Saide Current Awareness
22 July 2024

 

Distance Education

 

   Education: South Africa

 

Language, Literacies and Research Writing

  • Children’s Stories Take the Spotlight at Zeitz MOCCA! Source: GoodThingsGuy Art and language have always had an understanding; each inspiring the other and drawing from the other’s perspectives. Ever apparent in places like children’s stories, where words and illustrations team up to spark joy, curiosity, understanding and new revelations in young minds, it only makes sense that story books should take up more space in art museums! This is exactly what the contemporary art museum Zeitz MOCCA’s Centre for Art Education is doing, thanks to a unique showcase dedicated to children’s stories.
  •  
  • Language Learning Outcomes in on Ground Vs. Online Settings: Comparison and Correlation Source: American Journal of Distance Education While the effectiveness of online instruction has been well established, there remains a limited understanding of the correlation between language skills and performance across various instructional sections. This study investigates the language proficiency outcomes of college students in online and on-ground language instruction, focusing on four essential language skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. Data were collected from students enrolled in third-semester language courses in French, German, Italian, and Spanish during the Spring semesters of 2019 and 2021 with on-ground and online instruction respectively in a public university in the United States.
  •  
  • The Prose and Cons of AI Writing Source: Psychology Today Key point of thsi blog post include: The investifation: How would artificial intelligence write about mischievous play?; The machine-written simulation lacked spirit and feeling and was deficient in shading, tone, and nuance and that Good writing demands empathy.
  •  
  • Generative AI enhances individual creativity butreduces the collective diversity of novel content Source: Science Creativity is core to being human. Generative artificial intelligence (AI)—including powerful large language mod-els (LLMs)—holds promise for humans to be more creative by offering new ideas, or less creative by anchoring ongenerative AI ideas. We study the causal impact of generative AI ideas on the production of short stories in anonline experiment where some writers obtained story ideas from an LLM. We find that access to generative AIideas causes stories to be evaluated as more creative, better written, and more enjoyable, especially among lesscreative writers. However, generative AI–enabled stories are more similar to each other than stories by humans alone. These results point to an increase in individual creativity at the risk of losing collective novelty. This dynamic resembles a social dilemma: With generative AI, writers are individually better off, but collectively a narrower scope of novel content is produced. Our results have implications for researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners interested in bolstering creativity.

 

Open Access, Open Education and Open Educational Resources

  • Actionable Insights at the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Open Education- Call for abstracts Source: AI Open Education MIT Open Learning is announcing a 2024 call for proposals from practitioners in open education and AI from around the world. "We invite individual authors or groups of authors from and across higher education institutions, nonprofits, philanthropy, and industry working in AI to submit proposals for rapid response papers or multimedia projects that explore the future of open education in an ecosystem inhabited and shaped by AI systems."
  •  
  • Economic advisory work: knowledge inequities in the Global South Source: OTT  A blog post highlighting the  key aspects of the following review i.e  A narrowed perspective A review of (in)equities  in knowledge systems related  to economic advisory work  which characterises the structural inequities in global knowledge systems, with a focus on Southern knowledge systems, and explores answers to the question: What and whose knowledge counts in economic advisory work and in engagement with governments in Southern countries? It locates this issue in a much broader landscape in which Southern researchers and consultants, especially women, and individuals and organisations based outside the main epicentres of research, encounter significant barriers to making their voices heard as credible producers of knowledge. In that way, the review seeks to inform philanthropic organisations who are seeking to intentionally advance diversity, equity and inclusion in support of economic advisory work in the Global South.
  •  
  • What Is The Future Of Intellectual Property In A Generative AI World? Source: Forbes The process of indiscriminate scraping the web, databases, and other sources for images, text, and other content to train AI models often incorporates copyrighted works, leading to potential IP infringements. Not surprisingly, many of the largest foundation models and large language models (LLMs) do not disclose the source of their training data for these reasons. 

 

   Post Schooling

  • Journey from access to success at South African universities Source: University World News South Africa has largely dealt with the problem of access to higher education, making significant strides in providing opportunities for all students. And, although challenges remain in terms of student success, the country has seen good progress through the Siyaphumelela (‘We succeed’ in isiXhosa) network, which now includes 20 of South Africa’s 26 public universities. Read more on the key takeaways from the annual Siyaphumelela Conference, which took place in Johannesburg recently.
  •  
  • Does increase in postdoc fellows indicate market saturation? Source: University World News Postdoctoral fellows form a crucial, yet often overlooked, segment of South Africa’s academic workforce. Not much is known about their demographics, career trajectories, working conditions, or their aspirations. This looks set to change following a recent comprehensive national study on postdocs at South African public universities conducted by Professor Heidi Prozesky and colleagues at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) based at Stellenbosch University (SU).
  •  
  • UJ intros virtual reality courtroom for law students Source: ITWeb The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has introduced the Virtual Reality (VR) Courtroom Game for the Faculty of Law, to help law students brush up on their legal analysis and court representation skills. According to a statement, the initiative is a first for South Africa and also a pioneering effort across the African continent.
  •  
  • We don’t need no (traditional) education – Gen Z Source: MoneyWeb As higher education evolves to meet Generation Z’s needs, institutions are adapting with flexible learning options, robust emotional support, and interdisciplinary curricula. Dr Riaan Steenberg of the NetEd Group highlights how the student of the future is tech-savvy, job-focused, and globally aware.
  •  
  • Navigating The Turbulence In South Africa’s Higher Education Source: IAfrica The unresolved student funding debacle, ongoing leadership crises at top universities, and the recent de-registrations of several tertiary institutions are all distressing symptoms of the challenges facing South Africa’s higher education sector. It is turmoil that is not unique to South Africa. Worldwide, higher education is under unprecedented pressures. While the US suffers the consequences of ballooning, unpaid student debt and the ongoing chronic under-representation of minorities, several top UK universities have implemented faculty lay-offs and cut courses, facility maintenance budgets and student services. These struggles are multi-faceted and nuanced across different markets, however there is some common ground in the overall challenge for modern tertiary education to find the balance between offering both equitable access and excellence in economically challenging times.
  •  
  • Lucrative ACE project trains thousands, boosts research output Source: University World News The World Bank-sponsored Africa Higher Education Centres of Excellence (ACE) programme has initiated the process of collaborating with its European equals, the European Centres of Excellence (ECE). The aim is to commercialise knowledge, products and services as products of research. The process starts with identifying potential areas of collaboration in research and innovation to cultivate a more effective path for research-to-market outcomes and engage the private sector and investors to support the successful commercialisation of research.

 

Skills and Employment

  • 2024 IITPSA ICT Skills Survey to focus on GenAI, changing ICT skills demand Source: ITWeb  The 2024 edition of the IITPSA South African ICT Skills Survey – long recognised as an important reference work on the state of ICT skills demand and supply in South Africa – has gone live for survey input. This survey was previously co-authored by Adrian Schofield, Professional Member and Fellow of the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), and the late Prof Barry Dwolatzky, IITPSA Fellow, Emeritus Professor in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits University and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University.
  •  
  • ‘AI exclusion’ continues to the detriment of Africa’s graduates Source: University World News Over the past decade, generative artificial intelligence has become a powerful tool for creating jobs for tertiary-educated youth in Africa, but challenges of digital work on the continent remain. However, according to the African Union Development Agency – New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD), the continent’s primary technical and development body, many African tertiary institutions offer artificial intelligence (AI) courses that have outdated curricula and graduates who are not ready for digital work.
  •  
  • Upskilling retail’s youth: The power of micro-learning and effective communication Source: ITWeb As South Africa celebrated Youth Month in June, the spotlight focused on the crucial task of empowering and developing the nation’s young workforce.

 

Teaching and Learning: Local and Global

  • AI and digital neocolonialism: Unintended impacts on universities University World News As AI technologies become embedded in educational practices, content creation, and research methodologies, they open up significant opportunities for innovation while also posing collective challenges. Importantly, the evolution of AI also risks reinforcing neocolonial patterns, underscoring the complex ethical implications associated with their deployment and broader impact. This editorial explores the intricate impact of GPT and related AI models, which can reinforce existing cultural biases, create language hierarchies, and deepen economic dependencies.
  •  
  • Inaugural Lecture by Professor Chie Adachi – 2nd July 2024 Source:Youtube Dean of  Digital Education from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London presnet her talk titled ‘Climbing the mountain of digital education:2:40 Care, Disrupt and Empower, when (not) all things are digital"  
  •  
  • ‘My brain leaves the room’: what happens when teachers talk too much? Source: The Conversation About four students in every classroom will have a language or attention disorder. While some of these students will have an official diagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD) or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), others will be “hiding in plain sight”. These students may often be in trouble for acting out, underachieving or not attending school. In a new study, in which 59 students with DLD and/or ADHD wree interviewed about their experiences of Year 10 English. This is the only subject all Australian students must do from the first year of schooling to Year 12. And it plays a key role in their success at school and beyond it.
  •  
  • Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education Source: Science Advances Despite strong evidence that autonomy enhances motivation and achievement, few interventions for promoting student autonomy in higher education have been developed and empirically tested. Here, we demonstrate how two autonomy-supportive policies effectively increase classroom attendance and subject mastery. First, in a randomized controlled field study, we explored the effect of allowing students to choose whether to make their attendance mandatory (i.e., a component of their course grades). We found that nearly all students used the opportunity as a pre-commitment device and were subsequently more likely to attend class than were students whose attendance had been mandated. Second, in a multi-year cohort study, we explored the effect of allowing students to opt out of a challenging, high-effort assessment stream, finding that students given greater autonomy invested more effort into their assignments and attained greater proficiency with the material. We discuss other opportunities for applying choice architecture to improve learning, motivation, and well-being in higher education.

 

Technology-Enhanced Learning