OLDaily

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

View of Bibliometric Insights Into the Open Education Landscape
Rong Zou, Leilei Jiang, Walton Wider, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2025/02/27

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Although I am interested in the topic and enjoyed the diagrams that resulted, this article offers more evidence that the quality of an analysis crucially depends on the data being studies. In this case, the authors use the Web of Science database to research the literature on open education. "The keyword 'Open Education' was exclusively employed in the 'TOPIC' search field, a deliberate decision to hone the process on publications directly relevant to this field." So 'open learning' is ruled out? And 'open educational resources' is ruled out? The authors write of their analysis: "The 402 articles show that open education research is gaining popularity. There were no publications prior to 2015, but significant contributions started to appear in 2016." But surely that's wrong! And I have to wonder about the range and breadth of the articles selected. We see the 'top' article with only 46 citations. How is that possibly reflective of the literature?

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Generative AI is most useful for the things we care about the least
John P. Nelson, The Conversation, 2025/02/27

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The danger of using a phrase like "things we care about" is that we don't all care about the same things. That's important. Because when John Nelson says AI "lacks the contemplation and attention to detail that yield great works of art," my reaction is, "who cares?" I don't depend on AI to produce great works of art. I depend on it to do some things I do care about competently - things like translating text, removing pixelation from images, writing generic API algorithms, keeping a safe distance from the car in front of me. I care about all of these things much more that I care about creating a great work of art - though I note that AI will also make it much easier for me to produce a great work of art. So AI isn't van Gogh. Who cares? Via Alan Levine.

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The Making of Community Notes
Jay Baxter, Keith Coleman, Lucas Neumann, Emily Thai, Asterisk, 2025/02/27

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I haven't used Twitter in quite a long time so I haven't really watched the rise of the 'community notes' feature, though of course I'm aware of their use and impact. This article is a discussion with the team who built the feature (listed as authors here). A key element to the community notes system is the use of a 'bridging algorithm' that finds comments that reach across diverse communities. Via Lenny's Newsletter, which features a podcast and tons of links, including a sample community note, their formal paper, and the open source code on GitHub.

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I Do Not Understand Quantum Computers or the Apparent Breakthroughs From Google and Microsoft
Nick Heer, Pixel Envy, 2025/02/27

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This post signals the beginning of the hype wave for quantum computing as it discusses Microsoft's announcement that it has developed a new state of matter called 'topological superconductivity'. I've seen enough from my workplace to be able to say that quantum computing is a real thing and will make life interesting for developers and programmers (or their AI tools) for the next few decades. But I want to remond people as the hype wave startes that quantum computing has been in development for a long time in academic and government computer labs. Microsoft isn't creating or inventing quantum computing; it's trying to commercialize it. Take careful note of the difference.

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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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