OLDaily

Some thoughts on the future of public higher education
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2019/08/01

Tony Bates weighs in with a longish and well-thought-out post on the potential future of public education through the vehicle of a news report on education in the future province (?) of Cascadia: " Forget content delivery. Almost all the content we need to teach is already out there on the Internet, either as open educational resources or freely available through the Internet... we had to focus on the hard stuff, and that is high-level skills development that requires a skilled person – an instructor, although I prefer the term ‘counsellor’ – to help with the learning and training."

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I Do Not Own Kin Lane
Kin Lane, 2019/08/01

The concept of owenship entails the concept of exchange - I cannot be said to "own" something unless I can exchange it (say, for money). In this sense, we cannot be said to own ourselves, because we cannot sell ourselves (at best, we can sell our labour or our possessions). But where does this concept of "ourselves" begin and end. Take this assertion: " A photo taken by me or of me is not owned by me. It is me. There is no ownership of my physical or digital self." The question that arises in my mind is: is there a digital self? Can there be any sense of 'me' that is not my body? I could sell a photograph of myself, if anyone would but it, but I could not sell the property of 'looking like me'. So, maybe...

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Wild Creatures Emerge From Thrown Sand in Photographs by Claire Droppert
Andrew LaSane, Colossal, 2019/08/01

I personally do not see "wild creatures" in these images of thrown sand, but that's the nature of emergence - for a property to be emergent, there must be a perceiver who sees the pattern as something, that is, the pattern must be recognized. Anyhow, this is a pretty good novel demonstration of emergence, and maybe you'll see the creatures I don't.

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The College Dropout Scandal
David Kirp, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019/08/01

The point of departure for this post is an article in the journal New Directions For Higher Education which stated, “A revolution appears to be sweeping the campuses of the nation’s colleges and universities, and it is based on a simple credo: The success of an institution and the success of its students are inseparable.” The author comments that it is "sad and telling" that " putting students first is a revolutionary idea." The context is the fact that (in the U.S.) "forty percent of students don’t graduate." This leaves them without the certificate they've paid thousands of dollars to obtain. Higher education blames the student. The suggestion here is that maybe it should blame itself. Radical! See also: Author discusses his book on the college dropout scandal.

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This is Learning Experience Design
YouTube, 2019/08/01

"Learning Experience Design (LX design) is the process of creating learning experiences that enable the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome in a human centered and goal oriented way," according to Niels Floor. This is a short video introducing learning experience design (LxD). Sam Faissal introduces it as follows: "Experiential Learning is one of the fundamentals of Learning Experience Design. Watch this interesting video that introduces Learning Experience Design in simple words."

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A Reckoning for 2U, and OPMs?
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2019/08/01

Normally I wouldn't cover stock market news, not even when a leading Online Program Management (OPM) company's stock drops 65% in one day. But this followed a frank assessment of the OPM market, and that is worth covering. " Online program management is a difficult business to be in. Online education is increasingly competitive, student acquisition and marketing costs are going up, and the regulatory landscape is becoming more complex... attracting large numbers of students to a particular online program is more challenging and more expensive than it was just a few years ago." Those who watch the technology space in general will recognize this as a familiar pattern - when you tie yourself to a platform, whether it's Facebook or the university system, your fortunes are tied to that platform, and that platform will eventually turn on you.

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Across the great divide: How today’s college students engage with news
Alison J. Head, Erica DeFrain, Barbara Fister, Margy MacMillan, First Monday, 2019/08/01

Good article with a large sample size on how college student in the U.S. learn about the news (it would be nicer to see a global study, but one step at at time, I suppose). Significantly, "We found discussions about the news had an important sense-making function for students, guiding them on how to navigate the complex news landscape at a time of acute political polarization, a volatile media environment, and where poorer quality content and disinformation thrive." This is likely true for new information generally, which is why discussion has such an important role in learning.

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The rising tide: Open source’s steady transformation
Matt Germonprez, Jonathan Lipps, Sean Goggins, First Monday, 2019/08/01

This article reports on an increasing tension in open source projects. As they become more successful, contributions from corporations increase, and this changes the dynamics of the community, resulting in an increased focus on the 'project', and resulting in the "concealment" of the processes and mechanisms that govern to the project. The result is a need to balance the need to produce a workable product with the conversation and interaction that is characterics of open source. "Splitting the community project from the usable product is an inflection point for this new form of open source project work, and emblematic of the intrusion of the 'device paradigm'." This often results in an enclosed commercial product becoming predominant, with a residual less-functional husk being left over for the original contributors and users. Image: Torch API / Concealment.

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