OLDaily

Towards sustainable open educational practices: The NWU OER Fellows as a Case Study
Jako Olivier, Byron Bunt, Amit Dhakulkar, Commonwealth of Learning, 2022/10/04

This paper (10 page PDF) reports on an OER fellowship program at North-West University in South Africa. The project featured a number of lecture-oriented and student oriented resource development projects. There were also opportunities for students to participate in the creation of the resources. "It was clear that this initiative supported lecturer agency and self-directedness in terms of using OERs and moving towards OEPs," write the authors. "Furthermore, the potential for supporting student agency through creating opportunities for them to contribute to OER development through OEPs was clear."

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The Gates Foundation Messaging Machine
Phil Hill, Phil on EdTech, 2022/10/04

It should not be news that some foundations have a specific sort of thing they want to promote, and therefore that they fund research leading to that sort of thing. But there are expectations of research. One of these, as pointed out by Phil Hill, is that readers should be able to actually see the research, and not merely the foundation's spin on things.

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Is the student experience out of time?
Jim Dickinson, WonkHe, 2022/10/04

When I read the article, I thought the title meant that the traditional full-time student experience was 'out of time' in the face of new realities, but Dickson meant exactly the opposite.For most of this article Jim Dickson writes about the ever-pressing commitments faced by students ho have to commute long distances or work long hours while taking classes. But then he pivots: "I guess what I'm saying is that I'm starting to have some sympathy for the Oxbridge position. Maybe the sector should set a limit on things like hours of part-time work and location." He continues, "it still feels important that full-time, in attendance students are able to enjoy at least some of the inefficiencies that those modes imply." All very well, but I think we both know that students more in need will be excluded by these 'inefficiencies'.

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The Best Online Tutoring Sites
April Miller, ReviewGeek, 2022/10/04

I hae no particular reason to believe that these are the best online tutoring services. My main point here in linking to this article is to take note of their existence and to look at the range of offerings available. Pricing can be thousands of dollars for test-prep services, in the hundreds of dollars per month for premium services to a volunteer-based free service based on volunteers for undersered children. What I don't see are online tutoring serices offered as a part of public education, and it seems unlikely to see any such listed in the commercial media.

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