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

A Current Overview of the Use of Learning Analytics Dashboards
Italo Masiello, et al., MDPI, 2024/01/11

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This report on the use of learning analytics dashboards (LAD) is based on a review of research reports and Google search results on the topic. Not surprisingly, the use of LAD continues to increase. However, "(LAD) it provides predictions which are not clearly translated into pedagogical actions; and the possibility of self-regulated learning and game-based learning are not capitalized upon." Instead, the results are being used to highlight inequality and inclusiveness, and their use as well is raising questions about data ownership and reuse. It would be interesting to ask why the research into LAD went in this direction but the authors don't speculate.

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Academic Papers: Written to be Read, Referenced, or Questioned?
Tony Hirst, OUseful.Info, the blog..., 2024/01/11

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It's  interesting how the use of an AI tool to help read academic papers raises the question of what academic papers are even for. Even before the use of AI, students were taught to not read the paper from beginning to end. But then, what are they reading it for? As Tony Hirst documents, dome people are just looking for more references, others are looking for answers to questions, while still others are looking for new questions. I read academic papers critically and within the broader context of the literature generally (hence I spend time in the literature reviews, often the most valuable part of the paper). Because of the lack of accepted methodology or common research questions in our discipline, the contribution of research data is negligible (though I still read the conclusions to find out what the authors believed before going through the charade of proving it with data). P.S. totally agreed with Hirst on the two-column format.

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How Do I Know What Is Real? How to Fight Misinformation in An Age of Lies
Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, 2024/01/11

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I was involved in a discussion about blockchain earlier today where he subject of identity and provenance came up. Now I know there are issues with blockchain, especially financial blockchain, because like anything else associated with financial services, there is a risk of scams and corruption. But it seems to me that there's a role to be played by distributed ledger technology to establish (human) identity and content provenance, and as AI dumps more and more misinformation into the ether we will need a strong AI-proof mechanism to preserve identity and data integrity. Now Vicki Davis doesn't mention blockchain in her article, but when she reports how the SEC Twitter account was hacked you begin to see the importance of finding a solution.

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It's time to leave Substack
Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, Substack, 2024/01/11

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This is another entry in the genre of posts called "quit lit" - where you announce you are quitting a platform and giving the reasons why. Quit lit has its critics but I feel than when someone makes a significant life decisions (which is what a choice of social media platform amounts to these days) they are entitled to explain why. And in the case of Substack, there are some compelling reasons why. But the main point in this article is the explanation of where moderation is needed: "Ghost, a Substack competitor, has almost no real moderation to speak of, but no one seems to care. You know why? Because it's not trying to jam all of its users into one feed to compete with Twitter or whatever." This is key to understand: moderation is not censorship. You can go off and say anything you want in your own space. Nobody's stopping you. Nobody's listening either. No, it's when you insist on polluting someone else's space with your objectionable message that moderators need to step in.

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Which rights do AI and journalists have in common?
Jeff Jarvis, Nieman Lab, 2024/01/11

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I rarely agree with Jeff Jarvis, and there's a lot I disagree with in this column, but we are agreed that "The real question at hand is whether artificial intelligence should have the same right that journalists and we all have: the right to read, the right to learn, the right to use information once known." I have spent enough time in journalism to know that the people who write the news depend on other people's content more than anyone. They draw from anywhere and everywhere, delving into news, libraries, public records, press releases, personal correspondence, eye-witness reports, and more. I can't imagine how journalists would function if they could not read and borrow from each other and from the rest of us. For them to say they own it all is beyond credibility. To say that no one else - not nothing else - can exercise the very same rights is unreasonable.

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The Luddites of AI
Doug Johnson, Blue Skunk Blog, 2024/01/11

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A lot of people are worried about the impact of AI on professions like journalism and teaching, but maybe we';re thinking about it the wrong way. As Doug Johnson comments about AI in the news media: "might AI actually be better? Could a bot attend a school board or city council meeting, record it, and then distill the content? Could a bot analyze and summarize congressional actions, supreme court decisions, or presidential activities? Could a bot be embedded in a police force to report on crime or in a courtroom to describe trials? All in a style that is understandable and lacking bias." At a certain point we will realize that whatever biases an AI has, they're nothing compared to the biases of the corresponding human.

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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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