OLDaily

YouTube: Designed to Seduce
Fabio Tollon, 3 Quarks Daily, 2020/08/20

The point has been made before, but this is a good restatement that approaches the issue from an epistemic perspective. "The YouTube recommender system encourages users to view counter-normative and epistemically problematic content.... The recommender system, designed for profit, seemingly lacks an adequate epistemic component. That is, it does not seem to have a good enough mechanism for detecting epistemically good from epistemically problematic content. This blindness is especially challenging because it seems as though YouTube is actually making more money as a result of this system." The lies are free for us, but they make money for YouTube.

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This Isn’t Instructional Technology Either
Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff, 2020/08/20

I admit to having missed the 'Bitmoji Classrooms' trend, but if I take Tim Stahmer's word, I really haven't missed anything. This article is a pretty thorough take-down of the trend. "Too many teachers mistakenly believe that learning to build a Bitmoji Classroom is of more value than just a fun way to decorate a digital classroom," he writes. "Instructional technology is anything that can be used directly by students to enhance and extend their learning. The tools should be in the hands of and largely under the control of kids. The LMS you’re decorating certainly doesn’t qualify." Also: What is Bitmoji? EdWeek article. Here are some examples of Bitmoji classrooms.

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Big and open linked data analytics: a study on changing roles and skills in the higher educational process
Martin Lnenicka, Hana Kopackova, Renata Machova, Jitka Komarkova, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2020/08/20

This paper looks at "the identification of current and emerging roles of stakeholders in the data analytics ecosystem." The authors introduce "Big and Open Linked Educational Data (BOLED)" to describe these roles and seek to identify best practices though a Delphi study. Among those practices are 'data skills', defined as “the collective ability of individuals and organizations to use and reuse data,"which can be divided into " hard skills can be defined as more technical skills such as programming or data analytics skills and soft skills are more non-technical such as interdisciplinary cooperation or communication." There's a lot more going on in this paper; it's a good, if technical, read.

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Measurement of the MOOC Phenomenon by Pre-Service Teachers: A Descriptive Case Study
José Gómez-Galán, Cristina Lázaro-Pérez, José Ángel Martínez-López, Eloy López-Meneses, Education Sciences, 2020/08/20

"There have been multiple studies and research on MOOC courses," write the authors, but "we consider that there is one of them that should be further explored due to its great interest. By this, we mean understanding better how their main users value them: students." This is because despite the shortcomings found by experts (which have been numerous), MOOCs are enduringly popular nonetheless. This is a small study (16 page PDF), but the composition - pre-service teachers - is interesting. Among the weaknesses they find is "the lack of pedagogical supervision of the teaching-learning process by teachers who teach MOOC courses" According to the authors, "It denotes that MOOCs are an interesting training offer but that it is alien to the specific fields of educational sciences." I can't disagree. From my perspective, MOOCs were never designed to be educational, at least, not in a traditional sense.

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Instructional Strategies for the Future
Brenda Bannan, Nada Dabbagh, J. J. Walcutt, Journal of Military Learning, 2020/08/20

This article (13 page PDF) looks at the limits of traditional instructional design - which presupposes an "appropriate configuration of instructional interventions in insular and finite curricular units, such as a course or training program" - in contrast to longer term and less well defined learning. In so doing, it maps out a broader approach defining instructional strategies in the future. Consequently, the authors recommend learning strategies that "create active, constructive, cooperative, authentic, and intentional learning interventions." In particular, "In social constructivism and connectivism, learning becomes a process of collection, reflection, connection, and publication. Therein lies the cooperative (collaborative, conversational) principles of meaningful learning."

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