OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics. We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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You want your students back in the classroom? Give them a good reason!
Alexandra Mihai, The Educationalist, 2022/11/09

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This article makes me think about how hard it is to make a good case for in-person learning. "Ironically," writes Alexandra Mihai, "despite our expectations that students will happily rush back to campus, many of us noticed a different reality: low attendance levels and in some cases also low engagement." That's no surprise. If you're doing nothing that couldn't easily be done online, why go to the time and effort to travel to some (often uncomfortable) physical learning space? Mihai frames the argument for in-person learning in terms of the benefits of teacher presence and peer presence. But "Presence doesn't equal 'being in the classroom'." What matters is "make the classroom experience something they (students) don't want to miss." Sure, fine. But it's not clear we get better education as a result, at least to my mind.

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Consciousness and the Chinese Room
Tim Scarfe, Keith Duggar, YouTube, Machine Learning Street Talk, 2022/11/09

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This is a two-hour video (also MP3) on the Chinese Room argument featuring some leading voices in the field of AI and philosophy": J. Mark Bishop, Francois Chollet, David Chalmers, Joscha Bach, Karl Friston, Alexander Mattick, Sam Roffey. It's about whether an AI 'understands' what is being said or whether it's merely manipulating symbols (interestingly, we could ask exactly the same question about our students as well). The argument is introduced and the panelists offer basic comments, and then the discussion turns to related subjects such as consciousness, private language games, agency, Chomsky and syntax, and whether math represents. Via Reddit, where Tim Scarfe offers a brief overview and a well-infoirmed discussion follows in the comments.

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How to survive as the only remote person in the hybrid room
Tim Stevens, Protocol, 2022/11/09

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I have decades of experience being on the wrong end of a hybrid event or meeting. As Tim Stevens writes, "The hybrid approach to remote work can meet the needs of diverse teams of people, but too often those who sign in from afar can feel left out, absent from impromptu hallway discussions or outright ignored on Zoom calls." This article offers some suggestions on how to make the events work better, but it really is a challenge to convince people in the in-person room to treat online participants as real people (or even as a part of the meeting at all). People not using mics, tiny notes written on whiteboards, people talking over comments from remote people, informal breakout rooms with while remote participants wait - I've seen it all. My view: it's better to put everyone online than to try to mix modalities.

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2U leans into 'free-to-degree' pipeline
Lindsay McKenzie, EdScoop, 2022/11/09

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The title refers to the way online program management company 2U can convert of students from taking 'free' courses to tuition-based 'degree' courses. "A major benefit of the edX acquisition is that 2U's suite of degree programs and alternative credentials no longer have to spend so much on marketing to attract new students, Paucek said. Because edX's pool of learners is so big, there are now more 'organic leads' into paid programs, he said." Back in the day we used to call these 'loss leaders' because the idea was to sell something priced below value just to get people into the store, where direct marketing and 'upselling' would convince them to pay for something more expensive. According to this article, which reports on a 2U marketing call, the strategy is working.

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Mastodon Is Taking Off: Why It's My Favorite Social Media Network
Corbin Davenport, How-To Geek, 2022/11/09

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I'm rolling up today's Mastodon and fediverse coverage into a single point, beginning with this item praising Mastodon for not using an algorithm to organize results and for being a part of a wider fediverse. More news: In Time, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko explains how Mastodon avoids attracting hate. Molly Jong-Fast writes in Vanity Fair that Musk-era Twitter is a "complete mess" but she's not quitting just yet. Emory Craig says the debacle is "a lesson for the metaverse". Doug Johnson quits Twitter, but is using "no programs I am too out of the loop to even know about." Some people are offering their own account verification, including Walt Shaub's list mostly of journalists, and Jorge Caballero's list of verified, large, or notable Twitter accounts that have a Mastodon account. Metafilter reports that Reuters has a Mastodon explainer, as does CNN, New York Times, and the Guardian. Oh, and as I type, mastodon.social is down.

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Education’s Relative Autonomy: A Closer Look at the Discipline’s Past, Present, and Future
Stefan T. Siegel, Eva Matthes, Nordic Studies in Education, 2022/11/09

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The argument for the autonomy of education as a discipline is that it should basically be free of undue influence from other disciplines such as religion, economics and politics, write Stefan Siegel and Eva Matthes (17 page PDF). This risk is exemplified by the rise since the 1960s of 'empirical education', represented by such initiatives as PISA, which emphasis quantitative research, "whereas, for instance, hermeneutic and historical approaches and reflection on fundamental normative questions, which would be very important for educational practice, are often neglected." And, "disciplines such as psychology and sociology ask, for instance, psychological or sociological questions about education; however, they do not ask educational questions about education." And yet, they note, education lacks the basic ingredients of a stand-alone discipline, for example, agreement on what constitutes an educational theory, or well-understood and theorized research methods. Via BERA Blog, which offers a short summary.

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The corridor of uncertainty: Do we really need to record this session?
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2022/11/09

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This post is a restatement of the oft-made argument that recording may make some people uncomfortable and that therefore their consent ought to be sought. There's another post by Justin Weinberg on the same subject today. To quote Per Axbom, "Consider and think through needs, power structures, vulnerability and inclusion before you risk normalizing something that can lead to people feeling uncomfortable, unwilling to participate or unwilling to contribute." Fair enough. But the same argument applies in reverse. I've been a student or employee representative on management committees enough to know that secrecy is a powerful enabler of misconduct and worse. Demanding the meeting be secret was a way of taking control over what I could say about what happened. The same applies to classrooms; for some, being 'safe' means being free to harass, manipulate and misrepresent. My default is to open, and I feel people should require my consent before taking something secret.

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