FCN News 21 Feb 97

Don't read this by e-mail! Instead, read the hypertext version of this newsletter: <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/current.html>. Contents:

Upcoming Events

Local events of particular interest to FCN members (see also upcoming conferences below):

Also, consider these workshops selected from the Library's Internet Curriculum schedule for Winter 1997. The full schedule, with additional details, is available at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/instruct/internet.html>.

Seen on (and about) the Net

Alta Vista Enhances Search Procedures. Digital's Alta Vista search engine has added an enhancement that categorizes Web search results. By clicking on a button, LiveTopics organizes pages with similar content into groups, bringing structure and meaning to the process. The LiveTopics software creates its topics dynamically using statistical analysis, rather than relying on a group of predefined categories. The beta version is available at: <http://altavista.digital.com/> [InfoWorld Electric 13 Feb 97]

"The newest endowed chair at Stanford University comes with its own built-in exclamation point. The founders of Yahoo! Inc., the first comprehensive on-line guide to the Internet, are donating $2-million to endow the Yahoo! Founders Chair in the university's School of Engineering." [From Academe Today, 2/18/97]

Asynchronous learning networks: The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) and the ALN Magazine are new online publications devoted to the study of distance ed via networked content delivery and communications. Visit the ALN web site at <http://www.aln.org/>.

Ban that Classroom

EXPERIMENT SHOWS STUDENTS DO BETTER ONLINE

A sociology professor at California State University at Northridge conducted his own experiment to test online learning, randomly dividing his statistics class in half, and teaching one half by lecture and the other half by Web assignments, online discussion groups and e-mail. The students who'd been banned from the physical classroom scored an average of 20% higher than those who'd attended in-person. "The motivation for doing this was to provide some hard, experimental evidence that didn't seem to exist anywhere," says the prof, who plans to expand his research to determine whether the online students performed better because they spent more time collaborating with their classmates, or because of the online format of the class. [Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 Feb 97]

Conferences and Workshops, Real and Virtual

This is a selected and somewhat idiosyncratic list of upcoming conferences relevant to educational tech., both "virtual" (online) and traditional. For conferences that require physical travel, my emphasis is on conferences in the Northwest and on those I find personally interesting. The Educom and CAUSE calendars, <http://educom.edu/web/calendar/calendarHome.html> and <http://cause-www.colorado.edu/information-resources/events.html>, contain a more extensive list of mainstream conferences. Virtual conferences and tutorials:

Traditional conferences and workshops:

The Lighter Side

Godwin's Law

prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.

If one cites Godwin's Law as part of a USEnet discussion, is this an instance of the law that automatically implies that the citer has lost the argument?

Administrativa

The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately) twice a month. If you have materials for inclusion in the newsletter you can send them to <mailto:jqj@darkwing>. This newsletter (as well as other FCN-related material) is available on line in <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/>.