OLDaily

Reflecting on the Original Big Idea for MOOCs
James DeVaney, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/03/07

The announcements yesterday from Michigan and Rice have actually been in the works for a long time. The three-year "Credits for MOOCs" program "allows students from the participating schools to enroll in specific free online courses from the other member schools and receive transfer credits for passing them." In this post James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation at the University of Michigan, describes the thinking behind the program. "MOOCs and MOOC derivatives (e.g. Teach-Outs, specializations, MicroMasters, MasterTrack, etc.)  are helping universities to expand how they think about engaging with the world," he writes. Related: Coursera introduces its first bachelor's.

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Twitter Linguistics: A Study
Serena, Google Docs, 2018/03/07

I hope that one day the author (apparently a high school student) gets appropriate credit for what is an insightful and clear study on five elements of Twitter linguistics: the keyboard smash, phrase capitalization, period insertion, excessively long ellipses, and comma ellipses. The author summarizes the study perfectly: " I would like to note in my analysis is simply how complicated many of these linguistic phenomena are... there might not be a definitive explanation at all to why certain slang works and why others do not... online linguistic phenomena are not simple blips. As seen from this survey, they are extremely complex signified meanings masked by extremely simple and elementary signifiers." See also: Dude srsly? and The Language of Twitter.

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More than 120 live online trainings just released on O'Reilly's learning platform
O'Reilly, 2018/03/07

I don't normally post list of course offerings like this (so don't ask) but I wanted to highlight the business model here (I also wanted to complain bitterly about the use of the word 'trainings' as a plural noun - the English language groans in agony). First, O'Reilly is a publisher, not an educational institution, but they're moving into that territory. These are live online events, but the archives are stored and can also be used as training resources. Even more to the point, access is by subscription model only - they'll set you back $US 39 a month if you're a sole learner, more for groups. This is about the pricing average for these bundled services. I don't know what the subscription rates are like, but it doesn't take that many to turn into a substantial revenue stream.

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A quick and simple definition of microservices
Mac Slocum, O'Reilly, 2018/03/07

This article "covers some of the basics of microservices: what they are, how they work, and what you need to keep in mind before implementing them." These are small autonomous services. The idea is that they work together in groups to produce ensemble effects. " In a microservice architecture, the services tend to get simpler, but the architecture tends to get more complex. That complexity is often managed with tooling, automation, and process."

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Delivering digital change
Sarah Knight , JISC, 2018/03/07

"Digital used to be an add-on to core business but those are days behind us, now," writes Sarah Knight. "It's time for universities and colleges to stop treating digital as an accessory and to integrate it fully within all aspects of their business activities." This is in the context of introducting a new 'senior leaders briefing paper' entitled Delivering digital change: strategy, practice and process (8 page PDF, with a lot of white space and images, because senior leaders don't read long things). There are key points in case even that's too much text, including helpful advice such as "Leaders should develop confidence in their own digital capabilities, modelling the behaviours they want their staff to display."

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