OLDaily

Rules of Engagement for Emotional Discussions
Tamara Fyke, edCircuit, 2020/11/11

While educators like to talk about collaboration it seems to me that an argument is a classic case whether two people are not collaborating - they don't share the same goal, by definition - but are rather cooperating. I say 'cooperating' instead of 'competing' because in an argument (as opposed to a fight) they have agreed to engage. This post talks about rules of engagement, and it's a good summary from that perspective, but I want to highlight the ways in which these are different from collaboration. The purpose here isn't to reach some sort of common outcome, but to nonetheless help the participants help each other (and to not hurt each other) by setting out a mechanism that enables them to fruitfully interact. If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that while agreement is sometimes important, being able to disagree is even more important.

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Building Creative Critical Online Learning Communities through Digital Moments
Wendy Barber, Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 2020/11/11

This paper (10 page PDF) examines the a pedagogical strategy called “Digital Moments” (DM) for "developing creative interactive online learning communities" within the context of the Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC) model, based on a "foundation of problem-based learning, cognitive and social presence, and learner-centred pedagogies" (which sounds a lot like a MOOC, but I digress). Anyhow, the idea of digital moments is "to replicate the relationship building moments which naturally occur as students enter a face to face class before the structured learning begins." In it, students met on Adobe Connect (ugh) and uploaded "pictures, quotes, colours, links to describe in a single snapshot where the person was at that week." In other words, they basically opened the online conferencing environment before the formal conference started, and (as this paper reports) students took to it. Anyhow, the description was useful (the formal study, with 25 participants, was rather less so).

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Engagement with and Participation in Online role play Collaborative Arguments: A Sociocultural Perspective
Josephine Lutaaya Najjemba, Johannes Cronjé, Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 2020/11/11

The purpose of this study (13 page PDF) was "to investigate how students’ engagement with and participation in online role play collaborative arguments shaped their literacy practices, and influenced their beliefs and thinking regarding particular societal issue." In particular, "a blog-mediated role play was introduced in English as Second Language (ESL) methods class at one university in Uganda with third year, pre-service students as participants." The key here for participants is to build a credible "rhetorical persona who serves to achieve own rhetorical goals of convincing others to adopt their positions." As is always the case with limited studies like this, the value is in the background and the description of the method, rather than any quantifiable results, and there's quite a lot of it in this paper.

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Crisis Schooling vs. Online Education
Amy Valentine, Future of School: The Podcast, 2020/11/11

This is the the debut episode of Future of School: The Podcast. It runs about 33 minutes and promises "compelling perspectives and personal stories from a variety of participants in the U.S. education ecosystem." It's a product of Future of School and supports "its mission to mobilize change in American K-12 education from a one-size-fits-all system to one that ensures all students reach their unbounded potential no matter where their learning takes place". For what that means, exactly, I guess you can listen to the podcast.

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Why Am I Still Using Social Media?
Dean Shareski, Ideas and Thoughts, 2020/11/11

You wouldn't think this would be a question that needs asking, but in today's world with so many toxic aspects of social media, it's a serious question. As Dean Shareski says, " If you’ve watched The Social Dilemma or done any other extensive reading, you’re quite aware of the harm it has and continues to cause our society." It used to be better; "one advantage of those early days was its lack of status and metrics. Everyone was equal and I think it made things less competitive as there was nothing to compete for." And it became too easy to lose our vision of social media as a happy place and to begin contributing our “airing of grievances“ (and sometimes, I guess, feats of (verbal) strength). And yest, says Shareski, "I still find value and take pride in making someone smile." Perhaps that's enough.

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Why Higher Ed Needs Data Ethics
Bonnie Stewart, Inside Higher Ed, 2020/11/11

A couple of years ago higher ed needed AI ethics. Now it needs data ethics. In the future it will need DNA ethics. We could just say higher ed needs ethics. Yes, true, as Bonnie Stewart says, "these are relatively new issues on higher education’s radar as a whole." Anyhow, the bulk of this post is about a pilot survey of university educators on their knowledge, practices and perspectives about data. Here is the data set. As Stewart notes in the article, most (about 2/3) don't know where their LMS data is located, and most (2/3) mostly don't read the full terms of service. But why would they? In an institutional context, there are people to do this. Interestingly, most respondents (95%) haven't experienced serious data breach issues. And about half say institutions shouldn't analyze the records of logins, clicks, and contributions posted without express permission. None of this says 'crisis' to me. Image: Wired.

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