OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Curiosity as an antidote …clinging to wonder as the tide rolls in. — KATH MURDOCH
Kath Murdoch, 2024/03/26

---

Kath Murdoch uses the need to keep learning as a frame within which to wrap a discussion of the debate between proponents of direct instruction and inquiry learning. "No educator should ever feel they have 'arrived' at a place of complete understanding about teaching and learning. We are never done learning and always need to grow and adapt to new information." This especially is necessary "when inquiry is characterized as involving 'minimal teacher guidance' (such as in the oft quoted research paper by Sweller et.al. from the early 2000's)." Yeah. Murdoch wraps up her article with a long series of sharp questions that pundits should read before holding forth, questions like "How can we argue for what is best without asking, 'best for what purpose'?" and "What does 'evidence-based' really mean?" These terms are tossed around without any thought - without any curiosity! - and really should be rethought before being reused. Image: Suzi Travis.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What's the Brand Value of a College Degree?
Michelle Mulder, Campus Sonar, 2024/03/26

---

One of the key things to remember about the linkage between a university degree and employment as described in this article is that one's employment prospects depend a lot on marketing. How well you are able to position yourself in the marketplace will determine what sort of job you can get. This may have something to do with your skills, but a lot of it depends on the brand, because people need abstractions - short-cuts - to help determine whom to hire. And clearly, though the education (and hence, skill) may be exactly the same, there's a lot more value to, say, the Harvard brand than, say, the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith. How, then, does this change? One one hand, it can't. Harvard grads aren't going to suddenly start hiring non-Harvard grads. It's a network. The only way around it is from outside - building alternative and more inclusive networks with an equally powerful brand value. But that's really hard to do. Beyond that, what? Reduce the need and value of brand-based hiring? But that would undercut the very idea of a linkage between a university degree and hiring. And universities, especially, aren't ready for that.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Understanding Platforms: What They Are, Why They Work, When to Use Them, How to Build Them
Hazel Weakly, InfoQ, 2024/03/26

---

Pretty much everything we do in education technology revolves around designing platforms. But what are they, even? This is a very good presentation, better when viewed as a video than read as a transcript, on the thinking behind designing and using platforms. In a nutshell: a platform is intended to be an abstraction of whatever it is that we do. It becomes useful to the degree it helps a group manage itself rather than being managed by a manager. It works by creating mechanisms to help groups develop standard processes and terminology that they don't have to think about when doing whatever they do. The platform shouldn't define these but rather to allow the people using it to create their own definitions. In this way, the platform captures and helps propagate the culture of the organization.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Administration vs. Academia
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2024/03/26

---

Alex Usher's theory about the conflict between academics and senior administration at universities is that administration "are also the conduit by which major funders - and by this I mean students, governments, and philanthropists - talk to academia." Having sat on university boards of governors and faculty councils, I offer an alternative explanation: loyalty. As you rise in an organization the message is stressed over and over: your loyalty belongs to those at your level (and those above). You are not in any way 'a representative of' any third party - not academics, nor funders. Definitely not 'conduits'. Your work is defined as being 'for the good of the university'. But it's really about supporting each others' careers as administrators. Image: Dominic Surya.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed