Research

As I’ve been (re-)reading OER adoption research through a more critical lens I’m seeing a recurring pattern of significant threats to validity in the designs of studies purporting to measure the impact of OER adoption on student outcomes. While there are numerous methodological issues to consider, in this essay I’ll discuss three. Specifically, I’ll share: three questions you should ask when you read research about the impact of OER adoption on student outcomes, the reasons why you should care about the answers to those questions, and the questions the study is really addressing when the answer to any of the three questions is “no.” Three questions to ask when you read research on the impact of OER adoption Ask yourself these three questions when you read OER adoption research - especially research that claims to find a positive impact on student outcomes. ...

One of the main concerns about generative AI is “cheating,” or students getting credit for work they didn’t do. This is actually a problem that collaborative learning has been grappling with for decades. In fact, if you think of generative AI as a collaborator in a group project, there’s actually quite a lot of existing practice and literature we can tap into for guidance about using generative AI effectively in the service of learning - both in how students learn and how instructors assess. ...

The journal Nature, and all other Springer Nature titles, have updated their Guide to Authors with rules for using LLMs like ChatGPT when writing research articles for the publication. To summarize, the rules say: 1. DO NOT list the LLM as an author, and 2. DO describe how you used the LLM in a Methods, Acknowledgments, or other appropriate section. With a journal as prestigious as Nature having established formal guidelines, I expect other journals will adopt similar rules relatively quickly. ...

Treadmills are iconic pieces of exercise equipment for the wrong reason. They’re famous primarily for sitting unused in basements and spare bedrooms all across the country. These treadmills go unused despite having some pretty sophisticated features, including embedded video trainers who talk to you during your workout, realistic imagery of running routes, automated speed and incline adjustment to match the imagery you’re seeing, and even a “cruise control for your heart” that monitors your heart’s beats per minute and adjusts the difficulty of your run in real-time to keep you in your target heart-rate zone throughout your workout. However, all the amazing features in the world can’t improve your fitness level if you never get on the treadmill and use them, which apparently many owners don’t. ...

[caption id=“attachment_7070” align=“alignright” width=“167”] https://cheezburger.com/8016802816.[/caption] Do you know the #nailedit meme? In its most common form: Someone sees a recipe or craft online. They try to recreate it. Things go terribly, comically wrong. They graciously post the results online, allowing us all to take joy in the degree to which they absolutely #nailedit. Part of what makes these memes great is that they’re so relatable. Everyone has been there - faithfully (we believe) following a recipe or other set of instructions (looking at you, Ikea), only to have things go horribly wrong. It really can be difficult to get the desired results even when you’re following a step-by-step recipe with illustrations. ...

I’ve been writing this article 30 minutes here and 60 minutes there for several months (Wordpress tells me I saved the first bits in March). I’ve probably deleted more than is left over. It’s time to click Publish and move on. This article started out with my being bothered by the fact that ‘OER adoption reliably saves students money but does not reliably improve their outcomes.’ For many years OER advocates have told faculty, “When you adopt OER your students save money and get the same or better outcomes!” That claim is fine enough if your primary purpose is saving students money (which feels like the direction that OER and ZTC degree advocates have been moving for some time now, and explains why I don’t feel like I’m part of that community any more). But if your primary purpose is improving student outcomes, the shrugging “sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t” uncertainty is utterly unacceptable. So I’ve been thinking more than I’d care to admit about the relationship between OER and improving student outcomes. This thinking, with all the benefit that hindsight affords, doesn’t always reflect well on some of my earlier research. But that’s no reason not to share it. ...

Curt Bonk and I recently published a Preface for a special issue of ETR&D on Systematic Reviews of Research on Learning Environments and Technologies. It is largely a collection of personal stories and reflections about the arc of learning technologies over the last 30 years. However, we close with some advice which I believe to be profoundly important for everyone working in and around the learning technologies field, include open advocates. ...

The most recent issue of IRRODL included an article titled Effectiveness of OER Use in First-Year Higher Education Students’ Mathematical Course Performance: A Case Study, by Juan I. Venegas-Muggli and Werner Westermann. Quoting from the article: The main aims of this research were to examine the effect of OER use among higher education students and to analyze teacher and student views on OER use in order to better understand how these resources are used and valued. This was justified by the fact that there is a lack of empirical evidence to support expanding the use of OER. Moreover, recent societal demands to improve education quality in Chile have made this a relevant case study environment in which to examine the potentials of OER. ...

At the OpenEd Conference in 2013, Nicole Allen and I challenged the OER community to save students one billion dollars. Five years later, SPARC have collected a significant amount of data in order to answer the question of whether or not we have achieved that goal. You can read more about the data collection methodology and their ongoing work on this question here. SPARC have made the data available under the CC0 dedication and you can download them here. ...

During his 2016 State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Vice President Biden to lead a new, national “Moonshot” initiative to eliminate cancer as we know it. Today, the White House is announcing a new $1 billion initiative to jumpstart this work. (fact sheet) The country - the world, really - is fighting the war against cancer with both hands tied behind its back. This work is quintessentially cutting-edge science, and the lifeblood of work in any advanced scientific field is research. Cutting off access to research results - either the seminal (foundational) research or the very latest findings published earlier this morning - is a certain way to kill this kind of endeavor. When researchers, scientists, and others working on a project can’t find out was has already been tried, what has been proven to work, and what has already been shown to fail, they are doomed to spin frenetically in an eddy of frustrated impotence, forever. ...