Stephen Downes

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Elsevier’s Alicia Wise on the RWA, the West Wing, and Universal Access
Richard Poynder, Open and Shut, February 9, 2012.

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What's Elsevier's take on legilsating open access for government-funded research publications? "[W]e don’t believe that the government should tell authors and publishers what we can do with our publications." Well. Maybe government should say "we don't believe in letting Elsevier publish any work that we've funded." I wonder whether they would call that interference. Anyhow, read the rest of these eye-opening comments from Elsevier’s director of universal access Alicia Wise, who posted a defence of the company on the Liblicense mailing list.

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Putting the User at the Heart of Education
Ben Showers, JISC, February 9, 2012.

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Summary of "a recent Usability workshop held by Ben Showers and Torsten Reimer as part of their work on the Usability and Adaptability of User-Interfaces." Themes covered include the impact on the product development culture, strategic buy-in and communication. The post is useful enough, however, I found that if I substituted any other word for "usability" it read pretty much the same.

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Book review: Quality assurance in distance education and e-learning
Tony Bates, Online Learning and Distance Education Resources, February 9, 2012.

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Tony Bates reviews a book that "provides comprehensive coverage of the practice and applications of quality assurance in distance education and some elements of e-learning around the world." He expresses disappointment because "the book does not touch on the greatest area of application of e-learning, which is in the traditional campus-based universities and two year colleges." I'm not really sure these fall properly under the heading of "distance education and e-learning." But Bates explains, "We don’t need to build a bureaucracy around this (quality in learning), but there does need to be some mechanism, some way of calling institutions when they fail to meet these standards. However, we should also do the same for campus-based teaching."

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Unbundling Education, A Simple Framework
Michael Staton, M. P. Staton, February 9, 2012.

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Illustrated, a framework for unbunbling education. I've commented on the concept previously. This breaks down the task of learning along very different dimensions, describing "ten services, listed here in the order of they will be disrupted."

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New Research Paper Presents 30 General Design Considerations for Online Deliberation Systems
Tim Bonnemann, Intellitics, Inc., February 9, 2012.

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Good summary of an article (itself unfortunately behind a paywall) on the design of online deliberation systems. These are systems that enable a group of people to debate and eventually reach a decision about some matter. The article reviews a number of such systems in an effort to draw out design principles.

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Open Access and Interventionism
Steve Kolowich , Inside Higher Ed, February 9, 2012.

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The 377 responses posted in response to the White House's request for commentary on open access are a treasure trove of commentary and perspectives on the issue. This article focuses on one statement, from William E. Davis, III, on behalf of the American Anthropological Association, which asserts that "no research that demonstrates a problem with the existing system." This created a revolt in the ranks of the AAA, as members had already pledged themselves to support open access. Jeremy Trombley, for example, writes, "I'm willing to put my career on the line and promise to only publish in open access journals.

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Employee or Employer: Who Owns the Twitter Followers?
David Kravets, Wired, February 8, 2012.

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A headline like that just makes you feel like property, doesn't it. The people who talk about the dehumanizing aspects do have a point, I think.

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Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business are Hollow Shells without Democracy
Harold Jarche, Life in Perpetual Beta, February 8, 2012.

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I have long argued that a nation is not democratic if its institutions are not democratic. To date, however, we have managed to enact democracy in only a very few of our institutions, while the vast majority - companies and corporations, departments, schools and institutions - are governed by command, not deliberation. Harold Jarche writes, "David Korten in The Great Turning, described America, the Unfinished Project: Democracy is neither a gift nor a license; it is a possibility realized through practice grounded in a deep commitment to truth and an acceptance of the responsibility to seek justice for all."

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Links and Resources

(presentations include slides and audio recordings)
Videos: http://www.downes.ca/me/videos.htm
RSS Feed: http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.xml
Podcast: http://www.downes.ca/news/audio.xml

Key Articles

Scholarly Articles

Cites:294 Educational Blogging (Local copy)
264 Learning objects: Resources for distance education worldwide (Local copy)
134 E-learning 2.0 (Local copy)
126 Models for sustainable open educational resources (Local copy)
88 The future of online learning (Local copy
75 Learning networks and connective knowledge (Local copy)
70 Design and reusability of learning objects in an academic context: A new economy of education (Local copy)
59 Resource profiles (Local copy)
40 Learning networks in practice (Local copy)
33 Semantic networks and social networks (Local copy)
35 An introduction to connective knowledge (Local copy)
27 Design, standards and reusability (Local copy)
23 EduSource: Canada's learning object repository network (Local copy)
22 An introduction to RSS for educational designers (Local copy)

(Cites from Google Scholar for an H-Index = 14)

Recent Popular Articles

The Purpose of Learning, February 2, 2011.
The Role of the Educator, December 6, 2010.
Deinstitutionalizing Education, November 5, 2010.
Agents Provocateurs, October 28, 2010.
What Is Democracy In Education, October 22, 2010.
A World To Change, October 19, 2010.
Connectivism and Transculturality, May 16, 2010.
An Operating System for the Mind, September 19, 2009.
The Cloud and Collaboration, June 15, 2009.
Critical Thinking in the Classroom, June 5, 2009.
The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On, November 16, 2008.
Things You Really Need to learn: http://www.downes.ca/post/38502

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Contact: stephen@downes.ca Stephen.Downes@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
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About Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes is a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council and a leading proponent of the use of online media and services in education. As the author of the widely-read OLDaily online newsletter, Downes has earned international recognition for his leading-edge work in the field of online learning. He developed some of Canada's first online courses at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, Manitoba. He also built a learning management system from scratch and authored the now-classic "The Future of Online Learning".

At the University of Alberta he built a learning and research portal for the municipal sector in that province, Munimall, and another for the Engineering and Geology sector, PEGGAsus. He also pioneered the development of learning objects and was one of the first adopters and developers of RSS content syndication in education. Downes introduced the concept of e-learning 2.0 and with George Siemens developed and defined the concept of Connectivism, using the social network approach to deliver open online courses to three thousand participants over two years.

Downes has been offering courses in learning, logic, philosophy both online and off since 1987, has 135 articles published in books, magazines and academic journals, and has presented his unique perspective on learning and technology more than 250 times to audiences in 17 countries on five continents. He is a habitual photographer, plays darts for money, and can be found at home with his wife Andrea and four cats in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Vision Statement

I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.

Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be.

This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward.

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Canadians who gave their lives in service in Afghanistan

Hundreds of my IAAF Track & Field Photos from Moncton 2010

My calendar

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