By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
Robert H, frank, The Atlantic, 2016/05/06

The point of the article, in a nutshell: "a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. One Theory to Rule Them All
Esko Kilpi, 2016/05/06

I think there's a point to this post, which is why I'm linking to it, but I think it could probably have been explained more clearly. Essentially the argument is this: companies have shifted their thinking from treating other agencies as 'externalities' to thinking of them as the network. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brain Warps the Faces We See to Fit Stereotypes
James Devitt, Futurity, 2016/05/06

I have said in the past that we see what we are looking for. This is confirmation of that. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fifty shades of open
Jeffrey Pomerantz, Robin Peek, First Monday, 2016/05/05

This could have been much more appropriately titled, but the content of the piece is spot on. Specifically:

Open means rights
Open means access
Open means use
Open means transparent
Open means participatory
Open means enabling openness
Open means philosophically aligned with open principles. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Academia is quietly and systematically keeping its women from succeeding
Marcie Bianco, Quartz, 2016/05/05
Marcie Bianco makes the point proposed in the headline fairly convincingly by offering a series of ways in which it is true, listing everything from the larger students loans they must take out to the higher proportion of women in low-paying adjunct positions to the observation that as women join a field, average pay in the field drops. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Weak Predictive Power of Test Scores
Jay P. Greene, Education Next, 2016/05/05
The key question is "Are math and reading test results strong enough indicators of school quality that regulators can rely on them?" The evidence on this isn't clear. "There is surprisingly little rigorous research linking them to the long-term outcomes we actually care about." There is some evidence, such as this, but frankly it reads like pseudoscience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is Big Data Taking Us Closer to the Deeper Questions in Artificial Intelligence?
Gary Marcus, Edge, 2016/05/05
It's easy to get excited about thee potential for big data and deep learning in artificial intelligence, but as Gary Marcus argues in this item, we are still a long way from the goal. Even a one-year old child is further ahead than a robot with it comes to doing things like climbing couches. Machine reading and comprehension is a long way from what humans can do. Siri is not really much of an advance over ELIZA. More...

Universities UK has established a new working group to examine the current higher education sector agency landscape and provide advice on how the work of the agencies can continue to effectively support the sector into the future. Read more...