OLDaily

OER, CARE, Stewardship, and the Commons
Jim Luke, Econproph, 2018/03/21

This is a much longer reply to David Wiley's recent take on open education stewardship than my recent posts here, though as the author suggests, it says much the same thing. Jim Like writes, "What might discourage faculty from attributing or contributing? Faculty will not share, will not contribute, and will not attribute when they see that their efforts and time get abused by others who don’t adhere to the social norms. It’s not just over-use that can doom a commons. Enclosure and extraction can destroy a commons just as well." I think this is a pretty definitive response to Wiley, and addresses the real issues of value and community at stake in the discussion.

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Dimensional Modelling by Example
Barry Williams, 2018/03/21

This short book (132 page PDF) contains an overview of the concept of 'dimensional modeling' and then a ton of examples. You can find the origin of dimensional modelling in Ralph Kimball's 1997 Manifesto. "The data that can be measured are called the ‘Facts’ and they are stored with the things that can be measured by, which are called the the ‘Dimensions’." These are also sometimes referred to as 'data marts'. The point here is to support 'self-service business intelligence (BI) where this is "a facility provided to end-users which allows them to select the data they want and the Dashboard or Report they would like to use to see their data displayed... without depending on IT."

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Intellus Open Courses
Intellus Learning, 2018/03/21

This came through my email under a University Business banner but I'm guessing it was marketing content (though not labeled as such; the email states (in tiny print) "You are receiving this email as part of a free information service from University Business Magazine," which of course is a lie). The company being advertised, Intellus Learning, us basically using the termninology of OER to market online courses. Or as they say, "Curated, fully customizable courses ("curated by Macmillan Learning") that make adopting open educational resources (OER) efficient, worry-free and, at $14.99 per course, affordable for students." The word for all of this in my dictionary is skeevy.

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The Google News Initiative: Building a stronger future for news
Philipp Schindler, The Keyword, Google, 2018/03/21

Google has launched a subscription service for news content. Called Subscribe, it offers bundled access to participating publications and centralizes payment using Google's existing payments system. It's part of a wider Google News Initiative. I would imagine that Subscribe will replace Google News, or at the very least, show up as a premium service, effetcively converting Google News into advertising for its Subscribe service. The success of a service like Subscribe will depend a lot on the credibility of its content, but in turn, this means that Google has no incentive (and hasn't had an incentive all along) to ensure that its free services are in any way credible. The rise of fake news is essentially marketing for subscription-based news.

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OER state legislative guide
Creative Commons, 2018/03/21

From the OER Knowledge Cloud (always a good resource to follow): " The resource, an 'OER State Legislative Guide,' is meant to provide policymakers and staff with a cross-sectional, annotated set of legislative texts that help expand the use of OER (open educational resources), a powerful alternative to the broken textbook market." 28 page PDF. See also the “OER State Policy Playbook,” from SPARC, offering recommendations and strategies to state governments.

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