OLDaily

Experience of using CORE Recommender - an interview
Melanie Heeley, JISC, 2021/06/02

This post describes the interviewee's experience using the CORE Recommender, a plugin for repositories, journals and web interfaces recommending additional resources from CORE, self-described as "the world’s largest collection of open access research papers." George Macgregor from the University of Strathclyde says that use of the recommender "sends out a signal that Strathprints, along with the other services it takes advantage of, is a node within the wider open scholarly communications landscape." He says the recommender is unique because of the size of the collection and its similarity algorithm, which you can read about here. The script is pretty clever; it scans the page where it's embedded for tags or user-defined content and uses the centrally defined recommender to create the output. Sadly my test of the script seems to have failed.

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Understanding microcredentials: a report from HEQCO
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2021/06/02

This is a summary of a recent report from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), Making Sense of Microcredentials (32 page PDF). Tony Bates first remarks on the fact that HEQCO's definition differs from eCampus Ontario's, but while he says "eCampus Ontario’s is slightly more specific" i would focus on the key difference, specifically, that HEQCO says a microcredential "is focused on a discrete set of competencies" and eCampus Ontario does not. This is reflected in HEQCO's list of features, which says microcredentials are "relevant: tied to industry and/or community needs." Not surprisingly, the HEQCO is recommending a set of 'quality markers' for microcredentials, but I would caution that what counts as 'quality' (for example: relevance) can be very different for different people.

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JSON Graph Format (JGF)
JGF, 2021/06/02

Yesterday I considered the question of how to represent a graph in Javascript Object Notation (JSON). I want to use a graph to represent a course network, which would in turn be used to help someone enroll in the course. There isn't any single authoritative way to do this (though there's a specification on GitHub) but I did find this resource that offers a number of approaches (click on 'expand source' to see the actual JSON code). I also found another site offering similar approaches. There's also the approach using JSON Linked Data (JSON-LD). It's JSON that includes a @context element (for example, the context for person) that points to a data type definition and @id element that creates a canonical id; links to other elements are then embedded in the data using their canonical ID. I've gone ahead with a sort of abbreviated JGF using content-addressing IDs (CID) (see IPFS).

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How to be an elearning expert
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2021/06/02

Of course I could not pass by this item without comment. My first thought was to put the term 'expert' in single quotes, because Clark Quinn has a particular meaning in mind, as suggested in his advice to "two components: know your stuff, and let people know." The 'expert' Quinn has in mind is, I think, what might be termed a 'popular expert', one who develops a following around a particular model or domain area and who publishes in popular press outlets such as Learning Solutions or eLearn Mag. Not that I'm criticizing! But I would emphasize that it's about much more than just brand. Being an expert means getting your hands dirty, actually doing the teaching or the research and development, and publishing your results. And to me, this is reflected in development or progression in your work, and you expand your own understanding and contribution to the field. Image: CPA.

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T-REX: the Teachers’ Research Exchange. Overcoming the Research-Practice Gap in Education
Marek McGann, Marie Ryan, Jennifer McMahon, Tony Hall, ResearchGate, TechTrends, 2021/06/02

This is a really nice paper describing the Teachers’ Research Exchange (T-REX) (more), a professional development and learning community for teachers currently being piloted in Ireland. The article describes the thinking behind the project, including especially the attention it pays to the 'research-practice gap' and the design as a community of practice (CoP). The authors draw a parallel to the old TappedIn (previously: here and here) community, though in this case, " rather than having a focus just on outcomes for one key profession, the aim is to develop an integrated community of education researchers across multiple professions." This link is to the ResearchGate version of the paywalled TechTrends article.

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