Training the Trainers for Linked Data
Seth van Hooland, Ruben Verborgh, International Conference on Dublin Core, Metadata Applications DC-2014, 2014/10/28

I'm very much a linked-data kind of person; it suits the way I think far more than documents or even things like index cards. That's probably no real surprise to people. This post takes that way of thinking and expands it into a tutorial for practitioners. It's a set of slides (117 page PDF) that defines linked data, explains the advantages, and provides practical guidance in its application through four major steps: clean your metadata, reconcile with authoritative sources, enrich your metadata, share on the (open) web. There's a wealth of resources in this for those who look, for example, references to a number of data-cleaning tools (slide 21) or named entity extraction (NEW) (slide 57). And there is a really good discussion of representational state transfer (REST) in the second half of the deck. See also The 1:1 Principle of Linked Data, by Richard J. Urban.  See more from the same conference.

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Stop Being So Positive
Gabriele Oettingen, Harvard Business Review, 2014/10/28

Although it addresses an important point, the title is very misleading. The study cited in the article (Future thought and behaviour change) is actually pretty interesting, but it divides future thoughts (ie., thoughts about the future) into 'fantasies' and 'beliefs'. The former are forms of wishful thinking, not based in rehearsal or past performance. The latter are based on experience and practice. And as the author says, "empirical research reliably finds that high expectations of success and and optimistic beliefs indeed foster motivation and successful performance." There are good grounds for expecting specific forms of 'positive thinking' to work. For example, "teaching mental contrasting of feasible desired future outcomes would result in better academic performance than teaching students to only think positively about the respective future."

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Research information management systems - a new service category?
Lorcan Dempsey, Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog, 2014/10/28

The aim of research information management (RIM) is "is to synchronize data across parts of the university, reducing the burden to all involved of collecting and managing data about the research process. An outcome is to provide greater visibility onto institutional research activity." I'm not sure it's a new category per se but it's cl;early an important institutional function (and in a best-case scenario supports open access). Anyhow, the article has a lot of good links to resources, including RIM standards: "two are especially relevant here:CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) from EuroCRIS, which provides a format for exchange of data between RIM systems, and the Casrai dictionary. CASRAI is the Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information."

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Research about cMOOCs
Heli Nurmi, Heli connecting ideas, 2014/10/28

Heli Nurmi summarizes the article Participants’ Perceptions of Learning and Networking in Connectivist MOOCs, written by Mohsen Saadatmand and Kristiina Kumpulainen. "The results show that participation in MOOCs challenges learners to develop self-organization, self-motivation, and a reasonable amount of technological proficiency to manage the abundance of resources and the more open format. Participants in cMOOCs use an array of technologies and various networking skills. The nature of cMOOCs requires students to assume active roles, in a spirit of openness, to shape activities and collaborate in goal achievement." As she points out, though, the self-selecting nature of the survey would tend to favour such results.

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Review of Clark Quinn’s New Book: Revolutionize Learning and Development: Performance and Innovation Strategy for the Information Age.
Will Thalheimer, Will at Work Learning, 2014/10/28

Review of Clark Quinn's book Revolutionize Learning and Development. Thalheimer writes, "Clark loves what we do. He just wishes with hope that we did it better. He puts the focus on on-the-job performance, saying that our learning solutions should be aimed at creating results in the workplace. Indeed, Clark nimbly changes our name from the Learning and Development team to the Performance and Development team! Learning is just a means to performance." See also this interview between Thalheimer and Quinn.

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