OLDaily

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

Technologies of Individualization Are Technologies of Inequality
Audrey Watters, Second Breakfast, 2025/04/16

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If you wonder why I am at such pains to distinguish between personal and personalized learning, this should give you a sense of it. Here's Audrey Watters: "'Individualized learning,' particularly when enacted through technologies that defy scrutiny and accountability through algorithmic decision-making, echo the legacy of 'separate but equal.' ... through the establishment of a hierarchy based on 'ability,' often determined by standardized testing - a way to avoid saying 'IQ' perhaps while continuing to practice ranking based on 'intelligence.'" That sort of Platonic predetermination of one's role in society has never appealed to me, though it has resonated with authoritarians through history. Opposed to it directly is an account of agency (part one, part two) and personal learning, which is what I'm all about in these pages. 

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AI code suggestions sabotage software supply chain
Thomas Claburn, The Register, 2025/04/16

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I can confirm from my own experience the phenomenon where a large language model (LLM) will incorporate software packages that don't exist. This happens where there is a pattern of similar package names for similar functions that do exist. You see them, for example, when you ask an AI to write a script accessing an API; if the right package doesn't exist, the AI will simply act as though it does exist. This, argues Thomas Claburn, opens an avenue for malware called "slopsquatting" where a malicious actor creates malware using the name suggested by the AI to be incorporated and run. "Even worse, when you Google one of these slop-squatted package names, you'll often get an AI-generated summary from Google itself confidently praising the package."

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Pedagogical Biases in AI-Powered Educational Tools: The Case of Lesson Plan Generators
Bodong Chen, Jiayu Cheng, Chen Wang, Vivian Leung, 2025/04/16

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Why am I not surprised? "AI generated content predominantly promotes teacher-centered classrooms with limited opportunities for student choice, goal-setting, and meaningful dialogue." This would put AI in line with most of what I've seen in commercial online learning (and in my workplace, I've seen a lot recently as the solution to every workplace issue seems to be 'mandatory training'). Note: this short paper (7 page PDF) would not display in Firefox; you'll need to download using Chrome or open using Acrobat Reader. Via Clint Lalonde. Image: Ditch That Textbook.

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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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