By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fact-Testing On the Britannica Blog: Analyzing Internet Search Skills
In a recent Britannica Blog post contributor Gregory McNamee advised, "Trust not the first answer the search engine turns up." Not because the first result is usually an ad - I assume he meant the first reault after the ad. But because "it will usually be wrong or, if not outright wrong, not the answer you really need." This, of course, is nonsense - the first results are often useful. Search for me, for example. But McNamee adds, "too few students know even to go beyond the first couple of hits that come back from a Google search." Is this true? This article checks the facts - and it turns out that while most users (62 percent) don't look past the first page of results, the overwhelming majority (82 percent) attempt to refine their search - a rather sophisticated strategy, I would say. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Needed Skills for New Media
I guess my main reaction to this list is that it is a set of 2.0 skills described as though they were 1.0 skills. For example: "Play - the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving." Um, no, that might make the business perople happy, but I would say 'play' is 'the capacity to mess around with something just for fun'. Or "Multitasking - the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details." The 'shift focus' definition is very reassuring to pre-net-gen people who only focus on one thing at a time. I would say 'multitasking' is 'the ability to work on two tasks at the same time'. Or "Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information." This is a definition for people who don't want the messiness of things like connections or emergent knowledge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Award-Winning Faculty Online Teaching Practices: Roles and Competencies
Florence Martin, Kiran Budhrani, Swapna Kumar, Albert Ritzhaupt, online learning, 2019/03/05
My first reaction was to roll my eyes when I read the title of this paper, because the designation of 'award winning' professors is unscientific at best. I remained sceptical on reading about the "five different roles: facilitator, course designer, content manager, subject matter expert, and mentor," because I know there's a lot more than that. But persisting with it paid off as it turns out to be an interesting and thorough article. There's a good (though not comprehensive) list of competencies (table 4) and an emphasis on the need for quality online instructors to be strong online learners themselves. The authors write, "Our study emphasizes the need for instructors to maintain a strong willingness to learn and grow in their pedagogical and technology skills. More...