By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Insights into Promoting Critical Thinking in Online Classes
Many people equate critical thinking with reading skills. This flavour comes through clearly in this article, the core of which is a discussion of critical thinking and reading, with an eye to using the former to "increase the student’s cognitive information processing skills." Applied to writing, the same discourse stresses the importance of reflection and editing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 2019 eLearning Predictions – Hype Curve
Andy Hicken, Web Courseworks, 2019/01/02
I might have done this chart differently, but I like the way they've documented their process and made it harder to make a case against their hype cycle diagram. But where I disagree: they have blockchain right at the start, pre-hype, while I would have put it at peak hype a year ago. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. e-Learning Framework Toolkits
Here is what the preceeding item should have done instead. Here is a list of projects, their project home sites, and direct links to code (or to downloadables, where code is not available):
[site] [code] Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments (APIS)
[site] [code] Brokerage for Deep and Distributed e-Learning Resources Discovery (D+)
[site] [code] Integrating Simple Sequencing (ISIS)
[site] [code] Middleware for Distributed Cognition (MDC) (previously (?) JAFER)
[site] [code] Portal Services Embedder (PSE) (Site reporting a 404)
[site] [code] Service based LEarning Design (SLED)
[site] [code] Enterprise Web Services with Timetable Extentions for Microsoft.Net (SWEET)
[site] [code] Web Services for Reflective Learning (WS4RL). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Resources for Round One of the Toolkit Projects Now Available
These resources relate to the E-Learning Framework as supported by Britrain's JISC. Navigation to the resources themselves is just awful; the link you are given opens this page, where you need to notice links to the projects have opened in the left margin; click on a project such as APIS and then back to the left hand margin where (look carefully now) a link to the project resources page has opened. You're still not there. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paradigms in E-Learning
Short post I sent to DEOS-L last week in response to Farhad Saba's contention on that list that "e-learning is not a paradigm." I respond that there is a distinct discipline I call 'online learning' and that the evidence that it is indeed a distinct discipline is overwhelming. My post outlines what I think that paradigm looks like and offers an argument to show that it is distinct. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, June 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...