Meet MathGPT: a Chatbot Tutor Built Specific to a Math Textbook — from thejournal.com by Kristal Kuykendall

Excerpt:

Micro-tutoring platform PhotoStudy has unveiled a new chatbot built on OpenAI’s ChatGPT APIs that can teach a complete elementary algebra textbook with “extremely high accuracy,” the company said.

“Textbook publishers and teachers can now transform their textbooks and teaching with a ChatGPT-like assistant that can teach all the material in a textbook, assess student progress, provide personalized help in weaker areas, generate quizzes with support for text, images, audio, and ultimately a student customized avatar for video interaction,” PhotoStudy said in its news release.

Some sample questions the MathGPT tool can answer:

    • “I don’t know how to solve a linear equation…”
    • “I have no idea what’s going on in class but we are doing Chapter 2. Can we start at the top?”
    • “Can you help me understand how to solve this mixture of coins problem?”
    • “I need to practice for my midterm tomorrow, through Chapter 6. Help.”
 

Educator considerations for ChatGPT — from platform.openai.com; with thanks to Anna Mills for this resource

Excerpt:

Streamlined and personalized teaching
Some examples of how we’ve seen educators exploring how to teach and learn with tools like ChatGPT:

  • Drafting and brainstorming for lesson plans and other activities
  • Help with design of quiz questions or other exercises
  • Experimenting with custom tutoring tools
  • Customizing materials for different preferences (simplifying language, adjusting to different reading levels, creating tailored activities for different interests)
  • Providing grammatical or structural feedback on portions of writing
  • Use in upskilling activities in areas like writing and coding (debugging code, revising writing, asking for explanations)
  • Critique AI generated text

While several of the above draw on ChatGPT’s potential to be explored as a tool for personalization, there are risks associated with such personalization as well, including student privacy, biased treatment, and development of unhealthy habits. Before students use tools that offer these services without direct supervision, they and their educators should understand the limitations of the tools outlined below.

Also relevant/see:

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
David Wiley wrote a thoughtful post on the ways in which AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) can “provide instructional designers with first drafts of some of the work they do.” He says “imagine you’re an instructional designer who’s been paired with a faculty member to create a course in microeconomics. These tools might help you quickly create first drafts of” learning outcomes, discussion prompts, rubrics, and formative assessment items.  The point is that LLMs can quickly generate rough drafts that are mostly accurate drafts, that humans can then “review, augment, and polish,” potentially shifting the work of instructional designers from authors to editors. The post is well worth your time.

The question that I’d like to spend some time thinking about is the following: What new knowledge, capacities, and skills do  instructional designers need in their role as editors and users of LLMs?

This resonated with me. Instructional Designer positions are starting to require AI and ML chops. I’m introducing my grad students to AI and ChatGPT this semester. I have an assignment based on it.

(This ain’t your father’s instructional design…)

Robert Gibson


 

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen “with contributions from the Getting Smart team and numerous friends and partners in the field”

Excerpts:

In this publication, we articulate the critical steps needed to unbundle the learning ecosystem, build core competencies, design learning experiences, curate new opportunities, and rebundle these experiences into coherent pathways.
.

Building the Unbundled Ecosystem

Vision

Every learner deserves an unlimited number of unbundled opportunities to explore, engage, and define experiences that advance their progress along a co-designed educational pathway. Each pathway provides equitable and personalized access to stacked learning experiences leading to post-secondary credentials and secure family-sustaining employment. Throughout the journey, supportive coaches focus on helping learners build skills to navigate with agency. In parallel, learners develop foundational skills (literacy, math), technical skills, and durable skills and connect these to challenging co-designed experiences. The breadth and depth of experiences increase over time, and, in partnership, learners and coaches map progress towards reaching community-defined goals. This vision is only enabled by an unbundled learning ecosystem.

Recommendations

Solutions already exist in the ecosystem and need to be combined and scaled. Funding models (like My Tech High), badging/credentialing at the competency level (like VLACS), coaching models (like Big Thought), and open ecosystems (like NH Learn Everywhere) provide an excellent foundation. Thus, building unbundled systems has already begun but needs systemic changes to become widely available and accepted.

      1. Build a robust competency-based system.
      2. Create a two-way marketplace for unbundled learning.
      3. Implement policy to support credit for out-of-system experiences.
      4. Invest in technology infrastructure for Learning and Employment Records.
      5. Design interoperable badging systems that connect to credentials.
 

The practical guide to using AI to do stuff — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource. Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he studies entrepreneurship & innovation, as well as how we can better learn and teach.
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).

Excerpts:

My classes now require AI (and if I didn’t require AI use, it wouldn’t matter, everyone is using AI anyway). But how can students use AI well? Here is a basic tutorial and guide I am providing my classes. It covers some of the many ways to use AI to be more productive, creative, and successful, using the technology available in early 2023, as well as some of the risks.

Come up with ideas 
Open Source Option: Nothing very good
Best free (for now) option: ChatGPT (registration may require a phone number)
Best option if ChatGPT is down: OpenAI Playground
.


Also relevant/see:

ChatGPT for educators -- a free 17 lesson course

 



On a relevant note:

Gen Z says school is not equipping them with the skills they need to survive in a digital world — from fastcompany.com by Shalene Gupta; with thanks to Robert Gibson for this resource
According to a study from Dell Technologies, Gen Z-ers in 15 different countries feel their government could do better.

Excerpt:

They see an education and skills gap: Forty-four percent said that school only taught them very basic computing skills, while 37% said that school education (for children under age 16) didn’t prepare them with the technology skills they needed for their planned careers. Forty percent consider learning new digital skills essential to future career options.

It’s clear that Gen Z see technology as pivotal for their future prosperity. It is now up to us—leading technology providers, governments, and the public sector—to work together and set them up for success by improving the quality and access to digital learning. Forty-four percent of Gen Z feel educators and businesses should work together to bridge the digital skills gap, and with the speed at which technology continues to evolve, this will require constant collaboration.

Aongus Hegarty, president of international markets at Dell Technologies


 

 

How edtech companies should create and empower lifelong learners — from chieflearningofficer.com by Oleg Vilchinski

Excerpt:

Now is the ideal time for a flexible and competent market leader to emerge and seize this opportunity, delivering personalized and lifelong educational solutions and experiences that meet the needs of a learning-hungry populace.

Edtech businesses can address this widening skills gap and need for frequent job-switching through those same data-driven ecosystems, which can support the user through their career and leisure activities. For example, a user could sync their profile with their work’s employee portal to receive further professional development. Simultaneously, the technology would support the user during their spare time as they take courses or watch video content ranging from Adobe InDesign to gardening, further refining their skills. And, when it comes time to retire, the user’s trusted ecosystem has a backlog of data to recommend applicable hobbies and community events.

For example, a user could sync their profile with their work’s employee portal to receive further professional development.

 

A new path to higher education that begins on YouTube! — from blog.youtube by Katie Kurtz, Managing Director, Global Head of Learning

Excerpt:

We’ve partnered with Arizona State University (ASU) and Crash Course to create Study Hall, a new approach that demystifies the college process while creating an affordable and accessible onramp to earning college credit.

Also relevant/see:

YouTube Launches Video Program Creating a Pathway to Real College Credits — from by Joan E. Solsman
Using YouTube videos as a launchpad to Arizona State University virtual courses, people can work toward first-year college credit with little upfront cost.

YouTube unveils new program that enables students to earn college credits — from techcrunch.com by Aisha Malik

The program is expected to expand to 12 available courses by January 2025 to give students a chance to receive credit for an entire first year of college. There is a $25 fee if a student elects to sign up and begin coursework, and a $400 fee to receive college credit for each course.



 

Also relevant/see:

 

Top edtech trends in 2023 and the ASU example — from news.asu.edu

Excerpt:

In spite of our tendency to break things down into tidy time frames, like a new year or academic semester, change constantly turns over the status quo. Especially in the world of technology, where disruptive innovation may evolve rapidly from the fringe to the mainstream.

“At ASU’s Enterprise Technology, we work in spaces where technology is not just revolutionizing higher education, but the world at large,” said Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Arizona State University. “We strive to be proactive, not reactive, to new paradigms changing the ways in which we work, learn and thrive.”

As referenced by the above article:

Thus, the top higher education technology trends to watch out for in 2023 include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Digital Twins, the Metaverse (including digital avatars and NFT art for use in the Metaverse and other Web3-based virtual environments), Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Cloud, Gamification, and Chatbots. These technologies will support the expansion of the Digital Transformation of higher education going forward.

Also relevant/see:

 

 

A New Generation Of Mastery-Based Learning Platforms Has Arrived — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin

Excerpt:

The $330 billion corporate training market is enormous, fragmented, and complex. For years it was dominated by Learning Management Systems (LMS) and content providers, each pioneered in the early 2000s. These systems served well, but the needs of employees and organizations moved ahead.

Today companies want not only a place to find and administer learning, they want a “Learning Platform” that creates mastery. And this market, that of “Learning Delivery Platforms,” is far more complex than you think. Let me put it straight: video-based chapter by chapter courses don’t teach you much. Companies want a solution that is expert-led, engaging, includes assignments and coaching, and connects employees to experts and peers.

Well there’s a new breed of platforms focused in this area, and I call them Capability Academy systems.

These are platforms explicitly to bring together expert teachers, AI-enabled collaboration, assignments, and coaching to drive mastery. They can train thousands of people in small cohorts, offering hands-on support for technical or PowerSkills topics. And the results are striking: these vendors achieve 90% completion rates and netPromoter scores above 60 (far above traditional content libraries).

6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2023 — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

Excerpt:

The guide is packed with tools that can meet so many of your needs as a teacher, and many of them are already well established and widely used. But every January, we like to choose six that we think deserve a little extra attention. Most are not actually brand-new to the world, but each one has something special about it. So here we go!

6 Google Scholar Tips From Its Co-Creator — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Google Scholar can be a great tool for teachers and their students. Here’s how to get the most out of it.

Excerpt:

Anurag Acharya co-created Google Scholar in 2004. The Google engineer and former professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara was inspired to create the free search tool after being frustrated by being unable to access research articles as a student at the Kharagpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.

Today, Acharya is head of Google Scholar and an authority on how the scholarly search engine can best be used by teachers and their students. He offers these tips and best practices for teachers to use and share with their students.

Instructional Designer: Tools of the Trade Webinar 3/8 (from Teaching: A Path to L&D) and tools of the trade

Teaching: A Path to L&D aims to provide free guidance to teachers looking to move into the world of Learning and Development, specifically Instructional Design. Check out our website at www.teachlearndev.org for free coaching, webinars, and resources to help you on your journey!

 

14 Technology Predictions for Higher Education in 2023 — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
How will technologies and practices like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, digital transformation, and change management impact colleges and universities this year? Here’s what the experts told us.

Excerpt:

In an open call on LinkedIn, we asked higher education and ed tech industry leaders to forecast the most important trends to watch in the coming year. Their responses reflect both the challenges on the horizon — persistent cyber attacks, the disruptive force of emerging technologies, failures in project management — as well as the opportunities that technology brings to better serve students and support the institutional mission. Here are 14 predictions to help steer your technology efforts in 2023.

 

Unschooler: Your AI Vocational Mentor — from techacute.com by Gabriel Scharffenorth

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

AI to help realize your dream career
The Unschooler mentor helps you understand what you need to do to achieve your dream career. You can select one of six broad areas of expertise: science, people, tech, info, art, and business. The platform will then ask questions related to your future career.

It also has some other useful features. Unschooler keeps track of your skills by adding them to a skill map that’s unique to you. You can also ask it to expand on the information it has already given you. This is done by selecting the text and clicking one of four buttons: more, example, how to, explain, and a question mark icon that defines the selected text. There’s also a mobile app that analyzes text from pictures and explains tasks or concepts.

From DSC:
This integration of AI is part of the vision that I’ve been tracking at:

Learning from the living class room -- a vision that continues to develop, where the pieces are coming into place

Learning from the living [class] room
A vision that continues to develop, where the pieces are finally coming into place!

 

Is your Law Firm Ready for Continued Virtual Legal Proceedings? — from jdsupra.com

Excerpt:

For 2023, one trend is obvious: legal professionals prefer remote work. According to an ABA report on the future of the profession, 87% of lawyers say their workplaces allow them to work remotely. And in just a few years, the percentage of attorneys working exclusively in the office has dropped to less than 30%.

Also relevant/see:

The Metaverse: What Is It? How Does It Affect Law Firms? — from by Annette Choti
A new set of legal issues and advertising opportunities.

Excerpt:

Law Firms And The Metaverse
Since the Metaverse is so new, it will continue to develop and change. Distinct kinds of legal issues and implications have not been uncovered yet. The Metaverse will likely create various legal challenges in the future. This creates a new legal landscape for law firms and lawyers.

Those who anticipate the questions and challenges that may arise will be able to take advantage of this new digital market. Here are some ways a law firm can capitalize on the virtual realities of the Metaverse:

From DSC:
My point in posting this item about “The Metaverse” is not to say that it’s here…but to be sure that it’s on your legal radar. There will be enough legal ramifications of AI to last a while, but I would still recommend someone in your firm look at the place of emerging technologies — those techs not only to be leveraged by your firm but also as to what types of legal issues your lawyers will need to be up-to-speed on.

 

Education is about to radically change: AI for the masses — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen and Rachelle Dené Poth

Key Points:

  • AI already does and will continue to impact education – along with every other sector.
  • Innovative education leaders have an opportunity to build the foundation for the most personalized learning system we have ever seen.

Action

Education leaders need to consider these possible futures now. There is no doubt that K-12 and higher ed learners will be using these tools immediately. It is not a question of preventing “AI plagiarism” (if such a thing could exist), but a question of how to modify teaching to take advantage of these new tools.

From DSC:
They go on to list some solid ideas and experiments to try out — both for students and for teachers. Thanks Nate and Rachelle!


Also from Rachelle, see:


 

From DSC:
A few items re: ChatGPT — with some items pro-chat and other items against the use of ChatGPT (or at least to limit its use).


How About We Put Learning at the Center? — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
The ongoing freak-out about ChatGPT sent me back to considering the fundamentals.

Excerpt:

So, when people express concern that students will use ChatGPT to complete their assignments, I understand the concern, but what I don’t understand is why this concern is so often channeled into discussions about how to police student behavior, rather than using this as an opportunity to exam the kind of work we actually ask students (and faculty) to do around learning.

If ChatGPT can do the things we ask students to do in order to demonstrate learning, it seems possible to me that those things should’ve been questioned a long time ago. It’s why I continue to believe this technology is an opportunity for reinvention, precisely because it is a threat to the status quo.

Top AI conference bans use of ChatGPT and AI language tools to write academic papers — from theverge.com by James Vincent; with thanks to Anna Mills for this resource
AI tools can be used to ‘edit’ and ‘polish’ authors’ work, say the conference organizers, but text ‘produced entirely’ by AI is not allowed. This raises the question: where do you draw the line between editing and writing?

Excerpt:

The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) announced the policy earlier this week, stating, “Papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis.” The news sparked widespread discussion on social media, with AI academics and researchers both defending and criticizing the policy. The conference’s organizers responded by publishing a longer statement explaining their thinking. (The ICML responded to requests from The Verge for comment by directing us to this same statement.)

How to… use AI to teach some of the hardest skills — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick
When errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies are actually very useful

Excerpt:

Instead, I want to discuss the opportunity provided by AI, because it can help us teach in new ways. The very things that make AI scary for educators — its tedency to make up facts, its lack of nuance, and its ability to make excellent student essays — can be used to make education better.

This isn’t for some future theoretical version of AI. You can create assignments, right now, using ChatGPT, that we will help stretch students in knew ways. We wrote a paper with the instructions. You can read it here, but I also want to summarize our suggestions. These are obviously not the only ways to use AI to educate, but they solve some of the hardest problems in education, and you can start experimenting with them right now.

NYC education department blocks ChatGPT on school devices, networks — from ny.chalkbeat.org by Michael Elsen-Rooney

Excerpt:

New York City students and teachers can no longer access ChatGPT — the new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that generates stunningly cogent and lifelike writing — on education department devices or internet networks, agency officials confirmed Tuesday.

Teachers v ChatGPT: Schools face new challenge in fight against plagiarism — from straitstimes.com by Osmond Chia; with thanks to Stephen Downes for this resource

Excerpt:

SINGAPORE – Teachers in Singapore say they will likely have to move from assignments requiring regurgitation to those that require greater critical thinking, to stay ahead in the fight against plagiarism.

This comes on the back of the rise of ChatGPT, an intelligent chatbot that is able to spin essays and solve mathematical equations in seconds.

ChatGPT Is Not Ready to Teach Geometry (Yet) — from educationnext.org by Paul T. von Hippel
The viral chatbot is often wrong, but never in doubt. Educators need to tread carefully.

Excerpt:

Can ChatGPT provide feedback and answer questions about math in a more tailored and natural way? The answer, for the time being, is no. Although ChatGPT can talk about math superficially, it doesn’t “understand” math with real depth. It cannot correct mathematical misconceptions, it often introduces misconceptions of its own; and it sometimes makes inexplicable mathematical errors that a basic spreadsheet or hand calculator wouldn’t make.

Here, I’ll show you.


Addendum on 1/9/23:

9 ways ChatGPT saves me hours of work every day, and why you’ll never outcompete those who use AI effectively. — from .linkedin.com by Santiago Valdarrama

A list for those who write code:

  1. 1. Explaining code…
  2. Improve existing code…
  3. Rewriting code using the correct style…
  4. Rewriting code using idiomatic constructs…
  5. Simplifying code…
  6. Writing test cases…
  7. Exploring alternatives…
  8. Writing documentation…
  9. Tracking down bugs…
 
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