OLDaily

Could You Volunteer As A Student Blogging Challenge Commenter?
Kathleen Morris, The Edublogger, 2019/02/06

If your answer to the question is "yes" then you may want to visit this post on Edublogger, read the overview, and if you're inspired, fill out the form. The occasion is the service's Student Blogging Challenge held every March and October - read more here.

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A Recipe for a Successful Institutional Open Education Initiative
Rajiv Jhangiani, WCET Frontiers, 2019/02/06

Nice article by Rajiv Jhangiani describing some of the essentially elements for a successful open education initiative. The article is based on his experience as the institutional lead for open educational practices at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia which launched Canada's first two Zed Cred programs (known as Z Degrees in the U.S.) - that is, programs based completely on open educational resources. He points to the need for existing grassroots support for such an initiative, the need for care and feeding of that support, and the need for the institution to contribute "whether in the form of time releases or secondments, role re-designations or the creation of a designated position, or even necessary funding."

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A review of the research literature on adult learning and employability
Tove Midtsundstad, European Journal of Education, 2019/02/06

Based on this survey, we don't really have the data "to conclude that adult learning (formal or informal) has a causal effect on older workers’ employability." This is partially a problem with the number of the studies, partially a problem with methodology, and partially a proiblem with the mixed results produced by the existing studies. We see this especially in cases where adult learning seems to decrease the chance of getting a job. "There has to be easy access to education and skill upgrading and it must not be too expensive to enrol in courses or classes. Furthermore, there must be ways to finance one's lives while studying."

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Is Microsoft or Google your next LMS? The view from BETT
Jason Cole, e-Literate, 2019/02/06

The article barely mentions Google, so I imagine it's mentioned just for completeness. But there are two major strands of interest. First is the stand of no-shows at the large English technology conference: "the absence of the major LMS vendors besides Instructure Canvas... D2L, Moodle, the UK Moodle partners, and Blackboard had no discernible presence." Second, "When Microsoft makes their push, the learning system won’t look like an LMS, but it will look like Teams... Microsoft is rapidly integrating service platforms for email, calendar, business logic, business intelligence, AI, device management, and cloud services into the Teams platform." Which totally makes sense to me.

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Looking for the Right Name for the MOOC-based Degrees
Mikel Amigot, IBL News, 2019/02/06

This short article makes the point in a single quote: "Our degrees are not exactly massive and not open. But they have the same pedagogy as MOOCs –they are broken into small pieces with quizzes to make sure students understand concepts before moving on." Right, they're not MOOC-based degrees. They're (in my view) programmed degrees, based on the design model called 'programmed instruction'. A proper MOOC-based degree, meanwhile, based on real open online education, is of course an open degree.

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