By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Turnitin Bibliography
Turnitin is a system that copies students' essays (without their permission) and then compares them to submitted work, this all to combat plagiarism. This weblog post is a comprehensive resource on the topic, listing a number of the author's own posts in addition to numerous external resources. Good stuff. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Desire2Blog
Greetings from Duluth, where I am attending (but not presenting) at the Desire2Learn user conference, an unusual experience for me. Early impressions include taking note of some insider expression s ("publish up") and thinking that the white shirts worn by every D2L staffer (and there are a lot of there here) is a little bit cult-like. Today's presentation by Ruth Clark was weak, in my view; Will Richardson and Nancy White are on tomorrow and Wednesday. You'll get much more coverage of the conference at Barry Dahl's Desire2Blog site. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The problem with using scientific evidence in education (why teachers should stop trying to be more like doctors)
Lucinda McKnight, Andy Morgan, EduResearch Matters, 2019/03/26
The pushback against 'scientific evidence' in education continues (I put 'scientific evidence' in quotes because in reality it is neither). This article calls for "an urgent halt to the imposition of ‘evidence-based’ education on Australian teachers, until there a fuller understanding of the benefits and costs of narrow, statistical evidence-based practice." It substantiates that call with some very reasonable points: "In education, though, students are very different from each other. Unlike those administering placebos and real drugs in a medical trial, teachers know if they are delivering an intervention. Students know they are getting one thing or another. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Killed by Google
Cody Ogden, 2019/03/26
This is a list of 149 products and services that have been killed by Google over the years. It stands as an object lesson in why you should not depend on commercial vendors and platforms for critical services. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Troubles with the Open Source Gig Economy and Sustainability Tip Jar
Chris Aniszczyk, Chris Aniszczyk's (zx) diatribe, 2019/03/26
For a few years I held an annual donation campaign to support OLDaily. I discontinued it last year because I cut my server hosting costs and so didn't have the need. But the campaigns never came close to what it would cost to support OLDaily if I didn't have a day job. It was an object lesson in humility (it would be nice to do OLDaily full-time, but it isn't going to happen) and it points to the question being discussed in this article: can we depend on charity to support valuable open source content and services. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Chatbot talks up a storm for Bolton College
JISC, 2019/03/26
Ada is a chatbot "which uses artificial intelligence to answer more than 1,000 queries each day from students and staff." It is credited with laudable achievements: "the chatbot has increased learner retention, reduced teacher workload and bureaucracy, increased mental wellbeing and enhanced support for visually impaired students". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Constructivist pedagogy is like a zombie that refuses to die
Isak Skogstad, 2019/03/26
This is the other side of the 'scientific evidence' debate. I have no doubt that the evience has led Paul Kirschner to the conclusions he has reached (just as it has let the also-mentioned John Hattie to reach his conclusions). The question is: can we trust the evidence, and can we trust the inference that leads to the conclusion? For Kirschner, the answer is clear. "Cognitive load is about how our cognitive architecture affects how we learn and how this interacts with instruction". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Will this be on the test?
nick shackleton-jones, aconventional, 2019/03/26
Part of the problem with using 'scientific evidence' is that it mistakes efficiency for learning. Nick Shackleton-Jones makes this point quite nicely: "If someone wants to pass a test, the most efficient process is to give them the answers so that they can copy them into the paper." This is essentially what direct instruction amounts to, and so it's not surprising that the evidence people like Paul Kirschner cite reach this conclusion. The other side of the coin, though: "So what is it then – if it’s not storing facts in your head?". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mathematics for Machine Learning
Marc Peter Deisenroth, A. Aldo Faisal, Cheng Soon Ong, Cambridge University Press, 2019/03/25
There are many many reasons why I would recommend this book (421 page PDF). But what makes me link to it here is the simple introductory paragraph on page 12: "The goal of machine learning is to design general-purpose  methodologies  to  extract  valuable  patterns  from  data... To achieve this goal, we design that are typically related to the process that generates data... Learning can be understood as a way to automatically find patterns and structure in data by optimizing the parameters of the model." Another 409 pages explaining this concept follow. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Pedagogy – A three day seminar at Digital Pedagogy Lab
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, 2019/03/25
I'm sure this description of his open pedagogy workshop will have people lined up at Dave Cormier's door, and for good reason. I'm sure it's an excellent experience. I can't hlp but notice there's no tech more complex that scissors and tape used in the workshop. That's one way to make sure you know the tech will work. I really have mixed feelings about zero-tech workshops on tech subjects like digital pedagogy. More...