more general purpose skills such as problem solving skills, creativity, social skills, and emotional intelligence.
Mostly, these are called 21st Century Skills - right? So, these are the skills of the knowledge economy. The U.S. has (or is in the sunset) of transitioning out of a hands-economy (manufacturing). Peter Drucker's ideas from the 70s announced this.
knowledge work will continue to accelerate and become widely deployed and adopted.
A conversation about the definition of knowledge might be useful. How does a room full of educators (or people working in higher education) define knowledge? Should we be thinking of expanding that definition - given that we're on the precipice of an explosion of cognitive computing?
llow workers to focus on the human aspects of work
In this sense, we're re-defining knowledge. It's no longer simply information in one's head. Knowledge is performative; it's what one can do, not what one can remember.
Today there is a new focus on the “people aspects” of work
This also connects with "Project Oxygen." Also, it's aligned with the overall thinking that current higher education fetishizes content. What's more important - a growth mindset or being able to explain why a volcano erupts? Currently, higher ed prioritizes the later in this example. Maybe we should re-prioritize?
Continuing students down 3% from budget in part due to lower retention of Pathways students -an area of immediate focus
What's Pathways Fall-to-Fall retention and it's first quarter to second quarter?
respond to each other's annotations
Responding to others annotations has a lot of pedagogical value. Discourse - both dialect and dialogic - occurs. At this point, the text becomes a platform for social learning.
"Hearing" (or reading) another person's perspective on a particular topic is the hallmark of education.
When reading others' annotations, my experience is deepened, since I'm exposed to other points of view.
I like to buy used books where the previous reader has annotated the pages.
I can remember my grade school teachers harping on me about interrogating the text by making notes. I find that when I annotate when I read, I'm more engaged.
But not all discussions are as simple as described. In some discussions, the instructor asks provocative questions to spawn a discussion where multiple points of view are expressed.
A social learning analytics perspective offers the possibility of harnessing these methods and understandings in order to provide analytics and representations that can help learners to develop their conversations into reasoned arguments and educational dialogue.
Discourse analysis for educational purposes is extremely interesting and certainly helps make the invisible more visible to the learner. After rendering a learner's outputs more visible, what's the next step - from a pedagogical standpoint? Reflection? Activating the learner's metacognition?
It is succinctly expressed by Seely Brown and Adler (2008) as being “based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions.”
Isn't this because meaning is situated and information doesn't have indexical meaning but is chameleon-like and shifts as a result of the situation and its participants?
An example of this is Gee’s “affinity spaces,” which provide a model for online social learning and were first identified in video gaming environments.
Gee's ideas about "affinity spaces" are interesting for many reasons, but I'm curious how SLA can optimize the learning situation in an affinity space. Is the goal of SLA to funnel learners to affinity spaces that the learner might be interested in participating, or is the goal to optimize a learners participation in an affinity space, or both? I suspect both but I'd be curious to hear about ways these actions are currently being executed with SLA.
n extension of educational opportunities, and a “responsibility to realise a cosmopolitan understanding of universal rights and acting on that understanding to effect a greater sense of community”
This definition of knowledge-age skills reminds me of the articles previous call for social learning analytics to facilitate the expansion of the learner's network.
engaged in social activity, either interacting directly with others (for example, messaging, friending or following), or using platforms in which their activity traces will be experienced by others (for example, publishing, searching, tagging or rating).
In this way, the pedagogical goal (i.e. the process) is facilitate the expansion of a learner's social network and promote engaging with that network.
ignals project at Purdue University
Here's a video explaining Course Signals - it's student-facing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BI9E7qP9jA
pedagogy, theory, learning or teaching (Ferguson, 2012
This article which Buckingham Shum is a contributor is useful. It was published in 2014, a couple years after this article. file:///Users/ryanbartelmay/Downloads/3538-16882-3-PB%20(2).pdf
we are replacing the tyranny of experts with the tyranny of idiots.
Doesn't the availability and accessibility allow for unique paths to expertise? Perviously, the institutions and the experts themselves acted as gatekeepers. I'm not sure there's "tyranny of idiots" - just a noisier environment. #LASI18SMM
adding richness and wider perspectives to learning.
That "richness," in my opinion, is created by the authenticity of the activity. When a learner's knowledge artifacts are available for public access, the accountability is elevated. #LASI18SMM
ollowing skills
What about 'writing' and 'reading,' which are fundamental to social media engagement? Perhaps, these skills are too elementary, but without them, especially writing skills, one's engagement is limited. #LASI18SMM