OLDaily

Social contract vs. invisible hand: Agreeing to solve social dilemmas
Viktor J. Vanberg, Freiburger Diskussionspapiere zur Ordnungsökonomik, 2021/11/17

"The purpose of this essay is to take a closer look at the relation between the invisible
hand paradigm that is at the heart of economists’ theoretical outlook at markets and the social
contract paradigm" to “provide us with the ‘bridge’ between the individual-choice calculus and group decisions.”

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Krug Don't make us think
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2021/11/17

Following from people like Donald Norman and Jakob Nielsen, who raised usability into a design imperative, Steve Krug argues that "users and learners want the interface to be an unthinking act, easy and unobtrusive. The more they think, the more likely they are to stop and go elsewhere. Forget instructions. People don’t read them and don’t want them. He recommends that we design out the need for a tutorial or instructions." Totally agree. My own approach to design (see, eg., my ethics course) is based on simplicity, clarity, and consistency.

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Data science for analyzing and improving educational processes
Shadi Aljawarneh, Juan A. Lara, Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 2021/11/17

This is a short editorial introducing a special issue of Journal of Computing in Higher Education. Some of its recommendations are well worth noting. Data science extracts knowledge to address problems in education, they write, but "knowledge extracted is only applicable to the problem addressed." Moreover, "most research is focused on analyzing only one source of educational data." They "generate models that are hard to interpret". And the tools need to "adapt to each student depending on his or her emotions at a certain moment." All but two of the articles in the issue are closed access, but I've seen evidence of these trends elsewhere as well, and I think the editors are spot on. Image source from one of the articles.

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Everything you need to know about the metaverse
Janko Roettgers, Protocol, 2021/11/17

This article doesn't have everything, of course, but it's enough for a quick update on the buzzword of the week. The metaverse is an embodied internet, where we can interact with each other using avatars, and it's persistent, meaning you don't start over each time you load it. Most importantly, though, it's not a single service or environment. It's a network, connecting people, services and places together. Most importantly, it doesn't exist yet, and may not exist for decades, but as we develop virtual reality (VR) like Oculus and augmented reality (AR) like Google Glass, we are building the basic hardware it will need to operate. This article outlines the concept and highlights some major players.

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Decentralised Teaching with OER Podcasts in Higher Education: The Classic Management Murder Podcast Series
Maik Arnold, ResearchGate, 2021/11/17

People who follow my work know how much I love podcasts. Audio is such a flexible medium; it can be delivered at relatively low bandwidth, can be listened to while doing other things (especially driving or cycling), and can take any number of forms: drama, discussion, lecture, documentary, whatever. The audio resource described here uses a murder mystery formal to introduce Taylorism as a management principle. But the bulk of the paper is devoted to discussing podcasting in decentralized learning environments and the effectiveness of podcasting as a learning tool. It's a short read (9 page PDF) and well suited to introducing the concept to management and executives.

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Interdisciplinary collaborative approaches in Higher Education: Open Educational Resources for Subject and Language Lecturers
Ana María Piquer-Píriz, Margarida Morgado, Jana Zverinova, Verbeia, 2021/11/17

This paper reports on work done within the context of an  EU-funded innovation called Interdisciplinary Collaborative Approaches to Learning and Teaching (INCOLLAB) on the use of open educational resources to support the integrated learning of content and language (CLIL). Of particular interest to me are the modules chosen on ‘Autonomy Support’, including one on 'collaboration towards self-regulated learning strategies’. About half the document (45 page PDF) is the paper itself; the remainder contains text and images from the modules. The paper describes three rounds of piloting of the modules demonstrating "the involvement of three completely different target groups at the HEIs, resulting in the process of customisation of the resources in line with the courses’ and students’ needs."

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