OLDaily

Educational chatbots for project-based learning: investigating learning outcomes for a team-based design course
Jeya Amantha Kumar, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2021/12/16

This paper is definitely worth reading for the literature reeview, which is a comprehensive survey of recent work in chatbots in an educational context. The study is less useful, primarily (in my opinion) because the author was limited by the use of a rule-based chatbot, which allows only for rudimentary capabilities. That said, "ECs as tutor support did facilitate teamwork and cognitive outcomes that support project-based learning in design education." Additionally, "it is worth noting that the embodiment of ECs as a learning assistant does create openness in interaction and interpersonal relationships among peers, especially if the task were designed to facilitate these interactions." Images were pretty low quality; that should really be fixed.

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Working With Web Feeds: It’s More Than RSS
Farai Gandiya, CSS-Tricks, 2021/12/16

This warms my heart: "with a growing frustration of how social media platforms limit a creator’s reach to their fans through algorithmic feeds, there’s been renewed interest in RSS feeds and they’re primed for a comeback as we get into 2022." This article is an introduction to RSS for people who may be new to it, along with some practical advice (such as: make the feeds easy to find, enable CORS (especially for JSON feeds), and plan for them to be read outside the browser. Beginners probably won't find these tips useful (my advice: use something that has RSS built-in, like Blogger or WordPress).

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Predictions for 2022: Everything Is About To Change
Josh Bersin, 2021/12/16

Three of Josh Bersin's four predictions are worth highlighting (quoted):

• a very tight labor market.
• unleashing of the most incredible (AI) technology, and
• (a new focus on) issues of culture, trust, and employment

Now I don't think these change everything, exactly, but they do start what could be a series of cascading changes (especially when combined with ongoing climate change and the tensions of global inequality). As the balance shifts to learner needs, expect similar unrest in the learning provider sector.

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The age of the educational technologist
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2021/12/16

Reflecting on the recent Tony Bates summary of 2021 Alastail Creelman fouses on the recently relevant role of the educational technologist. "Today we see a realisation of the need for comprehensive support for teachers in designing and running courses," he writes. "Now, when all teaching staff need support, the role of educational technologists and pedagogical development specialists has become a core function." Thus, "What is important now is that support for teachers is strengthened and professionalised." The key question, to my mind, is whether this need for support will continue, or will instructor competence plus better tech reach a point where support isn't really needed?

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India to become the EdTech capital of the world
India Brand Equity Foundation, 2021/12/16

I do suspect there may be disagreement in other quarters, but there's no denying the rise of India's technology sector and online learning in particular. I've had the good fortune to be acquainted with a number of people from India's EdTech sector over the years. Here's India's EdTech story in numbers: start-ups raised more than US$ 1.43 billion across 100 deals in 2020, four unicorns (Unacademy, UpGrad, and Eruditus and Vedantu), expected to reach US$ 4 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 39.77% (all quoted from the article).

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