teaching & learning

What DICE does in this posting will be available 24x7x365 in the future [Christian]

On 11/20/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, business, career development, changing business models, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, MBA, microlearning, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), neurodivergent/special needs, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, skills, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, training / L&D, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, vocational / trades, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, Web3, webinars, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
First of all, when you look at the following posting:

What Top Tech Skills Should You Learn for 2025? — from dice.com by Nick Kolakowski

…you will see that they outline which skills you should consider mastering in 2025 if you want to stay on top of the latest career opportunities. They then list more information about the skills, how you apply the skills, and WHERE to get those skills.

I assert that in the future, people will be able to see this information on a 24x7x365 basis.

Which jobs are in demand?
What skills do I need to do those jobs?
WHERE do I get/develop those skills?

And that last part (about the WHERE do I develop those skills) will pull from many different institutions, people, companies, etc.

BUT PEOPLE are the key! Often times, we need to — and prefer to — learn with others!

“The Edtech Insiders Generative AI Map” + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 11/19/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, assessment, business, career development, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, pedagogy, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, training / L&D, United States, vendors, workplace, writing, by Daniel Christian

The Edtech Insiders Generative AI Map — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Ben Kornell, Alex Sarlin, Sarah Morin, and Laurence Holt
A market map and database featuring 60+ use cases for GenAI in education and 300+ GenAI powered education tools.

A Student’s Guide to Writing with ChatGPT— from openai.com

Used thoughtfully, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool to help students develop skills of rigorous thinking and clear writing, assisting them in thinking through ideas, mastering complex concepts, and getting feedback on drafts.

There are also ways to use ChatGPT that are counterproductive to learning—like generating an essay instead of writing it oneself, which deprives students of the opportunity to practice, improve their skills, and grapple with the material.

For students committed to becoming better writers and thinkers, here are some ways to use ChatGPT to engage more deeply with the learning process.

Community Colleges Are Rolling Out AI Programs—With a Boost from Big Tech — from workshift.org by Colleen Connolly

The Big Idea: As employers increasingly seek out applicants with AI skills, community colleges are well-positioned to train up the workforce. Partnerships with tech companies, like the AI Incubator Network, are helping some colleges get the resources and funding they need to overhaul programs and create new AI-focused ones.

Along these lines also see:

Practical AI Training — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Community colleges get help from Big Tech to prepare students for applied AI roles at smaller companies.

Miami Dade and other two-year colleges try to be nimble by offering training for AI-related jobs while focusing on local employers. Also, Intel’s business struggles while the two-year sector wonders if Republicans will cut funds for semiconductor production.

Can One AI Agent Do Everything? How To Redesign Jobs for AI? HR Expertise And A Big Future for L&D. — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin

Here’s the AI summary, which is pretty good.

In this conversation, Josh Bersin discusses the evolving landscape of AI platforms, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s positioning and the challenges of creating a universal AI agent. He delves into the complexities of government efficiency, emphasizing the institutional challenges faced in re-engineering government operations.

The conversation also highlights the automation of work tasks and the need for businesses to decompose job functions for better efficiency.

Bersin stresses the importance of expertise in HR, advocating for a shift towards full stack professionals who possess a broad understanding of various HR functions.

Finally, he addresses the impending disruption in Learning and Development (L&D) due to AI advancements, predicting a significant transformation in how L&D professionals will manage knowledge and skills.

Integrating Active Learning in Large STEM Lectures [Pinto]

On 11/19/2024, in active learning, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, faculty, higher education, ideas, instructional design, Learning Experience Design, pedagogy, teaching & learning, United States, by Daniel Christian

Integrating Active Learning in Large STEM Lectures — from scholarlyteacher.com by Gabriele Pinto

Key Statement: Implementing elements of active learning into a large course may seem daunting task, but think-pair-share aided by quizzing and clickers can be done in any size classroom.

Many teachers do not realize how seamless it can be to shift their lectures towards a more active learning environment. In this article, we looked at how think-pair-share (TPS) is a simple activity that can be easily introduced and integrated within a lecture framework. We also explored how clickers and quizzing may fit into course design to provide greater tools of participation for the students and enrich their classroom experience and study patterns. These implementations, which do not involve drastic and daunting changes to lecturing, will improve student engagement and learning, and will allow the instructor to better gauge the state of the class, evaluate and adjust content pacing accordingly, and enrich his own teaching experience, as well as the students’ education.

Using AI to brainstorm students own learning objectives [Potkalitsky] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 11/13/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, ethics, experimentation, faculty, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, mathematics, morals/values, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, UK, United States, universities, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

“The Value of Doing Things: What AI Agents Mean for Teachers” — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by guest author Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Applied Media at Berkeley College in New York City

AI Agents make me nervous. Really nervous.

I wish they didn’t.

I wish I could write that the last two years have made me more confident, more self-assured that AI is here to augment workers rather than replace them.

But I can’t.

I wish I could write that I know where schools and colleges will end up. I wish I could say that AI Agents will help us get where we need to be.

But I can’t.

At this point, today, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where the rise of AI agents will take us, in terms of how we work and learn. I’m in the question-asking part of my journey. I have few answers.

So, let’s talk about where (I think) AI Agents will take education. And who knows? Maybe as I write I’ll come up with something more concrete.

It’s worth a shot, right?

From DSC:
I completely agree with Jason’s following assertion:

A good portion of AI advancement will come down to employee replacement. And AI Agents push companies towards that.

THAT’s where/what the ROI will be for corporations. They will make their investments up in the headcount area, and likely in other areas as well (product design, marketing campaigns, engineering-related items, and more). But how much time it takes to get there is a big question mark.

One last quote here…it’s too good not to include:

Behind these questions lies a more abstract, more philosophical one: what is the relationship between thinking and doing in a world of AI Agents and other kinds of automation?

How Good are Claude, ChatGPT & Gemini at Instructional Design? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A test of AI’s Instruction Design skills in theory & in practice

By examining models across three AI families—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—I’ve started to identify each model’s strengths, limitations, and typical pitfalls.

Spoiler: my findings underscore that until we have specialised, fine-tuned AI copilots for instructional design, we should be cautious about relying on general-purpose models and ensure expert oversight in all ID tasks.

From DSC — I’m going to (have Nick) say this again:
I simply asked my students to use AI to brainstorm their own learning objectives. No restrictions. No predetermined pathways. Just pure exploration. The results? Astonishing.

Students began mapping out research directions I’d never considered. They created dialogue spaces with AI that looked more like intellectual partnerships than simple query-response patterns.

The Digital Literacy Quest: Become an AI Hero — from gamma.app

From DSC:
I have not gone through all of these online-based materials, but I like what they are trying to get at:

Confidence with AI
Students gain practical skills and confidence in using AI tools effectively.
Ethical Navigation
Learn to navigate the ethical landscape of AI with integrity and responsibility. Make informed decisions about AI usage.
Mastering Essential Skills
Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in the context of AI.

Expanding access to the Gemini app for teen students in education — from workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Google Workspace for Education admins can now turn on the Gemini app with added data protection as an additional service for their teen users (ages 13+ or the applicable age in your country) in the following languages and countries. With added data protection, chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve AI models. The Gemini app will be a core service in the coming weeks for Education Standard and Plus users, including teens,

5 Essential Questions Educators Have About AI — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning

Recently, I spoke with several teachers regarding their primary questions and reflections on using AI in teaching and learning. Their thought-provoking responses challenge us to consider not only what AI can do but what it means for meaningful and equitable learning environments. Keeping in mind these reflections, we can better understand how we move forward toward meaningful AI integration in education.

FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AI — from epoch.ai
FrontierMath presents hundreds of unpublished, expert-level mathematics problems that specialists spend days solving. It offers an ongoing measure of AI complex mathematical reasoning progress.

We’re introducing FrontierMath, a benchmark of hundreds of original, expert-crafted mathematics problems designed to evaluate advanced reasoning capabilities in AI systems. These problems span major branches of modern mathematics—from computational number theory to abstract algebraic geometry—and typically require hours or days for expert mathematicians to solve.

Rising demand for AI courses in UK universities shows 453% growth as students adapt to an AI-driven job market — from edtechinnovationhub.com

The demand for artificial intelligence courses in UK universities has surged dramatically over the past five years, with enrollments increasing by 453%, according to a recent study by Currys, a UK tech retailer.

The study, which analyzed UK university admissions data and surveyed current students and recent graduates, reveals how the growing influence of AI is shaping students’ educational choices and career paths.

This growth reflects the broader trend of AI integration across industries, creating new opportunities while transforming traditional roles. With AI’s influence on career prospects rising, students and graduates are increasingly drawn to AI-related courses to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.

Is Generative AI and ChatGPT healthy for Students? — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
Beyond Text Generation: How AI Ignites Student Discovery and Deep Thinking, according to firsthand experiences of Teachers and AI researchers like Nick Potkalitsky.

After two years of intensive experimentation with AI in education, I am witnessing something amazing unfolding before my eyes. While much of the world fixates on AI’s generative capabilities—its ability to create essays, stories, and code—my students have discovered something far more powerful: exploratory AI, a dynamic partner in investigation and critique that’s transforming how they think.
…
They’ve moved beyond the initial fascination with AI-generated content to something far more sophisticated: using AI as an exploratory tool for investigation, interrogation, and intellectual discovery.
…
Instead of the much-feared “shutdown” of critical thinking, we’re witnessing something extraordinary: the emergence of what I call “generative thinking”—a dynamic process where students learn to expand, reshape, and evolve their ideas through meaningful exploration with AI tools. Here I consciously reposition the term “generative” as a process of human origination, although one ultimately spurred on by machine input.

A Road Map for Leveraging AI at a Smaller Institution — from er.educause.edu by Dave Weil and Jill Forrester
Smaller institutions and others may not have the staffing and resources needed to explore and take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence (AI) on their campuses. This article provides a roadmap to help institutions with more limited resources advance AI use on their campuses.

The following activities can help smaller institutions better understand AI and lay a solid foundation that will allow them to benefit from it.

Understand the impact…
Understand the different types of AI tools…
Focus on institutional data and knowledge repositories…

Smaller institutions do not need to fear being left behind in the wake of rapid advancements in AI technologies and tools. By thinking intentionally about how AI will impact the institution, becoming familiar with the different types of AI tools, and establishing a strong data and analytics infrastructure, institutions can establish the groundwork for AI success. The five fundamental activities of coordinating, learning, planning and governing, implementing, and reviewing and refining can help smaller institutions make progress on their journey to use AI tools to gain efficiencies and improve students’ experiences and outcomes while keeping true to their institutional missions and values.

Also from Educause, see:

From Hype to Help: Making GenAI Useful for Enterprise Reporting and Data Analytics — from er.educause.edu by Craig Rudick

AI school opens – learners are not good or bad but fast and slow — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

That is what they are doing here. Lesson plans focus on learners rather than the traditional teacher-centric model. Assessing prior strengths and weaknesses, personalising to focus more on weaknesses and less on things known or mastered. It’s adaptive, personalised learning. The idea that everyone should learn at the exactly same pace, within the same timescale is slightly ridiculous, ruled by the need for timetabling a one to many, classroom model.

For the first time in the history of our species we have technology that performs some of the tasks of teaching. We have reached a pivot point where this can be tried and tested. My feeling is that we’ll see a lot more of this, as parents and general teachers can delegate a lot of the exposition and teaching of the subject to the technology. We may just see a breakthrough that transforms education.

Agentic AI Named Top Tech Trend for 2025 — from campustechnology.com by David Ramel

Agentic AI will be the top tech trend for 2025, according to research firm Gartner. The term describes autonomous machine “agents” that move beyond query-and-response generative chatbots to do enterprise-related tasks without human guidance.
…
More realistic challenges that the firm has listed elsewhere include:

- Agentic AI proliferating without governance or tracking;
- Agentic AI making decisions that are not trustworthy;
- Agentic AI relying on low-quality data;
- Employee resistance; and
- Agentic-AI-driven cyberattacks enabling “smart malware.”

Also from campustechnology.com, see:

New OpenAI Swarm Framework Offers Experimental Tool for Multi-Agent AI Networks — by John K. Waters
OpenAI has introduced a new open source framework designed to simplify the development and management of multi-agent AI systems that can collaborate autonomously to perform tasks.

Three items from edcircuit.com:

All or nothing at Educause24 — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Kevin Kelly
Looking for specific solutions at the conference exhibit hall, with an educator focus

Here are some notable trends:

Alignment with campus policies: …
Choose your own AI adventure: …
Integrate AI throughout a workflow: …
Moving from prompt engineering to bot building: …
More complex problem-solving: …

…
Not all AI news is good news. In particular, AI has exacerbated the problem of fraudulent enrollment–i.e., rogue actors who use fake or stolen identities with the intent of stealing financial aid funding with no intention of completing coursework.
…
The consequences are very real, including financial aid funding going to criminal enterprises, enrollment estimates getting dramatically skewed, and legitimate students being blocked from registering for classes that appear “full” due to large numbers of fraudulent enrollments.

Boosting Student Engagement with Interactive and Practical Teaching Methods — from campustechnology.com by Dr. Lucas Long

One of my biggest goals as an educator is to show students how the material they learn in class can be applied to real-world situations. In my finance courses, this often means taking what we’re learning about financial calculations and connecting it to decisions they’ll have to make as adults. For example, I’ve used real-life scenarios like buying a car with a loan, paying off student debt, saving for a wedding, or calculating mortgage payments for a future home purchase. I even use salary data to show students what they could realistically afford given average salaries after graduation, helping them relate to the financial decisions they will face after college.

These practical examples don’t just keep students engaged; they also demonstrate the immediate value of learning financial principles. I often hear students express frustration when they feel like they’re learning concepts that won’t apply to their lives. But when I use real scenarios and provide tools like financial calculators to show them exactly how they’ll use this knowledge in their future, their attitude changes. They become more motivated to engage with the material because they see its relevance beyond the classroom.

The Uberfication of Higher Ed [Ubell]

On 10/29/2024, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, colleges, community colleges, faculty, higher education, learning ecosystem, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

The Uberfication of Higher Ed — from evolllution.com by Robert Ubell | Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning in the School of Engineering, New York University
As the world of work increasingly relies on the gig economy, higher ed is no different. Many institutions seek to drive down labor costs by hiring contingent works, thereby leaving many faculty in a precarious position and driving down the quality of education.

While some of us are aware that higher ed has been steadily moving away from employing mostly full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty, replacing them with a part-time, contingent academic workforce, the latest AAUP report issued this summer shows the trend is accelerating. Precarious college teachers have increased by nearly 300,000 over the last decade, as conventional faculty employment stays pretty much flat. It’s part of a national trend in the wider economy that replaces permanent workers with lower paid, contingent staff—members of what we now call the gig economy.

The wide disparity is among the most glaring dysfunctions—along with vast student debt, falling enrollment, rising tuition and other dangers afflicting higher education—but it’s the least acknowledged. Rarely, if ever, does it take its place among the most troubling ails of academic life. It’s a silent disease, its symptoms largely ignored for over half a century.

Do families who send their kids to college, paying increasingly stiff tuition, realize that most of the faculty at our universities are as precarious as Uber drivers?
…
Everyone at the table was taken aback, totally surprised, a sign—even if anecdotal—that this dirty secret is pretty safe. Mass participation of contingent faculty at our universities remains largely obscure, wrapped in a climate of silence, with adjunct faculty perpetuating the quiet by leaving their students mostly uninformed about their working conditions.

Half of Higher Ed Institutions Now Use AI for Outcomes Tracking, But Most Lag in Implementing Comprehensive Learner Records — from prnewswire.com; via GSV

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Instructure, the leading learning ecosystem and UPCEA, the online and professional education association, announced the results of a survey on whether institutions are leveraging AI to improve learner outcomes and manage records, along with the specific ways these tools are being utilized. Overall, the study revealed interest in the potential of these technologies is far outpacing adoption. Most respondents are heavily involved in developing learner experiences and tracking outcomes, though nearly half report their institutions have yet to adopt AI-driven tools for these purposes. The research also found that only three percent of institutions have implemented Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs), which provide a complete overview of an individual’s lifelong learning experiences.

New Survey Says U.S. Teachers Colleges Lag on AI Training. Here are 4 Takeaways — from the74million.org by ; via GSV
Most preservice teachers’ programs lack policies on using AI, CRPE finds, and are likely unready to teach future educators about the field.

In the nearly two years since generative artificial intelligence burst into public consciousness, U.S. schools of education have not kept pace with the rapid changes in the field, a new report suggests.

Only a handful of teacher training programs are moving quickly enough to equip new K-12 teachers with a grasp of AI fundamentals — and fewer still are helping future teachers grapple with larger issues of ethics and what students need to know to thrive in an economy dominated by the technology.

The report, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank at Arizona State University, tapped leaders at more than 500 U.S. education schools, asking how their faculty and preservice teachers are learning about AI. Through surveys and interviews, researchers found that just one in four institutions now incorporates training on innovative teaching methods that use AI. Most lack policies on using AI tools, suggesting that they probably won’t be ready to teach future educators about the intricacies of the field anytime soon.

It is bonkers that I can write out all my life goals on a sheet of paper, take a photo of it, and just ask Claude or ChatGPT for help.

I get a complete plan, milestones, KPIs, motivation, and even action support to get there.

Less than 5% of the world uses the SOTA AI…

— Allie K. Miller (@alliekmiller) October 21, 2024

The 5 Secret Hats Teachers are Wearing Right Now (Thanks to AI!) — from aliciabankhofer.substack.com by Alicia Bankhofer
New, unanticipated roles for educators sitting in the same boat

As beta testers, we’re shaping the tools of tomorrow. As researchers, we’re pioneering new pedagogical approaches. As ethical guardians, we’re ensuring that AI enhances rather than compromises the educational experience. As curators, we’re guiding students through the wealth of information AI provides. And as learners ourselves, we’re staying at the forefront of educational innovation.

Are ChatGPT, Claude & NotebookLM *Really* Disrupting Education? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com
Evaluating Gen AI’s *real* impact on human learning

The TLDR here is that, as useful as popular AI tools are for learners, as things stand they only enable us to take the very first steps on what is a long and complex journey of learning.

AI tools like ChatGPT 4o, Claude 3.5 & NotebookLM can help to give us access to information but (for now at least) the real work of learning remains in our – the humans’ – hands.

To which Anna Mills had a solid comment:

It might make a lot of sense to regulate generated audio to require some kind of watermark and/or metadata. Instructors who teach online and assign voice recordings, we need to recognize that these are now very easy and free to auto-generate. In some cases we are assigning this to discourage students from using AI to just autogenerate text responses, but audio is not immune.

“College competition & operational pain are the ‘new normal,’ S&P says” [Unglesbee] + other items re: higher ed

On 10/14/2024, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, faculty, higher education, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

S&P: Community colleges lifted by improved enrollment and finances — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee

Dive Brief:

With enrollment trends improving and state appropriations increasing, the community college sector has reason for “optimism,” according to a recent report from S&P Global Ratings.
For 2023, median full-time equivalent enrollment, at 5,439 students, was down just 0.3% from 2021 and up nearly 8.1% from the previous year, S&P found among the roughly 200 community colleges it rates. That comes after enrollment in the sector fell 7.7% year over year in 2022,.
Meanwhile, median state appropriations per FTE student for the sector increased 19.1% to $4,930 between 2021 and 2023, analysts found.

College competition and operational pain are the ‘new normal,’ S&P says — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee-
Margins are down, costs are up and tuition revenue is constrained after the pandemic exacerbated existing challenges, according to a recent report.

Dive Brief:

U.S. colleges face a “new normal” and accelerated existing challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including constrained operations and heavy competition, a recent report from S&P Global Ratings found.
Between 2018 and 2023, operating margin rates fell from 0.8% to -0.1% amid rising costs to colleges, according to S&P. Meanwhile, median tuition discount rates at private colleges rose by more than 5 percentage points, to 44.4%, in that period, putting pressure on college revenues.
From 2019 through the second quarter of 2024, the ratings agency issued 126 credit downgrades for the higher ed sector, compared to 62 upgrades, per the report.

5 ways colleges can improve outreach to rural students — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Students from small towns help strengthen campus communities, said panelists at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s conference.

We cannot just swoop in and take the best and brightest and just say, ‘Oh, good job us.’ We want this to be a two-way highway, not a one-way brain drain.

Marjorie Betley
Deputy director of admissions at the University of Chicago

A Trauma-Informed Teaching Framework for Stewards — from scholarlyteacher.com by Jeannette Baca, New Mexico Highlands University; Debbie Gonzalez, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt; Jamie Langlois, Grand Valley State University; and Mary Kirk, Winona State University

Using the Trauma-Informed Community of Inquiry (T-I CoI) framework as a pedagogical design helped us address students’ emotional stress and facilitated cognitive growth and connection to the learning process. It also provided an opportunity to create a sense of community within an online learning environment. When we returned to in-person instruction, the model continued to be beneficial.

“Google’s NotebookLM: A Game-Changer for Education and Beyond” [Spencer & Potkalitsky] + other items re: AI in our LE’s

On 09/25/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, assessment, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, interactivity, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

FlexOS’ Stay Ahead Edition #43 — from flexos.work

People started discussing what they could do with Notebook LM after Google launched the audio overview, where you can listen to 2 hosts talking in-depth about the documents you upload. Here are what it can do:

Summarization: Automatically generate summaries of uploaded documents, highlighting key topics and suggesting relevant questions.
Question Answering: Users can ask NotebookLM questions about their uploaded documents, and answers will be provided based on the information contained within them.
Idea Generation: NotebookLM can assist with brainstorming and developing new ideas.
Source Grounding: A big plus against AI chatbot hallucination, NotebookLM allows users to ground the responses in specific documents they choose.
…plus several other items

The posting also lists several ideas to try with NotebookLM such as:

Idea 2: Study Companion

Upload all your course materials and ask NotebookLM to turn them into Question-and-Answer format, a glossary, or a study guide.
Get a breakdown of the course materials to understand them better.

Google’s NotebookLM: A Game-Changer for Education and Beyond — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
AI Tools: Breaking down Google’s latest AI tool and its implications for education.

“Google’s AI note-taking app NotebookLM can now explain complex topics to you out loud”

With more immersive text-to-video and audio products soon available and the rise of apps like Suno AI, how we “experience” Generative AI is also changing from a chatbot of 2 years ago, to a more multi-modal educational journey. The AI tools on the research and curation side are also starting to reflect these advancements.

Meet Google NotebookLM: 10 things to know for educators — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller

1. Upload a variety of sources for NotebookLM to use.
You can use …

websites
PDF files
links to websites
any text you’ve copied
Google Docs and Slides
even Markdown

You can’t link it to YouTube videos, but you can copy/paste the transcript (and maybe type a little context about the YouTube video before pasting the transcript).

2. Ask it to create resources.
3. Create an audio summary.
4. Chat with your sources.
5. Save (almost) everything.

NotebookLM summarizes my dissertation — from darcynorman.net by D’Arcy Norman, PhD

I finally tried out Google’s newly-announced NotebookLM generative AI application. It provides a set of LLM-powered tools to summarize documents. I fed it my dissertation, and am surprised at how useful the output would be.

The most impressive tool creates a podcast episode, complete with dual hosts in conversation about the document. First – these are AI-generated hosts. Synthetic voices, speaking for synthetic hosts. And holy moly is it effective. Second – although I’d initially thought the conversational summary would be a dumb gimmick, it is surprisingly powerful.

4 Tips for Designing AI-Resistant Assessments — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule and Erin Carter
As AI continues to evolve, instructors must modify their approach by designing meaningful, rigorous assessments.

As instructors work through revising assessments to be resistant to generation by AI tools with little student input, they should consider the following principles:

Incorporate personal experiences and local content into assignments
Ask students for multi-modal deliverables
Assess the developmental benchmarks for assignments and transition assignments further up Bloom’s Taxonomy
Consider real-time and oral assignments

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces $120M fund for global AI education — from techcrunch.com by Anthony Ha

He added that he wants to avoid a global “AI divide” and that Google is creating a $120 million Global AI Opportunity Fund through which it will “make AI education and training available in communities around the world” in partnership with local nonprofits and NGOs.

Educators discuss the state of creativity in an AI world — from gettingsmart.com by Joe & Kristin Merrill, LaKeshia Brooks, Dominique’ Harbour, Erika Sandstrom

Key Points

AI allows for a more personalized learning experience, enabling students to explore creative ideas without traditional classroom limitations.
The focus of technology integration should be on how the tool is used within lessons, not just the tool itself

Addendum on 9/27/24:

Google’s NotebookLM enhances AI note-taking with YouTube, audio file sources, sharable audio discussions — from techcrunch.com by Jagmeet Singh

Google on Thursday announced new updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, allowing users to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions…

NotebookLM adds audio and YouTube support, plus easier sharing of Audio Overviews — from blog.google

“10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor” [Clay] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 09/23/2024, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, culture, dangers of the status quo, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, pace of change, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay
ChatGPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, custom GPTs – you name it, I use it. Here’s how…

Excerpt:

To plan lessons (especially activities)
To create course content (especially quizzes)
To tutor my students
To grade faster and give better feedback
To draft grant applications
Plus 5 other items

From Caution to Calcification to Creativity: Reanimating Education with AI’s Frankenstein Potential — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky
A Critical Analysis of AI-Assisted Lesson Planning: Evaluating Efficacy and Pedagogical Implications

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in education, a troubling trend has emerged. What began as cautious skepticism has calcified into rigid opposition. The discourse surrounding AI in classrooms has shifted from empirical critique to categorical rejection, creating a chasm between the potential of AI and its practical implementation in education.

This hardening of attitudes comes at a significant cost. While educators and policymakers debate, students find themselves caught in the crossfire. They lack safe, guided access to AI tools that are increasingly ubiquitous in the world beyond school walls. In the absence of formal instruction, many are teaching themselves to use these tools, often in less than productive ways. Others live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing accusations of AI reliance in their work. These are just a few symptoms of an overarching educational culture that has become resistant to change, even as the world around it transforms at an unprecedented pace.

Yet, as this calcification sets in, I find myself in a curious position: the more I thoughtfully integrate AI into my teaching practice, the more I witness its potential to enhance and transform education

NotebookLM and Google’s Multimodal Vision for AI-Powered Learning Tools — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins

A Variety of Use Cases

Create an Interactive Syllabus
Presentation Deep Dive: Upload Your Slides
Note Taking: Turn Your Chalkboard into a Digital Canvas
Explore a Reading or Series of Readings
Help Navigating Feedback
Portfolio Building Blocks

Must-Have Competencies and Skills in Our New AI World: A Synthesis for Educational Reform — from er.educause.edu by Fawzi BenMessaoud
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on educational systems calls for a comprehensive reform to prepare future generations for an AI-integrated world.

The urgency to integrate AI competencies into education is about preparing students not just to adapt to inevitable changes but to lead the charge in shaping an AI-augmented world. It’s about equipping them to ask the right questions, innovate responsibly, and navigate the ethical quandaries that come with such power.

AI in education should augment and complement their aptitude and expertise, to personalize and optimize the learning experience, and to support lifelong learning and development. AI in education should be a national priority and a collaborative effort among all stakeholders, to ensure that AI is designed and deployed in an ethical, equitable, and inclusive way that respects the diversity and dignity of all learners and educators and that promotes the common good and social justice. AI in education should be about the production of AI, not just the consumption of AI, meaning that learners and educators should have the opportunity to learn about AI, to participate in its creation and evaluation, and to shape its impact and direction.

“Which AI tools do Instructional Designers use the most?” [Hardman] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 09/12/2024, in 21st century, accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, biology, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, media/film, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), neurodivergent/special needs, Open AI, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, writing, by Daniel Christian

The Most Popular AI Tools for Instructional Design (September, 2024) — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
The tools we use most, and how we use them

This week, as I kick off the 20th cohort of my AI-Learning Design bootcamp, I decided to do some analysis of the work habits of the hundreds of amazing AI-embracing instructional designers who I’ve worked with over the last year or so.

My goal was to answer the question: which AI tools do we use most in the instructional design process, and how do we use them?

Here’s where we are in September, 2024:
…

Developing Your Approach to Generative AI — from scholarlyteacher.com by Caitlin K. Kirby, Min Zhuang, Imari Cheyne Tetu, & Stephen Thomas (Michigan State University)

As generative AI becomes integrated into workplaces, scholarly work, and students’ workflows, we have the opportunity to take a broad view of the role of generative AI in higher education classrooms. Our guiding questions are meant to serve as a starting point to consider, from each educator’s initial reaction and preferences around generative AI, how their discipline, course design, and assessments may be impacted, and to have a broad view of the ethics of generative AI use.

The Impact of AI in Advancing Accessibility for Learners with Disabilities — from er.educause.edu by Rob Gibson

AI technology tools hold remarkable promise for providing more accessible, equitable, and inclusive learning experiences for students with disabilities.

From DSC:
Anyone who is involved in putting on conferences should at least be aware that this kind of thing is now possible!!! Check out the following posting from Adobe (with help from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

From impossible to POSSIBLE: Tata Consultancy Services uses Adobe Firefly generative AI and Acrobat AI Assistant to turn hours of work into minutes — from blog.adobe.com

This year, the organizers — innovative industry event company Beyond Ordinary Events — turned to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to make the impossible “possible.” Leveraging Adobe generative AI technology across products like Adobe Premiere Pro and Acrobat, they distilled hours of video content in minutes, delivering timely dispatches to thousands of attendees throughout the conference.
…
For POSSIBLE ’24, Muche had an idea for a daily dispatch summarizing each day’s sessions so attendees wouldn’t miss a single insight. But timing would be critical. The dispatch needed to reach attendees shortly after sessions ended to fuel discussions over dinner and carry the excitement over to the next day.

The workflow started in Adobe Premiere Pro, with the writer opening a recording of each session and using the Speech to Text feature to automatically generate a transcript. They saved the transcript as a PDF file and opened it in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Then, using Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant, the writer asked for a session summary.

It was that fast and easy. In less than four minutes, one person turned a 30-minute session into an accurate, useful summary ready for review and publication.

By taking advantage of templates, the designer then added each AI-enabled summary to the newsletter in minutes. With just two people and generative AI technology, TCS accomplished the impossible — for the first time delivering an informative, polished newsletter to all 3,500 conference attendees just hours after the last session of the day.

Join our linked in group, AI in the Classroom https://t.co/rmfw0SvcW1 #edtech #GenAI @isteofficial @cosn @ascd @neatoday @aftunion @oecd_edu @ccsso @fetc @tcea @cueinc pic.twitter.com/Cxl80WuDuS

— David Ross (@DavidPBLRoss) August 20, 2024

This AI App Can Solve Your Math Homework, Steps Included — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

Right now, high schoolers and college students around the country are experimenting with free smartphone apps that help complete their math homework using generative AI. One of the most popular options on campus right now is the Gauth app, with millions of downloads. It’s owned by ByteDance, which is also TikTok’s parent company.

The Gauth app first launched in 2019 with a primary focus on mathematics, but soon expanded to other subjects as well, like chemistry and physics. It’s grown in relevance, and neared the top of smartphone download lists earlier this year for the education category. Students seem to love it. With hundreds of thousands of primarily positive reviews, Gauth has a favorable 4.8 star rating in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

All students have to do after downloading the app is point their smartphone at a homework problem, printed or handwritten, and then make sure any relevant information is inside of the image crop. Then Gauth’s AI model generates a step-by-step guide, often with the correct answer.

From DSC:
I do hesitate to post this though, as I’ve seen numerous posting re: the dubious quality of AI as it relates to giving correct answers to math-related problems – or whether using AI-based tools help or hurt the learning process. The situation seems to be getting better, but as I understand it, we still have some progress to make in this area of mathematics.

Redefining Creativity in the Age of AI — from gettingsmart.com by David Ross

Key Points

Educational leaders must reconsider the definition of creativity, taking into account how generative AI tools can be used to produce novel and impactful creative work, similar to how film editors compile various elements into a cohesive, creative whole.
Generative AI democratizes innovation by allowing all students to become creators, expanding access to creative processes that were previously limited and fostering a broader inclusion of diverse talents and ideas in education.

AI-Powered Instructional Design at ASU — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
How ASU’s Collaboration with OpenAI is Reshaping the Role of Instructional Designers

The developments and experiments at ASU provide a fascinating window into two things:

1. How the world is reimagining learning in the age of AI;
2. How the role of the instructional designer is changing in the age of AI.

In this week’s blog post, I’ll provide a summary of how faculty, staff and students at ASU are starting to reimagine education in the age of AI, and explore what this means for the instructions designers who work there.

PhysicsWallah’s ‘Alakh AI’ is Making Education Accessible to Millions in India — from analyticsindiamag.com by Siddharth Jindal

India’s ed-tech unicorn PhysicsWallah is using OpenAI’s GPT-4o to make education accessible to millions of students in India. Recently, the company launched a suite of AI products to ensure that students in Tier 2 & 3 cities can access high-quality education without depending solely on their enrolled institutions, as 85% of their enrollment comes from these areas.

Last year, AIM broke the news of PhysicsWallah introducing ‘Alakh AI’, its suite of generative AI tools, which was eventually launched at the end of December 2023. It quickly gained traction, amassing over 1.5 million users within two months of its release.

Learning Ecosystems

Integrating Active Learning in Large STEM Lectures [Pinto]

“Using AI as an exploratory tool for investigation, interrogation, & intellectual discovery” [Spencer & Potkalitsky] + other items re: AI in our LEs

The Uberfication of Higher Ed [Ubell]

Several items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

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