OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

How Students Use Unofficial Online Backchannels for Classes
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2023/09/14

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Here's the gist: "Many professors worry that online systems like Discord and GroupMe are used for cheating, but they can also help build community." What's funny is that while Discord is very well known and has about 200 million users, GroupMe isn't, and has only around 10 million users. So why put them both side by side in the story (especially when other services, such as Matrix, have six times as many users)? If I were more cynical, I would say this is marketing. Anyhow, the gist of this article is that "the biggest concern many professors have about these unofficial online platforms is whether students use them to cheat." As usual. But I have to say, if a backchannel can be used to cheat in your course, it's your course, not the backchannel, that is the problem.

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Publishers, Don't Use AI Detection Tools!
Avi Staiman, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2023/09/14

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You wouldn't think this warning was required, given the well-documented failures of AI-detection tools ("Timnit Gebru, Founder & Executive Director at The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), recently shared a distressing email she received where a writer was unjustly accused of employing AI") but this article is evidence that it does seem to be necessary. Indeed, the question remains why we should be banning them at all. If an article has academic merit, who cares if it was written using the assistance of an AI? "Rather than rejecting AI tools in academic writing," writes Avi Staiman, "what if we used them as educational tools and a means to level the playing field for EAL scholars?" 

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Open Source Initiative Hosts 2nd Deep Dive AI Event, Aims to Define 'Open Source' for AI
Stefano Maffulli, Voices of Open Source, 2023/09/14

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As this press release states, "Open Source Initiative (OSI), the non-profit corporation that educates about and advocates for the importance of non-proprietary software, is hosting its 2nd Deep Dive: AI event, this one focused on Defining Open Source AI." Major sponsors include Google, GitHub, Amazon and OSS Capital - not exactly who I'd trust to define 'open'. My concern right off the mark is that 'open source AI' is very different from 'open AI' (the concept, not the colmpany), which is what we actually need. True open AI would be based on data sets that are open and accessible to all, extracted from sources specifically permitting and endorsing such use. As Irene Solaiman (Hugging Face) wrote back in March, "open source and closed source (are) the two ends of a gradient of options for releasing generative AI systems, rather than a simple either/or question" (illustrated).

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Library eBook Pledge
Open Book Publishers, 2023/09/14

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Just as music publishers have successfully converted the market from music you buy and own to streams you subscribe to on a month-to-month basis, so also book publishers want to convert books into time-limited and temporary access. This is why the Library eBook Pledge was created. "The move to licensed eBooks has undermined many things we once took for granted, including stable pricing, preservation and inter-library loan, through to even the possibility for a library to acquire a book. This is not sustainable." Via the Nation in an article unironically offered as a time-limited temporary access subscription based model.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

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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