OLDaily

China's Xinhua agency unveils AI news presenter
Chris Baraniuk, BBC News, 2018/11/09

This item is for those people who think that the teacher can never be replaced. Watching the AI announcer, I like many others felt the delivery was a bit flat. But we see that from a lot of human anchors. And it was funny to read the criticism: "The presenter struggled to appear completely natural, said Michael Wooldridge at the University of Oxford." Of course, only a human would "struggle". And even a human couldn't fix the overly-long sentences the poor AI has been tasked with reading.

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Plan S for open access is far too risky, say researchers
Brendan O'Malley, University World News, 2018/11/09

Journal publishers have struck back against Plan S, the requirement that researchers publish findings of publicly funded research in open access journals. According to this article, "700 researchers from across Europe and beyond have signed an open letter criticising Plan S." It's currently 870 researchers, mostly from Europe, and overwhelmingly from chemistry departments (which seems off to me). There's considerable hyperbole, for example, the claim that "we won’t even be able to legally read the most important [society] journals of, for example, the American Chemical Society." This comes after reports that "the London-based Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, announced they were both endorsing ‘Plan S’."

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What Learning Technologists said the key challenges would be for 2019: ALTC Word Cloud
Ben Waugh, ALTC Blog, 2018/11/09

The top issue in this list was staff - "Staff will always be essential for facilitating learning, making decisions and being key stakeholders in any digital learning process," writes Ben Waugh. Next is 'learning' ("Everything revolves around this for HE institutions.") and next is 'New', whatever that means. Students only made number 5 in the word list.

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here, and it is changing everything
Colleges and Institutes Canada, Desire2Learn, 2018/11/09

Desire2Learn has updated and published a Canadian edition of its report on the future of learning (28 page PDF) (and you don't even have to give them information to read it; well done D2L). The premise is that the nature of work is changing and that therefore "societies must embrace new or hybrid learning models to allow individuals and economies to thrive going forward." A challenge is coming from automation and AI, "putting cognitive jobs at risk." There's also the rise of "the gig economy". So "neither employers nor employees can expect skills to stay relevant throughout careers."

So what needs to change? "Higher education must redefine its value proposition for students and employers." Just getting a credential is not enough any more. Institutions need to embrace "delivery models that are learner-centric, flexible, responsive, and adaptive," for example, "a system of stackable credentials (that) can be leveraged to provide ongoing education and skill development for employees." D2L recommends aligning programs and credentials to labour market needs (which I think is a dubious proposition), expanding work-integrated learning (which I support), and ensuring the system is affordable (which i very much support).

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Product management learning list - for government, open to all
Canadian Digital Services, 2018/11/09

This is a low-tech way to distribute what is essentially a self-paced course on product management. It came to me via the Canadian Digital Services newsletter, part of an ongoing program to modernize digital services in the Government of Canada. It's a Google Sheets spreadsheet with resources collected from around the web, a short commentary, and information about the focus and type. Everything is freely accessible - click and read. That's the way to do it.

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