OLDaily

Government of Canada launches Future Skills Centre call for proposals and Future Skills Council call for applications
Employment and Social Development Canada, Cision, 2018/05/24

There's a lot of detail, but here's the gist: "$225 million over four years, and $75 million per year thereafter, in Future Skills. The Future Skills Centre and Future Skills Council will be tasked with exploring new and innovative approaches to skills development, identifying the skills employers will need now and in the future and sharing information to inform future investments and programming." Here's the backgrounder. Here's a background paper from last year. Here's the application process. There's a webinar June 7.

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New York Doubles Down on Open Educational Resources
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/05/24

Overview of how SUNY is focusing on open educational resources (OER), including this definition of 'open pedagogy', which I like: "Much of the focus in the year ahead will be trying to shift from OER adoption to 'open pedagogy,' in which faculty members don't just use existing open content but take the next step toward involving their students in modifying it, 'so they're involved deeply in the content,' Hatch says. 'When you get students involved in creating is when you start to build their creativity.'" See also: Amplifying Student Voice Through Digital Resources, part one, part two.

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Progress report for Educational and Occupational Credentials in schema.org
Phil Barker, Sharing and learning, 2018/05/24

I've been watching a lot of discussion about this on the mailing lists and so think of this as a snapshot rather than the final word. The document basically "summarizes information from the community group wiki for those use cases that we have addressed, with links to the outline use case description, the wiki page showing how we met the requirements arising from that use case, and proposed new terms on a test instance of schema.org." Some major outstanding issues are reported, including "whether accreditation is a form of recognition." There are also some proposed Schema.org changes.

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A Learning Design Methodology for Developing Short Learning Programmes in Further and Continuing Education
Lillian Buus, Marianne Georgsen, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2018/05/24

This paper addresses a common issue faced by designers who are working with instructors. "The teachers’ actions in the design process are clearly centred around the role and work of the teacher, and their ideas about the new design are heavily influenced by their existing teaching practice and by the logics of their face-to-face courses. Technology is added to what they already do..." So the authors ask, "How can one combine the levels of activity: strategic level; tactical level and operational level; in such a way, that teachers’ design work is facilitated, regardless of their previous experience?" The authors test an approach called the Collaborative e-Leaning Design method (CoED). Though it's based on data collected over 4-5 years, the paper leaves me wondering about the answer to the question. I wish we'd seen something specific by way of a conclusion rather than vague generalities about online communities of practice.

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