OLDaily

If the vision of the “Web3” comes to fruition, how might these developments impact the future of lifelong learning?
Daniel Christian, Learning Ecosystems, 2021/12/14

Daniel Christian links to a Business Insider story (which may or may not throw up a paywall; it's getting impossible to predict these days) outlining the idea of web3, which blends distributed technologies and a cryptographic infrastructure (it's basically what I covered in my E-Learning 3.0 course in 2019). The idea is gaining increasing traction as the reputation of the existing centralized ad-supported social media internet continues to plummet. I'm still waiting for something to put it all together in a quality consumer-facing application; when that happens the future we've been slowly building to will suddenly arrive.

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How Much Does an LMS Cost? LMS Price Comparison Guide
Web Courseworks, 2021/12/14

There's no simple answer to the question in the title, of course, because services vary widely and many companies don't post pricing information publicly. But reading and looking for a rough rule of thumb, it looks like about $2-$3 per user per month at the low end. Assuming 100 users, that's between $200 - $300 per month. But prices mostly go up from there, and I'm sure the companies hiding their prices aren't offering discounts.

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What Professors Do
Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous, 2021/12/14

The focus of this short post is a diagram created by Susan Wardell and shared on Twitter last June called Academic Life: What does a "Lecturer" do? It's split into three major categories: teaching, service and research. Most of what is classified 'service' could easily be classed under 'teaching' or 'research', to my mind. It's interesting to contrast this with my own presentation of The Role of the Educator in 2011.

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Looking ahead to COVID-19’s third year: what it may mean for higher education
Bryan Alexander, 2021/12/14

Bryan Alexander's predictions for the U.S. collegiate system are safe, and hence, usually accurate. No black swans here! "These forecasts, modified by a year+ of experience, suggest an academy a year from now that probably teaches fewer students. Its buildings may start to show signs of COVID style. Sports will keep on. Library and IT services will keep rising, albeit without additional financial support.  Student learning will continue, but hampered.  More people within the academic community will suffer from illness, long COVID, or death."

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Utilization of the Kahoot-it Application as a Learning Vehicle Based on Massive Open on Line Course (MOOC) during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Zulkifli Amin, Irfan Dahnial, Budapest International Research and Critics Institute, 2021/12/14

This isn't a great paper. So why include it here? The abstract has zero views and it was lightly edited (if at all) by the journal editor. The authors deserve some feedback. It describes the deployment of Kahoot in a MOOC environment for students in northern Sumatra in Medan, Indonesia. Using Kahoot in response to the Covid-driven online learning mandate was a good idea. It appears to have been popular and well received. The paper should not identify student interview respondents by name. The research methods section should have included the first two sections of 'Results'. Similarly, the entire contents of the 'Discussion' section belong in the methods section, and the discussion should consider why the results were as they were and consider ways the course could be improved for next time. The illustrations were of poor quality. I encourage others to read the paper and send feedback to the authors.

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