OLDaily

Group Processing: Students Reflections on the Experience and Impact of Group Processing
Nathan John Lachowsky, Jacqueline Murray, Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education, 2021/12/22

The value of this paper (21 page PDF) is in bringing to greater light the 'group processing' stage of collaborative problem-based learning as "a structured approach to peer-and self-assessment that encourages learning that is both self-reflective and collaborative." It outlines research on the subject, offering examples of practice (for example, requiring each person to offer a comment on a student's contribution, with no duplicates). The study unsurprisingly results in an endorsement of group processing as being "found to have a long-lasting impact on students when it was implemented regularly, and the group dynamic was guided by a non-intrusive facilitator."

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The Purposes of Education. John Hattie and Steen Larsen
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2021/12/22

"The significance of this book, The Purposes of Education," writes Jenny Mackness, "is that Steen Larsen is (or at least has been) a fierce critic of John Hattie’s work." Hattie, of course, "is known for his evidence-based quantitative research on student achievement and his book Visible Learning," According to Mackness, Larsen argues that "students, teachers and researchers are blind to each other’s rationales. ‘The teacher and the learner do not see the world in the same perspective’." Hence, most of the value of learning is precisely not visible. " Surely as Larsen says, ‘The purpose of education is much more demanding and challenging than enhancing visible learning processes and results.’" This book, published in 2020, will be discussed by the online Philosophy of Education Reading Network next week.

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Relevant and anchored
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2021/12/22

This is a nice little framework that could do a quick sorting of learning experiences. "Anchored," writes Clark Quinn, "is ensuring the learning outcome meets a real need." Meanwhile, by 'relevant' he means "whether the learner cares about that learning objective." If you have neither, the experience is 'worthless', while if you have both the experience is 'meaningful'. The whole exercise reminded me of a similar framework I created years ago around generating interactivity, making your learning content usable, and ensuring relevance.

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Irish and Egyptian governments back study abroad platform Educatly
Sophie Hogan, The PIE News, 2021/12/22

The founders of Educatly worked at LinkedIn before leaving to form what is essentially a spin-off, a LinkedIn-type platform for students planning to study in another country. It wasn't clear to me whether the intent was to support Irish students studying in Egypt, or Egyptian students studying in Ireland, but of course it doesn't really matter. Though I will say that the timing of the platform wasn't good, what with a global pandemic and all. But the Egypt-Ireland partnership intrigued me.

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20 reasons why the Metaverse may not work out as we think it will
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2021/12/22

Donald Clark has had a lot of experience in virtual worlds and it shows with this post. The post might be better titled '20 thoughts on the metaverse' as they range from fears about an economy run by Facebook to what happened when he entered Second Life as a female avatar. The most relevant point, to my mind, is the observation that we don't need all that reality in order to make an experience work. "Desirable experiences are not all about 3D fidelity... Media rich is not mind rich. We love a good podcast precisely because it is a stripped down, single media experience. It feels intimate, like being in that conversation."

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Patterns of student collaborative learning in blended course designs based on their learning orientations: a student approaches to learning perspective
Feifei Han, Robert A. Ellis, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2021/12/22

This is a pretty good article blending some useful concepts, yet I find myself dissatisfied with the relatively narrow frame it occupies. For example, the concept of 'learning orientations' could be valuable, but in their literature search the authors only find two: reproducing, and understanding. These are set against collaborative approaches (because "employers are dissatisfied with graduates’ collaborative skills," sigh). The study suggests that the "the Understanding Collaboration network has more desirable features of collaboration such as the intensity of collaboration, having closely knitted groups who tended to seek out and welcome peers and who tended to engage more often in both face-to-face and online modes" and suggests "designing some compulsory collaborative assessment task." Based on these categories, no other outcome was possible. So why conduct the study?

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What is a “book” in the age of the web? (Part 1 of 5)
Hugh McGuire, Medium, 2021/12/22

It's a good question. I want to turn my course into a book. But when I look at book platforms, like PressBooks, say, none of them do what I want to do with the material. That's why I agree with Hugh McGuire when he says "while I think books, and in particular digital textbooks still matter now, our idea of the “book” must continue to evolve to deliver more." Freeing them from the shackles of commercial publishers would be a start. Pressbooks does that. But easing the navigation would help. Better mechanisms for design, and the integration of multimedia. Connecting the book to a database, and making it expandable. Embedded code (a la Jupyter notebooks, but without the complexity of juggling Python versions and environments). Versioning and collaborative authoring. Dynamic reference managing, with cross navigation from one book to the next. Via Alan Levine.

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