OLDaily

Stewardship of global collective behavior
Joseph B. Bak-Coleman, et.al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021/06/22

The next time someone tells you their pet theories of online social interaction are "research based" send this important paper back to them. "We lack the scientific framework we would need to answer even the most basic questions that technology companies and their regulators face," argue the authors. "We lack the ability to predict how the technologies we adopt today will impact global patterns of beliefs and behavior tomorrow." Our understanding of collective behaviour has been impacted by four key changes: the increased scale of human networks, changes in network structure, increased information fidelity and correlation, and algorithmic feedback and amplification. At the same time, "humanity faces global and existential threats including climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the prospect of nuclear war. We likewise face a number of other challenges that impact our wellbeing, including racism, disease, famine, and economic inequality." We can't address these unless we can understand and manage human collective behaviour, they argue. "There is no viable hands-off approach." Image: Petra Kuenkel, Collective Stewardship.

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The Key to Success is to Iterate
Tim Klapdor, Heart // Soul // Machine, 2021/06/22

I've heard this before. The idea is that you build a minimal viable product (MVP) that does the least you can possibly do, get user feedback, and iterate from there. Just as depicted in the image and well-documented in this post. And that works, I think, in (to borrow terminology from Kuhn) 'normal development'. That's what we have when we're working in a relatively well defined problem space, with familkiar tools and mechanisms and interfaces. But my experience is that to build something really new, you have to follow what I've seen called the 'two times advantage'. You can't just offer one imporvement over what was done previously, you have to double that; people won't get out of their comfort zone for less, which means you can't increment your way to it, you have to be able to show them the full benefit before they're willing to give it a try.

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A Place for Messy Professional Development
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2021/06/22

I think the hardest thing to do on the internet these days is to create a community. Not only are you working against the social media giants, you're also working against people's preference to stay where they are rather than go somewhere new. Thus it is with OE Global's Discourse powered community space. Add to this difficulty Alan Levine's preference for semi-structured (bordering on chaotic) interaction and you have an almost impossible task. "I think my idea is still out of the bell curve of expectations of webinars, workshops, presentations," he writes. "I am not sure my colleagues grasp my idea. This is hardly the first time." Well I, for one, would like to see it succeed.

I've signed up, but even if you don't, there's already some excellent resources available for you to just browse. For example, there's this set of selected resources about open pedagogy. And for this year, we have the open pedagogy summer adventure. Levine also links to his H5P Kitchen. Finally, there's the summer EDI book club, where they're reading From Equity Talk to Equity Walk. You might also be interested in Penn State's open pedagogy project roadmap and workbook. Now I'm hoping the community server sends me email (update: it does, fully configurable), since I'm not a 'drop in' sort of person, and if it keeps sending me stuff like this I'll find it well worth the investment in time.

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17 goals to transform our world
Statistics Canada, 2021/06/22

This is a new (still in beta) website from Statistics Canada to measure this country's progress toward United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG). It looks very nice but I have to admit I'm not enthusiastic about many of the measures. For example, for SDG4, 'ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all', we have exactly two measures: high school completion rate (which at 80% for Canada strikes me as surprisingly low) and post-secondary attainment rate (at 60% ranks as among the best in the world). This strikes me as a wholly inadequate set of measures, even if they're subdivided by age, gender, etc. Compare these with the actual U.N. targets and you'll see what I mean. The measures elsewhere seem equally meaningless; for example, under SDG10 (reduce inequality) measures include 'hourly wage ratio' and 'annual after-tax income', neither of which are indicators of inequality (and again, the U.N. targets).

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