Stephen Downes

I'm sure a lot of the articles I've been reviewing for OLDaily are AI-authored, though it is getting increasingly difficult to tell. In a certain sense, it doesn't matter, because what I'm always interested in is whether the content is accurate, clearly expressed, and in some sense novel (by that, I mean 'novel to me', which leaves a lot of room for both humans and AIs). This article passes the test, though many readers won't like the message: "AI can already do social science research better than most professors... (and) The academic paper is a dead format walking." It's the same thing for academic papers as it is for software: we can produce a high-quality paper in a few minutes with AI. So why on earth would we pay any money for one? Now there's still a bit of a supply-chain issue: if the AI is to stay current it needs input from somewhere. But probably not from academic papers. Via Paul Prinsloo, who I can just envision walking around muttering to himself after reading this.

Ironically, I'm reading this the day after being interviewed about the origins of our connectivist MOOCs. Here's what Ruth Crick says, "We were asking people to make a fundamental shift in their mental model of what learning is. The dominant model - and it still exists everywhere - treats learning as the acquisition of content. You attend a course. You receive information. You are now 'trained.' Tick the box, move on. What we were describing was something categorically different. Learning as a dynamic, relational, embodied process — inseparable from identity, from purpose, from the quality of relationships." Ten years after our MOOC, it was still ten years ahead of its time. Via some post in LinkedIn that disappeared in an unasked-for LinkedIn refresh and is now impossible to find. Image: Learning Guild article on the same topic. I also like this 2019 image from Nick Shackleton-Jones. And of course my own classic.

Blackboard has emerged from bankruptcy, reports Phil Hill. "Court filings and company statements show a fundamentally reset organization: virtually no debt, $70 million in new financing, and Matt Pittinsky set to return as CEO once his non-compete and NDA obligations with competitor Instructure expire." Various assets were acquired by Ellucian and Encoura, with Anthology keeping the remainder. But as Hill notes, "Nexus and Oaktree now control the company. The board structure makes this clear: Nexus and Oaktree each designate multiple directors and together anchor the executive committee."

I have never understood the logic of responding to downturns with layoffs. It seems to me magical thinking to expect that earnings will increase when you reduce your productive capacity. It's like responding to being in debt by saying "I'm going to work less to cut back on expenses." Tim Bray cites 'the Kansas experiment' showing that tax cuts and government workforce reductions made it more difficult, not less difficult, to address financial issues. The same with companies. You have all this qualified staff and infrastructure just sitting there, and instead of figuring out how to make money with it, they just let it go. So wasteful. And now companies think they can cut their way to grown using AI. Now at this point it's still an experiment, the way Kansas was before they ruined it. But it's not just that that the experiment is likely to be a failure, it's that with AI they could have (say) doubled their capacity, and they chose to just lay off half their staff instead.

The AI skill people are lacking, says Sean Stowers, is 'discernment', "the ability to decide whether AI belongs in a given task, which tool fits the situation, what good output actually looks like in your specific context, and when the situation calls for your own expertise instead." He cites 'Learning & AI strategist' David Chestnut, who writes that people focus on skills rather than behaviour change. "People can understand AI, relate to it differently, and still revert to old ways of working. Not because they don't get it - but because behavior change has always been hard." None of this is wrong per se but it's too narrow (and people, are talking about it). It's more than behaviour change, more than 'get on board with the new strategy', more than just 'hard'. It's like they're suggesting people take a leap of faith, but there's more to faith than a leap.

The concept of 'warm demander' is new to me, so I'll pass it along. "The concept, usually credited to education leaders like Judith Kleinfeld and Lisa Delpit, combines genuine care and cultural responsiveness (warmth) with high academic expectations and rigorous instruction (demand). It is explored at length in Franita Ware's book, Warm Demander Teachers: Healthy, Whole, and Transformational." It feels like a mild version of 'tough love'. My main reaction is that it seems far more teacher-driven than student-driven, though we read, "the Warm Demander is a facilitative leader, not a dictator. Warm Demanders emphasize student agency, classroom leadership, goal setting, and accountability." Yet look at the language the teacher uses: "I expect smooth, silent transitions... every student must contribute using established sentence stems... etc."