Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ An early warning system to identify and intervene online dropout learners

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I have no doubt there is a tidal wave coming of GPT-based academic articles coming, but until then, journals are still publishing old-school articles like this. I'm not saying it's a bad article; it's actually quite good. But it's old school in the following senses: first, the problem of 'drop-outs' presumes a specific and arguably outdated model of online learning; second, the mechanism of a decision tree and risk-level classification system harkens back toi the days of rule-based AI, an approach now completely overtaken by deep learning; and third, the idea that there can be an 'explanation' and therefore 'intervention' reflects a similarly dated model of causal reasoning. There's a lot of good thinking here, but it all feels to me like a gears-and-pistons model of learning and cognition.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 4:05 p.m.

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