OLDaily

To weather a crisis, build a network of teams
Andrea Alexander, Aaron De Smet, Sarah Kleinman, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, McKinsey, 2020/04/10

I've stated several times this week that we can't address the need for online learning by creating a bunch of high-volume courses. But what to do instead? We've addressed that over the years in this newsletter, but here is much the same message from McKinsey: create a network of teams. This is how we set up our connectivist MOOCs, and this is how learning online works in less formal communities outside academia. I wouldn't expect people to learn this all at once, but I would hope we've progressed toward this outcome by August and September.

The teacher's role, beyond instigating the network and steadily enhancing learner self-organization, is to be a good example. "You should continue setting the tone, modeling the actions you want to see, recognizing others who are taking risks and making real change, removing roadblocks for teams, and connecting people across the network. Finally, communicate widely, transparently, and authentically about your experience and the implications for others around you." You don't stand back, you're no 'guide by the side', but neither are you authoritarian; you're an example to emulate.

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Losing Graduation and Job Opportunities, How China's Class of 2020 Breaks Through the COVID-19 Crisis？
Siyi Zhang, JMDedu, 2020/04/10

What are students in China using to learn online? According to Zhang Zheyang, a sophomore computer science student, "most like ChaoXingXueXiTong (超星学习通) and the Chinese University MOOC." They are referenced a lot by teachers as well. "And the Chinese University MOOC, which is jointly launched by NetEase and the Higher Education Press, has been recommended as one of the remote solutions (and) has cooperated with more than 1,000 universities nationwide, witnessing a DAU of tens of millions amid the epidemic.” The major issue for Chinese students, according to this article, will be the lack of job prospects, a problem exacerbated by online interviews.

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A pan-Canadian effort in online education? PD not content.
George Veletsianos, 2020/04/10

Responding to Alex Usher's argument from a few days ago George Veletsianos argues that instead of creating a whole bunch of digital content, we should be providing professional development. Which sounds like a good idea, but when you look at his proposal, it's just more content. "Develop a teaching and learning online curriculum," he writes. "Create a 4-week common online course." Ot's a course that will get complex in a hurry: "while there may be some centralization in the design of the course, this needs to encompasses smaller-scale work and collaboration." Veletsianos's one course would fail for the same reason Usher's many courses would fail, and for the same reasons. There's no shortage of content - we don't need a new online course.

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Skype introduces 'Meet Now' video calls to lure users away from Zoom
Humza Aamir, TechSpot, 2020/04/10

The thing with Skype, aside from the lossy audio, is that it has always been a pain to use. The interface bounces around a lot, and it feels like they're trying to get you to do a lot of things when all you want to do is make a video call. Zoom was successful precisely because it got rid of all this cruft and simply allowed people to make video calls. Skype's new 'Meet Now' feature enables free conference calls, no sign ups, and (sometimes) no downloads (I tried to start a meeting and it demanded I download Skype, so I assume the web-only version of Skype is only for attendees). Maybe there's a message for the tech industry here, that it is only hurting itself when it prioritizes its own interests over its users. The same lesson could be learned by educational software vendors.

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Flipping the higher ed new normal: from synchronous to asynchronous education
Bryan Alexander, 2020/04/10

While the first reaction of untold numbers of educators has been to shift their lectures to video conferencing, Bryan Alexander notes that there has been pushback from people who don't have that kind of flexibility of scheduling. "First, requiring live video means assuming students have access to infrastructure. Not everyone has the right hardware. Worst, not everyone has sufficient bandwidth... Second, time zone issues can become a real problem in scheduling a simultaneous event.  This is especially true for international students... Third, scheduling becomes harder for many people under quarantine. Think of parents with children now staying at home...  Fourth, turning on a camera for an hour or more might be a problem for people suffering physical health issues...  Fifth, as with any other technology, faculty and students have to learn how to use it competently." I think the last two are a reach too far, but overall I think he has a point.

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Microsoft thinks coronavirus will forever change the way we work and learn
Tom Warren, The Verge, 2020/04/10

This article backs off on the prediction in the final paragraphs ("video conferencing isn’t enough to get work done") but until that point argues that the way we work and learn will be changed forever. “The new normal is not going to be, like what I thought two weeks ago, that all is clear, go back everybody,” says Spataro. “There will be a new normal that will require us to continue to use these new tools for a long time.” I think we'll keep using the 'new tools' so long as they keep working. And I think that once a lot of the marketing is removed (see the Skype story today) they work just fine.

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What is Albert Camus’ The Plague About? An Introduction
Josh Jones, Open Culture, 2020/04/10

I didn't descend deeply into existentialist angst the way some philosophy students do, but I did experience its outer fringes in reading works like Albert Camus's The Plague (which I read around the same time as Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. I'm a pretty serious person, but these books remind me of the limits of that. Josh Jones  writes, "The recognition of finitude, of failure, ignorance, and repetition—what philosopher Miguel de Unamuno called “the tragic sense of life”—can instead cure us of the behaviors Camus abhorred: a hardness of heart, an obsession with status, a refusal of joy and gratitude, a tendency to moralize and judge. Whatever else The Plague is about, Camus shows that in a struggle for survival, these attitudes can prove worse than useless and can be the first to go."

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Dyson creates engineering challenges for kids in lockdown
Molly Long, Design Week, 2020/04/10

This item showed up in our research centre Slack channel this week. "The initiative, which is made up of 44 Challenge Cards (91 page PDF), aims to provide young people with ample stimulation as families adjust to spending more time at home because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent shut down of schools." I also noticed Ewan McIntosh's article along the same lines. I like the Dyson projects (and did many of them myself when I was younger) but it occurs to me that today scientists and engineers wouldn't think of engaging in such projects without documenting them. Because there are four stages to these projects, if done properly: design, build, test, document. The Dyson challenges describe how to do things, but skimp on methods for sharing your results.

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