Tag: higher education
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When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object
TL;DR (generated by Claude, lightly edited by me). The rise of abundant expertise in the form of generative AI questions the university monopoly on expertise provision and validation. Leadership in the creative deployment of AI for learning, teaching, and assessment will require a change in mindset and a shift towards a new paradigm, which universities…
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Book – Higher Education for Good
I recently came across Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures, an openly licensed book co-edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin. I haven’t read any of the book (yet) but it looks interesting. From the editors: The book sets out to confront, consider, and reimagine the challenges and opportunities of higher education in…
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Full stack teacher
I love analogies that help me think differently about learning, teaching, and assessment, and this is a great one from Brendyn Hadfield. In computing, a software stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform that applications can run on top of. And a full stack developer works in…
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Generative AI in higher education: Paradigm shifts in assessment – Cape Peninsula University of Technology symposium
accountability, ai, artificial intelligence, assessment, assessment concerns, assessment design, assessment paradigm, assessment task, assessment validity, faculty development, higher education, large language model, learning inference, LLM, paradigm shift, pedagogy, standard assessment paradigm, universal anything machineIn this presentation at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, I examines the impact of large language models (LLMs) on assessment practices in professional education. I critique the standard assessment paradigm and suggest that AI could reshape assessment methods. The presentation also briefly covers a faculty development framework and broader implications of AI in learning.
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Universal ‘anything’ machines – North-West University symposium
In this presentation I describe the concept of “universal ‘anything’ machines,” which leverage large language models (LLMs) capable of producing human-like text across various domains. These LLMs enable the creation of customisable, context-aware characters with expertise in multiple disciplines, accessible via natural language. The talk also addresses the implications for higher education, discussing the potential…
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Rejected AMEE abstract (workshop) | ChatGPT and its implications for health professions education
See this brief post on my reasons for sharing rejections. Background The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 was accompanied by an explosion of interest in both mainstream and academic media. It has simultaneously been described as the saviour of higher education, and the beginning of the end. The fact is, it could be both.…
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Do language models threaten the economic viability of universities?
Recent developments in generative AI – not least the notorious ChatGPT – offer opportunities to stimulate long-overdue reforms to assessment practices. But these reforms need careful thought and principled implementation within an already hard-pressed sector. Carless, D. (2023). How ChatGPT can help disrupt assessment overload. Times Higher Education Campus Note that the article I link…
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Conversation with Dave Nicholls on generative AI
A few weeks ago I had a conversation with Dave Nicholls for his Paradoxa substack, on the topic of large language models and other forms of generative AI. Dave and I wanted to talk about the implications of generative AI, and of ChatGPT in particular, on higher education and professional practice. In addition to our…
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Generative AI will never be as bad as it is today
Google Scholar citations (yes, I know that this is a flawed metric, but it’s a useful heuristic nonetheless) support the first two of these recommendations (I didn’t check the 3rd, to be honest). But a month ago, we all felt smug because ChatGPT was inventing citations. If you haven’t realised it yet, generative AI will…
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Generative AI in higher education – HELTASA conference
This is a recording of a presentation I gave at the HELTASA conference, on the topic of generative AI in higher education. The focus of the talk was on ChatGPT but I tried to think about generative AI more broadly, including image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. I also tried to avoid making this…
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The seductive appeal of measuring outcomes in edtech research – SAAHE SIG webinar
In this SAAHE webinar, I discuss the limitations of comparative study designs in education technology research, which often fail to control for confounding variables and focus too much on specific outcomes. Instead, I propose decoupling teaching from learning, suggesting that research should consider whether observed student behaviours align with established good learning practices, rather than…
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More than my h-index – African Doctoral Academy
The presentation was given to a group of early career researchers and PhD students as part of the African Doctoral Academy. Download the slides. The main premise of my presentation was that academics are often driven to measure the quality of our work by quantitative metrics and journal impact factors because those are relatively easy…
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Head space: Calm productivity for knowledge work
Head space is a programme for academics who want to establish new habits and routines aimed at cultivating a space for calm productivity. To escape the unproductive and frenetic activities that fill our days. And to create the head space we need to do the work we love. I’ve started A New Thing. It’s called Head space…
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OpenPhysio podcast: Considering the precariat
Earlier this month I finally managed to publish an episode of the OpenPhysio podcast that’s been on my to-do list for about a year. I’ve been wanting to get the journal podcast series up and running for a while but for various reasons I haven’t been able to work on it as regularly as I’d…
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Training students for jobs that don’t exist yet. Or not.
The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. It takes some work to find out that the claim is not true.…
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Technology Beyond the Tools
You didn’t need to know about how to print on a printing press in order to read a printed book. Writing implements were readily available in various forms in order to record thoughts, as well as communicate with them. The use was simple requiring nothing more than penmanship. The rapid advancement of technology has changed…
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Technology will make lecturers redundant – but only if they let it
Technology will make lecturers redundant — but only if they let it This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. A teacher walks into a classroom and begins a lesson. As she speaks, the audio is translated in real time into a variety of languages that students have pre-selected, so each…
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Technology is no longer a luxury for universities – it’s a necessity
This is a republication of my article on The Conversation. See bottom of the post for the link to the original. In the world’s new knowledge economy, innovation and technological change are recognised as the primary drivers of progress. Technological and digital literacy will be a crucial part of helping many countries move beyond their…
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Thoughts on my first article for The Conversation
I pitched 3 ideas for articles to The Conversation: Africa at the end of last year, one of which was picked up to develop and publish. A few days ago I gave the go-ahead for it to be published and am happy to report that it is live. It’s called Technology is no longer a…