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by Stephen Downes
Apr 14, 2017
Democratizing digital learning: theorizing the fully online learning community model
Todd J. B. Blayone, Roland vanOostveen, Wendy Barber, Maurice DiGiuseppe, Elizabeth Childs, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2017/04/14
From the abstract: "As a divergent fork of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, FOLC describes collaborative learning as a symbiosis of social and cognitive interactions amplified through effective use of synchronous and asynchronous digital affordances." According to the authors, "The underlying argument is that self-regulating and transformative learning communities can be established and sustained in fully online environments." I don't think the original CoI authhors would have ever disputed that. So what makes FOLC different? The "foregrounding democratized and emancipatory learning processes that are adaptable to the socio-cultural context of institutions and learners." This is a point where I've felt some tension with CoI (Garrison, for example, saying "strong communities must build upon strong pedagogic leadership.")
A Marketplace in Confusion
Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/04/14
This article takes the perspective of private colleges that are reacting with concern after the state's announcement of a free college tuition program. They "reacted with a mix of dismay, confusion, criticism and, in some cases, resolve in the days after New York leaders struck a deal to start a tuition-free public college program this fall." At the same time, public universitties in the state are launching a major expansion of OER programs (which make much more sense once tuition is free). “This isn’t a nice one-off innovation,” Hatch said. “This is something that can be incredibly impactful for our students. If you can save students $700 a semester, that’s a month’s rent.”
Why VR Is Failing
Rob Enderle, E-Commerce Times, 2017/04/14
It might be a bit early to say that virtual reality (VR) is "failing" but the arguments in this article are sound (and have been the basis behind my own caution to fully embrace the technology (as much as I really really want to)). "Where VR gets into trouble is in RPGs (role-playing games) and FPSes (first-person shooters). This is because when VR demands movement from the player, it gets not only less realistic but also dangerous."
Itâs Time to Mobilize Around a New Approach to Educational Assessment
Alvin Vista, Esther Care, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017/04/14
We know there are better models of assessment than they typical tests and assignments being used today. Even so, these models are not changing rapidly at all. So what's going on? "It seems to us," write the authors, "that both the education (including educational assessment) and economics fields face two primary barriers... 1. The status quo is more profitable for those with vested interests... 2.T here’s not enough of an impetus to drive change. Essentially, the public does not see that there’s reason enough to bring the necessary pressure to bear to cause the shift." While I'd love to believe that the public would be able to drive change, I don't. That leaves the first reason as the only reason. So long as the vested interests are making the decisions, the models of assessment won't change. The solution is obvious, but not really explored by the authors.
Burger King Ad Creates Whopper of a Mess for Google Home
Richard Adhikari, E-Commerce Times, 2017/04/14
This is funny in a couple of ways. First, it's funny because the Burger King television spot succeeded in prompting Google Home to look up 'whopper burger' and read back the response to people. See also: "I love the little girl saying 'Alexa order me a dollhouse,' during a newscast." Oh course, this is not behaviour want from their audio interface, so Google needs to think about how to prevent random activations. But it's also funny because Burger King, in relying on Wikipedia for content, made it possible for people to insert their own content into the response. "Internet trolls struck minutes after the ad debuted... editing the Wikipedia entry to describe the burger variously as 'cancer-causing' or 'a chocolate candy'." The unfunny part isn't the damage caused to the companies involved, but rather, the increasing incursion of corporate media into private spaces.
New machine learning models can detect hate speech and violence from texts
Myriam Douce Munezero, Phys.org, 2017/04/14
This dissertation presents "a framework that can be used for the automatic detection of antisocial behavior in text. The framework is based on the emotion and language theories." I'd call this an early study as it depends on models of anti-social behaviour and then detects for them; a fuller study would develop its own models to capture a wider range of anti-social content. Still, we can see how this is useful in the context of online and learning communities. Via Helge Scherlund.
New Systems, Old Thinking
George Couros, The Innovatorâs Mindset, 2017/04/13
The point of this article is that we have to get past old systems of thinking when we employ new technology. Couldn't agree more. But does the example make that point? George Couros writes that ionstead of saving all his stuff in folders (which is the old way of thinking) he just saves it wherever and makes sure it is tagged (that's the new way). But tagging - ie., metadata - seems to me to be fraught with peril. At least you can reorganize or split folders, but if you need to adapt materials to a new tag then you have no way to do it. My own method is to write a short description and then use regular expressions; this allows me to make new categories out of old materials even if the new tag hasn't been developed yet.
Building APIs for the University and the Student
David Raths, Campus Technology, 2017/04/13
Creating an API for a university system is more of a challenge than you might think. ""The inconsistency was such that if you wanted to write a mobile app that dealt with a student, it was possible you would have to deal with 25 different APIs using five different identifiers, and multiple data formats." Yeah. And that's for a small university. Picture now a large enterprise or a government. But you start with some services, and eventually you have a single consistent interface. Start simple and expand as you go.
Scaffolding in Microlearning
Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-Learning, 2017/04/13
The interesting part of this post occurs when Christy Tucker says "Maybe you don’t need to scaffold within a microlearning module. Maybe the microlearning itself is the scaffolding." Indeed, if we can get past the idea that learning resources are single unified wholes, then we can imagine a constellation of resources around a particular activity, where each resource provides a bit of scaffolding and support.
What I wish I knew before joining Mastodon
Qina Liu, Medium, 2017/04/13
I've been on Mastodon for a while and have written about it previously, but if you're just looking at it now the first instance, mastodon.social, is now closed to new users. But the idea is that Mastodon is distributed so there are other instances you can join. When you do, you can find me at https://mastodon.social/@Downes.
Deep Learning in 7 lines of code
gk_, Medium, 2017/04/13
This is a technical article with some good less-technical points. First, we have the idea of how straightforward machine learning has become, as noted in the title. Second, though, those seven lines embody considerable depth of function. The data is run through several layers of neural networks (five of the seven lines in question). Finally, this: "The essence of machine learning is recognizing patterns within data." But it's not just the essence of machine learning, it's the essence of learning in general. To know is to recognize. To recognize is to be connected in a particular configuration. To learn is to form those connections from experience and reflection.
Toyota says it is ready to mass produce robots
Jayson MacLean, Can-Tech Letter, 2017/04/13
Let us welcome our new robot overlords. "ASIMO is an autonomous robot, meaning that it performs without the need for a human controlling its movements, and was billed as the first humanoid robot capable of human-like running (along with being a pretty fine dancer, too). The technology for ASIMO made its way into Honda’s version of walking assist robotic legs in 2015."
Research through the Generations: Reflecting on the Past, Present and Future
Grainne Conole, SlideShare, 2017/04/12
Overview paper describing the history of learning technology as a series of transformative innovations. "The take home messages are that this is an exciting and important time for digital learning research, there are multiple theoretical research perspectives and methodologies, which have enormous potential but must be appropriately used." The link is to a SlideShare page, but don't try to read it on Slideshare. Just download the paper.
The Current State of Educational Blogging 2016
Sue Waters, The Edublogger, 2017/04/12
Longish overview of the use of blogs in classes. Most survey respondents are edublogs.org users though some use Blogger and other services. Importantly, blogging isn't just about posting bogs, it's about reading and responding. "It’s all about commenting. The students who make an effort to find other student blogs that interest them and make thoughtful comments get the most traffic on their own blogs. Those who don’t, get few visits–no matter how catchy their title, flashy their theme or wonderful their writing."
A Beginnerâs Guide To Progressive Web Apps
Kevin Farrugia, Smashing Magazine, 2017/04/11
I spent a good part of the day investigating progressive web apps (PWA). These are the result of a model proposed by Google back in 2015 that merges web browser applications with mobile applications. The idea is that you write the same code for everything, and this code is progressive (runs on any platform), responsive (resizes for different windows), discoverable, and more. Here's a guide from Google on building your first PWA. Here's a selection of PWAs. And the tweet from Bryan â»llendyke that set me off: "The way to create a decentralized learning record store IS to create an lmsless university via a PWA." Well yeah.
Canada's Fundamental Science Review
C. David Naylor, et.al., Government of Canada, 2017/04/11
This report (280 page PDF) (if you don't have time to read it have a machine read it for you) addresses Canada's investment in research and development and is known colloquially as the Naylor Report. It doesn't cover internal Government of Canada science (like, say, the National Research Council), but rather, the money the government spends on research outside the government (for example, as supported by the funding councils). The key recommendation is found in the introduction: "The cumulative base increase would move annual spending in steady-state across the four agencies and closely related entities from approximately $3.5 billion to $4.8 billion." And htis is a recommendation that looks especially good to me: "The Government of Canada should rapidly increase its investment in independent investigator-led research to redress the imbalance caused by differential investments favouring priority-driven research over the past decade." More coverage: CBC, Globe and Mail, McLeans, Ottawa Citizen, Science Magazine, Nature.
When I Think of Student Success
Ellen Wagner, eLearning Roadtrip, 2017/04/11
Good post from Ellen Wagner that is at once a history of successive programs from EDUCAUSE and the Gates Foundation on student advising and support services (variously the PAR, iPASS and IPAS) and at the same time a rumination on the concept of 'student success' itself. The software (and there are more than 100 offerings now) is part help-desk and part analytics, and is intended to help guide students to their ultimate objectives. "We are going to wonder how we managed to live without platforms that help visualize patterns, red-flag student risks before they become problems," she writes, but at the same time, the innovation here is not in the creation of the tools, but in the use of them to support students. Image: Ellen Wagner.
How India saved its internet from greedy corporations
Febin John James, freecodecamp, 2017/04/11
The headline is a little over the top but the article describes a determined attempt on the part of a number of companies to create a multi-tier internet where you have to pay extra for things like messaging. Part of this, readers may recall, was Facebook's attempt to create a proprietary 'internet lite'. As All Indian Backchod put it, "These corporations tried to define Net Neutrality as everyone being able to access some things on the internet. In fact, Net Neutrality is about everyone being able to access everything on the internet." Good read, good videos, bu someone directly involved in the campaign.
How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing
Lindsay McKenzie, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017/04/10
I've started using Unpaywall, a browser extension that finds open access versions of closed access publications. For example, is a search takes me to a closed Elsevier article, Unpaywall might find the Arxiv version. Too Cool. "We’re setting up a lemonade stand right next to the publishers’ lemonade stand," says Mr. Priem. "They’re charging $30 for a glass of lemonade, and we’re showing up right next to them and saying, ‘Lemonade for free’." I'm just waiting for them to find a way to declare this illegal. Also, free lemonade. They'll declare that illegal too.
All I Know Is Whatâs on the Internet
Rolin Moe, Real Life, 2017/04/11
This is an excellent post responding to the idea that fake news is recent, isolated, and easily fixed with media literacy. In fact, fake news is just one part of "an entire landscape of neglect and corruption" and those teaching media literacy "are not necessarily in a position to actually supply it." Instead, "colleges and libraries have ceded control to content publishers, who impose their hierarchical understanding of information on passive consumers, leaving institutions to only exhibit and protect the information."
I Donât Need Permission to be Open
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2017/04/10
What is open pedagogy? According to David Wiley, "open pedagogy is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions... (it) is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical when you are using OER." This struck some readers, including Jim Groom, as wrong, and after a Twitter argument (these never go well) he explains in a post. "But, I do wonder at the push to consolidate the definition beyond OERs into Open Educational Practices," he writes. "Seems to me there is an attempt to define it in order to start controlling it.... I think the locking down of open is dangerous. I think it draws lines where they need not be, and it reconsolidates power for those who define it." I am much more sympathetic with Groom's perspective. Open Pedagogy is not just about resources, it's not just about open resources, and ideally, it's not about licensing and ownership at all.
When Pixels Collide
sudoscript, 2017/04/10
I'm not sure what principle this illustrates - chaos, maybe, cooperation, a bit, collaboration certainly, and competition too. Here's the set-up: last weekend Reddit created a grid where members could colour one pixel at a time, but would have to wait a few minutes before colouring the next one. People quickly learned to cooperate, and then these cooperatives began to compete with each other, and then they began to cooperate, and it's all a beautiful worldwide story of collective iconography played out over a weekend (complete with 4chan villains).
Federated Learning: Collaborative Machine Learning without Centralized Training Data
Brendan McMahan, Daniel Ramage, Google Research Blog, 2017/04/10
One of the problems with learning analytics and analytics in general is that it requires a lot of data. This means you have to watch what a lot of people are doing, which has ethical and privacy implications. The federated analytics model described here attempts to address these issues. "Your device downloads the current model, improves it by learning from data on your phone, and then summarizes the changes as a small focused update. Only this update to the model is sent to the cloud." Of course, you have to trust that your device is actually doing this.
Rules of memory 'beautifully' rewritten
James Gallagher, BBC News, 2017/04/10
If (and it's a big if) this thesis (pay-walled study) is correct, then proponents of cognitive load theory have a lot of rethinking to do. The suggestion is that while brains do indeed store short-term and long-term memory, they store these using two separate processes. So a memory doesn't have to be squeezed through short-term memory before it becomes a long-term memory. This makes a lot of sense to me - people like Romeo Dallaire talk about detailed complex traumatic memories of wartime where the entire experience stored and plays back over and over, brushing by the limits of cognitive overload as if they didn't even exist. "Post-traumatic stress disorder hard-wires events in your brain to the extent they will come back in digitally clear detail to your brain. You don't actually remember them. You relive them."
The Learning Analytics Blueprint
Desire2Learn, 2017/04/14
This is a piece of marketing published by D2L some time in the last year. It's a nice overview of how to plan for the use of data analytics and how to work with the results. "This isn’t about ‘analytics’ or data. It is about insight and understanding to help you solve the most pressing challenges impacting your institution, your faculty, and your students."
Understanding Classrooms through Social Network Analysis: A Primer for Social Network Analysis in Education Research
Daniel Z. Grunspan, Benjamin L. Wiggins, Steven M. Goodreau, Life Sciences Education, 2017/04/13
The paper is a couple of years old but I thought it was a good introductory deep dive into social network analysis (SNA) for education. It contains good practical advice for people who want to apply SNA in their own educational research (for example, recognizing and dealing with survey fatigue). It also describes how to test for specific hypotheses, for example, whether there is a correlation between link-formation and learning outcomes. "Conceivably, network analysis can be used to describe the structure of seemingly ethereal concepts such as reputation, charisma, and teaching ability through the social assessment of peers and stakeholders."
A Bot That Can Tell When It's Really Donald Trump Who's Tweeting
Andrew McGill, The Atlantic, 2017/04/12
This is a pretty good example of what can be done with analytics. As we know, there are the tweets Donald Trump writes himself, and then there are tweets written by his press office. The two have different styles, as was noted last year. The twitter bot takes advantage of this. "It’s a Twitter bot that uses machine learning and natural language processing to estimate the likelihood Trump wrote a tweet himself." This is of course a novelty but it's the same sort of logic that can be used to filter spam, and eventually, to identify individual students by their writing style and typing cadence.
Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smithâs publisher survival guide in the duopoly era
Sahil Patel, Digiday, 2017/04/11
The 'duopoly' in question is Facebook and Google, and arguably these two platforms have a firm hold on platform traffic. This article points out that this is not a good deal for publishers. Bloomber's Media CEO Justin Smith Smith cited a recent study from Digital Content Next showing "only 14 percent of some publishers’ revenues were coming from distributed content." How, then do publishers succeed? Quartz has a good model. "Quartz’s model from the beginning has been to never accept a banner ad or an IAB standard unit." Also, "If you’re producing content that someone else is also producing, you have to stop right away and rethink your approach. Create content that no one else is producing."
How The New York Times, CNN, and The Huffington Post approach publishing on platforms
Joseph Lichterman, Nieman Lab, 2017/04/10
I'm not sure whether this represents a sea change or is just a blip, but the New York Times, which was one of the original partners when Facebook launched Instant Articles in 2015, has not ceased publishing that way. It still publishes a lot of content to platforms (as do most major publishers) but now in the form of links rather than full content. It is worth noting that the Times is trying (still) to make its way as a subscription-based service. This article documents the trend for a number of publishers.
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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