[ ](http://dicepool.com/catalog/quiz.php) Take the quiz at dicepool.com Absolutely hysterical. Best quiz I’ve taken forever. From the excellent explanations at the end of the quiz: _This survey is completely scientific. Despite the mind-boggling complexity of mankind, the billions of distinctly different personalities found on Earth can easily be divided into seven simple categories that correspond to the five Platonic solids, a pseudo polyhedron, and whatever the hell a d100 is. The results of this quiz should be considered not only meaningful but also infallible, and pertinent to your success as a fully realized individual. If you feel the results of this examination do not match your perceived personality, you should take whatever drastic measures are needed to cram your superego back into proper alignment, as described by the quiz results. ...

It’s been too long since I’ve blown off some ID-related steam. The claim of pedagogy-neutrality in standards an interesting issue. As I have said many times, I believe that the term “pedagogy-neutral” is not adequately descriptive, and instead the term “pedagogy-agnostic” should always be used. I purposely choose “agnostic” because of its religious implications: a pedagogy-agnostic standard “doesn’t know if there’s a pedagogy or not.” In other words, it is impossible to design a language which allows the expression of *any* pedagogy without simultaneously allowing the expression of *no* pedagogy. ...

Well, the new theme has been checked in (as have a host of backend authoring improvements to eduCommons itself), the collection has been moved onto the cluster, and Squid is caching happily away. USU OCW is now in the state it will be in for our formal launch. Come by and have a look if you still haven’t. We’d love your feedback.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OpenCourseWare. This in addition to OpenCourseWare-esque projects at Utah State University, MIT, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, and Foothill De-Anza.

So Bekir Gur and I are working on this paper which applies Habermas’ critique of technology to copyright law and Lessig’s notion of “code as law.” I was going to send it to a friend to review, and then realized I should give it to the blogosphere to review! So, if you have trouble sleeping some night soon, take a look. ...

We haven’t officially launched the site yet, but the first eight courses in USU OpenCourseWare are now available. The official announcement will come after we clean a few non-course related things up (like the design of the front page). But I thought folks would like to know as soon as these courses became available…

A story in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education (paid registration required, ironically enough) discusses the growing momentum behind the OpenCourseWare movement, and the meeting at MIT two weeks ago. As described in the article, at this meeting several universities at varying levels of progress into their OCWs met to talk about best practices, building additional momentum behind the movement, etc. Attendees included reps from MIT, Utah State University, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Tufts, Michigan, the Universia consortium, the China Open Resources for Education consortium, and a new consortium of Japanese schools. Some other “name” schools who are dipping their toes in the pool were there are well. It’s nice to see the mainstream press following what we’re doing, even if they don’t completely “get it” yet.

A couple of times a year I update this page with longer pieces written as peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, or presentations. Enjoy! 2004 Scalability and Sociability in Online Learning Environments HTML Supporting Student Autonomy Online HTML Commentary on Downes’ Resource Profiles PDF IMS/SSP Comes So Close HTML 2003 A beginner’s guide to blogs. HTML OSOSS - Crisis / Response. HTML Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities. PDF A brief history of the blog. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF Keeping the Baby and the Bath Water. HTML 2002 Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online learning. Quarterly Review of Distance Education. (With Erin Brewer). PDF A proposed measure of discussion activity in threaded discussion spaces. Working Draft PDF Learning objects need instructional design theory. In A. Rossett (Ed.) The 2001/2002 ASTD Distance Learning Yearbook. New York: McGraw-Hill. PDF Learning objects – a definition. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF CAREER Grant - A mediated action study of learning object use in online learning communities. PDF The coming collision between the automated instruction and learning communities camps of online learning research. Working Draft DOC Component Display Theory. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF OpenCourseWare. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF A unified design framework for learning objects and educational discourse. PDF 2001 EduCommons. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF An empirical estimate of student growth in beginning music theory: Results and pedagogical implications. (With Leo Welch). PDF About the RLO strategy white paper. HTML Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition a metaphor, and a taxonomy. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. DOC “Web-based instruction” should never have happened (oh, never mind - it’s dead anyway). Tech Trends PDF What is the Internet ran like the U.S. public education system. Tech Trends PDF The teacher’s outrageous claim to intellectual property. Tech Trends HTML Collaboratively filtering learning objects. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Walker). DOC A non-authoritative educational metadata ontology for filtering and recommending learning objects. Journal of Interactive Learning Environments. The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. (With Mimi Recker). PDF 2000 In defense of the by-hand assembly of learning objects. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF A reformulation of learning object granularity. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF An exploratory study of the statistical and educational implications of violations of the assumptions of parametric analysis techniques. (With Vic Bunderson and Jim Olsen). PDF When worlds collide. PDF Learning object design and sequencing theory. Dissertation PDF Getting students interested: An integrated approach to Keller’s ARCS model of motivational design. Instructional Design Project PDF Structured metadata spaces. Journal of Internet Cataloging. 3(2/3), pp. 263 - 277. Binghamton, NY: Haworth. (With Tom Wason). PDF 1999 Three common properties of efficient online instructional support systems. ALN Magazine. (With Joe South, Julene Bassett, Laurie Nelson, Larry Seawright, Trent Peterson, and David Monson). HTML The post-LEGO learning object. PDF So what do I do with a learning object?. PDF Metadata mall. HTML Dynamic directory structures. PDF An intelligent method for searching metadata spaces. Epistemology Course Final Paper PDF My, what an intelligent tool you have!. IMS White Paper HTML Why semantic structures?. IMS White Paper HTML 1998 Towards a definition of fundamentality. HTML It’s… fundamentality 2.0!. HTML Iterative formation of learning environments based on self-similar primedial objects (for dummies). (With Laurie Nelson, David Monson, and Joe South). HTML

Jumping in with both feet here. (I suppose moving the DNS pointer is like burning your ships when you make landfall.) I have abandoned Plone (which is a great tool for things like eduCommons but just too heavy for my personal website needs) for a combination of wordpress, mediawiki, and other tools. Everything should be reappearing shortly – some of it even where you expect it. We apologize for the interruption.

The call for papers for the 16th annual Instructional Technology Institute is now available online at http://itinstitute.usu.edu/. This year’s program is titled “Reusable media, social software, and openness in education.” Keynote speakers include Larry Lessig, Stephen Downes, and Paul Kirscher. If you’re faculty or a government employee, registration is only $135 for the three day conference, which includes meals! Please spread the word and I hope to see you at the conference in September!