By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OER Survey and Adoption Growth: It pays to check source material
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2019/01/21
I had my own issues with the accuracy of a recent Chronicle's report on an OER study, and Phil Hill does a little fact-checking of his own and finds more problems. "The second paragraph shows a potential drop in adoption over the next three years for all faculty," he writes. "That would be major news showing that the OER movement hit an inflection point." But the study says nothing of the sort. "This survey asks faculty members who are not current users of open educational resources whether they expect to be using OER in the next three years. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Science in Canada's 2018-2020 Open Government Plan
Richard Ackerman, Science Library Pad, 2019/01/10
As you know, I've been a long-standing proponent of open science within our government agencies. I'm also on a committee working toward open science (though I haven't really done much with it yet). So I celebrate the recent announcement, covered by Richard Ackerman today, of Canada's newest commitment to open science, part of the newest release of the National Action Plan on Open Government. The plan includes pledges to "develop a Canada Open Science Roadmap to provide a plan for greater openness in federal science and research activities". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Miguel Guhlin[Edit][Delete]: Open Source Boondoggle? and Video Editing on Linux, Mousing Around [Edit][Delete] December 29, 2005

[link: 0 Hits] My experience with multimedia on Linux has been pretty poor, so I am sympathetic with the comment that prompted this post. I will look at some of the resources listed here for vide on Linux - but without a lot of hope. Right now, I can't even play video in my browser, much less create or edit it on the Linux system (and don't get me going about the work involved installing plugins for Firefox on Linux, or making wireless work (like this open content comic, which is probably good, but simply crashes my browser on Linux) - I have just about had my limit with this)). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeremy Price: Moving Forward with Open Eyes and an Open Mind, Smelly Knowledge December 16, 2005

Good discussion of some of the questions associated with social software and learning. Questions like, "What new challenges and barriers does the use of social software create?" And, "Does the use of social software the encourage the development of depth of thinking?" The best take-away is this citation from Ulises Mejias: "Ensuring that the benefits of social software reach all circles of society will require that we focus not on the virtuality of social interactions, but on their reality... the desire for connection and understanding, the nomad's learning as becoming". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Preston McAfee: Introduction to Economic Analysis December 8, 2005

I'll just quote Mike Linksvayer, who in turn quotes Preston McAfee, which I'll append with a hearty "hear! hear!": "Caltech economics professor Preston McAfee appears to be mad as hell about high journal and textbook prices, and he's doing something about it. He's published a complete Introduction to Economic Analysis textbook under a Creative Commons license. See his page about the license and high textbook prices: 'Why open source? Academics do an enormous amount of work editing journals and writing articles and now publishers have broken an implicit contract with academics, in which we gave our time and they weren't too greedy". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stuart Yeates: Oxford University Opt for a Library System Based on Open Source, EDUCAUSE Blogs November 25, 2005

Stuart Yeates reports, with links, "Oxford University libraries have announced that their new Library Management System (LMS) will be from VTLS. The VTLS product range incorporates open source components such as FEDORA digital object repository and the Mckoi or MySQL databases. So what are is Oxford paying for, if the software is based on free and open source software. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Joseph Hart: The Open Learner November 25, 2005

New blog by Joseph Hart. Well, in all honesty, he sent me an email about it about a month ago, but it lay buried in a stack of items requiring action. Over the last couple days I have burrowed through about 500 emails (90 to go) and this means that some people did not get responses - I feel badly about that, because I appreciate the time people take to write to me, and you should know that I have read the email even if I didn't answer. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rachel Hardy, Charles Oppenheim, Tim Brody and Steve Hitchcock: Open Access Citation Information, University of Southampton November 23, 2005

Very useful paper for those with an interest in metadata and indexing. The first third of the paper discusses open access publishing; good stuff, a nice review, but not really new. The second third is a useful discussion of indexing services and techniques currently extant, drawing from both commercial and non-commercial services. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Agneta Hult, Ethel Dahlgren, David Hamilton and Tor Söderström: Teachers’ Invisible Presence in Net-based Distance Education, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning November 4, 2005

The November issue of IRRODL is now available online. I highlight two papers, beginning with this look at the incluence of teachers in the directions taken by students in online discussion forums. I am most interested in the direction the paper takes at its conclusion: "The main ethical question, in both off- and online learning, is who does the drawing out [of purpose and value in learning]? Is it an external agent (a teacher)? Is it an internal agent (e.g., student’s own motivation or desire)? Or is it a disembodied agent – the invisible hand, for instance, that shaped the Website?". More...