By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Establishing a Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication: A Call for Community Engagement
Personally, I think this comes very late in the day, but I think it's good to see the library community looking seriously at changes to scholarly communication. After all, the old system - where we take all our material, give it to publishers, then buy it back for ever more inflated prices - is pretty much dead. I don't know about a "research agenda" - that's the old model of 'coordinated and targeted action', which generally serves the interests of one minority view or another. But all of that said, the questions, at least, are being asked: how is cyberinfrastructure money being spent? How do virtual organizations differ from those more traditional. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lost in Translation: (Mis)Understanding Youth Engagement
I've said this before but it bears repeating (from a report just released by the Canadian Policy Research Networks): "The central finding is that 'Generation Y' - those born after 1979 - is far from apathetical and apolitical. However, while very much tuned into small "p" political life, young Canadians are increasingly disenchanted with our formal political institutions and politics as currently practiced." More...

Interest in the 2020 election could give colleges and universities an opportunity to increase student voting and civic engagement to a level we've rarely seen before, argues Hahrie Han. More...