By . The United States is currently in its 113th month of consecutive economic expansion. The all-time record is 120. A trade-war-obsessed lunatic is in control of the White House, and earlier this year Congress approved maybe the most radical set of deficit-driven tax cuts ever proposed. The likelihood that a recession hits the United States at some point in the next 24 months is thus exceedingly high. More...
Planning for a Recession
First Nations art and dance, a new campus, and moving to sustainable open education: a short report on the ETUG Fall Workshop

(free) book Assessment strategies for online learning #education #assessment #eLearning #instructionaldesign
By Inge Ignatia de Waard. Assessing online learning has many challenges, but with this new book written by experts Dianne Conrad and Jason Openo, a lot of solutions can be found. The book, entitled Assessment Strategies for Online Learning - Engagement and Authenticity, can be bought for 32,99 dollars here (if you have a budget this is the way to go as you support author and initiative), or you can have a look at the free pdf here. This book is a must read for those using assessment, as it not only gives traditional assessment, but also dives into evaluations that are linked to open learning, journals, portfolios, etc. Great and interesting read. More...
Call for papers #CfP from #BJET & call for co-authoring book on #Philosophy #AI #humanmachine #interdisciplinary
By Inge Ignatia de Waard. The call for papers below is for authors researching 'human learning and learning analytics in the age of artificial intelligence' and is an action to celebrate BJET's 50th anniversary. But first ... the call for co-authors to realize a new Rebus book on the subject of Introduction to Philosophy series. More...
Page for #IDVmatrix on #LMS description and setting it amidst other tools
By Inge Ignatia de Waard. In the past year I have been adding some Instructional Design descriptions in my notebook. After I while I realized that something useful could come out of this very varied collection, so now I am putting some of these pages online (the Instructional Design Variation matrix or IDVmatrix). The idea is to grow a compendium of these pages, adding parameters that are meaningful in ID to each of those learning/teaching design elements, and eventually use these parameters as a matrix to use on the job. I will only write them here, and add the #IDVmatrix hashtag for easy recall once these pages grow. More...
Murder on the academic express

He paused, and made eye contact with each of the twelve people around the table. More...
Building bridges between UK and African universities

Ten ways NOT to run an independent consultation

Like many others, I had assumed it would be more helpful to the higher education sector than it turned out to be.
But this should not be the end of the road because there is a strong case for thinking the results of the MAC review reflect the imperfect processes more than the quality of the evidence submitted. More...
The Statistics Authority versus the DfE: Round X
At HEPI Towers, we’ve been discussing the latest spat between the UK Statistics Authority and the Department for Education about education spending. In a new exchange of letters, the Department has largely backed down. More...
If we value autonomy, we should be wary of inadvertently encouraging more state intervention
I dropped by the Barbican at the weekend, for the Battle of Ideas. It was my third visit to the annual festival to take part in a stimulating event about higher education. This time, the topic was ‘Universities: Can’t get no satisfaction’. More...