“Education remains a positive, significant, and profitable investment for individuals. On average, another year of education produces a private rate of return to schooling in excess of 5−8% a year. As such, there are few better investments one can make.”

Harry Anthony Patrinos, World Bank and Georgetown University, USA

Research Reason’s for adopting bLearning

Research reason’s for adopting bLearning:

  1. Improvement of learning effectiveness: student and faculty satisfaction (impact on learning and workload, in spice of the fact that in the beginning there is an enormous workload); student success, less drop outs, increase success rates and improvement on skills;
  2. Increase access and convenience ;
  3. Greater cost effectiveness: it may occur a drop in cost but its not guaranteed;

Success of the bLearning depends on the institutional support, student and faculty centered approaches  and the teacher training in this areas: Instructional models; staff development; course structures; assessment designs; trail and error mind set;

Dangers: domesticating tech to support old practices;

Source: Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, Third Edition, Edited by SPECTOR, J. Michael; MERRIL, M. David; MERRIENBOER, Jeroen; DRISCOLL, Marcy; 2011, p.269, Blended Learning Environments, GRAHAM, Charles; DZIUBAN, Charles;

Baye’s Theorem explained

8 Bayes’ Theorem

…in no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.
—Martin Gardner

In a famous psychology experiment, subjects were asked to solve the following problem. The experiment was first published in 1971. It was performed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Their work on human reasoning reshaped the field of psychology, and eventually won a Nobel prize in 2002.

A cab was involved in a hit and run accident at night. Two cab companies, the Green and the Blue, operate in the city. You are given the following data:

85% of the cabs in the city are Green and 15% are Blue.
A witness identified the cab as Blue. The court tested the reliability of the witness under the same circumstances that existed on the night of the accident and concluded that the witness correctly identified each one of the two colors 80%
of the time and failed 20% of the time.

What is the probability that the cab involved in the accident was blue rather green?

Source: https://jonathanweisberg.org/vip/chbayes.html

THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

“Kroll [1] describes intellectual growth as the progression from ignorant certainty to intelligent confusion. Many entering college students are firmly rooted in ignorant certainty. Their beliefs about the world are clear, absolute, and based entirely on what they have been told by others—parents, teachers, and influential peers. They have never subjected these beliefs to critical questioning or looked for evidence to test their validity. They view all knowledge as either certain or unknowable, with scientific knowledge residing squarely in the domain of certainty. In their minds, the role of teachers is to know The Truth and to tell it to them and their role as students is to absorb it and repeat it back on assignments and tests.

source: Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc. ; The Intellectual Development of Science and Engineering Students. Part 1: Models and Challenges. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247916554_The_Intellectual_Development_of_Science_and_Engineering_Students_Part_1_Models_and_Challenges [accessed Apr 10 2020].