Stephen Downes

Bryan Alexander offers examples of the debate around and adoption of artificial intelligence through a series of examples drawn mostly from the U.S. (there's one reference to a Chinese example). He cites one trend, "Large majorities of these leaders cite specific hindrances to GenAI adoption and integration at their schools. The challenges most often mentioned include faculty unfamiliarity with or resistance to GenAI, distrust of GenAI tools and their outputs, and concerns about diminished student learning outcomes." 

I'm often critical of Alex Usher but there's a lot to like in this article on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in academia. What he explicitly recognizes here is that "our definition of merit, which disproportionately rewards people of certain backgrounds, is a deficient one." Where I would push back is twofold: first, he argues that EDI addresses this deficiency "by proxy" and that it's employed only because it's cheaper and easier than assessing each person individually. Not exactly. EDI addresses the "immutable factors" of race, gender, etc. because there are systemic barriers based precisely on such immutable factors. If the sign says "no girls" you're not responding "by proxy" by removing the sign; you're directly addressing a cause. Second, there seems to be a 'zero sum' assumption in the article that suggests some sort competition (and hence, measurement of merit and disadvantage is necessary). Maybe it's not 100% inescapable, but in a world of abundance (as Dave Cormier would say) we can certainly open up learning to far far more people than we do today. Image: McMaster's EDI Action Plan.

There are too many lessons here to summarize in a single post, but by and large I agree with them, as they parallel my own experience and what I've been seeing elsewhere. For example, "Students develop AI literacy through direct experimentation with its capabilities and limitations, not through theoretical instruction." And, "Measuring individual knowledge acquisition makes little sense in an era of AI-human cognitive partnership." The funny thing is that I think these 22 observations have always been true, even if our formal systems of education have not recognized them. Image: Zhai, et al. (a bit dated but worth a read in its own right).

Miguel Guhlin finds himself "fascinated by Xunzi, whom I never read or heard about in school and only found thanks to AI analysis of a draft of my writing, and its relevance to our AI moment." Based on this, he comes up with "a 'Xunzian' approach to AI in education created with Perplexity." It's the CARES model (because educators can't resist a mnemonic):

• C – Cultivate Habits
• A – Augment Teachers
• R – Reach Everyone
• E – Ethical Use
• S – Stay Curious

"Xunzi... focused on humanity's part in creating the roles and practices of an orderly society, and gave a much smaller role to Heaven or Nature as a source of order or morality than most other thinkers of the time."

I'm including this mostly for my own reference, as I live in hope that my official workload will ease up enough to allow me to continue working on CList and including stuff like this: "Recently, I 'vibe coded' a career discovery tool which asks you some questions, suggests some jobs, and tags them based on how likely to be automated in the future. It uses the Perplexity and Lightcast APIs. You can try the tool for yourself here."

I spent some time on university Boards of Governors (two years on the University of Alberta's, and one on Athabasca University's Governing Council). What I recognize in this article is the 'by the book' description of Canadian board members' duties and challenges, a description members would endorse, even while knowing it's not exactly accurate. For example, Alex Usher writes "Boards are expected to act as a conduit of information from the community to the university." Well, yeah, except that 'community' members do this by governing the institution (that's why they're always in the majority), and by 'community' we mean government, because that's who selects the members. And yes, Board members are volunteers, but they are typically from a (business) demographic that expects some return for their volunteerism, generally nothing overt like outright graft, but, you know, friendly relations between the business community and the government. Image: CAUT.