A well-informed look at Open Education history

To make sense of our field, every now and then we need to step back and take an historical glimpse at how we’re going. If you don’t already do it, then when you scan the journal contents pages for historical contributions and meta analyses. In terms of the recent history of open education and the emergence of MOOCs, you won’t find a better summary than that by the inimitable Stephen Downes. Continue reading

Change of name

The alert reader (blithely assuming that there’s at least one) will have noticed a change of name for this blog, from the ODLAA President’s Occasional Blog (hence the ‘opob’ in the URL) to David’s Occasional Blog (how’s that for creativity!).

The simple reason is, unsurprisingly, that I am no longer President Continue reading

Academic promotion: through teaching or research? … plus Wikipedia misinformation!

First, apologies for the long title for this post – it didn’t start out that way, but as I was writing I came across a serious error in Wikipedia, a timely reminder to treat it with caution. And given my recent penchant for talking up matters wiki-related, I thought I’d better temper my enthusiasm and report my finding. Continue reading

Conference tales

Perusing the latest blockbuster issue of Distance Education (29, 1, 2008), the article by Don Bewley on the history of ASPESA (ODLAA’s predecessor) naturally caught my eye (and so it should – Som Naidu had flagged it with me!). Building on an earlier contribution by Alistair Inglis (Distance Education, 20, 1, 7-30, 1999), Don provides a special focus on the regional activities of ASPESA, in particular the South Pacific dimension.

What I found as I read through the article was that it rekindled memories of particular incidents and people associated with conferences. Continue reading