By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Kevin Carey is (mostly but not entirely) wrong (again)
Steven D. Krause, 2019/04/10
This post responds to a recent article by Kevin Carey, summarized here. The points where Carey was right: tuition costs too much, and online program management (OPM) is not helping things. So where is he wrong? In three places, says Steven Krause: first, in the idea that MOOCs can cut costs. Second, in the idea that students are not 'repeat customers'. And third, the very idea that corporations are "devouring" education (which may be more Carey-wish-fulfillment than fact). Maybe Krause is right. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why ethical debate is crucial in the classroom
Miranda Mowbray, JISC, 2019/04/10
I'm going to use this post as an excuse for discussing the part where I disagreed most with Kate Bowles (see below). She very clearly ties the need for open education with an ethics of care. In a similar manner, I listened to a radio show today connecting our response to climate change with a certain ethical perspective. And I see the reasoning - if only people adopted a certain ethical perspective, then systems would be humane and people would do the right thing. However, my fear here is that if we are putting our trust in ethics (in both education and environment) then we are putting our trust in exactly the wrong thing. We can discuss ethics, we can refer to them - but you can't make people ethical - at least, not in the sense that everybody is ethical in exactly the same way everyone else is ethical. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Systematic Review of the EQuiv Theory
Terry Anderson, Virtual Canuck, 2019/04/09
Terry Anderson's Equiv Theory is essentially the idea that "though interaction is critically important in distance education, it can take many forms and further that one form can substitute for another." It's the sort of theory that's difficult to quantify and evaluate - what is it for one sort of interaction to have the same outcome as another? And how do you apply it when the outcomes are complex - for example, as I read this article I couldn't help thinking that the purpose of a PhD program is as much to socialize or enculturate prospective professors as it is to advance knowledge. Anyhow, this post is a summary and review of Constance D. Graham and Liezel Massyn's review of the Equiv Theory (30 page PDF). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Developer Survey Results
Stack Overflow, 2019/04/09
This survey of some 90,000 software developers on Stack Overflow is heavily weighted toward European and North American respondents, and of course is self-selecting, but it still provides some pretty good insight into the field. Let's deal with one myth right away: the idea that programmers don't go to school. Wrong - the vast majority of them have a university degree. The vast majority are also employed full-time. But the rest of the stereotypes all fit. They are overwhelmingly young white males. They're not heavily into social media, but if they are, it's probably Reddit. Apart from their degree, how do they learn. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Accessibility testing with Blackboard Ally
Clint Lalonde, EdTech Factotum, 2019/04/09
Clint Lalonde reports on "system wide testing of an accessibility product called Ally with 5 institutions: UBC, VCC, NIC, Langara College & Camosun College." Created by Blackboard, and advertised as LMS Agnostic, Ally scans learning content and helps institutions provide accessible versions. Lalonde's post summarizes the testing project final report (12 page PDF). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. College Grads Sell Stakes in Themselves to Wall Street
Claire Boston, Bloomberg, 2019/04/09
This might seem like a really good idea - until you work through the consequences. The idea is that aspiring college students sell stakes in their future earnings on something like a student stock market. “I envision a whole new equity market for higher education in the next five years where today there’s only debt,” says Chuck Trafton, who runs a hedge fund. Ah, but I can see the problems already. Not all students will be able to sell options - and the ones declined will be the usual set of minorities and less affluent students. As well, when companies sell stock, they assume a fiduciary responsibility to prioritize earnings - will the same apply to graduates? Will the options be traded? Will there be scams and insider trading. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Blockchain Enhanced Framework for Social Networking
Renita M. Murimi, Ledger, 2019/04/09
This paper (15 page PDF) proposes "a framework for secure, trustworthy social networking that also creates value for user-generated content by using a blockchain-enhanced framework for social networking." Obviously a similar approach could be used in educational networking. The framework proposes mechanisms for authenticating authorship, sharing options, recognition or reward, and algorithms for nuisance management (sentiment, trolling, spam). Where blockchain comes into play is in enabling these functions in decentralized systems while protecting user privacy. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Think tanks fill an important niche within Canada’s public policy landscape
Mark Cardwell, University Affairs, 2019/04/11
I disagree with the sentiment expressed in the headline for two reasons. First, many of Canada's think tanks are what Guillaume Lamy calls "combat think tanks", meaning they "defend or advocate on behalf of ideologies and policies outside the political system." And they do this using illegitimate or very questionable research. And second, they “are highly adept at getting their messages heard in today’s crowded ideas marketplace.” Depending on private fundraising from special interest groups, they essentially shout down more legitimate perspectives, placing columns in newspapers, filling all the slots for media interviews, and thereby defining conversations they have no business being in. It's worth noting that news media are their willing accomplices as they turn to the think tanks for an easy headline rather than doing the work of interviewing serious academics, researchers and scientists. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. When Leaving Academe, Which Research Projects Do You Leave Unfinished?
Erin Bartram, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019/04/11
The question being considered by the author is one best considered while still working in a college or university environment, I would say. And it should be thought of in this sense: if I left academe today, would I still be working on this work? If the answer is 'no', stop doing the work and start working on something you're actually interested in. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Restore dead websites that don't exist anymore: Archivarix
Luigi Canali De Rossi, Robin Good, 2019/04/11
While the Internet Archive (IA) is a great service, it's not really meant for day-to-day use. It's an archive, not a production website. If you want to restore a site from the archived copy, that can be a lot of work, since IA changes all the links and adds a header. Archivarix acts like a reverse archiver - it extracts the site from IA, cleans it up, and presents it to you in a zip file ready for mounting on a web server where it can resume its former life as a real web site. It won't be perfect - things IA couldn't harvest, like CGI scripts and some background files, will not work. More...