1,395 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2019
  2. Aug 2019
    1. Rather, the real threat is the creeping forces of privatization that continue to undermine our public mission. If we are to reclaim that mission, to reclaim control of the work produced in and by our colleges and universities, we must do so as a sector, acting not just in solidarity with but in generosity toward the other institutions to which we are inevitably connected and also toward the public that we all jointly serve.

      A call to act together as a community: "to go far, go together".

    2. I asked the provost what the possibilities might be for a very important, highly visible research university—one that understands its primary mission to be service to the public good—to remove the tenure and promotion logjam in the transformation of scholarly communication by convening the entire academic campus, from the provost through the deans, chairs, and faculty, in a collective project of revising—really, reimagining—all of its personnel processes and the standards on which they rely in light of a primary emphasis on the public good. What would become possible if all of those policies worked to ensure that what was considered to be "excellence" in research and teaching had its basis in the university's core service mission?

      The core project of open knowledge practices.

    1. “It is likely that the authoritarian syllabus is just the visible symptom of a deeper underlying problem, the breakdown of trust in the student-teacher relationship.”

      Yes: aligned with the mentality that students are cheating on exams, plagiarizing works, and inventing excuses for late work. In all these cases, there are things teachers can do to restructure the educational experience and stop casting blame for the inadequacies of machine graded assessments, disposable assignments, and even date-based grading.

  3. Jul 2019
    1. One way to empower these students to have voice isto encourage them to build on local knowledge andpersonal experience as valid and important sources oflearning.

      Thinking about this in the context of recent experiences where Western white men use Western rational frameworks to validate their own personal experiences where their privilege is challenged. Maybe there's such a comfortable fit between dominant identity and dominant knowing frameworks that, for such folks, the Western rational tradition is a sort of local knowledge.

    2. I argue that digital literacies should notbe taught as a technical skill, but should be seen as a partof cultivating critical citizenship

      This is an incredibly important point: too often explorations of digital practices focus on skills (often even then too narrowly defined, as when specific software programs are taught, rather than higher level skills about using an entire software category, like word processing, or spreadsheets), when they should be focusing on how digital practices fit in to wider human life, as in citizenship.

    1. not necessarily with the same quality

      And in this case, reshaped by the USA academic machine and its dominant frameworks and discourses, which didn't necessarily lower the quality of critical theory, but certainly changed it.

    2. Critical theory itself can tell us why.

      I realize that what follows doesn't really rise to the level of critical theory, but there's a lot more that should be included in the brief sketch here, like how USA-UK pragmatism and anti-intellectualism fits in with what happened to critical theory in academia and popular culture in the USA.

    3. So to recap about critical theory: it’s not relativism, it’s hard to understand for reasons, and it’s not a SJW agenda, it’s an exposure of why we should all be SJWs.

      This is the summary of what the "PoMo is evil" argument gets wrong. That argument probably gets other things wrong too, but this was my short list of key misunderstandings.

    4. my son

      I say "my son" here, because the imaginary audience of my rant was pretty much entirely male, as I most often hear this mistaken "PoMo" argument from boys.

    5. for lack of a better term

      I'm not really satisfied using the term "critical theory" either, given that it could include works that aren't really "PoMo" (eg, Marxism or historical materialism). I'd use "post-structuralism", but I don't think that many folks know what it means and it's not totally accurate either. So I decided to just leave it as "critical theory" as in the original rant.

    1. One dystopian potential outcome would be that, despite the best efforts of many institutions of all kinds, we could see a devolution back to a distinctly two-tiered system like what existed in 19th Century Britain. In this negative projection one can envision a very small number of well-endowed institutions that cater to the wealthy, well-prepared class as well as a small number of carefully picked representatives from various groups. These students would receive a world-class education, while most students would be at risk of receiving a much lower quality education that is overly-reliant on poorly built computerized teaching systems or online learning courseware that does not provide the kind of encouragement and motivation that is required to help students through the many challenges encountered when learning. Following this path could well lead to a self-perpetuating system across generations where a small elite group benefits from a compounding level of social capital, while most students are left out, leading to a widening of social, political, cultural, and financial gulfs.

      This is the dystopian vision that I fear a market-fundamentalist, machine-first approach will generate.

      Pet peeve: Points taken away for Kevin's use of "devolution back" here, given that evolution does not go backwards.

    1. we first need to cultivate an academic ecosystem that can make proper use of better tools

      This is putting the tool before the horse, if you'll let me mix two metaphors Michael uses. Could the academic ecosystem be renewed in such a way that the existing product category we are trying to justify here was unnecessary?

    2. One could also imagine colleges and universities reorganizing themselves and learning new skills to become better at the sort of cross-functional cooperation for serving students.

      Yes, let's imagine (and actually work toward) this, rather than new kinds of vendor relationships.

    3. Academically at risk students often are not good at knowing when they need help and they are not good at knowing how to get it.

      In the back of my mind is how some students at one community college I know that deployed Starfish called it "Star Snitch" because they always felt it was ratting them out, not helping them.

    4. "We're getting really good at predicting which students are likely to fail, but we're not getting much better at preventing them from failing."

      Predicting is a product category, but preventing is not (unless you count the EDUs themselves, which is probably where the responsibility for prevention should be located).

    5. each installation of the product would require a significant services component, which would raise the cost and make these systems less affordable to the access-oriented institutions that need them the most

      Again, the commerciality of their social deployment would make it more difficult for them to tailor for success OR address ethical concerns.

    6. You can lead a horse to water and all that.

      This is where the social deployment of tech/practices can start to take over. First, commercial interests are now in charge of surfacing the ethical dilemma, which may not be in their best commercial interests to prioritize. Second, their customers have outsourced concerns and so are less interested/committed/resourced to address them.

    7. These are basically four of the same very generic criteria that any instructor would look at to determine whether a student is starting to get in trouble. The system is just more objective and vigilant in applying these criteria than instructors can be at times, particularly in large classes (which is likely to be the norm for many first-year students).

      This is key: the machines aren't really doing anything better than humans, but they do make it easier to scale. Are there studies that compare student success for larger classes assisted by machines with smaller classes with smaller teacher to student ratios? Would human participation and intervention be better than machines? Would it be cheaper or more expensive? What ofter effects, desirable or not, would the machine and/or human models have?

    8. a good case study in why tool that could be tremendously useful in supporting students who need help the most often fails to live up to either its educational or commercial potential

      From the start, the educational and commercial fate of predictive analytics are intertwined.

    9. we can make recommendations to the teacher or student on things they can do to increase their chances of success.

      For me, a first question about how such information would actually be used is whether it might not be used just as often to deter students from entering specific classrooms (or even institutions) as used to help them succeed once there.

      Behind any technology/practice being deployed today in EDU is the larger circumstances of trying to scale/optimize, and often, privatize, education. There are strong winds blowing stuff that could be used to help in other directions.

  4. May 2019
    1. It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.

      One of the moments in this work that gives me pause. Yes, and yet, the idea that greater beauty should bestow greater citizenship...

    2. Not only do the comparative values of charwomen and lawyers rise and fall from decade to decade, but we have no rods with which to measure them even as they are at the moment.

      On the mystifying structures of value in capitalist society.

    1. ability to leverage technology to create new knowledge, new challenges, and new problems and to complement these with critical thinking, complex problem solving, and social intelligence to solve the new challenges

      Another definition of digital literacy, recast as digital fluency.

  5. Apr 2019
    1. The example of the Linux kernel shows that this is completely possible.

      I think the Linux kernel analogy breaks down even more in considering "the other 93%" of educational content, which David has already identified here as more niche, less kernelesque, than content for core courses. Seems to me, the more specialized and rarely used something is — either in digital technology or in content — the less likely it is going to be the focus of widespread, shared activity.

      If commercial publishers could rely on OER content for core classes and generate revenue from wrapping them in additional services (as David describes here), what is their incentive to devote any resources to labor-intensive, niche content that would have far lower revenue margins?

    2. Traditional textbook content like words and images are just like the operating system kernel – kind of boring.

      This is the part of the argument here I don't find convincing. I'm not sure we can liken content — yes even "traditional textbook content" — to OS kernels or roads as a kind of "boring" infrastructure. Content is an expression of knowledges/understandings right? If anything, content seems more like the "interesting" part that relies on the kernels/roads.

      Yet I am interested in the idea of thinking of content as PUBLIC infrastructure, in the sense that like roads, we have common interests in securing public sources for the resources necessary to produce and maintain educational content.

    1. Professional digital practice: using digital media tools for professional purposes: to build networks, construct an e-profile, publicise and share research and instruct students. Sociological analyses of digital use: researching the ways in which people's use of digital media configures their sense of selves, their embodiment and their social relations. Digital data analysis: using digital data for social research, either quantitative or qualitative. Critical digital sociology: undertaking reflexive and critical analysis of digital media informed by social and cultural theory.

      Tressie McMillan Cottom quotes this in her post "Why Is Digital Sociology?"

    1. Professional digital practice: using digital tools as part of professional practice – build networks, construct e-portfolios, build online profiles, publicize and share research Analysis of digital technology use: research the ways in which people’s use of digital technologies configures their sense of self and their embodiment of social relations, the role of digital media in the creation or reproduction of social institutions and structures Digital Data Analysis: using naturally occurring digital data for social research Critical Digital Sociology: reflexive analysis of digital technologies informed by social and cultural theory

      This quote comes from a Wikipedia page on digital sociology.

  6. Mar 2019
    1. Open Initiatives in Universities

      Benefits of OKI for EDUs:

      1. Wider access to info.
      2. Reclaiming scholarly production.
      3. Increased open info and technology creation.
      4. Research ROI.
      5. Greater openness -> stronger science.
      6. Address unequal distribution of data/flows: expose "data shadows".
      7. Lower scholcomm costs.
    1. NOT READY TO LET GO: A STUDYOFRESISTANCETO GRADING CONTRACTS

      This article was included in the curriculum for the Open Pedagogy track led by Dave Cormier in the 2019 Digital Pedagogy Lab Toronto.

      In a 19 March 2019 Virtually Connecting session, Dave explained that he uses the contract in this article as a negative example — not to be adopted uncritically, but as a starting place to think about how one might generate a better assessment model.

    1. DXtera Institute is a non-profit, collaborative member-based consortium dedicated to transforming student and institutional outcomes in higher education.

      DXtera Institute is a non-profit, collaborative member-based consortium dedicated to transforming student and institutional outcomes in higher education. We specialize in helping higher education professionals drive more efficient access to information and insights for effective decision-making and realize long-term cost savings, by simplifying and removing barriers to systems integration and improving data aggregation and control.

      With partners across the U.S. and Europe, our consortium includes some of the brightest minds in education and technology, all working together to solve critical higher education issues on a global scale.

    1. But often — and maybe even usually — when we complain about the cost of books, we’re complaining about the cost of supplemental media, password-protected websites, and other items that may include text but are certainly not books.

      And at the same time, OER’s lack of such ancillary materials is often blamed for its slow adoption.

    2. By teaching students to expect that books ought to be free, we are teaching them to be bad citizens.

      Point taken. Maybe the lesson is not about the price of books, but who should pay for them. A lot of course materials are produced in factory-like conditions by underpaid creators who have no intellectual property rights in the works they produce.

  7. Feb 2019
  8. quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com
    1. For too long the field of #OER has simply been a field studying itself. We debate what is open and what is not. What is a resource what is pedagogy...and is that pedagogy really praxis....

      I don't really get this opinion, or how it pertains to Greg's otherwise important point about the format of OER. Seems like it ignores BOTH the great many tangible contributions folks have made in the field of OER AND the very important conversations that also take place around topics as or more important than technical formats, like pedagogy, and the socio-economic ecosystem in which OER participates.

    1. Flickr Commons photos will not be deleted. Anything uploaded with a CC license before November 1, 2018, won’t be deleted, but users will need to upgrade to Pro to upload more than 1,000 photos or videos.

      Flickr's new owner SmugMug promises to continue to host all CC-licensed images shared before 1 Nov 2018.