OLDaily

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

Nonbinary Characters in Scenarios - Experiencing Elearning
Christy Tucker, Experiencing eLearning, 2024/10/01

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I'm pretty careful about my use of pronouns in this newsletter and elsewhere; you have to be when you're citing authors from around the world and don't fully know naming conventions in, say, Samoan. I don't post my own pronouns because I don't think they're anybody's business, and I don't feel inclined to inquire as to other people's gender preferences. So unless I'm pretty sure, I use the old journalists' technique of referring to a person first by their full name, and in subsequent references with a single name (usually their family name, if I can infer it). Having said all that, I recommend Christy Tucker's look at the use of pronouns while reflecting diversity in characters for scenarios in learning design. But I would add (as Tucker does) that in most workplace learning scenarios, it doesn't really come up.

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Must-Have Competencies and Skills in Our New AI World: A Synthesis for Educational Reform
Fawzi BenMessaoud, EDUCAUSE Review, 2024/10/01

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This article comes with the imprimatur of Educause, however I confess that I think the list of 'must-have competencies and skills' is nonsense. The list is certainly not based in any competence definitions found in its three subdivisions: data skills, design skills, and human skills. For example, compare the list of data competencies in this article with what my own literature review finds. I haven't done a review of design literacy, but many people have; Eva Lutnæs for example. By contrast, the competencies offered in this article are superficial and topical - things like 'prompt engineering', 'mind mapping' - or so general as to be unhelpful - things like 'ethical' and 'reflective' and 'learning'. Related: another Educause article on AI literacy, also, Kevin Lyon creating a four-stage Bloom's-ish taxonomy for AI literacy.

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Demystifying the context property
Codeberg.org, 2024/10/01

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The concept of 'context' plays a number of roles not only in the fediverse but in digital communications generally. Some examples of context in this article include a "topic" in a forum presentation, a "conversation" in a social networking presentation, a "room" in a chatting or messaging presentation, and a "thread" in any of the above contexts (forum thread, social media thread, chat thread). Context serves as an indicator when publishing posts, and (some would argue) could operate as a limiter, determining who can see posts (for example, a context of 'family', it is argued, out to be limited to family). I can sort of envisage a technology that matches post contexts to reader contexts, but I'm sure this gets complex in a hurry. Via full thread.

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Digitalised higher education: key developments, questions, and concerns
Janja Komljenovic, et al., Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2024/10/01

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The intent of this article "is to take a step back and reflect on how HE as a sector is digitalising." It describes something called 'assetisation' as "an emergent mode of governance linked to the digitalisation of HE." Assetisation isn't as clearly defined as I would like, but in general refers to governance that results from the accumulation of assets, for example, the set of licenses, patents and copyrights held by external agents that exert control (aka 'governance') over the institution. This creates "a problematic perspective in which financial value and metrics (e.g. return on investment) may take precedence over other evaluation metrics and measures (e.g. educational or pedagogical relevance)." I see the point, but don't see this as a consequence of digital technologies per se, but rather, of the contracts institutions sign, which are variations of the more broadly conceived 'public-private partnerships', a staple of many governments granting private entities control over public assets (and therefore, governance), often at the expense of the public being served. Via Thomas Ekman Jorgensen. See also, First Monday, Governance by Infrastructure, Part 1, Part 2.

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Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the 'Soul of the Internet'
18, Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 2024/10/01

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This is a long article detailing the work of the Internet Archive to save and make available old recordings and the music industry's efforts to stop them. What I think is important here is to understand that it's not about money, it's about control. Sure, the music industry might make money on some of the recordings - the perennially popular White Christmas, for example. But without the Internet Archive, a lot of material is not available at all, since there's no profit in it for the labels. But do they have the right to make the past disappear? Adding to the complexity is the fact that the music industry itself exploited many of the artists it recorded. "You would hope that there might be some balancing act, or that everybody could play nice in the sandbox, and come up with solutions that benefit all... but that's not really how business is done." Via Dan Gillmor.

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The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
Thea Lim, The Walrus, 2024/10/01

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The central argument here is that digital algorithms are defining our self-worth in external terms (things like likes and follows) and that this is undermining our sense of self-worth, especially for artists. As I read it I thought of a biography of Marshall McLuhan I read a number of years ago where, after his initial burst of media fame faded, he was desperate to recapture it again. I promised myself not to let that happen to me. I think any media has an allure, a way to define ourselves in the admiring gaze of others, and very few of us avoid the temptation to publish, to act, to present ourselves, to the external gaze of approbation. Good article; don't miss it.

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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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