Access Copyright lawsuit against York is first test of fair-dealing guidelines
Rosanna Tamburri, University Affairs, October 31, 2013

The court case filed by Access Copyright against York University is being cited as a test of the meaning of fair dealing, but it is as much a test of a large monopoly's deep pockets against a small university's financial reserves and will. And what Access is mostly against is the decision by York - and other universities - to shed the 'protection' of the blanket license. "Nice university you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it."

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Augmentation, not Replacement…
Erik Duval, Erik Duval’s Weblog, October 27, 2013

This is a good way of putting the divide I feel between myself and (say) Diana Laurillard:

• (on the one hand) "could help to address scalability of education – an issue that Diana Laurillard focused on in her talk: if we [can't] automate teachers, then at least we can scale teaching and meet the increasing demand."
• (on the other hand, we could) "try to focus on ‘augmenting the human intellect’, rather than replacing it [and help] students to look at the traces of their own activities (and those of their peers) in order to steer their efforts in a more informed way."

Better teaching, or better learning? My money is on the latter. (I've probably misinterpreted Duval's original idea; I changed a "can" to a "can't" in the fist point, and may well be drawing the dichotomy in a way he never intended. And I don't refer to his slides at all. But I like this version better.)

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Courses, or learning episodes?
Steve Wheeler, Learning with 'e's, October 26, 2013

Probably the worst thing about MOOCs is that they're courses (if they weren't 'courses' nobody would care about completion rates, there wouldn't be this emphasis on quizzes and credentials, and they wouldn't be these long structured content-dumps). What's the better alternative? Here's Steve Wheeler: "learning episodes rather than courses could be the way forward for 'just in time' and 'just enough' learning that is personalised, and delivered at the point of need.  Ultimately, it's a matter of granularity." [Photo by Paul Clarke]

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