OLDaily

Repositories of Open Educational Resources: An Assessment of Reuse and Educational Aspects
Gema Santos-Hermosa, Núria Ferran-Ferrer, Ernest Abadal, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017/08/16

This study examines resources from 110 repositories. It should be clear that this post doesn't measure actual reuse, it measures only how suitable the resources are for reuse. Having said that, there are some issues with how the observations are presented (for example, licensing is divided between CC-by-NC-SA (42.4%) and "Any of the 6 CC licenses (27.1%)", which is an impossibility). But there are some interesting things. For one, there is a preponderance of NC licenses (contrary to some OER advocates' claims to the contrary). The private sector is almost completely absent from OER production. Most repositories use Dublic Core metadata, and not (say) Learning Object metadata (LOM). Educational metadata was almost never used. Resources were rarely updated. There were few external quality assessments. The authors conclude, interestingly, "current ROERs include more drivers that promote the reuse of OERs, mainly through open licenses and social networks, than features facilitating the retrieval and use of OERs according to educational needs, such as learning goals."

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Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education
Catherine Cronin, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017/08/16

This article describes (accurately) the domain of open educational practices (OEP) as a kind of academic land-grab. In a couple of paragraphs consisting mostly of references we read of the current work on the subject. But as the results of the survey suggest, "Participants described a wide range of digital and pedagogical practices and values.... It is impossible to draw a clear boundary between educators who do and do not use OEP." So why is this? It doesn't help that there are three competing definitions of 'open'. It doesn't help that the term 'practices' conflates concepts as diverse as 'networking', 'teaching' and 'values'. The author describes four 'dimensions shared by open educators': balancing privacy and openness; developing digital literacies; valuing social learning; and challenging traditional teaching roles. To my mind it goes to show that the concept of open practice, by itself, is too impoverished to describe what open e ducators should practice. That's why I add autonomy, diversity and interactivity. And we have to remember: openness is a means, not an end in itself.

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Real talk: bullies, trolls and the troll tax
Michaela Smiley (Thayer) , Mozilla, Internet Citizen, 2017/08/16

The comparison of trolls with bullies is apt. "Imagine a walk home from school filled with fear. Imagine you feel the fear because of a bully. Now imagine your bully is online — and this bully, a troll, can get to you any time of day." I grew up with that experience and I learned that the only way to stop a bully is to fight back. But what if they enjoy fighting? Once you start fighting there's no way to stop. Trolls, like bullies, can't be ignored. They will poison the environment, the way they've poisoned social media today. The only way to stop them is to deny them a platform; the only way to stop bullies is to deny them access to the neighbourhood. That's why we put criminals in jail. And that's why we deny trolls a platform. Swift and automatic deletion of hate from social media platforms is the only way to keep social media platforms free of hate. Doing anything else is just a tacit admission that we're fine with it and can live with the consequences. 

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How SB Nation Profits Off An Army Of Exploited Workers
Laura Wagner, Deadspin, 2017/08/16

Full disclosure: I read one of the SB Nation blogs (Bluebird Banter) almost every day. I like it because it's a fan site; it's independent from the team in a way traditional news coverage isn't. So I'm reading coverage, not advertising and promotion. The existence of this model should be no surprise; it's almost exactly what was described by Hegel and Armstrong in Net.Gain almost 20 years ago. Yes, I think the wages paid to editors should be higher, but I also think we should pay janitors and restaurant workers a living wage as well. Is this the future for educational writing? Well, some. It's harder for education because readers progress through a discipline; they don't stay loyal to one body of content the way a sports audience would. But the model is otherwise very similar (which is why Vox has grown well beyond its roots in SB Nation).

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