OLDaily

Testing of support tools for plagiarism detection
Tomáš Foltýnek, et.al., International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2020/08/07

This is a long-overdue review of plagiarism detection systems (31 page PDF). The authors look at fifteen applications in multiple languages and evaluate them across a number of criteria including coverage and usability. They find numerous weaknesses and, with respect to range, find none of them suitable for academic use. They need to detect more types of plagiarism, indicate the source URL of the plagiarized item, and, they write, "Lose the single number that purports to identify the amount of similarity. It does not, and it is misused by institutions as a decision maker." And they emphasize, "Despite the systems being able to find a good bit of text overlap, they do not determine plagiarism." This is a meticulous report, well-referenced, and with full disclosure of methodologies and data.

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Taking conferences online during the pandemic
Oliver Quinlan, 2020/08/07

There are tips in this post that you've probably seen before, but I'm including it here for one piece of advice that is new: "Run a staffed green room for presenters – it worked so well getting everyone prepared and ready to transition smoothly between presentations." Now as a presenter I typically log on early, but usually I'm on my own while the organizer does things like organize the session. Having a dedicated green room person helps me get comfortable with the setup. It seems to me that it would also give panelists a chance to interact for a few moments before the session, which can be a bad thing.

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Wellness, Happiness and Mindfulness - Holy Trinity of bogus therapy culture
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2020/08/07

There's a lot going on in this article, some with which I agree, and some with which I don't. The core argument is that programs promoting wellness, happiness and mindfulness are fruitless and sometimes fraudulent. The part I agree with concerns the deficit narrative - the idea that without these you are somehow incomplete. The part I question most is this: "The first large, randomised-controlled trial of an employee Wellbeing programme suggested they are a waste of money... The bottom line is that there is no bottom line, no return on investment." Here is the study (83 page PDF) published not in a health or education journal, but in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. It also has its own website. It focuses on the first year of a specific program called iThrive employed at a university in Illinois and as such there are many reasons to question it. From where I sit, this is not evidence, even if it's dressed up in evidence clothing. And that is the problem with so much 'research' in our field.

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