Group items tagged

"Today, it's in vogue to talk about how Slack is going to replace email. As someone who has seen this play out a dozen times now, let me give you a little spoiler: Slack is not going to replace email. But Slack isn't the problem here, either. It's just another communication tool. The problem of email overload is both ancient and persistent. If the problem were really with "email", then, presumably, one of the nine million email apps that dot the app-stores like mushrooms sprouting from a globe-spanning mycelium would have just solved it by now, and we could all move on with our lives. Instead, it is permanently in vogue1 to talk about how overloaded we all are. "

"Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) are seen to be, and are in fact designed to be, stand-alone online courses, their introduction to the higher education landscape has expanded the space of possibilities for blended course designs (those that combine online and face-to-face learning experiences). Instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, could MOOCs enhance those courses? This paper reports one such exploration, in which a Stanford University Machine Learning MOOC was integrated into a graduate course in machine learning at Vanderbilt University during the Fall 2012 semester. The blended course design, which leveraged a MOOC course and platform for lecturing, grading, and discussion, enabled the Vanderbilt instructor to lead an overload course in a topic much desired by students. The study shows that while students regarded some elements of the course positively, they had concerns about the coupling of online and in-class components of this particular blended course design. Analysis of student and instructor reflections on the course suggests dimensions for characterizing blended course designs that incorporate MOOCs, either in whole or in part. Given the reported challenges in this case study of integrating a MOOC in its entirety in an on-campus course, the paper advocates for more complex forms of blended learning in which course materials are drawn from multiple MOOCs, as well as from other online sources."

"And without a common language for describing what works and what doesn't, our work isn't being pushed or explored further. I see example after example appearing online, that people have clearly spent time and thought into making, which cover the same ground and also share the same mistakes. Experimentation is great if you're learning. If you're not, it's just expensive. The words we've been using so far, like "intuitive" and "immersive," are overloaded with meaning. Let's drop them. What are we really trying to say? By pulling these words apart, we may find more precise ways that pinpoint the different problems we are trying to solve. "

"This article surveys some of the ways in which early modern scholars responded to what they perceived as an overabundance of books. In addition to owning more books and applying selective judgment as well as renewed diligence to their reading and note-taking, scholars devised shortcuts, sometimes based on medieval antecedents. These shortcuts included the use of the alphabetical index, whether printed or handmade, to read a book in parts, and the use of reference books, amanuenses, abbreviations, or the cutting and pasting from printed or manuscript sources to save time and effort in note-taking. "

These people don't use/think about Twitter the way I use/think about Twitter.

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