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

Study debunks myth of the fast learner
Carnegie Mellon, Futurity, 2023/04/26

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Thisis a Carnegie Mellon PR piece reporting on a study (11 page PDF) that shows that learners generally learn at roughly the same pace. "The data, gleaned from learning science repository DataShop, indicated that learners master new concepts by having opportunities to practice them. 'The data showed that achievement gaps come from differences in learning opportunities and that better access to such opportunities can help close those gaps,' Koedinger says." Maybe it's time we stopped blaming failure on students (whether it be theories about IQ, growth mindset, grit, or whatever) and started looking at providing opportunities for all. "No matter who you are, you can do it. You might have had fewer prior opportunities in your life, so it may be harder at first than it is for other people, but you will make just as much progress as anyone else as long as you stick to it."

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A dialogue with Ordinary Person Keith
Keith Frankish, 2023/04/26

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Is there "a minimal, theory-neutral conception of phenomenal consciousness, which everyone can agree picks out something real." Most people would quickly say yes, there is. But people say there are lots of things, some of which exist, like chairs, and some of which don't, like ghosts. But as this dialogue shows, when you ask people what their various experiences have in common, there is really no answer. Seeing blue is just 'seeing blue', feeling pain is just 'feeling pain'', and so on. In this reply to Frankish, Eric Schwitzgebel argues we can just define consciousness by example. "Can't we just use the term (consciousness) to capture whatever it is that the things I've just called (consciousness) have in common, which the other things which aren't (consciousness) lack?" Well, we could do that, but what's the point? If we can describe what's happening at the neural, why do we need some other thing which really doesn't add to the description or explanation at all?

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AI is taking the jobs of Kenyans who write essays for U.S. college students
Martin K.N Siele, Rest of World, 2023/04/26

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This is probably just the tip of a much larger trend. Working in Nanyuki, Kenya, "Collins writes college essays on topics including psychology, sociology, and economics.... In 2022, he made between $900 and $1,200 a month from this work. Lately, however, his earnings have dropped to $500–$800 a month. Collins links this to the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools." It's hard not to have mixed feelings about this in this specific case, through I wonder in general how much of the lower-paid knowledge work industry in Africa and Asia will be impacted by AI.

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An Empirical Investigation into Students' Actual Use of MOOCs in Saudi Arabia Higher Education
Uthman Alturki, Ahmed Aldraiweesh, MDPI, Sustainability, 2023/04/26

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This study shows that the quality and usefulness of MOOCs have a positive influence "on social interaction, influence, networks of support, and social identity." This in turn supports "learning engagement and perseverance" in higher education courses generally. The study of 276 university students in Saudi Arabia is fairly limited, though it is replicating, in part, results found elsewhere. The study also offers a new model for investigating MOOCs, as "no previous studies have examined how students perceive social contact, social interaction, social power, support networks, social identity, perceived service quality, and their own self-perception of actual MOOCs use, which in turn affects learning engagement and retention persistence."

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Why Micro.blog is supporting Bluesky now
Manton Reece, 2023/04/26

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Micro.blog is, as the name suggests, a place to write tiny blog posts. It's also known for being a part of, and supporting the indieweb. To some, seeing it support a Twitter-associated decentralized  service such as Bluesky might seem like a betrayal. Hence the need for an explanation. Manton Reece writes, "While Mastodon and ActivityPub have most of the attention, I'm not entirely sure how this next generation of open protocols is going to shake out. I like how Bluesky is focused on domain names and data portability, principles that are shared by the IndieWeb and Micro.blog."

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Interaction With a Television Character Powered by Artificial Intelligence Promotes Children’s Science Learning
Ying Xu, et al., EdArXiv, 2023/04/26

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This shortish paper (18 page MS-Word Document) describes research in which children are instructed using an interactive version of a television show, Elinor Wonders Why. "The results showed that offering children opportunities to interact with the media character led to better learning outcomes than having children watch the non- interactive videos." The authors also tested whether simply pausing and generating a generic response (the pseudo-interactive condition) and found that "merely asking children questions and allowing them time to respond (as was done in the pseudo-interactive videos) might not be sufficient to promote learning."

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Questioning for retrieval: five mistakes to avoid
Harry Fletcher-Wood, Improving Teaching, 2023/04/26

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"What is the name for the part of our ear that vibrates when it gets hit by a soundwave? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?" We all know the scenario. But what's the best response? And how do teachers actually respond? This article offers best practice ("cold call, wait three seconds before asking a student to respond, correct wrong answers, and offer a hint") and, more interestingly, looks at five ways teachers go wrong. What also struck me was my own reaction - thinking that this sort of article (or data supporting this sort of research) will go in to training future automated tutors.

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Think tank proposes plan to cut chatbot cheating
Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week, 2023/04/26

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I have to admit that I laughed a bit when I read about the 'think tank' recommending learners "take an additional subject in year 12 assessed solely by speaking tests" in order to "to broaden the curriculum while curbing the risk of AI chatbot cheating." Really? Broaden the curriculum? The Schools Week article also says that "EDSK, which is run by Tom Richmond a former Department for Education adviser, warned written exams must continue to be the main method of assessing students' knowledge and understanding." In fairness, it should be noted that the report (79 page PDF) also considers portfolio-based and project-based assessment, as well as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Extended Essay (EE) and performance-based assessments. I think the report depends too much on testing, is too quick to dismiss project-based and EE assessment, and doesn't take into account the practical costs of oral assessments. Interestingly, I clicked on the hidden advertising link for VCerts assessments at least three times while reading the Schools Week article, which tells me where their sympathies lie.

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A survey of higher education surveys
David Kernohan, WonkHe, 2023/04/26

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For a discipline that's so often unscientific, education generates a lot of data. This article provides a UK-focused overview of the surveys out there and the data they collect. It also offers a good handful of buyer beware: "Surveys in regulation, and indeed surveys in the wider policy debate, need to be caveated heavily - often we don't get that in anything other than technical documents read by few and understood by fewer." I would add as well that a survey is often as much a lobbying instrument as it is a tool for gathering data, as the implication is that if something is measured, it matters.

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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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