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

Digital textbook deals spark controversy
Moira MacDonald, University Affairs, 2025/09/19

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I've reported on this trend previously. "It's an American trend that's slowly gaining attention - and controversy - in Canada. Instead of buying new or used textbooks, or independently purchasing a digital licence, students are being automatically enrolled in fee-based subscription services to access their textbooks and course materials online." The fallacy, of course, is the assertion that "student success... was the driver." The program has received virtually no support from students, and there are other ways to provide access to learning resources at much lower cost.

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Bar Graphs Should Start at 0
Erik Ekholm, Edudata, 2025/09/19

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As Erik Ekholm says, "using a bar graph that doesn't start at 0 is always the wrong choice." This isn't exactly novel invormation. Ekholm is describing the 'Gee Whiz Graph' as described by Darrell Huff in his 1954 How to Lie With Statistics. I think the real story here is that publicists are still pulling the same moves in 2025 and are still getting away with it. If only there were some way to enable people to protect themselves against manipulations like this.

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A 107-Year-Old Irish Farmer Reflects on the Changes He’s Seen During His Life (1965)
Colin Marshall, Open Culture, 2025/09/19

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I'm sitting in my office listening to Radiohead as I work on a computer to research learning and technology. It makes you think. From Kottke: "A 1965 television interview with a 107-year-old Irish farmer (born in 1858) on all the changes he's seen during his life. Q: "What would you say was the biggest change?" A: "Well, machinery." This man was born 100 years before I was. In two lifetimes, we've gone from the scythe to self-driving combines. It's all so very new and precarious, and I'm not looking forward to what happens if and when this all stops working.

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Children's Conceptions of AI, Ethics and Intelligence in China: Evidence from Drawing and Ranking Activities
Ziyan Lin, Yun Dai, British Journal of Educational Technology, 2025/09/19

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I'm not generally a fan of articles of the form "X's conceptions of Y", especially when the population of X considered is very small, but I'll make an exception here because the study speaks (in some way, at least) to broader social attitudes. After all, as I've argued elsewhere, our ethical beliefs are shaped informally long before anyone trots out a set of 'ethical principles' to follow. Certainly, though, we should not generalize from these findings. So what do we see? In terms of ethics, most of the students focused on the benefits of AI, its "potential to improve efficiency, convenience and productivity." A minority expressed "concerns related to data privacy, dependency and unequal applicability of AI technologies." There are interesting things said about AI as a whole and intelligence in particular (for example, "some students viewed natural entities, such as tree branches and ice, as inherently intelligent due to their natural, born-with ability to grow, adapt and evolve without human manipulation").

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What is the Trusted Learning Environment (TLE) Seal?
edCircuit, 2025/09/19

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To be honest, I would trust a 'seal' like this about as much as I trust the 'Canada' labels being applied in grocery stores by American companies on American products being sold in Canada. Public schools may comply, but the motivation is just not there for a private company to follow social standards, and their allegiance to them will last (as has been demonstrated repeatedly over time) only as long as the financial incentive does. And it's pretty easy to, as they say, fake the data. But props to CoSN for at least trying to set a standard for student data privacy, along with an urging to keep fees as 'nominal' as possible. 

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In the Mouth of AI Maddeness
Jim Groom, 2025/09/19

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So I'm actually following this experiment in AI Maddeness - it started with a flood of posts on Mastodon and led to me actually watching (a good part of) the YouTube game recording. I'm an old hand at posting my own game videos so I can see the appeal. And I definitely like the way Jim Groom has tried to add a whole AI-generated community and press coverage around the games. I don't know whether this becomes a new way to play video games, but it's fun to think about.

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The First-Party Data Future: Responsible Data Collection Strategies for News Organizations
Ben Werdmuller, News Product Alliance, 2025/09/19

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I am not actually convinced that most interactions require the collection of data. Certainly, publishing news shouldn't require data collection at all, in my view. OLDaily doesn't collect any data from readers other than the email addresses of subscribers or IP addresses of web users (so I know where to send it to). I have a link redirect script that I use (I wrote it myself) but it doesn't log clicks (it used to, but it was way too much trouble than it was worth). I does allow me to fix links after I've sent them out, which I've done a few times over the years. Same with my MOOCs; my last MOOC had zero signups required. My own feeling is that any data about the user should be held by the user, and used only on an as-needed basis. But most of the world does not agree with me on this, and so for the people who do collect data, here are Ben Werdmuller's guidelines.

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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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