OLDaily

Can AI tutors help students learn?
Eric Jang, eSchool News, 2021/11/11

This is a question that is never going to go away (until, perhaps, the answer turns out to be 'yes') because there's no foreseeable limit on what the capacities of an AI could be. But of course if you ask the question just the right way you can perhaps tweak the reader's intuitions. For example, consider asking it this way: "The question becomes how AI can be implemented in the classroom to leverage the best it has to offer and not completely diminish the human side of education." Then set up an seemingly impossible standard: "the best and only way AI tutors will be adopted and accepted is if interactions with AI tutors are seamless and if there is trust that the information shared is accurate."

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Experimental Evidence on Student Assistance
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2021/11/11

Alex Usher starts this article extolling the virtues of "trying to start a tradition of evidence-based research in Canadian higher education." And while I am the last person to argue against evidence, or against good scientific practice in general, this article also highlights the dangers of such advocacy. It comes when a commentator trots out an argument consisting of one study focused on students in one province (specifically, New Brunswick), to make a general claim such this: "the touted benefits of grants or lowering tuition... is that lower net costs will help students work less and study more. Nuh-uh. Turns out students’ drive for a better material standard of living outweighs the drive to study." Well yeah. Having lived in the low-income job-scarce province of New Brunswick for 17 years, I could have told you that nobody in the province is going to give up a job simply because they received $8000. But the main lesson here is this: one or two studies in very limited circumstances focusing on very specialized outcomes tell us less than nothing about policy impact. Usher, a statistician, should know better to peddle such nonsense under the guise of 'evidence-based research'.

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Preserving the wonder as we widen access
Nigel Tubbs, WonkHe, 2021/11/11

"Are we in danger of developing a two tier education system - the good stuff for the elite, and job training for the rest?" This system already exists. "The deserving, who have feasted on the light of wonder in university education, now sell an impoverished vision of higher education to the undeserving." The real issues is in whether online learning will entrench such a system, or render it obsolete. Anyhow, in the middle of the article we get to the author's main point, which is to oppose extending the student loan repayment period. "It will further spread the inequality that already exists whereby graduates that earn more pay less over a shorter period whole graduates who earn less pay more over a longer period" thus leading the poorer class to "limit its aspirations to taking degrees that are a direct training for jobs." Yeah, whatever. Not considered are alternative solutions such as addressing income inequality, abolishing fees, or creating more accessible learning resources.

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BlueJeans Adds Remote Learning Features
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2021/11/11

BlueJeans Network is a videoconferencing tool that seemed to be almost forgotten in the fuss over Zoom in the early days of the pandemic. The company, founded in 2009 trying to "make video conferencing as comfortable and as casual as your pair of jeans" was acquired by Verizon in April, 2020. Now they're playing catch up. This week, Verizon announced a number of remote learning features for the software including customizable layouts, flexible views, student rosters, floating chats, and teaching apps - features we've long since come to expect in other videoconferencing tools. See more.

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Pedagogies of the climate activism space
Lisa Howard, Teaching Matters blog, 2021/11/11

This post reports on the author's participation in the recent Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change. And while "scholars have long argued for the merits of experiential learning in addressing pressing social problems," it's clear that this does not come without its hurdles. Lisa Howard reports "hallmarks of what scholars Jody Chan and Joe Curnow might refer to as men ‘doing white masculinity’ through the performance of ‘climate expertise’." This effect was also observed in online interactions. "This gang of ‘experts’ failed to consider the disproportionate level of abuse that women experience on social media." This experience enabled her "to imagine other relations of control, power and privilege, such as those of class, race and ability" 

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Brain Implant Translates Paralyzed Man's Thoughts Into Text With 94% Accuracy
Peter Dockrill, Science Alert, 2021/11/11

This short article reports on a paywalled Nature paper from a few months ago. The system in question doesn't translate all the man's thoughts, but only those specifically directed toward making hand motions as though he were writing. "Electrodes implanted in his motor cortex recorded signals of his brain activity, which were then interpreted by algorithms running on an external computer, decoding T5's imaginary pen trajectories." This is consistent with other direct neural interfaces; you can't directly read 'thoughts', but you can communicate with sensory and motor neurons that input and export those thoughts.

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Educating girls for the future of Kenya
Annie Brookman-Byrne, Blog On Learning & Development, 2021/11/11

This post offers an interview of Tonee Ndungu, the founder and CEO of a digital platform called Kytabu, which Crunchbase describes as "a textbook subscription application that allows students to rent preinstalled textbooks on android tablets and desktops." The interview focuses on equity and especially education for girls, raising a particularly good point: "our cultures and our systems are permeated with the idea that women are meant for the house and men for the workplace (but) because education focuses on the workplace, women are excluded." So, he says, "We created Girls-4-Girls as an intervention for girls who are either taking care of their siblings or for some other reason unable to go back to class, so they can learn from home."

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Canada launches $95 million outbound program to boost skills
Viggo Stacey, The PIE News, 2021/11/11

I never had anything like the resources it takes to travel internationally while I was a student, and aside from one high school trip to the UK, it wasn't until I was 41 that I traveled outside Canada and the United States. Even so, my experiences since then have had an enormous impact on me. So something like the Global Skills Opportunity program described here would have been a huge benefit to students. And it's focused on exactly the right people: "the GSO program is targeting Indigenous students, low-income background student and those with disabilities." And it's not just the participants who benefit; I recall Australia basically building an entire online learning industry by sending 'flexible learning leaders' around the world to make connections, identify leading-edge trends, and bring back knowledge.

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