Ed tech must reads: column #73

March 24, 2023

First published in Campus Morning Mail 21st March, 2023

Can prompts improve self-explaining an online video lecture? Yes, but do not disturb! From International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education

While institutional leaders push for a move away from the lecture and the cool kids are all talking about ChatGPT, lecture videos still form a significant proportion of online content in Higher Ed. Commonly criticised as a passive and transmissive form of learning, researchers have been looking for pedagogical approaches that get the most out of the viewing experience. This article describes work around using prompts to signpost key concepts in these resources, with those that encourage students to explain concepts in their own language among the most effective.

While it is still fairly primitive, the onward march of GenAI tools to increasingly complex content continues unabated. The HuggingFace Modelscope Text to Video tool works in a similar way to AI image generation tools but creates short (2 seconds) clips of animated images. The examples in the linked Twitter thread make me wonder what we might be seeing later in the year.

Ethan Mollick (@emollick) on Twitter has been one of the more interesting explorers (AIstronauts?) of the GenAI space in recent times and this tweet thread showcases what happened when he shared a previous academic article that he had written with GPT4 and asked for “harsh but fair review from an economic sociologist”. He notes that it raised many of the same things that he received in his human feedback.

As the Metaverse hype seems to recede into the distance with the latest shiny toy, the question that I never felt that was satisfactorily answered was “How is this better than/different to Second Life?” So it was interesting to see this story pop up recently that SL is still chugging along and they are soon to launch a mobile version. I have many fond memories of building weird things in this space and I wish them well.

Some of you may remember the 2021 Netflix series “The Chair” and the equally delightful companion podcast “Academics talk about The Chair” from Inger (Thesis Whisper) Mewburn, Narelle Lemon, Anitra Nottingham and co. that dissected it and what it said about life in the academy. They have announced their next podcast season, exploring last year’s stylish and thinky corporate dystopia series Severance.