Dear Reader,

I have had a really productive week and with the end of term in my university nearly upon us, I am going to have more time to do the things that I always wanted to do. I will explain more about my plans for the summer later in this and future newsletters. For this week, here are the things I want to reflect on:

1. Technical Reflections: Comprehensive Ductile Damage
2. Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: Conference Plans for the summer
3. Quote for the week: University defined

Before we get into the actual reflections, please quickly let me know your perspective of these newsletters. I am trying to better gauge the experience of my reading audience.

Thank you and now lets get into this week's newsletter reflections.

Technical Reflections

Comprehensive Insight into Ductile Damage

Ductile damage is one of those types of damage that everybody seems to be able to model in ABAQUS. A quick search about damage of metals in YouTube, you will see quite a lot of videos on ductile damage. My friend, Dr Ronald Wagner's videos on his YouTube channel about ductile damage, is dominating this keyword and I have learnt a lot from his videos.

I was reading through a comment section of another video about ductile damage and though it was a fantastic video, a comment on that video stated that the commenter would want to better understand the meaning of the parameters in the model. Apart from maybe Ronald, and the host of Engineering Software YouTube channel, most videos on ductile damage just gloss over this. They offer you some parameters to put into the model without justifying how or why those parameters are the best.

So, as I reviewed these videos and also the comments on some of them, I thought there is a gap for me here to make a well informed video about ductile damage. The key vision of my CM Videos YouTube channel is to help subscribers and viewers create effective computational modelling solutions. The adjective I always keep on top of my mind when I make these videos is the word effective. Part of addressing this involves making videos that viewers would actually learn something from, understand the mechanics and theory underpining the videos and also do so relatively effortlessly.

So, this week I published a video on my CMVideos YouTube channel which I titled: This is the MOST comprehensive video about ductile damage. Tongue in cheek, one would say there is something about the clickbaitiness of the titling, but really the plan is to create a video where the insights in the video can be as comprehensive as possible. If you are yet to see the video, then please check the video link below and do let me know what you think about the video - if there is anything I have missed or should add.

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I believe the vision I had about the video was achieved as it quickly became my most watched video in the last week. In 7 days, it has been viewed 606 times which far exceeds the average of about 150 views within the first week of my newly published videos. Also, some of the comments within the first two days of the video are as follows:

I will continue to explore other aspects of this subject with a view to publishing more videos on this topic. I keep thinking about doing the same for polymeric systems or composites (high temperature, thermoplastic ones), but do let know if you have any thoughts about this.

Behind the Scenes at CM Videos

Conference plans for the Summer

I have now finished my lectures for this academic year and also marked all my scripts, collated the results and next stage is for the Progression Award Board (PAB) sit. The PAB is the panel that sits and awards final degree classifications to students. After that, then the summer holiday begins and during this period I tend to have more time to work on my research both technical and pedagogic research. I also use this period to work on projects that I have kept in the cooler for so long.

This summer, which ends for me at the end of August, here is my conference speaking plans.

Speak at two conferences: I have three conferences where I am going to be speaking about my pedagogic research. If you do not know, pedagogic research is becoming really popular in higher education. It is all about a systematic study of the principles, practices and challenges facing teaching, learning and assessment. This is particularly relevant as we live in a Generative-AI-disrupted and mediated higher education. So, carrying research around these would be really important. Here are a list of the conferences and their details:

1. "AI and education" - Dr Michael Okereke. I will be speaking at the Annual Faculty of Engineering and Science Research and Knowledge Exchange Symposium, 2004 holding at Stockwell street, University of Greenwich, London on 25th June, 2024
2. Fostering Learning beyond University: A Case study of a STEM academic's Journey on YouTube and LinkedIn - Dr Michael Okereke. I will be speaking at Learning and Teaching Conference 2024 hold at Pilkington Building, Medway Campus, University of Greenwich, on 26th June 2024.
3. The YouTuber Educator: Why every academic should teach online! - Dr Michael Okereke. I will be speaking at the AdvanceHE's Teaching and Learning Conference 2024 holding at Nottingham Trent University City Campus on 2-4 July 2024

I will let you know how they go, and offer insights on my learnings from these speaking opportunities.

Quote for the Week

University defined

I attended a summit this week on how to undertake pedagogical research and we had this author - Prof Lin Norton - come to speak to us about her work around Active Research. She gave a quote in her talk and this is the basis for my quote for the week. It goes thus:

University is indeed a place of learning, teaching and assessment but beyond that facade is often a quite complex relationship of intrigue, conspiracy, motivation and other issues that encourage and often hinder the ability of the players in such space to adequately achieve the teaching, learning and assessment objectives.

As an Associate Professor within a UK university, the above quote does resonate with me, not from a negative point of view vis a vis the intrigue and conspiracy but more so on the aspects of getting to grips with a whole range of human issues. If you are to succeed in higher education, there is a complex interplay of issues both human and operational which you must address and master. It is on the above premise that the promise for undertaking research about these human issues and how they affect the ability of students to learn become important hence the insistence of pedagogic research.

For me who makes YouTube videos and use same to teach a global audience of learners, I have a quite different lens of assessment of the interplay of human issues, students engagement and attribution to university in such a learning space. For example, what benefit does a university draw from an academic like myself teaching a global audience of learners where these learners are not paying tuition fees to the university? Is this to be encouraged beyond the reputational positives it gives me and the university as a consequence? If finances dictates all that we do, and in the end, a university is a business, how would a university view such ventures that do not necessarily bring money to the coffers of the institution?

It is these often rhetorical questions that necessitate Kember to define university as a quite complex place and one must get to grips with these human issues. Therefore, it remains the objective to find a way of charting a path to succeed within the institution whilst being true to ones calling and vision for teaching, learning and assessment.

Let me know what your view is of a university! How do you define it? Do you agree with Kember about the hives of instrigue and conspiracy and the resultant getting to grips with a whole range of human issues? I found the quote fascinating and thought I could reflect more indepth about it this week.