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AI storm cloud
Michael Sankey (Charles Darwin U) reports (via Twitter) that a meeting of open, distance and e-learning experts specified their top three “AI related priorities.” In the resulting word-cloud “academic integrity” was big, black and dead centre. “A sober reminder of what lies ahead of us,” he adds.
Their response hammered would probably be even more nimbostratus.
There’s more in the Mail
In Expert Opinion
Tim Winkler (HEJobs) talks to Mike Thelwall (Uni Wolverhampton) about the compounding power of research citations and why young researchers should pal-up for publishing with hi-cited, if not particularly productive authors, HERE.
Plus Mr Winkler considers their conversation, HERE.
And in Features
International Women’s Day offs and Dawn Gilmore (RMIT) sets out issues and options for university women. Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s new selection, HERE
plus Paul Harris from the Innovative Research Universities makes the case for another impact and engagement exercise HERE
with Sean Brawley and Richard Cook (Uni Wollongong) on restructuring services for continuous improvement, HERE
and International students enrolling in universities and then switching to lower cost providers is costing unis $60m, Mahsood Shah (Swinburne U) and James Collins (Education Centre Australia) report on how it happens and what needs to be done HERE
as well as Merlin Crossley (UNSW) on why universities should speak up for the Voice to Parliament.
Ideas to honour Peter Noonan’s memory
Tomorrow morning Victoria U hosts a symposium in memory of the late Peter Noonan, (as in the review of the Australian Qualification Framework and the Bradley Review of HE).
Great timing, with the O’Kane Accord team well at work.
“Peter Noonan was one of the rare experts in tertiary education policy whose expertise spanned both higher education and vocational education and training, VU’s Peter Hurley says.
Speakers include, Peter Dawkins (Jobs and Skills Australia), Sally Kift (Higher Education Academy), Megan Lilly (Australian Industry Group), Sandra Milligan (Uni Melbourne) and VU VC Adam Shoemaker.
What HE wants the Accord panel to fix
The feds commissioned consultants Nous Group to report on the 185 submissions to the O’Kane Accord panel’s request for stakeholder priorities to consider. There’s quite a list, HERE
Top issues addressed grouped by terms of reference include, access, skills needs, equity group outcomes, funding for research, teaching and learning, regulation, the Job Ready Graduates programme, student experience and fees.
Submissions are less engaged with research training and workforce, Commonwealth investment, student demand for HE – and academic freedom, which came up in ten submissions.
There are calls for changes to research funding (simpler processes for grants, a higher proportion via block programmes). And Universities Australia wants, “flexible agreements between government and universities to make funding available for different mixes of provision and activities in accordance with a university’s institutional mission and the needs of its local (and wider) community.”
And QUT and RMIT point to the funding elephant in the Accord room.
* “undertake a considered and comprehensive analytical review within the Accord process to establish a fair, effective and sustainable basis for setting discipline funding levels including the split between Commonwealth and student share,” (QUT)
* reframe the funding of university places and agree a consistently applied ‘fair price’ for student co-contribution. This should be put alongside a true-cost-of-delivery higher education supplement from the Commonwealth,” (RMIT)
Protecting research integrity: change or the same old ARIC
An “evaluation” of the Australian Research Integrity Committee is due to complete this month – some researchers want ARIC beefed up, others want an independent investigation agency instead and some don’t know what Aric does
ARIC has a less Himalayan than horizontal profile but even so, in its time has, attracted unkind comments in the research community. Back in 2013 there were arguments whether an independent office investigating research misconduct allegations would be better than ARIC looking at how institutions dealt with them (CMM August 19 2013).
Things stayed much the same (CMM March 6 2017), over the next few years with ARIC investigating how institutions, investigated and managed alleged research integrity breaches, and took corrective action as required
A national research integrity office is not mentioned in the topics of the present evaluation of ARIC – which focus on process, standing and take-up of recommendations and whether “ARIC‘s existence and role are known and understood by relevant stakeholders” –
However there is room to raise one in some of the references;
“the relevance of ARIC’s advice to the respective CEOs, including its suggested recommendations to institutions”
and,
“institutions’ compliance and cooperation on reviews and the extent to which ARIC’s recommendations are acted on when communicated to institutions”
The review was also charged with looking at, “research integrity arrangements in other countries.”
Any choice for change will not be universally applauded.
As UNSW’s Nicholas Fisk points out, it has become a “doves versus hawks issue,” between advocates of a “tightened institution al hygiene model” and an independent regulator (CMM HERE).
Colin Simpson’s ed tech reads of the week
We pitted ChatGPT against tools for detecting AI-written text, and the results are troubling from The Conversation
There is a cohort in any discussion about the AIpocalypse in Higher Ed whose first question is some variation on ‘how can we detect AI generated writing?’ Given the change that is needed in teaching practice to respond to these tools, it is understandable that a first response might be in the “shut it down” vein. As with most things in the ed tech space though, there is no silver bullet, as this set of basic tests conducted by Armin Alimardani (Uni Wollongong) and Emma Jane (UNSW) indicate. Detecting AI content is unlikely to ever be reliable and clever users will usually be able to find a workaround.
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Towards a framework for designing and evaluating online assessments in business education from Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
This paper from Elaine Huber and a cadre of other heavy hitters in business education at Uni Sydney and UTS describes some very thoughtful work to develop an overarching framework for online assessment that holistically addresses learner, educator, institutional and disciplinary needs. While different discipline areas clearly have their own needs, the big picture takeaways from this work should be applicable to most educators, ranging across (but not limited to) authenticity, scale, quality feedback, resourcing, and accreditation
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Micro-learning, Digital Badges and Micro-credentials: Definitions, Affordances and Design Considerations for application in Higher Education Institutions from All Ireland Journal of Higher Education
It has been interesting to see how all the GenAI talk recently has sucked the air out of a range of other important discussions in the technology enhanced learning space. I am not unhappy that the torrent of publications about remote emergency teaching has slowed to a trickle but things have also been quiet in the micro-credentialling space. Happily this paper covers some rich work underway in Ireland, proposing some sensible models and describing some practical examples.
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The Perceptions of Faculty and Instructional Designers Regarding the Impact of Professional Development to Teach Online Courses from Scott Mitchell January (Thesis)
I group these works together – a doctoral thesis from Abilene Christian University and an article from the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology – because they share some interesting overlaps from rather different perspectives. Both relate broadly to effective use of learning technologies by educators and the growing contribution that “third space” workers in HE can/should make to this. The Australians (Tay et al.) note concerns about centralisation, surveillance, institutional homogenisation, responsibility and efficiency when it comes to the use and support of ed tech and both they and January flag a need for greater awareness of support from learning designers (and education technologists) and institutional supports for collaboration between them and educators.
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)