OLDaily

Towards an Ethical Framework for #OpenRecognition
Serge Ravet, Learning Futures, 2017/12/08

This is an intelligent and well-thought out account of the ethical implications of open badges. Open badges can be used for good, or they can be used to perpetuate discrimination or to reify the advantages of an already privileged group. "Open Badges are not innocuous," writes Serge Ravet. "They can heal or kill, empower or control, enable or disable, recognise or exclude. In the perspective of Open Recognition, it is critical to define an ethical framework."

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A Cengage Buffet
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/12/08

"The new offer, called Cengage Unlimited, will give students access to more than 20,000 Cengage products across 70 disciplines and 675 course areas for $119.99 a semester." That's more than twice what the going rate has been, so I'm expecting this price to drop quickly. But it reflects a trend that we've seen in other industries - mustic, for examplem with Spotify, or video with Netflix. Thee company has also "set a strategic goal of being 90 percent digital by 2019. The new strategy is a notable departure from the traditional publishing sales model, which historically has relied on the sale of individual print textbooks." 

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Hitting Reset, Knewton Tries New Strategy: Competing With Textbook Publishers
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2017/12/08

Remember Knewton? Pundits loved it. It positioned itself as "the world’s leading adaptive learning technology provider with the mission of bringing personalized education to the world" and drew some $157 million in funding. Now they're executing a pivot "along with mounting criticism that its founding CEO, Jose Ferreira, overhyped its technology." Now the company is trying to compete with publishers. "The secret to its swift entry into publishing was OER (open education resources). Rather than hire authors to write textbooks from scratch, the company is now curating open-educational materials already on the internet." Only the open educational resources won't be free. "Each online textbook costs $44 for two years of access, or $9.95 per month."

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IEEE Consortium Established To Support The Development Of Learning Engineering
IEEE IC Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering, 2017/12/08

The vote to launch this was taken just a couple weeks ago and mine was the sole vote against, this based solely on the name, which I think is a bad idea. The engineers are getting far ahead of the theory in e-learning, and as a result, we're getting solutions thta are inappropriate. And I don't think that learning is something you can engineer as though it were a bridge or an electrical circuit. But it still makes sense to have a consortium supporting the development of, say, learning technology  engineering. 

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