Stephen Downes

Alfred Essa comments on a two part article (part one, part two) on the history of the learning management system (LMS) from former Blackboard CEO Matthew Pittinsky last fall. "Today's LMS is essentially the same system we had three decades ago," summarizes Essa. "This is a stunning admission." Despite a billion dollars of investment, the LMS did nothing to advance learning in all that time. "Describing this history simply as 'investment' also obscures what was actually being optimized. Equity financing is designed to reward scale, market dominance, and successful exits - not necessarily pedagogical transformation." As we all know, Blackboard spent all this money trying to acquire its way into market dominance, to become "operating system" of education. The future? The LMS with AI "as an operating system that should orchestrates all learning." But if it does this, argues Essa, it cannot become something that advances teaching and learning.

"The greatest threat to higher education is not AI. It is institutional inertia supported by reflexive criticism that mistakes resistance for virtue. AI did not create this problem, but it is exposing dysfunctionalities and contradictions that have accumulated over decades." So says Ian Richardson in this article responding to critics of his earlier article (archive) where he makes the same claim. "If universities, especially those in the second and third tiers, fail to respond to the strategic challenge it poses, they risk being displaced."  Currently open access on THE, but archive just in case. I think that recent experience tells us that rather than being displaced, universities risk being acquired and/or repurposed to serve various corporate or political ends.

Anil Dash is speaking to software developers, but he may as well be speaking to people in edtech as well. "It is grim right now," he writes, "About as bad as I've seen." It starts at the top. "Every major tech company has watched their leadership abandon principles that were once thought sacrosanct... (or) dire resource constraints or being forced to make ugly ethical compromises for pragmatic reasons." He recommends people learn about systems and about power - and in particular, "your first orders of business in this new year should be to consolidate power through building alliances with peers, and by understanding which fundamental systems of your organization you can define or influence, and thus be in control of." In addition, consider working "in other realms and industries that are often far less advanced in their deployment of technologies," especially where "the lack of tech expertise or fluency is often exploited by both the technology vendors and bad actors who swoop in to capitalize on their vulnerability."

In case we had forgotten, the authors of , The Drain of Scientific Publishing (12 page PDF) remind us that " academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it" as well as to the wider community that funded it. Publishers have subverted open access mandates through the application of publication fees (aka 'article processing fees' (APC)) to earn even more than before. "APCs have exacerbated the distortions of commercial publishing. Whereas the Open Access movement aimed to make knowledge freely accessible, publishers found ways to shift paywalls from readers to authors." Via Octopus monthly updates.

"If one cannot distinguish between lies and statistics, if statistics can be easily manipulated and presented to fit preferred narratives, what then is the real value of statistics as a social technology?" It's a good question. Research involving statistics, argues Ed Humpherson, requires three kinds of openness (paraphrased): first, making the statistical data available; second, being clear about the limits of statistics; and third, listening to users of the statistics and being willing to recognise when users have valid criticism. Humpherson focuses the article on government statistics, but of course these considerations would apply to any company, organbization or institution presenting statistical research to the community.

This article is in response to two recent reports. "The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) released best practices for journals on formatting funding statements, while the International Science Council (ISC) linked funding transparency to combating mis- and disinformation." In addition, though, the authors point to "the need for funding information as open metadata." They note that "The ISC highlights the 'playbook' phenomenon—strategies where the relationship between funding sources to research is disguised... (and) cases where governments engage in the spread of misinformation, to advance their anti-science agendas." They argue that "including funding statements in articles, while necessary, is insufficient. Funding information as open metadata creates high value for the whole research community." I agree. Via Octopus monthly updates.