OLDaily

Evaluation of a MOOC Design Mapping Framework (MDMF): Experiences of Academics and Learning Technologists
John Kerr, Vicki H.M. Dale, Fanni Gyurko, Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 2019/05/15

The MOOC design tool is a template for describing and sequencing activities in a MOOC. This article (14 page PDF) describes the tool and the results of a limited survey-based evaluation of its function and utility. From my perspective, the main weakness of the tool is that it is designed horizontally rather than vertically. There's only six types of activity (video, readings, discussions, tests, emails, and other; these should be columns, rather than rows. Then each row can be a time element - thus, making the template more like an itinerary rather than a Gantt chart, and giving people more room to enter data. (It should also be digital rather than paper, so the page can increase in size when there's more to add).

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Tim Klapdor, Heart | Soul | Machine, 2019/05/15

As YABOs go, this isn't bad. It offers a quick outline of some of the key concepts, overviews some applications, offers some 'review' comments, poses some questions, and suggests some alternatives to blockchain. My main complaint is that after reading it, you still won't know what a blockchain actually is. (YABO = Yet Another Blockchain Overview).

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Online Conversation Benchmarks for Higher Ed
Amber Sandall, Campus Sonar, 2019/05/15

I'm not sure whether it's worth filling out the spamwall form for this report (this direct link to the 45 page PDF appears to work) but it is a fairly comprehensive discussion of owned and earned social media commentary for higher education institutions. I know the title says 'conversation' but I'm not sure the authors have appropriately distinguished conversation from 'chatter'. This especially seems to be the case when they add campus sports-related commentary to the mix. The self-stated pr4urpose of the article was to create benchmarks for the measurement of social media campaigns and conversation. I still found it an interesting read, even if I didn't feel especially enlightened at the end.

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A Study of Commenting on PLOS Articles
Simon Wakeling, Stephen Pinfield, Peter Willett, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2019/05/15

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) publishes open access scientific articles. These articles allow commenting, but very few people actually comment, a fact that caught the authors' eye given the nascent popularity of the concept of post-publication review. If people don't comment, how can we depend on them to review publications? It's a valid question. Different explanations offered - perhaps academics prefer traditional venues, like staff rooms and conferences. Perhaps what's missing (especially for mega-journals) is community. Perhaps it's just taking new models of review to be accepted. Or maybe (and this is my own speculation now) academics don't comment because there's no reward for commenting, and they do what they've always done for reward: cite and comment in a publication of their own. And that's not so bad - and what would be especially useful would be were there to be a way to view these follow-up publications linked from the relevant paragraph in the original publication, the way WebMentions works.

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What Makes a Comment – an Investigation of the Different Ways of Engaging in Dialogue
Aaron Davis, Read Write Respond, 2019/05/15

I've thought a lot about comments. I've never had many comments - so few, in fact, that I no longer make the effort to support comments on my website. The same with distributed comments - I don't see many responses on Twitter or elsewhere. Even in the days of mailing lists, I wouldn't get many responses to my emails - I always just figured I had closed the discussion with the correct answer, so there was nothing else to say. Someone once said to me that everyone knows everyone else has read it, so there isn't much to add. I used to comment more than I do today, but my tolerance for logins, passwords and capchas is almost zero. Anyhow, this article talks about the flavours of comments. I don't know - I see websites with long comment threads and I'm still not sure what makes people comment on one website and not another.

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