OLDaily

Review of the methodological landscape of literacy and social media research
Esteban Morales, First Monday, 2022/08/03

You'd think studies of social media rely mostly on data from social media services, but no. "Findings show that most studies do not use social media data and instead rely on traditional data sources, such as surveys...  researchers seldom followed methodological approaches that take advantage of the digital environments in which social media operates. Additionally, this gap in previous research can be seen in the minimal presence of quantitative approaches to social media data, such as social network analysis." If it were up to me, we would spend much less time (if at all) on survey data. Image: Wikipedia.

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Moral Theory
Julia Driver, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022/08/03

This is worth reading, but notice the assumptions baked in right from the start: "morality is a set of norms and principles that govern our actions... we can also think of morality as consisting of moral reasons... moral norms are universal in the sense that they apply to and bind everyone in similar circumstances... they are also commonly held to be impartial, in holding everyone to count equally." Each one of these propositions is debatable, and that's why the article is worth reading. Image: Richard Carrier.

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Indiewebify me! And don't forget my webmentions!
Christian Engel, 2022/08/03

I'm going to have to actually follow the instructions to determine whether the advice here is good, but the article does offer an insight into just what constitutes a personal presence on the indieweb. It also shows the major issue for the indieweb: "there is no out-of-the-box solution for making your website ready for the IndieWeb. It involves a lot of customization, fiddling with services and setting up endpoints." Most people won't do that. I don't want to do that.

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Coursera and 2U: MOOCs are Designed to Compete with Google AdWords
Michael Feldstein, eLiterate, 2022/08/03

The churn in the commercial MOOC and OPM world continues. This is Michael Feldstein's analysis. "The key phrases in this excerpt are 'conversation rate,' (sic; pretty sure he meant 'conversion rate') 'top of the funnel,' and 'search volume.' These are marketing terms. Free MOOCs are at or near "top of the [sales] funnel." They are designed to identify and attract paying degree candidates." And "When 2U introduced its slogan 'Free to Degree,' the company wasn't describing their breadth of coverage. It was describing its sales funnel for getting students into paying degree programs." So - yeah, we get it. Commercial MOOC platforms are commercial (See also: 2U Updates Partnership Model with Stackable Revenue Share Options).

But the problem isn't with MOOCs. It's with online program management (OPM) companies. These are companies that manage online programs for a percentage of tuition revenue. This was good for universities when online programs (including MOOCs) were a sideline. Now they're centre stage, and universities are looking to get out of these contracts. That's why OPM company 2U is laying off workers and (if we follow Feldstein) pivoting to marketing. That's why the University of Arizona (not to be confused with ASU) bought out its OPM Zovio. Is it just a pendulum swing? Or maybe something more permanent?

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Use xAPI Profiles to Govern Business Logic in Learning and Training Systems
Yet Analytics, 2022/08/03

Just passing this along with links: "STEEL-R is an Army STTC project focused on experiential learning analytics in the synthetic training environment (STE). The project enhances aspects of the Total Learning Architecture (TLA) for implementation in the space of immersive training. During the development of the project, we identified a novel use of xAPI Profiles which has implications for the way that learning activity data becomes relevant for business systems."

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