OLDaily
by Stephen Downes
Dec 28, 2016
Raise the Bar: YouTube, the World's Largest LMS
Mark Lassoff,
Learning Solutions Magazine,
2016/12/28
Interesting thought. Certainly I turn to it any time I need to learn something hands-on and practical.
Open Society Needs Defending
George Soros,
Project Syndicate,
2016/12/28
Argument from George Soros to the effect that, yes, the open society needs defending. "Open societies are in crisis," he writes, "and various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise." A bit sgtrong but we'll accept thes. He then asks, "How could this happen? The only explanation I can find is that elected leaders failed to meet voters’ legitimate expectations and aspirations and that this failure led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism." Well, that much is true, but the prevailing institutions - including the EU, which he seeks to defend in this article - weren't showing any sign of actually meeting those legitimate expectations. How many times has the European Commission tried to sneak software patents into law, for example?
Accessibility of MOOCs: Understanding the Provider Perspective
Francisco Iniesto, Patrick McAndrew, Shailey Minocha, Tim Coughlan,
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME),
2016/12/28
From the abstract: "we report the results from a study involving semi-structured interviews to investigate the perceptions and accessibility-related processes of MOOC platform accessibility managers, platform software developers and designers, and MOOC accessibility researchers."
Developing a Strategic Approach to MOOCs
Rebecca Ferguson,
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME),
2016/12/28
The authors write, "In this contribution we look at one substantial body of work, publications on MOOCs that were produced at the 29 UK universities connected to the FutureLearn MOOC platform. Bringing these papers together, and considering them as a body of related work, reveals a set of nine priority areas for MOOC research and development."
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