I have been talking about this game for quite a while both online and off line. It was the first game that I bought for my iPad some six month ago. It is a traditional 'Physics' type game with a really user friendly interface. The aim of the game is to get the marble or other object to hit the red button using the simple laws of gravity. Here is an example  (level 5):

 As you can see, the red button is located at a height. When the marble is released, it fals from the port hole (top left) and drops down to the ground level where it pops off the ramp. Though it gains a little bit of height it is no where near the height of the red button. Therefore, the player must use some objects. The objects available in each level vary and can be seen at the top left of the screen. In this case, there are three long blocks. The player must arrange these blocks so that when the marble falls, it hits the objects which in turn hit the red button. Have a look at the next screen shot below:

 Here you can see the blocks arranged. When the marble drops hopefully it will hit the blocks and as they collapse, they in turn will hit the red button. See next screen shot:

As you can see, the marble has hit the blocks and causing them to tumble and hit the red button meaning:

Each level varies in the number of objects, number of marbles and number of obsticles that must be passed in trying to hit the red button. It requires thought, skill and precision. I found this game particularly addictive but wasn't sure why. This brings me back to thinking about last weeks reading. As Malone (1980) mentions edit in his paper-

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

• "In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness"

Thomas Malone (1980)

- All of which are prominant features of Gravity HD.

When I was teaching, my subject was Biology and Science. If I think about the Science curriculum (specifically Physics) I think that Gravity HD could be used to illustrate/enhnance  learning in a number of ways. If we look at Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Science Experiences and Outcomes, we can see how a digital game such as Gravity HD may be used:

• "Through everyday experiences and play with a variety of toys and other objects I can recognise simple types of forces and describe their desired effect.
  
• By investigating forces on toys and other objects I can predict the effect on shape or motion of those objects"

As part of the Digital Games Based Learning course we have been asked to write a review of a game. I am considering using Gravity HD. I was  thinking about producing a small video clip of the game rather than use endless screenshots. Though I am still in the very early stages of my planning, I would welcome any thoughts from any teachers out there

:-)

As mentioned in my comment to the previous post, online learners’ emotions are of paramount importance to their tutors, letting them have a better insight into what might engage or inhibit the student in achieving their learning goals. I have decided to take the previous and very informal attempt of visualising my emotions a bit further and analyse them in more detail, hoping I would be able to draw some conclusions and help myself overcome the interaction problems I am now experiencing. I am also trying to assess how such data would be useful to the teacher.

Description of the method

The inspiration was brought by the research paper written by Gilmore and Warren (2007) in which they were trying to research the emotions from the perspective of online tutors using the medium of an online chat for holding seminars and the potential influence these emotions exerted on the relationship with the learners. The framework they used was a combination of ethnography and grounded theory. The former means the tutors were participating in the seminar themselves, so becoming part of the researched community. The latter assumes collection and processing the data (marking, coding, grouping into similar concepts and then categories) prior to stating the research hypothesis.

This is how they justify their choice of their methodology and describe their data collection:

An ethnographic approach requires a sense of the ‘poetry of experience’ in that researchers often need to pay attention to data which are metaphorically indirect and atmospheric rather than literal and rational (Gilmore & Warren, 2002: 589)

During the analysis of our own and each other’s logs there was a strong sense of ‘reexperiencing’ our emotions and as such the logs were not ‘sterile’ records of past interaction to be picked apart and recombined as codes, but more akin to ‘material memories’ that evoked recollections and emotional remembrances of our feelings (Gilmore & Warren, 2002: 590)

I found this approach quite appealing and decided to replicate it in my context. While participating in the first skype chat I was trying to monitor my feelings and jot down any stronger occurrences of emotionality (a visual taster presented in my previous posting). Later I analysed the chatlog, trying to log my thoughts and feelings at the time alongside the actual chat contributions. After that, I analysed my comments and picked out any mention of emotions, either encircling them (if they were named explicitly) or extracting them from ‘in-between the lines’. I tried to restrict the set of emotions if possible so that it would be easier to count the occurrences of particular feelings. At the end, I counted all the mentions of any emotion, mentions of negative emotions, positive emotions and ambiguous emotions and mentions of particular emotions trying to establish which ones were the most frequent. See the attached PDF for more detail (this document is not public at the moment - email me for details).

Results

Any kind of emotion was noted on 34 occasions. Majority of them could be described as negative. The ones that occurred most frequently were: alienation/ annoyance, self-consciousness and embarrassment (PDF).

According to Wosnitza & Volet (2005),emotions can be analysed in regard to their direction, i.e. recipient and they have identified multiple sources emotions can be orientated towards: task, technology, performance, oneself, social environment and learning context. It’s curious that all of the emotions coded in my experiment appear to be socially oriented, mostly self-directed and occasionally other-directed (and here it seems ‘other’ stands for ‘fellow students’ rather than the tutor), so it seems the social aspect of the learning experience took over. Another odd thing is that the emotions I felt towards myself, the feelings of alienation, self-consciousness and embarrassment are closely related to the social environment. One could actually argue that for instance the prerequisite for feeling alienated is the presence of a group of which one does not feel part of. Feelings of self-consciousness and embarrassment might also have a tendency to arise in a social setting as they are linked to the issue of perception – how the person perceived themselves in relation to others, how they are perceived by others and how she/he feels about others perceiving her in a given/imagined way.

My rough conclusion in regard to my emotionality is that there seems to be a high degree of pre-occupation with that last issue, considerably higher than in face-to-face contexts.

Limitations

Of course, my ‘research’ is still very informal and its conclusions are far from being meaningful due to the following reasons:

• I have minimal experience in research
• Self-report tends to be subjective and therefore not very reliable
• The annotations were made with a few days’ delay, which might further decrease the reliability of the report
• The matter was treated in a cursory manner, without a deep analysis of how to decipher, code and group the emotions arising due to the interaction (I was just playing a researcher)
• Due to the above reasons, some important data might have got lost.

Nevertheless, the whole experiment was worthwhile and did bring some insight into my emotionality. It would be interesting to repeat this with greater care about detail and reliability as well as compare with what other chat participants felt at the time.

Now the question remains a teacher can do with such data (I am now distancing myself from it and trying to put myself in the tutor’s shoes). Could the course design be tweaked to include more social get-togethers in real time, more pairwork and groupwork to facilitate establishing closer working relationships between the students so that the comfort zone for a socially inept student is slowly extended?

Gilmore and Warren (2007) while summarising  the issues related to the virtual classroom point out that online interaction is often conceptualised in dichotomy terms of being either liberating or impoverishing, either enabling highly intimate relationships or ones that are impersonal and hostile. It puzzles me to see that I am experiencing both: the Skype experience and the blog experience. So after all, even if the student runs into difficulties in one online environment, it does not have to be blown out of proportion as long as they find their niche in another environment on the course where they can flourish and fulfil their potential.

Adult learning has been traditionally perceived as conceptual, rational and cognitive. Yet, adults undertaking studies do experience a range of emotions, both positive (enjoyment, pride, satisfaction) and negative (fear, anxiety, dread, shame). And these emotions are not necessarily a sign of insanity, as Kant would have diagnosed it (in his opinion, emotion being ‘an illness of the mind’) but essential ingredients of the learning process. Affective factors seem to play a crucial role when it comes to motivation or lack of it to pursue the subject matter of the course. Of course the view of learning and teaching now is much more holistic, trying to integrate cognition and emotion into the instructional design. However, isn’t that uncanny that expression of certain emotions might still be looked down on as a potential sign of weakness, hysteria, lack of balance?

This might be even further complicated in an online learning environment which on the surface appears to be emotionally impoverished – disembodied, devoid of non-verbal cues, blurring social and spatial boundaries, in other words ‘the ultimate disorienting dilemma (Campbell-Gibson, 2000 in O’Regan, 2003), too overwhelming and alienating to make subtle emotions explicit. And indeed students experience confusion and isolation when trying to navigate through the course site and establish contact with peers and tutors.

However, some of the rules regarding feelings must be renegotiated very soon and some users decide to disclose personal or even intimate details at some point of the course, often in the initial phase. For instance, I had one e-colleague divulging to me she'd lost a teenage son at the beginning of the second week of a 20-week course and I must say I was at a loss as to how I should react to that. The reasons for such sudden sincerity were obscure at the moment as well as the way she felt about the confession. I was in a bit of a shock and started wondering why such things happen.

Some researchers claim that what is regarded as an impoverishing aspect is actually very enriching. Lack of body language and visual cues introduces a greater degree of intimacy into online zones, often loosening users’ self-protection mechanisms and pushing them to disclose private details, including the greatest intimacies. Could that be likened to the anecdotal ‘stranger on the plane’ phenomenon? It is often considered that the body in fact exists in cyberspace – already in the late 90s Argyle and Shields (in Gilmore and Warren, 2007:593) stated that the technology mediates the body, making its expressive qualities apparent in different ways. After all, the term ‘virtuality’ comes from the Latin virtus, which stands for excellence, potency and efficacy (Online Etymology Dictionary). Although the computer-related usage dates back to the 1950s, perhaps the traces of the root meaning still resonate in this modern lexical expansion.

Another facilitating factor at play, especially in regard to tightly-knit communities, might be an increased sense of community (which might build quickly on closed courses geared to a small group of like-minded professionals like in the above described case), common cause and purpose and trust that  builds up over the course of time. I would be curious to know which mechanisms are in place when people decide whether and when they can start trusting other online participants on the course and go further in disclosing personal information, beyond the point of stating the obvious 'I like reading 19-cent historical novels and listen to trip hop in my free time'.

Another interesting aspect is how online users go about their decision regarding who they are going to open up to. Based on anecdotal evidence and mostly on my own experience, I can state that even on asynchronous courses, where there is no real-time communication built in, you can create a sense of your personality through the way you express yourself. How do we pick up on the vibes from other people online, how do we come up with this expectation: ‘Hmm, I think I can easily relate to this person but not the other. She/He has got something about them. I think we’re on the same wavelength.’ Does that require an extra plug-in in our emotional intelligence to be able to read people online or is it by pure fluke that I managed to pick out friendly souls, including my current partner, in the chaos of the online? As I said this is a sheer speculation based on anecdotal evidence from my own and my friends' lives.  I am aware of the other darker side of the net where people meddle with their identity to harm others.

This refers more to education in general, both face-to-face and online contexts and I must admit I got sidetracked while researching this topic but being a teacher myself and currently working in a sort of assessment-obsessed environment I couldn’t resist the temptation of writing more on assessment. So here you go:

ON WORKING TOGETHER (ONLINE)

There is no doubt that group work might be beneficial to learning - it is more student-centred, promotes more self-directed learning and social construction of knowledge. In more practical terms it helps students develop a range of important skills, including problem-solving, communication, leadership, collaboration and decision-making, all of them being important personal and professional assets sought by prospective employers. However, some groups prove to be dysfunctional, mostly due to the so-called ‘lone wolves’ or the phenomenon of social loafing.

Lone wolves are primarily interested in achieving their own goals while social loafing can be defined as little or lack of activity on the part of a group member who ‘shirks their obligations in the hope of benefitting from the work of others’ (Dommeyer, 2007:175). If the loafer or the free rider manages to slip unnoticed through the system they receive the same mark as the rest of their more industrious group members, which seems to be the most common reason for students’ concern, dissatisfaction and complaints (Aggarval & O’Brien, 2008; Kennedy, 2006).

Both these dysfunctionalities are likely to occur in face-to-face and online settings alike but perhaps they are more common in the latter due to lack of bodily presence and issues around community building? Besides Hron and Friedrich (2003) claim that due to its characteristics, online discussions (and I dare to speculate that by extension probably  any form of online communication) might pose a number of problems, among others difficulty maintaining topic coherence and understanding the context of a message, which could instigate a number of difficulties in group activities.

For instance, based on my own experience of setting up group discussions within a virtual learning environment (Moodle), students often contribute a single post and rest on their laurels, satisfied that they have completed the task. There is usually very little or no interactive value in the post, e.g. a question or a challenging comment. When I run the activity report I often find out there is one post per student – is that a discussion or rather a series of minipresentations – I ask myself.

Such eventualities should be borne in mind while creating the tasks and perhaps more guidance in ‘global learning methods for organising group work, behaviour rules for structuring dialogues, so-called co-operation scripts’ (Hron & Friedrich, 2003: 73) should be offered. Introducing peer evaluations during the process of group work or final peer assessment could also reduce the incidence of loafing (Aggarval & O’Brien, 2008; Pond et al, 2007).

ON PEER ASSESSMENT (ONLINE)

This  idea of peer assessment, as you remarked in your comment, Clara, is however both compelling and problematic.

To start with, there are obvious benefits to introducing peer assessment, such as increased motivation, engagement and accountability (Falchikov, 2005). To illustrate this, in a piece of research carried out by Bouchoucha & Woznak (2010) the engagement and interaction in an online group discussion increased upon introducing peer assessment from 1.4 to 3.6 posts per person in a single discussion. Other potential advantages include facilitation of deeper understanding of the subject matter and the student’s own achievement (Bloxham & Boyd, 2007).

Besides, in a situation where the group project entails other communication media, beyond the tutor’s control, let’s say emails, conversations on the phone or skype, chat or texts, the tutor is not really in the position to gain a good insight into the group dynamics and fabric and thus cannot make a fair judgement. The only people who are capable of assessing their own and others’ relative contributions are the students themselves (Race, 2001) but the question arises whether they are able to do so fairly and reliably.

ON PROBLEMS RELATED TO PEER ASSESSMENT

According to the reading I did on the subject, it seems there is some discrepancy in the views in that respect from quite favourable findings that students grade accurately and consistently (Marcoulides & Simkin, 1995), through stating that they mark with a slight bias to over-mark (Boud & Holmes, 1995) or under-mark (Hamer et al, 2009), to discovering that the correlation between the students’ and tutors’ marks tends to be restricted to a holistic judgement, based on well-understood criteria (Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000). I guess these might be even more conflicting if a more thorough comparison is carried out across departments and faculties with their different grading scales, approaches and the nature of their typical assignments. If you think further of interdisciplinary degrees or post-grad degrees with students from different backgrounds, humanities and sciences, and you add online on top of that, the issue might get even more muddled (illustrated by your comment).

ON POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Ways of addressing the problem include involving students in the process of creating the peer assessment instrument. For example, they could select from a pre-prepared bank of questions or criteria using various scoring scales (Nicol & Milligan, 2006); alternatively they could even formulate the criteria themselves. Theoretically, in such a situation, they should be able to understand them inside out and allocate a fair mark. However, even this might be problematic as students might have varying notions as to what particular terms stand for or how achieving a given criterion translates into a particular grade. This might result in the students either over or under-marking. Clarity of the rubrics might be tested by means of a calibration process prior to launching the group project. In order to further reduce this stringency or leniency effect, each student could be assessed by all the other group members (multiple peer assessment) and the assessors could be encouraged to write more detailed comments to justify their scoring.

Hmm, it all sounds ideal but I guess in terms of preparation (creating criteria, running assessment trials) as well as implementation (students filling in the assessment forms and tutors reading them) might prove time-consuming and thus adding to the workload of everybody in question. It is also unclear to what extent the peers’ mark should influence the final grade and how the calculation should be performed.

I’d be quite interested in doing more about this as the issues of peer/self-review and assessment have been on my mind for some time now. Basically, I’d like to encourage more reflection on part of my students, deeper thinking on their performance, goals, abilities and skills. The issue of formative peer assessment springs to mind too (as suggested in the article by Aggorval and O’Brien (2009) it is multiple peer evaluations that best prevent social loafing). Something perhaps to ponder on the assessment module in the future?

Notes from Week 3 Readings

Both Malone papers provide excellent basic theories of Games Based Learning. Although written some thirty years ago, the principles remain the same for digital games today. This post is a summary of the mainpoints.

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1980)

• In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness

• Extrinsic fantasies depend on whether or not the skill is used correctly (see diagram below)
• Intrinsic fantasies- not only does that fantasy depend on the skill, but the skill also depends on the fantasy(see diagram below)

Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1981) 

This paper largely focusses on what makes computer games fun (intrinsic motivation) and the sysems behind the game.

• Game- Darts: diesigned to teach elementary students about fractions
• 8 differnet versions of the game to find out which features made the game enjoyable.

• Boys liked the fantasy of arrows popping ballons and girls appeared to dislike this fantasy
• Fantasies can be important in creating intrinsically motivating enviroments
• Implications for designing enjoyable user interface- the appeal of computer systems based on three categories: challenge, fantasy and curiosity (see below)

This post continues a theme from the second entry: Remember the Human

One of the stories from week one described a situation in which a wheelchair user participated in an online course – an example of inclusion on a logistical level where online creates a convenient and easily accessible environment for learners with disabilities. However, as I mentioned in the previous posting, online might offer inclusion in other respects too. In that particular case the disabled student chose to keep their health condition secret. That could have been dictated by many motives, for instance their unwillingness to manifest their otherness and so not to get ‘preferential’ treatment (being it true or fake sympathy or even harassment – hence inverted commas – or a degree of favouritism in assessment – ‘She is scraping through but since she is disabled and so making an extra effort to continue her education, let’s reward her with a higher mark) or the fact that they thought it was irrelevant in the given circumstances. Whatever the reason, the person did not experience any exclusion which could have otherwise occurred, became an integral part of the group and only at the in an off-hand remark revealed the actual state of things.

Clara, you pointed out in your comment that this might be just illusion of receiving equal treatment and so the need to hide a part of oneself might be considered exclusionary. I agree you can’t be certain whether the environment is inclusive or exclusive unless you test the waters by simply revealing who you really are and the others’ gut reaction might provide the proof of the pudding (I’m not sure though what counts as a gut reaction online and how you measure it!) However, I think it all comes down to how the ‘other’ person perceives themselves. If the self-perception is linked with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, then the main reason for withholding the truth might be fear and thus could count as exclusionary. If there is acceptance of the condition in the person and they simply opt out because they think it’s their private matter and it’s not pertinent to the course (but if asked, they would admit it), then it’s more inclusive. I think what I wanted to stress in my previous post is that the online might offer more control over private information to learners with disabilities or belonging to minorities (sexual, racial, cultural, religious) who could be subjected to discriminatory behaviour and simply denied access to the group on the grounds that they are transsexual, a Gypsy, an orthodox Muslim or Palestinian. They identify themselves to others, thus shaping the way the others can interpret them (‘if the [visual] cues are not discussed, pragmatically they do not “exist;” textualisation constitutes “reality”’ [Lai & Ball, 2004: 24]). Thanks to that they can promote themselves as individuals without being unjustly associated with  collective stereotypes that every Palestinian is a terrorist.

I think the idea of inclusion and exclusion might have some connection with how the participant sees themselves, especially in relation to other people. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs the needs of love/belonging (feeling of acceptance  by the community)  and esteem (being valued and respected by others) constitute two of the 4 basic deficiency needs, coming right after physiological and safety belonging needs. If these needs are not satisfied, a person might experience feelings of social anxiety and develop notions of low self-esteem and inferiority, which in extreme cases might lead to depression.

Levy (1998:34) pointed out that the boundaries between the private and the public blur online. Once I log into the course VLE, the classroom and my own cosy room penetrate each other. For this reason, it is often claimed that shy, less confident students often feel empowered by the online medium and contribute more when seated within their comfort zone than in an actual face-to-face classroom ([Faculty Focus, 2010] but I need to find more references). By more active participation they might start blossoming, gelling with the rest of the group,  building relationships and gaining respect of the others, thus satisfying their needs of belonging, a certain sign of online being inclusive.

However, and this is me thinking aloud, it might also happen that some hypersensitive and more vulnerable individuals might experience enhanced insecurity and anxiety, and in their fear of losing face, they might post nothing or very little to the forum. As it becomes increasingly more difficult to contribute, they might fade into oblivion (especially on big courses, self-study courses, or courses where participation is not part of assessment). In such a situation in order defend themselves and to pre-empt any imagined rejection they might project feelings of dislike, or even hostility onto their actually neutral coursemates. By doing so they exclude themselves from the group, in extreme cases spiraling downwards to depression.

Online experiences can shape the way we perceive ourselves, can’t they? An example (although this is personal it’s just an observation, I was just analyzing my thoughts and feelings): I posted my introduction to the forum, nothing fancy but that’s me (or how I see myself), no frills, straightforward. No response from anybody and a thought creeps into my mind: quite pejorative self-assessment fed by feelings of hurt, exaggerated by other circumstances having nothing to do with the course. A moment of reflection and I slowly regain the grasp of the reality (accompanied, however, by a shrug of shoulders). Then somebody replied, so far it seems the only fellow student I established some communication with. I don’t feel part of the group … Self-exclusion but I’m ok with it. How many students do a similar thing, how many students do it and are ok? How many do it and suffer in silence? And what should a tutor do? Fish them out and save (but the course is not a psychotherapy session), reason with them (it’s good for their learning to participate and it strengthens the fabric of the course and network) or maybe  leave them in peace (they are adults after all and so should know themselves what’s best, they are responsible for their actions).

I have tried to put some sense into understanding where the discussion of ‘digital natives’ vs. ‘digital immigrants’ stems from. And I don’t mean the basic definition that the former – in the most simplistic terms – are those growing up surrounded by technology and the internet.

What I mean is more concerned with why the notion was coined in the first place. I seem to have found part of the answer in Dworschak’s article.

“The example of the dot shows how normal the Internet has become, and debunks the idea that it is a special world in which special things happen. Media are used by the masses if they have some relevance to everyday life, (…) and they are used for aims that people already had anyway.”

This could suggest that before advanced information and communication technology permanently present in our lives became the omnipresent reality, such notion was revered and dreamt of by the biggest brains on the planet. It was the time when possible uses of the internet and likely improvements to every man’s life where almost limitless. It would seem that all too often, however, people tend to treat the internet simply as a different (more convenient, perhaps) way of performing the tasks they would do otherwise offline.

All in all, the term ‘digital natives’ seems valid and worthy of in-depth research during the current transition period. The transition being from no or little technology present in our lives to the stage where technology permeates our lives to the extent when it is hard to imagine living without it, or when lives start to depend on it.

(I wonder what term in the future the then-ubiquitous digital natives will give to the technologically impaired oldies’ minorities…)

The digital natives of the future such as the 20-month old Clementine:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdjjhf_when-a-baby-discovers-the-ipad_tech

“the thing about the online discussion is freedom of speech and everyone has the right to have their own opinion(…)”

Meeh, freedom of speech in this case has nothing to do with what’s happened here. Especially mentioning the fact of an ‘online discussion’ doesn’t change the simple fact of absolutely uncalled for verbal aggression on the Flamer’s part.

Surely, we get used to the idea of hiding behind a safe veil of the internet and our physical remoteness from the first time we use the web to chat, IM, give opinions, criticize. We are seduced to think we are invincible every time we vent our anger at someone we only acknowledge as a virtual, not physical being. Just like in a game.

It is sometimes easy to forget that the person sitting on the other side of the screen is exactly like me, with feelings and aspirations, etc.

I am thinking of an allusion to a game, more than that, I am thinking specifically of the latest GTA games or any of the Sims game. You meet other virtual beings and play by imitating real life to a certain extent. But you come to a point when you want to try something you’d never try in your life: set new boundaries, break the game’s laws, drive on the wrong side of the road, abuse a pedestrian, not feed your dog, etc. And when you are tired you switch off the game or restart it.

Adding to certain valid points on the discussion board, I am also thinking that Louise’s (the tutor’s) reaction was really over-the-top. Honestly, since she is well able to deal with exactly the same situation face-to-face, why now shouldn’t she just say calmly sth like “I’m sorry but this really is your task to find out. I can’t help you anymore.” Job done. bob's your uncle. No hard feelings.

Leaving the tutor's reaction aside, the likely truth is that once such ‘advice’ is given to a student, such ‘invitations’ for help will never cease...