OLDaily

Open APIs and the Facebook Trash Fire
Ben Werdmuller, 2018/12/20

I was thinking earlier today that Facebook was letting everyone use my data but me. It wasn't for lack of an API - Facebook had them aplenty. But Facebook also had control. "All of us wanted open access to APIs so that users could move their data around," writes Ben Werdmuller, "and so that startups wouldn't have as a high a barrier to entry into the market. But such systems - whether centralized or decentralized - need to center around giving control to the user. Even at the Data Sharing Summit, we quickly realized that data control was a more meaningful notion than data ownership." Facebook violated that. "I'm done assuming good faith; I'm done assuming incompetence; I'm done assuming ignorance. I hope you are too."

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Towards AI-powered personalization in MOOC learning
Han Yu, Chunyan Miao, Cyril Leung, Timothy John White, npj Science of Learning, 2018/12/20

I hadn't seen this, but it was sent to me by a colleague and I thought I'd pass it along. The article discusses "h ow advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may enhance learning and research on MOOCs." It's pretty standard stuff: "knowledge representation tools can enable students to adjust the sequence of learning to fit their own needs... optimization techniques can efficiently match community teaching assistants to MOOC mediation tasks... (and)  virtual learning companions with human traits such as curiosity and emotions can enhance learning experience on a large scale." Nothing about giving students agency.

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A call for promoting ownership, equity, and agency in faculty development via connected learning
Maha Bali, Autumn Caines, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2018/12/20

"In this article we advocate for and give examples of educational development opportunities for educators that encourage heutagogy with outcomes that focus on ownership and agency which can potentially lead to transformative learning," write the authors. What follows is an extended tour through philosophies such as transformative learning, heutagogy, connectivism and connected learning, and models such as #DigPINS, MOOCs, untethered faculty development, and many more. Image: Getting Smart.

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The Trouble With Institution-Led Boycotts
John Villasenor, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/12/20

Last week in a memo entitled Important Notice Regarding Elsevier Journals UCLA leaders urged faculty to consider "declining to review articles for Elsevier journals until negotiations are clearly moving in a productive direction." The University of California system is engaged in a dispute with Elsevier over the publisher charging the institution for access to papers authored by its own staff. John Villasenor opposes the UCLA memo, arguing that institutional leaders should not be endorsing boycotts in general. He then makes the ridiculous leap to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which he also does not support. Tying the Elsevier dispute to a complex international debate does not make it clearer, and the effect here isn't to further debate, it is to hinder it.

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On liberal education surviving the 21st century
Bryan Alexander, 2018/12/20

In response to the question in the headline Bryan Alexander begins with a survey of what can be meant by 'liberal education' before reaching the conclusion that this article basically addresses learning in the humanities at a particular college. Even in this college, the humanities is likely to survive, albeit at a reduced scale. As ever. But he concludes the article on a sombre note. Revisiting the different definitions of 'liberal arts' he suggests that some of these models may be in trouble. 'Learning for its own sake,' for example. "I think macroeconomics will take this kind of liberal education to the elite and restrict it there... Increasingly only those who can afford to clear out several years purely for the free play of intellectual exploration will be able to do so."

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