By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dear Mommy Blogger
Josi Denise, 2016/05/19
There's a lot of off-colour language in this post announcing Josi Denise's resignation as a 'mommy blogger'. The full post, though, is worth reading, as it gives us a glimpse of a world in which brands manipulate bloggers and bloggers so whatever it takes to gain readers - and stay in touch with company PR reps. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The empty brain
Robert Epstein, Aeon, 2016/05/19
Please please please read this. If you do any theorizing about learning at all, or want to explain why good pedagogy works, or anything like that, read this. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Highly novel research proposals ‘being systematically rejected’
David Matthews, Times Higher Education, 2016/05/19
I can identify with this. "Highly novel research proposals are being systematically turned down because they fall outside evaluators’ paradigms of understanding, a new study suggests." Novel proposals fared even worse if they were within the evaluator's domain of expertise. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Deploy a Website
Codecademy, 2016/05/19
If you don't know how to do this, this will be a really useful skill to learn. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Learning: Digital, Distributed, Data-Driven
George Siemens, elearnspace, 2016/05/18
"We know the names," writes George Siemens. "Vygostky, Freire, Illich, Papert, and so on. We know the ideas. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Partnering with Fishtree brings digital courseware at scale to Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Blog, 2016/05/18
Blackboard is partnering with yet another entrant in the adaptive learning marketplace, FishTree. It's a "personalization platform that combines standard-aligned resources and social media-based tools with world-class analytics to save teachers time, and help students learn. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Have Personalization Backwards
Michael Caulfield, e-Literate, 2016/05/18
I'm glad e-Literate asked Michael Caulfield to elaborate on his post, though it still feels abridged to me. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Increasing Social Presence in Online Learning through Small Group Discussions
Mete Akcaoglu, Eunbae Lee, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016/05/18
This could have been such an interesting paper had the authors not succumbed to what is a disease in our field, small (n=33) and unrepresentative (graduate students pursuing a master's degree in education) samples. The idea was to determine the impact of small group size on social presence in learning, where social presence was measured in three dimensions. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does Formal Credit Work for MOOC-Like Learning Environments?
Engin Kursun, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016/05/18
This article has an almost-decent sample size and the sort of conclusion that magazines like the Chronicle love to publish: "Data was collected via 516 responses to an online survey and achievement tests.... The credit bearing group also scored significantly higher achievement scores than the credit careless group. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Status of E-Learning in Public Universities in Kenya
George L. Makokha, Dorothy N. Mutisya, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016/05/18
OK, I get this: "e-learning is at its infant stage in universities in Kenya. Majority of universities lacked senate approved e-learning policies to guide structured implementation. A few lecturers (32%) and students (35%) used e-learning and few courses (10%) were offered online. More...
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