OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

bags of gold
D'Arcy Norman, 2023/03/24

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Some pointed questions from D'Arcy Norman. Do we really need a 'domain of our own' in education? How far down the tech stack must we go? "I love being able to have some level of control over as much of what I do online as I want to," he writes, "However, I'm also acutely aware of the drain that running this stuff can place on a person." It's not about the infrastructure. "The real shift isn't in publishing digital content. It isn't in moving to eLearning. The real shift is that of individual control over their (our) own learning... if we're all shifting to take more control over our learning, society needs individuals that want to learn. That's the crux. Not cyberinfrastructure. Not digital content. Not software, nor data, nor feeds, nor any of that crap. We need to learn. We need to want to learn." I don't think I fully agree with this reasoning.

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Fall 2022 Student Textbook Survey Results
Krystie Wilfong, Janelle Wertzberger, Mary Elmquist, Laura A. Conforte, SCARAB, 2023/03/24

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This is a study of students from eleven Oberlin Group institutions (non-profit liberal arts colleges in the U.S.) on the cost of textbooks and its impact on students. The stats are interesting but it must be kept in mind that this is a very exclusive group of respondents, and that the cost of academic materials has a much wider impact both inside and outside these specific institutions. Some good quotes, though, like: "I am already paying for the class. I don't understand why I must also pay for materials required for the class," and "if a full needs scholarship is required for some students to even attend the school, why would they think students have $300 just lying around for textbooks every semester?" Via Robin DeRosa.

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Google Bard AI Arrives - Can It Compete With ChatGPT?
Emory Craig, Digital Bodies Consulting, 2023/03/24

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According to this article, "Google Bard, its generative AI chatbot, faces challenges from OpenAI and the need not to cannibalize its own revenue model." So it's being released slowly - it's not available outside the U.S. and U.K., and it's only available to personal Google Users (which eliminates me, since I use Google Workspace, which gives me access to a bunch of things but not this). How-to Geek has a 'hands-on' report: "Overall, the UI is friendlier than both ChatGPT and Bing Chat, but Bard is not as feature-packed as Bing Chat. Bard can't create comparison tables, and it's not very good at text art, or making quizzes. At the time of writing, Bard is a pretty AI chatbot, but not a particularly good one when compared to the competition." More Bard stories: Google Bard plagiarized our article, then apologized when caught; Android Authority describes what it's like; Google Bard doesn't love me; here's how to use it (if you've got it).

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ChatGPT Gets Its 'Wolfram Superpowers'!
Stephen Wolfram, Writings, 2023/03/24

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As has been previously noted, chatGPT functions by predicting the most likely 'next word' or 'next sentence' based on its large language model. This makes chatGPT responses sound plausible (they're literally 'just what you would expect') but frequently factually incorrect. Giving chatGPT better data (and weighing it more heavily) allows it to draw on a storehouse of facts as well as what most people would say in a given circumstance. That's what's happening here with the Wolfram plugin. It "gives computationally accurate answers to ChatGPT queries using Wolfram's data knowledgebase and language. Custom visualizations are given as well." So now chatGPT can sound a lot like your best friend but have the background computational and data skills of an Einstein. Still don't think it can teach?

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Half of College Students Say Using AI on Schoolwork Is Cheating or Plagiarism
Lyss Welding, BestColleges, 2023/03/24

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Another company sent me an embargoed news report (specifically: TurnItIn announcing some time soon that users will immediately be able to see how much AI wrote a student's paper). I don't know why companies expect me to respect an embargo on unsolicited information they've sent me. Have they not read my stuff? Anyhow, when the slew of news reports comes out, we'll know who plays nice with corporate embargoes. But not me. Meanwhile, they also sent me this "completely unrelated" (cough, hack) survey from BestColleges. Note that I can't vouch for the survey; the 'method' section is more than a little vague.

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Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price.
Neha Wadekar, Ryan Grim, The Intercept, 2023/03/24

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This is an excellent article detailing the development of Bridge International Academies, dubbed "chicken coops for kids," by two Harvard graduates, and the scandals and abuse that followed. The model was based on keeping costs for buildings low and costs for teachers even lower. The company was funded by the usual investors in private education - Chan Zuckerberg, Gates, the World Bank - "opening hundreds of schools across Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as India." The idea was to standardize everything - from the buildings to the lessons distributed to students on tablets. A McDonalds for schools. An Uber for education, and like Uber, ignoring the regulations designed to keep students safe. A World Bank president  called it "the Tesla of education companies" in 2017. Then - inevitably - came the scandals and the abuse. Via Ben Williamson.

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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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