OLDaily

OpenLearn OER (Re)Publishing the Text Way
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2020/03/05

There were a couple issues to sort out, but I successfully followed Tony Hirst's instructions in this post and now have my own GitHub-based version of an entire FutureLearn course form the Open University. Here's the GitHub repository (feel free to clone or whatever). It's a clever hack - he uses the 'Issues' submission form as a mechanism to input a command which instructs an aggregator to download the course, store it in GitHub, and then publish it as GitHub pages (or as a Jupyter binder). GitHub is probably not the ideal environment for this (since it's so difficult to learn) but the concept itself is sound.

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McGraw-Hill Adds AI to Writing Software for High-Enrollment Courses
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2020/03/05

According to this article, "McGraw-Hill has updated its writing assignment software to use artificial intelligence in giving feedback... the new functionality shows up in the company's Connect digital course materials." I think I would find it a bit disconcerting. Imagine spending several days writing something and then getting instant feedback. That would feel wrong. So I think there's going to be a pedagogical innovation where, instead of simply using AI for grading, a system has a student work back and forth with the AI to develop a quality piece of writing, which is then shared (with the instructor, with the class, with the world) once a certain level of achievement is reached.

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Establishing a Sustainable Process to Measure Learner Performance
Mamta Saxena, Melanie Kasparian, International Journal of Learning Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Education, 2020/03/05

This is essentially a work in progress, and I would expect some follow-up in the future. It sets the stage for program evaluation by asking how we assess student outcomes in a class. Grades only tell a part of the story; some other obvious indicators are persistence and completion, satisfaction, and engagement metrics such as co-op program enrolments. This article (16 page PDF) describes how the authors' "tourney to collect and report on student performance data for continuous improvement of academic programs." It also describes a blending of data and story to provide a picture that is comprehensible and actionable. I enjoyed the discussion.

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The Educator's Guide to Wakelet
Wakelet, 2020/03/05

The other day I complained about a product that does documentation poorly. By contrast, here is some documentation done well. A simple example: instead starting by of telling you "how to install" or "header configurations for Jekyll" (real examples), this documentation starting by telling you what it is: "Wakelet is a free platform that allows you to curate and organize content to save and share. You can save videos, articles, images, Tweets, links or even add your own text. Save this content in your bookmarks, or organize related items in to a collection." Via Doug Peterson.

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What If We Didn't Grade? A Bibliography
Jesse Stommel, 2020/03/05

I'm less inclined to call this a bibliography, which suggests some sense of completeness, and more like a set of starting points. I'm not even sure it's just a bibliography about ungrading, beginning as it does with Alfie Kohn and running the gamut to bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress. Though that said, Stommel writes, "Ungrading works best when it's part of a more holistic pedagogical practice–when we also rethink due dates, policies, syllabi, and assignments–when we ask students to do work that has intrinsic value and authentic audiences." See also Stommel's How to Ungrade: A Workshop.

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