Have you ever been in a job interview where you were thrown off by an unexpected question? Questions like, “Why is a manhole cover round?” or “What’s the most crucial part of a sandwich?” or even “What three items would you want if you were stranded on a deserted island?“
Rest assured, it’s unlikely that your job will require you to survive on a deserted island. So, why do interviewers ask such perplexing questions? The truth is, these questions serve a purpose, and it’s not necessarily to hear your answer.
What recruiters are really interested in is what your responses reveal about your character and problem-solving abilities.
Also important and related to one’s career development, see:
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.
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.
So much of the way that we think about education and work is organized into silos. Sure, that’s one way to ensure a depth of knowledge in a field and to encourage learners to develop mastery. But it also leads to domains with strict boundaries. Colleges are typically organized into school sub-domains, managed like fiefdoms, with strict rules for professors who can teach in different schools.
Yet it’s at the intersections of seemingly-disparate domains where breakthrough innovation can occur.
Maybe intersections bring a greater chance of future work opportunity, because that young person can increase their focus in one arena or another as they discover new options for work — and because this is what meaningful work in the future is going to look like.
From DSC: This posting strikes me as an endorsement for interdisciplinary degrees. I agree with much of this. It’s just hard to find the right combination of disciplines. But I supposed that depends upon the individual student and what he/she is passionate or curious about.
A lot of people have been asking if AI is really a big deal for the future of work. We have a new paper that strongly suggests the answer is YES. .
Consultants using AI finished 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced 40% higher quality results than those without. Those are some very big impacts. Now, let’s add in the nuance.
Ask the Chair: Are Great Chairs Born or Made? — from chronicle.com by Kevin Dettmar (behind a paywall) Higher education is finally getting serious about training new department heads.
Great chairs aren’t born, but made; “trial and error” isn’t actually a professional-development strategy. The provost and deans should recognize that a confident and competent chair makes their job easier, creates a well-functioning department, and buoys faculty, student, and staff morale.
As someone vitally engaged with the chair’s role, I do think we are experiencing a sea-change when it comes to how institutions are preparing chairs. For too long, colleges have treated the position as simply a minor cog in the chain of command. But more and more institutions are now investing in their chairs.
What we teachers desperately need, though, is an ocean of examples and training. We need to see and share examples of generative AI—any type of artificial intelligence that can be used to create new text, images, video, audio, code, or data—being used across the curriculum. We need catalogs of new lesson plans and new curriculum.
And we need training on theoretical and practical levels: training to understand what artificial intelligence actually is and where it stands in the development timeline and training about how to integrate it into our classes.
So, my advice to teachers is to use any and all the generative AI you can get your hands on. Then experience—for yourself—verification of the information. Track it back to the source because in doing so, you’ll land on the adjustments you need to make in your classes next year.
From DSC: Interesting.
Learners can now seamlessly transition between AI-powered assistance (AI Tutor) and Live Expert support to get access to instant support, whether through AI-guided learning or real-time interactions with a human expert.
ASSIGNMENT MAKEOVERS IN THE AI AGE WITH DEREK BRUFF — from teachinginhighered.com by Bonni Stachowiak Derek Bruff shares about assignment makeovers in the AI age on episode 481 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast
Comment on this per Derek Bruff:
Why not ask ChatGPT to write what King or X would say about a current debate and then have the students critique the ChatGPT output? That would meet the same learning goals while also teaching AI literacy.
(Be sure to read Asim’s contribution for a useful take.)
Here’s a closer look at the concurrent AI landscape in schools — and a prediction of what the future holds.
So far, high-profile ventures in the instruction realm, such asKyron Learning, have fused teacher-produced, recorded content with LLM-powered conversational UX. The micro-learning tool Nolej references internet material when generating tasks and tests, but always holds the language model closely to the ground truth provided by teachers. Both are intriguing takes on re-imagining how to deliver core instruction and avoid hallucinations (generated content that is nonsensical).
As a result, real-time 3D jobs are among the most in demand within the tech industry. According to Unity’s vice president of Education and Social Impact, Jessica Lindl, demand is 50% higher than traditional IT jobs—adding that salaries for real-time 3D jobs are 60% greater.
“We want to provide really simple on ramps and pathways that will lead you into entry level jobs so that at any point in your career, you can decide to transfer into the industry,” Lindl says.
University World News continues its exploration of generative AI in our new special report on ‘AI and Higher Education’. In commentaries and features, academics and our journalists around the world investigate issues and developments around AI that are impacting on universities. Generative AI tools are challenging and changing higher education systems and institutions — how they are run as well as ways of teaching and learning and conducting research.
My advice for you today is this: fill your LinkedIn-feed and/or inbox with ideas, inspirational writing and commentary on AI.
This will get you up to speed quickly and is a great way to stay informed on the newest movements you need to be aware of.
My personal recommendation for you is to check out these bright people who are all very active on LinkedIn and/or have a newsletter worth paying attention to.
I have kept the list fairly short – only 15 people – in order to make it as easy as possible for you to begin exploring.
It is crucial to recognize that the intrinsic value of higher education isn’t purely in its ability to adapt to market fluctuations or technological innovations. Its core strength lies in promoting critical thinking, nurturing creativity, and instilling a sense of purpose and belonging. As AI progresses, these traits will likely become even more crucial. The question then becomes if higher education institutions as we know them today are the ony ones, or indeed the best ones, equipped to convey those core strengths to students.
Higher education clearly finds itself caught in a whirlwind of transformation, both in its essence and execution. The juxtaposition of legacy structures and the evolving technological landscape paints a complex picture.
For institutional leaders, the dual challenge lies in proactively seeking and initiating change (not merely adapting to it) without losing sight of their foundational principles. Simultaneously, they must equip students with skills and perspectives that AI cannot replicate.
“They begged, bargained with, and berated their instructor in pursuit of better grades — not “because they like points,” but rather, “because the education system has told them that these points are the currency with which they can buy a successful future.””
Whilst we typically cover a single ‘prompt’ to use with ChatGPT, today we’re exploring a new feature now available to everyone: custom instructions.
You provide specific directions for ChatGPT leading to greater control of the output. It’s all about guiding the AI to get the responses you really want.
To get started:
Log into ChatGPT ? Click on your name/email bottom left corner ? select ‘Custom instructions’
We’re excited to introduce you to AI Companion (formerly Zoom IQ), your new generative AI assistant across the Zoom platform. AI Companion empowers individuals by helping them be more productive, connect and collaborate with teammates, and improve their skills.
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Envision being able to interact with AI Companion through a conversational interface and ask for help on a whole range of tasks, similarly to how you would with a real assistant. You’ll be able to ask it to help prepare for your upcoming meeting, get a consolidated summary of prior Zoom meetings and relevant chat threads, and even find relevant documents and tickets from connected third-party applications with your permission.
From DSC: “You can ask AI Companion to catch you up on what you missed during a meeting in progress.”
And what if some key details were missed? Should you rely on this? I’d treat this with care/caution myself.
That’s because, as it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to remove a user’s data from a trained A.I. model without resetting the model and forfeiting the extensive money and effort put into training it. To use a human analogy, once an A.I. has “seen” something, there is no easy way to tell the model to “forget” what it saw. And deleting the model entirely is also surprisingly difficult.
This represents one of the thorniest, unresolved, challenges of our incipient artificial intelligence era, alongside issues like A.I. “hallucinations” and the difficulties of explaining certain A.I. outputs.
This strategic move aims to make the process of creating visuals such as logos, banners, and more, even more simple for businesses and entrepreneurs.
This latest integration could improve the way users generate visuals by offering a streamlined and user-friendly approach to digital design.
From DSC: This Tweet addresses a likely component of our future learning ecosystems:
Excited to introduce YouPro for Education—your AI study buddy.
Access unlimited AI chat + search, unlimited AI writing generations, unlimited AI art generations, supercharged with GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion XL at just $6.99/month for students and teachers. pic.twitter.com/0t8zf0AaLr
That’s why a growing number of researchers—computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, linguists—want to overhaul the way they are assessed, calling for more rigorous and exhaustive evaluation. Some think that the practice of scoring machines on human tests is wrongheaded, period, and should be ditched.
“There’s a lot of anthropomorphizing going on,” she says. “And that’s kind of coloring the way that we think about these systems and how we test them.”
“There is a long history of developing methods to test the human mind,” says Laura Weidinger, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. “With large language models producing text that seems so human-like, it is tempting to assume that human psychology tests will be useful for evaluating them. But that’s not true: human psychology tests rely on many assumptions that may not hold for large language models.”
In concert with the fine folks at Datos, whose opt-in, anonymized panel of 20M devices (desktop and mobile, covering 200+ countries) provides outstanding insight into what real people are doing on the web, we undertook a challenging project to answer at least some of the mystery surrounding ChatGPT.
“In terms of human capital development, for instance, AI can be the teacher that helps the national workforce upskill in both AI-related and other domains.”
With the field of artificial intelligence evolving at near breakneck speed, scammers now have access to tools that can help them execute highly sophisticated attacks en masse, warns the co-founder of Web3 security firm Quantstamp.
Habit #2: Engage students in a brain dump or two things as an entry ticket or exit ticket. Spend one minute or less having students write down everything (or just two things) they remember from class. The key: Don’t grade it! Keep retrieval practice no-stakes to emphasize it’s a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy.
Teaching from the heart in 13 steps — from timeshighereducation.com by Beiting He Engaging your students through empathy requires teachers to share their own stories and vulnerabilities and foster a safe space for learning. Here, Beiting He offers 13 ways to create a caring classroom
In summary, “I wish” is about proposing positive changes and improvements, while “I wonder” is about asking thoughtful questions to gain insight and foster meaningful conversations within the team.
Sometimes people and vendors write about AI’s capabilities in such a glowingly positive way. It seems like AI can do everything in the world. And while I appreciate the growing capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the like, there are some things I don’t want AI-driven apps to do.
For example, I get why AI can be helpful in correcting my misspellings, my grammatical errors, and the like. That said, I don’t want AI to write my emails for me. I want to write my own emails.I want to communicate what I want to communicate. I don’t want to outsource my communication.
And what if an AI tool summarizes an email series in a way that I miss some key pieces of information? Hmmm…not good.
Ok, enough soapboxing. I’ll continue with some resources.
ChatGPT Enterprise
Introducing ChatGPT Enterprise — from openai.com Get enterprise-grade security & privacy and the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet.
We’re launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more. We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive. Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.
Nvidia Quarterly Earnings Report Q2 Smashes Expectations At $13.5B — from techbusinessnews.com.au Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report (Q2) smashed expectations coming in at $13.5B more than doubling prior earnings of $6.7B. The chipmaker also projected October’s total revenue would peak at $16B
MISC
DC: And many business people in the early/mid-90’s thought electronic mail was only good for arranging a business lunch but it was never going to take off.
ChatGPT: Few Americans think it will impact their job in a major way| Pew Research Center https://t.co/dsUfoNOeVO
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) August 30, 2023
OpenAI is currently on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue over the next 12 months from the sale of artificial intelligence software and the computing capacity that powers it. That’s far ahead of revenue projections the company previously shared with its shareholders, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
OpenAI’s GPTBot blocked by major websites and publishers — from the-decoder.com by Matthias Bastian An emerging chatbot ecosystem builds on existing web content and could displace traditional websites. At the same time, licensing and financing are largely unresolved.
OpenAI offers publishers and website operators an opt-out if they prefer not to make their content available to chatbots and AI models for free. This can be done by blocking OpenAI’s web crawler “GPTBot” via the robots.txt file. The bot collects content to improve future AI models, according to OpenAI.
Major media companies including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, ABC, and Australian Community Media (ACM) are now blocking GPTBot. Other web-based content providers such as Amazon, Wikihow, and Quora are also blocking the OpenAI crawler.
Is a state-of-the-art LLM capable of generating code, and natural language about code, from both code and natural language prompts.
Is free for research and commercial use.
Is built on top of Llama 2 and is available in three models…
In our own benchmark testing, Code Llama outperformed state-of-the-art publicly available LLMs on code tasks
Key Highlights of Google Cloud Next ‘23— from analyticsindiamag.com by Shritama Saha Meta’s Llama 2, Anthropic’s Claude 2, and TII’s Falcon join Model Garden, expanding model variety.
From DSC: This is scary — not at all comforting to me. Militaries around the world continue their jockeying to be the most dominant, powerful, and effective killers of humankind. That definitely includes the United States and China. But certainly others as well. And below is another alarming item, also pointing out the downsides of how we use technologies.
The debut of ChatGPT in November created angst for college admission officers and professors worried they would be flooded by student essays written with the undisclosed assistance of artificial intelligence. But the explosion of interest in AI has benefits for higher education, including a new generation of students interested in studying and working in the field. In response, universities are revising their curriculums to educate AI engineers.
During this special keynote presentation, Western Michigan University (WMU) professor Sue Ellen Christian speaks about the importance of media literacy for all ages and how we can help educate our friends and families about media literacy principles. Hosted by the Grand Rapids Public Library and GRTV, a program of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center. Special thanks to the Grand Rapids Public Library Foundation for their support of this program.
What if you could have a conversation with your notes?That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently, as companies like Dropbox, Box, Notion, and others have built generative AI tools that let you interact with and create new things from the data you already have in their systems.
Google’s version of this is called NotebookLM. It’s an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes.
… Right now, it’s really just a prototype, but a small team inside the company has been trying to figure out what an AI notebook might look like.
According to ElevenLabs, the new Multilingual v2 model promises it can produce “emotionally rich” audio in a total of 30 languages. The company offers two AI voice tools, one is a text-to-speech model and the other is the “VoiceLab” that lets paying users clone a voice by inputting fragments of theirs (or others) speech into the model to create a kind of voice cone. With the v2 model, users can get these generated voices to start speaking in Greek, Malay, or Turkish.
…
Since then, ElevenLabs claims its integrated new measures to ensure users can only clone their own voice. Users need to verify their speech with a text captcha prompt which is then compared to the original voice sample.
From DSC: I don’t care what they say regarding safeguards/proof of identity/etc. This technology has been abused and will be abused in the future. We can count on it. The question now is, how do we deal with it?
Introducing SeamlessM4T, the first all-in-one, multilingual multimodal translation model.
This single model can perform tasks across speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, text-to-text translation & speech recognition for up to 100 languages depending on the task.
But Hugging Face produces a platform where AI developers can share code, models, data sets, and use the company’s developer tools to get open-source artificial intelligence models running more easily. In particular, Hugging Face often hosts weights, or large files with lists of numbers, which are the heart of most modern AI models.
While Hugging Face has developed some models, like BLOOM, its primary product is its website platform, where users can upload models and their weights. It also develops a series of software tools called libraries that allow users to get models working quickly, to clean up large datasets, or to evaluate their performance. It also hosts some AI models in a web interface so end users can experiment with them.
Numerous skills are required to grow the semiconductor ecosystem over the next decade. Globally, we will need tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople to build new plants to increase and localize manufacturing capacity: electricians, pipefitters, welders; thousands more graduate electrical engineers to design chips and the tools that make the chips; more engineers of various kinds in the fabs themselves, but also operators and technicians. And if we grow the back end in Europe and the Americas, that equates to even more jobs.
Each of these job groups has distinct training and educational needs; however, the number of students in semiconductor-focused programs (for example, undergraduates in semiconductor design and fabrication) has dwindled. Skills are also evolving within these job groups, in part due to automation and increased digitization. Digital skills, such as cloud, AI, and analytics, are needed in design and manufacturing more than ever.
The chip industry has long partnered with universities and engineering schools. Going forward, they also need to work more with local tech schools, vocational schools, and community colleges; and other organizations, such as the National Science Foundation in the United States.
Principle #1: AI is here, and we will embrace it responsibly together with our music partners.
Principle #2: AI is ushering in a new age of creative expression, but it must include appropriate protections and unlock opportunities for music partners who decide to participate.
Principle #3: We’ve built an industry-leading trust and safety organization and content policies. We will scale those to meet the challenges of AI.
Brett Bauman, the developer of PlayListAI (previously LinupSupply), launched a new app called Songburst on the App Store this week. The app doesn’t have a steep learning curve. You just have to type in a prompt like “Calming piano music to listen to while studying” or “Funky beats for a podcast intro” to let the app generate a music clip.
If you can’t think of a prompt the app has prompts in different categories, including video, lo-fi, podcast, gaming, meditation and sample.
A Generative AI Primer— from er.educause.edu by Brian Basgen Understanding the current state of technology requires understanding its origins. This reading list provides sources relevant to the form of generative AI that led to natural language processing (NLP) models such as ChatGPT.
Three big questions about AI and the future of work and learning — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Alex Swartsel AI is set to transform education and work today and well into the future. We need to start asking tough questions right now, writes Alex Swartsel of JFF.
How will AI reshape jobs, and how can we prepare all workers and learners with the skills they’ll need?
How can education and workforce leaders equitably adopt AI platforms to accelerate their impact?
How might we catalyze sustainable policy, practice, and investments in solutions that drive economic opportunity?
“As AI reshapes both the economy and society, we must collectively call for better data, increased accountability, and more flexible support for workers,” Swartsel writes.
With the new school year just around the corner, now’s the perfect time to put yourself in the shoes of an adult learner starting college for the first time this fall.
Maybe you’re going after the degree you set aside after high school. Maybe you’re searching for a fresh start and a new career. Or maybe you want to show your kids and your family that you can do it, helping to build a better life for them all. Whether you’re 25 or 55, attending classes on campus or online, one thing is certain: You’re nervous. Excited at the future you see at the end of the journey, yes, but apprehensive too. Will you fit in? Can you hack it — the papers and projects and exams? And how will you juggle all the things, including job, family and everyday life?
While the fundamentals of college — lectures, reading, research, writing papers — are the same for anyone attending college, the overall experience and the types of support services needed can be vastly different between a 19-year-old traditional student and a 32-year-old adult learner. With that in mind, here are nine tips you can share with your adult learners — tips for helping them start their new term off right.
10 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Instructional Design — from er.educause.edu by Robert Gibson Artificial intelligence (AI) is providing instructors and course designers with an incredible array of new tools and techniques to improve the course design and development process. However, the intersection of AI and content creation is not new.
What does this mean for the field of instructional and course design? I have been telling my graduate instructional design students that AI technology is not likely to replace them any time soon because learning and instruction are still highly personalized and humanistic experiences. However, as these students embark on their careers, they will need to understand how to appropriately identify, select, and utilize AI when developing course content.
Here are a few interesting examples of how AI is shaping and influencing instructional design. Some of the tools and resources can be used to satisfy a variety of course design activities, while others are very specific.
GenAI Chatbot Prompt Library for Educators — from aiforeducation.io We have a variety of prompts to help you lesson plan and do adminstrative tasks with GenAI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and Perplexity.
Also relevant/see:
AI for Education — from linkedin.com Helping teachers and schools unlock their full potential through AI
Check out https://t.co/sfWeOiOzP5, “Helping teachers bring AI to the classroom critically, ethically, & responsibly.”
You can submit assignments to their curated collection. From the amazing @SarahWNewman at @metalabharvard. (She also did the Data Nutrition Project).
— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) August 18, 2023
Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a major new feature: it will be able to summarize articles you’re reading on the web, according to a Google blog post. SGE can already summarize search results for you so that you don’t have to scroll forever to find what you’re looking for, and this new feature is designed to take that further by helping you out after you’ve actually clicked a link.
Weeks after The New York Times updated its terms of service (TOS) to prohibit AI companies from scraping its articles and images to train AI models, it appears that the Times may be preparing to sue OpenAI. The result, experts speculate, could be devastating to OpenAI, including the destruction of ChatGPT’s dataset and fines up to $150,000 per infringing piece of content.
NPR spoke to two people “with direct knowledge” who confirmed that the Times’ lawyers were mulling whether a lawsuit might be necessary “to protect the intellectual property rights” of the Times’ reporting.
Digital accessibility is the practice of making digital content and applications accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This means ensuring that websites, mobile applications, and digital platforms are designed and developed in such a way that people with various types of impairments—visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, or neurological—can use them without hindrance. It’s about removing barriers in the digital world, enabling equal access and opportunity to everyone, similar to how physical accessibility considerations in building design ensure everyone can navigate through them. Digital accessibility is not just a legal necessity but also a socially responsible practice, ensuring inclusivity in the increasingly digital landscape of our society.
Improving the digital accessibility of existing text ensures that you can reuse your learning support assets. In this article, I’m going to give you a list of ideas to achieve that objective, using a set of ideas presented in a previous article. In general, the content here will improve accessibility and readability for all learners.
