If you think it’s important to quote something, an excellent rule of thumb is that for every line you quote, you should have at least two lines analyzing it.
DO NOT USE DIRECT QUOTES From Published Material: In 99.99% of the cases, the information you want from a research article is an objective result or interpretation. How the author stated this information, i.e., their prose, is of little importance compared to the results or interpretations themselves. Take the information and put it into your own words; avoid paraphrasing since this can potentially lead to plagiarism.
Quote no more material than is necessary; if a short phrase from a source will suffice, don’t quote an entire paragraph
Use quotes that will have the most rhetorical, argumentative impact in your paper; too many direct quotes from sources may weaken your credibility, as though you have nothing to say yourself, and will certainly interfere with your style
Revenues for self-paced e-learning in 2016 are heavily concentrated in two countries — the United States and China. The growth rate in the U.S. is at -5.3 percent, representing a $4.9 billion drop in revenues by 2021, while in China, the rate is at -8.8 percent, representing a $1.9 billion drop by 2021. The e-learning market in China has deteriorated rapidly in just the last 18 months, the report said.
Of the 122 countries tracked by Ambient Insight, 15 have growth rates for self-paced e-learning over 15 percent during the next five years. These countries are heavily concentrated in Asia and Africa, with the two outliers being Slovakia and Lithuania.
Eleven of the top 15 growth countries will generate less than $20 million by 2021. Of the top 15, Slovakia and Lithuania are anticipated to generate the highest revenues for self-paced products by 2021, at $55.4 million and $36.5 million, respectively.
The growth rates are negative in every region except Africa, where the growth is flat at 0.9 percent. The steepest declines are in Asia and Latin America at -11.7 percent and -10.8 percent, respectively. The economic meltdowns in Brazil and Venezuela are major inhibitors in Latin America.
There are 77 countries with flat-to-negative growth rates. The countries with the lowest growth rates are Yemen (-18.7 percent), Brazil (-19.8 percent), Qatar (-23.5 percent) and Venezuela (-26.8 percent).
Self-paced e-learning products include online courses, managed education services, managed training, e-books and learning management systems, according to the report. The author does not consider mobile and game-based learning, which are growing, to be in the self-paced e-learning category.
The news on the self-paced e-learning industry is so bad, Ambient Insight will no longer publish commercial syndicated reports on the industry, the firm says on its website and in the report.
VR’s applications for education have been much lauded, and tech heavyweights have begun investing in the technology, in part to both enable and capitalize on educational opportunities. Google, for example, has been offering its low-cost Google Cardboard kits, which, coupled with the Google Expeditions service, provides VR-based educational experiences and learning activities.
according to market research firm ABI Research, some 6 million consumer and prosumer cameras are expected to ship by 2021. (That’s out of a total of 70 million VR devices that are forecast to ship by then.)
Call for Papers The Journal of Emerging Learning Design special issue: The Digital Humanities
Submissions due date
On/before November 14, 2016.
Editors Jerry Alan Fails (Boise State University) and AJ Kelton (Montclair State University)
Introduction The Journal of Emerging Learning Design is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for its first Special Issue: The Digital Humanities.
With roots reaching back as far as 1940, the term Digital Humanities came into wide usage in late 2012 and has slowly risen in popularity since then. A Google Scholar search for “digital humanities” yields just under 30 results during the year 2000 and over 4,700 during 2015. The increase in the number of published articles in 15 years is second only to the diversity of the research that is included.
About the ELDj
The Journal of Emerging Learning Design (ELDj) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that provides a platform for academics and practitioners to explore emerging learning design theories, concepts, and issues and their implications at national and international levels.
An outgrowth of the annual Emerging Learning Design Conference, which makes its home at Montclair State University (MSU), the ELDj invites scholarly communication in the emerging learning design field and will present best practices in design and implementation by offering articles that present, propose, or review engaging and dynamic approaches to pedagogy and how technology can better enhance it.
The ELDj has purposefully kept the focus of the theme for this special issue broad. The intent is to continue to break down traditional academic silos and allow for an open dialogue and sharing with respect to what is considered the Digital Humanities. ELDj is intentionally taking a broad consideration for what is included in the digital humanities with the clear understanding that this issue, and the articles within, will contribute to this growing field and provide a groundwork for further reflection and research.
Timeline
Deadline for Submission: November 14, 2016
Notification of Acceptance: March 1st, 2017
Final Revised Submission: April 21, 2017
Publication: June 2, 2017
Publication and Presentation
The issue will be published prior to, and featured at, the 7th Annual Emerging Learning Design Conference (ELDc17) on June 2nd, 2017.
Based on when a submission is accepted, authors may be offered the opportunity to present their research at the 7th Annual Emerging Learning Design Conference in June, 2017. Presentations must be given in an appropriate presentation format for the conference: panel (full conference audience), workshop (120 minutes), concurrent (45 minutes), or Sparks! (5 minutes to full conference audience).
Submission Details
Manuscripts should be the appropriate length for the material being presented.
Full paper manuscripts can vary from 2500-4500 words in addition to an abstract of 250 words and a works cited section of appropriate length.
Briefs or Trends papers have a limit of 1000 words.
A description of each type of submission and guidelines can be found at http://eldj.montclair.edu/submission-guidelines/ELDj uses a double-blind, peer-review process. Submissions should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors should review the above linked guidelines for important and relevant information.
Submissions should be sent to eldj@mail.montclair.edu: questions and information requests may be sent to the Editors at the same address.
++++++++++++++++++
more on digital humanities and publications for digital humanities in this IMS blog
4-week eCourse Beginning Monday, September 12, 2016
E-government tools and resources bring many people to your library for such activities as filing and paying taxes online, locating Medicare/Medicaid providers and reviews, checking student loan status, tracking regulatory changes for industries, monitoring ongoing legislation as well as codified law and court rulings, and much more. This hands-on eCourse also explores the information published online by the U. S. federal government through the Government Printing Office and specific agencies and government branches.
Experienced online instructor and consultant Diane Kovacs covers the best sites to begin researching for government information in general and specifically for business, healthcare, genealogy, history, current government, legal, regulatory, taxes, retirement, insurance, and state and local government information.
Beyond social media, there is also a clear disconnect between how college admins reach out to their students and what students actually pay attention to. While the average college admin, like most adults, is used to reading and sending emails, students are quickly moving away from using email in their daily lives and getting them to check it regularly is painful.
A fantastic New York Times article in the fall examined college student use of technology and the results were fascinating.
While some faculty members are hesitant to contact students on whichever social media platform is in vogue, others have explored texting as an alternative to email.
The paper, which is being presented at next month’s Information and Telecommunications Education and Research Association conference, also recommends colleges should consider using texting and social media platforms to reach students. However, the findings still suggest email can be an effective method of communication.
How Millennials use and control social media, Published
———————-
Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty ;
Yochai Benklerexplains: “The various formats of the networked public sphere provide anyone with an outlet to speak, to inquire, to investigate, without need to access the resources of a major media organization.”
Democratic bodies are typically elected in periods of three to five years, yet citizen opinions seem to fluctuate daily and sometimes these mood swings grow to enormous proportions. When thousands of people all start tweeting about the same subject on the same day, you know that something is up. With so much dynamic and salient political diversity in the electorate, how can policy-makers ever reach a consensus that could satisfy everyone?
At the same time, it would be a grave mistake to discount the voices of the internet as something that has no connection to real political situations.
What happened in the UK was not only a political disaster, but also a vivid example of what happens when you combine the uncontrollable power of the internet with a lingering visceral feeling that ordinary people have lost control of the politics that shape their lives.
Polarization as a driver of populism
People who have long entertained right-wing populist ideas, but were never confident enough to voice them openly, are now in a position to connect to like-minded others online and use the internet as a megaphone for their opinions.
The resulting echo chambers tend to amplify and reinforce our existing opinions, which is dysfunctional for a healthy democratic discourse. And while social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter generally have the power to expose us to politically diverse opinions, research suggests that the filter bubbles they sometimes create are, in fact, exacerbated by the platforms’ personalization algorithms, which are based on our social networks and our previously expressed ideas. This means that instead of creating an ideal type of a digitally mediated “public agora”, which would allow citizens to voice their concerns and share their hopes, the internet has actually increased conflict and ideological segregation between opposing views, granting a disproportionate amount of clout to the most extreme opinions.
The disintegration of the general will
In political philosophy, the very idea of democracy is based on the principal of the general will, which was proposed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century. Rousseau envisioned that a society needs to be governed by a democratic body that acts according to the imperative will of the people as a whole.
There can be no doubt that a new form of digitally mediated politics is a crucial component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: the internet is already used for bottom-up agenda-setting, empowering citizens to speak up in a networked public sphere, and pushing the boundaries of the size, sophistication and scope of collective action. In particular, social media has changed the nature of political campaigning and will continue to play an important role in future elections and political campaigns around the world.
++++++++++++++
more on the impact of technology on democracy in this IMS blog:
Cheating remains a stubborn problem at many schools. According to the Educational Testing Service and the Ad Council, who define cheating as “representing someone else’s work as your own,” cheating tends to start in junior high, peak in high school, and occur most often in math and science classes. Men and women cheat in equal measure, both sexes aided by the ubiquity of computers and the internet, and most cheaters aren’t caught. Both high- and low-achieving students find ways to misrepresent their work, explaining away their misconduct with familiar rationalizations: everybody does it, it’s a victimless crime, and getting the grade matters more.
while few cheat a lot—20 of the 40,000 involved in the experiments—many more—about 28,000—cheated a little bit. Most everyone has what he calls a “personal fudge factor” that allows for just a little dishonesty, provided that the conditions are right. For example, if people see others cheating without consequence, they’re more apt to do the same; social norms permit it. If cheating seems to benefit a “good cause,” even more feel comfortable deceiving.
+++++++++++++++++
more on cheating and academic dishonesty in this IMS blog
In an address to the VRX conference in San Francisco, noted game developer and tech wizard, Jesse Schell predicted that over 8 million VR gamer headsets will be sold in 2016. Facebook purchased Oculus Rift, presumably laying the groundwork for a future where friends and family will interact in rich virtual spaces. All the major players, including Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Google and an HTC and Valve partnership are jostling for the consumer headset market.
Experimenting with VR in his classes as part of a project piloted by Seattle-based foundry10, a privately funded research organization that creates partnerships with educators to implement, research and explore the various intersections of emerging technologies and learning, including VR..
As an educational tool, VR might prove transformative. Google Expeditions allows students to take over 100 virtual journeys from ancient Rome to the surface of Mars. It might also have a big impact on social emotional learning (SEL), as VR’s unique ability to produce empathy recently led Wired magazine to explore its potential as “the ultimate empathy machine”. Addressing a persistent anxiety, Suter used Samsung Gear’s Public Speaking Simulator to successfully prepare a few nervous students for class presentations, reporting they felt “much more calm” during the live delivery.
Ethical Considerations
In a recently published article, researchers Michael Madary and Thomas K. Metzinger from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany review a series of ethical considerations when implementing VR. The illusion of embodiment may provide VR’s greatest value to education, but also lies at the heart of its ethical implementation. Madary and Metzinger believe that VR is not just an evolution from television and video game screens, but a revolution that will have an enormous social impact. In their paper, they claim that:
VR technology will eventually change not only our general image of humanity but also our understanding of deeply entrenched notions, such as “conscious experience,” “selfhood,” “authenticity,” or “realness.”
It’s important to remember that many current VR uses in schools, like Google Expeditions, are not interactive VR, but simply 360-degree video experiences. In these cases, students experience immersive 3D pictures or panoramas, but do not deeply interact with the content. The illusion of embodiment is a product of interactive content and motion tracking, where users can alter and affect their environment and engage with others who share their virtual space. Headsets like the Vive and Occulus Rift fall under this latter category, but it won’t be long before most, if not all, consumer oriented VR technology will be completely immersive and interactive.
1. Long-Term Effects and Prolonged Exposure
2. The Impact of Environment on Agency and Behavior
3. Aggravating Preexisting Psychological or Emotional Issues
4. (Un)Reality and Diminished Real World Interactions
The deadline for proposals has been extended to September 9th, 2016. Thank you.
THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR LIBRARIANS, LIBRARIES, AND LIBRARIANSHIP
The redefinition of humanities scholarship has received major attention in higher education over the past few years. The advent of digital humanities has challenged many aspects of academic librarianship. With the acknowledgement that librarians must be a necessary part of this scholarly conversation, the challenges facing subject/liaison librarians, technical service librarians, and library administrators are many. Developing the knowledge base of digital tools, establishing best procedures and practices, understanding humanities scholarship, managing data through the research lifecycle, teaching literacies (information, data, visual) beyond the one-shot class, renegotiating the traditional librarian/faculty relationship as ‘service orientated,’ and the willingness of library and institutional administrators to allocate scarce resources to digital humanities projects while balancing the mission and priorities of their institutions are just some of the issues facing librarians as they reinvent themselves in the digital humanities sphere.
College & Undergraduate Libraries, a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis, invites proposals for articles to be published in the fall of 2017. The issue will be co-edited by Kevin Gunn (gunn@cua.edu) of the Catholic University of America and Jason Paul (pauljn@stolaf.edu) of St. Olaf College.
The issue will deal with the digital humanities in a very broad sense, with a major focus on their implications for the roles of academic librarians and libraries as well as on librarianship in general. Possible article topics include, but are not limited to, the following themes, issues, challenges, and criticism:
Developing the project development mindset in librarians
Creating new positions and/or cross-training issues for librarians
Librarian as: point-of-service agent, an ongoing consultant, or as an embedded project librarian
Developing managerial and technological competencies in librarians
Administration support (or not) for DH endeavors in libraries
Teaching DH with faculty to students (undergraduate and graduate) and faculty
Helping students working with data
Managing the DH products of the data life cycle
Issues surrounding humanities data collection development and management
Relationships of data curation and digital libraries in DH
Issues in curation, preservation, sustainability, and access of DH data, projects, and products
Linked data, open access, and libraries
Librarian and staff development for non-traditional roles
Teaching DH in academic libraries
Project collaboration efforts with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty
Data literacy for librarians
The lack of diversity of librarians and how it impacts DH development
Advocating and supporting DH across the institution
Developing institutional repositories for DH
Creating DH scholarship from the birth of digital objects
Consortial collaborations on DH projects
Establishing best practices for DH labs, networks, and services
Assessing, evaluating, and peer reviewing DH projects and librarians.
Articles may be theoretical or ideological discussions, case studies, best practices, research studies, and opinion pieces or position papers.
Proposals should consist of an abstract of up to 500 words and up to six keywords describing the article, together with complete author contact information. Articles should be in the range of 20 double-spaced pages in length. Please consult the following link that contains instructions for authors: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=wcul20&page=instructions#.V0DJWE0UUdU.
Please submit proposals to Kevin Gunn (gunn@cua.edu) by September 9th, 2016; please do not use Scholar One for submitting proposals. First drafts of accepted proposals will be due by February 1, 2017 with the issue being published in the fall of 2017. Feel free to contact the editors with any questions that you may have.
++++++++++++++
more on digital humanities in this IMS blog:
