By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Learning Arena
Geir Sand Nilsen, BI Norwegian Business School, EdTech Foundry, 2020/01/20
This is a report from a reserach projected aimed at increasing engagement and reducing dropouts. According to its author, "to increase student engagement, you must first give the students a feeling of social and academic safety. This is in line with Tinto's model. Together with the research organisation Sintef, we have documented that the student’s feeling of safety needs to be created considerably earlier than first assumed." Recommendations include providing an online buddy before admission, providing an online learning assistant at the start of studies, giving all students help finding someone to work with. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Devolved Management of OER in Irish Higher Education?
Phil Barker, Sharing and learning, 2020/01/20
People should think twice before leaping to centralize national OER repositories, writes Phil Barker. OER are not the same as research papers or cultural heritage. "OER are difficult, complex beasts, the people who produce them and care for them should be looked after," he writes. The central repository tends to produce exactly the conditions that make people hesitant to share: loss of control, repository functionality, being judged, lack of reciprocity. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Do You Really Have a Right to be “Forgotten”?
Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff, 2020/01/20
Tim Stahmer answers the question in the headline with a somewhat unconvincing "no" based on the fact that it's hard to implement. "Implementation of the GDPR in Europe has been confusing at best," he writes. Maybe, but that's not why we won't be forgotten. There are too many reasons why society as a whole needs to remember that we exist: we might owe money, we might be a wanted criminal, we might have an infectuous disease, etc. It's not that implementation is confusing. It's that we don't actually want to implement it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Some AI Efforts Succeed While Many Fail
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2020/01/20
I remember when digital technology came into the institution in the 1980s and 1990s the oft-asserted (but less often heeded) advice was that the benefits of technology would only be realized by transforming operations to take advantage of it. Through the decades since this has proven to be true over and over again. And so it's not surprising to read a similar analysis of institutional AI. "Integrating AI and digital transformation initiatives is particularly important, since both typically require large-scale, enterprise-wide efforts to redesign work processes, systems and structures". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Concept note for the 2021 Global Education Monitoring Reporton non-state actors
UNESCO, 2020/01/20
While acknowledging that "The role of non-state actors in education is hotly debated" the authors of this report do a good job identifying the types of activities they undertake, the relative scale of their activities, governance, influence and innovation. The document provides a framework for analysing the role of non-state actors in education, which it should be noted includes not just companies but also foundations and charities, NGOs, and other social groups. This document prepares the ground for a 2021 report that will ask a key question. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Do you really need all this personal information, @RollingStone?
Doc Searls, Doc Searls Weblog, 2020/01/23
This article illustates pretty clearly why I use the strong ad-blocking technology in Ublock Origin (and why I won't buy a Chromebook). " This kind of (stuff) is why we have the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and California’s CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How I write backends
Federico Pereiro, GitHub, 2020/01/23
This is a good reference document for myself as I begin to think about how I want to write the next generation gRSShopper. It outlines a basic startup server configuration using a Linux OS, Redis database, Nginx server and Node.ja applications, with backup/sync on Amazon S3. I've looking at architecture B. Since this is in essence a personal application, it shouldn't need to scale beyond that (though there are scaling options if I'm wrong). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Standards for Writing Accessibly
Michael J. Metts, Andy Welfle, A List Apart, 2020/01/23
It's useful to keep these principles in mind when writing and designing text on web pages. Some things that resonated with me: "it’s extremely important to structure your longform writing with headers, short paragraphs, and other content design best practices." Oh yes. Also: "if there’s information critical to an action... place it before the text field or action button." Totally agree. Also, "try device-agnostic words that describe the action, irrespective of the interface, like choose, select, view". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Modular, Stackable Learning Means And Why It Will Transform Learning In The Workplace
Anant Agarwal, EdX, 2020/01/23
This is just a quick bit offering some definitions from edX. Modular learning is "unbundling the traditional learning 'packages' - Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s degrees - into more manageable learning chunks that are also tied to real career and life outcomes." And stackable learning is "when you take certificates and credentials that you earn in edX programs and 'stack' them together to form a larger credential or degree." The article doesn't come close to delivering on the second part of the headline. After all, the traditional learning 'packages' are already unbundled - we used to call the unbundled bits courses. What would really be transformative is being able to take courses from multiple institutions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Our New Role: Bringing Kindness To Work
Josh Bersin, 2020/01/31
For people in the north part of northern hemisphere this is probably the most difficult time of the year as we struggle with illness and weather and darkness. It reminds us that, as Josh Bersin says, "the most important things in our lives are compassion, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, mindfulness, social connection, and awe. These are all human issues, and all revolve around kindness." There's a tendency to blame things like lonliness and lack of compassion on our devices, but I think financial pressures, work demands, and other external stresses are playing a large role. More...