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

On the paucity of 'aising awareness'
Doug Belshaw, Open Thinkering, 2023/06/29

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This post made me think of this article in the Guardian on the two types of anti-racism: "The liberal tradition sees racism as essentially a matter of irrational beliefs and attitudes.... The radical tradition, on the other hand, sees racism as a matter of how economic resources are distributed differently across racial groups." Changing attitudes and beliefs may feel worthwhile, but only changing actions, structures and institutions will create real change. It also makes me think of the 'awareness campaigns' being run by, say, Creative Commons, which again to my mind don't actually put open educational resources into the hands of people. So to the present article: Doug Belshaw approaches the question by outlining the concept of 'supererogation', which is the idea that an action might be good, but is not required. That's what the liberal tradition buys you. "Once you see people putting in the minimum effort of 'awareness raising'," he writes, "you start seeing it everywhere. It's particularly prevalent on social media, where it takes a single tap to reshare news and make others aware of something you've just seen." Quite so.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Replacing news editors with AI is a worry for misinformation, bias and accountability
Uri Gal, The Conversation, 2023/06/29

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For now, my job as a human curator and reviewer of news in our field remains pretty important. This is especially the case as AI is increasingly being used to replace humans in media. As a leaked memo to employees at Axel Sprnger's Bild magazine says, they will "unfortunately part with colleagues who have tasks that will be replaced by AI and/or processes in the digital world. The functions of editorial directors, page editors, proofreaders, secretaries, and photo editors will no longer exist as they do today." Using the AI may make it easier for the company to enforce its political perspective, but it arguably will not support fairness and accuracy in journalism; as this article argues, "Unlike a human editor, AI cannot explain their decisions or reasoning in a meaningful way. This can be a problem in a field where accountability and transparency are important." Maybe. But what happens when the AIs inevitable become good. Will we still need people like me as a human curator and reviewer of news? Arguably not.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Permission to Chat
Vicky Butterby, ALTC Blog, 2023/06/29

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This is a good set of reflections on how we use chat in online learning and especially about some of the more focused thinking around the subject that happened in the light of the pandemic. This post addresses specifically the idea of addressing a participant's reluctance to contribute, either for fear of criticism over spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG) or the learner's inability to comprehend every aspect of the chat and course content, and recommends ways of granting a form of 'permission' to help them overcome these barriers. This is especially assisted by an online teaching assistant or through team teaching, where one person can focus on leading the instruction, while the other can manage ad support the chat function.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

CAS - Home
Apereo, 2023/06/29

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So in coversation recently the subject of single-sign on (SSO) for distributed services came up, and I was led to this site. Apereo's Central Authentication Service (CAS)  "is an enterprise multilingual single sign-on solution and identity provider for the web and attempts to be a comprehensive platform for your authentication and authorization needs." What's important is that "CAS is an open and well-documented authentication protocol." The site links to an open source Java implementation. I think this is an area that will assume an increasing importance as we move into decentralized networks, and I suspect that identity technology will continue to evolve.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Paying a real living wage demonstrates commitment to higher education's values
WonkHe, 2023/06/29

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When I was the president of the Graduate Students' Association of the University of Alberta I campaigned hard for improved teaching assistant and sessional (aka adjunct) instructors proposer pay. The precarious working conditions for these employees is well understood. We negotiated hard over stipends and fees, we sued (and won) for almost a million dollars of illegal excess fees, and we attempted to unionize with CUPE. My successor converted the back room lounge into a busy and very necessary food bank. At every point, the university resisted us, and this experience still informs my views of academic institutions many years later. So I agree with Katherine Chapman that "As vital civic institutions, there is a moral case for universities ensuring at least the real living wage." And I'm not prepared to accept the university as any sort of moral authority until they decide to do this.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The PLOS Union
Charles Whalley, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2023/06/29

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"PLOS staff are unionizing," reports this article. "How its leadership responds is a test of its vision for inclusive publishing." I suppose it's possible to support open access publishing while being opposed to unionization, as the current PLoS leadership seems to be, as reported here. But I find the two hard to separate. As Charles Whalley writes, "Arguably the true measure of inclusion is not whether an organization is willing to give a voice, but whether it is willing to give power. As a democratic complement to managerial hierarchies, trade unions are the only legally empowered mechanism for employee participation in their workplaces." More to the point, if this is the attitude of PLoS leadership, one wonders how far away we are from the organization hitting that commercial social media moment where they attempt to monetize their open content by charging fees for API access.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

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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