OLDaily

Research ethics under the spotlight
James Coe, WonkHe, 2022/09/14

Over the years I've created a large number of reading lists for students on various topics (it's kind of what I do every day in this newsletter). I would certainly adjust these lists over time if I felt some material was too challenging for readers. 'Challenging' can mean anything from 'too technical' to 'raises complex issues'. There are places this newsletter won't go, and no, I'm not about to list those places, because that would defeat the point. Is this a question of research ethics? James Coe seems to think so, as he blends this practice seamlessly with other questions around academic practice, partnerships and policy. He then offers an oversimplified account of research ethics and suggests "more light and less heat is needed to understand the trade offs." Well, maybe. But ethics isn't simply about trade-offs, no more than it is simply about risk, or even about transparency and openness. And it demands a more subtle approach than the trickery used here to get academics to talk about the things they won't talk about.

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Supporting collaborative classroom networks through technology: An actor network theory approach to understanding social behaviours and design
Vishesh Kumar, Mike Tissenbaum, British Journal of Educational Technologhy, 2022/09/14

If I had to summarize this paper in a few words, it would be: viewed as an agent, technology can help students interact by, for example, helping them ask for help. But such a summary would elide the dense layering of theoretical structure placed over this relatively simple formulation, whereby the authors incorporate Actor-Network Theory (ANT) "to provide an underutilized posthumanist lens to understand the creation of collaborative connections in this Computational Action-based implementation... by pushing us to decenter the human, and consider the active roles that human and non-human entities play in learning environments by actively shaping each other." I guess I have to ask what value this theoretical approach adds.

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When open data closes the door: A critical examination of the past, present and the potential future for open data guidelines in journals
Annayah M. B. Prosser, et al., British Journal of Social Psychology, 2022/09/14

This is an excellent paper raising and addressing the complexities that arise when considering open data guidelines in qualitative research. "Many researchers who use quantitative research approaches remain unaware of wider debates about open data within qualitative research," write the authors. Indeed, "definitions of what constitutes data (e.g., raw data, transcripts, codes, and reflections) and what form data-sharing should take, were not included in journal guidelines." Complexities arise from varying conceptions of the relation between data and the matter being studied, data collection methods, the methods of processing and interpretation of the data, and the sensitivity and rights over the data by the subjects themselves. For example, as Tuck and Yang suggest, "we come across stories, vignettes, moments, turns of phrase, pauses, that would humiliate participants to share, or are too sensationalist to publish." Image: Alexander, et al. Via Charles W. Bailey Jr.

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My issues with assessment by AI
Terry Freedman, ICT & Computing in Education, 2022/09/14

Terry Freedman responds to my suggestion that the future of assessment is in "systems that can 'taught to analyse and assess responses to an open-ended question'." He raises three issues: first, "the program itself doesn't know how it reached the conclusion"; second, the phenomenon of "automation bias", where we are inclined to believe the AI system without question; and third, the concern that the teacher has "no opportunity to see what misconceptions the student has developed."

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IPFS Thing: Intro to WebNative File System
Brooklyn Zelenka, Philipp Kruger, Fission, 2022/09/14

This short article and video introduces the WebNative File System (WNFS), an effort to enable users "to be able to search for, select, and open files within the browser itself" in order to help "build Web3 native apps." The difficulty is that the browser is a 'hostile environment' in the sense that it is difficult to secure. This proposal builds on directed acyclical graphs (DAG) and the interplanetary file system (IPFS) to propose an approach. There's a lot of good thinking here, with the key (I think) being the way temporal structures and key structures can be understood as DAGs (presented elegantly as shape-shifting graphs in the video). There is a much more detailed presentation here along with a white paper and code on GitHub. If you're interested in this you'll be interested in other sessions from the IPFS þing (pronounched 'thing') conference from last July. Via Boris Mann.

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