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

Component-Based Research in Education: Emerging Ideas, Possibilities, and Next Steps
Jeanne Century, Christopher Dede, Joseph Taylor, University of Chicago, EdArXiv, 2024/06/18

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This is a really interesting report (40 page PDF) from a working meeting on component-based research (CBR) in education. "CBR unpacks innovation elements into precisely described parts... educational innovations are composed of 'components' that can be studied alone or in groups." The work is broken down into four groups: nomenclature, databases, research methodologies, and data applications. The contributors manage to avoid many of the pitfalls of similar projects: for example, they're not bound to a specific definition of outcomes and accept that there may be different research methodologies (which, true to form, they suggest should also be represented as components). But you can feel the tension between the desire for consensus or something generalizable and the complex nature of the educational domain.

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Adobe’s hidden cancellation fee is unlawful, FTC suit says
Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica, 2024/06/18

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Adobe is one of those companies that has user-hostile business practices but for which there isn't really any alternative if you're a creative professional (and please don't lecture me about Gimp, which from the name on down exhibits a different sort of user hostility). I use Lightroom Classic to edit photos, and that's it.Adobe was always expensive, but now with subscription bundles (that never end) they've devised new means of extracting money from unwilling buyers. They've also streamed people toward their cloud offerings in an attempt to trap them there as well (and to collect their data, natch). I don't know of a good way out of this.

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Paper: Systemic Design Principles in Social Innovation
Fred Hebert, My notes and other stuff, 2024/06/18

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This article passed my way as a result of following Doug Belshaw's progvress in his systems theory course. It works on a number of different levels, and reaches, I think, exactly the right conclusion (which really does not require you to embrace systems theory at all): "As each complex problem situation is different, there is not one way of doing things and we must rely on adaptive practice, where practices are adapted to the problem context at hand. Such adaptations require every actor concerned to engage in a continual and mutual learning process."

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AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans
Casey Fiesler, The Conversation, 2024/06/18

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So what is the role of chatbots in online communities. Some people would be quick to say 'none' and it's hard to disagree. Chatbots talking about their child that does not exist or offering to sell things that don't exist are definitely not welcome. They don't belong where "you want an answer from someone with real, lived experience or you want the human response that your question might elicit – sympathy, outrage, commiseration – or both." What we don't want, according to this article, is for chatbots to pretend they're human or have human experiences. They should, in other words, stay in their lanes.

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AI, Problem-Solving, and Visual Thinking | Brainstorm in Progress
Geoff Cain, Brainstorm in Progress, 2024/06/18

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I think this is a good way to think of it: "Picasso once commented on computers: 'But they are useless. They can only give you answers.' (But) when you are working with AI, getting the 'answers' is really the wrong way to use it, although in some limited ways, it can do that since it is also trained on Wikipedia. What it can really do well is to understand and express information through processes." This relates to Kye Gomez' Tree of Thought, "an approach to problem-solving that aims to map out the different paths and potential solutions to a problem." There's a lot of overlap with what AI does well: pattern recognition, iterative learning, non-linear thinking, and knowledge flow.

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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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