OLDaily

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

At the end of the corridor
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2024/09/09

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Alastair Creelman, whom I have cited numerous times in these pages over the years, has decided to call it a career and discontinue the blog. "Having been retired from academic life for two years I don't feel I have much more to contribute to the discussion of technology in education." He writes that he has lost his enthusiasm and that his posts have become darker over the last five years. Never say never, but in case we don't see him in these pages again, I just want to say thanks on behalf of the OLDaily community.

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Exploratory study: New forms of tertiary education | Stifterverband
Stifterverband, Heinz Nixdorf Foundation, 2024/09/09

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This report (56 page PDF) on future forms of higher education is worth reading but still strikes me as a plan for building a bridge half way across the river. It begins by identifying four 'pain points' in the German system: insufficient access and integration of underrepresented student groups; lack of dynamism in adapting teaching and learning content to new skills requirements; lack of innovation in the design of learning experiences; and insufficient structural and institutional agility (readers will be forgiven for thinking that predetermined solutions are built into these definitions). It them maps these against seven case studies including Arizona State University (ASU), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Heilbronn, which produces a set of 'innovations' like multiple professorships, agile competence frameworks, microcredentials, and the like - all essentially trappings of the existing system, with no way to actually get to the other side of the river. Via Gilly Salmon.

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The Land and the A.I.R.: Revisioning Experiential Learning on a Canadian Campus
Kyla Flanagan, Christine Martineau, Natasha Kenny, Erin Kaipainen, Experiential Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 2024/09/09

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This paper draws on "four key areas of focus as 'visionary circles' through which transformation and renewal are manifested..: Ways of Knowing (teaching, learning, and research); Ways of Doing (policies, procedures, and practices); Ways of Connecting (relationships, partnerships, connections to land, and place); and Ways of Being (campus identity, inclusivity, leadership, and engagement)." It then generates "a new definition of experiential learning that includes different types of knowing and builds in aspects of relationality from Indigenous pedagogies," creating the 'A.I.R. Framework for high-quality experiential learning' (illustrated). 17 page PDF, which I provide as a direct download, because Cal State doesn't seem to understand how open access works, and thus requires that people register before viewing this CC-by licensed article. I registered so you don't have to. Via D'Arcy Norman's excellent Weekly Note.

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How 'Spotlight Reading' Helps Students Learn to Trust Their Literary Instincts
Marlena Jackson-Retondo, Mind/Shift, 2024/09/09

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A key turning point in my education came when a young sessional instructor named Jonathon Bordo took the time to deeply analyze the first page or two of my essay. What he wanted to know was what exactly I was saying, and what I was saying wasn't being said very clearly. My writing dramatically improved overnight. I took this lesson to my own students when I taught critical thinking, this time armed with the fresh look at logical fallacies. I saw my own students' writing improve overnight, and it felt gratifying that I had given them the key that would unlock success in their studies. This sort of close attention to clarity and precision is incredibly valuable, but you can't force it on people. Making it a regular ungraded activity motivated by the students' own curiosity, as described in this article, is I think key.

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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.

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