By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Lifelong Learning
Desire2Learn, 2020/01/21
As this report (36 page PDF) states, "individuals in the workforce will need access to a learning system that will support them at different life stages, be easily accessed throughout their career, and be much more flexible." That's quite true. And I agree that " I agree that we will need "new pedagogical models, such as shorter-term or modular programs, stackable credentials or badges, modified and adaptable curriculum, and greater use of self-directed and online learning." But to align it with workforce needs would be a mistake. First of all, employers are much too short-sighted (and often backward looking) in their selection of learning priorities. Second, they are generally less interested in providing what the report calls 'durable' skills in favour of product- and application-specific technical skills. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. QBot is here – Creating learning communities supporting inclusion and social learning in Teams for Education!
Ray Fleming, Microsoft Education, 2020/01/21
According to this article, " QBot – the learning community bot – is available as an opensource app on GitHub." Now to be clear, only the "Lite" version of QBot has been put into open source. Fleming argues, though, that "the core experience of QBot remains just as familiar and intuitive in the opensource version." And it's not really a chatbot. "Anyone in the team can tag QBot in a channel and ask a question. This then prompts QBot to notify the right tutor(s) – so that no question goes unanswered. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Edu-Decade That Was: Unfounded Optimism?
Geoff Cain, Brainstorm in Progress, 2020/01/21
I swear, I had flagged this for inclusion in the newsletter before reading all the way to the end of the post. What caught my eye was that it offered a look at the positive developments in the last decade of online learning, a welcome counterpoint to the doom and gloom we've heard from many pundits. What positive developments? Well we have cMOOCS and Connectivism, which if I may so humbly say, represented a big leap forward. We have web annotations (ok, they don't thrill me, but so what?). We have the renewed and welcome emphasis on equity and Inclusion in learning. We have data literacy (and I would add, increasing media literacy generally). We have open resources, domain of one's own, and microcredentials. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nurturing a Global Mind
Emily Boudreau, Usable Knowledge, 2020/01/21
I agree with the sentiment expressed in this article, that people should encopurage "the development and enhancement of global competencies like self-efficacy, adaptability, attitudes towards immigrants, and openness to diversity." I think the five learning activities identified by the authors should have been much more precisely stated. For example, while volunteering is important, it needs to be, um, volunteer. Cultural diversity events should help learners see the world through another culture's perspective (and not through the lens of classwork or assigned reading). Discussions about world events are useful; shouting matches about world events are not. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What’s Wrong with Computational Notebooks? Pain Points, Needs, and Design Opportunities
Souti Chattopadhyay, et.al., ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2020, 2020/01/21
This article (12 page PDF) identifies the challenges and pain points of running things like data analytics in things like Jupyter Notebooks. It's good to see this sort of article, because while some people (including myself) have touted this sort of approach as a way to generate dynamic and interactive learning resources, the actuality is that they are far from usable for the average person. In fact, after reading this article, we see that they are far from usable for the average data scientist. But the research quite clearly identifies where these problems are, and will serve as a valuable guide not only for notebook designers but for learning tool developers generally. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Freedom in an Age of Algocracy
John Danaher, 2020/01/30
Today's word is 'algocracy'. As in, rule by the algorithm. This paper examines the concept, revisits the concept of 'freedom' in the light of it, and looks at how algocracy and freedom intertwine, presenting "five mechanisms through which algocratic systems can promote and undermine freedom." They can promote freedon through choice filtration.- "they can help to filter choices and reduce thefeeling of being overwhelmed" - and through cognitive slack - "by offloading some decision-making domainsto algocratic systems." Conversely, algorithms can threaten the rationality of decision-making, manipulate our choices. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The importance of studying at home for a degree: E-learning in Africa
DW, 2020/01/30
This article from the German DW (but here in English) profiles work to develop eLearning in Africa, drawing on the perspective of Rebecca Stromeyer, who organizes the eLearning Africa conference, and Tony Carr, from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can Open Educational Resources Foster Equity In Higher Education?
Henry Kronk, LMS Pulse, 2020/01/30
My answer to the question in the title would be 'yes'. But what does Henry Kronk say? The article presents a research report by Amy Nusbaum, Carrie Cuttler, and Samantha Swindell. They "tested OER use against the textbook their department currently uses for their introductory course." So far as I can judge, that's probably the most limited and and uncreative use of OER imaginable. But we forge on. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From access to digitalisation: the changing role of online learning
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2020/01/30
Tony Bates writes about his experience offering a talk and workshop at Aalborg University, which because of Denmark's free and progressive education system "has no great need to use online learning to increase access or for distance education." So "the arguments for increased access and flexibility did not apply at AAU so much. The justification for increasing the use of digital technologies in teaching was based on new skills development and more digital applications within a problem-based teaching approach." This makes sense. Digital skills are essential today, and the only way to develop them is to learn digitally. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education
American Association of University Professors, 2020/01/20
The Americal Asssociation of University Professors has published an interesting, if possibly controversial, statement in defense of knowledge (or, as I would cat it after reading it, in defense of experts). But as Dave Cormier says in a recent podcast, universities are not the exclusive domain of knowledge any more, and for (almost) any fact, you can find someone equally educated who will disagree with that fact. More...