OLDaily

Practice-Informed Learning: The Rise of the Dual Professional
GuildHE, 2018/11/21

This report (64 page PDF) examines practice-informed learning, defined as "encompassing any situations where expertise from industry is brought into the classroom to inform teaching practice, or where more hands-on learning is taken out into professional settings." It offers a quick overview, notes benefits to students ("up-to-date understanding of their chosen field", "opportunities to begin to develop professional networks"), then offers the 19 case studies that constitute the bulk of the report. The 'dual professional' referenced in the title is the "practitioner-teacher" who keeps a hand in both industry and education. Via WonkHE.

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Forget movie villains—it’s the “good” superheroes that are the most violent
Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 2018/11/21

Watching Infinity War I found myself rooting for Thanos against the superheroes trying to stop him. Sure, he was trying to wipe out half the universe, but this paled against the wanton violence of the superheroes. Statistics back me up. "According to a new study, the 'good guys' are actually significantly more violent than the antagonists they're trying to stop." I'm certainly left wondering about their priorities and their methods when I watch a superhero movie. Why is the instinct always to resolve differences by fighting? How is it that superior strength always defines what's right? Why do they use their powers for combat rather than humanitarian purposes? If media either reflects or informs cultural values, then the recent slew of such movies must leave us wondering.

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Journal Retracts 29 Articles, Explaining Little
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/11/21

An IEEE Journal is retracting 29 articles published over the last two years over what appears to be editorial board impropriety. But it is not announcing which articles it is retracting. "For now, the IEEE said that 'three volunteer editors identified during the investigation as involved in the misconduct have been permanently excluded from IEEE membership.'" All the more reason why review, publication and (of course) retraction should be conducted openly.

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The value of where you earned your PhD
Christine Daigle, University Affairs, 2018/11/21

This article poses the question, "Why do hiring committees appear to favour graduates from big-league universities?" It's the "wow factor", writes Christine Daigle, and it should be ignored. "The argument has been made for a very long time that CVs should be anonymized for hiring in order to contravene bias, implicit or not, when assessing CVs," she argues. "I think we should do the same for university credentials." I think that's a good idea, but I can't imagine that the big universities' marketing departments would be in favour of it for a minute. The "wow factor" is, after all, exactly what they are selling.

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Unbundling and Rebundling Higher Education in an Age of Inequality
Laura Czerniewicz, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/11/21

Doug Belshaw today reminded me to go back and look at this article from October (I subscribe to EDUCAUSE feeds and newsletters but still manage to miss articles) on the concept onbundling and rebundling education. Laura Czerniewicz based the unbundling on Michael Staton's Disaggregating the Components of a College Degree though of course there are many ways to unbundle. The major question, though, lies in how the parts are put back together. Do we retain the idea of higher education for public good, or does it become a modern day Netflix - privatized, commercialized, and available only so long as you continue to pay?

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The End of Trust
McSweeney, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2018/11/21

This all-nonfiction issue of McSweeney’s "is a collection of essays and interviews focusing on issues related to technology, privacy, and surveillance." It's is available as a free download (344 page PDF). It's worth a look - Cory Doctorow on privacy nihilism, Ethan Zuckerman on the ethics of distrust, Douglas Rushkoff on the media virus, Edward Snowden in a Q&A on blockchain, Edward R. Loomis on surveillance tools. The articles are short, accessible, and there's a lot of them.

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MOOC S trategies of European Institutions
Lizzie Konings, Darco Jansen, European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, 2018/11/21

This is from last year, but I only just found it, and it remains relevant today. It's the results (71 page PDF) of a questionaire of European higher education institutes (HEI) on their approaches to MOOCs. Here's what's significant: "the  majority  of  HEIs  (66%)  are  not  connected  to  one  of  the  big  MOOC platform providers (e.g., edX, Coursera, FutureLearn, Miriada X, etc.), but offer their MOOCs in their institutional platforms or in available regional/national platforms." Additionally, "respondents (51%) agreed that MOOCs should be for everyone" and suggested a range of possibilities to reach those left behind. Reading this report was a refreshing antedote to the crass commercial perspective I read yesterday in Forbes.

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