OLDaily

Reflections on "The University in Ruins" [Neem]
Daniel S. Christian, Learning Ecosystems, 2022/04/07

There has never been any shortage of histrionics in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the tradition continues with 'The University in Ruins', an apocalyptic look at what happens when universities lose their authority and prestige. They face the threat of "the rise of anytime, anyplace, consumer-driven content and source agnostic, unbundled, personalized education paid for by subscription" and according to Ronald J. Daniels, author of What Universities Owe Democracy, will need to rededicate themselves "to higher civic purposes in order to rescue universities from a skeptical public, tight-fisted policy makers, and culture warriors on and off campus." And as the author of the Chronicle article, Johann N. Neem,writes, this means in essence a repudiation of globalization and hearty embrace of uniquely American democracy.

The Chronicle article is, of course, behind a paywall, but you can read a copy here. Neem draws a comparison between the ruin of universities and the demise of Christian monasteries, "the vast majority of religious houses abandoned, their communities dissolved and scattered, their physical plants left for sale, pillage, and ruin." Now as Daniel Christian writes in his reflection, the universities' commitment to democracy doesn't really extend beyond their own ken. "Generally speaking," he writes, "institutions of higher education are not distributing knowledge to the levels that Gilman envisioned years ago... Faculty members normally... don't write for society at large. Instead, their expertise is often locked up — existing behind paywalls in academic journals. In other words, they talk to each other."

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Why Feedback Literacy Matters for Learning Analytics
Yi-Shan Tsai, International Society of the Learning Sciences, 2022/04/07

This article is in places awkwardly written, but it raises an important point. "The effectiveness and sustainability of Learning Analytics (LA) based feedback are questionable if it does not support learners and teacher," writes author Yi-Shan Tsai. The LA feedback needs to be appreciated "with critical awareness of its value and limitations", it needs to be translated from what is observed to a form people can actually use, and it needs to be managed "to offset imbalanced power relationships and increase transparency, validity, and accountability." You don't, in other words, simply plug a learner into an LA dashboard; the learner needs to be 'LA literate". Image: Leitner, et.al.

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Science Teaching and Learning With the Support of Digital Education Resources Under a Connectivist Approach
Cesar Augusto Hernández-Suárez, Raúl Prada-Núñez, William Rodrigo Avendaño-Castro, Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2022/04/07

Interesting look (16 page PDF) at the role of the teacher in a physics course  employing a connectivist methodology. Write the authors: "the teacher, far from controlling, should go beyond guiding and mediating the teaching-learning process through ICTs, but should ensure that students create their own network of connectivity for lifelong learning. In this sense, the connective teaching strategy orients openness and autonomy towards the diversity of knowledge and relationships to communicate and share information, since collective knowledge is within reach."

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