OLDaily

Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures
Nicolas P. Rougier, Michael Droettboom, Philip E. Bourne, PLoS Computational Biology, 2019/05/27

Good post with compelling examples arguing for clear and accurate graphs (aka 'figures') in publications. There's a good list of open source tools for visualization to conclude the article. Best find: XKCD filter on Matplotlib.

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Blockchain - the Networked Ecosystem is the Business
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2019/05/27

The key to understanding the impact of blockchain, I think, is to stop thinking about Bitcoin and digital currency, and to start thinking about networked ecosystems. "We’ve observed that organizations that launch their journeys by first designing and testing minimally viable ecosystems (MVE), rather than minimum viable products (MVP), have a greater chance to be successful. When first organizing a blockchain, designing an MVE that equitably incentivizes all participating network members is a key challenge." See also IBM's Building Your Blockchain Advantage (24 page PDF).

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Tell Me, Learning Analytics…
Maha Bali, Reflecting Allowed, 2019/05/27

While I'm not disagreeing with the criticisms of learning analytics in this post, I'm not exactly agreeing with the argument that we need more humans to do the work. It seems to me that what we really need is better AI. "Someone who is falling behind probably needs personal attention and care from the teacher or at least a TA." Maybe this is true. Or maybe they're failing for reasons that have nothing to do with the course. Or maybe they're failing because of the human in the course. I don't know. I do know that in the era of all-human instruction, lots of students still failed.

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Social Assessment: New Ways of Learning, a Modern Framework for Feedback
Desire2Learn, 2019/05/27

The document is behind a spamwall (here's a direct link that might get you past it, and here's a direct link to the 21 page PDF) and they've trademarked the term 'social assessment'. But here's the feature: "Social Assessment leverages modern workplace learning capabilities and experiences to help organizations improve employee engagement by facilitating regular, constructive feedback from stakeholders across the enterprise-including experts like managers, coaches, and mentors as well as peers-and encouraging iterative employee improvement." The main thing happening here, though, is that D2L has devised a strategy to move into corporate learning (where there's no teachers marking papers).

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