OLDaily

The (monetary) value of a university education during a pandemic
Doug Belshaw, Open Thinkering, 2021/01/15

The problem with the premise in the headline is I hope evident, since the meaning of education runs far wider than monetary value, but if you're paying £9000 tuition you are going to be attentive to the value you're receiving for that money, educational or otherwise. The key point in this post is that "Universities, because they’re acting like businesses, don’t have as much goodwill from the general population anymore." I mean, sure, they provide a service, people might reason, but it's no big deal if they go out of business, just like any other commercial enterprise. What would make universities indispensable? Well, there are many good examples - things like fire services, roads, police, water supply. Not only do we need them, we will make sure government keeps supporting them because they're available mostly for free and affordably to everybody. I don't think this is Doug Belshaw's point, but it's certainly mine.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Two groups separated by a shared goal: how academic managers and lecturers have embraced the introduction of digital technologies in UK Higher Education
Xue Zhou, Melania Milecka-Forrest, Research in Learning Technology, 2021/01/15

This paper (18 page PDF) examines "differences and similarities in the perception of digital technology by lecturers and academic managers." While I'm not even remotely a fan of 'perception' research papers (they are not to my mind 'research' but rather a collection of opinions presented as research) I felt the contrast in roles here was worth considering. Basically, the paper concludes that the two groups have different motivations (at least, among the 20 people, um, 'sampled', for this study). There's a longish list, but if I had to summarize them (an admittedly subjective perception), the teachers were more worried about student experiences while managers were focused more on outcomes.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Automatically maintained citations with Wikidata and Cite Q
Mike Peel, Andy Mabbett, Diff, 2021/01/15

Citations are an important part of any information ecosystem (so much so that pretty much every post in OLDaily is in essence a citation). They are also core to the reliability and authority of Wikipedia, which has a policy that any assertion be backed with a citation to a published source. This article describes a citation template in use by Wikipedia that has a single parameter: the index of the citation in Wikidata. The Wikidata record, meanwhile, has a range of citation properties that will be familiar to learning designers. The project has a lot readers can dig into - here is the Source MetaData project page, which includes a roadmap, a research bot, and implementation in a programming language called Lua (this is the first I've ever heard of Lua).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

6 Steps to Breaking Up With Your OPM
Blackboard Blog, 2021/01/15

It's interesting that Blackboard would post this, because I would expect the company maintains strong relations with Online Program Management (OPM) companies, but maybe not. Anyhow, the post reflects the general dissatisfaction with OPM contracts that appeared to be beneficial when online learning was just a sideline but which became a burden when online learning was the institution's only option during a pandemic. Since we're not likely to return to the Days Before there is incentive to part ways with OPM contracts, and this post is the briefest (but useful) guideline.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]