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by Stephen Downes
Dec 16, 2016
On Teaching Critical Thinking
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Dec 15, 2016
As someone who was teaching critical thinking for a living
well before anyone thought to call it a '21st century
skill' it bothers me to no end to read articles like this
arguing that we should not be teaching critical thinking in
schools. It feels to me that the critics of critical
thinking do not understand what critical thinking is, nor
why we would teach it.
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Beyond Institutions Personal Learning in a Networked World
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Dec 11, 2016
This article looks at the needs and demands of people
seeking learning with the models and designs offered by
traditional institutions, and in the spirit of reclaiming
learning describe a new network-based system of education
with the learner managing his or her education. It
questions the employment of models to design learning
systems or the learning process, and recommends instead
that learning be developed on a case-by-case basis by the
learners themselves as they work within a network of
learning resources within a personal learning environment.
Learning design on this model resembles a murmuration,
shaping and reshaping itself in a self-organizing manner.
The author recommends that students self-organize by
‘reclaiming learning’, that is, developing
their own learning systems and working outside traditional
institutions of learning.
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The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses
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Dec 11, 2016
In this short contribution I would like to address the
question of assessing the quality of massive open online
courses. The assessment of the quality of anything is
fraught with difficulties, depending as it does on some
commonly understood account of what would count as a good
example of the thing, what factors constitute success, and
how that success against that standard is to be measured.
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European MOOC model
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As the article notes, Europe has embraced the MOOC and is
creating its own distinct flavour (one that I would say is
closer to the original MOOCs than the commercial American
products). This article summarizes that movement with
reference to numerous resources, including two surveys
of the HOME project
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(Higher education Online: MOOCs the European way), the
2015 JRC-IPTS survey
http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC99959/reqno_jrc99959.pdf on
open education in Europe, and the Porto Declaration on
European MOOCs
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signed by more than 70 organizations.
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Mwabu and Onyx Connect have joined forces to locally
produce the Mwabu e-learning tablet.
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Onyx Connect http://onyx-international.co.za/ is a
South African startup with backing
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from Google. Mwabu's
Linkhead office is in
Cambridge, UK, with a branch office near Durban. "Mwabu and
Onyx Connect have joined forces to locally produce the
Mwabu e-learning tablet. The partnership will allow Mwabu
to locally produce e-learning tablets which will enable
easy distribution of their e-learning content." It makes
sense in all sorts of ways to manuacture them locally. The
core technology (eg., "circuit-board designs and raw
components") will be imported from China.
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Online Course Quality: What do Nontraditional Students
Value?
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One reason I'm linking to this item is that it focuses on
nontraditional students, which makes it a welcome relief
from most similar work (it would be even better if it
extended to non-students, but that may be asking a bit too
much). The nontraditional students value about what you
might expect: clear instructions on how to get started,
clear assessment criteria, and access to technical support
if something goes wrong. I would like to have known what
traditional students favour more, but beyond saying they
don't like the start-of-course introductions, the article
doesn't really address that.
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Why the Coming Jobs Crisis Is Bigger Than You Think
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This has come up in other discussions as well. "No matter
which political party holds the White House or Congress,
over the next 25 years, 47% of jobs will likely be
eliminated by technology and globalization." Well then,
won't new jobs replace the ones we lose? Maybe not. "What
would our society be like with 25%, 30% or 35%
unemployment?" asks venture capitalist Art Bilger. I think
we can imagine, since it's a reality faced in various
nations around the world today. But it raises the question:
what should we be training our children and youth of today
for? Job training seems so irrelevant in a world without
jobs.
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Designing bots
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What this makes me wonder is what the best way to
think is when creating bots. Consider this: "A
designer who thinks in systems will get to know their
users’ problems better and will be able to see the
point where the bot technology won't be able to solve
problems anymore." OK, fair enough. So thinking in
systems is one way to approach bot design. But is it the
best way? What would the alternatives be? I tend to think
in terms of spaces and affordances, not systems. I think of
open-ended possibilities, not ways of reaching objectives.
But is that appropriate to a bot? I'm not sure, but we need
to ask the question. As Desiree Garcia says, "I think
there's a need to have a point of view, to note the ways we
may be setting precedent for product design throughout the
industry, and to know how to articulate it inside our
multidisciplinary teams and throughout the broader design
community."
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What Matters Now: A New Compact for Teaching and Learning
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The National Commission on Teaching & America’s
Future (NCTAF) has released an update (24 page PDF
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on its original report released 20 years ago. "We have
squeezed all we can out of the hard rind of econo-metric
formulas," they write. "Now it is time to activate the
human factor - the motivation and intelligence of students
and educators - to reorganize schools around what drives
learning." I'm not sure there was any juice in that
particular rind to begin with. But the turn is a welcome
one. So if for the most part their focus on teachers and
teaching - not the traditional people and roles, but a
redefined set of activities and relationships between them
and the students and the community. The report also appears
to recognize that there are many other system-wide factors
to consider - a shift in demographics in the U.S., where a
majority of students are now people of colour, and the
gripping reality of poverty, where 50 percent of students
qualify for free or subsidized lunches. The report came out
in August but SmartBrief revisited it this week
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How to Develop a Mentor Program for Millennial Employees
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A large organization I know launched a mentor program for
new employees by asking for volunteers, matching them with
partners, then leaving them to do whatever. That's a
program that's ineffective by design. People aren't born
being mentors; it's a skill that needs to be honed over
time through learning and development. This article is
hardly the last word on the subject, but it's a start.
Mentors need to know why they're doing it, have some sense
of what they should be doing while they're doing it, and be
able to monitor and track results. People acting as mentors
should have ongoing support and feedback. Related:
Mentoring's promise and limits
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the Atlantic..
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The 12 Apps of Christmas 2016
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It's a fun thing, though shouldn't it be called the 12 apps
of the holiday season? #jk "This short free course is
for anyone who is interested in mobile learning,
specifically the potential mobile apps hold for learning
and teaching. Over 12 consecutive weekdays, starting
Dec 1st, take the time to read 12 short case studies
written by educators from Ireland, the UK and America, and
be inspired by the work that they are doing."
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Tap into These 5 Tips for Mobile Learning
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These five tips are practical and, according to the
article, effective. It was the first tip that drew me in:
find out what devices students are actually using and align
support accordingly. In this case, the trend was toward
Apple. But it won't always be - you have to check. The
second tip was also a winner: teach not just for
consumption but also for curation. And the mechanism
suggested was a good one: have the class go out and take
pictures of injustice, then (as a group) select the one
they want to use. The quality goes down a bit from there
but it's still worth reading all three pages.
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Forgetting is Easy But So Is Reinforcement
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One of the reasons I'm enthusiastic about practice and
engagement in a discipline is that these provide natural
environments for the reinforcement of learning. The need
for reinforcement - or as it's sometimes
called, spaced learning
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- is well documented. As Ryan Eudy says, "There are many
good psychological theories about what is conducive to
remembering. In a nutshell, these theories agree that
information is not so much 'stored' and 'retrieved' in the
brain as it is connected, rehearsed, and reconstructed."
Yet it is often overlooked in real learning and development
situations. There are ways to address that, but first
managers have to get past the 'brain as bookshelf' model of
learning. Related: Duolingo on How We Learn
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Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
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Understanding this mindset is key to understanding a lot of
what happens in the mythologizing of learning, writes
Bonnie Stewart: @socialism never took root in America
because the poor see themselves not as an exploited
proletariat but temporarily embarrassed
millionaires.” The idea is that people don't address
underlying socio-economic causes of poverty because they
don't see themselves as poor. "I’m particularly
interested in how we fight the strange cocktail of
victimization and entitlement that hate leeches onto and
deploys in its service," she writes. "I’m interested
in how media and social media are part of the problem, and
what we do about it
https://hapgood.us/2016/11/17/scanning-the-facebook-feed-as-an-evidence-shopping-experience/."
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Connectivism: A Learning Theory for Today’s Academic
Advising
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This isn't exactly the Connectivism I know, but the
application is interesting. Zack Underwood repositions
connectivism as a means of integrating past knowledge with
new knowledge, thus addressing some issues in academic
advising.
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Why Faculty Still Don’t Want to Teach Online
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Online learning is a lot more convenient for students,
offers potential cost savings for institutions and public
education systems, and often offers a superior learning
experience thanks to the affordances learning technology
offers. Yet one of the major roadblocks to implementing
online learning, one of the major roadblocks to all the
socio-economic benefits more equitable access to higher
education offers, are the professors themselves. And the
resistors are - quite frankly - quacks. As the story notes,
"professors with the deepest resistance are those with the
least familiarity with digital instruction," and "solid
research over many years has failed to support the
overwhelming negative attitudes that most faculty members
hold toward virtual learning." If I did the same thing, the
academics would be all over my case. But because they're
professors.... ooo-ooo-ooooooo
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FutureLearn and Deakin University the first to offer range
of degrees delivered entirely on a MOOC platform
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The title above is of course the title the FutureLearn used
on its press release (as is my custom, my post titles
follow the article titles). But they should be advised that
something is a MOOC only if it is open. And these programs
are definitely not open - "Students will enrol for free in
a two-week ‘taster’ course. If they decide to
continue and become a degree student they will pay
£1,500 or AUD $2,600 for the equivalent of one
university subject. Each of these subjects will be made up
of a program of five short FutureLearn courses." It doesn't
say how many programs make up a degree, but never mind.
These courses are expensive. And it's not a MOOC platform
any more if you lock it up and charge people their
life savings for admission.
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Innovate Learning Review
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I just got a launch announcement for this zine in my email,
and the logo says it's still in beta, so I'm assuming the
sparse population of articles in the website will begin to
fill out a bit. The purpose of ILR is to provide "a curated
hub of the latest insight into the issues, practices,
research, ideas, discussion, and resources from innovative
learning professionals around the world." According to the
blurb it is "original as well as aggregated and curated in
content, crowdsourced with content recommendations [and]
interactive so content and dialogue flows both ways." So
we'll see. It's sponsored by AACE and SITE, and fronts
their publication portal LearnTechLib
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Strategic Plan 2016-18
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eCampus Ontario has just released its strategic plan for
2016-28 (21 page PDF
Link.
It will be guided by four overall goals: enhance the
student learning experience, support faculty development,
enhance member capacity and participation, and build
eCampusOntario’s organizational capacity. hard to
argue with those. What I found interesting in the document
was the description of what students want. It's great that
they actually asked them. 90% "would choose online delivery
over in class because it "allows me to have control over
the time and place I learn."
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Internet Comments Are Awful. Could They Be Awesome?
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This article looks at some of the work in the online
comment space (also known as the Great Cesspool of the
Internet) offering "a mixture of technical innovation and
social incentives could make online comments
readable—and even engaging." For example, Civil
Link- "The online equivalent of
taking ten deep breaths before picking a fight." Or the
Coral Project Linkwhich has a tool
called Ask for embeddable comments and feedback, as
supporting tools called Talk and Trust. Or the Engaging
News Project Linkwhich has an
embeddable quiz widget
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Or of course Disqus Linkwhich is used here
at OLDaily. Of course, these are all aimed at publishers,
and not really suitable for blogs or personal publications.
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Ria #37: Dr. Jamison Fargo On Working With A National
Research Center
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In this episode, Jamison shares about his experience as a
researcher with the National Center on Homelessness Among
Veterans and his work as a biostatistician.
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Are you ready for blended learning?
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The key question to emerge from Tony Bates's review of a
survey on learning technology in universities: "What
happens when we go to 85% or more of the teaching being
blended? The current learning technology support model just
won’t be able to handle this expansion, certainly not
at the rate that it is being predicted." But if
universities have no realy idea how to implement blended
learning, why would we think this is the way forward?
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What I have learnt from the course "Advanced Theories of
Communicationâ€
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A lot of what underpins communications theory as described
here also underpins theories of transactional distance in
education theory (see the work
Linkof Michael
G. Moore for example). The idea is that "the process of
communication involves the process by which a sender
conveys a particular message to the audience" and
"effective communication occurs when the receiver can
acquire the exact meaning intended by the sender." Pretty
standard stuff. About three quarters of the way through,
the author looks inward and discusses the elements of
dialogue with oneself. I like this a lot, but it makes me
wonder, when we communicate with ourselves, is
communication always effective? I don't think it is, for a
variety of reasons. And I ask whether communication is
really the sending of a specific message with any sort of
meaning at all. Via Pierre Levy.
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What I Learned Recreating One Chart Using 24 Tools
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This is a great example of a personal professional
development project, and Lisa Charlotte Rost is not only
walking away from this exercise with knowledge and skills
she can bank on, she provides the rest of us with an
excellent understanding of the range of data visualization
tools available today (and more importantly, what sets them
apart from each other).
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Experience of disadvantage: The influence of identity on
engagement in working class students’ educational
trajectories to an elite university
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A willingness to work hard, an ability to resist negative
social pressure, and a desire to prove sceptical parents
and peers wrong - these are traits that characterized those
from disadvantaged social groups who did attend a top-tier
university, as compared to those who didn't. These are the
conclusions of a British Educational Research Journal study
published today. It all rings true for me (despite the
small size of the study, which should invite caution).
People may read this and say "oh yeah, you need grit." Or
some such thing. But to me it speaks to the wider social
conditions we need to address to help people move beyond a
disadvantaged background and achieve more in life.
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Transforming the Value Proposition
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I think it's more than just American education that has
"lost the narrative" and I think it was in need of a
rethink Linkwell before
Trump. And I've also expressed my scepticism in the past
about the ability of the higher education sector to reform
itself. I continue to be sceptical. Higher education as a
whole, as Patricia McGuire says, "has been adrift in a
devolving eddy of self-pity, whining about overregulation
while obsessing about bracket placements and rankings,
pandering to political and philanthropic overlords while
remaining largely silent on the great social issues of our
times."
So what's needed? McGuire identifies three major areas of
change:
Expand access to college - "change the interior
circumstances of costs, culture, educational programs and
pathways that would enlarge the pipeline and ensure
success... focus on students and less on institutions."
Reform the cost-price structure - college is "entirely too
expensive for most people to bear, even with generous
financial aid" and "debt burdens are impossibly heavy."
Reclaim their voice - "the young [should] perceive
clearly where we elders stand
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on issues like human rights, world poverty and hunger, good
government, preserving the fragile ecosphere..."
These issues have all received priority in these pages.
As, I believe, they should.
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Why Indian students drift to foreign universities
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This article should be an eye-opener for those arguing for
'traditional' education and pedagogy. It is precisely to
escape that model that Indian students head elsewhere for
their degrees. In India, "education is more theory-based
rather than practical thus creativity is not at all
encouraged. Education is based on rote-learning and is
exam-oriented... Education thus becomes a mere formality.
The acquisition of a degree does not equate with real
learning." By contrast, "In foreign universities,
education is given and absorbed by practical measures.
There is more hands on experience and thus the learning
acquired is real and has depth... through research-oriented
assignments and project work. The aim is to make the
students independent and themselves responsible for their
learning." Yet it is surprising how many people in our
system argue for the former and not for the latter.
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Education Technology and the Year of Wishful Thinking
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This is the first of Audrey Watters's series
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for 2016 and it's pretty good, even if I disagree with the
main metaphor. She depicts 2016 as "a terrible, terrible
year" because of the celebrity deaths, bad election
results, war and killings. My own observation is that it's
business as usual with a bit of a demographic kick as the
post-war baby boom reaches its inevitable conclusion. But
her observations about the danger of quackery in ed tech
are spot on, and she lists a number of 'trends' as
indicators: chatbots, blockchain, Pokemon Go, 3D printing
and wearables. If your pundit gushed about one of more of
these this year, there's a good chance they're a quack. Not
because they're failures. But because they're fads, and
quacks jump on fads (trying to be the 'first' and make a
name for themselves, as Dean Groom
Linkpointed out earlier this
week.
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Your Ellie – On the Primacy of Networked Knowledge
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I commented to someone this week, "For all my talk about
networking, I'm not a very good networker." Maybe when you
don't have it you see what it is more clearly? So
consequently, I don't have what Amy Burvall's daughter
would call "an Ellie" - a close (and more organized) friend
she calls instead of using antique technology like a
website. This reminds me of a survey we did when
researching for MuniMall in the 1990s - we asked municipal
officials where they got the information they needed, and
the number one answer was to "'call someone they know."
Burvall suspects we prefer this method because it's more
human. I suspect it's rather because it's more efficient.
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes
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