By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Eliminativism and the Neuroscience of Consciousness
Richard Brown, 2017/03/21
The idea of 'eliminativism' is that our common-sense psychological concepts such as 'beliefs', 'desires', etc., don't actually exist. This has important implications for education, since pretty much all of educational theory depends on these concepts. I am an eliminativst philosophically. More...
Recommended Reading: CBE platforms represent a truly niche market
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Recommended Reading: CBE platforms represent a truly niche market
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2017/03/21
It's pretty hard to make that case when you're steeped in enterprise learning, but I think it's true: "CBE is indeed a niche market growing much more slowly that many had hoped or predicted." There are reasons for that. More...
Critically examining unbundling
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Critically examining unbundling
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2017/03/21
"Like its close cousin Disruption," says Martin Weller, "unbundling has been a favourite philosophy of the silicon valley start up. It has often been applied to education (even, erm, by me). More...
The Learning Analytics Blueprint
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Learning Analytics Blueprint
Desire2Learn, 2017/04/14
This is a piece of marketing published by D2L some time in the last year. It's a nice overview of how to plan for the use of data analytics and how to work with the results. More...
New machine learning models can detect hate speech and violence from texts
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New machine learning models can detect hate speech and violence from texts
Myriam Douce Munezero, Phys.org, 2017/04/14
This dissertation presents "a framework that can be used for the automatic detection of antisocial behavior in text. The framework is based on the emotion and language theories." More...
Burger King Ad Creates Whopper of a Mess for Google Home
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Burger King Ad Creates Whopper of a Mess for Google Home
Richard Adhikari, E-Commerce Times, 2017/04/14
This is funny in a couple of ways. First, it's funny because the Burger King television spot succeeded in prompting Google Home to look up 'whopper burger' and read back the response to people. More...
It’s Time to Mobilize Around a New Approach to Educational Assessment
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. It’s Time to Mobilize Around a New Approach to Educational Assessment
Alvin Vista, Esther Care, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017/04/14
We know there are better models of assessment than they typical tests and assignments being used today. Even so, these models are not changing rapidly at all. So what's going on? More...
Why VR Is Failing
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why VR Is Failing
Rob Enderle, E-Commerce Times, 2017/04/14
It might be a bit early to say that virtual reality (VR) is "failing" but the arguments in this article are sound. More...
A Marketplace in Confusion
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Marketplace in Confusion
Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/04/14
This article takes the perspective of private colleges that are reacting with concern after the state's announcement of a free college tuition program. They "reacted with a mix of dismay, confusion, criticism and, in some cases, resolve in the days after New York leaders struck a deal to start a tuition-free public college program this fall." More...
Democratizing digital learning: theorizing the fully online learning community model
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Democratizing digital learning: theorizing the fully online learning community model
Todd J. B. Blayone, Roland vanOostveen, Wendy Barber, Maurice DiGiuseppe, Elizabeth Childs, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2017/04/14
From the abstract: "As a divergent fork of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, FOLC describes collaborative learning as a symbiosis of social and cognitive interactions amplified through effective use of synchronous and asynchronous digital affordances." More...