OLDaily

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

Being Broken
Tim Klapdor, Heart Soul Machine, 2025/03/12

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I know it's a nice appealing theory. "(Social Media services) all built not on engagement, connection, conversation or discussion but on distraction via little hits of dopamine." We're fed little bits of happiness and we go after them more and more - and then we're hooked. But how well does this theory apply to real-world examples. Tim Klapdor offers a chart of other things reflecting 'the rise of dopamine culture' showing an evolution from 'slow' to 'fast' to 'dopamine' in things ranging from athletics to video ro relationships. But I don't really think the chart holds up - not, at least, unless you feel slow-culture artifacts like newspapers, film, and handwritten letters are intrinsically better than the alternatives. And I don't.

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Tired of Awkward Silences? Upgrade your Think-Pair-Share
Ashley Harvey, Faculty Focus, 2025/03/12

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I'm just using this link to go on about how much I hate Think-Pair-Share (TPS) activities. They're bad enough as a classroom activity, and even worse when foisted on an unsuspecting audience at a conference session. It's not that I have nothing to say on a subject, nor that I can't have conversations, it's the imposition of a specific sort of conversation or interaction that bothers me. Conservations are personal, private, and sometimes should never happen at all, and shouldn't be used just to further some pedagogical purpose. At least, that's my take on them, as a learner.

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To be FAIR: Theory Specification Needs an Update
Caspar J. Van Lissa, Aaron Peikert, et al., PsyArXiv, 2025/03/12

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"Methods for specifying, sharing, and iteratively improving theories remain underdeveloped," write the authors. "To address these limitations, we introduce *FAIR theory*: A standard for specifying theories as Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable information artifacts." The paper as a whole is quite interesting, though I find its discussion of what counts as a theory to be a bit shallow (though they later assert that the definition of FAIR does not prescribe what it is to be a theory). What it does require, though, is that theories be presented as part of a modular approach to publishing. Generally, theories are just written in (variable) text descriptions in the body of a paper. Instead, "a FAIR theory object can be connected to a specific paper which might serve as the theory's documentation and canonical reference by using 'relationType: IsDescribedBy', while the reverse relationship, documented in the canonical reference paper, is 'relationType: Describes'." Via DigitalKoans. See also: Octopus.

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How to be an ally - University Affairs
Michael Kehler, University Affairs, 2025/03/12

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This is a useful contribution from Michael Kehler that men should read. "Allyship means acknowledging and understanding one's own gender, race and classed position. It requires purposefully engaging in ways that unseat or disrupt axes of power." No words are wasted in this succinct statement of what this entails in practice.

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Scholarship in the Face of Powerful Opposition: Academia Needs a March of the Ents
Nason Maani, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2025/03/12

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J.R.R. Tolkien's Ents are giant tree creatures that marched against deforestation and destroyed their opposition. The analogy here is that scholars are like Ents and that "we should take this as a moment to redefine the purpose of science as an instrument in the carrying forward of an ever-advancing civilization, with the greater accountability, transparency, diversity, breadth, and depth that means for us as individual scientists, institutions, funders, and publishers." But have we ever seen scholars and scientists rally forth to defeat their enemy? No, I don't think that's how it works.

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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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