OLDaily

Feature Article
The Problem With 'A National Effort in Online Education'
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2020/04/07

The great big centralized response to the problem of online learning - either during the crisis or after it - is exactly the wrong response. It's the sort of thing that gets very complicated and very expensive in a hurry, and when - almost inevitably - it ends up in private hands, it becomes something that builds failure into its own design.

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Flattening the online education curve
Clint Lalonde, Ed Tech Factotum, 2020/04/07

Here's where I am in complete agreement with Clint Lalonde: "I hope that one of the measures institutions will seriously consider is shoring up the people who support faculty and students. Increasing the people capacity in their teaching and learning centres, faculty development, instructional design, IT support areas with people who have experience in online teaching & learning and educational technology."

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The seven principles of online learning: Feedback from faculty and alumni on its importance for teaching and learning
Cynthia Janet Tanis, Research in Learning Technology, 2020/04/07

The point of departure for this article is Chickering and Gamson's (1987) Seven Principles For Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. The author revisits these principles, draws out some examples of what they look like in practice, and then surveys academic staff and alumni on the importance of these examples, thus describing the relevance of these principles today. Not surprisingly all seven principles were rated as important. But the quantitative results don't really matter because (frustratingly) the sample size and selection are so inadequate. Still, it's an interesting discussion of some old theory that might maybe motivate someone to mount a similar study with a truly representative sample size.

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Daily-Ink by David Truss
David Truss, Daily-Ink by David Truss, 2020/04/07

David Truss offers some good advice. "Now more than ever, we are going to see issues of behaviour in online learning spaces that are inappropriate? Why? Because we have students and educators who are new to these spaces who are learning as they go. It is important to talk about appropriate use and expectations, if you want to be proactive rather than reactive. But creating draconian rules and conditions won’t help. When I see this happening I always go back to a quote I first heard from my colleague, Dave Sands, 'Laws create outlaws.'"

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From Being There to You Don’t Have to Be Here to Care/Share
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2020/04/07

In 1980 I had a cat named Chance - pictured here with her kittens - also named after the gardener from Being There. I don't know what it is about that movie (aside from predating the much inferior Forrest Gump by a few decades) about being in the right place at the right time that captures people's imagination. But I do know that as an allegory of society., it is accurate. More than a few people are in positions of power or wealth simply by virtue of 'being there', and not through any qualification of their own. Which is why I guess people find physical presence so important.

As I have often said to business development people here at NRC, in order to be able to benefit from an opportunity, you have to be in the room, which is why participating in standards bodies and industry consortia and the like is a better way to generate results than locking people in their office and demanding they produce IP. But it's funny. The same dynamics don't work if you're looking to give or to share. As Alan Levine says, you don't have to be there to care (but you do have to be there if you want to take credit for caring). I'm not sure whether anyone has researched the imbalance between giving and taking in online and offline environments, but there's probably something to that.

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