Dimensional Modelling by Example
Barry Williams, 2018/03/21
This short book (132 page PDF) contains an overview of the concept of 'dimensional modeling' and then a ton of examples. You can find the origin of dimensional modelling in Ralph Kimball's 1997 Manifesto. More...

The For-Profit Education Old Guard Has More to Worry About Than Government Regulation
Henry Kronk, eLearningInside News, 2018/03/23
The point of this article is to argue that the greatest threat to for-profit education is the for-profit industry itself. This became clear when regulations were drafted to weed out bad actors. "At this point, there are ample data that suggest the for-profit education sector in the U.S. doesn’t just have a few bad apples; it’s primarily comprised of them." Recently, we've seen two major incursions from the for-profit sector into the educational technology space: for-profit MOOCs, and coding bootcamps. More...

The Internet of Bad Things
Jenna McLaughlin, Utne Reader, 2018/03/23
I've heard it called "the internet of broken things" in the past, though the new name is probably more appropriate because the things aren't broken, they were just badly designed to begin with. This article is a good compendoium of some recent breakdowns, referencing such threats as Mirai and Stuxnet and Heartbleed. More...

The Fundamental Power of Explanation
Brett Hall, Philosophy of Science, 2018/03/23
One of the advantages of having a background in the philosophy of science (and, to a degree, in the sciences themselves) is that it puts me in a good position to assess claims that "researchers have found" this or that pertaining to education (mostly, the assessment is that they have found no such thing). More...

Short eLiterate Course on Analytics and Adaptive Learning
2018/03/20
This is a nice collection of six videos on the topic. Topics covered include continuous formative assessment, memory decay, and adaptive learning. More...

No Significant Difference - Unless you are a Jumper
Craig Ruff, Richard J Fendler, Milind Shrikhande, online learning, 2018/03/20
The well-documented 'no significant difference' phenomenon (NSD) is the observation that the delivery mode does not impact learning outcomes. The proposition tested in this paper (22 page PDF) is the idea that while NSD may hold in the aggregate, it varies at the individual level. More...

An Online Engagement Framework for Higher Education
Petrea Redmond, Amanda Heffernan, Lindy Abawi, Alice Brow, Robyn Henderson, online learning, 2018/03/20
This paper (22 page PDF) identifies a set of five major types of online engagement in courses based on a literature search looking at student attitudes, beliefs and actions. The types are: social, cognitive, emotional, behavioural and collaborative engagement. More...

Online, Cheap -- and Elite
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/03/20
This article summarizes an analysis of Georgia Tech’s online master’s in computer science published in Education Next ("a journal focused on school reform") which suggests that the experiment was a success. According to the authors, it attracted students who would not have enrolled in the program and paid the fees -  "working adults who can’t commit to full-time graduate study." But it might be a result that doesn't replicate. More...

OERu social network
Wayne Mackintosh, OERu, 2018/03/20
OERu has launched it's on Mastodon instance. In an email Wayne Mackintosh writes, "We are excited to announce the launch of mastodon.oeru.org - OERu’s own social network to support learners and the wider OERu family. For information on how to sign up on mastodon.oeru.org, please consult the OERu support site." Mastodon is an open source social network application that creates a distributed network of instances (instead of a commercialized central service like Twitter). More...

Family fun with deepfakes. Or how I got my wife onto the Tonight Show
Sven Charleer, 2018/03/19
Content sites are beginning to block and take down deepfakes animations and videos. These are created by AIs and essentially put the face of one person onto the body of another (where the other may be depicted in some very compromising positions (or to insert Nicolas Cage into all your favourite motion pictures)). More...