OLDaily

Can lower tuition fees grow a population?
Dale Kirby, University Affairs, 2022/03/04

A common form of argument in favour of increased tuition fees is to suggests that lower fees are intended to solve a problem and then to argue that the problem was not solved by the lower fees. Not only does this confuse necessary and sufficient conditions, it often misrepresents the primary argument for lower fees. Both are the case here. Nobody (I think) would argue that lower fees are sufficient to grow the population of Newfoundland and Labrador. Nor would this be a primary argument for a tuition freeze. So why offer such a bad argument in University Affairs? The publication doesn't tell us, but the first comment does.

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Why Ethereum is switching to proof of stake and how it will work
Amy Castor, MIT Technology Review, 2022/03/04

This article uses about 1800 words to say the following (slightly paraphrased): proof of stake does away with wasteful bitcoin miners and replaces them with 'validators.' Instead of investing in energy-intensive computer farms, you invest in the native coins of the system. To become a validator and to win the block rewards, you lock up - or 'stake' - your tokens in a smart contract. Proof of stake hasn’t been proven on the scale that proof-of-work platforms have, and there's still the risk the rich get richer and eventually centralize and control the system.

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AI-written blog posts are spam
Ben Werdmüller, 2022/03/04

This is a strong and well-written article arguing, in effect, that "AI-generated articles are not the future of journalism. They are content spam." Some platforms, it argues, are promoting contents written by AI. You are able to sense the feeling and emotion behind this article. There is, however, just one catch.

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Open Education Week
Open Education Global, 2022/03/04

Next week is Open Education Week. Here are some links, taken directly from OE Global: This 10th year of #oeweek there are, from 25 countries: 198 activities to attend, 65 openly licenced educational resources to reuse, remix and adapt, and ... a host of fun things to do and thoughtful discussion to engage with on OEG Connect. More: certaines activités se dérouleront en français. Also: EDEN's open education week activities.

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Online tutoring study shows cause for optimism
Jonathan Kantrowitz, Education Research Report, 2022/03/04

This article is a word-for-word copy (without attribution) of a press release from UC San Diego. Neither source links to the original study, which is a preprint that can be found here (5 page PDF) posted as a 'framed field experiment on the The Field Experiments Website at EconPapers. The study "explores the possibilities of a low-cost model with volunteer tutors which has the potential to reach more students in need." One of the authors, Sally Sadoff, is quoted as saying "“We think there’s reason to be optimistic about the prospect of online tutoring." But as the paper (but not the article) notes, "It remains an open question whether such a model can be replicated at scale given the extraordinary efforts of undergraduate volunteers from highly selective colleges who served as tutors and operated CovEd." No kidding.

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Can You Transfer Tacit Knowledge?
Nancy Dixon, conversation matters, 2022/03/04

What I want to say about this post is that the information is correct but the language is all wrong. Nancy Dixon writes about the long-known distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Here, I would want to call them public knowledge and personal knowledge respectively. These are, for Dixon, "the tangible information such as written documents or computer programs and intangible information embodied in human memory." I wouldn't use the word 'information' here. She says "Our tacit knowledge is made up of many bits and pieces located in different places in our brain." True - but not 'located', like lego blocks, but distributed, like a web. And not really bits and pieces, but interwoven strands and patterns, all connected to each other. That's why we can't 'transfer' tacit knowledge; we can only model and demonstrate it, helping the observer develop their own tacit knowledge in response to the 'public knowledge' - spoken language and documents and programs - that we create in a public space.

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