the left and I point to someone, everyone else sees where I'm pointing.  Or if we're working on a shared object together, that the spatial aspect matters. And oftentimes when we think about being spatial, we think about vision is a person here, is a person to the right, and looking at them. However, spatialized sound offers an incredible amount of value in terms of social interaction. Naturally, in a real world, if somebody whispers, their voice is lower. And if somebody shouts, their voice is louder. And when you're on a video conference, that doesn't necessarily happen. The same cues we use in the real world to understand people, we get to use them in the metaverse as well. So given the enormous potential of this virtual world, how much time will we actually end up spending in the metaverse? I've been studying the metaverse for 20 years. The metaverse is not going to change your life tomorrow. There was a moment where we thought all of us were going to be in the metaverse, meaning the media was promoting this as an everyday thing. And we're not going to have that for some years. It doesn't mean that the medium isn't being used. What we've learned about the metaverse is we're going to see slow and steady growth. It's going to be driven by use cases that make sense. The medium is great for these intense experiences that solve hard problems. However, for other things, a shared document will suffice. So a lot of things you don't need the metaverse for. The metaverse will creep in when it earns its keep. There's something incredible to do there. And short of that, we should stay in the real world.


The Ching Hai Tibetan Plateau, QTP, is highly sensitive to climate change due to its unique geography and high altitude. Temperature, solar radiation and water availability are key drivers of vegetation sensitivity on the plateau. Temperature has been shown to have a positive effect on forests, grasslands and barren or sparsely vegetated areas, BSVs, while solar radiation has a negative effect on these land cover types. Water availability has a positive effect on grasslands and BSVs, but no clear trends were seen in forests. These findings suggest that temperature is the most important driver of vegetation sensitivity on the QTP, followed by solar radiation and water availability. Additionally, temperature and solar radiation jointly dominate the vegetation sensitivity in the central to eastern QTP, while water availability dominates the sensitivity of forests in the southeast and grasslands in the northwest and southwest. This study provides valuable information for understanding the effects of climate change on vegetation sensitivity on the QTP, which can inform future conservation and management efforts. This article was authored by Kai Wu, Jiao Chen, Han Yang and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Well, it's nice to, nice to meet you all. I appreciate that it's somewhat one-way traffic in this but it do keep the questions coming into the chat and at the end there will be a chance if you want to ask questions through the audio you may. So my name is Tage Porewald and I'm going to share my slides here and I am the program convener for the MSc International Development and we have two programs so I'm actually going to be speaking some of you may be thinking about enrolling on the MSc Humanitarian Action and both of the programs basically run you know side by side so the format the medium the system all of it is the same it's just the content that's different so hopefully I'll be able to answer some of the questions that those of you who are interested in the humanitarian program you can direct them to me and if I'm not able to I we can we can put you in touch with someone else that can. So yes welcome to SOAS online and I think what I'll begin by just saying that these programs began in the Development Studies Department in October 2019 and that's just a few months well actually just as the pandemic was beginning in one part of the world it reached London in March 2020 and what we found was we had started a program that you know was all online but of course as we are now as we see so much of what we do now in terms of education in terms of other sectors as well so much of the work that we're doing and learning that we're doing is and communication we're doing is online so hopefully you're not feeling as though and I think that's one of the biggest questions is like is this a real degree and I'm hopefully going to give you a sense of what learning online looks like and what the experience can be so the session is just really very short I'm just going to just give you a bit for those of you who are interested in Development Studies is kind of thinking about why Study Development Studies but also I want to think about a little bit about what makes SOAS I think different and unique in lots of ways and I think one of the one of the things is that it's a place that people come for critical perspectives really there are a lot of there's so many universities in the world that you can go to to study Development Studies or International Development or Humanitarian issues but there SOAS does certainly have I think a very unique place in the world for being or generating particularly critical perspectives which oftentimes are challenging mainstream approaches which you often get in other places so I hope many of you might be coming for that and others if you might be coming for other reasons I might actually in fact invite you in the chat to say kind of why you're interested in in studying at SOAS or how you heard about SOAS as we go I can get a sense from you there too I'm going to then just give you a hint a little bit about kind of what distance learning looks like what is it what what is the format what would it mean for you in terms of maybe your your schedule your working lives your personal lives to enroll on a distance learning program and then I'll end with some frequently asked questions and then give you time to ask to ask some questions as well so as I mentioned I think one of the one of the attractions I've seen in the past with students coming to our programs and we we we kind of in many ways pride ourselves on on the idea of critical thinking and it's not to say we're the only place that does it but in terms of development studies it it's known in many ways for thinking about the historical and political backdrops of development because of course we can look at development and look at it in terms of SDGs we can look at it in terms of the data we can look at it in terms of targets we there are many different ways in which we can understand development so one dimension is that it understands and of course colonization the experience of colonialism and its impacts in terms of the the persistent inequalities that we see is one dimension of that another is reading between the lines and and not taking kind of the idea of development necessarily at face value and so really deconstructing the kind of rhetoric and buzzwords that we see floating around and and questioning them oftentimes for their Eurocentricity how they're tied to systems and structures of power which oftentimes themselves are producing inequalities so it's kind of you know looking really at the face of the structures and and and the systems and asking those kinds of questions about not just how we can solve problems but also how we can address the causes and understand them better and in order to do that I think we we really try to consider you know a range of of approaches and I won't say it's all about kind of being kind of thinking non-Eurocentrically it's also about looking at different ideological theoretical conceptual and I think for the core modules you'll find in particular that's where you really get an idea of oh this is the kind of thinking that's out there some of it at least and some of the debates that exist there and it's a good way for you in your first module when you join the program to kind of get an idea I mean I think many people and many of you might already be working in development or the humanitarian sector and maybe wanting to get more of an academic background and that certainly the the core modules for both of our programs are really very much about giving you that grounding so it's not only about critical thinking but it's also of course about writing and I'll explain in shortly what that means in terms of the training that you get so just an example some of the debates and development studies and this is just a couple of them that you would be introduced to in the core module for international development is what do different measurements of poverty and inequality tell us so we might look at one table which tells us and it uses the HDI the human development index for instance we might look at another indicator which tells us which looks at consumption and may use different ways of understanding how inequality is actually being produced or where there may not be a comprehensive health service or something where we can then understand how health indicators might be mapped on to that so we have different ways of considering and I think looking at one problem there may be many different ways and not only in terms of concepts but also the the tools so we we expose you in many ways to different kinds of ways of thinking in that way and one so one another debate is that of looking at capitalism of course you have to be critical of capitalism even if you agree that it if it's it's inevitability we still must be very critical of it and so one big question that we have which kind of runs across two of our weeks in the core module is does neoliberalism which is the recognized oftentimes as the triumph of capitalism is it the triumph and how does this impact on development you know what is the relationship between capitalism and development and of course they're intrinsically tied so we look at that in terms of agrarian policy or industrialization but we might also look at it in terms of labor employment alienation poverty so there's a number of different kind of ways in which one one concept can lead and we encourage you in your essays to follow those leads you might find an area that you're really interested in but it kind of cuts across some of those topics well you can develop your essays in ways that that can that can kind of cater towards your your particular interest the third question I have here is is development by definition colonial so the idea of progress itself again that's a deconstruction there even the idea of development we question where where are its origins is is there a timeline is it a teleology where is it located what is the end goal and who is outlining or dictating the terms of it and who's managing those processes so there are a number of different ways in which you can do that and we have I think a really exciting area within our some of our our modules which is in the area of decolonization and thinking thinking decolonially about development and there's a lot of you know really they're really good examples that are out there of attempts to actually think critically about development and ways that don't reproduce the colonial patterns the final example I have here is how is gender instrumentalized oh it's International Women's Day today so we might think oh is it is gender women necessarily well gender is obviously about the kind of social construction of gender is not just about men and women it's also about the social construction of roles but we can also look at it in terms of heteronormativity and how that exists within development policy and discourse and that's one area that we've kind of developed I have an optional module called the politics of gender and feminism and development where we actually look at development and say is our gender binaries kind of are an imposition in development where all of the the struggles over the last four or five decades to achieve gender parity or gender gender equality many of them are really rely on the male female binary and so much so much of the data the targets the planning the programs the intervention so much of it or so much of that whole area of work really is hinged on that and in this era of gender recognition and diversity we're seeing there's some real challenges to those perspectives and so that's a new area I think in many ways for the development sector more broadly and it's a really critical and the important area that we should be looking at and I think students have quite enjoyed engaging with that so that's just to kind of give you an idea of some of the topics and those are just a few of them and I'm just going to show you in my subsequent slide what what the topics look like I mean so I've kind of outlined already kind of why join the kind of development studies programs at SOAS and of course it's not just thinking critically but it's also kind of has an ethos of progressive you know many students come to SOAS not all we think you know they have got ideas of of wanting to have a very you know socially engaged approach to the kinds of studying and the learning that they want they want to do and they want to apply it and oftentimes think that they can make a difference in whichever areas they're working in another I think important attraction really for distance learning is the pedagogy and it's it's a very inclusive accessible user-friendly flexible student-centered approach to learning and it's a different experience it isn't about and many of you might have done undergraduate studies or maybe even other postgraduate studies elsewhere where you are on campus so you're a physical student who would go and attend lectures in a room with your classmates it's a different mode of learning and the pedagogy is different but we do have now of course these we're on zoom now and this is one way of of of accessing the kind of university space but there are also other ways as well so the pedagogy in many ways can is is more flexible for people who are located and I can see Poland, Angola, Cornwall, Florida you know different places you're all over the world you would basically be sitting in a classroom and you'd be on the online discussion forums with people sitting all over the world and so that brings with it new kinds of conversations different kinds of experiences as well which I think do make the distance learning experience unique hopefully all of that equips you know would equip you with the skills and knowledge to engage with the kinds of issues that that we think are important and that you you do too so here are the aims of the distance learning programs that we have I mean the first is is really thinking about interdisciplinarity so you might and I think we use that word interdisciplinarity just because development studies in itself is quite interdisciplinary people have come from areas in terms of their previous studies who've studied economics politics anthropology social policy and even sometimes non-social science programs as well and they still are able to kind of make that transition but most of it is the interdisciplinarity it gives you a kind of agility across different kinds of literature different languages I'd say in terms of social science literature as well so we give it we try to give you a good exposure in that way the second aim is giving a specialized knowledge where we introduce case studies and examples that you then become familiar with because they they they are or they might exemplify or illustrate something that you might have read about as a theoretical or conceptual idea and then you have the examples and case studies to to kind of highlight like this is what this means or has meant in in in practice we also apply a lot of policy thinking in terms of the teaching and the curriculum that we have so that you're you're not just reading theory it's also related to whether it's contemporary policy but it might also be policy shifts that have taken place over time as well so giving you that introduction to how the significance of policy is but for you to be able to also relate your learning to policy and the final aim we have is having the kinds of analytical skills to proceed to and and written skills of course within that to be able to either move on in terms of your career professional development or even potentially go on for further research so those are the four main aims of the program and and basically the distance learning programs both of our programs have this structure and you can see this structure on our webpage as well and it's it there's actually some more detail there if you if you like but just for today's purposes i wanted to just show you what what it what a what the program would look like over the two years and so basically if you're joining now in april and we have intakes in both april and october of each year that you would take your first module and it would be one module at a time so you're not going to be overloaded with many different modules and having to read across the different kind of reading lists you'll be taking one at a time but they are and this is the this is the pedagogy is that we would begin and you would begin in april around the mid april or mid october whenever you'd register and we basically have 12 topics and each week there is a discussion forum that goes alongside the topics and you would be engaging along with that so the module would run from april until august and then the next one would be from october until february and then so on so you can see here you'd be taking 30 credits at a time and while you're doing those 30 credits at a time times four and this is showing you what it would look like over two years you would then eventually have the the dissertation and the dissertation is actually run throughout the module sorry throughout the program so you'll be doing these 30 credit modules and in between them you'll have a couple of weeks in which during those weeks you would have dissertation a mini module to kind of begin to get you thinking about your your topic so it's a very guided kind of approach you're kind of you're being guided through the modules and then you're of course your core modules you have the two the word guided again here the two two modules you choose from the development studies list and then you can take an elective module from outside of development studies as well and and and that's basically what a progression of your program would look like and if anyone has well we can you can ask at the end I suppose or if in the chat there's anything you'd like to ask here so this is what the the core module looks like for the MSc international development and this is the module that's called political economy and sociology of development so you can see it covers it spans quite a few topics here and it gives I mean a quite I would say it's an overarching kind of approach but actually it's quite a fine a foundational approach to contemporary development studies and it actually mirrors what we do on campus so it's not a different curriculum altogether it actually draws from our core modules on campus and in many ways I guess the the it's not just the curriculum well the curriculum is very similar but it what it what makes it different from the on campus is just the pedagogy okay so you can see here from the schedule the topics begin so this is actually last april's date specifically but you can get an idea here the essays so you begin in april and the first essay would be due around the fifth or sixth normally of august and it's not as though you're every week going to be intensely busy but what happens is that you you end up having you have group seminars which are like this where you'll be on a gallery on zoom with your classmates and with the tutor but you would also have in between you can see the study skills seminars or webinars which are there to help you in terms of for those of you particularly who might be coming from different countries different writing styles or who have left you know an academic setting or university for you know for after a long time that you're coming back after a long time so we do have those kinds of writing and study skills kinds of sessions as well so the pace so let me start I'll show you this is the humanitarian action core module as well you can see so it's the same format with yeah with a pace of the introduction and you can see each week has a topic and you're all of your reading and you're commenting in the discussion forums as you're reading along the discussion forums are there to for you because obviously we understand that you're all in different time zones I think all of you here right now are we're all in different time zones so this is an asynchronous form of learning so you will be for some of you it will be middle of the night others of you will be right in the beginning of the day and so therefore you can engage with each other in an asynchronous time but still be part of the same discussion and so these weekly forums that I keep mentioning and activities I think these are the two things that might distinguish distance learning and from other programs that you might see is that these are the discussion boards where you interact this is where this is the ongoing topics and weekly readings and interactive material and so I can see one question here about the group seminar so we basically do a doodle poll and we'll generally have two set in case the time zones are completely you know unworkable I'm trying to think this term I haven't actually done that mapping this term the last term I'll just say we did we did a mapping to see the time zones and it was I think the furthest east was Auckland and the furthest west depending on where you want to say let's say we're making London at the centre here okay not trying to say not to be Eurocentric and the furthest west was Vancouver or Panama City I think so we ended up having two different time zones with you know a lot of students you know there'll be places where people are clustered you know Kenya, Rwanda, at that time Myanmar for people who were working and then Middle East also and Jordan you find that actually there are people in your class who are who might be in the same region yeah it's not even uncommon so we had a two we had a one of our thematic seminars and students were engaging and we discovered that two were actually in the same city and they discovered they actually didn't live far from one another so that was kind of interesting as well so you may you may you may find that those are places that you find you get to know people even if it's just you know it's online too but you realise you have more in common in that way too so it's kind of a combination of things so it's the weekly you know discussion boards where you're typing in you're reading you're commenting you're given set tasks as well so that's actually it's not just it's not a free free for all kind of I mean you're free to also comment too but that they are they're quite structured you'll be it's kind of like here are the questions for this week you know looking forward to hearing from you all and it's kind of like you go and you've got from the beginning of that week until the end at whatever time suits you to do that to post your reflections and responses to your other two other classmates as well so that's that's part of the discussion forums the other side so those those are the discussion weekly discussion forums so we also have activities so those are assignments or they are essays or assignments okay that's our way of calling an activity so basically those are those are what you will be submitting for your mark for your assessment for the overall program and there are five of them even though technically we have six but one of them is participation and engagement interaction and basically you would you would have a set a task to do so activity to for instance is an information and library retrieval task okay so you would be given a go find a reading and tell us a bit about it and then post it it's a very quick short one but it's that you're actually learning kind of you know referencing library skills right using the online sources so that is one so that is one and it's worth five it's not sorry that one is not worth any points but it's just to show that you and that you understand how to do that task the next one is a text critique so there'll be a set reading and then you're given you're given a guidance about how you would write about that text and then it moves on so activity three is text critique four is an essay plan five is another text critique and then six is the final essay which is five thousand words they're all building so it's the pedagogy is it's very you know formative until the summative the final five five thousand words it's all helping to support you so you're not it's low risk in many ways that you can if you if you have been out of education for a while at least you'll get that feedback so it's five percent you know fifteen percent five percent and then it's seventy percent for the final essay and that's way that goes okay so okay so Adara has asked about outside of scheduled seminars you can interact well well what happens is that people the students do arrange things outside and they do get to know each other through the online you know whatever forms whether it's whatsapp or other kind of online medium so absolutely students are welcome to get to know each other in your group you would also be able to and I'm going to mention that in a little while about being at SOAS right so you you would so much has gone online now at SOAS in terms of the campus on campus activities that you'll find that you will probably be taking advantage of attending seminars there which are open to the public also or there might be a departmental seminar that will be holding that will also be online so you'll find that that will also be another place for you to get to know even the wider kind of community at SOAS and not just on your own program but for your own program really it's the thematic seminars the discussion forums and then of course you'll be in your groups and you'll find that students will probably will want to get to know each other as well I hope that answered that question okay okay so basically so this is great I've just come to commonly asked questions I'm getting a few so my Tage that's a very good name sounds like mine how many students on average you take in one group so I mean basically it depends on the larger group in your in your year or your cohort it we we basically won't have more than 20 in a in your discussion forum group but there may be 40 in the overall group but we will will always keep it will cap it at 20 you'll have opportunities get to interact with the others and the other groups but we try and keep it to that's just because we want you to be able to have a smaller yeah that's my smaller group so you'll have more interaction so I'm just going to give you a couple of questions and you feel free to keep on asking the questions in the chat as well so how much study time should I plan to spend each week this is one of the most commonly asked questions and basically the answer is there's no set time to spend and it really had some I mean a lot of times it has to do with your pace of reading you know maybe for some of you English may not be your first language or it may be that you're coming you studied a science before and now you're coming to social science there may be other reasons but or you may be a very fast reader so maybe familiarity with the concepts for the first few weeks you may need more time but I would say for the first two to three weeks I would try to set aside time for the core readings and basically what you'll you would see on the and we basically everything is on what we call the Bloomsbury learning environment or the Moodle and you basically will log in there and you'll see for the topic one you'll see that those readings will be there and there'll be two normally two core readings sometimes three if they're short but normally two and they shouldn't be longer than 30 pages for both of them really or maybe 40 pages and so you'll have time you'll have time during the week to read those and many students who I mean who are full time doing this full time and they're not working at the same time and I think that is another big question people ask is it possible to work alongside so I mean this is set up for people who are working but it's also something that people who are not and who are doing this full time can actually you can do all of the readings and get a lot more out of the course if you're able to and so I would basically just try and pace it and get to know yourself in terms of your own needs so maybe begin with having 30 to 60 minutes a day if you're working especially or maybe it's 60 minutes to you know two hours a day I don't know how much time you would need but I think the main point is to schedule it and to keep that time to really make sure that you don't think that it's something you can do at the end I think that's the biggest warning I would give to anyone who wants to join our distance learning programs it might be different in other universities but it's not something you can leave to the end I hope you got a sense of that it starts from the week one and basically you have to be in it you have to be on those discussion forums because you also won't get to know your classmates either you won't be able to contribute to the discussions and you won't be able to be part of the pedagogy which basically builds from activity one until six so you really do once you commit to it you know you start but it's it may not it may just be a couple of hours a week for you to do it so it is very doable people do it I would say probably most most of our current students are working either part-time or full-time many of them are actually working in the field in terms of working in the development sector and they are doing this alongside and the flexibility in terms of the timing is a big attraction but also the fact that they don't have to take study leave from work they can do this alongside while they're working so I would say maybe a majority of our students are actually doing that and maybe that is part of the attraction for those of you who are here today as well. The live sessions I think we've added those in because I think they are something that students seem I think seem to want to have but we don't make them compulsory that's because not everyone can make them for various reasons but we do record them so you can always catch up on them later if you're not able to attend okay here's another one which is if you're returning to university after a long time and you think you feel rusty and uneasy about your academic writing skills how will you adjust and I've already answered that as well by saying telling you about the pedagogy those activities are designed to ease you into academic writing like so I mentioned the information retrieval exercise to the short and when I say they're short actually the information retrieval is 200 words, activity three you know is 600 words it just moves it moves on very gradually so they're kind of building blocks short small tasks that you do but you very quickly you get feedback as well and you're able to then move on to the next one having learned from you know that experience so you'll be able to and if you need the extra support we do have as I mentioned before the study skill sessions to help you further so people who are in London or in the UK or flying through which is also not completely uncommon can get access to the campus and library so you just have to come into the onto campus and check that it's out you know the library's open at that time on that day and just show them your they'll well you have an email once you have a saw us email ID you can just show them your registration kind of confirmation and they can issue you with a card the library card are there any other questions that you might have so Dara's asked what would we recommend from the pre-reading list so once you've enrolled we send out a kind of open access list so meaning that you don't have to have a university ID to get access to them some of them are links but you can just kind of click on and then we always some of them are PDFs that we just send and they're actually taken from the core module so hopefully that will give you an idea and I think people enjoy coming into a module having already read at least one or two of the readings that are on the list okay when are we able to share the curriculum for the upcoming April cohort in order to plan alongside so once once you've registered and enrolled we can I mean I don't we will still be finalizing and updating the BLE and everything is on that on the Moodle so that would be there but we will have the calendar I don't know if that's what you mean about the curriculum for the in terms of planning alongside war so I showed you that kind of table that grid we've got others that kind of are more detailed they show when which activities do so you can plan ahead knowing that maybe you want to take you might need a day or two that week if you've got a particularly busy week that you know to plan for that so that that would be that's that's made available so I think as soon as you know you you've registered and everything you begin you can you'll get you'll be sent those kinds of details are professors available through their email for questions for students yes they and we are we also have online office hours so I basically in the bottom of my email ID I have a I have a link I think it's on my personal webpage now as well but you have yeah you you can book because you may not if you've got quest lots of questions sometimes it takes longer to actually answer an email or serve someone to get back to you so sometimes it's easier just to book an appointment and I do them as 20 minute slots and I hold office hours through the week and so do other the other academics as well is it possible to receive a student ID yes so you would need to come in and do that though and that as I mentioned that process you show you can show it on your mobile device to show that you've registered and you've got your sourced ID already to get the the call the physical sourced the library card is the ID is there possibly to have direct one-on-one interaction with lecture if there are any specific so basically that's what the office hours are I mean the your base your your main interactions would be with the associate tutors who are very accessible they tend to people they'll they'll be themselves people who've worked in the department most of them have done their PhDs already in the department are very familiar and are also teaching on campus so they have office hours across on campus and and also online so you're able to access them but also the course the module convener as well does an online master's is equally valuable to progress to yeah so I would say yes we do we have actually students in this this year one who has nearly finished but has already started the PhD and I think it actually depends on your your background and your profile and what program you're going on to do the kind of studies if it's in development studies partly probably yes but you would need to look to the program that you're thinking of applying to I mean what I would add there is that also I mean for us we do we do very strongly believe that our online distance learning programs are of equal value to our in-person programs and that they are just a it's just a different a different way of taking a program but what I would say is also when you get your certificate after you've completed your program it won't actually say distance learning on it it doesn't say in person on either it's just a certificate from us as a university so again you know I think sometimes there are kind of worries from students that might my certificates get to a distance learning and would that mean that maybe certain institutions maybe certain organizations might see that differently to a in-person program but for us we don't differentiate between them yeah I mean I might even say that distance learning is for some people it's actually better I mean it depends on what you're coming in for I mean if you want the interaction on campus yes of course it's great to be on campus but if you're there if you're coming to do a master's because you want to dig deep into the kind of topic areas and you've chosen the modules you know what you want to do you can get a lot out of this and really I mean what I've seen is people's writing improve so much because of our pedagogy it's very different from what we do on campus so our on-campus module which is comparable say to the development studies core module you know you would do an article review and then two article reviews and an essay and here we've done these six activities which are shorter and they come quite quickly during those you know 12-15 weeks but you'll find that your progress you know it's over two years our on-campus is of course on it's either part-time for two years or full-time one year but the pedagogy itself is quite different but equally valuable absolutely and I think I mean we have you know we have people whose you know places of employment are sponsoring them from from various international agencies so it's it's certainly recognized in the development sector and the humanitarian sector as well as being a you know a good degree to do if you want to work in that area I just wanted to go up to one of the Ines has said about the so my dates I mentioned those dates were not correct so just ignore those that was just showing the sequence I didn't have didn't have a chance to update the dates so the dates they fall slightly later this year then they didn't then they did the previous previous cycle I think there's a question about visa support so in terms of the online and distance learning programs the university doesn't actually provide a doesn't actually provide a letter to assist students with like an actual visa to come to study in the UK to be based here whilst you're studying however if you are coming to visit the UK and you would like to ask if there is anything the university can provide I would contact our advice at soas.ac.uk team who are fully trained on visa advice and they'll be able to give you the most up-to-date information on what we are able to provide and what we aren't able to provide in terms of visiting the UK because visiting the UK would be different to getting a student visa to the UK one is is for the full duration of the program and which would be based on actually being in person and the other would be a short-term visit to the UK which would possibly include coming to the university and meeting staff at the university. Okay okay I almost was thinking how much how much more time do we have Kim? We have another 15 minutes or so. Okay so what I was thinking while I'm talking about one I was thinking of just quickly I'm going to stop my share and going I was going to just show what the BLE looks like and then while answering another question here is Heidi is thinking about timekeeping and yes juggling lots of different things alongside work, family it's something that you know our students come into knowing you wouldn't be alone I think that's one point to make but the other is that you will after the first week or two and actually the first week is not is more of us it's basically a socialization activity which is just post about yourself tell us about yourself what are you interested in doing tell us about your background and after that it becomes much more academic but you'll find that you will find you'll you'll find a groove that that works with your own circumstances and because it's asynchronous there isn't pressure to be online at the same time as other people I'm just going to show you and keeping up with the readings of course is a big part of it but you'll find that keeping up I think different students have different strategies of what keeping up means I mean I think the bare minimum is reading at least one of the core readings just so you can begin there and onto the discussion forums and some people will say okay I'm going to read two of them and others be over the week we'll we'll begin to say okay I'm going to read a couple of them or read one participate in the forum and then carry on reading and you'll I think you'll you should through your own experimentation and what works for you be able to to see what works yeah I think and that's kind of why we look at of spreading the program because some students do ask why is our online and distance learning program different in in duration to our to our in-person programs and a big element of that is taking into consideration what our students would be doing alongside studying and lots of different commitments that they may have as they're taking our program so it's definitely something that we've kind of considered in our approach so this is what the BLE looks like can you see my screen yes yeah okay good all right so this is what the core module looks like this is from last year last April and so basically everything is here yeah there's a lot of other things going on a lot of announcements events and things and what you'll see here is the calendar and I was kind of showing you that and on one of the slides and that's the date there we've got 13th of course it's different now so you can see that there let me just see what else we've got down here we had an October one as well so I think that's why I'm not in the right place here actually this is what I wanted activities and forums this is where you spend a lot of time you go into the activities and forums and let me show you this schedule this is the kind of schedule one of the questions is about is planning ahead please ignore this we're actually changing this now it's not even in place yet is our is that the activity one is actually weighted five percent it's zero percent five yeah so it's slightly different but it's not too different but this is what you will need at the beginning of this of your basically your your journey on this program is is that all of these modules that you'll take all four of them will have this same format the same kind of schedule and so once you've done one module the core module will tend is the one where you have all the teasing issues then you once you've worked out that this is what is expected you will be able to then start the your first optional module and the second and the third one's knowing what to expect different content of course but the same activity structure so this shows you how many days you have to write them they work on them so we'll have start date and then an end date when you need to submit and we tell you when you get your feedback so it is quite structured and you'll know you know what to expect and you can therefore also let me just show you one of these as well so maybe I'll show you a couple of them I'll show you what the access and socialization looks like so basically you can see here we tell you exactly what to do you know this is introduce yourself tell us a bit about yourself and then tells you what to do it's like tell us about your interests and hobbies and how you survived the you know COVID-19 lockdown lockdowns multiple ones we've had and then you go down and you can see here and see people have posted here all right so that's that's what that looks like and then you know we have the other ones which are more I'll do it I'll show you the text critique so you analyze one of these articles and identify its strengths and weaknesses and then you can see here it's it's really broken down and this is where this is our pedagogy we've broken it down we've said you here's what you read you choose one of these two articles and then we we've given you a very structured way of doing it so you you're going to post 300 words on the and share it with your classmates you're going to take the feedback and then you're going to submit a 600 word thing having taken on the feedback so it is showing that it's kind of training you and teaching you how to take advantage of feedback and reflection so that's so that's a peer-to-peer learning you'll get the kind of learning through the feedback from through the marks as well in the feedback so okay so Dara has a question I'm especially interested in social research methodologies it's very relevant my work to what extent our research methodologies taught and which modules are best for research so we have our dissertation mini modules and that's where that is I mean our the other modules are very substantive or theoretical or conceptual so there'll be areas rather than talking about methodologies the dissertation mini modules give you some and at this stage we're not quite there yet with the kind of doing research methodologies and has a lot to do with the ethics and during especially during this time period in terms of getting kind of risk doing the risk assessments and ethical approvals as distance learning students but that all that all happens within the mini modules and as I mentioned to you those mini modules they happen in between the other optional and the core modules so you'll be focused there and there are specific tutors that are working on that as well associate tutors who who would and you you are assigned to supervisors well for the dissertation I forgot to say so you would then be working with someone on your dissertation so we probably just have a few minutes more in case and we could take one more question if anybody has a final question that they'd like to drop in I think maybe one thing as well that might be interesting for you to do is we do have on our website they're not development MOOCs but we do have MOOCs on our website so massive open online courses again they're not exactly the same as the online and distance learning programs but it can give you kind of a dipping your toe into how online and distance learning kind kind of works in some respect so it might be something that you want to look at on our website and as as development studies is such an interdisciplinary kind of area you probably will find that there are a few of the options that we do have on our MOOCs that there will be some overlap with development studies to some extent as well so that might just be something you want to do either just to kind of view it and see I mean I took I took a couple of them when we were in our first lockdown with COVID just so that I didn't go into a Netflix wormhole and never never emerge and I have been out of education for quite some time so I did find that though it said you know it's about two hours a week of your time to do this in about four weeks I found for me it was more like three to four hours at the start and then as I went through I kind of adjusted so it is just something for you to think about in terms of as you'll go through the program you will definitely kind of evolve in terms of your studies and in terms of your approach and in terms of the way you think and then the way you write all those areas yeah you might even be able to balance the Netflix with them I say you know reading as well as we all do so I think there was one last question which was just about uh oh yeah I think you've answered it as well about modules so yeah yeah I mean basically with the modules I mean the main thing is once you've enrolled you the core module is the one you have to do first anyway um and you may be asked at the beginning which ones you want to take but not all modules are offered in the same term so you are given a choice so you basically I think a few weeks um towards the end of the of the module you'll you'll have a choice then to decide on the options great well thank you all for joining us today and thank you so much for an amazing kind of overview and presentation and providing lots of answers to all of the questions I think I definitely heard some takeaways from today's event as well and yeah thank you everybody for joining us we hope this has been helpful to you we hope it's it's kind of made a few things more clearer for you or possibly just solidified some of the information that you'd already received and the decisions that you're making moving forward we will be hosting more general events so again as a online and distance learning student or whether you're a student coming to our in-person programs we would like everybody to attend equally so if there are any other sessions that are more general that you think you want to attend please do feel free and yeah thank you very much for attending today and again thank you for such a wonderful kind of presentation and overview thank you great bye everybody bye everyone