Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Education in the Age of the MOOC
Noam Ebner, Social Science Research Network, 2016/09/26

Good paper (47 page PDF) on the development and delivery of a MOOC on negotiation and conflict resolution. It's focused around four major issues:

1. Can we provide the same quality of negotiation education in a MOOC format
2. Can the signature pedagogy of the negotiation field, the experiential learning model, be implemented in a MOOC?
3. Can we provide students in a MOOC the same experience that has made negotiation courses successful?
4. What implications might this have for negotiation and dispute resolution education?

I really like the section on quality (it should be required reading). "Interestingly, the standards for assessing the quality of traditional negotiation courses have been somewhat vague both in terms of outcomes within the course," writes Noam Ebner.

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What Do Forbes, NYT, And Sotheby’s Have In Common? They Make Online Courses
Anuar Lequerica, Class Central, 2016/09/26

There's virtually no content in this article (would it be too much to do an interview or get a point of view?) but the author points to an important trend. "The World Bank, PwC, and Fundação Lemann offer MOOCs on Coursera. Microsoft, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, and the Inter-American Development Bank all offer MOOCs on edX. Google offers an Android Basics Nanodegree on Udacity."

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The Open Research Agenda
OERhub, 2016/09/26

Passing this along: "The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) is conducting a global survey of OER ahead of the 2nd World OER Congress....You can find out more and take the survey at http://rcoer.col.org/surveys.html. If you’re feeling in a mood to contribute to a survey, please also consider sharing some thoughts on our open research consultation at http://tinyurl.com/2016ora."

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Google’s creepy Allo assistant and our rocky relationship so far
Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog, 2016/09/26

I actually admire Google's efforts to make Allo work. Allo has a greater range than Siri, even if it does listen in to your conversations and act like a friend that's trying too hard to be liked. Eventually we'll all use an assistant like this, but they'll have to work out some of the glitches and get past the 'creepiness' factor. What concerns be about Allo and its ilk is that it's tied to the phone. The phone is our least secure device, is a consumption-only device, and is tied to things that matter, like our phone number (and hence, telcom account and billing). Here's a bit more about Allo.

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