Find out more about my Technology Enhanced Learning research and practice. You will find preprints of my publications, video tutorials, and free downloads of my awarded book The Digital Turn, which analyses how the ever-growing flood of digital media affects our understanding of the world.
Westera, W. (2021). Comparing Bayesian Statistics and Frequentist Statistics in Serious Games Research. International Journal of Serious Games, 8(1), 27-44.
This is one of my favourite articles and it is also highly relevant as it compares the statistical methods that are commonly used in learning research and the wider social sciences with so-called Bayesian statistical approaches. To some extent the findings are shocking, since the traditional approaches cannot meet the standards set by Bayesian statistics. Therefore, I would urge researchers (and university lecturers as well) to immediately abandon classical statistics and adopt the superior Bayesian alternative.
I have been working as a full professor of digital media at the Open University of the Netherlands. Here I had to opportunity to combine my knowledge from diverse domains:
• Science: a PhD in physics and mathematics from Utrecht University
• Teaching: highest teaching qualification level in physics, mathematics and astronomy; I have worked as a teacher/lecturer in high school, at college level and at university level
• Media creation: trained by the BBC in 1984; creator of dozens of TV programs, documentaries, trainingprogrammes, educational simulations and serious games
• Writing: a variety of books, blogs and scientific publications
• Presenting: numerous keynote presentations
• Programming: in particular computational models for scientific simulation
• Management: I have been leading projects, research programmes, innovation units, and research consortia (e.g. the RAGE project, which is the serious gaming H-2020 flagship project on serious gaming)
• Governance: board member of various national and international forums/bodies (Dutch Games Association, CAWO, CRWO, RAGE Foundation, Cycling HB)
• Social science research: both qualitative and quantitative methods, in particular research into education, teaching and learning (and a lot of criticism on verification-oriented research and common sloppiness in methodologies).