Weeks 4 and 5 of MOOC: Gender Through Comics

Attrition rates for online courses are fairly high.  In the years I worked in distance education and eLearning, we always knew that external incentives were a huge reason anyone signed up for a masters program online and why they would complete the program.  We didn't keep in-house stats when I was working at UT or ASU, as many students blended their learning between on-campus and online, but I believe in our cohort of 15 students to begin a unique program we designed, we only lost 3 of the 15 or so who started.

Massive Open Online Courses have an estimated retention rate of about 10%.

Depending on who you talk to, this is either a problem or it is nothing to worry about.  What's interesting is hearing the various excuses and pointing of fingers I've seen lobbed in my personal experience over the years - from "it doesn't matter that the students leave in droves, they came in to get what they needed and left" to "if the faculty can't hold the students' attention, that's really saying something about the faculty".

What nobody is apparently willing to say is that maybe we already have ample evidence that this isn't working as originally intended.  Moving the posts in the first quarter of the game turns it into Arena Football, it doesn't improve the NFL.

Look, if you have a TV show and if by week 10, you've lost 80 - 90% of your audience, your show is getting canceled. It doesn't really matter how great of a debut you had.  If your whole network loses 80-90% of every program it runs, everyone is getting fired and you're shutting down.  If you had a play, and by the time you closed the final curtain your formerly sold out house was left with 10% of the attendees wanly applauding, you'd figure maybe the place was on fire and nobody had told the cast and crew.

I find the idea that students are dipping into classes, getting what they need, and then exiting a naive and groundless assumption and, frankly, the sort of useless hand-waving that folks in higher ed are good at.  I suspect they know better, but it's something to say until they put together some actual data on what's happening.

Supermarathon! Superman: The Movie (with Paul and Valerie)

Paul does not like any movies.

I've been to movies many, many times with Paul, and every time, the following happens:

The movie ends, the lights come up, we exit the theater, and stand around talking.  I ask "So, what'd you think?" and Paul sort of ponders for a second, then says "I don't think I liked it."

I can only recall Paul saying he liked one major release movie, but I wasn't there for it.

This evening he and Valerie (Paul's steady lady friend) came over and we all watched Superman: The Movie.

No, I have no idea how many times I've seen the movie, but I'd guess I've seen it a few dozen times.  I know I've seen it theatrically at least 3.3 times.

RHPT, Steanso, Lucy, Adriana, Peabo and Jamie in Beaumont - no longer watching Superman: The Movie, circa 2005

JimD once brought the film to Beaumont, Texas when he was working there, and I met RHPT, met up with Peabo and his wife (and his wife's sister) and went to see the flick.  And then the projector broke.  Well, these things happen.

Tonight, nothing broke.  I have no idea what Paul thought of the film, but he did tweet that he'd seen it, so he was at least willing to acknowledge the experience.

Happy Birthday to The Godfather of Soul

Happy Birthday, Mr. James Brown.



You would have been 80 years old today.

Iron Man 3 is coming, too

jeez, this poster is rad

I'm pretty jazzed for Iron Man 3, but won't see it until next weekend.  Y'all try not to spoil it for me.

Looks like Rhodey and Pepper are getting a lot more screen time.

I heart Pepper.

We Salute Mythbusters as they enter their 10th Season

I often forget to mention that I watch Mythbusters nigh religiously.

Yes, they blow things up real good in most episodes.  Yes, I am curious about what happens when you throw a car in a swimming pool, or jump at the last second in a falling elevator, or try to maximize gas mileage or park a car behind the exhaust of a 747, drop a car from a helicopter or blow up a cement truck, just 'cause...  The show raises questions I didn't know I had, then answers them pretty thoroughly.  Even if, in an early episode, they got that whole thing about sodas exploding in one's car wrong.*

Adam has aged, but Jamie is eternal

No doubt the mix of personalities keeps the show working, and the dichotomy of Jamie and Adam's approaches always an object lesson in how even two people who know each other well can have completely different ways of solving a problem.  And, of course, we all love the build team and you should really follow them on Twitter.  They're pretty amusing.

It may not be perfect science, but the progam aims to demystify science and engineering, and therefore, perhaps, demystifies the world through some of the steps of the experimentation (and less often, the scientific) method.  Evidence is reviewed.  Hypotheses and ideas are considered and explained (including why some options are cast aside), and small scale testing of components is shown.  As the full experiment is built to, math is shown, explanations of physics are all brought down to a consumer level.  And if the myth doesn't go off as planned, in recent years, Mythbusters has gone on to find what they think would be required to replicate the scenario described in the myth.

Willie Nelson's 80th

Monday was the 80th birthday of Texas music legend, Willie Nelson.



I am aware that some people lump all country into one huge pile and say they do not care for the genre.  And, growing up as a suburban kid on the edge of shit-kicker Texas, I can understand the urge to want to put on the blinders when it comes to pop country.  I have been exposed to it since 1979.  Much of it it is not to my taste.

But I am not speaking of Country Music Awards winning, flavor of the year, country guy.  I'm is Willie Nelson.

And I will punch you in the jaw if you say anything bad about the man.

Some toys from the movie "Man of Steel"

Well, today I found what I guess are the three "Movie Masters" action figures from the film Man of Steel.

Walmart has on this promotion where they released some items early.  They were supposed to arrive on Sunday at Walmarts all across the land, but I visited three Walmarts in my area (all within a short distance of each other, and, I am fairly convinced, connected by a series of subterranean tubes that keep their management from ever having to deal with the surface dwellers) and did not find the displays at any of the three stores.  

I even asked at the Walmart closest to my house and got a pretty snippy response to my query about the toys from the manager, and an eye roll from her pal who informed her - as if I wasn't there - that "that movie isn't even coming out til June, so don't even bother".  I considered letting them know that many popular Superman fan sites had re-published the Walmart press release announcing the promotion, and that I had, indeed, seen photos on facebook of the items at other Walmarts on the extremely well run Man of Steel facebook page.  But then I briefly examined my life and what choices I was making and I left.

Well, I chose to give up.  My OCD did not.

Forbidden Planet - May 25th at Noon at The Ritz

It's no lie that I love the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

Incredible FX, a weirdo story based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, a killer soundtrack and Robbie the Robot?  That's not even mentioning Leslie Nielsen in a straight role as a proto-Captain Kirk.

If you're in Austin, I'm going to try to be down at the Ritz at 12:00 noon to catch this thing.  A great, otherworldy sci-fi classic!

Here for details

And, btw, this poster hangs in my stairwell, so I look at this image each and every time I come down the stairs.

Supermarathon: Superman - The Animated Series! ("Last Son of Krypton" and "Blasts from the Past")

I started developing an interest for Superman in high school, and just after I'd picked up a couple of issues, DC launched the whole "Death of Superman" business, which I knew was a gimmick, of course, and so I didn't bother with it.   And this sounds perhaps a bit trite, but when Superman "returned" with a mullet and entered into what I consider to be one of the weakest eras of Superman writing and development, there wasn't much to grasp onto.*

In 1996, Warner Bros. responded to Fox Kids Network's complaints that Batman was too "dark" by trying their hand at a Superman series.  Superman was a lot spunkier, in theory.  Of course, it's a story that depends on killing an entire planet of people just to get started, but let's not split hairs.

I think Google has more or less broken my blog

I tried to be a good Google citizen and update my blog to use the new features integrated with Google+.

It's not working out.

I am not sure you guys can see my comments right now, and I'm pretty sure only people with Google accounts can comment - if you can jump through the hoops to make it happen.  Only after "checking out" the new Google Comments did I realize Blogger (a Google product) will not let me back out of their awesome new commenting system.

Sigh.

I use Blogger because, for ten years, it's been really simple, really easy and for the past 5-6 years, its been rock solid.  I use Google stuff all the time, and never have a problem.

Until today.

I'll keep working on the problem, but this is where I'm at.

Comments are borked until further notice.

Basically, it looks like Google is trying to find a use for Google+ and Blogger in this age where, in theory, nobody blogs anymore.  So they found a way to make them work together, except that it doesn't work.  It also generates so many cookies that it took me, literally, ten tries to figure out if I'd "allowed" all the right cookies.

In short - this is why there's a guy all developers make fun of that can "talk to people", but he's the person who looks at stuff like this and says "guys, this is totally not working.  We need to make this make some sort of sense to actual human beings before we roll this out".  That did not happen here.  This is what I call "success by the developer's standard".