Platforms and big data in ELT – a look back at the last decade

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Platforms and big data in ELT – a look back at the last decade
Philip Kerr, Adaptive Learning in ELT, 2020/01/07
This post mostly looks at the sad saga of Knewton. "It was clear, from very early on (see, for example, my posts from 2014 here and here) that Knewton’s product was little more than what Michael Feldstein called ‘snake oil’. Why and how could so many people fall for it for so long? Why and how will so many people fall for it again in the coming decade, although this time it won’t be ‘big data’ that does the seduction, but AI (which kind of boils down to the same thing)?" The real impact of data and AI, in my opinion, will come when it supports creativity, and not mere content consumption. More...