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by Stephen Downes


Jan 27, 2017


‘Regaining Public Trust’
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As competition from non-traditional education providers
intensifies, colleges and universities will depend a lot on
public perception and trust. So this is not a good time for
that trust to be eroding, but that's what's been happening
as they blithely collect ever-increasing tuition fees and
conduct research at the behest of the highest bidder. At
least now the effort is underway to reverse that trend.
"Beyond data, re-engaging the public also means talking
more about -- and designing policies and programs around --
who college and university students really are, since only
a fraction are “traditional” students straight
out of high school... It also means “maintaining a
laser focus on equity and quality” in what will
likely be a deregulated environment going forward."
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The foundation of a more secure web: Google Trust Services
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So there's something: "You can now have a website secured
by a certificate issued by a Google CA
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hosted on Google web infrastructure, with a domain
registered using Google Domains, resolved using Google
Public DNS, going over Google Fiber, in Google Chrome on a
Google Chromebook. Google has officially vertically
integrated the Internet." Also: "server written in Go,
running on a Google server OS, located on a Google designed
server appliance, which is centrally controlled by a Google
designed microprocessor, which is finally manufactured in a
Google owned semiconductor foundry. Oh, and the sand used
for silicon purification is sourced from a Google-owned
stretch of beach." OK, maybe not the last. But Google is a
force of nature, to be sure.
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The coming of age of digital education
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MOOCs are growing shorter, tighter, and more popular.
Against a "backdrop of growing popularity with learners,
and growing recognition by employers, MOOC platforms
themselves are evolving and a much more sophisticated
landscape of short online courses is emerging." This is the
result found by a study by The Open University,
FutureLearn, and Parthenon EY. No links provided
in several
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14991310.Adults_go_online_for_courses_to_help_job_prospects/ news
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sources to the original study (boo! hiss!). The author -
Gavin - appears also to have no last name.
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“Time is the bottleneck”: a qualitative study exploring
why learners drop out of MOOCs
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The authors of this study interviewed participants of a
couple MOOCs and asked them why they dropped out, rolling
up the responses. Time was one of the factors cited, though
there wasn't really an effort to quantify or order the
responses, though 'time' was the most frequently cited
reason. They then draw some odd conclusions. "When a course
is open for everyone, some learners will have problems with
the content being too difficult, or too basic, and some
will have problems with understanding English, while others
will have problems with Internet connections. Thus, we can
ask two rhetorical questions: Are MOOCs really open?" I
don't think this follows at all from the study.
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Cognitive bias cheat sheet
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This is a really nice use of Wikipedia to create a useful
learning resource. The subject is cognitive bas and the
author's intent is to bring together and categorize the
various sources of bias, then provide some simple
heuristics to comprehend them. Great idea (and I not in
passing that these biases apply everywhere, and are not
subject specific). The article offers an object lesson in
how to use open educational resources in such a way that
the licenses don't matter. It's the age of the internet -
you don't need to mix and combine resources, you just link
to them.
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Top 10 IT Issues: 2000–2017
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EDUCAUSE released its annual list of the top IT issues
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in education last week and the article - though chock-full
of useful analysis - is the usual mélange of IT
angst: information security, student success, leadership,
management, funding, the like. It's worth a read as a good
review of the strategic issues of the day. But the best
perspective is always perspective, and that's where this
17-year retrospective steals the show. It's an interactive
graphic (take the time to play with it) showing how issues
have trended, come and gone through the years (the only
constant, it seems, is a worry about funding). In an
interview with the report's author, Susan
Grajek, EdScoop suggests
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that the trends show that “IT took a back seat in the
narrative” to a larger story — namely how IT
forms the very “foundations of student success in
higher education.” You can look for yourself, but I'm
not seeing it.
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3D TV is finally, blessedly, mercifully, dead — will VR
follow suit?
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I wonder how many pundits predicted that virtual reality
would be one of the big trends for education in 2017. I
wasn't one of them. Virtual reality, though definitely
cool, suffers from many of the same issues as 3D TV, as
this article notes. "Like 3D, it requires expensive,
personal peripherals. Like 3D, games need to be designed
explicitly for VR in order to showcase the technology to
best effectiveness. Like 3D, VR can cause nausea and
headaches. Like 3D, working in VR has an entirely new set
of best practices... VR is debuting as a gaming
peripheral, and gaming is still much more of a solo
activity than TV watching." VR has many niche applications.
But it won't sweep through learning and technology this
year or the next because, fundamentally, it can't.
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Canada’s accidental brain drain
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According to this article, "Canada has relied upon its
supposedly self-evident and enduring allure to bring expats
back," it is losing too many of its best and brightest, and
"ending the brain drain should be a priority for the
federal minister of innovation." I don't agree. First of
all, many if not most of the Canadians who remain are
(ahem) also its best and brightest. It's not like those who
immigrated or who remained here are somehow not good
enough. Second, it is natural and valuable for the flow of
students and academics to be two-way, bringing in expertise
from abroad and exporting the Canadian perspective in
return. Just as we welcome those who arrive here from
elsewhere, we should enthusiastically wish the best for
those who decide to leave.
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Leaving Lynda.com
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When companies acquire each other they create debt out of
nothing, which creates from thin air a new urgency to
increase customer revenue. This is what has happened to
universities subscribing to Lynda.com as they face double
digit increases after Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn, and
LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft. In its defense "The
company went on to say that part of the price hike can be
explained by recently added features such as learning
management system integration and offline access, as well
as its ongoing push to expand its course library." But
typically, these changes would be paid for (and justified)
by the acquisition of new customers, not by squeezing
existing customers.
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Global Survey on the Quality of MOOCs
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This is a call to participate in a global research effort:
"The survey addresses MOOC learners, MOOC designers and
MOOC facilitators. It begins with a few questions on your
profile before you are asked to select the survey section
that fits best to your main role in MOOCs (i.e., either as
MOOC learner, MOOC designer, or MOOC facilitator)."
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Building a Chatbot: analysis & limitations of modern
platforms
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Good article exploring the strengths and weaknesses of
various chatbot platforms. "The chatbot ecosystem is moving
very fast and new features
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released every day by the numerous existing platforms."
There are non-technical platforms aimed at average users:
Chatfuel LinkManyChat
LinkOctane Ai Link
Massively Linkand Motion.ai
LinkThese, though, do not have natural
language processing ability and are not suitable for
commercial applications. The five major solutions are
all from major companies (not surprisingly). They
"represent already a standard or at least they are on
(their) way to become one: Api.ai Link(Google),
Wit.ai Link(Facebook), LUIS
Link(Microsoft), Watson
Link(IBM), Lex
Link(Amazon).
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Of OER and Platforms: Five Years Later
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David Wiley revisits his suggestion five years ago that
2017 could be the end of open educational resources. His
reasoning is basically sound: "Our fixation on discovery
and assembly also distracts us from other serious platform
needs – like platforms for the collaborative
development of OER and open assessments." And he argues
that the value-add of systems like Pearson’s MyLab
and Cengage’s MindTap makes them significant
educational tools. So it may be that his prediction wasn't
wrong so much as early. "PDFs aren’t going to get us
there," he writes. "We need more efforts to provide the
benefits of publishers’ “adaptive”
systems while honoring and enabling the values of the OER
community." No question. Image: FutureOER
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Community-Focused Versus Market-Driven Education
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The thrust of this fairly detailed article is that "though
the true purpose of public education is clear — to
provide benefits to individuals and communities —
education is now becoming more aligned with the purposes of
firms; all of which may lead to richer companies but poorer
(in an educational sense) communities." I don't agree with
the dichotomies set up in the article - in particular, I
don't associate technology use with corporate control - but
I am nonetheless wary of corporate influence. After all, we
have the example of how a focus on market forces rather
than communities has served traditional media, which now
struggles both for credibility and sustainability.
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Searchable Directory of Canadian Researchers of Online,
Blended and Distance Education
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Contact North has launched a directory of Canadian
researchers in open and distance learning. Browse through
the listings and you'll see a lot of big names in the
field. Norm Vaughn writes, "Wow, the idea for a Canadian
researchers directory is AMAZING - as nothing like this
exists at the moment and I think it will really help to
build and enrich the online, blended, and distance research
network in Canada - kudos to Contact North for putting this
together." I have to admit having had similar sentiments
when I saw the list.To add your information to the list
(note, you have to be working at a college, university or
other institution in Canada and have published work that
other people have cited) share the information via the
Contact Us Linkform.
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Co-design consultation 2016-17
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Britain's JISC is entering the final stages of selecting
it's next big focus. After a process of consultation
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the choice is down to two options:

Which skills do people need to prepare for research
practice now and in the future?
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What should a next-generation research environment look
like?
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I find it interesting that neither of the final two has
anything to do with online learning. Alternatives
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the implications of the intelligent campus, the next
generation of learning environments, and digital
apprenticeships.
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New data on the breadth of skills movement in education
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I would say that it's not a lot of new data, but it's
some, and it shows widening adoption of skills programs
around the world, including work in critical thinking and
problem solving. "Evidence points to a higher rate in
identifying a breadth of skills within national documents
(except mission and vision statements) and in including
descriptions of skills progressions."
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Struggling = Learning
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Papert called it "hard fun". We;ll, it has been fun but
I've been swearing a lot recently. Getting to understand
technologies like Docker and Vagrant - and all the
associated middleware and protocols and conventions - has
been a lot to undertake. I have a simple objective to start
- create an image of gRSShopper and serve it from AWS. Why
do it it this way? Why not just study what I need? Because
if I want to truly understand it I have to build it. That's
the point of Karl Kapp's argument in this post. "When you
really want learners to understand content or concepts,
force them to struggle with the concept or the idea. The
act of struggling and manipulating and engaging with
content will make it more meaningful and more memorable."
And if I want to be credible when I talk about these
technologies, I have to know them, inside and out.
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Looking Beyond the LMS: Why a Single App Won't Work
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I think this vision of the future of educational technology
is fundamentally correct, though the description in this
article is lacking. "We are using Canvas as a thin layer
and laying apps on top of it. For instance, we needed a
better way to record video, so we developed an app to
record video on an iPhone or iPad. Once you upload it, it
automatically gets bounced into your Canvas account. We are
using Canvas as the core glue to hold together a bunch of
other things."
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How I Built that Free Microlearning Template
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'Microlearning' is the new buzzword in the rapid e-learning
community, but be careful. As this article shows, it is
often realized as a quick Flash animation. I, however, am
viewing the internet on a 4K screen
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These animations
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appear like postage stamps in the middle of my screen
(which makes sense, since they were designed for mobile).
Designers, however, should create learning resources that
can be viewed well on any screen - from a tiny handheld to
a living-room television. This takes more care than
dashing quick
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Articulate animations provides. By contrast, look at
my presentation Link
pages, which show (imperfectly) how  presentations and
videos can be sized up and down to fit any screen.
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Diversity in the Open Access Movement
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This is a good two-part article (part one
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part two
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discussing some of the divisions in the open access
movement. Part two lays them out quite nicely: are
embargoes permitted, yes or no; is charging for access
permitted, yes or no; and is the non- commercial license
permitted, yes or no. Me, I can live with embargoes and I
certainly allow for non-commercial licenses, but I am
opposed to a definition of 'open access' that permits
enterprises to put up tolls blocking access. I am opposed
by primarily commercial agencies seeking to monetize open
access by banning non-commercial licenses and enabling
tolls for access.
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Ground: A data context service
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Advanced analytics will look at much more than aggregate
behaviour (which, for example, is what we see in learning
analytics today) and will focus additionally on identifying
context. For any given piece of data, for example, we can
ask about who is using it (and with what), how they're
using it, and how use changes over time. These are the
major elements of an initiative called Ground, which is
described in this article (which in turn summarizes a
fascinating (12 page PDF
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publication). "Each kind of contextual data (Application,
Behavioural, and Change) is captured by a different kind of
graph. Application context is represented by model graphs
which capture entities and the relationships between
them. Change context is represented by version graphs
which form the base of the model. Behavioural context is
represented by lineage graphs which relate principals
(actors that can work with data such as users, groups and
roles)."
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How to Create Tomorrow’s Learning Today
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Jeanne C. Meister describes three new roles that have
emerged as corporate e-learning departments adapt to
changes in the learning landscape. The roles are:

Curators: "learning leaders increasingly focus on
facilitating and orchestrating learning aligned to their
organization’s growth priorities."
Design thinking: "a human-centered, prototype-driven
process for innovation that can be applied to product,
service and business design."
People analyst: "uses machine learning to calculate the
relative importance of geography, compensation, employee
and manager engagement at the aggregate level."

I don't like any of the titles. They're each different
types of research, not simply the function-driven positions
that the titles imply. Maybe they should be called scholar,
designer and demographer, respectively.
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Hidden Figures and The Hope for More Real Science Stories
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I often puzzle over story selection by the media. I live in
a world of research and education and science. These seem
to me far more interesting and relevant that the world of
pundits, crime and conflict reported by media. This story
touches on that with respect to other media. "It seems
silly that major studios now insist on churning out reboots
and remakes that nobody asked for, and that rarely seem to
succeed either critically or commercially, when STEM
history has so many stories just waiting to be told." We
need this sort of story in the news, not just fictionalized
and presented in film.
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Net Return On Philosophy Major Is Comparable To That Of
Engineering Major
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This is a bit of a personal item for me, as I graduated
with an MA in Philosophy (and went All-But-Dissertation for
a PhD). When I studies philosophy I was warned there were
no jobs in the field, and to a large degree the warnings
were accurate. But there are many jobs outside the field,
and as it turns out, philosophy prepares a person
especially well for the information age. The report
cites a study
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researching "earnings per educational dollar", which
doesn't seem to be a very practical measure. But if we look
at the post-graduate employment
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philosophers, you have a very practical guide as to the
contributions they make to society. Photop: Quartz
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The NIH Public Access Policy: A triumph of green open
access?
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'Green open access' means that an author self-publishes
their paper, or posts it into an institutional repository.
Gold open access involves submitting to a publisher, paying
publication fees, and then having the publisher release the
paper as open access. This article looks at the green and
gold model from the perspective of the argument by some
open access proponents that only papers released under a
CC-by license are open access. The non-commercial license
(NC), they argue, doe not qualify. The licenses are roughly
aligned; the green model supports NC, because publication
rights are often assigned, while the gold model supports
CC-by, as demonstrated by the rise in CC-by licenses in
Pub-Med Central (PMC). The article doesn't mention that
what we are also finding is that the gold model is leading
to abuse, with a proliferation of fake journals, rising
publication costs, and other scams.
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The rising price of knowledge: University of Calgary cuts
1,600 academic resources
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The Gauntlet article
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has the best coverage but the CBC news item
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/university-calgary-cancels-journal-subscriptions-2017-1.3942774?cmp=rss&utm_source=Academica+Top+Ten&utm_campaign=df07daa385-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b4928536cf-df07daa385-47729649
has the best quote:"Even if we had more money, we cannot
buy our way out of this," said University of Calgary
head librarian Tom Hickerson. "We really have to
change the model." Still, the Gauntlet had a good quote:
“You want 50 channels, but instead they sell you 337
for twice what you would pay for the 50,” he said.
“We don’t get to make our decisions around a
single journal. We have to look at the bundle as a
whole.” The U of C cut was $1.5 million; meanwhile a
fund to produce and distribute open access jrournals is up
to $500K.
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