OLDaily

Watch the keynotes and panels from the Saylor Higher Education Summit
Sean Connor, Saylor Academy, 2017/06/30

Saylor has made a list of keynotes and panels available for viewing on YouTube. "The goal," writes Sean Connor, "was to carry forward the conversation about education and credentialing for the next billion students worldwide — students who will be served by both traditional and non-traditional higher education and credentialing models." Speakersd include Heather Hiles from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Vijay Kumar and Mary Ellen Wiltrout from MIT, and Wayne Mackintosh from the OER Foundation. The conference was run June 21st and 22nd.

[Link] [Comment]

Why artificial intelligence is different from previous technology waves
Robbie Allen, Oreilly, 2017/06/30

When Robbie Allen says 'we' here he doesn't mean me. Still, there is truth to what he says: "We went from a general disbelief in software being able to automate things that were strictly in the domain of humans to every startup having a token AI slide in their pitch decks." And of course now the startuips are all AI with a token 'web' or 'user interface' slide in their decks. But what makes AI different, argues Allen, is that it is, first of all, a distributed technology (we don't need to rely on the Facebook or Microsoft of AI), and record, that it has a relatively low entry barrier ("All the tools you need are freely available. The barriers are purely self-driven."). And actually I think that the barrier will become lower still with AI as a service (though that will tend to re-centralize it a bit). 

[Link] [Comment]

Pragmatism vs. Idealism and the Identity Crisis of OER Advocacy
Rajiv Sunil Jhangiani, Open Praxis, 2017/06/30

This article describes pretty accurately the identity crisis in open education (OE) "as it is pulled towards both pragmatism (marked by an emphasis on cost savings, resources, and incremental change) and idealism (marked by an emphasis on permissions, practices, and radical change)." I think the divisions have always existed. This paper maps them across three dimensions: "free vs. freedom; evolution vs. revolution; and resources vs. practice." Despite the use of some ill-considered metaphors (OE is not an adolescent) the author nonetheless points the way toward sustainability: "a move away from philanthropic, government, and other unsustainable funding models in favour of a grassroots-based, community-driven, self-sustaining approach."

[Link] [Comment]

Developing Civic Engagement in Distance Higher Education: A Case Study of Virtual Service-Learning (vSL) Programme in Spain
Juan García-Gutierrez, Marta Ruiz-Corbella, Araceli del Pozo Armentia, Open Praxis, 2017/06/30

This article asks the question, "How can ethical competence and civic engagement be formed through a virtual learning environment?" The answer is offered in the form of a service learning function "based on virtual exchange involving, primarily, Spanish students from UNED’s Faculty of Education enrolled in fourth-year Social Education Degree and African students from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Porto Novo (Benin) who were enrolled in second- and third-year teacher-training courses for Spanish-language teachers." 

[Link] [Comment]

“The best part was the contact!”: Understanding postgraduate students’ experiences of wrapped MOOCs
Tasneem Jaffer, Shanali Govender, Cheryl Brown, Open Praxis, 2017/06/30

I generally think of the "wrapped MOOC" as neither massive, nor open, nor online, so I view them with a bit of scepticism. And we learn very little about the actual details of the implementation in this case. But I did appreciate the discussion of MOOCs with respect to the CoI (Community of Inquiry) framework (Anderson, Archer and Garrison) describing the role of social, cognitive and teaching presence in distance learning. The authors suggest that the framework doesn't capture the full learning experience, arguing that "a more comprehensive framework for learning design would include both a more carefully constructed learner presence and a way of understanding structural factors that impact on the wrapped MOOC learning experience."

[Link] [Comment]