OLDaily

By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2021
Dhawal Shah, Class Central, 2021/12/01

Remember, some people are saying MOOCs are dead. However, "MOOCs have reached 220 million learners, excluding China. In 2021, providers launched over 3100 courses and 500 microcredentials. In 2021, 40M new learners signed up for at least one MOOC, compared to 60M (fueled by the pandemic) in 2020." Worth noting is the emergence of Swayam, India's national MOOC platform, as a major player.

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Three Under-recognized Hazards of Digital Recording
Elizabeth O'Neill, Digital Life Initiative, 2021/12/01

The three hazards are: "(1) unending, unbounded moral judgment; (2) tarnished reputational connotations; and (3) tarnished self-perception." These problems arise because they are easily accessible, high fidelity, vulnerable to manipulation, and so can be use to manipulate a person't image and reputation. Consequently, writes Elizabeth O'Neill, "almost every person has reason to avoid subjection to digital recording whenever possible." The post is longish and quite well argued. But I think the digital recording cat is out of the bag - we can't reasonably reduce our attack surface, because any amount of recording (or even none at all) is still sufficient for these attacks to take place.

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‘Exclusive is illusive’: U.K. publishers launch plan to mitigate loss of traffic when sources aren’t properly cited
Seb Joseph, Digiday, 2021/12/01

I have a policy in this newsletter than I will not link to sources behind a paywall or a spamwall. But I sometimes mention what they've said (especially in the case of books or articles being reviewed by someone else). I wouldn't think it was a requirement to post such a link, but some publishers would disagree. "In the absence of links to original sources, the significant impact on publishers’ traffic, and the associated revenues, are irrefutable," they believe, and they've taken steps to make such links mandatory. I doubt such measures would ever impact me, but they would be targeted toward Google and other intermediaries.

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Global Skills Opportunity program launches across Canada
Hannah Liddle, University Affairs, 2021/12/01

i would have loved something like this as a student, though if there were a cost involved, I most certainly would not have been able to afford it. But this program might have helped: it "will enable approximately 16,000 college and undergraduate students to work or study overseas, with particular emphasis on non-traditional destinations. The program, while open to all students, targets groups that have not traditionally had these opportunities: Indigenous students, students from low-income backgrounds and those with disabilities." Here's the official web site.

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Mentoring in a Cooperative Learning Classroom
Jacqueline Gilbert, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2021/12/01

This paper (9 page PDF) reports on a project in which "each of thirty-seven students in a Principles of Management Experiential Learning class was assigned an experienced executive/professional who served as their mentor." Assessing the results of this experiment in cooperative learning, Jacqueline Gilbert writes, "mentoring is a function that is often “hit or miss” because organizations do not emphasize and reinforce its value," and so "universities will need to change the formal evaluation process and hold faculty accountable for interacting positively with those lower in rank." I don't know. I never had a mentor and never particularly wanted one. I think it's not for everyone, both as student, and as faculty.

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MOOCs One-Stop Shop: A Realization of a Unified MOOCs Search Engine
Khadijah M. Alzahrani, Maram Meccawy, IEEE Access, 2021/12/01

The quest for a unified MOOC search engine and recommender over the last dozens years or so has been in constant tension between MOOC providers seeking to retain exclusivity and search providers seeking to attain ubiquity. Along with the MRSE model described in this paper (though with no URL provided (I searched) so I can't assess it for myself), MOOC aggregators have included such tools as Class Central, MOOC.org, and My MOOC. The authors discuss weaknesses in multilingual MOOC search support among all the platforms, including especially for Arabic MOOC content from providers such as Rawq.

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