By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Of Machine Guns and MOOCs: 21st Century Engineering Disasters
Pat Lockley, Hybrid Pedagogy, April 25, 2013
As someone heavily implicated in the development of MOOCs, I have to be accountable if, as this author suggests, the impact of the MOOC is more skin to that of the machine gun than to anything that would actually help massive numbers of people. But I am not a member of the military-industrial complex (nor even a particularly good public servant) and it is not with the militarization of learning in mind that the MOOC was developed (the author's allusions to COBOL and SCORM, neither of which have anything to to with MOOCs, notwithstanding). More...
Tin Can API Version 1.0 Released
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tin Can API Version 1.0 Released
Rustici, April 25, 2013
The US-based Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) led the development of a project now called the Experience API, the purpose of which is to formalize the recording of learner interactions with learning resources. The non-ADL version of this is the Tin Can API, featured here by Rustici software (though so far as I can tell, Experience API and Tin Can API are the same thing). Tomorrow (Friday) will feature the launch of the Tin Can API version 1.0 specification. Thanks to Andy Whitaker for sending me the Tin Can information. More...
The Future of Digital Identity
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Digital Identity
Hans de Zwart, Technology, Innovation, Education, April 25, 2013
Identity is an ongoing concern, both in the news and in our daily lives. Digital identity creates constraints around what would once have been an anonymous activity - buying a magazine, for example - while at the same time streamlining others - like online banking, for example. Surveillance and biometrics solve serious criminal threats, but when used to constrain legal demonstration, pose the possibility of suppression. More...
News of the Week: Robo-Grading Debate, MOOCs Promoting Peer Collaboration & New Ed-Tech Tool
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. News of the Week: Robo-Grading Debate, MOOCs Promoting Peer Collaboration & New Ed-Tech Tool
Debbie Morrison, online learning insights, April 21, 2013
This is a summary article of the week's events in educational technology, but it contains a good summary of the debate around (what I guess we are now calling) robo-grading, including links to a NY Times article (with more than 1000 comments), a petition against robo-grading, and arguments against edX on the basis of robo-grading. The same article looks at a new platform called NovoEd , including challenges posed by peer grading. More...
How resilient is “open”?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How resilient is “open”?
Brian Lamb, Abject, April 21, 2013
More on the influence of wealth and power on history, open content and open source. "It’s not as if “closed” systems are particularly resistant to the influence of money and power. But resting assured that “openness is the best disinfectant” is likely to fail us as well". More...
Pick My NCTM Sessions For Me. Please.
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pick My NCTM Sessions For Me. Please.
Karl Fisch, The Fischbowl, April 22, 2013
I thought this was a clever way of (semi-)randomizing his participation at an upcoming conference on education and mathematics. You are presented with a list of sessions, a way to select one, and room for comments. Of course I helped Karl Fisch pick his sessions; my comment at the end: "It's like there's two tracks through this conference, baby-math (aka common core) and adult math (the others). Stay with the adult math". More...
Value-Added Measures (VAM)
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Value-Added Measures (VAM)
Scott Mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, April 22, 2013
There's a whole industry based on evaluating teachers - and yet, it seems to me the statistics it relies upon would be dismissed outright if used to evaluate professional baseball players or other athletes. The current measures are quite coarse, like ranking a ballplayer based on wins and losses in the month of April. Nobody would rely on this, and because many variables relate to wins (including the strength of one's opponents, the contributions of teammates, health, and other intangibles) much more fine-grained measures are used. More...
Too Many Universities? Too Many Graduates? Too Much Debt?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Too Many Universities? Too Many Graduates? Too Much Debt?
Dave Warlick, 2¢ Worth, April 22, 2013
This sentence struck me as especially relevant: "I had always been destined for college, not a factory." As though the former is of value, and the latter not so much. Now I happen to think that work in a factory is dignified and worthwhile (I frequently think of the workers in Alliston, Ontario, who made my Honda - thank you all). But the problem isn't simply that there are too many university graduates, but also too many factories, many of them producing less and less meaningful products. In general in society worldwide we have too many people for the work that needs to get done, which leaves many of us underemployed or unemployed. More...
Who Will Pay for the Paper?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Who Will Pay for the Paper?
Allie Grasgreen, Inside Higher Ed, April 26, 2013
It's interesting to observe this trend just beginning in the U.S. because it has been the norm in Canada for many years. The trend is to have students pay, via a levy, for student media (generally the newspaper and radio station). When I was editor of the Gauntlet in the 1980s we received some $10 or $15 per student, which gave us a budget of a couple hundred thousand. Student levies are the norm in Canada. Most of our costs were in printing, but we also had money for equipment, photo processing, typsesetting, and the like. More...
Students Avoid ‘Difficult’ Online Courses, Study Finds
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Students Avoid ‘Difficult’ Online Courses, Study Finds
Ann Schnoebelen, The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, April 26, 2013
The report states, "Many students stay away from online courses in subjects they deem especially difficult or interesting." Again, we have to keep in mind that by studying "students" the reserachers are limiting their domain to people who (a) have already excelled in traditional education, (b) have the means to pay for tuition, and (c) have already done so, and are currently attending college. So of course they would shun the online option in cases where their privileged position will give them that in-person advantage. More...