Via @shackletonjones "Is online learning really cracking open the public post-secondary system?" by Tony Bates. 5 lessons in comment below. - http://www.tonybates.ca/2012...
Lesson 1: No president with an activist Board of Governors is now safe if the university does not have a clear institutional strategy for online learning. It’s now become the latest buzzword in post-secondary education.
Lesson 2: MOOCs may be the answer – but what is the question? May there be better solutions to the question? And may such solutions exist already but are not being sufficiently supported?
Lesson 3: Governments are increasingly not going to accept the status quo or business as usual. In particular, if your institution doesn’t have a meaningful strategy for innovation in teaching, for improving the cost-effectiveness of the organization, and particularly a strategy for online learning, you will become increasingly vulnerable to funding cuts.
Lesson 4: Prepare and train your faculty to deal with change and innovation in teaching, and in particular for teaching online.
Lesson 5: If public institutions do not respond effectively to the challenge of change, they will eventually be swept aside by the private sector – and will deserve it.
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eNotes from TUC Education are "bitesized" mixed media online briefings on topics of interest to working people. [Account creation required, and you have to enable your browser for pop-ups.] - http://www.tuclearning.net/
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Working for @Udacity from Latvia. Nice to see that Gundega D, who wrote a Fortnightly Mailing Guest Contribution last year about Stanford's free CS courses http://goo.gl/xvPGu, now has a job with Udacity. - http://udacity.blogspot.co.uk/2012...
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MIT Technology Review - When machines do your job. Interview with Andrew McAfee. (Concluding para excerpted below.) Also 2 brief but worthwhile articles about automation and about algorithms: http://www.technologyreview.com/news... http://www.technologyreview.com/news... - http://www.technologyreview.com/news...
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We have access to amazing digital resources. And a lot of it is all-you-can-drink, no matter what your income level is. Wikipedia is distributed to the masses. Warren Buffett doesn't have any more Google than I have, or the unemployed person has. When I see that there are five billion mobile-phone subscriptions in the world—well, hey, that is cornucopia. It is important not to lose sight of that."
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Cheating In Online Courses - interesting piece by Dan Ariely from Duke University. Excerpt below. - http://shankerblog.org/?p=6224
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"Online classes are by definition taken at a distance, from the comfort of the student’s home where they are removed from the teacher, the other students, and the academic institution. This distance doesn’t merely allow room for people to get away with dishonest behavior; it creates the psychological distance that allows people to further relax their moral standards. I suspect that it is this aspect of psychological distance, and not simply the ease of pulling it off, that is at the heart of the online cheating problem. There is another important reason why we should care whether the cause for online dishonesty is due to its ease or to a change in the perceived moral meaning of the action. If online cheating is simply a matter of a cost benefit analysis, we can assume that over time online universities will find ways to monitor and supervise students and this way prevent such behavior. However, if we think that the root cause of online cheating is more relaxed internal morals, then time is working against us."
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Very quaint. Back in the late 90s I used to attend meetings in Sheffield with other people who were "using the Internet". http://www.nuf.org.uk/
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Terrific 30 June 2012 post by @pasi_sahlberg - "How the Global Education Reform Movement is infecting schools around the world". - http://www.pasisahlberg.com/blog...
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Repetitive, unless you enjoy orchids, or rocks, or Verona's rats. - http://www.flickr.com/photos...
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What should society journals do about open access? Excellent, well-commented post by Mike Taylor. - http://svpow.com/2012...
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"Nature" wins a 'victory for free speech' libel verdict. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science...
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The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. #jisccni12 This work - and Scalar - http://goo.gl/p9Ue5 - have a bearing on the design of (visual) learning materials. - http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc_si...
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OpenEndedGroup #jisccni12 - combining artworks directed or assisted by AI; non-photorealistic 3D rendering; motion-capture of body movement. - http://openendedgroup.com/about...
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Paul Ohm's "Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization" is relevant to Open Data #jisccni12 - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3...
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Just out. Going for Gold? The csts and bnfts of Gold OA for UK research institutions. Report by Alma Swan and John Houghton #jisccni12 - http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/610...
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Petition to UK Home Office started by Jimmy Wales to stop the extradition of Sheffielder Richard O'Dwyer to the USA <RT also http://goo.gl/kiZfa - http://www.change.org/petitio...
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If the authors of computer science text books wrote arithmetic text books...... - http://abstrusegoose.com/474
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"This lost generation will cost us more than the cuts save" Polly Toynbee "gets" the importance of Further Education. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment...
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