OLDaily

Bridging Partisan Divides
Megan Wildhood, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2022/05/26

Megan Wildhood reviews Mónica Guzmán's I Never Thought of It That Way, a book that looks at how people can speak to each other across partisan divides. "Prioritizing listening deeply to understand the other person's values and perspectives can help lessen the risk of triggering their defensiveness or shutting the other person down... when we focus so much on the righteousness of our side, we stop thinking straight [and] lose the ability to truly consider what's different." I would be included to agree if I felt the divide were about values and perspectives, but I fear it's more about power and identity. It's more like winning a game than winning an argument. Politics - and education - today are played by finding mechanisms that tilt the playing field, not by finding reasons that convince.

The content doesn't matter; the point is to distract, weaken and disorient your opponent, not to convince them of anything, much less reach some sort of common ground. I might agree with my friend about most things, but he'll vote conservative because that's his team, and I'll vote socialist because that's mine. It's like the Flames and the Oilers; there's no convincing the other side, and there no point to it, even. We need - for the sake of our society - to understand that knowledge, learning, decision-making, and the rest are not cognitive activities, governed by reason, but rather are physical activities, governed by experience. Start here. This is where society begins.

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Combining Augmented Reality with Peer Learning Pedagogy: iPEAR Theoretical Framework
Chryssa Themelis, AACE Review, 2022/05/26

The topic of this article is well worth consideration, though the writing itself is quite loose, presented as a sequence of associated thoughts rather than as a cohesive whole. The author outlines inclusive peer learning with augmented reality (i-PEAR) in terms of a two part model, the first being the account of inclusive education (which "stands for students' requirements and preferences") and the second being the PEAR framework ("divided into four sections in constant interaction: visual literacy, digital competence in AR, P2P tasks, and feedback"). Various references are then cited for each of the four sections. The editing is loose as well; there's a spelling error in a diagram, a reference to ARCL (2022) is broken, etc.

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The fine art of teaching with a 'Light Board'
Zac Woolfitt, Video Teaching, 2022/05/26

I spent more time than I thought I would with this article on how to teach using a lightboard (similar to the way Khan Academy videos were produced). The light board allows the instructor to write notes and draw illustrations on a board the way they might normally, but without turning their back on their audience, as you have to do with a blackboard or smartboard. The lessons are presented using video. "You are filmed 'through' the glass. The clever aspect is that when processed, the video is mirror imaged. Although I am right-handed, in the video it appears I am writing with my left hand. The text can be read and appears to the viewer as normal.

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Reclaiming Choice and Agency in a Networked World
Jannik Kaiser, Elsa Henderson, Networkweaver, 2022/05/26

Jannik Kaiser & Elsa Henderson have their own blogging style and it's a refreshing change from the usual. Here, they discuss (and work with, and dive into) the concept of choice and decision as it relates to living in a networked world. To summarize, in their words: "we are not passive consumers or bystanders in the course of history. There is choice and agency everywhere... In a networked world, there is nothing that matters more than what you do... As we reclaim our sense of choice, we inhabit more of our agency, which in turn enables us to have a greater impact." Being clear about our choices helps us reclaim our sense of agency, but it isn't the same as agency. "Agency refers to the ability to direct your own actions in a meaningful way. In the field of systems impact, agency is often the precursor to creating change."

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The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist
Doug Belshaw, Open Thinkering, 2022/05/26

In the most roundabout way possible, Doug Belshaw informs us he has deactivated his LinkedIn account. It's an ersatz reality, he argues, venerating "representation over reality, and appearance over essence. What matters is the performance rather than the work." I don't disagree. Belshaw introduces the subject with reference to W.V.O. Quine's 'web of belief' (described in the book of the same name) describing how we'll often just 'go along' with received wisdom barring any compelling reason to doubt it. And just so, he says, people go along with the idea that a site like LinkedIn is professionally necessary. A lot of our beliefs are like that, and the post serves as a reminder that we should question even those things we take to be obvious (like whether something is a planet, say).

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JIME Virtual Special Collection – 2012 to 2022: The Decade of the MOOC
Katy Jordan, Fereshte Goshtasbpour, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2022/05/26

The Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) has assembled a collection of the articles it has published over the last ten years on MOOCs and introduces it with this editorial. It's a fascinating overview, reflecting not only the continued growth of MOOCs, but also the sentiments of articles about them, the various topics addressed, and the more recent emphases on accessibility and inclusion, languages, and learning design. Naturally as a long-time MOOC enthusiast I have my quibbles with the presentation, and especially the historical timeline (this is a much better listing, IMHO, rather than picking random sites that posted open course materials (because these go back to 1995 and earlier)) but overall I'd say it's a worthwhile read.

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Higher ed’s crystal ball: What will students want?
Omer Riaz, eCampus News, 2022/05/26

So many forward-looking articles are framed this way, asking what students will want. But the much more relevant question, to my mind, is this: who will the students of the future be? This matters a lot. I don't think it's acceptable to assume that educational institutions in most places will continue to serve only a small and privileged proportion of the population.  To remain relevant, they must serve an entire population. This story, meanwhile, suggests that "students who want to secure lucrative 'new economy' jobs as they arise will be looking to gain skills quickly (and) need short, bite-sized credentialling programs." It speaks to a model of higher education as job training. But again, I think we need to define 'student' more broadly. To develop a whole-of-society approach we need to think of higher education as social infrastructure, and resist cherry-picking those areas we think will be most profitable for educational institutions.

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