OLDaily

An Advanced Authentication Scheme for E-evaluation Using Students Behaviors Over E-learning Platform
Yassine Khlifi, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2020/02/26

This is such a bad idea it deserves its own post. One of the problems with online authentication is that a person could sign in to a test and then hand it over to someone else to complete, thus defeating the login. The solution proposed here (22 page PDF) is to collect information about the student during the course and then to pose periodic authentication questions during the test. According to this paper, the method works. I'm sure it does. But it's a solution that manages to be intrusive and annoying at the same time!

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Development and Integration of E-learning Services Using REST APIs
Saleh Mowla, Sucheta V Kolekar, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2020/02/26

I like this approach to distributed web services in a course. "The paper (20 page PDF) presents a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to minimize the cost and time associated with the development of E-Learning systems. The paper illustrates the development of independent E-Learning web services and how they can be combined to implement the required policies of respective education institutes." Illustrated is a system where content, forums, quizzes and assignments are each on their own API-accessible server. The article is a bit technical, and could be more up-to-date, but the essential idea is (in my view) sound.

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Wikipedia is flooded with information — but it has a blind spot
Sierra Garcia, Grist, 2020/02/26

The value of this post is that it shows that imbalance in coverage is something that exists in traditional media, online sources like Wikipedia, and therefore in automated knowledge systems. It's not just an AI thing. Here's how it happens: "Wikipedia authors are required to cite sources when they write or edit articles, and a severe lack of media coverage on floods and other disasters in underreported regions makes the corresponding Wikipedia articles inevitably less detailed." It doesn't help that most of Wikipedia's editors come from a single demographic. "The vast majority of editors are white men... and people living in countries that tend to be ignored by Wikipedia editors might also be missing out on an important benefit that Wikipedia provides to higher-income communities as disasters are happening."

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Adopting Open Educational Resources Can Help Students. But It Takes Time, Money and Effort
Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge, 2020/02/26

This article reports on a study conducted on a pilot program using open educational resources (OER) and the first half described the modest gains in achievement OER can produce. But the second part emphasizes the cost. "Creating an OER degree pathway cost between $300,000 and $1 million at five of the community colleges... The biggest expense came from developing courses. STEM classes and those that used open interactive learning systems were the costliest to develop." This to me indicates the degree that publishers have insinuated themselves into the teaching process. When I taught courses (including computer courses) developing the course was part of the normal duties of an instructor. But over time, it has come to be treated as an additional expense (for which, of course, the student would be charged).

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Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?
Rick Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2020/02/26

Rick Anderson has been arguing for the publisher-backed closed-access model for decades now, and I've commented on his attempts from time to time, but this column appears, well, desperate. The argument here is that open access is a monoculture, and so, if you support diversity (and pluralism, and democracy, and all that) then you should voice your support for commercial publishers. This is a common trope from the commercial sector. If you want choice, you must privatize, according to the trope. It's false. Commercialism doesn't mean more choice, it means less choice.

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