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A question that has been bubbling away since the early days of the world wide web has been thrown into the open by the Facebook scandal. Who owns our data?

For many years the question has been asked by idealists and internet pioneers. Facebook’s poor decisions have thrown it into the open. The implicit transaction - I give you my data in return for access - is now under explicit scrutiny.

Since the financial crisis, there has been a steady drip of gloomy news on UK labour productivity. Most recently an encouraging rise was overshadowed by better performance in the Eurozone, US and Japan. But why should we care? The national debate concentrates on national actions: improving transport links, extending mobile coverage, or changes to regulation to increase access to capital or foster competition. These are not levers most of us can pull in our jobs and our organisations.

How many roads does a man walk down? The short answer is 4.715 x 10^284, if he’s a student of our Excel course. A more useful answer is: eLearning user journeys can be non-linear. This is usually a good thing – students can access training in a pattern that suits them, personalising not just the pace of training but also its emphasis and direction in a way that would be unaffordable with conventional, face-to-face training. But the degrees of freedom available to a student make it difficult to control or even understand the user experience.

Introducing the Filter

This post is a quick introduction to the Filter – the gizmo at the heart of our site that is the means by which we select course content appropriate for you (or for each of your staff).