OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Critical Thinking (Dis)Positions in Education for Sustainable Development—A Positioning Theory Perspective
Sonia Martins Felix, Education Sciences, 2023/07/03

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This article combines critical thinking, education for sustainable development (ESD), and positioning theory (that is, the perspective from which you undertake some activity). Two themes emerge from the discussion. First,  critical thinking involves more than skills; it also involve's one's dispositions; "Teachers' dispositions related to ESD influence not only the types of critical thinking skills students learn but also the critical thinking dispositions they acquire." And second, these dispositions are revealed through positioning theory as indicators of care; "Teachers' positions (the micro level of CDA via PT) indicated CT dispositions as a prevalent tendency to care about others' needs." The authors weave a nice tapestry, full of interesting strands, but I'm not sure it would stretch far beyond its original Norwegian context. Image: Michael Hogan.

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The Administration of a Higher Education Faculty Online Learning Community
Andy Jett, EdD, and Mary Jane Pearson, PhD, Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning, 2023/07/03

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This shortish article is framed around a framework of six guiding principles for a faculty online community. One of the key benefits such a community," writes the author, "is that faculty are given the opportunity to collaborate and share their knowledge and expertise." That explains why the principles - including such things as "a clear purpose" and "a commitment to high standards" - appear to the professionalism of faculty. But if we ask what sort of things work, then in addition iin addition to usable tools and effective moderation you need things like engagement and animation. Unless the community actually presents itself to faculty where they live, it will sit unnoticed.

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Coordinating modalities of mathematical collaboration in shared VR environments
Wen Huang, Candace Walkington, Mitchell J. Nathan, International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 2023/07/03

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This paper (39 page PDF) explores collaboration in virtual environments. "New forms of VR enable multiple learners to manipulate the same mathematical shapes presented as dynamic objects projected in a joint 3D collaborative space, using intuitive hand gestures." Though positioned as a research paper, it's really a conceptual overview, given that the 'subjects' were "groups of in-service teachers" in different physical locations. That said, it's very comprehensive and provides a really good overview of the subject. The paper itself is a broad survey of different instructional approaches, tracking and measurement, and implications for theories such as embodied cognition.

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Fediverse Governance
Tim Bray, ongoing by Tim Bray, 2023/07/03

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It's useful to contrast how decisions are made in the fediverse with how they are made in commercial social media and how they are made on school, college or university platforms. In this post, Tim Bray outlines how the fediverse works, including especially Mastodon, and describes as a case study a key image facing it: whether to allow Meta (aka Facebook) to create a service (called 'Threads") that interoperates with it. What's important here is not what different sites decide, but how they go about making the decision. Unlike most other services, fediverse instances consult their members. "Who wasn't involved? Venture capitalists. Entrepreneurs. Advertisers. Private-equity people. Billionaires." As it should be.

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Twitter is a mess, so former employees are creating Spill as an alternative
Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch, 2023/07/03

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As Twitter limits the number of tweets users can view, this story reports that, "powered by Black founders who formerly worked at Twitter, Spill is opening the waitlist today for its upcoming social media app." I've signed up for the waitlist, though honestly, my patience with social media (even the good ones, like Mastodon) is wearing thin. Sure, some people post interesting things, but a sizable number simply post links to commercial media paywalls. It's lazy and unthinking and I think characterizes most posts from most people. It's why in OLDaily I prefer to accompany a link with an opinion (and, of course, to never link to paywalls). Taking time and care is less popular these days (maybe that's always been true) but that's how I like my media.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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