Team Trust in Online Education: Assessing and Comparing Team-member Trust in Online Teams Versus Face-to-Face Teams
Peggy M. Beranek and Monique L. French, The Journal of Distance Education, November 30, 2011.

This study measures 'trust' at the beginning and the end of a semester for in-person and online classes using a questionnaire designed to measure the different dimensions of trust in virtual teams. Different types of trust include personality-based trust, institution-based trust, and cognitive trust (eg., schemes based on our choices of whom to trust as we get to know people) and the questionnaire used measures the latter two types. It would be interesting to see such an evaluation made of MOOC participants - or at least to have a sample size greater than 27. Interestingly, at least in this instance, there were no significant differences in levels of trust between the two types of course. "The change in trust levels over the course of a semester were the same for both course formats." Interestingly, "the online teams had higher initial levels of trust." Of course, next time, perhaps they should run the study with students who are strangers, not students who have already sat through the same prerequisite courses at the same institution. Talk about your biased samples! Via Tony Bates, who links to three additional new articles from the JDE.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Personalization]

What We Should Learn from the Collapse of Borders
Joseph Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen, November 30, 2011.

It seems to me I remember people telling my that predictions about the end of books, or the collapse of stores that sell books, were way off in the distance future, if they were going to ever happen at all. Of course, today, everybody predicted that bookstores will close and that reading will be done digitally. Just like everyone today is predicting that the traditional school and university will be replaced by dynamic online alternatives and that numerous institutions of learning will close their doors. Yes, 20 years from now, everyone will be saying they were predicting this.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools]

A Few Thoughts on “Pay a Blogger Day”
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, November 30, 2011.

I'm pretty sympathic with what Audrey Watters says here, especially the bit about a blog being a labour of love, and the bit about hating advertisements. "It isn’t simply that ads are ugly and that they destroy the readability of the written word. I hate the way it’s reduced much of online writing to a race for the most page-views." I remember the day Google+ launched (yes, I was one of the first-day users) and it was war in there as the commercial blogs tried to round up followers. Ugly. Now there's also this bit about being paid. I don't need the money - like Watters, my pay comes from other gigs. But the respect sometimes still feels elusive. "It’s not simply a matter of financial sustainability for academic bloggers — although I suppose you could interpret it as such. Rather it’s about how academia still fails to recognize a lot of the online work that scholars and students create — such are the demands of tenure and the expectations of a well-rounded CV– and how that in turn points to a broader 'crisis in digital sustainability' — people opting to set aside their blogging for other projects."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Project Based Learning, Marketing, Web Logs, Google, Blogger, Academia]

Supercomputing, The Singularity, and 21st Century Teachers
Jim Shimabukuro, educational technology & change, November 30, 2011.

I don't know. It feels to me as though the singularity is ever-receding. Maybe it's just me. Jim Shimabukuro writes "Bonnie Bracey Sutton‘s coverage of the 2011 Supercomputing Conference (More on SC11 – “Broadening Engagement” and Conferences Are About People – “Broadening Engagement”) brings one of the most critical developments in technology to the rest of the world. With supercomputing, we may begin to see change as a line that curves upward, beginning slowly but gradually accelerating at an exponential rate. As the curve grows increasingly steep, we approach the singularity." Maybe I just don't get to play with supercomputers enough.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: none]

21st Century Skills are so last century!
Donald Clark, Plan B, November 30, 2011.

I really need to write my thing one day about what I think are the real 21st century skills. Donald Clark's list here is so last century: communicating, collaborating, problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy. My list is very different:
- emergent thinking: extracting patterns, rules, regularities, prototypes
- sensing value - finding meaning, truth, relevance, purpose, goals
- acting semiotically - using signs, signals, art, desig, etc., to do things
- seeing beyond - describing, defining, drawing conclusions, explaining data
- ecological sensitivity - placing in context, seeing frames, making meaning
- living in change - understanding flow, adaptation, progression
These are literacies that reflect the times and not simply the fact that we have a lot of machines.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: none]

Kevin Riley
Various Authors, IMS GLC, November 30, 2011.

I had the opportunity to meet Kevin Riley several times and was always inspired by his enthusiasm and dedication - not to mention the fact that he was dauntingly smart. He worked for the public good, did it very well, and will be missed.

From the tribute page: "It was Kevin who was the IMS staff member responsible for the development of the Tools Interoperability Guidelines, released in March 2006 (precursor to LTI and Basic LTI), and the Common Cartridge. The development of the first release of the Common Cartridge specification involved, at its peak, over 35 IMS Contributing Members. It was largely down to Kevin that this group managed to reach consensus and the specification published in October 2008."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, IMS Project]