By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Racy frosh event video angers Ottawa student federation
Umnattributed, CBC News, Aug 01, 2014
Every once in a while, you get a photo of a person enjoying a university social activity (such as binge drinking) with the caption "you can't do this in online learning." The implication of course is that the physical and social presence of an in-person class creates an experience that can't be duplicated off-campus. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Disentangling The Effects Of Student Attitudes and Behaviors On Academic Performance
I commented the other day that a study was misleading because it didn't take into account motivation. This paper documents that effect. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Ethics of Big Data in Higher Education
Jeffrey Alan Johnson, International Review of Information Ethics, Jul 31, 2014
Interesting look at the effect of data mining in education (8 page PDF). The author makes the point that research based in data mining works quite differently from traditional research. I quote:
The author surveys the ethical implications of this. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reclaim & Rethink
Tim Klapdor, Tim Klapdor, Jul 31, 2014
Tim Klapdor explores the concept of self, paticu;arly with respect to identity and learning. It's a complex issue. At first blush we think we have one self, but then everyone can think of an instance when we were (if you will) "not ourselves". Klapdor explores "Jung... the anima/animus (male/female). This underlying unconscious mind helped balance and maintain the persona..." Except that's too simple as well. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Campus Tech 2014: Reinventing Higher Education
Tara E. Buck, Ed Tech, Jul 30, 2014
I like data as much as the next person. Probably more. But I'm fussy. And while I'm impressed by 3 billion data points in EdX, I first of all know that this is a relatively small amount of data, only a fraction of the actual reading and learning that happens online, and that it is a terribly unrepresentative sample, coming from only one platform representing only one approach. But based on the Universal Theory of the Social Sciences ("every person is like the students taking my class") we obtain some generalizations. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Early Review of Google Classroom
Phil Hill, e-Literate, Jul 29, 2014
The fade-to-black transition in the slide show was so distracting I couldn't finish (yes, it's that bad). And that's the main problem I can see with Google Classroom - tight integration with Google tools. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/07/27/why-lectures-are-dead-or-soon-will-be/
Tony Bates, online learning and distance education resources, Jul 29, 2014
As a test of Tony Bates's assertion, go to Codeacademy and try it out for an hour, and then come back. OK, back? Now ask yourself, could you even stand having the same content delivered to you by lecture? Keep in mind that you would have to do another hour's worth of work to practice it and actually learn it. And that's why the lecture is dead as a learning device. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Municipal nets, municipal electric power, and learning from history
David Weinberger, Joho the Blog, Jul 26, 2014
David Weinberger writes, "The debate over whether municipalities should be allowed to provide Internet access has been heating up. Twenty states ban it. Tom Wheeler, the chair of the FCC, has said he wants to “preempt” those laws. Congress is maneuvering to extend the ban nationwide." This is not just a U.S. issue because similar pressures exist worldwide. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Confound it! Correlation is (usually) not causation! But why not?
gwern branwen, LessWrong, Jul 27, 2014
When somebody proposes a simple mechanism to improve (say) learning outcomes, they're most always wrong. But why? It's because they have ascribed a simple cause-effect relation onto a complex phenomenon. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The real 10 algorithms that dominate our world
Marcos Otero, Medium, Jul 28, 2014
This is an interesting and alternative way of looking at how our world is structured. For people who design systems, these algorithms are second nature. More...
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