OLDaily

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

What is survivorship bias, and why it matters for your daily life
Clearer Thinking, 2025/02/18

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Most readers will know about this fallacy (I'm not going to call it a 'cognitive bias') but if it's new then this article is well worth a quick read. If nothing else, it explains clearly how somebody can get four stock market predictions correct in a row and still be running a scam. I'm listing it here to remind myself that I should one day update and expand my Fallacies website (which is now 30 years old). 

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“Course Design Should Cost About Zero”? What on Earth are George Siemens and Stephen Downes Thinking? – EduGeek Journal
2025/02/18

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Matt Crosslin spends most of this article responding to David Wiley's OELM idea, which I mention but don't necessarily endorse, but his response to George Siemens and I appears to boil down to: (a) we're not instructional designers (and, semi-implicitly, don't really understand instructional design, which surfaces in remarks like "Clean separations of course content and learning activities are generally labeled as bad pedagogy in instructional design circles"), (b) that AI training data "is mostly garbage", and (c) that AI systems are mostly junk. And he recommends that I read Audrey Watters, as though (somehow) he thinks I haven't. Now it doesn't matter that Crosslin doesn't follow my work (he says he doesn't) but if he did he'd know about my history in instructional design, the developments Siemens and I introduced to the field, and our emphasis on personal learning support as a replacement for pre-planned formal instructional design and pedagogy, something that can demonstrably be supported using AI. And which should reduce costs to effectively zero. If he wants to talk about this we can. Image: NEPC graduation rates.

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How We Choose to Respond to Crises
Alex Usher, HESA, 2025/02/18

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I'm old enough to remember the budget of 1995 and how the Chretien government dealt with mess made by the 'Made in Canada recession' wrought by the previous government of the day. This much is true: "granting council budgets were reduced (and) it also instituted a multi-billion dollar cut in transfers to provinces for health and postsecondary education." But equally important, and far more relevant to the day-to-day lives of Canadians, was the multi-billion dollar Infrastructure Project detailed in the Red Book. There was austerity, sure, but there was also a reinvestment in Canadian communities. In addition to (apparently) endorsing austerity, Alex Usher suggests "putting our best minds together for the next 12 weeks.. to answer the following questions about the future of Canada," questions like "how can we best balance the protection of our democracy with the maintenance of norms of free speech?" I mean, what? Even assuming this is a good way to generate answers (it's not; it's ridiculous) the questions address nothing that will help universities, much less the Canadian public as a whole.

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An AI-Driven Optimism for Transforming Higher Education (It's Not What You Think)
Karen Cangialosi, EDUCAUSE Review, 2025/02/18

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I'm sympathetic withe the intent, but not the implementation. Karen Cangialosi proposes that "artificial intelligence drive higher education institutions to dispense with grading and refocus attention on empathy and learning." That seems reasonable. But how does this happen? Cangialosi asks, "If higher education is not the central locus for driving responsible, inclusive, community-driven social change that improves the lives of all, what is?" Well, that's a problem, because (in the U.S. at least) higher education reaches only 37% of the population. That's not a strong recipe for social change. Cangialosi also suggests, "Not only can we teach motivation, curiosity, collaboration, character, wisdom, integrity, empathy, and compassion, we must." I don't think these are just subjects like math or physics that we can just teach. It takes a reorientation of the whole concept of education (including higher education, such as it is) that goes beyond merely dropping the idea of grading.

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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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