Researchers at U Cal Berkeley report “Koala,” “a dialogue model for academic research” that suggests that high-quality data sets might be the basis of “safer, more factual and more capable models” rather than going for ever-bigger systems.

Sadly the name appears to come from data platform LLaMA, on which it is trained, not Blinky Bill.

In Expert opinion Michael Sankey (Charles Darwin U) on AI in teaching. “ChatGPT is like a textbook on steroids.” HERE

and in Features 

Uni Wollongong created an Integrity Division. Sean Brawley, Richard Cook and Trish Mundy explain why.

plus Alex Barthel (Association for Academic Language and Learning) on the unmet demand from students who need academic language support. New  in Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s celebrated series, Needed now in learning and teaching.

The VC reports an operating deficit of 3.7 per cent for ‘22

This $28m loss “is exactly where we expected to be,” VC John Dewar told staff Monday. The university’s headline result was a $37m surplus, but that was largely based on a $42m donation tied to specific research.

“With healthy international student numbers this year, our plan is to return to a break-even operating result by the end of this year,” Professor Dewar said.

It’s a good result for Lt U, continuing improvements in pandemic-driven operating losses, $51m in 2020 and $19.5m in ’21 (CMM May 4 2022).

After all the pandemic pain it’s time to work through the lessons of lockdown and build better HE workplaces

HEjobs invites you to an in-person event to talk, listen and learn about jobs that work better HERE.

Difficult issues for international education were raised at recent hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade’s inquiry but it was a privilege to hear plenty of positives in a recent briefing by Toshi Kawaguchi, (Study NSW) and Juliet Kanyi (Austrade)

By CLAIRE FIELD

Juliet Kanyi spoke about the many and varied opportunities for Australian higher education and VET providers to recruit more students from Africa as well as the TNE possibilities that are available.

Toshi opened the briefing with an overview of the state of the sector in New South Wales and the focus of Study NSW on supporting international students – specifically;

* “a warm welcome when you arrive”

* “support for you to thrive” (including government funding for the Redfern Legal Centre to ensure students can access free legal advice, the International Student Health Hub and the International student sports program), and

* “career programmes for you to succeed” (including the NSW Jobs Connect for International Students, the upcoming Careers Expo and more).

To hear a leader in the sector express their obvious care and compassion for international students and for their agency to be providing such practical support was inspiring. More please … And it was also great to see providers being given such important insights into Africa. Congratulations to Study NSW and Austrade.

As if that were not inspiration enough during these difficult times for the sector – I was also pleased to speak in depth with Western Sydney University’s Prof Yi-Chen Lan on the latest episode of the ‘What now? What next?’ podcast about the university’s work educating refugees and displaced students from Myanmar, as well as offering English language tuition to teachers working in the refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

As Prof Lan observed “we need to think about how we give back to the global community” and with this example that’s clearly what WSU is looking to do.

Claire Field is a consultant and advisor to the tertiary education sector

South Australia now has a “pathways to politics” programme for women interested in standing for office, via Uni Adelaide

The unaligned programme provides training on how to run. Uni Melbourne was first (CMM March 16 2017) followed by QUT (CMM June 26 2019). It’s a project of the Trawalla Foundation’s Women in Leadership Project.

The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union strikes next Wednesday

It’s part of the union’s protected industrial action over enterprise bargaining. According to the comrades, management “has shifted a little on pay … and opened limited expressions of interest for fixed-term contracts to PhD students” but “it isn’t enough.”

The union states it’s “major claims” include, a target of 80 per cent secure work, “manageable workloads” and “fair pay.”

Monash U management presented an offer to all-staff on April 4, which included a headline 13 per cent pay offer, not far off the NTEU national target of 15 per cent, but the university was silent on key local union demands (CMM April 5).

Both sides may well be watching the outcome of the Deakin U staff vote now underway. DU management has put an offer, which the NTEU rejects, direct to staff. If DU management wins it could encourage Monash try its luck with a union-opposed vote. But that is a very big if – staff who are not union members tend to listen to the NTEU in bargaining.

In recent memory, Victoria U put two offers to staff which the union opposed – and was decisively beaten on both (CMM February 20 2019).

 

I have a cunning plan from Guerilla Warfare blog

Kane Murdoch (Macquarie) has worked in the academic integrity investigation space for many years and has seen a lot. With this AI being discussed almost as much as the other, Artificial Intelligence, one, he shares a bold vision for re-shaping assessment in Higher Ed by doing away with grading for first year assessments and focussing more on feedback to foster a love of learning rather than grade grubbing in students. It has generated no small amount of discussion on Twitter.

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Sounds good to me: A qualitative study to explore the use of audio to potentiate the student feedback experience from Journal of Professional Nursing

The importance of feedback in student learning is (rightly) getting far more attention than it once did. This study from Anne Kirwan, Sara Raftery and Clare Gormley at Dublin City University describes their analysis of responses from 199 nursing students to written and audio feedback, indicating that students benefited significantly from the latter.

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Sensemaking Lectures from GRAILE

Coming back to the other AI, George Siemen’s (and co.) Global Research Alliance for AI in Learning and Education (GRAILE) organisation has launched a 12 month speaker series covering the deeper issues that we need to face in the new age of Artificial Intelligence. The programme kicks off on May 10th with noted futurist Bryan Alexander considering the next 10 years.

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Entangled pedagogy: why does it matter to educational design from ASCILITE TELall Blog

In discussions about the role and prominence of technology in 21^st century learning and teaching we often hear the belief that pedagogy should always come first. Tim Fawns (Monash U) continues his line of thinking that pedagogy and technology are now so utterly intertwined that this is neither practical nor helpful. Instead, he posits that we need to aspire to a state where purpose, context and values are emphasised other/either.

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The H5P Report from EdTech Designer

H5P is an incredibly powerful and accessible open source tool for creating a range of interactive learning resources. Benjamin Waller, a Canberra Institute of Technology education designer has launched a polished and informative (8 min) vodcast keeping people up to date with the latest news and features in the H5P world.

Colin Simpson has worked in education technology, teaching, learning design and academic development in the tertiary sector since 2003 at CIT, ANU, Swinburne University and Monash University. He is also one of the leaders of the ASCILITE TELedvisors Network. For more from Colin, follow him on Twitter @gamerlearner (or @[email protected] on Mastodon)

New qualitative research from the estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research point to problems in delivering training in regional areas – some are not easily fixed

Tabatha Griffin and Upekha Andrahannadi set out complex issues and propose solutions, including,

what employers want: “skills (not necessarily full qualifications) that are up-to-date and provided in ways convenient to the business”

what’s the problem: lack of trainers and big training programmes, absence of higher level skills/qualifications programmes

what to do: “a greater understanding of how training should be delivered in the local context, devolve funding decisions, coordinate supply and demand from employers for training

but, and it is quite a big but: “Some of the barriers to workforce development and training in regional, rural and remote Australia do not fall under the responsibility of the training sector.  Issues such as lack of housing/accommodation; community problems (safety); technology/connectivity limitations; and limited job opportunities need to be tackled more broadly.”