Welcome to my (restyled) website
Find out more about my Technology-Enhanced Learning research and practice. I have been working at different universities, many years as a full professor of digital educational media at the Open University of the Netherlands. On this website 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.
* My apologies in advance for any malfunctioning of the provisional chatbot below that I installed for testing purposes.
Featured article on Bayesian statistics
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 highly relevant as it compares the classical 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.
Free download
Quick biography
Over the years I ‘ve had the 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
• Learning media research: both qualitative and quantitative methods, in particular research into education, teaching and learning, ranging from didactic media design, innovation strategies and serious gaming to machine learning, adaptive systems, software reuse and research methodologies as such.
• 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)
• Voluntary work
Various roles in local associations and foundations, e.g. chairman, webmaster, PR-officer, secretary and treasurer