Ground: A data context service
Adrian Colyer, The Morning Paper, 2017/01/23

Advanced analytics will look at much more than aggregate behaviour (which, for example, is what we see in learning analytics today) and will focus additionally on identifying context. For any given piece of data, for example, we can ask about who is using it (and with what), how they're using it, and how use changes over time. These are the major elements of an initiative called Ground, which is described in this article (which in turn summarizes a fascinating (12 page PDF) publication). "Each kind of contextual data (Application, Behavioural, and Change) is captured by a different kind of graph. Application context is represented by model graphs which capture entities and the relationships between them. Change context is represented by version graphs which form the base of the model. Behavioural context is represented by lineage graphs which relate principals (actors that can work with data such as users, groups and roles)."

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How to Create Tomorrow’s Learning Today
Jeanne C. Meister, Chief Learning Officer, 2017/01/23

Jeanne C. Meister describes three new roles that have emerged as corporate e-learning departments adapt to changes in the learning landscape. The roles are:

• Curators: "learning leaders increasingly focus on facilitating and orchestrating learning aligned to their organization’s growth priorities."
• Design thinking: "a human-centered, prototype-driven process for innovation that can be applied to product, service and business design."
• People analyst: "uses machine learning to calculate the relative importance of geography, compensation, employee and manager engagement at the aggregate level."

I don't like any of the titles. They're each different types of research, not simply the function-driven positions that the titles imply. Maybe they should be called scholar, designer and demographer, respectively.

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Hidden Figures and The Hope for More Real Science Stories
Ciara Wardlow, FilmSchoolRejects, 2017/01/23

I often puzzle over story selection by the media. I live in a world of research and education and science. These seem to me far more interesting and relevant that the world of pundits, crime and conflict reported by media. This story touches on that with respect to other media. "It seems silly that major studios now insist on churning out reboots and remakes that nobody asked for, and that rarely seem to succeed either critically or commercially, when STEM history has so many stories just waiting to be told." We need this sort of story in the news, not just fictionalized and presented in film.

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Net Return On Philosophy Major Is Comparable To That Of Engineering Major
Justin W., Daily Nous, 2017/01/23

This is a bit of a personal item for me, as I graduated with an MA in Philosophy (and went All-But-Dissertation for a PhD). When I studies philosophy I was warned there were no jobs in the field, and to a large degree the warnings were accurate. But there are many jobs outside the field, and as it turns out, philosophy prepares a person especially well for the information age. The report cites a study researching "earnings per educational dollar", which doesn't seem to be a very practical measure. But if we look at the post-graduate employment of philosophers, you have a very practical guide as to the contributions they make to society. Photop: Quartz.

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The NIH Public Access Policy: A triumph of green open access?
Richard Poynder, Open, Shut?, 2017/01/23

'Green open access' means that an author self-publishes their paper, or posts it into an institutional repository. Gold open access involves submitting to a publisher, paying publication fees, and then having the publisher release the paper as open access. This article looks at the green and gold model from the perspective of the argument by some open access proponents that only papers released under a CC-by license are open access. The non-commercial license (NC), they argue, doe not qualify. The licenses are roughly aligned; the green model supports NC, because publication rights are often assigned, while the gold model supports CC-by, as demonstrated by the rise in CC-by licenses in Pub-Med Central (PMC). The article doesn't mention that what we are also finding is that the gold model is leading to abuse, with a proliferation of fake journals, rising publication costs, and other scams.

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The rising price of knowledge: University of Calgary cuts 1,600 academic resources
Scott Strasser, The Gauntlet, 2017/01/23

The Gauntlet article has the best coverage but the CBC news item has the best quote:"Even if we had more money, we cannot buy our way out of this," said University of Calgary head librarian Tom Hickerson. "We really have to change the model." Still, the Gauntlet had a good quote: “You want 50 channels, but instead they sell you 337 for twice what you would pay for the 50,” he said. “We don’t get to make our decisions around a single journal. We have to look at the bundle as a whole.” The U of C cut was $1.5 million; meanwhile a fund to produce and distribute open access jrournals is up to $500K.

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