news (external)

2025 Open Access Policy

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-07-02 17:37
Gates Open Access Policy, Jul 02, 2024

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Open Access Policy is being updated for next year. It applies to all Gates funded manuscripts starting in January. It mandates preprints "as a preprint in a preprint server recognized by the foundation or preapproved preprint server." It requires a CC By 4.0 license on publications, though grantees retain copyright. The foundation will not pay article processing charges (APC) but doesn't rule out grantees paying the costs. And it asserts "underlying data supporting the Funded Manuscripts shall be made accessible immediately and as open as possible upon availability, subject to any applicable ethical, legal, or regulatory requirements or restrictions." The policy is broadly endorsed and (I am told) offered to governments as an example to emulate for their own open access policy. Image: Open Access Network.

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Code Droid Technical Report

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Mon, 2024-07-01 07:37
Factory, Jul 01, 2024

Back when I was a program manager I called for a project to explore using AI to study how experts approach tasks in order to understand what skills they require. We called it automated competency development and recognition (ACDR). Here's a couple of papers from my colleagues based on the concept. Automated competency development has advanced in the years since. This product announcement takes the idea a step further, progressing from recognizing the competency and developing in humans to developing it in artificial intelligence, who then go on to replicate the expert behaviour. Sure, at this stage, maybe it's all smoke and mirrors. But there's nothing inherent in the concept that suggests to me that it would be impossible, especially in narrow domains like software engineering.

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Practical ways to deal with AI in your courses

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Mon, 2024-07-01 07:37
Elizabeth Wells, University Affairs, Jul 01, 2024

I don't think this is a great article, but the first section took me back to the days when search engines first became popular. One suggestion was for teachers to have 'Google jockeys' in their classes to look up and report on things that were discussed. Elizabeth Wells suggests in this article the idea of 'AI jockeys'. "Since these people are on their devices anyway, we might as well make them work!." The remaining five suggestions are variations on the themes of 'go live and go offline', taking us back to the days of writing tests on paper. "We used to do this all the time, so its not as onerous as you think." For people who otherwise don't write anything, requiring paper-based tests is indeed onerous.

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This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain on Screens

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Mon, 2024-07-01 07:37
Jill Barshay, Mind/Shift, Jul 01, 2024

This paper explores studies that "show that students of all ages, from elementary school to college, tend to absorb more when they're reading on paper rather than screens." I think 'absorbing' is an odd way to describe reading. Researchers have been looking at things like blood flow, brain waves and electrical activity, which they then (fancifully) interpret. Here's a link to the meta-analysis. But ultimately, "None of this work settles the debate over reading on screens versus paper. All of them ignore the promise of interactive features, such as glossaries and games, which can swing the advantage to electronic texts."

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Stepping Down as Co-Chair of the National Information Standards Controlled Digital Lending Working Group

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Mon, 2024-07-01 07:37
Jennie Rose Halperin, Library Futures, Jul 01, 2024

Publishers are seeing this as their moment to destroy public libraries. The evidence of this is all around, including most recently their efforts to derail the the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)'s Interoperable Standards for Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) Working Group. "These (publisher) groups waited until the end of the process to declare that the entire concept of digital lending is unacceptable to them," writes Jennie Rose Halperin. Anyhow, "Whether or not big publishers approve, the standards are drafted and ready for use." This is the point at which legislators, not the courts, should be intervening, to protect public libraries, and in passing, the democracies they protect. Via Dan Gillmor.

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Diagramming: history of the visualization of grammar in the 19th century

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 22:37
Victor Mair, Language Log, Jun 28, 2024

The real gem here is Public Domain Review, a blog that does what its title says it does. This specific post in Language Log from Victor Mair references a specific article from the Review, American Grammar: Diagraming Sentences in the 19th Century. It's a beauty. The article collects seven works on grammar from the 1800s and reproduces then as "crisply photographed archival works that you can flip through page by page to study at your leisure." And, appealing to my own arcane interests, it gives us a good look at how grammar was diagrammed over time. "It is interesting to observe how the explications and illustrations become increasingly clear and sophisticated through the years and decades." Do read Mair's article as he pulls out some of the best bits, and then (since it's the weekend) linger over these seven treasures of analysis "in an attempt to visualize the complex structure — of seemingly divine origins — at their mother tongue's core."

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The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Docker

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 22:37
Josep Ferrer, MachineLearningMastery.com, Jun 28, 2024

Now I already know how to set up and run a Docker container. But a lot of people don't and this post is mostly a good guide. But it's also an example of how easy it is to confuse your readers. Josep Ferrer writes, " I place the Dockerfile at the same level as my main script and the requirements.txt file." Sounds find, but above there has been no example of 'requirements.txt'. Going back you can see where he mentions it: "Even though it is not necessary, it is a good practice to always have a requirements.txt with all the libraries that our script requires. In this case, we would only add the numpy library." So - what does requirements.txt look like? Do you just put in the name of the requirements? Are they separated with spaces, commas or line feeds? Just that one little bit is unclear and requires quite a bit of inference on the part of the reader. It could stop them cold, becoming what I call a 'blocker' in instructions texts. Some other things are also unclear (and the script being run actually fails). See my video where I follow the instructions.

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Authentication vs. authorization: What's the difference?

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 22:37
Matt Kosinski, IBM Blog, Jun 28, 2024

Here's the answer: "Authentication and authorization are related but distinct processes in an organization's identity and access management (IAM) system. Authentication verifies a user's identity. Authorization gives the user the right level of access to system resources." What follows is a fairly high level discussion of the concepts, but if the distinction wasn't immediately clear it would be well worth reading the article to get a firm understanding of the two concepts.

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Digital Literacy OER

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 22:37
Katsusuke Shigeta, Hokkaido University, Jun 28, 2024

Katsusuke Shigeta reports, "we've teamed up with Adobe to create Open Educational Resources (OER) for teaching digital literacy in higher education." They're available in Japanese and English from either Digital Literacy OER (Hokkaido University) or Adobe Education Exchange. There's a related presentation from a couple of years ago. He also references Adobe Creative Campus, though (in my view) people may be less inclined to get involved with over following recent licensing changes that may allow them to use your content to train AI. Via OE Global Connect.

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What is language for?

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 22:37
Jennifer Michalowski, McGovern Institute, Jun 28, 2024

This is a bit funny but pretty important. It's funny because the central claim is being used as an argument against the use of large language models (LLM) for artificial general intelligence. Here's the claim: "Drawing on evidence from neurobiology, cognitive science, and corpus linguistics, researchers make the case that language is a tool for communication, not for thought." I think that's quite right. But while LLM are limited in this way, neural network based AI in general is not. And even more importantly, the claim refutes a theory known as the Physical Symbol System hypothesis, which implies that that human thinking is a kind of symbol manipulation, and which forms the basis for a lot of the cogitive theory out there today (including, ironically, most critics of LLM). This article is a summary of the paper printed in Nature (paywalled, but there's a copy posted here). See also this Hacker News discussion. Via Benjamin Riley in a post that I think contains a number of errors, who is referenced in this discussion on the Learning Engineering discussion list.

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Learning analytics methods and tutorials

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Fri, 2024-06-28 19:37
Mohammed Saqr, Sonsoles López-Pernas, Jun 28, 2024

I love love love this open online textbook edited by Mohammed Saqr & Sonsoles López-Pernas and featuring a large number of contributors. It's not one of those online 'books' that offers only a superficial look at the subject; read this book closely and you'll learn a lot about learning analytics. It's strong on theory - check out this chapter on data, for example, which build-in examples of datasets - and it's strong on practice - check out this chapter on R (including code repository and installation instructions ( install R and then RStudio Desktop )). I recorded myself following the installation instructions (video). Via Sheila MacNeill.

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What did NRENs ever do for us? The answer might surprise you - Jisc

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Thu, 2024-06-27 16:37
Heidi Fraser-Krauss, JISC, Jun 27, 2024

This article briefly outline what the UK's Janet Network does and provides an overview of national research and education networks (NREN), focusing in particular on Britain's. "An NREN is a key piece of national infrastructure: a secure, resilient, high-speed network infrastructure that connects universities, colleges and research institutions. Across the world, 140 countries have their own NREN dedicated to supporting their research and education communities." I like this idea of NREN; a networked research infrastructure is essential today. But I'd to see them more open, so that everyone - not just universities and research organizations - can have access to them. Via GÉANT.

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We asked people about using AI to make the news. They’re anxious and annoyed

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Thu, 2024-06-27 16:37
Jennifer Orsi, Poynter, Jun 27, 2024

I commented today on how creating this newsletter is getting harder because of the proliferation of AI-generated content (you're just fooling yourself if you don't think it's already widely used). This article reports on some focus groups' responses to AI-generated news. "News consumers are clear they want disclosure from journalists about how they are using AI — but there is less consensus on what that disclosure should be." If it's AI-written, sure, I'd like to know (a label would be useful). But if AI was used in the research? When I was using Feedly's AI to filter RSS feeds (I have since stopped, because the selection was getting bland) should I have labeled every post? I don't mind the AI if it's producing content worth reading. But most of the content seems intended only for other AIs to read.

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ChatGPT shows hiring bias against people with disabilities

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Wed, 2024-06-26 07:37
Stefan Milne-U. Washington, Futurity, Jun 26, 2024

"According to new research," says this article, "ChatGPT shows bias against resumes with credentials that imply a disability." For example, "it noted that a candidate with depression had "additional focus on DEI and personal challenges," which "detract from the core technical and research-oriented aspects of the role." This is a problem, obviously. But in assessing issues of this type, two additional questions need to be asked: first, how does the AI performance compare with human performance? After all, it is very likely the AI is drawing on actual human discrimination when it learns how to assess applications. And second, how much easier is it to correct the AI behaviour as compared to the human behaviour? This article doesn't really consider the comparison with humans. But it does show the AI can be corrected. How about the human counterparts?

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Positive Artifcial Intelligence in Education (P‐AIED): A Roadmap

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Wed, 2024-06-26 07:37
Ig Ibert Bittencourt, et al., International Journal of Artifcial Intelligence in Education, Jun 26, 2024

A lot of the discussion has focused on the use of AI to address learning outcomes. This paper, by contrast, looks at "the strengths and the positive aspects of the learning process to promote wellbeing" - in other words, AI-based learning technology that cares. "Despite focusing only on the learning system's inefciencies and on the hegemony of solutions to tackle the learning gap, we also need to shed light on the strengths and the positive aspects of the learning process to promote wellbeing." Drawing on John Self's writing about the defning characteristics of Intelligent Tutoring Systems, the authors outline how "ITSs care not only about what the student knows and misunderstands but also about what the student feels and how such interaction afects them." I'm sure a few readers are sceptical, but I've never felt a single-minded focus on 'learning outcomes' was ever the intended objective of educational technology, or education generally.

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We Tried to Replace 404 Media With AI

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-06-25 22:37
Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media, Jun 25, 2024

The title of this article is a bit misleading, as the story describes an experiment where the 404 authors tried to replicate their site using web scraping technology. Basically, the sites either harvest feeds and link back to the source (I made my own sites like that back in the day), copy and reproduce full text, or use AI to rewrite copied text and present it as a new article. That's not the same as having an AI write your news site for you. In my opinion, a confluence of three factors make these possible: first, Google's ad model, which makes such sites profitable; second, the technology, which makes it easier to fool Google's search engine; and third, news sites themselves, which these days rely less and less on original research and reporting.

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Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-06-25 22:37
Mariette DiChristina, Bernard Meyerson, World Economic Forum, Jun 25, 2024

Today's new word (for me at least) is "elastocalorics", which refers to types of materials "emit heat when subjected to mechanical stress and cool down when the stress is relaxed." This is one of the ten new technologies predicted in this report (46 page PDF) from the World Economic Forum. The rest of the ten are various flavours of sensors and AI, proteins and genomics, and carbon capture. I don't meanto sound glib - I mean, there's a fair bit of research behind these ideas - but there just feels to me like there's a disconnect between what we see here and what we need. Via Alan Levine.

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Writing as 'passing'

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-06-25 22:37
Helen Beetham, imperfect offerings, Jun 25, 2024

This article should be read from the bottom up as well as the top down, as the inference can work in either direction. The article begins as a critique of the Turing test (which says essentially that a computer has achieved artificial intelligence if it can fool a human) and Turing-like tests. Beetham offers the observation that Turing tests do as much to make humans appear as computers as they make computers as humans, since the only a text-based interface is used. But she then takes this a step further to suggest that higher learning itself changes the student as part of an identity-building process. Writing for assessment forces a person to interact differently than they would otherwise. As Beetham writes, "I think most students experience academic English as a profoundly 'other' discourse." The idea here, in both parts of the article, is to depict writing as an activity, not a product. As derived from Wittgenstein: "language is not representational form, however complex and inter-related, but action, interaction and expression."

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Developing Policy Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence in Post-secondary Institutions

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-06-25 22:37
Mohamed Ally, Sanjaya Mishra, Commonwealth of Learning, Jun 25, 2024

Via Sanjaya Mishra, here's a new report (52 page PDF) from the Commonweath of Learning on AI policy. It's so new I can't find it in the CoL repository. Based on a literature review and survey of AI policies, "this report identifies 14 areas that stakeholders in higher education institutions should consider while developing policies for AI." You can find the list on pp. 15-16. The report also has general considerations on setting up the policy and a process for development and implementation.

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What We Do in a Nutshell: GÉANT at the Research Infrastructures Conference

OLDaily by Stephen Downes - Tue, 2024-06-25 16:37
GÉANT CONNECT Online, Jun 25, 2024

This is an introduction to a video presentation on "Research Infrastructures in a Changing Global, Environmental and Socio-economical Context". Though the purpose is to describe the underlying infrastructure, it also in passing explains why it's a bad idea to force researchers from across the country to work in a single building in Ottawa: "None of us knows where the next super scientist sits, none of us knows where the next dataset is... By making sure all researchers are connected to our network, we ensure that scientists around the globe have the same chance to collaborate." Next-generation research and education agency should be focused on connecting researchers and educators wherever they happen to be, not forcing them to work in a downtown office.

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