OLDaily

Planning for Change: Leveraging American Rescue Plan (ARP) for Open Educational Resources (OER) to Enhance Teaching and Learning
Jean Weller, K12 Open Ed Collaborative, Google Docs, 2021/07/19

This is a position paper released by the K12 Open Ed Collaborative and referenced on the CC OpenEdu mailing list today. It is in line with the collaborative's Community Action Plan, which envisions "community-led structures and activities to advance open educational practice and OER implementations across settings." The position paper recommends "shifting the long-term investment from commercial resources to open educational resources (OER), accompanied by incentives and time for teachers to collaboratively integrate research-based pedagogies."

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No, Mr University, I expect you to die
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2021/07/19

It was a natural, I think, following the acquisition of EdX by an online program management (OPM) company, to come up with a categorization blending the two. And it's not unrealistic to imagine this new blend, which we'll call OPX, continue the undermining of the university system as it takes on more and more contracts from various institutions to manage their online programs. That's what Holon does, that's what George Siemens reports, and this is how Brian Lamb responds: "If your 'plan' for higher ed is to outsource to an OPM... maybe... quit? Don't worry, corporatization, privatization and the drive to learning as commodity will somehow manage without you." Martin Weller points out that this is only one of four scenarios for the future of online learning. Now I have a hard time seeing the university system somehow defying the odds to survive and save the day, though I guess they are best framed as defenders of class and privilege like James Bond. My preference would be to sustain a publicly-funded community-based model, as I outlined at OECD in 2006, despite the misgivings of David Wiley (who was in the room when I outlined it).

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Michael Feldstein, 2021/07/19

The paywalled Times Higher Education article in question here, says Michael Feldstein, is "an unenlightening mess wrapped in clickbait packaging," but " it is a near-perfect illustration of how the popular representations of both artificial intelligence (AI) and cheating can be harmful." What follows is an extended discussion of cheating, defined here as “engaging in behaviors that are intended to facilitate passing without learning”, and John Ross, the human author of the article, "and the mental algorithm he employed to write this piece, which I will call Journobot 2000... a set of mental shortcuts that John Ross employed to avoid the hard work of thinking and learning when writing parts of his article." In the case of this article, "Journobot 2000 has assembled a series of quotes and facts related to the topics of AI, writing, and/or cheating in some combination." Feldstein makes the case quite well, I think, for example, confirming with one of the interviewees, Jesse Stommel, that his quote in the article was given months ago about a different topic.

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Is it possible to ban remote proctoring?
Sarah E. Silverman, Autumm Caines, 2021/07/19

The answer to this question is essentially "no". The authors explain, "This is because directly purchasing a proctoring service from the provider is only one way to make use of proctoring software. Many other educational technology companies offer proctoring services, often for 'free' or passing the cost on to the student." Point well made, with a list of vendors to substantiate the claim.

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Beware explanations from AI in health care
Boris Babic, Sara Gerke, Theodoros Evgeniou, I. Glenn Cohen, Science, 2021/07/19

Substitute 'education' for 'health care' and the same argument applies. We want explanations for decisions or diagnoses made by artificial intelligence; this requirement shows up in any number of documents on the ethical use of AI. But we should be cautious in making this demand, according to this article. "This consensus, at least as applied to health care, both overstates the benefits and undercounts the drawbacks of requiring black-box algorithms to be explainable." The article is behind a stupid paywall, but it's short and can be viewed on Twitter in full here. See also Eric Topol's full thread. Image: Explanation ontology (full size version).

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Data-driven detection and characterization of communities of accounts collaborating in MOOCs
José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, Daniel Jaramillo-Morillo, Srećko Joksimović, Vitomir Kovanović, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Dragan Gaševiće, Future Generation Computer Systems, 2021/07/19

This article reports on the analysis of data collected from Coursera MOOCs in order to identify different types of collaboration, which they classify as 'fruitful', 'free-riding', 'illicit', CAMEO (Copying Answers using Multiple Existences Online) helper, and CAMEO premeditated. "While collaborations in MOOCs are generally considered positive for the learning process, this work has revealed that not all students’ collaborations can be considered as good or beneficial," write the authors. This to me reflects more weaknesses in the design and delivery of the MOOCs. That would be why, to my mind, "the majority of the associations that we detected have shown a low interest in learning the courseware and explicit dishonest behaviors."

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