Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks — from theverge.com by Jess Weatherbed Magic Studio features like Magic Switch automatically convert your designs into blogs, social media posts, emails, and more to save time on manually editing documents.
To use Sherpa, an instructor first uploads the reading they’ve assigned, or they can have the student upload a paper they’ve written. Then the tool asks a series of questions about the text (either questions input by the instructor or generated by the AI) to test the student’s grasp of key concepts. The software gives the instructor the choice of whether they want the tool to record audio and video of the conversation, or just audio.
The tool then uses AI to transcribe the audio from each student’s recording and flags areas where the student answer seemed off point. Teachers can review the recording or transcript of the conversation and look at what Sherpa flagged as trouble to evaluate the student’s response.
Who decided that grading and assessment should be the exclusive responsibility of teachers? Why do we sideline students when it comes to assessment?
Self-assessment is a powerful strategy that encourages students to become more invested in their learning journeys. It is a process where students evaluate their work, reflecting on what they’ve learned, how well they’ve understood complex concepts, how much progress they’ve made toward mastering key skills, and where they may need to invest time and energy to improve their concept knowledge and skill set (Siegesmund, 2016). Self-assessment shifts the focus from a grade-centric perspective to a learning-centric one. For those of us who want to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, believing they can always improve and develop with practice and hard work, self-assessment is a critical piece of that puzzle (Wang, Zepeda, Qin, Del Toro & Binning, 2021).
The more I look around higher education, the more clearly it seems to me that there are three practices which we carry out every day – which seemed baked right into the very DNA of our current system of higher education – that are inimical to the actual purpose of higher education. Those practices are:
Lecturing,
Traditional grading, and
Student evaluations of teaching.
Before you get upset, let me say: I don’t think any of these practices is “evil”, and my understanding of the history of education says that all three were developed with good intentions, for legitimate reasons, to solve real problems. (With the possible exception of student evaluations of teaching – I’m working on trying to figure out where these came from and why they were invented.) But regardless of the background and intentions, they have taken over higher education like an invasive species.
“If you looked at the average person outside of higher education and said, you know, ‘We’ve created a culture in higher ed where our core thing we do isn’t valued,’ that makes absolutely no sense,” says Amy Hawkins, assistant provost for teaching and academic leadership at the University of Central Arkansas, which has been working to change that dynamic on campus. “It would be like saying in a company, ‘Well, customer service isn’t really a big deal to us. We’re about product development. We treat our customers like crap.’ I mean. That’s nonsensical.”
Does the public know this? And does it care?
Surveys show that what the public values most about higher education is good teaching and meaningful learning.
What makes an effective microcredential programme? — from by Temesgen Kifle Short, flexible and skills-focused, microcredentials must balance the needs of students and industry. Here are tips on how to develop courses that achieve this
Here are tips for higher education institutions (HEIs) to consider when creating and delivering microcredential programmes so they meet the needs of all stakeholders.
Collaborate with accrediting bodies, employers and other HEIs
An introduction to creating escape rooms— from timeshighereducation.com by Bernardo Pereira Nunes Bernardo Pereira Nunes offers tips on how to get started on an escape room experience that will boost students’ teamwork, leadership, communication and problem-solving skills
But I’ve also been hearing one intriguing question, over and over, that isn’t directly about loans or repayment, so much as it is about how to avoid them entirely. And it’s coming from parents of kids who’ve not yet traded in their sticker collections for student loans.
“I’ve got one little guy who’s about six years old,” Caleb Queern, of Austin, Texas, told me recently. “And my questions are, number one: How much should we be saving between now and the time my little guy is ready for college? And number two: What’s the best way to save for it?”
Is school transformation possible without replacing the existing education system? In addition to Tom, Kelly Young of Education Reimagined joined me to argue that it’s not. In an educational landscape that constantly seeks marginal improvements, my guests spoke to the importance of embracing new value networks that support innovative approaches to learning. The conversation touched on the issue of programs that remain niche solutions, rather than robust, learner-centered alternatives. In exploring the concept of value networks, they both challenged the notion of transforming individual schools or districts alone. They argue for the creation of a new value network to truly revolutionize the education system. Of course, they admit that achieving this is no small feat, as it requires a paradigm shift in mindset and a careful balance between innovation and existing structures. In this conversation, we wrestle with the full implications of their findings and more.
Hi everyone, I’m Daphne, a 13-year-old going into 8th grade.
I’m writing to compare “regular” Khan Academy (no AI) to Khanmigo (powered by GPT4), using three of my own made-up criteria.
They are: efficiency, effectiveness, and enjoyability. Efficiency is how fast I am able to cover a math topic and get basic understanding. Effectiveness is my quality of understanding—the difference between basic and advanced understanding. And the final one—most important to kids and maybe least important to adults who make kids learn math—is enjoyability.
7 Questions on Generative AI in Learning Design — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly Open LMS Adoption and Education Specialist Michael Vaughn on the challenges and possibilities of using artificial intelligence to move teaching and learning forward.
The potential for artificial intelligence tools to speed up course design could be an attractive prospect for overworked faculty and spread-thin instructional designers. Generative AI can shine, for example, in tasks such as reworking assessment question sets, writing course outlines and learning objectives, and generating subtitles for audio and video clips. The key, says Michael Vaughn, adoption and education specialist at learning platform Open LMS, is treating AI like an intern who can be guided and molded along the way, and whose work is then vetted by a human expert.
We spoke with Vaughn about how best to utilize generative AI in learning design, ethical issues to consider, and how to formulate an institution-wide policy that can guide AI use today and in the future.
On September 25th, 2023, OpenAI announced the rollout of two new features that extend how people can interact with its recent and most advanced model, GPT-4: the ability to ask questions about images and to use speech as an input to a query.
This functionality marks GPT-4’s move into being a multimodal model. This means that the model can accept multiple “modalities” of input – text and images – and return results based on those inputs. Bing Chat, developed by Microsoft in partnership with OpenAI, and Google’s Bard model both support images as input, too. Read our comparison post to see how Bard and Bing perform with image inputs.
In this guide, we are going to share our first impressions with the GPT-4V image input feature.
Redefining What High School Is Supposed to Look Like — from edutopia.org by Brittany R. Collins From restorative grading to paid internships, an equity-centered approach to education creates rich learning opportunities for all students.
We have a networking party with special tables and food, and the students have to stand and mingle. We emulate this sort of a networking party, because they have to learn how to do it. They have to dress the part that day, and I film it so we can watch it back to give them some feedback.
Digital Promise announced [on 9/26/23] the launch of the Digital Promise FutureLab. This cutting-edge initiative embodies Digital Promise’s long-standing dedication to innovation in education and aims to not only revolutionize the current state of education, but to reimagine a new world of learning.
FutureLab is funded in part by Digital Promise’s recent gift from MacKenzie Scott.
“Innovation is in Digital Promise’s DNA, and we are reaffirming our commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible in education,” said Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO of Digital Promise. “We believe the Digital Promise FutureLab will be a catalyst for transformative change in education. It’s a significant opportunity to collaborate with visionary educators, technologists, and researchers to create a more equitable future for learners worldwide.”
Instructional Design Careers and Freelancing Presentations — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker A collection of my presentations and podcasts on instructional design careers and freelancing, including transitioning from teaching to ID.
Calculus is a critical on-ramp to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). But getting to those careers means surviving the academic journey.
While there’s been progress of late, it’s been “uneven” and Black, Hispanic and women workers are still underrepresented in some STEM fields. Traditional methods of calculus instruction may be knocking students off the path to these vital occupations, which is why advocates warn that getting diverse students into these careers may require instructional models more responsive to students. Meanwhile, the country is struggling to fill vacancies in related fields like semiconductor manufacturing, despite sizable investments — a feat that may require stabilizing the pipeline.
Good news: There’s mounting evidence that changing calculus instruction works for the groups usually pushed out of STEM. At least, that’s according to a randomized study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
Student Use Cases for AI: Start by Sharing These Guidelines with Your Class — from hbsp.harvard.edu by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick
To help you explore some of the ways students can use this disruptive new technology to improve their learning—while making your job easier and more effective—we’ve written a series of articles that examine the following student use cases:
Earlier this week, CETL and AIG hosted a discussion among UM faculty and other instructors about teaching and AI this fall semester. We wanted to know what was working when it came to policies and assignments that responded to generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E, and more. We were also interested in hearing what wasn’t working, as well as questions and concerns that the university community had about teaching and AI.
Then, in class he put them into groups where they worked together to generate a 500-word essay on “Why I Write” entirely through ChatGPT. Each group had complete freedom in how they chose to use the tool. The key: They were asked to evaluate their essay on how well it offered a personal perspective and demonstrated a critical reading of the piece. Weiss also graded each ChatGPT-written essay and included an explanation of why he came up with that particular grade.
After that, the students were asked to record their observations on the experiment on the discussion board. Then they came together again as a class to discuss the experiment.
Weiss shared some of his students’ comments with me (with their approval). Here are a few:
Asked to describe the state of generative AI that they would like to see in higher education 10 years from now, panelists collaboratively constructed their preferred future. .
Julie York, a computer science and media teacher at South Portland High School in Maine, was scouring the internet for discussion tools for her class when she found TeachFX. An AI tool that takes recorded audio from a classroom and turns it into data about who talked and for how long, it seemed like a cool way for York to discuss issues of data privacy, consent and bias with her students. But York soon realized that TeachFX was meant for much more.
York found that TeachFX listened to her very carefully, and generated a detailed feedback report on her specific teaching style. York was hooked, in part because she says her school administration simply doesn’t have the time to observe teachers while tending to several other pressing concerns.
“I rarely ever get feedback on my teaching style. This was giving me 100 percent quantifiable data on how many questions I asked and how often I asked them in a 90-minute class,” York says. “It’s not a rubric. It’s a reflection.”
TeachFX is easy to use, York says. It’s as simple as switching on a recording device.
…
But TeachFX, she adds, is focused not on her students’ achievements, but instead on her performance as a teacher.
ChatGPT Is Landing Kids in the Principal’s Office, Survey Finds — from the74million.org by Mark Keierleber While educators worry that students are using generative AI to cheat, a new report finds students are turning to the tool more for personal problems.
Indeed, 58% of students, and 72% of those in special education, said they’ve used generative AI during the 2022-23 academic year, just not primarily for the reasons that teachers fear most. Among youth who completed the nationally representative survey, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes and 19% said they’ve used the tools to help them write and submit a paper. Instead, 29% reported having used it to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.
Part of the disconnect dividing teachers and students, researchers found, may come down to gray areas. Just 40% of parents said they or their child were given guidance on ways they can use generative AI without running afoul of school rules. Only 24% of teachers say they’ve been trained on how to respond if they suspect a student used generative AI to cheat.
The prospect of AI-powered, tailored, on-demand learning and performance support is exhilarating: It starts with traditional digital learning made into fully adaptive learning experiences, which would adjust to strengths and weaknesses for each individual learner. The possibilities extend all the way through to simulations and augmented reality, an environment to put into practice knowledge and skills, whether as individuals or working in a team simulation. The possibilities are immense.
Thanks to generative AI, such visions are transitioning from fiction to reality.
Video: Unleashing the Power of AI in L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman An exclusive video walkthrough of my keynote at Sweden’s national L&D conference this week
Highlights
The wicked problem of L&D: last year, $371 billion was spent on workplace training globally, but only 12% of employees apply what they learn in the workplace
An innovative approach to L&D: when Mastery Learning is used to design & deliver workplace training, the rate of “transfer” (i.e. behaviour change & application) is 67%
AI 101: quick summary of classification, generative and interactive AI and its uses in L&D
The impact of AI: my initial research shows that AI has the potential to scale Mastery Learning and, in the process:
reduce the “time to training design” by 94% > faster
reduce the cost of training design by 92% > cheaper
increase the quality of learning design & delivery by 96% > better
Research also shows that the vast majority of workplaces are using AI only to “oil the machine” rather than innovate and improve our processes & practices
Practical tips: how to get started on your AI journey in your company, and a glimpse of what L&D roles might look like in a post-AI world
The idea was simple: ask sixty community leaders to fan across the city’s public schools, follow in the footsteps of its youngest citizens, and report back on what they saw.
Fifty-nine said yes. What they found, Pickering says, “were kids with dead eyes. Kids not engaged. And kids who knew that school was a game – and the game was rigged.”
So the Billy Madison team used its findings to design a prospective high school that would actually produce what its participants said they wanted to see:
Let kids pursue their passions. Give them real work to do. And get them out of the school building, and in the community.
This thought-provoking discussion delves into the topic of system replacement in education. Is school transformation possible without replacing the existing education system? Joining [Michael] to discuss the question are Thomas Arnett of the Christensen Institute and Kelly Young of Education Reimagined.
In an educational landscape that constantly seeks marginal improvements, [Michael’s] guests speak to the importance of embracing new value networks that support innovative approaches to learning. They bring to light the issue of programs that remain niche solutions, rather than robust, learner-centered alternatives. In exploring the concept of value networks, [Michael’s] guests challenge the notion of transforming individual schools or districts alone. They argue for the creation of a new value network to truly revolutionize the education system. Of course, they admit that achieving this is no small feat, as it requires a paradigm shift in mindset and a careful balance between innovation and existing structures. In this conversation, we wrestle with the full implications of their findings and more.
From DSC: This reminds me of the importance of TrimTab Groups who invent or test out something new apart from the mothership.
The 2023 GEM Report on technology and education explores these debates, examining education challenges to which appropriate use of technology can offer solutions (access, equity and inclusion; quality; technology advancement; system management), while recognizing that many solutions proposed may also be detrimental.
The report also explores three system-wide conditions (access to technology, governance regulation, and teacher preparation) that need to be met for any technology in education to reach its full potential.
Bloom Academy is the first and only self-directed learning center in Las Vegas – microschooling as true, nontraditional and permissionless education alternative. 5 Questions with Microschool Founders Sarah & Yamila.https://t.co/RvxtwGXvkZ
Since last spring, journalists at The 74 have been crossing the U.S. as part of our 2023 High School Road Trip. It has embraced both emerging and established high school models, taking us to 13 schools from Rhode Island to California, Arizona to South Carolina, and in between.
It has brought us face-to-face with innovation, with programs that promote everything from nursing to aerospace to maritime-themed careers.
At each school, educators seem to be asking one key question: What if we could start over and try something totally new?
What we’ve found represents just a small sample of the incredible diversity that U.S. high schools now offer, but we’re noticing a few striking similarities that educators in these schools, free to experiment with new models, now share. Here are the top eight: .
What does it take to empower parents and decentralize schooling? Why is a diversity of school models important to parents? Are we at a tipping point? .
Several meta-analyses, which summarize the evidence from many studies, have found higher achievement when students take quizzes instead of, say, reviewing notes or rereading a book chapter. “There’s decades and decades of research showing that taking practice tests will actually improve your learning,” said David Shanks, a professor of psychology and deputy dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at University College London.
Still, many students get overwhelmed during tests. Shanks and a team of four researchers wanted to find out whether quizzes exacerbate test anxiety. The team collected 24 studies that measured students’ test anxiety and found that, on average, practice tests and quizzes not only improved academic achievement, but also ended up reducing test anxiety. Their meta-analysis was published in Educational Psychology Review in August 2023.
The End of Scantron Tests— from theatlantic.com by Matteo Wong Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.
There are several possible reasons why pretesting worked in this study.
Students paid more attention to the pretested material during the lecture.
The pretest activated prior knowledge (some of them are clearly doing a lot of prework), and allowed them to encode the new information more deeply.
They were doing a lot of studying of the pretested information outside of class.
There are some great spaced retrieval effects going on. That is, students saw the material before lecture, they took a quiz on it during the pretest, then later they reviewed or quizzed themselves on that same material again during self-study.
But this fall, a few educators are quietly charting a different course they believe could change everything: At least two groups are pushing to create new AI chatbots that would offer teachers unlimited access to sometimes confusing and often paywalled peer-reviewed research on the topics that most bedevil them.
Their aspiration is to offer new tools that are more focused and helpful than wide-ranging ones like ChatGPT, which tends to stumble over research questions with competing findings. Like many juveniles faced with questions they can’t answer, it has a frustrating tendency to make things up.
Then, I turned Custom Instructions on and gave it the same starting prompt. Here are a few of the responses (emphases are mine):
“Purpose:What’s the primary goal of the course? Is it to augment your existing offerings at Every, serve as a standalone product, or something else?”
“Content Depth: Given your love for detailed, intellectual writing, how in-depth will you go on each topic?”
“Guest Contributions: Do you plan to involve guest experts, perhaps even some of your writing heroes or team members like Kate Lee and Evan Armstrong?”
“Time Investment: Given that you’re already grappling with being too opportunistic and dutiful, how will you allocate time for this without sidelining your creative work or burdening yourself?”
AI for comics— from aiandacademia.substack.com by Bryan Alexander Exploring an entertaining new Hugging Face application
As generative AI grows, more uses appear. Beyond text and images, other domains for creation pop up as companies, groups, and individuals try out new functions.
Today’s case in point is AI Comic Factory from Hugging Face.* This service will generate a couple of comic book pages based on your text input. It gives you choices of comic style and page layout as well.
Items from Tom Barrett’ Promptcraft: AI for a better learning ecosystem
How many languages do you speak? Thanks to AI, that number could be as many as seven. Los Angeles-based AI video platform HeyGen has launched a new tool that clones your voice from a video and translates what you’re saying into seven different languages. If that wasn’t enough, it also syncs your lips to your new voice so the final clip looks (and sounds) as realistic as possible.
Microsoft and Project Gutenberg have used AI technologies to create more than 5,000 free audiobooks with high-quality synthetic voices.
For the project, the researchers combined advances in machine learning, automatic text selection (which texts are read aloud, which are not), and natural-sounding speech synthesis systems.
It’s crucial – for individuals and the larger community – that students and young adults develop a solid foundation of personal finance knowledge, skills and habits in order to thrive. Practicing good money habits means the difference between long-term financial security and serious financial straits.
Financial literacy education is the responsibility of everyone, but most particularly parents and teachers. This guide focuses primarily on teaching financial literacy in elementary, middle and high schools. However, the concepts discussed below – and many of the resources listed – are also helpful for parents and others interested in promoting sound personal finance practices by kids and teens alike. Below you’ll find our suggestions for what concepts should be taught to kids from pre-k through grade 12, and the best times to introduce those concepts. You’ll also find an extensive list of some of the best resources – books, lesson plans, activities, videos, games and more – to supplement financial literacy education in the classroom.
Generative A.I. could reduce the busywork of accessibility
Most digital accessibility issues can be addressed easily with clean code and thoughtful content creation. However, many “easy” fixes still take time to implement, particularly when humans need to be involved.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) function as the international standards of digital accessibility. WCAG includes a number of requirements that require a subjective approach, which can create busywork for developers, designers, and writers.
For example:
WCAG requires text alternatives (alt text) for images and other non-text content. Writing alt text takes a few seconds, but if you’re operating a large eCommerce site with thousands of images, you may need to spend days or weeks adding alt text.
WCAG requires captions and transcripts for video content. If you don’t plan for those features when drafting your videos, you’ll need to write them after-the-fact — and on a lengthy video, that’s a time-consuming process.
WCAG requires content to maintain an appropriate color contrast ratio. Adjusting your website’s CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) isn’t especially difficult, but on a complex website, designers may need to spend hours adjusting each element.
Generative A.I. may be able to address these challenges.
One of the biggest challenges to navigate now is the fact that more digital tools will come with generative AI already embedded in them, says Annette Vee, director of composition and an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s everywhere in professional writing.”
“We need to be fundamentally rethinking ways we teach writing, so we are thinking about integrating tools mindfully,” says Vee, who helped develop a new resource, TextGenEd, that provides guidance in this area. “The real challenge is how do we teach courses that are preparing students and that are smart about generative AI? We have very few teachers currently equipped to do that work.”
“It’s best if there are real stakes attached to the work, for example, an authentic audience the student is writing to,” he writes. “A subject on which students have both sufficient interest and knowledge in order to feel as though they can write convincingly to this audience also matters a lot.”
Also relevant/see — via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn:
Learnt.ai — Built for Learning Specialists — from learnt.ai Harness the power of artificial intelligence to enhance your learning and development efforts with our easy-to-use platform – no technical expertise required!
Introducing Learnt.ai – a revolutionary collection of AI-powered content generation tools and AI chatbots that are specifically designed to support the common writing tasks of educationalists and learning and development professionals. Imagine being able to generate learning objectives on any topic of your choice, create engaging icebreakers and activities, write assessment questions with ease, and so much more.
Students are using artificial intelligence tools to assist them in their academic careers. Three students share their viewpoints on the tools they use and how using these tools helps them in their coursework and prepares them for the professional world.
Also relevant/see:
Why Professors Are Polarized on AI — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino Academics who perceive threats to education from AI band together as a survival mechanism. The resulting alliances echo divisions formed during online learning’s emergence.
Big Ideas is Education Week’s annual special report that brings the expertise of our newsroom—and occasionally those beyond our newsroom—to bear on the challenges you might be facing in your classroom, school, or district. Big Ideas questions the status quo and explores opportunities to help you build a better, more just learning environment for all students. Browse our collection.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24976021/Canva_Magic_Studio.png)
