OLDaily

A n analysis of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2013 - 2017
Katja Buntins, Melissa Bond, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2018/09/24

It's rare enough that journals in education look at themselves reflectively, so this is an occasion to be noted. This article from the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology doesn't offer any real surprises, but there are three things to note: first, the highest-cited articles continue to be interpretative and inferential; second, after the change in editorial policy in 2013 "to focus on higher education research and on improving journal submissions" mixed-method studies rose in number; and third, the journal has become more student-centered in that time. Also, maybe it's just me, but I found the citation counts for those years to be quite low: 189 for the top article, 88 for the next, and down from there, as counted by Google Scholar.

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Re-examining grit
Jonathan Kantrowitz, Education Research Report, 2018/09/24

Sadly, the reserach report cited here languiahses unread behind a paywall, but at least we have this useful (albeit short) summary: "many of the core claims about grit have either been unexamined or are directly contradicted by the accumulated empirical evidence. Specifically, there appears to be no reason to accept the combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals into a single grit construct, nor is there any support for the claim that grit is a particularly good predictor of success and performance." This is bad news for the Philadelphia Flyers, who unveiled their new mascot 'Gritty' today. Anyhow, I've touched on the topic of grit in the past, and never had much use for it.

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Big changes for CC Search beta: updates released today!
Paola Villarreal, Creative Commons, 2018/09/24

I haven't used the Creative Commons search in a very long time. But I went back to it today based on thsi announcement. I confess that I was afraid it would only list results in CC-by but that doesn't appear to be the main problem. No, rather, it seems to display only a small subset of the available results. As always with search services, IO test using my own name. A search for 'Stephen Downes' yielded six results (pictured). By contrast, the same search on Flickr (which is one of of the sources for CC Search) yields 295 results - including 156 openly licensed photos (not that Flickr is any great shakes - many of the results are of a Babylon 5 convension which has nothing to do with me).

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Dentists call for pudding and sweet soft drinks ban in schools
BBC News, 2018/09/24

But if they don't have their pudding they won't eat their meat. How can they eat their meat if they don't have any pudding?

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Further education students are shunning the web and turning to staff and each other for digital skills support
JISC, 2018/09/24

As I read through this survey report (76 page PDF) it felt more and more like I was only getting half the picture. Consider the headline, for example - it says they are shunning the web, when in fact they basically all use the web. Moreover, I wonder how they are turning to each other. In person? Or - more likely - by text, email, and messaging. But even more, a survey of how students use the web depends on how they are able to use the web. The wifi seems generally OK, but we see calls for them to stop blocking social media (p. 35) and to provide adequate storage (or at least access to OneDrive (p. 36). So, like I say, it feels like half the picture. It's still interesting reading, though.

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The problem with Harvard Business School case studies
Lila MacLellan, Quartz, 2018/09/24

The Harvard Business School method of using case studies is well known to management students. The cases are drawn from real-world examples and students are asked to imagine themselves in the position of a protagonist (usually the CEO) and to argue for what ought to be done. This article offers an interesting history and a trenchant criticism. By focusing on narrow business interests, argues Lila MacLellan, the students ignore the wider social consequence of their actions. "If the history of business education had taken a different path, the pressure to do well by the world would have been coming from the corner office all along."

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