From Joe Bower, a good, straightforward summary of most of the reasons not to grade learners, and some sensible suggestions about how to largely avoid using grades etc within a system that requires them. Though situated in a face-to-face school context, this very closely matches my own views on the subject and the methods I use to get around a system that is built on grading.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/heres-my-chapter-from-book-de-testing.html
Great report from Accenture on the results of an International survey (not including Canada but a good basket of developed countries represented) on use of consumer electronics from 2013. The big takeaways are:
The report is very well presented and easily digestible, and is packed with interesting statistics and analyses of trends. As someone with more than a passing interest in technologies and technology trends, I found something fascinating on almost every page. Understanding, reacting to and, ideally, anticipating such changing patterns is going to be vital to Athabasa University as a primarily online learning institution.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/2013-Accenture-Consumer-Electronics-Products-and-Services-Usage-Report.pdf
Steve Wheeler (a fine contributor to the world of online learning himself with a blog worth subscribing to and a very active Twitter presence with a Twitter handle that beats most) interviews our own Terry Anderson about distance learning and Terry’s views on related topics.
Disclaimer: this includes good plugs for both the Landing and books that I have contributed to and that I have cowritten with Terry, plus Terry is a good friend of mine. But he is also, as Steve says, “one of the famous figures of contemporary education, and his list of achievements is lengthy.” It’s worth reminding ourselves from time to time that we have a very good percentage of the most significant thinkers and researchers in distance and online education in the World here at Athabasca University, of which Terry is one of the great leading lights.
Address of the bookmark: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.ca/2014/03/interview-with-terry-anderson.html?utm_content=buffer457d6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
An interesting set of statistics about access to the Web as well as many other metrics relating to use, availability and freedom on the Web, ranking nearly every country on various different scales. Canada makes a mediocre showing at 15th overall, with a disappointing nearly-80% having access, and falling well short of perfect on most other metrics too. The recent CBC report that ranks Canada 53rd in the world on upload speeds is also sobering. Like all such statistics, these need to be looked at critically and considered in context, but it is none-the-less a good starting point for discussion. See http://www.webfoundation.org/projects/the-web-index/ for more on the project, and how the figures are calculated.
Address of the bookmark: http://thewebindex.org/data/all/scores/
This study looks at multitasking behaviour measured by the amount and frequency of attention paid to a computer screen and TV. It is interesting, if flawed, at least partly because of the differences it claims to show between multitasking behaviour in older and younger people. The researchers claim to show that there is not much age-related difference in overall time spent looking at things when multitasking, but that younger people’s gaze tends to flit much more frequently – the differences between age groups on this measure are actually quite huge. The researchers don’t make any notable claims about whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it is a result that helps to explain other findings that older people are better at multitasking, inasmuch as they retain more of what they have been paying attention to and are typically less easily distracted (I think I may be an outlier here!). However, the big flaw that I see in this study is that it used staff and students at a university as subjects. University staff are trained to concentrate in quite peculiar ways because that is what scholarly study is all about, and have typically spent a great many years acquiring that habit, so they are not at all representative of older people in general. It would at least be useful to compare this demographic with other older people who do not habitually concentrate very hard and very persistently on one thing for a living.
Address of the bookmark: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2010.0350
Diana Laurillard chipping in with a perceptive set of observations, most interestingly describing education as a personal client industry, in which tutor/student ratios are remarkably consistent at around 1:25, so it is no great surprise that it doesn’t scale up. Seems to me that she is quite rightly attacking a particular breed of EdX, Coursera, etc xMOOC but it doesn’t have to be this way, and she carefully avoids discussing *why* that ratio is really needed – her own writings and her variant on conversation theory suggest there might be alternative ways of looking at this.
Her critique that xMOOCs appear to succeed only for those that already know how to be self-guided learners is an old chestnut that hits home. She is right in saying that MOOCs (xMOOCs) are pretty poor educational vehicles if the only people who benefit are those that can already drive, and it supports her point about the need for actual teachers for most people *if* we continue to teach in a skeuomorphic manner, copying the form of traditional courses without thinking why we do what we do and how courses actually work.
For me this explains clearly once again that the way MOOCs are being implemented is wrong and that we have to get away from the ‘course’ part of the acronym, and start thinking about what learners really need, rather than what universities want to give them.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/five-myths-about-moocs/2010480.article
From Dave Noon, what Boing Boing describes as a ‘Lovecraftian rant’ about how much the author hates Blackboard. Brilliant.
If you don’t know Blackboard, it is a learning management system from the Blackboard corporation. The company produces very weak products for the educational market but has captured quite a lot of the territory using a business model built on deliberate lock-in (it was able to gain a foothold early on and keeps its position by making it very hard to migrate to a different platform) combined with an ‘acquire and eliminate’ approach to superior but less-entrenched competitors and, where that fails, aggressive patent trolling.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/01/christ-i-hate-blackboard
Charming variant on a Wallace Stevens poem, replacing the blackbird with the MOOC. A little heavy on metaphor and simile here and there but makes a lot more sense than most scholarly articles I’ve read on the subject of MOOCs, and I’ve read really too many of them.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.thesevenfutures.com/blog/thirteen-ways-looking-mooc-0
My friend and inspirational thought leader George gets well-deserved recognition in this in-depth Chronicle article that gives George’s background as well as an overview of some of his ideas, particularly as they relate to MOOCs. The article has one minor error: it’s Dr Siemens, not Mr Siemens – he has at least two doctorates, one earned, the other awarded.
Address of the bookmark: http://chronicle.com/article/George-Siemens-Gets-Connected/143959/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Interesting and free evolving handbook for learning with and from others without formal structures and courses.
It’s a little overblown in singing its own praises and a little lacking in much substance yet, not to mention having a cringeworthy (albeit memorable and descriptive) name. But it is still evolving and there are some very sound ideas from the connectivist family gathered together here in a very digestible, non-scholarly, practical form, from a number of excellent thinkers, and it is nice to see that it practices what it preaches. A worthwhile resource that should help to move things forward in useful ways.
Address of the bookmark: http://peeragogy.org/