Interesting post, Jon.

Now FB's massive stream of data will be tagged with greater nuance.

I'm reminded of the Wired article, Don't Worry Facebook Still Have No Clue How You Feel from a couple years ago when FB tested whether their algorithm could affect users' posting behavior. The author's justification for his argument:

Setting aside the nuance lost by breaking down the human psyche to its barest possible binary—happy and sad—the Facebook study also relied on what sounds like a minimally viable approach to sentiment analysis. To determine whether posts were positive or negative, the study measured the “positive” and “negative” words in each post to determine what the study called its “emotionality.” Status updates don’t appear to have been weighed for shades of mood as determined by the context in which those words appear.

Interesting connection, Jeff! Yes, the way Facebook simplifies, in almost every way, people, messages, emotions, relationships, interactions etc, seems quite pervasive in its culture. While I can see that averaging out over such large numbers, as they did in that paper, might smooth over the coarseness of the metric across different contexts to uncover broad patterns, it's telling that they chose to use (or at least chose to draw attention to the use of) a data-driven approach that see humans as averaged-out binary data points. Generously, one might observe that it lacks nuance. More realistically, it suggests an attitude to people not unlike that of a factory-chicken farmer to chickens.

Great article Jon! I was reminded of it while reading this Guido van Rossum interview:

What does a typical day of work at Dropbox look like for you?

There's a lot of email, a lot of code by other Dropboxers to review, and I also get to write a lot of code myself (which I then have to get reviewed by my coworkers). Fortunately I don't have too many meetings!

Re: "...about online education is that a lot of work is needed to help get the message across to kids that online learning can be incredibly enriching and empowering in ways most face-to-face learning can only aspire to...."

The 'brilliance' of the work done by learners online can be attritbuted to many factors; however, the consensus is that the learning process is indeed  "incredibly enriching and empowering".  What is sad, in my field of practice, is that there are very few willing to see that "a lot of work is needed" before learners can 'feel like' being exposed to this rewarding way of learning.

re: "...We need to embed the kinds of interactions and engagement it provides everywhere in our online spaces. ..."

Interesting...

I was asked to attend a meeting (last week), so I could be questioned on the rationale behind the 'pre-course activities' of a blended ESL course I am currently developing.  For the past two weeks, the learners have been 'formatively assessed' for both language and technical skills, and the 'community' seems to be getting stronger although the course shell does not go live till next week.

Online learning, as I explained, is still in its infancy; "a lot of work is needed" before we can modify 'systems thinking'.

Yes indeed. Too many have made the point that teaching is teaching, whether online or not. It's not at all. Some things do indeed stay constant (the need for passion, caring, knowledge of how people learn, etc) but simple mimicry of methods that work when a teacher is in complete control of every second of a learning activity, and all the assumptions that come with that about what happens between such teaching events, is like having someone walk in front of your horseless carriage carrying a red flag when you could be driving a car.

I'm not sure that it's true that online learning is in its infancy - it is by far the dominant form for anyone with a net connection, after all. It's just that online education has not caught up with it yet.

I've read books on my iPad 2, but the thing is quite heavy after even a short time. I do prefer it, however, for the single reason that I'm able to obtain FREE pdf's of many of the classics.

I also agree that the worst thing about our e-book "solution" at AU is the provider and their abominable software. When we pay what seems to be almost full retail price for a text and then pass the cost on to the student in exchange for an e-book, we should be providing / demand at the very least a DRM-free pdf book.

In at least one case that I am aware of, the same price is charged for a DRM'd time-limited rental on the awful, crippled, unusable VitalSource system as for a full, multiple-format, DRM-free version with free updates and supporting materials from the publisher (O'Reilly) that can be read using any e-reader software. Something very wrong here.

Very interesting...

Feb 09, 2016 – your post based on an article by Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, Benjamin Tilly from http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is-wrong

 re:  "build it and they will come." 

I welcome your view on the Landing as it relates to the statement above -- I have been wondering about this issue for a while now...

@Rita - there's a book or two's worth of answers to that! As a starting point...

In itself, building something rarely achieves much, but you'll generally get more visitors if you build something in an already busy place than if you put it in the middle of an uncultivated forest. On the other hand, if you can tell enough people about it and there's a compelling enough reason for them to go, that uncultivated forest can quickly become a busy place, and so can the soon-to-form roads in between, so you get growth. We shape our dwellings and afterwards our dwellings shape our lives: it's iterative and recursive.

I take a lot of inspiration from Jane Jacobs, who identified short blocks, diverse primary uses, dense population and mix of old and new buildings as the essential characteristics of thriving city areas. Each of these aspects feeds the others - it's a complex adaptive system with an evolutionary dynamic.  On the web, short blocks are about quick and easy connection (we're still working on that on the Landing - a bit of a maze, with too many dead-ends). The more connection, the more people pass by and can travel between areas, allowing diverse sub-communities and uses to thrive. A mix of old and new relates to the low-threshold and high-threshold design (we could differentiate these better but there is a fair mix of quick-and-easy and carefully designed here: anyone can have a presence, but it is possible to design quite complex and elaborate spaces). That drives diversity of primary uses. A central issue is density of population - that's the big driver that drives itself once a threshold is crossed, as long as it does not become too high (Facebook and now Twitter face that problem in spades, responding with filtering algorithms that bring a whole new set of problems).  People attract people. And density of population, in turn, leads to and is driven by diverse primary uses. The more reasons you have for being somewhere, the more you will visit and the safer the place will become because there will always be others around you. It's a mix of hard (structural) and soft (social) drivers. In the case of the Landing, it is complicated by the overlaid existing structure, especially of courses, student roles and staff roles, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it creates density and provides reasons to be here, bad because it reduces diversity and can detract from agency and ownership: people see the Landing as part of a different structure, rather than a thing in itself. And ownership - perhaps more accurately, belongingness - really matters. And, as the article bookmarked above shows, the nature of the activities and connections between people makes a huge difference. That is both formed by context and forms it.

I could write (and have written) a lot more on this! Alas, time is at a bit of a premium right now but see both my books for more. In brief, it's a complex adaptive system fed by people and set in an ecosystem that also provides inputs and receives outputs. It's pretty hard to design structures from the top down to support this kind of environment but, as long as they are flexible, adaptable,  richly connected, parcellated and a few other things (for a few more, see my paper at http://www.ifets.info/download_pdf.php?j_id=36&a_id=769)  with a bit of nurturing they can evolve to fit their communities.

http://www.ifets.info/journals/10_3/5.pdf -- thanks for the link!

Abstract: “…With especial benefits for lifelong learners and those outside institutional boundaries.” -- Re: those outside institutional... -- How so? 

Conclusion (I noticed a couple of typos…): “Social software in e-learning offers great potential pedagogic and practical benefits, both through the amplification and creation of social ties, and through allowing learners to choose (to choose) whether they (want?) to control or be controlled in a learning transaction.   ---  Twitter, Facebook, etc. (staff interacting with clients, with management, etc.)– why not the Landing (staff, faculty, students)?

And…”A self-organizing environment is not necessarily an effective learning environment…”

Good point.  Which one do you consider the Landing to be? 

P.S. “(we're still working on that on the Landing - a bit of a maze, with too many dead-ends). “ – I would be interested in making this part of a future project…

I enjoyed reading this paper – thank you!

I agree with you Jon about being stuck with Microsoft, they make things so easy but crappy at the same time. There are so many alternatives out there but companies have to use Microsoft because they have been using it since the beginning and relying too much on it. Windows 10 new and approved thanks to copying other OS which is done by millions of hours of volunteering work. Same goes to development platform, as a developer we always face dilemma of .NET vs JAVA, I agree .NET has very nice studio framework but Java also achieved that level on Eclipse platform.

It is very annoying when you have to use certain programs like Chrome or Firefox in certain cases otherwise things does not work properly. We should be allowed to make our own choice and freedom. As you already mention about the spying, it is happening by everyone and that's how they are making billions to sell our information to everyone out there.

Thanks

Shafiq

This time he is talking about the practice of 'cold calling' in classrooms, through which teachers coerce students that have not volunteered to speak into speaking, rightly observing that this is morally repugnant and reflects an inappropriate and mistaken behaviourist paradigm. As he puts it, "The goal is to produce a certain observable behavior; the experience of the student — his or her inner life — is irrelevant." A very bad lesson to teach children. But it is not limited to children, and not limited to classrooms.

I find this very interesting and also very disturbing. Not from the perspective of the author, and not at all in the traditional classroom environment. Where I find this disturbing is this is a most common behaviour in classic corporate training, especially workshops and team building sessions. In fact, such training activities often seem based on the notion that forcing attendees to participate, especially in "meet and greet" activities or worse calisthenics. It does not help that most attendees of these events  are often coerced into attending in the first place.

Perhaps a good eductational research area - how many of the worst and most discredited educational practices are still employed with great fanfare in corporate training and workshop environments?

Indeed, although a lot of those who are professionally involved in corporate training know this, and there is a large and powerful counter-culture in the trade that pays much closer attention to good pedagogy, or that takes an entirely different path (e.g. those that take on board the ideas behind Communities of Practice or that focus on motivation and context). Unfortunately there are still too many consultants with little current knowledge of learning research, pushing mumbo jumbo like learning styles or, more insidiously, Kirkpatrick's evaluation model. Such training sessions usually provide boxes to tick for managers, and often result in happy scorecards, but have little if any lasting learning impact.

Very informative read and I totally agree where the author is coming from, I also agree with Richard point of view about corporate culture. We all been to meeting or courses and such where we meet people who do not want to contribute, they sit quietly and listen, this does not indicate they are less intelligent or motivate to learn. I had few experiences where I went to a week long workshop where they very first day you meet people like such. I found few reason based on my personal experience in public speaking that this behavior could be due to shyness, fear of public speaking or simply language barrier. In one case I met a fellow from Middle East, he was very reserve person, don't want to share or contribute but delivering anything he was asked in a group setting. I start to chat with him, but first he was very hesitant to reply or share but eventually he start to speak when I told him that I am in the same field he is. I found his knowledge very impressive and very professional but also can see his fear towards public speaking, he speaks very gently to compose his words like performing calculation in his mind, like in my case I have to translate words from my native language to English before speaking. 

I believe if we provide encouraging environment for the students to share without the fear of being pushed/pressurized into public speaking, we will see improvement. Another, technique I witnessed at Athabasca recently to allow student to create their presentation using some screen reader software to record their voice in their own time, which is less pressurized. The students can spend time practicing before finalizing their project.

Thanks for sharing!

Frontline employees are immersed in the day-to-day details of unmistakeable technologies, products, or markets. No the verbatim at the same time is more master in the realities of a party’s m‚tier than they are. But while these employees are deluged with hugely delineated report, they over light upon it bloody contrary to wrench meander that intelligence into salubrious knowledge. Seeking at individual goodwill, signals from the marketplace can be non-specific and ambiguous. Mission of another, employees can turn into into so caught up in their own confining attitude that they fine descry of the broader context.

The more holistic come close to to cognition at various Japanese companies is also founded on another cornerstone insight. A attendance is not a crest but a living organism. Much like an unitary, it can have a collective judgement of indistinguishability and primary purpose. This is the organizational equal of self-knowledge—a shared erudition of what the concern stands pro, where it is prospering, what benevolent of ringlet it wants to area in, and, most renowned, how to fill in that swarm a reality.

Nonaka and Takeuchi are arguing that creating perception when identical pleases happen to the indicator hint to sustaining a competitive reform in the future. Because the competitive environment and chap preferences changes constantly, adeptness perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Players, managers be struck by means of at their fingertips years of perspicacity from Japanese firms that quality how to engender wise continuously, and how to utilize it to assemble top fanciful products, services, and systems .
- BrianHit

@Shafiq - I love:

"Online experience is amazing, when you hear people share their knowledge, their thoughts and show their style of working, it is great learning exercise, its like you are traveling to different places and spending time with different people."

Very true, very poetic.

Though I am not an expert on religion at all, I have written and taught the occasional ethics course that faces similar issues, inasmuch as people always have ethical principles and beliefs when they start such a course, and these are almost certain to be challenged at some point. Assessment in such courses tends to focus on critical thinking, synthesis, analysis, creative argument and transcending personal beliefs in order to understand the world from other people's perspectives. At a more basic educational level, it also relates to being familiar with well-known arguments, theories and classifications in the field. I am guessing this course works similarly in the context of religious beliefs. It would be a sign of failure in my teaching if students used their own beliefs to attack other beliefs, though a sign of success if they reflectively embraced and fortified their own beliefs while recognizing, understanding and perhaps even valorizing what others believe in the light of that. I'd not be unhappy if they changed their beliefs either! I'd be happiest of all if they came out of it more accepting of the fact that, in some important aspects of human existence, including in ethics, aesthetics, or metaphysics, different and contradictory things can both be true without either negating the other. I expect the same is true of courses on religion.

@Rita -

There are cultural differences in cheating, for sure. I've commented on this a few times before, e.g. here, or, a couple of years later and better thought through, here. Interestingly, it seems that a lot relates to the social and economic significance of qualifications within a society - the more the qualification matters, the less learning counts.

I'm not familiar with the D2L portfolio tools, though I'd be intrigued to know more about them. I'm particularly interested in how they might square with the teacher-dominated hierarchies of an LMS. The roles and permissions in most (all?) LMSs make it quite hard to make things from inside hidden course spaces available outside them. When it is possible, it tends to be hard to manage that without granting access to more content and/or to more people than many students would feel comfortable revealing so, quite often, they are used within rather than across courses, which is a great pity.  One of the things I really like about Mahara (and Elgg, used on the Landing) is that the learner, socially networked with other learners, is the centre of the system, not the course or the teacher. The learner can explicitly reveal as much or as little as they like to whoever they like and has a far greater sense of ownership and control.

Reflection is one of the very few things that almost every teaching theory agrees upon. It's a crucial part of most intentional learning processes, though other things matter too (motivation, action, application, creation, problem-solving, etc). I'm not so sure the evidence-based learning matters - or, at least, in a learning (rather than qualification) context, I'm not sure what it means!

RE: “The learner can explicitly reveal as much or as little as they like to whoever they like and has a far greater sense of ownership and control.”

And

“LMSs make it quite hard to make things from inside hidden course spaces *available outside them”

 As  the courses I facilitate in both ESL and Teacher Education are entirely in the Discussion Forum (DF) (tasks, research assignments, presentations, conceptual graphic representation of a lesson, etc.), I perceive my learners as having a “sense of ownership and control.” 

During the last class (f2f) of a 12-week ESL blended (Thanks for the book, Dr. Cleveland-Innes! re: Orientation, 2015), each student spoke for a few minutes about their perception of the course (first blended at my workplace).  A slide had been submitted via the DF with their final thoughts, and they used that artifact to guide their presentation.  It was my understanding then, and now as I design a second course for ESL learners, that the community (learner-learner, learner-content, learner-instructor and learner-technology (citation?)) along with the sense of sharing, belonging, possessing, played a big role in this beautifully unveiled and openly shared final learning experience.

Regarding *college-wide viewing, I invite Faculty to be part of my course as auditors (even the former College President took a look at my modules).  As a result, colleagues from other areas can view the learning process of my learners at different times of their learning journey – inter-professional  collaboration, perhaps? It is possible…