OLDaily

About That Webcam Obsession You’re Having…
Maha Bali, Reflecting Allowed, 2020/06/23

I had an audioconference today and I found it unreasonably awkward compared to videoconferences. But that was 90% because we were doing it over the telephone, with dubious sound quality, and because it wouldn't connect to my noise-canceling headphones. So much better on the computer! And yes, I also like to be able to look at the other participants. But Maha Bali is correct here - it should be up to the other person whether or not they turn on their camera. Even if they're students. "Honestly," she says, "it seems a lot to ask people to turn their cameras on so you can see them smile and nod their heads. And it seems we need to consider ways of allowing people to “be there” in alternative ways that they are comfortable with and that tell us they are really listening to us and responding in more explicit ways."

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S3: A Holistic Framework for Evaluating the Impact of Educational Innovations (Including OER)
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2020/06/23

As David Wiley remodels his 'Introduction  to Open Education' course he revisits the concept of what counts as 'success'. Here's his take: "In the S3 framework, 'success' means 'completing a course with a final grade that allows the course to count toward graduation.'" But that's only one of the 3 Ss - the others are 'scale' and 'savings'. All three are important, he says. "It is a huge mistake for us to look at 30% graduation rates from US community colleges and say, 'the most important thing we can do is make that abysmal outcome less expensive.'" Well, true. But I would expect OER to address all three factors - and as Wiley says, "There is nothing OER-specific about S3." And while I think there's a loit to recommend Wiley's thinking here, I think there are three elements that are problematic: course, grade, and graduation. I'd prefer to see a model not locked into such an ossified conception of education.

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Are Universities Going the Way of CDs and Cable TV?
Michael D. Smith, The Atlantic, 2020/06/23

I know people don't want to read this, and there are many sceptics who will offer the contrary view, but I think the answer to the question in the title is "yes". This article makes the case, and I want to pull out two quotes. First: "As educators, we strive to create opportunities for as many students as possible to discover and develop their talents, and to use those talents to make a difference in the world. By that measure, our current model falls short." And second, "Soon, residential colleges may experience a decline similar to that of live theaters after the advent of movies and broadcast television. Broadway and local playhouses still exist, but they are now considered exclusive and expensive forms of entertainment, nowhere near the cultural force they once were."

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Remote education and the quarantine: My view
Antonio Vantaggiato, Skate of the Web, 2020/06/23

I'm not sure exactly what Antonio Vantaggiato is saying here, but two messages seem to come through: first, the pivot to online wasn't awful for everybody; and second, his own "immodest best practices: All interaction and course work orbit around the Web hub (for instance, the New Media course, inf115.com). It is a syndicated hub where students’ contributions get aggregated from their own blogs. emphasis on word 'own': meaning, the blogs and posts therein are theirs, not the University’s nor mine. After it starts, the Machine works seamlessly. " This is roughly my experience with MOOCs as well, and Vantaggiato appears to have had some good role models: "In fact part of what Jim, Brian Lamb, Gardner Campbell, Alan Levine and many more have been preaching is to build some part of one’s course as an indie website, out of a process of Instructional Design that does not abdicate the esthetic and visual design to the platform of choice."

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Exploring the Potential of Bootstrap Consensus Networks for Large-Scale Authorship Attribution in Luxdorph's Freedom of the Press Writings
Florian Meier, Birger Larsen, Frederik Stjernfelt, Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries, 2020/06/23

The writings in question are from the Trykkefrihedsskrifter, the Danish freedom of the press writings authored between 1700-1773. The application seeks to find similarities across 725 of the pamphlets written during that period to determine authorship. The Bootstrap Consensus Method (BCN) is the algorithm being used to conduct the analysis. Now it turns out that this effort (15 page PDF) was unsuccessful. "It might be that the BCN method is inadequate for the task. On the other hand, it can also be that the data-set we are dealing with is a very challenging one." So why is this interesting (aside from the unique glimpse into Danish history that it offers)? Recall that in previous writings I have said 'community is consensus', and 'what defines a community is how it decides what is true'. The lessons here, it seems to me, can be applied there. More papers from Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries.

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