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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The Best Paper You'll Read Today: Media Biases and the Public Understanding of Science
Aydin Mohseni, Cailin O'Connor, James Owen Weatherall, 2022/12/30

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The authors use a probabilistic model to evaluate the extent of distortion in news media (illustrated). They focus on three types of misrepresentation: "One is hyperbole where curators exaggerate or sensationalize claims to garner attention. The second is extremity bias which involves cherry-picking surprising, novel, or extreme events to report. The last is fair reporting—the practice of presenting equally weighted evidence from two sides of some issue irrespective of where the preponderance of evidence lies." The perspective here is that journalism is at least to some extent a curation activity, and errors in the curation result in errors in how news media presents the world. As a sometime journalist I find these effects hard to avoid, but crucial to consider.

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An exploration of course and cohort communication spaces in Discord, Teams, and Moodle
Eva Heinrich, Heather Thomas, Ella R. Kahu, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2022/12/30

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While I like the topic of this report (14 page PDF), which studies the impact of supplementing a learning management system, Moodle, with communication tools, Discord and Teams, I am once again compelled to remind writers that a study consisting of 19 interviewees does not tell us what 'will' happen, only what 'can' happen. So the authors haven't shown this, as stated in the abstract: "adding Discord or Teams increases information and knowledge exchange and helps students to connect with peers and teachers in their courses." In the text, though, they are more careful: "both combinations, Discord + Moodle and Teams + Moodle, can form valuable digital learning environments, which, in terms of information and knowledge exchange as well as being-with, surpass what Moodle offers by itself." Unfortunately, the discussion of suitability of tools isn't similarly constrained, presenting as fact only that with the study shows is possibility.

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An A.I. Pioneer on What We Should Really Fear
David Marchese, New York Times, Internet Archive, 2022/12/30

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This past year was the year of generative analytics. That leaves only my sixth category, deontic analytics, to become mainstream. This is when AI tells us what should be the case. Others are now beginning to predict this, as in this archived version of an NY Times article: "A.I. does learn through statistical distribution the best word to use, the distribution of the reasonable words that could come next. I think moral decision-making can be done like that as well. Instead of making binary, clean-cut decisions, it should sometimes make decisions based on This looks really bad."

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How to use Moodle 4.1 Book
Jaswinder Singh, LMSDaily, 2022/12/30

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New edition of a definitive Moodle reference work. "The text is 250+ pages and focuses on all aspects of Moodle 4.1 standard modules and functionality, detailed information on all settings available to users (including administrators) and screenshots of various configuration screens. It is a perfect companion for all Moodle educators to use Moodle more effectively. If you're looking for a desktop companion or a guide to provide new users a quick reference, this updated Moodle 4.1 book might be just what you are looking for." 257 page PDF. Via Marcus Green.

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