OLDaily

Academy
Moodle, 2017/05/19

Academy, Moodle's take on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, has launched. It's in a very preliminary state, with one institutional partner (Dublin City University) and seven courses (or, more accurately, seven course placeholders, as they are in pre-enrollment stage). Announced last year, the idea is that it "will be a centralized MOOC hosting platform run and managed by Moodle. This is for institutions or Moodlers who want to hold a MOOC but don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to deal with the short term (massive) hit on their internal resources."

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Walking the line of predictive analytics in higher education
Marlen Rattiner, Blackboard Blog, 2017/05/19

This is a column from Blackboard addressing the ethical implications of learning analytics. First, to set the context: "Predictive analytics are not about perfect future outcomes; they are about analyzing historical and current data to project a likely future outcome." In particular, "it allows for sharing of output analytics to enable institutions to act... Implementing predictive analytics comes with a responsibility to define a process for appropriate and timely intervention responses." All fine, but this post elides the question of ownership. Analytics are discussed here exclusively in the institutional context, and without reference to the right of learners to know about and manage the employment and distribution of performance data.

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Designing Microlearning
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2017/05/19

I agree with Clark Quinn to a point. "we’re talking about layering learning on performance in a context. However, it’s more than just performance support... To make it learning, what you really need is to support developing an ability to understand the rationale behind the steps, to support adapting the steps in different situations." Fair enough. But this is a step too far: "here we’re talking about models. What (causal) models give us is a way to explain what has happened, and predict what will happen." I don't agree that a learner requires an explicit semantic representation in order to have learned.

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Why Harvard Business School is under fire
The Economist, 2017/05/19

The Economist not surprisingly rejects the idea that "HBS is responsible for the ills of Western civilisation" but is willing to countenance the idea that it has behaved badly: "It has failed to manage conflicts of interest adequately: for example it gives companies a veto over case studies written about them and academics can be paid by the companies they teach about." The school has failed to diversify and tuitions have increased 30% in five years. But the key point here is that HBS, by virtue of its position, establishes these as normal business practice. It makes clear that academic integrity and ethical behaviour are irrelevant to business. And that's a problem.

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