By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. California’s multi-million dollar online education flop is another blow for MOOCs
Ryan Derousseau, The Hechinbger Report, 2015/04/15
According to this article, "the Online Instruction Pilot Project has become another expensive example of the ineffectiveness—so far, anyway—of once-vaunted plans to widen access to college degrees by making them available online, including in massive online open courses, known as MOOCs." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The numbers game
Steve Wheeler, Learning With Es, 2015/04/15
The assignment of a numeric value to student work is a technology. It's actually a relatively recent technology. Why did we adopt it? Steve Wheeler asks the question and the closest he comes to an answer is in saying "marking of students' work is... about how their work measures up against standards." In the wider scheme of things, though, surprisingly few assessments are made this way. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Against close reading
Alex Reid, Digital Digs, 2015/04/15

There are some really good observations in this post. The practise of 'close reading' as it is widely taught involves "the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text." A common criticism of social media and online reading is that students "find nuance, complexity, or just plain length of literary texts less to their liking than we did." I don't think they ever found it to their liking, but let's assume they do. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Maryland 'Free Range' Kids Taken Into Custody Again
Emily Shapiro, ABC News, 2015/04/14

I have to wonder what's missing to children who are raised in constant custody until their mid-teens. This story concerns a 10-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl who were picked up by police when seen playing by themselves in a park; their parents have been charged. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Survival to Success: Transforming Immigrant Outcomes
Government of Canada, 2015/04/14

A panel "led by experts in the areas of newcomer integration, diversity and certification" is conducting interviews in a bid to determine how best to help new Canadians integrate into the economy. There is an online consultation available here. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Someone Calculated How Many Adjunct Professors Are on Public Assistance, and the Number Is Startling
Jordan Weissmann, MoneyBox, 2015/04/14
When people are living on low wages in North America, the government is essentially subsidizing their employers. It's as though we are saying "we (the taxpayers) are willing to contribute directly to their basic needs for food and shelter so you can have low prices at Walmart and McDonalds.". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Corporate Culture in a Venn Diagram
Dan Pontrefact, 2015/04/14

You can read the article for yourself; I want to use this post to flag the misuse of the term "Venn Diagram". In this article, the diagram has four circles, while in a proper Venn diagram there are only three. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kirkpatrick Model Good or Bad? The Epic Mega Battle!
Will Thalheimer, Clark Quinn, Will at Work Learning, 2015/04/14
The Kirkpatrick Model is a mechanism for evaluating learning programs; you can read about it here. The idea is to take evaluations of learning events beyond the 'reaction sheet' and to look at the actual results, including "to what degree targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training event and subsequent reinforcement." These targeted outcomes are often, in a corporate setting, the impact of changes in behaviour (lower losses, keeping on schedule, etc). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Driving Disruptive Innovation: developing agile and responsive module production
Allison Littlejohn, Little by Littlejohn, 2015/04/13
"How," asks Allison Littlejohn, "should professional practice in the Open University evolve to facilitate agile and responsive module production?" It's a good question. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why LinkedIn Matters
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2015/04/13

"Imagine," says Michael Feldstein, "that you wanted to do a longitudinal study of how students from a particular college do in their careers. In other words, you want to study long-term outcomes." Where would you go. More...