OLDaily

Proposed Guidance Regarding Broad Consent for the Storage and Use of Data and Human Biological Materials
Government of Canada, Panel on Research Ethics, 2021/09/02

This is a proposed statement on the meaning of 'broad consent' for the storage of and use of data and human biologic materials with reference to the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) on ethical research. 'Broad consent' means "consent for unspecified research." There's a lot of overlap between this document and European regulations, including the provisos that subjects "must be able to request withdrawal of their stored data," that "consent must be free of coercion and undue influence," and "a means for participants to obtain ongoing repository information." Consent, in other words, is not a simple one-off click of a 'terms of use' button that gives data collectors carte-blanche. Those who collect data have an ongoing responsibility to those from whom the data was collected. Submit your comments by email at secretariat@srcr-scrr.gc.ca by October 4th 2021, using the subject 'TCPS 2 consultation'. Image: Price & Cohen, Privacy in the age of medical big data.

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State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2021
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2021/09/02

Topics covered include: learner demographics and enrollment trends; staff roles, ranks and salaries; government and university budgets and expenditures; tuition and student aid by province and field of study, including student debt at graduation; and guaduation rates, attainment and labour market outcomes. I'm not going to criticize this report (77 page PDF); it's a great piece of work. But I'll make some observations. Most importantly, it looks at education purely from an economic perspective. It is an analysis exclusively of fomal institutions, and defines outcomes strictly in terms of formal qualifications and employment. What it does not study at all are the needs, interests and aspirations of those outside the educational system, or those inside the system but limited in their opportunities. Canada has an enviable (and world-leading) rate of attainment in education (illustrated), and this report documents that quite well, but as always my focus in on the difference we could be making to improve people's lives.

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Demystifying deep reinforcement learning
Ben Dickson, TechTalks, 2021/09/02

You might think of deep reinforcement learning as behaviourism for computers, but it's different in that there's no black box; we can see all the circuitry inside (and it's basically a deep neural network). This article describes how deep reinforcement learning works and outlines some applications and functions. I think it offers readers in education a perspective on the relation between pedagogical strategy (specifically: environment and input/reward), learner activity, and learning. What we're trying to do as educators is to prompt the learner to take actions that essentially result in the rewiring of their neural network. An oversimplification? Absolutely. But you can see the connection here, right? Part of a series of posts called Demystifying AI.

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Cherie Diaz, OpenLearning
Manu Prakaash, The PIE News, 2021/09/02

This is an interview with Cherie Diaz the managing director for Australia at OpenLearning. Most of the focus is on the online delivery of the UNSW Transition Program Online (incorrectly called the 'Training Program' in the article). Preparing people for successful admission to a limited-enrollment fee-based university isn't exactly what I would call the pinnacle of achievement in open learning, but there we have it. The Transition Program itself caters to an exclusive audience: "It’s for students who have just missed out on their academic requirements for their preferred degree program." But there are some innovative bits worth closer scrutiny. For example, "One of the unique features is the daily stand-up." Also, "activities are designed for divergent learning experiences. Students are asked to undertake research and bring back to the cohort, their ideas and experiences into the learning process." And "instead of exams, we have implemented high stakes interviews."

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In Search of Creativity in Education
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, 2021/09/02

There's a number of interesting bits in this article. For example, there's this reference to Schlechty’s set of indicators of compliance, engagement, retreatism and rebellion. There's the suggestion that "a teacher is going to struggle trying to implement someone else’s idea of creativity in the classroom," which seems odd (would you struggle with someone else's understanding of mathematics? of logic?). And there's the argument, with which I agree, that "All of our creativity... comes from bits we’ve seen and done combined together in a novel way." Image: the creative connectome in Beaty, et.al.

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There’s a New Wave of AI Research Coming to Transform Education
Nadia Tamez-Robledo, EdSurge, 2021/09/02

Let's focus on this: "Goel envisions creating an AI program that could adjust itself to students’ individual needs in a couple of hours, rather than one-size-fits-all approaches that have been deployed in the past." So, a couple of things. First, this is more than simply adapting to a student's needs; it requires a dialogue and interaction and is ongoing, not finished in 'a couple of hours', so the computer is not telling them what they need, but working with them. And second, students' individual needs encompass much more than mere content recommendation; it includes adapting to learning preferences, supporting creative activities, preparing and authoring content, offering conversational prompts to stimulate thinking, and more.

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Martin Buber – I and Thou (Notes)
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2021/09/02

If you are religious, then you should see God (or Allah, or Buddha, or the Tao) in everything. This means that you should no longer view them as objects to be consumed, commodified, classified, etc., but as possessing will and grace, so that you "become bound up in relation to it", transforming it from 'It' to "Thou". That is what I take to be the central message of Martin Buber's I and Thou, nicely summarized here by Jenny Mackness. And I think it's central to connectivism, especially the George Siemens account of connectivism. This sort of message is common in a lot of religious writing (I think back to Spinoza as a starting point) and it's not wrong. And I don't think you need to be religious or spiritual to see the continuity between yourself and things in the world; they are literally part of you, and you of them. And if you're religious - well, I don't see how you could be religious and not experience this continuity. I don't see how you could be religious and externalize the Other.

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