Ed tech must reads: column #72

First published in Campus Morning Mail 14th March, 2023

GPT4 is coming this week? From Heise Online

Speculation is rampant that a major upgrade to GPT, the language learning model behind ChatGPT, will be released this week following a comment at an event for partners and prospective clients of Microsoft Germany last week. No firm details are confirmed but it is believed that the update will increase the number of ‘parameters’ used by the tool from ~175 billion to 10-100 trillion and it may add multi-modal inputs and outputs (text, images, audio and possibly video). How will this impact learning and teaching? Outputs will probably be better, but it shouldn’t really alter the changes that are already occurring. The associated discussion on Reddit adds some useful surround details, including the fact that Microsoft does have an AI focused event scheduled for Thursday.

Engaging with students on the use of GenAI tools from Twitter (and USyd)

Coming back to Earth a little, student perspectives when it comes to the responsible use of GenAI tools like ChatGPT have been light on the ground in all the wider discussion. This twitter thread from Amanda White (UTS) captures the process she worked through with her students in deciding what usage is reasonable. Additionally, the Educational Innovation team at Sydney Uni recently held a couple of panel discussions with students covering their perspectives and the recordings are quite illuminating. While a certain type of student commonly appears in these sessions, it was interesting to note that they didn’t want to let the tools weaken their own writing skills.

Learning Designers as Expert Evaluators of Usability: Understanding Their Potential Contribution to Improving the Universality of Interface Design for Health Resources from International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

While learning content and activities may be vital elements in good online learning courses, the visual and structural design (the User Experience or UX) has a massive impact on their efficacy. This valuable research from Adams, Miller-Lewis and Tieman of UniSA and CQU compared the ability of Learning Designers, healthcare professionals and end-users to identify UX problems in resources based on previously identified end-user errors. They observed that Learning Designers correctly identified nearly three times as many design issues as the other evaluators, highlighting their value in assisting the development of these resources.