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

Threads Adopting ActivityPub Makes Sense, but Won't Be Easy
Richard MacManus, The New Stack, 2023/07/17

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Threads could have adopted a different federation propocol "such as Tim Berners-Lee's Solid and Bluesky's AT Protocol," writes Richard MacManus. But ActivityPub, which is used by Mastodon and more, "perfectly suits Meta's goals." Why? "With ActivityPub, the server manages your identity and data... As fediverse developer Ryan Barrett put it in a post this week, your ActivityPub "identity, data, and administration are all tied to your instance, for both technical and cultural reasons." Hmm. This is not a problem if each person have their own ActivityPub server. But how many people is that?

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Is Ethics doing more HARM than GOOD in AI for learning?
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2023/07/17

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"We are now in the position, in some countries and sectors, especially education, in getting bogged down in a swamp of amateur moralising on AI, suppressing the benefits." In addition to being a Hume aficionado, I am largely in agreement with this sentiment from Donald Clark: "In truth, most of what passes for Ethics in AI these days is lazy 'moralizing', moral high horses ridden by people with absolute certainty about their own values and rules, as if they were God-given. More than this they want to impose those rules on others. They call themselves 'ethicists' but it is thinly disguised activism, as there is no real attempt to balance the debate out with the considerable benefits." That's why I began my Ethics course with a long section on the uses of AI, and took a deep look at a variety of ethical perspectives.

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It's time to put the brakes on student debt and give more students a shot at higher education
Michele Shepard, The Hechinger Report, 2023/07/17

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Here's the argument: "Over the last several decades, paying for college has shifted ever more from a public responsibility to an individual one." As a result, "Most students can't afford to earn a degree without taking on debt. That debt is a heavy burden for many of those who complete a degree; it's even worse for those who don't." Tuition debt creates a huge drag on people's lives (including my own, when I owed it) More, the shift in responsibility to individuals belies the mportance of education to society as a whole. If governments and business want an educated workforce, then they should be prepared to pay for it. This article is U.S. based and mostly focused on their system (and so emphasizes scholarships and grants) but my own view is that education simply ought to be free for all, paid for through government resources, which are provided by a proper corporate taxation system.

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Contributing to build "an open, free, and secure digital future for all" through the Global Digital Compact
Costanza Sciubba Caniglia, Verde Miguelángel, Diff, 2023/07/17

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"'An open, free, and secure digital future for all' is the purpose of the Global Digital Compact: a series of shared principles being developed through a consultation process," according to this post discussing Wikipedia's contribution to the initiative. It says things like "Copyright law should explicitly encourage free expression, and facilitate cultural participation and access to the benefits of knowledge and scientific progress." I'm in general agreement with this, but it illustrates the challenge of achieving global shared principles. Here's the United Nations page for the Global Digital Compact.

 

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Quick and Easy Tools for Making Flashcards
Peggy Reimers, TechNotes Blog, 2023/07/17

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"If you're looking for tools to make online flashcards to help students recall important information and practice skills, here is a goldmine!"
🔄 Flippity
👹 Fact Monster
🛝 Google Slides Template
🃏 FlashDecks
🧠 Brainscape
📚 StudyStack
➕ more!
(I couldn't resist trying the emoji icons used by Tony Vincent in his Mastodon post).

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ChatGPT promotes American norms and values
University of Copenhagen, 2023/07/17

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According to this article, chatGPT "reflects American norms and values - even when queried about other countries and cultures... The AI spun web of cultural bias is a major problem according to the study's researchers." I do think 'reflects' is a better word to use than 'promotes', because again, chaGPT knows nothing about American values, but rather merely replicates word order from a preponderance of texts that actually do represent those values. The same happens in Chinese. Different language, different values. "The answer depends on the language being used to ask." Maybe the researchers should have conducted their study in Danish.

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Is Connectivism Viable?
Adam Langridge, Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Success, 2023/07/17

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There's nothing like a good criticism to brighten my day. This paper is a summary of a presentation on connectivism. It provides an overview of the theory, then in successive sections discusses the epistemology and application in the classroom. There is then a detailed list of criticisms (including: "connectivism is a manifestation of Siemens and Downes' resentment of academia and that connectivism is an attempt to prank academics and develop a following among those who lack an understanding of learning theory and hold similar resentments."

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A comparative analysis of the skilled use of automated feedback tools through the lens of teacher feedback literacy
Simon Buckingham Shum, Lisa‑Angelique Lim, David Boud, Margaret Bearman, Phillip Dawson, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2023/07/17

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This is the first I've heard of 'teacher feedback literacy', though student feedback literacy has been around since 2010 or so; you can read about the developement of a teacher feedback literacy competency framework here defining "what is needed by teachers to implement feedback well". This paper uses the framework to assess automated feedback tools. It's interesting, because as the authors say, "he online learning literature reflects predominant conceptualisations of feedback as something performed on students rather than a process in which their agency is exercised," however, automated feedback shifts the agency from teachers to students, so you can't simply assess them in the same way. What the teacher does, then, is adapt the tool to the needs of the learner, using what the authors call 'open' tools, as opposed to 'closed' tools, that are simply another form of information provision. Four such tools are evaluated, and they "identified 14 of the 19 teacher feedback competencies being demonstrated by instructors as they used the tool."

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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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