there’s enough evidence
Show your work! This is a "History Channel" statement. I've read fairly extensively through the peer-reviewed scholarship, and archaeologists don't seem agreed there's "enough evidence". Even the guys that discovered Monte Verde are much less certain about the 33,000 year old finds, and separated them into a different category.
reject the idea that their ancestors migrated from somewhere else
Vine Deloria Jr. is one of the big advocates for the idea that "we have always been here", but his argument is primarily political rather than scientific. Realistically, isn't a scientific certainty that native Americans have been here for at least 15,000 years enough?
Craig Childs
Who is not a trained scientist, historian, archaeologist, but apparently many find him a compelling storyteller.
as the Navajo and other Native American tribes believe
Which is to be expected, since their experience here goes back hundreds of generations. But that doesn't mean that Indian legends are any more valid than the old testament which says Eden was a place in the vicinity of Mesopotamia.
weren't one group of people; they arrived at different times, and likely by different methods
These are two separate statements, that require two different types of argument and evidence to back them up. Why do I get the sense you're not going to do that...?
more detail
I'll begin with a list of texts you might want to read, in addition to the ones we'll be reading excerpts from together, in the next week or so.
smallish
So far, we have 5 people registered.
970s,
In the US, many social historians AND cultural historians too. Bill Cronon for example -- note his interest in both "history from below" and in literary critic Raymond Williams.
the "wilderne
Rocky Mountains sanitoria for treating "consumption" might be an interesting topic. Follow Doc Holiday to Glenwood CO...
ical. Evolutionary history shows not only how humans have steered the evolution of other species through breeding, hybridization, and direct genetic manipulation but also how human actions have produced unintended evolutionary consequences, such as pesticide res
Evolution by natural selection vs. breeding by deliberate selection.
terns of land use. Only in the early republic did a market-driven cycle of unsustainable agricultural expansion, specialization, and abandon- ment oc
I don't recall that Donahue completely explained why the colonial approach changed and became unsustainable in the early republic...
n them and their world; the birds act in history as informants about the qualities of the engineered environments upon which they increasin
The birds aren't "agents", but they are a barometer.
show that state conservation was not a heroic intervention on behalf of nature but rather a flawed and imperious project that did social, economic, and cultura
Was it even really envisioned as an "intervention on behalf of nature" or was that just a rationalization?
exposing the constructed
Is this just the "linguistic turn" catching up with EnvHist?
t past efforts to speak for nature have masked social and cultur
"I speak for the trees" says the Lorax.
plain. The presence of coal seams or fertile soils in particular places has certainly mattered to human history, but to talk of coal or soils as
Yeah, "agency" seems to imply choice. But it would be completely accurate to say that these natural features influenced (to some extent determined) the choices available to people.
e the ideal of the human agent a
It's also important to note that not all humans have equal amounts of agency or freedom of action.
to define the roles of animals - creatures that might be recognized as h
Even if not conscious, could the ability of herds of prey animals or domesticated cattle to react to human activities (to flee or resist) be considered agency? Either way, it's probably important in historical analysis.
e Anthropoc
Maybe this is a model: not ALL human interventions in the natural world rise to the status of the anthropocene.
ted, "there is hope in hybrid landscapes," born of the realization that the natural can persist, and sometimes thrive, in
This is especially hopeful in the world we occupy right now.
- for approaches that see all environments as interweaving the natural and the cultural in com
Hybridity
d other categories
What does the historian mean by the term "category of analysis"?
June 2013
Not entirely up to date, but pretty recent.
lets us focus on critique without a requirement that we devalue the work
An even more valuable element is that the critiques stay IN CONTEXT rather than appearing out of context in reviews, blog posts, etc.
tensions and tradeoffs of revision
Making annotation an important element of versioning things like textbooks.
collapsed the distance and distinction between producer and consumer
Another goal
performative publishing
Another useful term
laminated and multi-vocal text
Nice description -- design principle.
process and product
Discuss work-in-progress as a valid publication.
disruptive of formal education and enabling of student-centered and interest-driven learning
To what extent are these actually at odds?
web annotation as a disruptive media practice, as well as web annotation as performative publishing
Disruptive of hierarchy.
June 2013
Not entirely up to date, but covers a lot of ground.
emphasizing the need to spend as much (or more) time on an online class as an in-person class
Esp. time spent reading vs. listening to lectures
cooperation among students
Hypothesis
introductions, announcements, online office hours, and prompt response
Online office hours -- maybe Zoom access?
the risk that overly onerous and inflexible attribution requirements are simply disregarded
This seems to be a key point, and this post doesn't really make it clear whether OUR's attribution requirement is onerous. Is the point to make it possible for an educator to find the original source, or to prevent anyone ever viewing a page without a visible attribution? It seems to me those are two very different things.
increases student success, reduces the cost of education, and supports rapid experimentation and innovation in education
It will be interesting to see if we can build layered materials that present important ideas or content at a variety of levels of detail/complexity for different subsets of students. For example, a module on the Columbian Exchange that has a “slider” to increase the depth of the coverage for different audiences.
openly license a complete set of competencies
And then once they've opened their competencies and credentialing, how do they continue to charge tuition? As a student, why wouldn't I just cut out the middleman?
Open Credentials Open Assessments Open Educational Resources Open Competencies
I'm not sure I'm against this. But it is incredibly disruptive. In this world, the difference between a Harvard BA and a Bemidji State BA could be substantially reduced. Since I'm at Bemidji State, I suppose I should welcome this change and work to hasten it. But there still seems to be a missing element, and it seems to me a bit like a publisher's dream of capturing the entire value-chain in the learning app "Stack".
Z degree
Doesn't reducing the cost of every other element of education to zero put an inordinate spotlight on the fact that the only value-add left that the institution is charging for is the credits themselves? That they're basically an accreditation gatekeeper? Is this where higher ed wants to shine the spotlight??
when you say “textbook” rather than “learning materials”
There are implications, though, from the creative side, when you switch from thinking about textbooks to thinking about "learning materials". Textbooks typically have a single author or team for the entire work. Learning materials are much easier to imagine as promiscuous remixes. There are tradeoffs to these two approaches. I think we can expand idea of textbook to include ebook multimedia and interactive (H5P) functions, so maybe we don't need to dump the term on those grounds.
students who print do worse
All the more reason to make the e-book significantly more compelling than the pdf.
doer effect
I wonder if I can emulate this improvement in learning in reading-oriented (history) classes by guiding the students through a Hypothes.is-based annotation engagement with texts?
extraordinarily simple
Because Khan Academy math is better than a textbook.
increasing access to learning materials by adopting OER
Except that adopting OER does demonstrably increase the number of students who take your class, which measurably improves learning FOR THEM.
intersection of energy and environment.
And how is this currently changing as the grid changes?
environmental history of things that en-vironmental science and policy care about.
This is ideal for my current cooperation with ENVR.
Before the energy of environmental historians can reach the public, the obstacles to transmission posed by jargon, obscurity, and an inward-looking orientation toward historiography must be removed
This is a better statement of this than McNeill's recent post in the AHA blog.
omni-presence of complex and mixed attitudes,
Especially toward the environment? Or is this equivalent to the complexity of other issues like class?
engaging environmental history with contemporary discussion is the best hope for “us” historians, inviting us to address a widened audience, adding vigor to our minds and value to our research, and deepening the meaning we find in our lives
It will definitely be good for us -- will it be equally good for the public?
Turning hindsight into foresight
Is this a useful four-word definition of history?
But it cannot tell you about how OER adoption makes a student feel less poor in the eyes of his peers.
I'm reminded of something I read or heard recently about student evaluations and the value of instructor "kindness" to students. Hard to quantify, but probably key.
was considering
At this point I'm leaning toward assigning an excerpt rather than the entire essay. Or maybe, as the group did, assigning just sections of the text.
OER should be a no-brainer for any provost concerned about retention and graduation rates; the key is presenting it in a way that makes that clear.
That's been my experience so far.
won’t betray any confidences here
??? Am I being too open about this process?
Jillian Maynard, from the University of Hartford, and Jeremy Anderson, from Bay Path University, led a session on developing a strategic plan for OER on your home campus. I went to that one having previously selected a different one -- born to be wild, that’s me -- because upon closer reading, I made the connection to a law that NJ recently passed requiring public colleges to develop plans for OER (or “inclusive access”)
This seems very much like what I was talking about yesterday with MinnState folks and reported on my blog.
adjunctification of institutions founded on “gift” logic
I still don't see how institutions are continuing to miss the inevitable outcome, when adjuncts who feel no connection to an institution hop right over to the Mother-of-all-MOOCs online institution that makes the first credible bid to disrupt/replace them?
OER movement had become so successful that the publishers have launched a disingenuous takeover, going so far as to brag about their paywalled platforms containing OER
"Inclusive Access" and "Netflix of Books" (do you mean Kindle Unlimited?) not necessarily the same thing. Netflix DID make movies more accessible at lower net cost.
“ZTC” (zero textbook cost) icon
Another great idea! Would a 0 (zero) with line through it in icon help it live at top of list?
photos of students holding whiteboards saying “I just spent $$$ on textbooks
Good idea! I wonder if I could convince student government to do this on my campus? Just emailed Student Senate members to ask...
tell faculty what to do
I get the raised eyebrows, but don't things like transfer curriculum requirements provide some degree of direction that the faculty at, say UMass, maybe don't feel?
As DeRosa put it, “my institution is very good at cutting costs. The point is to provide the best learning environment.”
Wish I was there, at my alma mater too! 1. Cutting costs, check; 2. Improving learning, check; when do we get to 3. streamlining instructor workloads? Currently in midst of argument about course caps at my school.
general history journals, or in books or digital forums
My beef is more with historians who don't even know they're doing it, and do things like put coded markers to interpretive structures into narratives in textbooks. Undergrads from other majors in surveys, who will never read historiography, miss these markers and don't realize they're reading a story told through a particular lens.
don’t want anyone, even me, telling historians how they must write
Ultimately, isn't the market going to do that?
impossible to express novel ideas without novel language
Aren't MOST new ideas explained by way of metaphors or analogies to known ideas?
relentlessly abstract and obscure prose, often in imitation of models once current in literary criticism and philosophy
Sometimes that obscure language actually helps historians make subtle but important points. I'm thinking of something like Hayden White's Metahistory here. Having said that, I'm pretty unforgiving when something I'm reading puts me through that "foreign-language" wringer but then doesn't pay off with a big insight.
Nobel laureate physicist Ernest Rutherford allegedly claimed that “all good science can be explained to a bar[tender].”
Long tradition of top-level physicists like Hawking writing for the general public.
The Point Isn’t to Sound Smart. The Point Is to Communicate.
As grad students we're exposed to all kinds of jargon and specialized analysis and argument. But it's not really that much more difficult to understand that just as most regular people (who ARE interested in history) aren't interested in our professional arguments, they aren't interested in our technical language. Failing to adjust our language to our audience is just sloppy, like using the passive voice.
he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available
Recording the trail we wander through this info seems to be a key feature of the Hypothesis annotation view we return to whenever we open the page.
the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge The prime action of use is selection
Implications for education?
provide the individual with information-generating aid
Interesting that there was apparently recognition of the importance of info creation as well as manipulation and consumption.
concepts that we have never yet imagined
Has this been achieved by people, or have algorithms taken on this task and automated this process beyond our ability to directly interact with these concepts?
Both the language used by a culture, and the capability for effective intellectual activity are directly affected during their evolution by the means by which individuals control the external manipulation of symbols
As it becomes easier for individuals to manipulate symbols, what happens?
Korzybski
General Semantics, A.E. van Vogt, Null-A...
every composite process of the system decomposes ultimately into explicit-human and explicit-artifact processes
But the increase in efficiency and effectiveness comes from improving the interface so that the relationship between the artifact and the human is easier to manage. A graphical user interface that requires less work on the user's part (even if it required more work for the system programmer) improves those synergies and emergent opportunities. There's an increased benefit when those interfaces can be proliferated widely.
the development of "artificial intelligence" has been going on for centuries
And the prior evidence is pretty strong for an "emergent" set of new insights and capabilities as these intellectual tools (artificial light, writing, printing, libraries, universities) proliferated.
hope was to make a better match between existing human intelligence and the problems to be tackled
This seems to echo back to that "aboriginal" example above, where our current seemingly enhanced intelligence derives quite a bit from a circumscribed set of "problems to be tackled" that no longer involve survival, but are more focused on things like making phone calls. Does it matter whether our external "intelligence amplifiers" actually deskill us as humans and make us more dependent on thought-labor-saving technology, as long as we don't lose access to it? Did writing put an end to a rich oral tradition in antiquity? Does Wikipedia and Google search make us more forgetful of "facts"?
synergistic principle gives increased phenomenological sophistication to each succeedingly higher level of organization
Emergent properties again -- is there an implication that a new (higher?) level of emergence may await?
system is actively engaged in the continuous processes (among others) of developing comprehension within the individual and of solving problems; both processes are subject to human motivation, purpose, and will
A working definition for education in the digital age?
new innovation in one particular capability can have far-reaching effects throughout the rest of your capability hierarchy
There's a sense here that some emergent new ability will be discovered once the difficulty of "routine" tasks diminishes.
We find three general categories of process capabilities within a typical individual's repertoire. There are those that are executed completely within the human integument, which we call explicit-human process capabilities; there are those possessed by artifacts for executing processes without human intervention, which we call explicit-artifact process capabilities; and there are what we call the composite process capabilities, which are derived from hierarchies containing both of the other kinds.
But they shade into each other. Is reading an explicit-human process? What about when a text-to-speech app reads to you? Is that composite? What about when an app keyword-searches a bunch of documents for you and returns only those with the info you want?
even quite different higher order processes may have in common relatively high-order sub-processes
This must be a useful insight for UI designers.
Every process of thought or action is made up of sub-processes
Does this focus on the pencil-stroke enhance or detract from the explanation of how to write a document? At what point does this granularity become a detriment?
truly complex situations
As others have noted here, the idea that the aborigine surviving by her own wits in the outback is tackling less complex situations than the white dude using a telephone seems a bit backwards. A more accurate statement might be that the aborigine does not have the necessary tools and information to build a telephone network. But that's the point, isn't it? That neither do WE. Being the beneficiaries of a technological patrimony and standing on the shoulders of giants doesn't actually make us superior to the aborigine. If anything, it might make us less adaptive and more brittle.
In such a future working relationship between human problem-solver and computer 'clerk,' the capability of the computer for executing mathematical processes would be used whenever it was needed. However, the computer has many other capabilities for manipulating and displaying information that can be of significant benefit to the human in nonmathematical processes of planning, organizing, studying, etc. Every person who does his thinking with symbolized concepts (whether in the form of the English language, pictographs, formal logic, or mathematics) should be able to benefit significantly.
This is an important suggestion that most thought is symbol manipulation and that computers could be built to assist with it, if not to do it themselves.
considering the whole as a set of interacting components rather than by considering the components in isolation. 1a3
Considering human supported by smartphone in similar terms as we once considered human supported by library.
extensions of means developed and used in the past
Do we tend to miss this point, that these new technologies are a continuation of earlier "means" that included language, narrative, writing, printing, libraries, etc.?
Minnesota State Colleges and Universities must develop a program to offer a Z-degree at three additional colleges by expanding the use of open educational resources, including custom and open textbooks. The system office must provide opportunities for faculty to identify, review, adapt, author, and adopt open educational resources. The system office must develop incentives to academic departments to identify, review, adapt, author, or adopt open educational resources within their academic programs.
Are these three separate charges, or are the second and third considered only as means to the first? The point is, will the system office be able to "provide opportunities" to departments and faculty that are not able to create Z-Degree outcomes?
This appropriation includes $250,000 in fiscal year 2020 and $250,000 in fiscal year 2021 for developing and offering courses to implement the Z-Degree textbook program under Minnesota Statutes, section 136F.305. This is a onetime appropriation.
Since Z-degrees are defined as Associates Degrees with zero textbook cost, it seems likely that 2-year institutions will be the focus of much of this effort. Is there a way for 4-year institutions to apply for some of this appropriation to incentivize OER adoption that will save students $$ but not immediately lead to a new Z-Degree?
students spent a mean of £572 on books and equipment in their first year, falling to £465 in year 2 and £490 in year three
Similar to US expenses.
difference in textbook use in the North American context compared with that of the UK. Rather than “required reading”, students are presented with a reading list, which may (depending on the subject) contain text-books, reference material, and primary sources either individually or anthologised. These lists are not limited to books - online resources, video/film and materials prepared internally may also be cited. In the North American model, one specified textbook is more likely to be used as the basis for a whole course.
The difference might actually be that similar activities are done by US instructors in the LMS and are not as visible as they seem to be in the UK.
Learning Rubric
Good model
The Disquantified Reading Group
This is not only a great reading list, but a model of how perhaps to structure a reading course with outward-facing content that makes its appeal wider than the single-semester cohort.
fleeing humanities and related fields specifically because they think they have poor job prospects
But again this is a generalization across a WIDE range of different schools, so conclusions about places where students rack up $200k debts may not apply to places where they do not.
democratization of access has diluted the prominence of the humanities
Or maybe the humanities & History courses have failed to adapt to the needs and interests of these new students?
history majors, which fell by 20 percent
This seems to be the bigger issue. Can we craft a better pitch for why students ought to major in History? If not, can we focus more on OTHER ways to add value for majority of undergrads in other majors?
1950. Since then, the humanities have seen three eras. The first ran from 1955 to 1985. As normal schools around the country, set up to educate teachers, transformed into comprehensive universities, men and women alike poured into English and history majors; then, when the economy soured and the growth of higher education slowed in the 1970s, the boom turned to bust, and humanities majors collapsed nationwide. The second phase began around 1985 and ran to 2008. This was a long period of stability; majors in the four largest (and easiest to track over the long term) humanities majors held steady, with modest fluctuations. Since 2008, the crisis of the humanities has resumed, with percentage drops that are beginning to approach those of 40 years ago. Unlike the drops of the ’70s, though, there’s no preexisting bubble to deflate. And there’s no compelling demographic explanation. Five years ago, it was reasonable to look at these numbers and conclude that the long-term story is all about gender. Men majored in humanities fields at the same rate in the 1990s as they had in the 1950s, while women, seeing more options in the workforce, increasingly turned to majors in business fields.
The interesting elements here are teacher-training (Normal) schools becoming universities and the decrease in women students as they increasingly found viable career paths beyond the "Mrs" degree.
wake of the 2008 financial crisis
Interesting to correlate this change with non-recovery from Great Recession for most people.
History is down about 45 percent from its 2007 peak
But what can we say about the "peak" that could help us understand the change?
60 percent of the institutions responding to the survey offered graduate-level history courses, and the average graduate enrollment fell over 12 percent, from 205 in 2013–14 to 180 in 2016–17.
This is a completely different issue. How many new History MAs and PhDs does American actually need per year?
enrollment in introductory history courses does not appear to be leading the overall decline
Because undergrad History surveys fill a core requirement, but also because they support other programs, esp. where faculty are not distracted by focus on grad students/research? How many of the surveys at PhD schools are taught by senior faculty vs. contingent?
total undergraduate history enrollments rose 5 percent from 2015–16 to 2016–17. In sharp contrast, enrollment in undergraduate history courses fell 6 percent between 2014–15 and 2015–16 at the 17 responding institutions classified as Master’s Colleges and Universities
History course enrollments up at institutions like mine where BA is highest degree, down at MA and PhD institutions. What TYPES of courses increased? What happened to major/minor numbers?
total undergraduate enrollments in history courses fell 7.7 percent, from 323,883 to 298,821.
Overall decline in undergrad enrollment dropped substantially over a three-year period that does NOT seem to correlate with an economic crisis or other obvious "cause".
Crafting Digital History
Looks interesting
economic returns of education after high school
Is change in lifetime income potential a way of measuring higher education's social contribution? Is it too broad? Can it account for distributive injustice?
rankings have focused on the input side of the equation, not the output.”
This is incredibly ham-handed, but not necessarily a bad question to be asking, esp. as digital education begins disrupting brick-and-mortar schools. Can we be more explicit about the value we add as educators?
October 1962
1962...
$5 billion fine
Slap on wrist.
not-yetness is the space that allows for emergence
Collaboration requires a space where the answer isn't yet decided, doesn't it?
OER company Top Hat
Top Hat is not an OER company
Student costs for textbooks rose 67% from 2008 to 2018
This is obscene
If big publishers really add value to OER, then open-wrapping is not necessarily a bad thing, said Jhangiani. This is different to "openwashing" where publishers spin a product as open while continuing proprietary practices, he explained. "However, in order for this role to actually be beneficial to the community, they would need to radically change their mentality so that they do not price gouge and do not limit the choices and formats available to students and faculty," said Jhangiani. "They also need to stop behaving like parasites who simply absorb OER into their catalogues and instead also contribute resources back to the commons (like Cengage did a little bit last summer)."
To return to a question from an earlier convo, what impact would a CC-BY-NC-SA license on the OER have on the ability of these parasites to use our work?
implicit social contract
To what extent does the fact that Hypothesis annotations show up in our feeds (and are thus useful for us tracking our movement through texts) while mere highlights do not, determine usage patterns ?
text as an unfinished thing
In another sense, though, it makes the reader's process more visible so that the reader no longer needs to trespass into the author's territory. I've always been dissatisfied with the lit-crit position that the author must be completely decentered and her contribution minimized to make room for the reader. THIS seems to create a real space for the reader, and in so doing maybe it also allows the author to reclaim some of her space.
whatever client they choose just as they can use their browser of choice
Interesting -- what would it look like to have a shared annotation layer that could be accessed by a variety of tools?
allowed course registrants to annotate either in a private coursegroup or in public—
This would definitely solve the web-reticence issue some students might have -- but what does it look like in practice?
Afteractivating Hypothes.is in the browser, a learner can annotate any piece of text on a webpage with her own ideas, to whichother learners could respond (Principle 1). Tags can be attached to a Hypothes.is annotation, enabling the aggregation of webannotations that are scattered across webpages through a tag (Principle 2). Because Hypothes.is adheres to the Open AnnotationModel, annotations are uniquely identifiable and retrievable, allowing portability of ideas not widely supported in threadeddiscussion forums (Principle 2). The search functionality of Hypothes.is offers means to aggregate annotations according to avariety of criteria such as by tags, users, user groups, and annotated web URLs. Users are thus able to enter the discourse notonly from a specific webpage (e.g., the textbook), but also from the search page that provides another view of the discourse(Principle 3)
Alignment statement for Hypo
oundaries between different learning and discourse spaces (e.g., public vs. private, formal educationvs. workplace learning) are to be crossed if not totally dissolved
This is probably a long-term goal of mine that I might as well own up to.
At the individual level, this principle supports reflection on and reuse of one’s earlier ideas. At the group level, thisprinciple facilitates collaborative discourse by enabling learners to incorporate peers’ ideas to solve new problems
Students can watch their ideas evolve and a class can trace changes across a series of readings.
spatiotemporally distributed on the web.
So maybe the more reasonable long-term strategy is to build these web-based linkages rather than try to capture all these network-resident learning elements within an LMS.
Networked learning, in contrast with the broader terme-learning, is defined as “learning in which information andcommunications technology (ICT) is used to promoteconnections: between one learner and other learners; between learnersand tutors; between a learning community and its learning resource
Should I start exploring this too?
boilerplate thing
Sounds like those 19th-century Chapman books filled with platitudes about the upstanding men of the regions. https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Chapman_brothers
idea that the land was prehistoric, suspended in stasis, before the arrival of white people
The idea of wilderness is definitely in play here, but let's not overdo the criticism of 18th-century people for not having 21st-century environmental values.
settler later wrote that the natives said
There's got to be some evidence of what the Indians said to each other that's not filtered through this "settler" lens -- maybe have students read this alongside Colin Calloway's Scratch of the Pen.
how big the gap between critical history and the “popular history” that makes it to best-seller lists
There's a BIG difference between the gap between academic and popular history and this, which seems more in the tradition of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly "history".
19th-century ideology of Manifest Destiny
Or at least of an uncritical embrace of the turner thesis.
Further Reading
Another book that JUST came out which I'd highly recommend is Joshua Specht's Red Meat Republic, 2019 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KBFNL7Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The Greatest Trust in the World
https://archive.org/details/greatesttrustin00russgoog/page/n13
Jonathan Ogden Armour
1863-1927: Son of Philip Danforth Armour and inheritor of the business.
Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview
Also check this one for history.
Information Systems for Business and Beyond
Check this for history.
orienting questions
John uses these -- I'm not sure they're entirely effective but they're probably worth a try.
the tragedy of “disposable assignments”[7] that “actually suck value out of the world,”
Still a classic burn!
Rubric for Asynchronous Discussion Participation
License?
annotate it with us at that Hypothesis-enabled link
Would love to, but unfortunately I'm not a subscriber.
I won't get any royalty payments
Right, so hopefully you were adequately compensated for the work you put in.
I'm taking content that is designed to be printed out on paper
Of course this value-add is probably less valuable in 2019 than it was in 2015.
notes for the teacher about how to set up lessons and learning activities
Also the clearest expression of the "publisher" model -- how we're not thinking of teachers as being involved in the creation of the content they teach. 3rd grade math may be a valid case (but even it might not be...), but I'm not sure this analogy extends to, say, college history.
It's the act of creating the curriculum in a particular form that will be useful to Minnesota 3rd grade teachers that generates revenue for me, and not the content which is created.
This is the clearest expression for me, of what David Wiley might be talking about when he calls OER infrastructure.
The difference
I'm inclined toward the attitude regarding for-profit publishers you describe here. And I don't really buy David's analogy between OER and apps like the Apache server. Maybe this is a difference between K-12 and higher ed? I don't think of OER (even my own) as a generic piece of infrastructure like a bridge that anyone can drive over to the same place. We're talking about students becoming active learners -- why aren't we talking about instructors remaining active teachers?
don’t give a damn about for-profit publishers and for-profit providers of things that get packaged with OER
Yeah, this feels closer to my reaction too.
chemistry lab simulation is the “wrong” content if students are supposed to be learning world history
Isn't this exactly why it isn't helpful to think of content as infrastructure?
about a decade now
Okay, I went back and read (and commented on) that post, but I still disagree.
Apache is a piece of software that meets the need of its developers
Okay, so the open source software analogy has deep roots. But I still (looking at this a dozen years later) think this analogy is flawed. Apache was a webserver (infrastructure) that could serve any page (content). I think the proper analog to Apache in OER is a platform or app (Pressbooks, Hypothes.is), not any particular Pressbook or annotation.
richness of these materials is generally inversely proportional to their accessibility by users in the developing world
There seems to be an assumption here that "rich" is meant in a technological sense rather than in the quality of the insights rendered by the materials. So we're talking about a richer educational material being one that users experience at a higher frame rate and resolution, with higher media "production values", maybe with more interactivity or adaptive branching...in the future maybe AI.
Another way of asking this: how much "richer" is the latest Version of Word in Office 365 than MacWrite in 1985, if the learning outcome you're looking for is "write a short story"?
November 4, 2005
Okay, now I'm well and truly down the rabbit-hole!
learning outcomes, educational resources that support the achievement of those outcomes, assessments by which learners can demonstrate their achievement of those outcomes, and credentials that certify their mastery
So educational infrastructure = learning outcomes, educational resources, assessments, and credentials. I'm not sure I agree. Educational resources are content. I suppose they can be thought of as generic enough to be one-size-fits-all, but it seems like that approach minimizes and trivializes the role of both the teacher and learner. Seems like a rather mechanistic, whole-equals-sum-of-parts approach to learning. But the focus on assessments and credentials seems appropriate in this mix, I suppose. makes me somehow less excited about being a teacher.
The example of the Linux kernel shows that this is completely possible.
I worked at SGI as a systems engineer when Linux was just coming into its own. IRIX didn't go down without a fight. I agree that Linux offers a possible model, but right now I don't see the publishers as Linux evangelists. They may jump on the bandwagon when there's no stopping it. And we ought to be open to that possibility, I agree. But the OER community is Linux, not the publishers. We need to make it irresistible before they'll get to that last stage of the ignore-laugh-fight-then you win process.
I believe the last 20 years have made it clear
I think you underestimate the S-curve.
Everything interesting is being built on top of them – from adaptive systems to OER-enabled pedagogy.
This is what publishers would have us believe because they think they can own the building-things-on-top space. I don't think I'm ready to drink that koolaid yet. The ultimate aim, if you follow this logic to its natural conclusion, is eliminating the instructor's role altogether. But a big element of the students' User Experience (to borrow from the software world's vocab) is the instructor.
open source provides a way for companies to collaborate on technology that’s mutually beneficial.
Yes this is clearly the case. But again, where does infrastructure end and content begin? I don't think my content is that undifferentiated.
huge companies that pay their employers to give some of their work away to everyone – including their competitors – under open licenses.
This is a cool idea, if the implication you’re driving at is that there might be some model there for sharing between educators writing open content and authors writing commercial textbooks. The code contributed in the open source model benefits everyone by improving the state of the art. Is that true in OER, where the medium and message are less easy to distinguish?
if the OER that do exist find substantially more adoption success, we may undercut the funding mechanisms responsible for the creation and maintenance of the learning materials used in the other 93% of courses
I’m not sure I’m prepared to accept the argument that the same publishers producing the Psych 100 textbook are NECESSARILY the go-to people for grad courses.
very few high enrolling courses accounting for a large amount of textbook sales
So we can follow the $$
After 20 years and dozens of hundreds of millions of dollars of philanthropic, governmental, and institutional investment, sufficient OER exist for somewhere around 300 / 4500 = 6.7% of the courses offered at an average institution
This semester my institution offered 1062 courses. The bookstore reported that in only about half were textbooks ordered. So I’m not sure that the logic in this paragraph, leading to the 90% textbook number, is quite right.
infrastructure
But OER isn’t just infrastructure. It’s not really a road or a vehicle, it’s the content, which is breaking free of the traditional media that it was once trapped inside.
Charles Knowlton
I wrote a book about Knowlton in 2012. It's available currently on Amazon, but I'll probably turn it into a Pressbook this summer.
AWARENESSOFOPENEDUCATIONALRESOURCES: 2014-15 TO2017-18
Use this to show increase in recent years
Faculty often make changes to their textbooks, presenting material in a different order (70 percent), skipping sections (68 percent), replacing content with their own (45 percent), replacing with content from others (41 percent), correcting errors (21 percent), or revising textbook material (20 percent).
Put this in brochure too.
61 percent of all faculty, 71 percent of those teaching large enrollment introductory courses, and 73 percent of department chairpersons, "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" that "the cost of course materials is a serious problem for my students."
Use this in next info piece.
match to the extensive use of 'revise' and 'remix' that faculty are already practicing
That's what I've been finding in conversations at BSU.
statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of the number of creditsthey took
Validates the other survey claim that students facing expensive textbooks tend to take fewer.
nosignificant differences between the overall results
UCD study finds no statistical difference btw textbooks and OER. Baseline result suggesting no negative impact.
what might be most notable about the OER adoption was its use as a catalyst fordeeper pedagogical change and professional growth.
Another reason for admin. to support shift toward OER.
students that had been taught by the same teacher
Even when taught by same instructor!
only 7 % of that group were ‘very familiar’ with open accesstextbooks, while 52 % were ‘not at all familiar’ with open access textbooks’
Check this against our faculty.
‘only 18 % of thestudents reported that they frequently or always read before coming to class. In contrast,53 % reported that they never or rarely read the textbook before coming to class
This is good additional info above and beyond the question of whether students buy the assigned textbook.
keep accessibility top of mind
I'm not even really sure what this entails. Are we saying "don't even bother thinking about creating an open textbook until you're a master of UDL." Seems like a bit of a barrier to entry/participation.
Might be a more effective carrot than a stick. Something like, "hey, there are people here who speak UDL, so if you're a subject matter expert or a pedagogy person maybe it makes sense to team up." So far I'm not hearing so much of that at Rebus. I'm hearing more "these are our priorities and they should be yours too."
Adapt or remix OERs with your students.
Begin by having them respond to the readings and mind the gaps. Also maybe by having them vote on the effectiveness of readings, relevance to course material, ease of understanding, etc.
we more readily attribute their inability to complete assigned readings to laziness and entitlement than to unaffordability
Or hunger, or working full-time.
focus on collaboration, connection, diversity, democracy, and critical assessments of educational tools and structures
Also critical assessments of authority structures, truth claims, value judgments...
free of charge and free of licensing restrictions
Are there any examples currently where something is not free of charge but is free of licensing restrictions?
agreement template
Adding to course materials in summer & fall classes
do you have access to their US History book
I just looked at a few sections of it that apply to what I'm doing currently in my US I course. It's basically the Openstax textbook.
faculty can and do customize with proprietary content all the time, and that anyone who believes the only way to do this is with OER is fooling themselves.
Yeah, and people regularly compile copyrighted material inside a course shell and cite "fair use" but that doesn't mean this is the desired outcome. It's what we have to do when free remixing isn't an option. So it's less something to celebrate as something to evolve beyond.
How much is professional curation—in the form of scope and sequence—worth?
Two questions re: that: How much more is the authoritative expert's professional curation supposed by the publisher to be worth? Eminent historians writing textbooks. Second, how much of that activity aggregates the work of instructors -- or in other words, replaces that work? Should we have minimum wage instructors in the future using super-value-added digital texts? Why not just eliminate instructors and engage students directly with textbook companies?
Who is eating whose lunch, actually?
formative assessments, student and instructor dashboards, nudges and reminders, and maybe adaptive capabilities
This is the transition from print to digital being reproduced in a more expensive print book. How long can that last?
used books
This is not entirely two sides of same coin. But it does emphasize the question about what additional value is the new version of the textbook bringing.
Faculty members are increasingly interested in open access publication models. Approximately 64%
Growing dissatisfaction with a subscription-based publication model with "scholarly research outputs" freely available to public.
different value proposition
How are my lectures different from a Wikipedia entry? It's not just bundling with assessments etc. How much of this bundling is a distraction? A technological solution seeking a problem to solve?
pipes
Maybe flow and pipes is a good way to think about higher ed in a digital world?
platform is proprietary
People do need to be paid for their work. Use this idea in HighTech class and compare to Jaron Lanier.
transformative labor
I'm concerned that my work is going to be aggregated in a paywall-protected anthology whose value-add is simply the act of aggregation or, now that I think of it, the claim that value can only be gained from it if it is consumed in a particular way. That is, in a for-credit course in a degree-granting institution.
How quickly does this become a discussion about what the academy does. I agree with Steel in the sense that I believe the experience of studying text A or historical event B with me is different from just reading about it on one's own. But how much of that extra value resides in what I bring to the vs. the fact that in order to get a grade and Lib Ed credit, the student has to do the work in my class?
Scalar is a more comprehensive multimodal publishing platform
I just watched the Scalar video and my brain sorta exploded. Will definitely have to return there and explore it a bit more...
Douglas Engelbart’s 1962 essay “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework”
Also good background for HighTech course, but it's too long and although it's online, it's also copyright protected. But at least it's not behind a paywall.
Vannevar Bush’s hypothetical “memex,” described in “As We May Think”
Add to High Tech course reading list, after having them turn on Hypothes.is
Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
Add this to History of High Tech course reading list too.
digital writing practices might facilitate annotation as a form of “student protest,” a component of Ira Shor’s “empowered” classroom
These are both interesting threads to follow. Hypothes.is breadcrumb trails could be used by students (and we're all students) to identify sources that can later be pulled together into syntheses. It could also be used by instructors to track this work by students...
sources become “reified as objects”
This also happens in course readers that excerpt the "important bits" from longer texts.
students virtually never summarize entire sources but rather pluck individual sentences out of them for quotation or paraphrase
Is this an issue if the student has used the idea cited appropriately? As long as they're not taken out of context, we don't expect an authority to be entirely consistent, and we don't insist that they agree with us on everything in order to consider a point valid, do we?
Minnesota State
If you are using this hub I'd appreciate it if you would drop me a line at dan.allosso@bemidjistate.edu . I'm trying to see if this will be a spot we can get going again for collaboration across the system. Thanks! --Dan
CC Pukeko
This is a nice, short animated video covering not only the basics of CC licenses but also the institutional arrangements in New Zealand supporting CC authoring and use. It got me thinking about investigating organizational issues at my university that might help or impede CC and OER adoption.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
I'd like to understand a little better how accessibility relates particularly to the topic at hand? Moreso, for instance, than to traditionally-copyrighted materials? This guideline document is quite elaborate and to be honest, I looked at it for a few minutes and then sort-of backed away, shaking my head. I believe thinking about the usability of things we create with open licensing is important, but to be honest this is more than I'd be comfortable trying to consider when creating new OER. My suggestion, I guess, would be to find somebody to translate this legalese into simple language and straightforward guidelines (as the CC organization has done for CC).
Creating Open Educational Resources
Don't miss the menu bar at the top with links to additional resources, examples, and search tools. Although designed for UCB people, this is great info useful beyond the Vancouver campus. It's worthwhile to back out to the main page (https://open.ubc.ca/ ) and explore from there.
Public Domain Review
The interface takes a bit of time getting used to, and isn't precisely suited to finding exactly what you're looking for. On the other hand, searches often return VERY interesting material you didn't know you were looking for, which can be quite helpful.
Enclosure Wikipedia Article
The article is relevant and useful as far as it goes, but a slightly more contemporary example might be the shift from ideas of common use and private ownership in America illustrated by the “enclosure” of the Merrimack River by the Boston Manufacturing Company which dominated the textile industry in Lowell and Lawrence in the 19th century. This shift is described in Ted Steinberg’s book Nature Incorporated and I talk about it in my OER Environmental History Text I’m developing on Pressbooks. I’ll add a link later, when the text is complete.