By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Research Methodologies Redux
Stephen Downes, May 26, 2014, E-Teaching.org, Tübingen, Germany, online via Adobe Connect
This is essentially the same set of slides as presented as 'Against Digital Research Method', though the presentation addresses research on MOOCs more specifically. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Defending Commencement Protest
Michael Rushmore, Inside Higher Ed, May 27, 2014
I have never attended any of my graduation ceremonies and have no idea who spoke at them. I would probably have disapproved; I think that universities often celebrate the wrong people (the selection for this year's University of Calgary speakers makes my point: the outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, a science journalist, the CEO of the Calgary Stampede, and an executive in the grain and energy industries). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alexander the MOOC Lands
Guy M. Rogers, Inside Higher Ed, May 28, 2014
I know, it's just another MOOC story, which has been done, but still I can't help passing these sentences along: "Some critics of MOOCs have pointed to the fact that only a small percentage of those who register for MOOCs routinely 'finish' classes... it is true that about 6% of the students who registered for my class completed the final exam. But the total of 1162 students taking the final exam in this one course is more students than I have taught at Wellesley College over the past ten years." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Ed-Tech is a Reclamation Project
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, May 28, 2014
Quite a good talk from Audrey Watters a few days ago in Edmonton. This post is the (sparse) slide deck and the (rich) text transcript. The gist? "We can reclaim the Web and more broadly ed-tech for teaching and learning. But we must reclaim control of the data, content, and knowledge we create. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building a Knowmad Society in Ecuador
John W. Moravec, Education Futures, May 28, 2014
I think this is an ambitious plan and wonder how it will impact the work that follows: "The project seeks to encourage horizontalized, peer-to-peer exchange and the development of activities that will promote extending learning beyond formal education. Nine three-day workshops will cover each regional division of Ecuador. An online platform will facilitate further discussion, and the outputs from the workshops and online activities will be fed into a data analysis process that will inform the creation of a white paper on transforming Ecuadorian education for a 'knowmadic' society." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Best Laid Plans …
Frances Bell, Francesbell's Blog, May 28, 2014
Frances Bell has responded to my recent presentation on digital research methods. She writes, "A criticism of research that Stephen made was that it tends to find what it is looking for. This is a very valid potential criticism but I would claim that a combination of planning and flexibility can guard against this." Also don't miss a good comment from Roy Williams. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ergo
Ergo, May 28, 2014
Most philosophy publications are closed-access, so I haven't really kept up, but this week markes the launch of Ergo, an open-access philosophy journal. "Ergo is a general, open access philosophy journal accepting submissions on all philosophical topics and from all philosophical traditions. This includes, among other things: history of philosophy, work in both the analytic and continental traditions, as well as formal and empirically informed philosophy." Interestingly, the articles in the initial issue are also being blog-commented in the Mod Squad group philosophy blog. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Defending Commencement Protest
Michael Rushmore, Inside Higher Ed, May 28, 2014
I have never attended any of my graduation ceremonies and have no idea who spoke at them. I would probably have disapproved; I think that universities often celebrate the wrong people (the selection for this year's University of Calgary speakers makes my point: the outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, a science journalist, the CEO of the Calgary Stampede, and an executive in the grain and energy industries). But simply skipping graduation is not an option for many students, and given that they're being dragged into association with the speakers, they do have, they believe, the right to make a statement about that selection. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Who Gets to Graduate?
Paul Tough, New York Times, May 28, 2014

So this is part of what we're up against when we're trying to support a more egalitarian system of education: "whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make.... it will always be the case that the kids who have need are going to have been denied a lot of the academic preparation and opportunities for identity formation that the affluent kids have been given." I can speak to that from experience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Unizin is a Threat to edX
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, May 28, 2014
e-Literate a week or so broke a story on Unizin, an initiative from the Indiana University designed to, as Michael Feldstein says, "run the table" on online learning technologies. In this post he adds more; it's an oddly personalized look at the initiative: "If you want to understand Unizin, you really have to understand Brad Wheeler.... Unizin has his fingerprints all over it." Well, maybe. More...