OLDaily

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

Feature Article
What Is the Soul of Open Educational Resources?
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2024/08/27

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I have already written a short post in OLDaily responding to Heather Ross's post but I would like to expand a bit on it with a short post ... [Share]

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AI voice assistants evolve, promising deeper interactions
Sascha Brodsky, IBM Blog, 2024/08/27

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Just a quick note to report this: "Tech companies are betting that voice will become a primary interface for AI interactions, spurring a rise in AI voice assistant innovations... Google's recent launch of Gemini Live for Android users marks a significant milestone in this AI arms race, closely following OpenAI's development of ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode. These next-generation voice assistants represent a leap forward from their predecessors like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa." I think a lot would need to change before voice becomes the primary interface, because there are too many places where we can't just start speaking out loud to our computer. And in places where we can - like in a car - we're going to need much better interfaces.

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View of The Effects of Duolingo, an AI-Integrated Technology, on EFL Learners' Willingness to Communicate and Engagement in Online Classes
Zhiqun Ouyang, Yujun Jiang, Huying Liu, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2024/08/27

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Duolingo's AI is pretty basic (in my opinion), but even so, this study reports that "Duolingo has a revolutionary effect on language learners' willingness to communicate and participate in class activities." This, in turn, has a significant impact on language learning outcomes. or, in academic verbiage: "The significant effect sizes observed in various engagement and communication dimensions underscore Duolingo's capacity to incite favorable transformations in language learners' perspectives, involvement, and communicative assurance." Image: The Duolingo method.

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View of Teacher- Versus AI-Generated (Poe Application) Corrective Feedback and Language Learners' Writing Anxiety, Complexity, Fluency, and Accuracy
Dan Wang, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2024/08/27

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This article compares the effectiveness of feedback for language learners from human teachers with an AI-driven application called Poe. "Interestingly, the group that received AI-generated feedback performed better than the group that received teacher feedback or no AI support." Results like this are ceasing to surprise. Study size was three classes of 25 students each.

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Trustworthy journalism through AI
Andreas L Opdahl, et al., Data & Knowledge Engineering, 2024/08/27

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Though this is from last year, I want to share this article not simply because it shows how AI will help product trustworthy journalism (something we could really use) but also especially because it shows how complex this task really is, involving processes ranging from gathering and harvesting information to see what's important, verifying claims, and integrating data from multiple sources.

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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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