Ed & Tech must-reads 240226

What is academic freedom – and can we talk about it? from Future Campus

I was going to share my thoughts on this overview post addressing a book chapter by Zentveld and Myers (Federation University) titled “Academic Freedom: You can discuss any flavour you like, as long as it is vanilla” but then I decided to go to the source and I now have too many thoughts to organise cogently in time I have before publication. In itself this isn’t a terrible introduction but the issues go far far deeper. More next time I guess.

What we learned from 400+ Interactive Oral Assessments in STEM from Teaching @ Sydney

This post speaks very directly to me, as I am part of a team currently working out what resources are needed to support this hot “new” assessment practice in our institution (Deakin Uni). I suspect I will draw a chunk of inspiration from it because it - like a lot of the content from this team at Uni Sydney - is concise, thoughtful and highly practical. Interactive Oral Assessments (IOAs) have exploded in popularity since the GenAI Death Star entered Planet Academia’s orbit. Unlike prepared oral presentations, these are a bit like mini viva voces, with students’ asked to showcase their knowledge of the unit, often in response to scenarios and extension questions. Angela Sun and Helen McGuire from the microbiology/immunology area of USyd discuss the ways they made these work with a large cohort of their students. Of particular value is the explanation of the steps that they took to scaffolding this assessment for their students - vital given that this is generally a pretty foreign approach to assessment for many.

Assetizing academic content and the emergence of the ‘assetizen’: education platforms, publisher databases, and AI model training from Higher Education

Part of me loves the irony of the authors creating this article as a new asset for Springer while also railing against this practice. Also in Springer publishing it at all. Beyond that though, it is, again, something that I think I need to spend a little more time sitting with. I often have an initial visceral reaction when I read an interesting article that leads me to argue with the authors as I read and try to make sense of the point they are making. When it is a good argument I am happy to let go my initial reaction and take on board these new ideas. I have no idea if this will happen or not with this but, as with the academic freedom article, let’s read it together and compare notes next week. (My visceral reaction is to question whether they position academics as helpless pawns moved about the board by a God-like hand or if there is some recognition of individual agency)