Below you will find links to some of my own work as well as other relevant documents.
If you would like clarification on any of the material provided or if you would like to see more samples, please just email.
A bespoke 8000+ line Perl script I created which compiles documents from an LMS (e.g. Schoology) into a single PDF and also creates document statistics and does various work with vocabulary.
A YouTube link which details what the tool can do is available here.
First 1000 lines of the script are available here.
Winner of the 'Impact and Innovation' award 2019 from ITI Istanbul.
When we made a single PDF document per course available to students, it dramatically reduced our departmental photocopying.
Inputs: A single IMSCC file which is exported from your LMS. This archive can contain many hundreds or even thousands of individual files (Word documents, images, PDFs, audio/video files. XML quiz files, etc.)
Outputs:
1) A single PDF file with all Word files from the archive in it. Complete with an automatically-generated table of contents and complete with page numbers. Files in the booklet are in the order in which they appear on your LMS.
2) A locally-created directory structure of the archive files and its directories.
3) An excel overview spreadsheet which gives document statistics for each document in the archive.
4) For each Word document (i.e. .docx file) , it computes the Flesch, Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog readability scores. (See the footer here)
5) For each Word document, it extracts various document statistics such as: # words; # paragraphs; # pages; last modified date; last modified user; created date; created by user.
6) For each Word document, it spell checks and grammar checks the document and stores the output in a custom created XLSX spreadsheet. (Uses LanguageTool)
7) For each Word document, it reports the academic collocations (using Pearson's Academic Collocations List) in the document, the number of times they occur and their location in the document. (Also see #9).
8) For each Word document, it reports NGSL, NAWL and (attempts to report CEFR) vocabulary statistics.
8) For each Word document, it reports n-gram statistics (up to a depth of 4).
9) For each Word document, it can automatically highlight vocabulary in the text. E.g. academic collocations. See this image before markup and this image after markup.
10) It flags any duplicated files by using the file's MD5 hash.
11) It flags any large files in the archive. What is 'large' is configurable.
This is a 14-hour elective course which is designed primarily for computer science students to help get them ready for their faculty studies. The course is divided into two halves: essential vocabulary and key concepts. The key concepts are modelled on the Cambridge IGCSE Computer Science course at Key Stage 4.
The asynchronous video lessons are viewable on my YouTube playlist here
The handbook is available here.
The answer key is available here
A 14-hour elective primarily for computer engineering students.
This elective requires students to connect to a database, hosted on a university server, and interrogate it to try to get answers to questions I pose to them. E.g. "How many French films are on rent now?"
The database is based on the MySQL open source sample database (sakila).
The database schema is available here
An example of tasks for students is available here.
This elective is valuable as - through a task-based approach - it allows students to learn about databases through using databases. Elements such as data normalisation and primary/foreign key relationships are taught inductively without any heavy theoretical input sessions.
The course has 5 levels. Each level takes around 2 hours to complete.
Level 1: Academy Ninja. By the end of this unit, learners will be better able to aggregate simple data; use common functions such as avg(), sum(), count() as well as start using NULL and NOT NULL.
Level 2: Genin. By the end of this unit, learners will be better able to join two or more tables and start using 'group by'
Level 3: Chunin. By the end of this unit, learners will be better able to use multi-parameter WHERE clauses, join as many as six tables and start using more complex functions such as having() and now().
Level 4: ANBU. By the end of this unit, learners will be better able to join to the same table.
Level 5: Jonin. By the end of this unit, learners will be better able to use IN and NOT IN
The course concludes with a summative exam hosted on the LMS. Half the answers are self-marking.
Instead of annotating assignment documents that students send - which is what most of my colleagues to - I use YouTube to give feedback to students.
I make walkthrough videos available for students to access. E.g. Here.
Using YouTube's 'chapters' feature is also useful here.
Studies suggest that students benefit more from this sort of walkthrough than via bland document annotation.
My students greatly appreciate this method of feedback. I also find that it saves me time.
Focus: For learners to be better able to listen intensively and order events. To identify specific information.
Level: Late B1/Early B2
The handout.
The video.
The answer key.
Focus: For learners to be better able to persuade someone to do what they want.
Level: Early B2
The handout.
The audio.
The answer key.
A study into the use of linguistic structures used inter-gender and intra-gender in the TV show Friends
https://sites.google.com/site/friendstvcorpus/
The data used and the thesis is available for download on the site. Twice cited.
The dataset I created is used here https://github.com/manumathewthomas/Chat-with-Joey#Dataset
I created and am the primary contact for our 'Team Listening' branded YouTube channel.
This is a channel which I set up to aid autonomous asynchronous learning at the height of the COVID-19 crisis.
The channel can be found here
I used Adobe Character Animator to add characters to this video and to this video
I wrote a short (±650 line) Perl script which very quickly creates all exam day invigilation sheets for all courses and all sections.
This now does, in less than 10 seconds, what used to take an office administrator a whole day to do. My solution is also void of any human errors.
Sample output is available here
A booklet I authored which was given to students to allow them to decide which electives they want to opt for in the following term.
Available here
This was made using Audacity, Final Cut Pro and Motion (on Mac)
Available here
This was made using Final Cut Pro and Motion (on Mac)
Available here