Saide Current Awareness
27 May 2024

 

Distance Education

  • Unveiling the Future of Distance Education with AI Source: LinkedIn "In the ever-evolving landscape of education, the fusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and distance learning has emerged as a game-changer. As I delved into the enlightening article by Saida Khedrane, a new world of possibilities unfolded before me. Let's embark on a journey to unravel the profound impact of AI on education and the pivotal role it plays in shaping the educational realm." writes digital data analyst,Mirko Peters. 
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  • The impact of distance education on the socialization of college students in the Covid-19 era: problems in communication and impact on mental health Source: BMS Medical Education The problems of students’ social interaction and psychological well-being associated with online learning dependent on self-directed learning have become an important topic of research in recent years worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting their Social Emotional Learning. This paper aimed to compare the students’ loneliness, social anxiety, social interaction, and general psychological well-being at different stages of online learning (at the beginning and the height of the pandemic), considering their criteria (presence/absence of a job and own family).
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  • Learning Loss Typology: A Proposed Framework for Categorizing Learning Loss During COVID-19 Pandemic Source: Jurnal Imiah Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran Learning loss has been a global issue around educational scope lately. This study aimed at proposing a framework for categorizing learning loss during the covid-19 pandemic based on article review results. A qualitative approach has been employed utilizing systematic and qualitative-critical reviews as the research design. The main subject involved 26 articles that were selected purposively. All data were analyzed interactively before the objective was set, and the results were portrayed through grounded theory by Anderson & Krathwohl's dimensions of learning. The results show that learning loss in the affective domain includes a lack of learning motivation, social interaction, self-esteem, engagement, and interest. The sources of learning loss in the affective domain are geographical factors, socio-economic factors, and the digital divide; and in the psychomotor domain are educational inequality and low competence to adapt to situations. The mitigation of learning loss in the affective domain is improving learning facilities and mental care for students in the cognitive domain is adjusting the curriculum and adapting learning methods; in the psychomotor domain is an enhancing literacy skill.

 

   Education: South Africa

  • The school governance amendments in the Bela Bill are constitutional Source: Daily Maverick The Basic Education Laws Amendments Bill is currently on President Ramaphosa’s desk waiting to be signed into law as part of the pre-election legislative frenzy. The DA, ACDP and FF Plus opposed the Bill while the EFF, IFP and PAC voted with the ANC in support of the Bill.
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  • Thirty years after democracy, nothing has changed in SA’s rainbow nation education system Source: Daily Maverick An opinion piece by Prof Michael le Cordeur  Vice-Dean Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education at the University of Stellenbosch focusisng on the following: Does every South African child have access to basic education, as the Constitution promises? How conducive and safe is the school environment for effective education? Do all children in the country have access to mother-tongue tuition?
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  • Early childhood development — moving beyond departmental silos Source: Daily Maverick In anticipation of the 29 May elections, the early childhood development sector has introduced the People’s Manifesto for Early Childhood Development, calling for the delivery of all five essential components of ECD: adequate nutrition, early learning opportunities, maternal and child healthcare, responsive caregiving, and safety and protection.
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  • Western Cape government says legal action unnecessary, all learners finally placed in schools Source: Daily Maverick Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre are celebrating after the Western Cape High Court ordered education authorities to find spaces for unplaced learners.

 

Language, Literacies and Research Writing

  • Government to introduce mother-tongue bilingual education from Grade 4 next year Source: Daily Maverick In a major shift in education policy that has been hailed as ‘transformative’ by education experts, from next year South African schools will incrementally offer mother tongue-based bilingual education from Grade 4.
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  • Mother tongue teaching and learning to be introduced in Grade 4 in 2025 Source: IOL The Department of Basic Education (DBE) is set to introduce mother-tongue bilingual education from Grade 4 next year and education experts have described the policy shift as “transformational” and “progressive”.
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  • “Reading makes me happy” With support from partners, UNICEF supports the Early Grade Reading Programme in the North-West Province Source: UNICEF A video essay on the Early Grade Reading Programme (EGRP)- a  UNICEF and North-West Department of Education project that rolled out in 2021.  
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  • Future of Writing In the Disciplines and Professions Source: Carnegie Mellon University This white paper discusses how AI can lower barriers to writing skills attainment while maintaining the critical thinking processes most important to writing. "Guided generative AI will narrow the psychological distance between ideas and expression and relax the bottlenecks that have kept them siloed It can make writing more fluid while reducing pain points It can further address issues of social justice—It will make the writing process accessible and more inclusive, particularly for underprivileged students with limited access to writing instruction as well as second-language learners Generative AI is the first technological breakthrough that promises to accelerate not just the transcription of words, but the translation of the writer’s ideas from notes to grammatical English sentences "

 

Open Access, Open Education and Open Educational Resources

   Post Schooling

  • AI: Likely the gravest long-term threat to HE aggregators Source: University World News It cannot be much fun being an agent aggregator right now. Once the darling of the edtech world, with eye-watering valuations and record levels of investment, the future is looking far less rosy now.
    Student caps, more regulation, a number of whistle-blowers and growing anti-immigration rhetoric in three of the major Anglophone study destinations – Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom – mean that making the numbers add up is becoming increasingly problematic. What does this mean in real terms for aggregators and institutions alike? Look before you leap!
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  • SARUA to build SDG framework for ‘engaged’ universities Source: University World News A consortium of 15 universities from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Europe will collaborate on EngageSDG, a project which seeks to empower higher education institutions in the SADC region by leveraging digital platforms for knowledge-sharing towards implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular through the use of participatory approaches.
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  • Prof Mosa Moshabela to be announced as UCT vice-chancellor  Source: The Daily Maverick After weeks of speculation, UCT’s Council is expected to announce the successor to Mamokgethi Phakeng’s who left the institution under a cloud, but with a golden handshake.
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  • Deaf and hard-of-hearing students need more support from their universities – South Africa study Source: The Conversation Adjusting to university life tends to be tough no matter who you are. But what happens when deafness makes the usual demands even more difficult? Deaf students or those who are hard of hearing need extra accessibility measures to ensure they’re able to participate in even basic academic activities like lectures and tutorials. Tonny Matjila, who studied the experiences of Deaf and hard-of-hearing students at one large South African university, tells The Conversation Africa what he learned.
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  • Prof Thoko Mayekiso — the SA woman who turned a golf course into a university Source: Daily Maverick It would be difficult to find someone who has made a more outstanding contribution to higher education in democratic-era South Africa than Professor Thoko Mayekiso.
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  • Decisive action is needed to restore credibility of NSFAS Source: University World News Within the realm of ethics, there is a train of thought that stretches from Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative to Peter Singer’s utilitarianism and encompasses John Rawls’ concept of the veil of ignorance. That golden thread, linking them all, emphasises the need for equal and fair treatment of everyone in society.
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Skills and Employment

Teaching and Learning: Local and Global

  • The Influence of Artificial Intelligence Technology on the Optimization of the Teaching Model of Higher Education in the Context of the Pandemic Source: International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence The environment of the epidemic is a life changer for everyone, and specifically for the educational system is progress. In order to overcome the challenges in the educational system, this study proposes a new intelligent approach to teaching and learning. Teaching plays a vital role in higher education and can be advanced by utilising certain tools and technologies such as internet enabled mobile applications, automated scheduling of courses, assessment etc. The Emergency Distance Learning Methodology (EDLM) is proposed to improve the teaching-learning process by implementing artificial intelligence. Comparing the proposed system with the existing qualitative response analysis methods, it is observed that the proposed system provides 98.56% accuracy over the existing models. This study aims to assess the optimisation of teaching and learning models in higher education.
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  • Are Chinese better at maths than the rest of us? Source: Mail and Guardian An opinion piece by a Chinese educator at a South African University that does a comparison  between the two countrries in so far as parental involvement, expectations and how teaching approaches impact results.
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  • Synced brains: why being constantly tuned in to your child’s every need isn’t always ideal Source: The Conversation It’s crucial for healthy child development that children can form secure attachment bonds with their parents. Decades of research identified one key ingredient for this process: the coordination of parents’ and children’s brains and behaviour during social interactions.
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  • Five Ways to Engage Students outside of the Online Classroom Source: Faculty Focus Ubiquitous learning—the idea that everywhere you go, you’re learning all the time—lets us take advantage of the concept that in every interaction, there may be opportunities for students to engage with our subject matter if we can just get them into that holistic thinking mode.

 

Technology-Enhanced Learning

  • The AI Assessment Scale in Action: Examples from K-12 and Higher Education Across the World Source: LeonFurze.Com The AI Assessment Scale has already been adapted in many different contexts, both K-12 and higher education, and it’s been incredibly positive to see the impact that it has had in education across the world in the few months since its publication.  In this post, ILeon Furze gives some examples of how it’s being used across the world.
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  • AI and assessment in higher education Source: Times Higher Education Threat or opportunity? Advice for using, mitigating and embracing artificial intelligence in university assessment, skills development and task design
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  • How OpenAI’s Sora hurts the creative industries Source: Brookings OpenAI’s new text-to-video generative AI application, Sora, heightens the risks that generative AI poses to the creative industry. The film industry, in particular, has already been eliminating jobs in tandem with its adoption of AI technology, and Sora’s release could jumpstart this trend. Sora is also resurfacing ongoing questions about how the training of generative AI technology on publicly available media interacts with copyright protections.
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  • Have smartphones created an ‘anxious generation’? Jonathan Haidt sounds the alarm Source: The Conversation A new book argues that the first generation to go through puberty connected to their smartphones have had their brains rewired for depression and anxiety
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  • Academics push for AI in service of Africa and its goals Source: University world News Some scholars and media practitioners in Africa have called for the incorporation of training in artificial intelligence (AI) into the curriculum from elementary or primary to tertiary education levels, to raise a generation of African students grounded in developing AI systems that can enhance socio-economic development on the continent.
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  • Empowering Student Learning: Navigating Artificial Intelligence in the College Classroom  Source: Faculty Focus Like many of our colleagues, the emergence of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence sites initially created a mild panic. Out of the panic, an emerging field of practical, practitioner-based research has begun to emerge. The call for calm, patient reflection has been noted (Naidu 2023, para 10). Others argue that AI, in various forms, has been used to elevate students’ performance in the classroom, and in some cases, overcome barriers to learning (Shippee 2020, 20). AI can also be used as a classroom tool to reframe the learning experiences and as a “partner” in learning (Benson 2023, 30).  While being mindful of the concerns of plagiarism, equity, and access, some have argued educators must not only accept AI in the classroom but must help their students use it effectively as part of their digital literacy (Bender 2024, 9).  
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  • Embracing the future of Artificial Intelligence in the classroom: the relevance of AI literacy, prompt engineering, and critical thinking in modern education Source: International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume The introduction of AI into education marks a significant departure from conventional teaching methods, offering personalized learning and support for diverse educational requirements, including students with special needs. However, this integration presents challenges, including the need for comprehensive educator training and curriculum adaptation to align with societal structures. AI literacy is identified as crucial, encompassing an understanding of AI technologies and their broader societal impacts. Prompt engineering is highlighted as a key skill for eliciting specific responses from AI systems, thereby enriching educational experiences and promoting critical thinking. There is detailed analysis of strategies for embedding these skills within educational curricula and pedagogical practices. This is discussed through a case-study based on a Swiss university and a narrative literature review, followed by practical suggestions of how to implement AI in the classroom.