K12 District-Level Perspectives on AI — from aiforeducation.io by Amanda Bickerstaff, Dr. Patrick Gittisriboongul, Samantha Armstrong, & Brett Roer

Want to know how K12 schools are navigating the adoption of AI and what district-level leaders really think about GenAI EdTech tools?

Join us for this free webinar where we discussed AI technology, literacy, training, and the responsible adoption of GenAI tools in K12. Our panel explored what is working well – and not so well – across their districts from a school leader and practitioner’s perspective.


ChatGPT Has Changed Teaching. Our Readers Tell Us How. — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie and Beckie Supiano

Those vastly different approaches to college writing pretty much sum up the responses to generative AI: They’re all over the map.

One year after its release, ChatGPT has pushed higher education into a liminal place. Colleges are still hammering out large-scale plans and policies governing how generative AI will be dealt with in operations, research, and academic programming. But professors have been forced more immediately to adapt their classrooms to its presence. Those adaptations vary significantly, depending on whether they see the technology as a tool that can aid learning or as a threat that inhibits it.

Nearly 100 faculty members shared their stories. While not a representative sample, they teach at a wide range of institutions: 15 community colleges, 32 public and 24 private four-year colleges or universities, seven international institutions, and one for-profit college. They teach a variety of subjects, including animal science, statistics, computer science, history, accounting, and composition. Many spent hours learning about AI: enrolling in workshops and webinars, experimenting with the tools, and reading articles, so that they could enter the fall semester informed and prepared.


The Disruption of AI in CTE Is Real — from techlearning.com by Annie Galvin Teich
An ACTE expert panel urges CTE educators to jump on the AI train as it’s already left the station

10 Best Practices for AI and CTE 

  1. Embrace AI and use it first for simple tasks to create efficiencies. Then use it to individualize instruction and for formative assessment tools aligned to standards.
  2. Be creative and conscious of internal bias and ethics. Focus on DEI and access.
  3. Encourage students to use apps and tools to start moving toward an integrated curriculum using AI.
  4. Prepare students for jobs of the future by partnering with industry to solve real problems.
  5. …and others

How are universities responding to generative AI? — from medium.com by Nic Newman
What’s next for higher education as we enter a new wave of edtech innovation: AI-powered learning

Where will AI make a big difference?
At Emerge, we have identified eight high-level trends — what we’re calling “engines of opportunity”. These eight “engines of opportunity” capture our ideas about how AI is being used to drive better practice and outcomes in HE, now and into the future.

They fall into two main categories:

  • Making learning more engaging: solutions that scale high quality pedagogy at low cost.
  • Making teaching more efficient: solutions that save educators and organisations time and money.

 

The Rise of Learning Societies — from educationnext.org by Alan Gottlieb
A small experiment in rural Idaho holds big promise for student success 

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The basic idea is this: Some parents who, for a variety of reasons, hesitate to send their children to a traditional brick-and-mortar school have neither the time, inclination, or temperament to homeschool or to monitor a full-time online program. Learning Societies provide an intimate environment where kids, supervised by professional educators, learn online and in small, in-person groups for six hours a day. Gem Prep leaders describe it as a sweet spot between traditional schooling and at-home online learning. It is particularly well suited to rural areas.

Learning Societies have the potential to achieve a happy medium that combines the strengths of both homeschooling (or online learning from home) and a traditional brick-and-mortar school.

A typical school day at a Gem Prep Learning Society sees some students engaged in online lessons on laptops while others receive instruction from a teacher in a small group, all within the same classroom. Both modalities use Gem Prep Online’s well-regarded curriculum.

 

A Nation At Risk +40 | A Review of Progress in US Public Education — from hoover.org

Forty years ago, the release of A Nation at Risk led to what we know today as the modern school reform movement. With its calls for increased academic rigor, more productive use of instructional time, more effective teaching, and more impactful leadership, A Nation at Risk set in motion policy and practice changes at every level of the education system. But after four decades, what has been the result? And where do we go from here?

Forty years on, significant challenges remain. The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on student learning, and chronic absenteeism remains at alarming rates. Even prior to the pandemic, student achievement, as measured by standardized tests, seemed to have plateaued despite ever-increasing resources—in time, dollars, research, technology, and human capital—being devoted to school reform.

Much has been tried in the effort to improve our schools. Has any of it made a difference?

 

An Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.

If you are at all interested in generative AI and understanding what it can do and why it matters, you should just get access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 in as unadulterated and direct way as possible. Everything else comes after that.

Now, to be clear, this is not the free ChatGPT, which uses GPT-3.5.


America's Next Top Model LLMs in Educational Settings

1. America’s Next Top Model LLMs in Educational Settings

  • PDF
    Topics Discussed:
    Need for a Comprehensive Student-Centric Approach
    Collaboration between EdTech Companies and Educators
    Personalized Learning Orchestration
    Innovation and Agility of Startups vs. Resources of Big Tech
    The Essential Role of AI in Transforming Education
  • Video recording from Edtech Insiders

2. Hello, Mr. Chips: AI Teaching Assistants, Tutors, Coaches and Characters

  • PDF
    Topics discussed:
    Engagement and Co-Creation
    Educator Skills and AI Implementation
    Teacher Empowerment and Student Creativity
    Efficacy and Ethical Concerns
  • Video recording from Edtech Insiders

He Was Falsely Accused of Using AI. Here’s What He Wishes His Professor Did Instead | Tech & Learning — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
When William Quarterman was accused of submitting an AI-generated midterm essay, he started having panic attacks. He says his professor should have handled the situation differently.


Teaching: Practical AI strategies for the classroom — from chronicle.com by Beckie Supiano and Luna Laliberte

Here are several strategies you can try.

  • Quick Hits: Several presenters suggested exercises that can be quick, easy, and fun for students. Invite your class to complete a Mad Libs using ChatGPT. It’s a playful way to leverage ChatGPT’s ability to predict the next word, giving students insight into how generative AI works on a fundamental level. You can also have your students use ChatGPT to rewrite their own writing in the tone and style of their favorite writers. This exercise demonstrates AI’s ability to mimic style and teaches students about adopting different tones in writing.
  • Vetting Sources
  • Grade ChatGPT
  • Lead by Example  

Embracing Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom — from gse.harvard.edu; via Alex Webb at Bloomberg
Generative AI tools can reflect our failure of imagination and that is when the real learning starts


Class Disrupted S5 E3: The Possibilities & Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom — from the74million.org by Michael B. Horn & Diane Tavenner
AI expert and Minerva University senior Irhum Shafkat joins Michael and Diane to discuss where the technology is going.


Schools urged to teach children how to use AI from age of 11 — from news.sky.com by Tom Acres
Artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT are being used by children to help with homework and studying – and there are calls for it to become a central part of the school curriculum.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Schools have been urged to teach children how to use AI from the age of 11 as the technology threatens to upend the jobs market.

Rather than wait for pupils to take up computer science at GCSE, the British Computer Society (BCS, The Chartered institute for IT) said all youngsters need to learn to work with tools like ChatGPT.

The professional body for computing wants a digital literary qualification to be introduced, with a strong focus on artificial intelligence and its practical applications.

An understanding of AI should also become a key part of teacher training and headteacher qualifications, it added.


Improving Your Teaching With an AI Coach — from edutopia.org by Stephen Noonoo
New tools are leveraging artificial intelligence to help teachers glean insights into how they interact with students.


COMMENTARY
Embracing artificial intelligence in the workforce starts with higher education — from nebraskaexaminer.com by Jaci Lindburg and Cassie Mallette

When students can understand the benefit of using it effectively, and learn how to use AI to brainstorm, problem solve, and think through decision making scenarios, they can work more efficiently, make difficult decisions faster and improve a company’s production output.

It is through embracing the power and potential of AI that we can equip our students with future-ready skills. Through intentional teaching strategies that guide students to think creatively about how to use AI in their work, higher education can ensure that students are on the cutting edge in terms of using advancing technologies and being workforce ready upon graduation.

Also see:

The ChatGPT/AI Prompt Book is a resource for the UNO community that demonstrates how students can use AI in their studies and how faculty can incorporate it into their courses and daily work. The goal: to teach individuals how to be better prompt engineers and develop the skills needed to utilize this emerging technology as one of the many tools available to them in the workforce.


Two Ideas for Teaching with AI: Course-Level GPTs and AI-Enhanced Polling — from derekbruff.org by Derek Bruff

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Might we see course-level GPTs, where the chatbot is familiar with the content in a particular course and can help students navigate and maybe even learn that material? The answer is, yes and they’re already here. Top Hat recently launched Ace, an AI-powered learning assistant embedded in its courseware platform. An instructor can activate Ace, which then trains itself on all the learning materials in the course. Students can then use Ace as a personal tutor of sorts, asking it questions about course material.

Ace from Top Hat -- empowering educators and students with a human-centered application of AI


Reflections On AI Policies in Higher Education — from jeppestricker.substack.com by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker
And Why First-Hand Generative AI Experience is Crucial for Leadership

AI is already showing far-reaching consequences for societies and educational institutions around the world. It is my contention that it is impossible to set strategic direction for AI in higher education if you haven’t yet tried working with the technology yourself. The first wave of overwhelming, profound surprise simply cannot be outsourced to other parts of the organization.

I mention this because the need for both strategic and operational guidance for generative AI is growing rapidly in higher education institutions. Without the necessary – and quite basic – personal generative AI experience, however, it becomes difficult for leadership to meaningfully direct and anchor AI in the organization.

And without clear guidance in place, uncertainty arises for all internal stakeholders about expectations and appropriate uses of AI. This makes developing an institutional AI policy not just sensible, but necessary.




A free report for educational leaders and policymakers who want to understand the AI World — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard
And the immediate need for AI literacy

Beyond synthesizing many ideas from educational theory and AI deep learning, the report provides a comprehensive overview of developments in the field of AI, including current “exponential advances.” It’s updated through the release of Gemini and Meta’s new “Seamless” translation technology that arguably eliminates the need for most translators, and probably even the need to learn to speak another language for most purposes.

We were a mere 18 hours too late from covering an entire newscast (and news channel) that is produced with AI in a way that creates representations that are indistinguishable from what is “real” (see below) though it super-charges our comprehensive case and immediate AI literacy.

We also provide several suggestions and a potential roadmap for schools to help students prepare for an AI World where computers are substantialy smarter than them in many ways.

 

Google hopes that this personalized AI -- called Notebook LM -- will help people with their note-taking, thinking, brainstorming, learning, and creating.

Google NotebookLM (experiment)

From DSC:
Google hopes that this personalized AI/app will help people with their note-taking, thinking, brainstorming, learning, and creating.

It reminds me of what Derek Bruff was just saying in regards to Top Hat’s Ace product being able to work with a much narrower set of information — i.e., a course — and to be almost like a personal learning assistant for the course you are taking. (As Derek mentions, this depends upon how extensively one uses the CMS/LMS in the first place.)

 

Education evolves to match the speed of tech innovation — from Tech predictions for 2024 and beyond — from allthingsdistributed.com
Higher education alone cannot keep up with the rate of technological change. Industry-led skills-based training programs will emerge that more closely resemble the journeys of skilled tradespeople. This shift to continuous learning will benefit individuals and businesses alike.

Similar to the software development processes of decades past, we have reached a pivotal point with tech education, and we will see what was once bespoke on-the-job-training for a few evolve into industry-led skills-based education for many.

We have seen glimpses of this shift underway for years. Companies like Coursera, who originally focused on consumers, have partnered with enterprises to scale their upskilling and reskilling efforts. Degree apprenticeships have continued to grow in popularity because education can be specialized by the employer, and apprentices can earn as they learn. But now, companies themselves are starting to seriously invest in skills-based education at scale.

All of these programs enable learners at different points in their career journey to gain the exact skills they need to enter in-demand roles, without the commitment of a traditional multi-year program.

But there will be many industries where the impact of technology outpaces traditional educational systems. To meet the demands of business, we will see a new era of industry-led educational opportunities that can’t be ignored.

From DSC:
It seems to me that this is saying that higher education is not able to — nor will it be able to in the future — match the speed of innovation taking place today. Therefore, alternatives will continue to hit the learning landscapes/radar. For example, Amazon’s CTO, Dr. Werner Vogels, mentioned Amazon’s efforts here:

Amazon just announced that it has already trained 21 million tech learners across the world in tech skills. And it’s in part thanks to programs like the Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship and AWS Cloud Institute.

 

 

More Chief Online Learning Officers Step Up to Senior Leadership Roles 
In 2024, I think we will see more Chief Online Learning Officers (COLOs) take on more significant roles and projects at institutions.

In recent years, we have seen many COLOs accept provost positions. The typical provost career path that runs up through the faculty ranks does not adequately prepare leaders for the digital transformation occurring in postsecondary education.

As we’ve seen with the professionalization of the COLO role, in general, these same leaders proved to be incredibly valuable during the pandemic due to their unique skills: part academic, part entrepreneur, part technologist, COLOs are unique in higher education. They sit at the epicenter of teaching, learning, technology, and sustainability. As institutions are evolving, look for more online and professional continuing leaders to take on more senior roles on campuses.

Julie Uranis, Senior Vice President, Online and Strategic Initiatives, UPCEA

 

Completing College: National and State Reports — from nscresearchcenter.org
With Six- and Eight-Year Completion Rates Dashboards

Highlights

  • Progress in the national college completion rate has stalled. The six-year completion rate for the fall 2017 cohort was 62.2 percent, essentially unchanged since 2015.
  • Six-year completion rates increased in over half of states, with nine states increasing 1 percentage point (pp) or more. This is up from the previous year when only five states had gains of at least 1 pp.
  • Completions rates stalled or declined across all ethnicities, with Native American (-2.0 pp) and Black students (-0.4 pp) posting the largest decreases.
  • The gender gap in completion rates continues to grow and is the widest seen since 2008 (7.2 pp)
  • Traditional-aged students entering college in fall 2017 saw declines in their overall six-year completion rate. Older students continue to make gains, but they still lag behind traditional aged students.
  • The national eight-year completion rate for the fall 2015 cohort declined 0.5pp from 2014. Only 2.4 percent of the cohort completed in the seventh and eighth years.
 

Learning and employment record use cases -- from the National Governors Association

LERs Are Hot. What Are States Going To Do With Them?

Governors and state leaders are concerned about the current labor shortage, occurring during a time when many skilled workers are underemployed or even unemployed. Skills-based approaches to hiring and recruiting can shift that dynamic—making pathways to good careers accessible to a wider segment of the workforce and opening up new pools of talent for employers. They do so by focusing on what workers know and can do, not on the degrees or credentials they’ve earned.

That’s the theory. But a lot hinges on how things actually play out on the ground.

Technology will play a key role, and many states have zeroed in on learning and employment records—essentially digital resumes with verified records of people’s skills, educational experiences, and work histories—as an essential tool. A lot of important work is going into the technical design and specifications.

This project, on the other hand, aims to take a step back and look at the current state of play when it comes to the use cases for LERs. Just a few of the key questions:

  • How might employers, education providers, government agencies, and workers themselves actually use them? Will they?
  • In what areas do state policymakers have the most influence over key stakeholders and the most responsibility to invest?
  • What actions are needed now to ensure that LERs, and skills-based hiring more broadly, actually widen access to good jobs—rather than setting up a parallel system that perpetuates many of today’s inequities?
 

3 Questions for Deborah Dougherty on Higher Ed’s Past and Future — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim
A conversation with the director of the Andison Center for Teaching Excellence at Alma College about higher ed in 2060.

From DSC:
I was hoping to see a bit more from Deborah’s answer to where she sees higher education (including Alma College) might end up 35 years from now. Her answer seemed like business as usual —  the status quo. Nothing will change (hopefully, in her perspective). If that’s the case, many will be shut out of higher education. We can do better. I don’t mean to bash a residential, liberal arts, collegiate experience. I worked for such an institution for 10 years! But it needs to be augmented. New business models. More access. 


Butler University launches two-year college with degrees free to most students — from chalkbeat.org by MJ Slaby

Students can earn an associate degree from Butler University at no cost to them, and continue on to earn a bachelor’s degree for $10,000, thanks to a new program.

On Friday, Butler announced it is opening a new two-year college on campus that will offer  associate degrees in business and allied health. The program will start enrolling students in fall 2025.

The program is focused on Indianapolis-area students from low-income backgrounds, including students who are undocumented. The university said in its Friday announcement that it wants to make college more accessible and affordable for previously underserved students, and help them navigate the college-going process.

 

 

Exploring blockchain’s potential impact on the education sector — from e27.co by Moch Akbar Azzihad M
By the year 2024, the application of blockchain technology is anticipated to have a substantial influence on the education sector

Areas mentioned include:

  • Credentials that are both secure and able to be verified
  • Records of accomplishments that are not hidden
  • Enrollment process that is both streamlined and automated
  • Storage of information that is both secure and decentralised
  • Financing and decentralised operations
 

Instructional Designers as Institutional Change Agents — from er.educause.edu/ by Aaron Bond, Barb Lockee and Samantha Blevins

Systems thinking and change strategies can be used to improve the overall functioning of a system. Because instructional designers typically use systems thinking to facilitate behavioral changes and improve institutional performance, they are uniquely positioned to be change agents at higher education institutions.

In higher education, instructional designers are often seen as “change agents” because they help to facilitate behavioral changes and improve performance at their institutions. Due to their unique position of influence among higher education leaders and faculty and their use of systems thinking, instructional designers can help bridge institutional priorities and the specific needs of various stakeholders. COVID-19 and the switch to emergency remote teaching raised awareness of the critical services instructional designers provide, including preparing faculty to teach—and students to learn—in well-designed learning environments. Today, higher education institutions increasingly rely on the experience and expertise of instructional designers.

Figure 1. How Instructional Designers Employ Systems Thinking
.

 

Why Entrepreneurship Might Save Our Kids—and the Rest of Us. — from gettingsmart.com by Katie Kimbrell

Key Points (emphasis DSC):

  • We need to be asking our students “How did you put your ideas into the world today?”.
  • To be human is to be entrepreneurial.

One of my favorite mom friends asks her young school-aged kids every day, “What did you make today?”

I love how subtly subversive this question is. Not, “How was school today?” “Were you good today?” or, “How’s [insert school subject] going?” But, How did you put your ideas out into the world today?” 

That simple question understands this fundamental truth: to be human is to create, to employ our imaginations and partake in forming the world we want to live in.


Microschool in a Box: Programs Enabling the Microschool Movement — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen

Key Points

  • Microschools are not new. In fact, they are as old as learning itself.
  • Funding and operations can be difficult within a microschool model. Programs and other organizations can support planning, design and implementation.

Microschools are meeting strong market demand for more personalized, more contextualized and more relevant learning for every student. Programs like ASU Prep’s Microschool in a Box make it possible for more learners to become future-ready with access to affordable, relational microschool learning.

Nate McClennen


The Science of Classroom Design — from edutopia.org by Youki Terada and Stephen Merrill
Our comprehensive, all-in, research-based look at the design of effective learning spaces.

Topics include:

  • Light
  • Ventilation and air quality
  • Complexity and color
  • Data walls
  • Nature, plants, and greenery
  • Representation
    • Students can experience representation in classrooms by seeing their own or peers’ artifacts on walls and in shared virtual spaces, or by being exposed to images and references that mirror their interests, passions, and backgrounds.
  • Flexibility
  • Learning differences and neurodivergence
  • Heat
  • Acoustics/noise
  • Seating arrangements
  • Learning Zones

Addendum on 12/1/23:

 

Unpacking 3 major trends in ed tech and for-profit education — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
CEOs of major companies recently told investors how they fared in their most recent financial quarters, offering insight into the broader higher ed sector.

Education companies double down on degree programs

These programs allow Coursera users to count open courses they complete on the platform toward credit for degree programs. Students can also be admitted to degree programs based on their performance in these courses,Maggioncalda said.

Coursera recently announced it had built several of these pathways to master’s degrees offered by Illinois Tech. Coursera users can now complete professional certificates offered on the website — including from Google, IBM and Meta — as credit toward these programs.


Report Finds Students Struggling with Being Prepared for Courses and Increasingly Turning to Generative AI, Social Media to Study — from campustechnology.com by Kate Lucariello

In its second annual 2023 “Study Trends Report,” McGraw Hill found that college students were feeling unprepared for their courses, but also that they have turned to generative AI and social media to study and would like more learning resources in a similar format.

The study, conducted by Morning Consult between July 18 and Aug. 11, 2023, surveyed 500 undergraduate college students and 200 college instructors. Some of the key findings include:


The Plot To Kill Shop Class — by Ryan Craig

I suspect College Board may be trying to repent for its original sin: killing vocational education. Now known as career and technical education (CTE), America’s college-or-bust mentality has long relegated CTE to a shadowy corner of high school.

But make no mistake: the College Board’s fingerprints are on the weapon that killed CTE. College Board launched Advanced Placement courses in 1955 with 500 students across 18 elite schools like Andover, Bronx Science, and Newton High School. The original idea was guiltless: more challenging curricula for gifted and talented students to accelerate the development of leaders and win the Cold War. But it soon became clear that AP’s primary purpose would be to give students a leg up in competitive college admissions; as early as 1960, Exeter worried about “a dangerous tendency to regard advanced placement teachers and students as an elite worthy of special praise.”

When College Board’s primary source of revenue (and profits) is AP courses and demand for AP is driven by a weighted GPA formula that discriminates against all other forms of education, any attempt to create a level playing field between career discovery and college is window dressing: CTE theater. College Board knows which side its bread is buttered on (hint: it’s in its name).


2U, USC Curtail Online Partnership — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman
Southern California and the online program manager will part ways on master’s degrees that became a target of scrutiny because of their high price.

Which makes it fitting, perhaps, that Thursday 2U and USC announced that that they would largely wind down their 15-year partnership, which in the eyes of consumer advocates and some journalists had come to exemplify how involving companies intimately in the delivery of education could undermine, rather than expand, access and affordability to higher education.


edX and Jobs for the Future Offer Free MicroBachelors Programs — from campustechnology.com by Kate Lucariello

Three MicroBachelor programs are currently available:

  • Statistics Fundamentals and Mathematics and Statistics Fundamentals from The London School of Economics;
  • Marketing Essentials and Business and Professional Communication for Success from Doane University; and
  • Full Stack Application Development from IBM.

PROOF POINTS: Professors say high school math doesn’t prepare most students for their college majors — from hechingerreport.org


 

AI Pedagogy Project, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Creative and critical engagement with AI in education. A collection of assignments and materials inspired by the humanities, for educators curious about how AI affects their students and their syllabi

AI Guide
Focused on the essentials and written to be accessible to a newcomer, this interactive guide will give you the background you need to feel more confident with engaging conversations about AI in your classroom.


From #47 of SAIL: Sensemaking AI Learning — by George Siemens

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Welcome to Sensemaking, AI, and Learning (SAIL), a regular look at how AI is impacting education and learning.

Over the last year, after dozens of conferences, many webinars, panels, workshops, and many (many) conversations with colleagues, it’s starting to feel like higher education, as a system, is in an AI groundhog’s day loop. I haven’t heard anything novel generated by universities. We have a chatbot! Soon it will be a tutor! We have a generative AI faculty council! Here’s our list of links to sites that also have lists! We need AI literacy! My mantra over the last while has been that higher education leadership is failing us on AI in a more dramatic way than it failed us on digitization and online learning. What will your universities be buying from AI vendors in five years because they failed to develop a strategic vision and capabilities today?


AI + the Education System — from drphilippahardman.substack.com Dr. Philippa Hardman
The key to relevance, value & excellence?


The magic school of the future is one that helps students learn to work together and care for each other — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard
AI is going to alter economic and professional structures. Will we alter the educational structures?

(e) What is really required is a significant re-organization of schooling and curriculum. At a meta-level, the school system is focused on developing the type of intelligence I opened with, and the economic value of that is going to rapidly decline.

(f). This is all going to happen very quickly (faster than any previous change in history), and many people aren’t paying attention.  AI is already here.


 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian