OLDaily

Book of the Year
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2021/12/02

I mentioned this column in my presentation today, so the least I can do is link to it. Alex User describes a number of the books he read this year, but lands on Emily J Levine’s Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University, which he says "may be the best history of higher education of any type in the last decade." What caught my eye was a comment near the end of the article: "Research Universities – in Germany as in America – were always a negotiated compromise between academics and society.  At the broadest level, institutions do cool stuff for the benefit of society, and in return they get money to do cool stuff and suffer minimal outside interference in so doing." That's an important observation and should not be forgotten.

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‘Oregon Trail’ at 50: How Three Teachers Created the Computer Game That Inspired — and Diverted — Generations of Students
Greg Toppo, The 74, 2021/12/02

Great article. I'm not sure whether I played this game (though it seems familiar) though I'm sure I played many others like it. The article describes the development and popularization of a game based on the travails of those headed out on the Oregon Trail. "You have died of dysentery" became a catchphrase for the game. More to the point, it was widely used in educational contexts, where it helped students learn the history of the trails or even work in groups to learn problem-solving skills. The article also notes that the game was eventually commercialized and sold around 65 million copies, with none of that revenue ever reaching the authors. But that was typical - people would code things and share them, and only later some company would reap revenue from them. The early (pre-Stallman) shareware software licenses were written specifically to prevent this sort of practice. But nobody was thinking about it in the early days.

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Canada’s news industry expects up to $150m annual windfall from Australia-style big tech crackdown
William Turvill, PressGazette, 2021/12/02

OK, there are a couple of things to note here. First, Canada's news media is very centralized and owned by a small handfull of large corporations. Second, almost all of Canada's news content is already behind paywalls - if a news story is appearing on Google or Facebook, it's because the news corporation put it there. So what does that have to do with us? It is, as they say, the thin edge of the wedge on several fronts. The idea of legislating payment for something someone else (including the author) posted to your site is problematic. But if we're going to require payments for content, why not all content? I've put a bunch of posts on Blogger; why isn't Google paying me for those?  Also, the creation of a pool of wealth for such content payable to those corporations disadvantages smaller news providers (like me) who would get nothing. Where are the products and incentives for small media producers?

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Criminalising essay mills will make a huge difference
Gareth Crossman, Michael Draper, WonkHe, 2021/12/02

I'm no friend of essay mills, but I have to say, I can't see criminalizing them as being a really good idea. I mean, after all, it basically amounts to criminalizing the practice of writing essays and selling them. Is it only me that sees the implications for freedom of speech (or of the press)? Will we also start prosecuting for other things a person might do with a published work? Do royalty-free image libraries also become illegal, because students use them on presentations? I know I'm being a little over the top here, but I really think criminal sanction against what is fundamentally an academic problem is real overreach.

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5 Steps to Take After Graduating With Your Nanodegree
Eraina Ferguson, Udacity, 2021/12/02

What I thought was interesting about this article is that it could be interpreted as an alternative model of learning and development. Forget about the 'get your anodegree' part, which is essentially irrelevant. There's any number of ways you can do basic learning. Then look at the process: become an intern or apprentice; build your portfolio; network with people; own your professional development. I mean, really, why don't we just make this the model of education, and build our suppoort and infrastructure around it, and dispense with all the rest?

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Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education
Gema Santos-Hermosa, Vanessa Proudman, Paola Corti, SPARC, 2021/12/02

According to the abstract, "this report summarises the results of a survey of European libraries on Open Education (OE) and Open Education Resources (OER) prepared by SPARC Europe." It is based on 230 responses from 28 countries. 96 page PDF. The survey reveals (big surprise) "that Covid-19 has heightened awareness of openness and the need for OER in learning environments." It also states that librarians are aware of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER and are most focused on capacity-building. According to the authors, "creating a supportive Open Education infrastructure is a particular urgency."

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