Today's Reading: Online Teaching Manifesto / Digital Capability / Open Access Journals / Transforming Assessment and Feedback

For those of you out there who have blogs AND actually regularly write on them, I salute you. Today I thought I would try a new strategy. Rather than think, interesting, I ought to write something about that too, and never getting around to it as usual, I am just going to point you to some things I think are worth reading.

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First up on my way to work this morning I read a thought provoking post from Jenny Mackness, reflecting on Uni of Edinburgh's update to their Manifesto for Teaching Online:

Great synthesis of Edinburgh Uni’s updated Manifesto for Teaching Online with relevant research https://t.co/swCPdGU9Do via @jennymackness

— Mary Loftus (@marloft) October 22, 2015

Next up Sheila McNeill (whose rants I always value) on digital capability:

A few thoughts aka mini rant from me on institutional digital capability https://t.co/RZcHpr0XZG

— Sheila MacNeill (@sheilmcn) October 22, 2015

Sheila's mention of the notion that "technology alone will somehow wave some magical digital fairy dust" particularly struck a chord with me.

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As it's Open Access Week there is a lot of discussion taking place around what we want from open access, and how maybe transforming the business model of commercial academic publishers to APC-based rather than subscription-based (but actually how about we pay both for now), is rather an impoverished (and impoverishing) goal. See for example, Opening Up Open Access: Moving beyond business models and towards cooperative, scholar-organized, open networks. Javiera Atenas has also posted regarding this, arguing that we should be selective about where we publish, and identify and praise honest and reliable journals in our respective disciplines:

Honest and reliable Open Access Journals in Open and Distance Education https://t.co/SvfD6wvmXw pic.twitter.com/LqvuhH9ira

— Javiera Atenas (@jatenas) October 21, 2015

And Robert Farrow has followed this up with a post asking what other journals we could add to the list:

Honest and reliable Open Access Journals in Open and Distance Education https://t.co/SOBcaQpOCq pic.twitter.com/TP6XZGby9F

— Dr. Robert Farrow (@philosopher1978) October 22, 2015

Replies welcomed by @jatenas and @philosopher1978.

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I am cheating by including this, because I haven't read that much of it yet, but some useful work-in-progress on Transforming Assessment and Feedback has emerged from the Jisc EMA Project that is definitely worth a look for anyone who is interested in assessment practices:

New Jisc guide 'Transforming assessment and feedback' available http://t.co/SdfWWfDIuj, feedback welcome #jiscexperts15 #jiscassess

— Lisa Gray (@ljanegray) October 14, 2015

They are looking for feedback on the guide which you can provide via this form.

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Anyway, I'd better get back to today's other reading, emails...