OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics. We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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Feature Article
Participatory Governance and the Fediverse
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2022/12/21

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This is my response to Alek Tarkowski's 24-part Twitter thread expanding on his views about participatory governance and fediverse. His thread It builds on his article Priorities to Make the Fediverse Sustainable, which I commented on last week, as well as some work he and his collegagues have done with the Open Future Foundation, including The Paradox of Open, which is where I begin my commentary.

[Link] [Local copy]

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: When ChatGPT Teaches, What Do Teachers Do?
Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator, 2022/12/21

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Lisa Nielsen writes that chatGPT "is not a replacement for human teachers. It is best used as a supplement to traditional teaching methods and teachers are best at the personal connection and support they can provide students." Why? What is this true? Even if we assume chatGPT isn't good enough, nobody thinks AI will stop developing, do they? How soon will it be before traditional teaching methods and teachers are not best at the personal connection and support students need? We need to start thinking this way, and stop thinking the way Nielsen things in this article, because otherwise is to deny the reality of what is happening before our eyes.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

AI couldn't care less. Journalists will care more.
Jennifer Brandel, Nieman Lab, 2022/12/21

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This article has two major objectives. The first is to make the assertion in the title, that AI doesn't care. I presume this would apply as much to AI educators as it does to AI journalists. The second, interestingly, is to answer the question, "What would it take for you to orient your interactions to ensure that the people you engage with, report on, and report for get the signal that you and your newsroom really care?" And I'm sure we could come up with an analogous question for instructors and professors. And it's interesting, because the article essentially comes up with a recipe for caring (illustrated) and I'm moved to ask, why couldn't an AI do these things? I mean - my first reaction was that many of the journalists and professors I've worked with don't care, and that many of the things that constitute 'care' could be done by a machine. How far are we from the possibility that the machine 'cares' more than the human? Or - conversely - just what is it that's essential to care that could not be automated?

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Authentic human results
Mita Williams, Librarian of Things, 2022/12/21

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"Click-bait has never been easier to generate," writes Mita Williams, and as a result, our trust in things like search results has never been lower. "I wonder," she writes, "Who can I ask who would know the answer to this question?" And as a librarian, "I want to be seen as a person that people can turn to for Authentic Human Results." In a sense, that's what I provide in OLDaily as well. I use AI tools to assist me, but I personally select and evaluate each item in the newsletter. I think this type of service might last for some time. We might eventually trust AI results, but it will be a while before we're ready to accept acerbic comments about our work from a machine. Via Bonnie Stewart. Related: AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results. "Their work risks being a high-tech Maginot Line: A defense ... that can't anticipate - or respond to - the next iteration of information warfare."

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Chatbots in education: a (short) literature review
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu EU, 2022/12/21

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Short but useful review of recent work on educational chatbots (EC) though my first thought on looking at this was that with the arrival of things like chatGPT pretty much all of the work cited - even the item from 2022 - is out of date. This especially applies to literature describing what chatbots can and can't do, what they are used for, and what learning outcomes they have. Kumar (2021) says, for example, "ECs are still novel with challenges in facilitating, deploying, designing, and integrating it as an effective pedagogical tool across multiple fields." This might be true today, but is not a result we should expect to be relevant for very long.

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Implementing Campus-level Programming: Pathways for Online Civic Engagement
Angela M. McGowan-Kirsch, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2022/12/21

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The core idea here is that "civil discourse can be modeled;  thus, in addition to instilling in students an ability to recognize incivility, students can also be taught how to model civility in online discussions.  Role  modeling  enables  people  to  display  suitable  ways  of  acting  and responding  in  a  situation." It's especially important now, writes Angela McGowan-Kirsch, because of the rising incivility in online public discourse. There is a "connection between media consumption and perceptions of polarization," which leads to incivility, so McGowan-Kirsch recommends exercises in perceiving polarization, practice to avoid spreading misinformation, and learning how to debunk it when it appears. Overall I'm supportive, but I'm also aware that the requirement of civility can be misused by those in power to stifle the voices of those with legitimate grievances. Democracy - proper democracy - requires more than just discourse; it often requires redress, and this should be taught as well. Good article, though. 12 page PDF. Image: Bellevue College.

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Cable company’s accidental email to rival discusses plan to block competition
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, 2022/12/21

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It's a top priority of priovate internet access companies to prevent anyone from building publicly funded or cooperative alternatives to their monopoly. This has been known to be the case for some time, but it's unusual for the companies' communications to that effect to become public. But that's what happened here. I'm sure this strategy is confined to unimpoirtant things like internet access, and doesn't extend to any other areas where private companies are invested in essential public infrastructure like, say, health or education . See also TechDirt,

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