Good gear

I was in the market for a new smartphone recently, so I took up Samsung’s offer of a free Gear VR headset with a purchase of the new S7.

As readers of Paper cuts will know, I’ve been toying with virtual reality via the Google Cardboard headset. Now I had the opportunity to compare my experience with another headset one step higher up in the food chain.

Here I share with you my observations…

Headset

There’s no doubt about it, Cardboard’s ace in the pack is its price. For about $20 you obtain your very own portal into virtual reality.

Having said that, the Gear VR is only around $150, which I find surprisingly cheap and dare I suggest affordable. Whether it’s worth the greater investment will depend on your needs, but the following advantages that it holds over Cardboard may influence your opinion:

• The Gear VR headset is sturdier than its Cardboard counterpart, provides a snugger fit, and is more comfortable to wear.
• My S7 snaps perfectly into place on the Gear VR, whereas it sometimes goes a little off-kilter in the Cardboard.
• Gear VR’s tracking wheel allows me to focus my lenses, whereas Cardboard’s one-size-fits-all approach can result in blurry vision.
• Gear VR’s sensor responds to a simple tap of the finger, whereas the push button on Cardboard feels clunky.

Gear VR’s sensor also has scrolling functionality, but I find this tricky to use. I never seem to put my finger in the right spot, and I find the act of scrolling imprecise. I suggest an Xbox-like control stick (or perhaps a ball) would be a superior mechanism for both scrolling and selecting.

Apps

To use Cardboard, you need the Cardboard app. To use Gear VR, you need the Oculus app.

Third-party apps are searchable in Google Play, but as I mentioned in Paper cuts the results can not be filtered out by Cardboard compatibility. In contrast, the Oculus app has its own store that I can access via the headset, and while all the apps I see are compatible with Gear VR, there’s no search facility. That means I must scroll through the apps, which is tedious to say the least.

Then I worked out I can access the Oculus Store on my phone via the app without using the headset, which affords a much better user experience – complete with search facility.

As for the Oculus apps, I’ve found their quality to be a notch above the Cardboard offerings. So far I’ve tried Smash Hit VR, The Body VR, Speech Center, and The Night Cafe – all are excellent.

While some of the apps that I know via Cardboard – such as Vrse and Inmind – are also available via Oculus, not all are. I wonder if one day VR apps will be standardised so they work across all the major platforms. A pipe dream… I know.

360° photos

In Paper cuts I reported a drop-out problem when taking VR photos with my S4. I’m glad to say this is no longer an issue on my S7.

I must point out that VR photos taken via Cardboard Camera are not 360° photos; they are simply panoramic shots that are stitched together at their ends. While these are impressive, the black spots above and below the photo fall short of the definition of “virtual reality”.

Again in Paper cuts I expressed my surprise at the absence of multi-directional photo-stitching as per Photosynth, and it appears the boffins at Samsung read my blog. The S7 has a “surround shot” mode that enables you to take multiple photos in all directions, which are then stitched together to produce a true 360° photo. Mind you, this mode is not available on the phone by default – you must download it!

Here’s my effort with a surround shot at a wharf on Sydney Harbour. As you can see, the stitching is by no means perfect. I think the differences between the light and shade caused problems, not to mention the skills of the operator. However I’m pleased to report that adding my photo to Google Maps via Street View worked perfectly and immediately. The app still doesn’t say something to the effect of “Thank you for publishing your photo”, but I’ve grown to expect this kind of UX from Google.

I’m pleased to report that Flickr also recognises my photo as a photo sphere and automatically enables user manipulation, though I found it unreliable in Edge so try Chrome instead. Flickr also provides embed code that you can insert into your website – with user manipulation similarly enabled.

Back to Cardboard Camera, its VR photos can be viewed via the Cardboard headset – as you would expect. However a problem arises when you try to import a photo (such as a panorama) that wasn’t taken by Cardboard Camera. No matter whether I change the file name to PANO_date_x.jpg or run it through the Photosphere XMP Tagger, as user forums suggest, I’m invariably confronted by “This is not a VR photo”.

In contrast, all you need to do with Gear VR is create a subfolder called “360Photos” in the Oculus folder on your phone – though why it’s not already there is a another head scratcher – then transfer your photo into it. When you choose to see all photos in the Oculus app, you can go to “My Photos” and select yours. In fact, your photo need not be a true 360° photo; the app will stretch it into place (with mixed results).

A gripe I have with Oculus’s 360° viewing functionality, though, is that the slideshow mode is on by default. Just as you’re immersing yourself into the glorious coastline of Budva, you’re teleported somewhere else. Uber annoying!!

360° videos

Whereas Gear VR has the wood over Cardboard in relation to 360° photos, I maintain the reverse is true in relation to 360° videos.

On YouTube, all you need to do is click the little goggles icon in a 360° video to render it Cardboard compatible. It would be marvellous if we could similarly click a little oval icon to render it Gear VR compatible, but there I go again with another pipe dream…

A workaround for Gear VR is to use the Samsung Internet app to get to YouTube, play a video, toggle full screen, then change the mode to 360. Yet while this works, it’s inelegant.

Implications for business

Whether you intend on using virtual reality for e-learning, digital marketing, or some other business-related activity, I suggest Gear VR and Cardboard both have pro’s and cons.

In my opinion, Gear VR provides the better overall experience and looks more professional to boot. It’s handling of 360° photos is superior to Cardboard’s, and the S7’s compatibility with Flickr is useful for presenting them to the public. However, while $150 per headset is arguably affordable for an individual, you might think twice before buying 100 of them for your sales force.

Furthermore, Cardboard retains the upper hand with 360° videos. While Gear VR has a work around, it’s not really workable in a business setting. Until Oculus gets up to speed with third-party video, it might be worth having a Cardboard or two handy.

Udemy for you and me

It seems like every time you blink, another free tool becomes available to help you create online learning resources.

One of them is Udemy – a web-based platform that enables anyone to create and deliver online courses for free. Simply open an account and you are provided with the tools you need to structure your curriculum, upload your content, and publish your course to the world.

Udemy has actually been around since 2010, but I only recently decided to dabble in it. In so doing, I created Audacity Crash Course and The Wide World of MOOCs.

I thoroughly enjoyed using Udemy. I found it to be a simple yet powerful tool.

Having said that, everything has its pro’s and cons, and this was no exception. In case you are considering using Udemy for your own purposes, I will share some of my experience with you now…

Pro’s

• Udemy is incredibly easy to use. Creating lectures, rearranging them and uploading the content is a dream. I jumped straight into it without referring to the instructions, and while I’m familiar with authorware, I expect it’s intuitive enough for Average Joe to work out too. If not, it’s carefully scaffolded each step of the way.
• The help resources are helpful. When I couldn’t figure out how to delete a lecture, for example, I found the solution via someone else who had raised a similar problem.
• Every course undergoes a quality review process by the Udemy team. If and when it meets their standards they will add it to the marketplace, which means it will be discoverable by the public. The turnaround time for this process is 3-4 business days, which I consider reasonable.
• When you publish your course, it is immediately live on the interwebs. That means prior to (and even regardless of) it being accepted into the marketplace, it will have a URL which you can promote to your target audience.
• The business model enables you to monetise your course by assigning a price to it, of which Udemy claims a 30% cut. This seems reasonable to me, as it is the same cut that Amazon takes via its Kindle Direct Publishing service.
• A coupon generator allows you create discount coupons at your discretion, empowering you to set the discounted price, the number of coupons, and the deadline. Of course, your cut will then come out of the discounted price rather than the full price. (The algorithm is slightly different for coupon-derived sales.)
• You can also add your course to the Udemy affiliate program, which makes it available for others to promote for a share of the spoils. Conversely, you can earn a cut by promoting other people’s courses too.

Cons

• Udemy assumes that the bulk of your course will be lectures. In fact, one of their standards is that the course contains a minimum of 30 minutes of video content. While I understand why they do this, I also suspect it encourages “padding” and might make the course longer than it ought to be.
• Another standard maintains that the lectures be 2-15 minutes in length on average “or appropriately long based on the instructional content”. I ran afoul of this one when I published The Wide World of MOOCs because – as you can see on the landing page – most of my lectures are less than 2 minutes each, which I argued was instructionally sound in light of the nature of the content. If Udemy had rejected my argument, I would have had no choice but to consolidate my Q&A videos into one long clip – which not only would have compromised the integrity of the instruction IMHO, but also would have affected the marketing as prospective students would not be able to see the full outline of the contents. Luckily though, the Udemy folk were true to their word and honoured the “or appropriately long based on the instructional content” aspect of the standard.
• Udemy’s predilection for video presents another unexpected quibble. Leaving aside academic arguments about the pedagogy of lectures – which I think, for the record, depends on the circumstances – the curriculum builder labels every stage of your course a “lecture”. This makes it awkward when, for example, you want to upload a reading list, or web links, or a template. None of these things is a lecture, but they’re called one nonetheless.
• While Udemy allows you to pick the thumbnail of each video lecture, it offers you only a limited selection. Typically you would want to pick the first frame; otherwise the video appears jumpy as it briefly shows the thumbnail drawn from somewhere midway before autoplaying from the beginning. Unfortunately, though, this first frame is often left out of the selection.
• The method for deleting a lecture isn’t obvious. Having to click the little pencil first as if you were changing its title doesn’t make sense.
• While rearranging the lectures is beautifully afforded via dragging and dropping, the same can’t be said of the downloadable materials. Murphy’s Law dictates that you need to make an edit or an update to the file at the top of the list, which means you must delete them all and then re-upload them.
• You have to send an email to the affiliate team to request them to add your course to the affiliate program. This is a bit clunky, and naturally you want to fire off the request straight away. The problem is, your course can be added to the affiliate program only when it is live in the marketplace – which it won’t be for another 3-4 business days!

Suggestions for improvement

In case anyone from the Udemy team is reading this, I respectfully suggest the following improvements…

• Relax the enforcement of the standards. If a particular course doesn’t technically meet a requirement, the review team should be authorised to make a judgement call on whether to let it slide.
• Consider labelling each stage of the course a “topic” rather than a “lecture”.
• Allow the course owner to upload a customised thumbnail like YouTube does. That way, if the system doesn’t automatically pick up the first frame as a thumbnail, the owner can plug it in manually.
• Place the trash can icon on each lecture’s banner so that it’s obvious how to delete it. A warning message should be sufficient to prevent accidental deletions.
• Enable the dragging and dropping of the downloadable materials in the curriculum builder for resequencing purposes.
• Incorporate an option during the publishing process to add the course to the affiliate program. Then, as soon as it is live in the marketplace, it is automatically added to the program.

All in all, though, I must re-emphasise that I thoroughly enjoyed using Udemy. I think it’s an excellent tool.

Not only can you use it to distribute your own expertise, but it’s so easy to use that the SME’s in your organisation can use it to distribute their expertise too.

Anyone interested in leveraging Udemy for workplace training should look into Udemy for Organizations which provides a private, branded portal with exclusive access only for your employees.

UfO might be a viable option for companies that don’t have an LMS, or for others that are seeking an alternative delivery platform.

Reflections of a mooc unvirgin

I recently completed my first mooc, and I will soon receive the certificate to prove it.

Many people don’t think a certificate of completion means much, but this one will mean a lot to me. I put substantial time and energy into this course, so it will be satisfying to have something tangible to recognise it.

Before I signed up, I had decided to do a mooc because I was blogging about them but had never experienced one for myself. I considered doing Georgia Tech’s Fundamentals of Online Education via Coursera, but I wasn’t attracted to the introductory angle of the content. As it turned out, the course crashed under the weight of its own popularity, so I dodged a bullet there.

I also considered the independent(?) Educational Technology and Media mooc, but I was put off by its heavy connectivist approach. Not per se, mind you, but I was looking for more direction.

Eventually I settled on The University of Edinburgh’s E-learning and Digital Cultures mooc (EDCMOOC) because it targeted practising e-learning professionals who “want to deepen their understanding of what it means to teach and learn in the digital age”, not to mention the fact I was fascinated by its coverage of popular culture.

So my first learning – before I even began – was that all moocs are different. You can’t tar them with the one brush.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the EDCMOOC. In my opinion, it had a lot going for it. Having said that, however, every course has its pro’s and cons, and this one was no exception…

Pro’s

• The mooc was well prepared. The pre-information on the Coursera site was useful, the promotional video was informative, and both were reinforced by a welcome email upon registration.
   
• The virtual classroom environment was well structured. Not only were the content streams logically sequenced and accessible in advance, but the administrative aspects of the course were outlined under a dedicated “what, where, how and when” page. An announcement board kept us up to date, the discussion forums were easy to find, and the final assessment was explained clearly from Day 1.
   
• The pedagogical approach of the course combined elements of both instructivism and constructivism. Each topic included an introduction covering the central concepts, plus a resources page comprising several video clips (not of lectures, but of creative works) and readings. I appreciated the readings being classified as “Core” or “Advanced”, as this allowed me to focus my energies on the ones that mattered, while getting around to the others if I had the time and inclination.
   
• The duration of each topic was one week. This was enough time to get the work done, but not enough time to tempt you to sit on your laurels. I kept up to speed for the first 3 weeks, but I let the fourth week slip when real life got in the way. Thankfully the resources remained accessible, which allowed me to catch up afterwards.
   
• The duration of the whole course was 5 weeks, which again I found to be just right. After the novelty of the first couple of weeks wears off, real life competes hard for your attention. In all honesty, I think I would have dropped out if it were any longer.
   
• The course was supported by social media groups across several platforms, including Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. While I initially found this frustrating (having to bounce between them in case I missed out on anything), I now agree in hindsight that multiple platforms are a good idea – on the proviso that the Coursera-hosted forum remains the plenary. It makes no sense to me to force people onto one arbitrary platform which they otherwise would not use, and it was convenient to self-organise the 40,000 students into more manageable sub-groups.
   
• Through the discussions in the course, participation in the social media groups, and comments on my blog posts, I connected with some incredibly smart people from all over the world. These connections will enrich my learning experience well after the course has ended.
   
• Assessment for the course was crowd-sourced. Each participant was charged with peer assessing the digital artefacts of at least three fellow participants – and this was enshrined as a requirement for your own completion. The final score was an average of the peer scores.
   
• I used ThingLink for my digital artefact, which I had intended to try since I first heard about it over a year ago. This mooc gave me the nudge I needed. Incidental learning at its finest!
   
• The proof of the pudding is in its eating, and at the end of the course I can unequivocally say I learned plenty. Some of the learnings were implicit thoughts that were made explicit, while others were novel ideas to which I would otherwise have remained ignorant. I blogged about my learnings along the way, being mindful to draw out the practical applications of the somewhat academic concepts.

Cons

• With 42,000 participants, it was inevitable that the discussion forum would be swamped. I witnessed many participants talking at their fellow students rather than with them, and some discussion threads ran on for pages and pages. Of course, this became less of a problem over time as huge numbers of participants dropped out, leaving the keen beans to carry on the conversation.
   
• During Week 1 in particular, the discussion forum and social media groups were inundated with the likes of “Hi, I’m from Sao Paulo” and “Howdy from Texas”. While I’m a fan of social mores, I don’t specifically care where the 27,347th participant is from.
   
• Hand-in-hand with the “happy greeter” was the “lost soul”. A lot of participants expressed anxiety at being overwhelmed by the mooc – which I found surprising. Not only were the weekly instructions quite clear, but the target audience was e-learning professionals who are, presumably, seasoned adult learners.
   
• A bugbear of mine in any discussion forum is the “pretender” – ie someone who posts lofty statements with big words, yet devoid of any substance. There was no shortage of them in this mooc.
   
• At the other end of the extreme, other participants’ contributions were woefully inadequate. In one thread, for example, the discussion descended into a list of sci-fi movies; no explanation as to how they were pertinent to the conversation, but oh what a list!
   
• Another problem that popped up was the “parasite” – ie someone who signs up to a mooc just so they can spam the discussions with links to their own irrelevant content. Vomit.
   
• As far as the course content is concerned, I felt the focus on pop culture was perhaps too strong. While the instructors tended to end each topic with a question about its implications for e-learning, that was rarely followed up in the discussions. In my opinion, the participants roasted the same old chestnuts (such as the spectre of big brother and the inequity of digital access in the third world) instead of synthesising connections to the practice of education in their own world.

Suggestions for improvement

To be fair, the cons that I have listed above are not unique to the EDCMOOC, nor to online learning in general. I remember similar problems from my uni days on campus.

Nonetheless, they inform my following suggestions for improvement…

• Week 1 should be set aside as a social week to allow the happy greeters to get their social proclivities out of their systems. It may be tempting to set aside a pre-week for this purpose, but the truth is it will bleed into Week 1 anyway.
   
• The instructors need to be much more active in the discussions. I recommend they seed each week with a pinned discussion thread, which marks the official line of enquiry and discourages multiple (and confusing) threads emerging about the same concepts.
   
• More importantly, the instructors should actively prompt, prod, guide and challenge the participants to engage in critical analysis. Explication of the implications for e-learning must be the outcome.
   
• A moderator should delete the spam and ban the spammers.
   
• A support page and discussion thread should be dedicated to helping the lost souls, so that they don’t pollute the rest of the course with their problems.

All in all, I am glad to report my first mooc experience was a positive one.

I won’t rush out to do another one in a hurry, but that’s simply because I know how demanding they are.

But one thing’s for sure, I will do another one at some stage. I look forward to it!