By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online Course Quality: What do Nontraditional Students Value?
Emily Hixon, Casimir Barczyk, Penny Ralston-Berg, Janet Buckenmeyer, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 2016/12/16

One reason I'm linking to this item is that it focuses on nontraditional students, which makes it a welcome relief from most similar work (it would be even better if it extended to non-students, but that may be asking a bit too much). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mwabu and Onyx Connect have joined forces to locally produce the Mwabu e-learning tablet.
Staff Writer, IT News Africa, 2016/12/16
Onyx Connect is a South African startup with backing from Google. Mwabu's head office is in Cambridge, UK, with a branch office near Durban. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. European MOOC model
OpenUpEd, 2016/12/16

As the article notes, Europe has embraced the MOOC and is creating its own distinct flavour (one that I would say is closer to the original MOOCs than the commercial American products). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Design Principles
Pearson, 2016/12/19

Michael Feldstein points to this report on learning design principles from Pearson. The report (102 page PDF) is called "Objective Design and Instructional Alignment," which gives you a sense of their perspective. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Decentralized, P2P Chat in 100 lines of code
ZeroNet, DecentralizeToday, 2016/12/19

I spent several hours this morning messing around with this and actually created my own peer-to-peer discussion board as described in the article - it works, but I'm not sure people can access it as the port is closed. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. My Workflow
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2016/12/19

I was thinking about working openly recently and decided to document my workflow, such as it is. As you can see I need to devise a way to make my projects and courses more transparent. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Can We Learn From Countries That Effectively Teach Math?
KQED, MindShift, 2016/12/19

This report accords with my own sense of the matter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Model for the transformation of higher education in Africa
Phillip L Clay, University World News, 2016/12/19

I have my questions about former MIT Chancellor Phillip L Clay's proposal to renew African education, but the report he refers to is neither named nor hyperlinked, so all we have is this column. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Yes, Digital Literacy. But Which One?
Mike Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/12/19

"Which information literacy do we need?" asks Michael Caulfield. "Do we need more RADCAB? Do we need more CRAAP?" We can certainly agree that critical thinking has to go beyond simplistic five-step rubrics. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The SAP platform and digital transformation
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZD Net, 2016/12/19
This is a good but almost impenetrable article reporting on the fundamental shift in digital technology taking place today. If you want the two-line version it is this: the digital world is shifting from self-managed centralized services to distributed cloud services, but the weight of the platform is such that only a few very large vendors are competitive in this market. More...