By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LinkedIn shares plummet after 'extraordinary' revenue miss
Sarah Frier, Globe, Mail, 2015/05/01

Here's another example of a stock losing a quarter of its value after missing an earnings target (and proof that releasing the news via an unauthorized tweet really has nothing to do with the plunge in value). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. ASU’s edX MOOC deal: Lots of links and a few thoughts
Steve Krause, stevendkrause.com, 2015/05/01

As the title says, a bunch of links and some thoughts. I like the Onion's take on the ASU experiment (which is to offer free MOOCs to first year students, where you pay only if you pass). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Preparing for the digital university: a review of the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning
George Siemens, Dragan Gašević, Shane Dawson, Athabasca University, 2015/04/30
This book-length publication will receive widespread attention, coming as it does with a media campaign complete with Gates Foundation backing and a Chronicle article. It's essentially a meta-study (sometimes known as a tertiary study) of the 'literature' in the field if distance education and (to a lesser extent) online learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. They turned college into McDonald’s: Adjunct professors, fast-food wages and how colleges screw more than just students
Paul Rosenberg, Salon, 2015/05/04
From the article, which needs no further commentary: "The congressional testimony Greenberg gave was taken in conjunction with the release of a report on contingent faculty in higher education, “The Just-In-Time Professor,” summarizing results of an e-forum by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Turnitin Announces Availability of Turnitin Scoring Engine for Automated Writing Assessment
Press Release, Turnitin, 2015/04/30
So what can you do if you have a large database of essays that schools have forced students to contribute in order to prevent plagiarism? Well if you're TurnItIn you can use the database to create an automated essay grading system (one which presumably also detects plagiarism). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can Behavioral Tools Improve Online Student Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from a Massive Open Online Course
Richard W. Patterson, Cornell University, 2015/04/30

As Jon Dron says, this is an interesting and well-argued paper. The author tests the use of behavioural aides to increase course completion. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Game of Fear
Zachary Jason, Boston Magazine, 2015/04/30

At some point in the past advertisers decided computers and video games were only for boys, and women have been paying the price ever since. This article describes what one writer called "the nauseating pathology behind Gamergate." I can't read this without getting angry. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Saddest Tweets Ever
Chris Lott, FNCLL, 2015/04/28

Chris Lott now blogs at http://fncll.org and this week writes of an exchange wherein Gardner Campbell throws water on the possibility that he and Bryan Alexander might every collaborate in some sort of 'literature happening'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. BBC is giving away 1 million mini computers
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, 2015/04/28

The full title of this post is: "BBC is giving away 1 million mini computers so kids can learn to code: Prediction — little impact on broadening participation." Mark Guzdial continues. More...