Alarmed by AI Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach

 And the concerns will build.

 Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach  By The New York Times, January 17, 2023

Colleges and universities have been reluctant to ban the new chatbot because administrators doubt the move would be effective.

While grading essays for his world religions course last month, Antony Aumann, a professor of philosophy at Northern Michigan University, read what he said was easily "the best paper in the class." It explored the morality of burqa bans with clean paragraphs, fitting examples and rigorous arguments.

A red flag instantly went up.

Mr. Aumann confronted his student over whether he had written the essay himself. The student confessed to using ChatGPT, a chatbot that delivers information, explains concepts and generates ideas in simple sentences — and, in this case, had written the paper.

From The New York Times

Digitizing the Education Revolution

Changes have occurred, will they fundamentally influence how we learn and apply emerging tech? Does MOOC need the university?  How people will invent and collaborate to produce new science and its application?  Work is underway.  Here an example.

OMSCS: The Revolution Will Be Digitized   By Zvi Galil
Communications of the ACM, August 2020, Vol. 63 No. 8, Pages 27-29  10.1145/3366191

The Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS), a degree program at the College of Computing (CoC), Georgia Institute of Technology, grew out of a conversation I had with Sebastian Thrun (co-founder of online learning platform Udacity) in September 2012. We set as our goal to expand access to quality learning opportunities by using massive open online course (MOOC) technology to mitigate obstructions of time, space, and financial ability. This called for a fundamental, revolutionary shift from the prevailing paradigm of higher education, in which a brand is bolstered by exclusion and high tuition fees.

As a preliminary step, I, as dean of CoC, convened a faculty working group, chaired by Kishore Ramachandran, from the School of Computer Science. Its members were notably concerned with maintaining the quality of CoC's academic content, the logistics, and the student and faculty experience—a focus on quality that would become a key principle of the program. The document the group created became the operational manual for putting the program into practice. The working group, in turn, engaged with the faculty through a series of deliberations and town hall meetings, and in spring 2013 the faculty voted to move forward. The program then earned the support of Georgia Tech's President and Provost, who advocated for it with the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. While the faculty debated and planned, Thrun and I sought funding to cover the costs of preparing, organizing, and introducing the first courses. In January 2013, AT&T provided a $2 million gift, and added $2 million more a year later. AT&T's generous support signaled to Georgia Tech the potential of the program, and enabled OMSCS to have positive net income from the start. When, in May 2013, the Board of Regents approved the degree, we began preparing the first courses, using Udacity's platform and their course design and production experience. Each of the initial five courses cost approximately $300,000 to develop. In January 2014, OMSCS was launched with 380 students. (much more at the link)  ... "

Georgia Tech Tests Assistants in Dorms

Like to see not only what is being done, but what skills are seen as being most useful in varying contexts, here in a Georgia Tech dorm, a university known for practical engineering.  Worked with them on Tech applications.   Can we get a read out about which skills provided end up being most useful? Especially beyond what you would typically call 'hospitality' functions.   Will follow up.

Amazon Alexa pilot begins in Towers dorm  at Ga Tech By Polly Ouellette
On the evening of Feb. 7, all residents of Towers Residence Hall were invited to pick up their very own Amazon Dot, a voice-controlled personal assistant that they would install in their dorm room.

The Dots, which can be paired with a bluetooth speaker, will respond to verbal commands that tell the device to play music, get the weather and listen to the news. Additionally, students will be able to perform several Tech-specific operations.  .... "

(Update) This was previously also tested at AZ State in August 2017.

Internet 2 Rethought

Happened to be at a presentation announcing the launch of Internet 2, and admit I have not thought about it for years.   Not really an advanced internet, but an alternate one.    We used it to link to University research in early 'big data' analytics efforts. .   Still around and being useful, primarily at Universities.  Now at age 20.

Coke to Open Innovation Center at GA Tech

Coke and Ga Tech start Center in Atlanta. A favorite topic in these pages.  We established innovation centers starting in 2001.  As places to provide the infrastructure for innovation and link to our regional partners and the increasing amount of data involved.   Also there is increasing interest in emphasis on open innovation approaches.   Later we also looked at regional innovation links to university creativity.   These centers appear to be primarily software oriented. " ... The innovation center, which opens next month, will house about 20 software developers. CCE is attracted to Tech Square for access to Georgia Tech's students, faculty, research. "It's about tapping into Georgia Tech's ecosystem of innovation and people," ... " 

Request for Open Source Exemplars of Watson Analytics and Bluemix

Jim Spohrer,  Director, Global Top University Programs at IBM, writes:

" ... A number of faculty and student researchers have begun trying out these services:

Try IBM Watson Analytics on your data
http://gizmodo.com/anyone-can-now-use-ibms-watson-to-crunch-data-for-free-1667753086
http://www.ibm.com/analytics/watson-analytics/

Further, try IBM Watson Services on Bluemix
https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/#/solutions/solution=watson 

I am interested in hearing from any research faculty andt their grad students who are trained up on adding cognitive computing componentry to Bluemix - for open research purposes. .... " 

Glad to pass examples along.

Watson and Academic Institutions

Have had some discussions on this concept.  There is considerable interest in academia, but the ideas have to be tied to course structure, AND be of real interest to hiring companies.  You have to work both sides of the knowledge chain.  IBM News room - 2014-05-07 Seven of the Nation’s Leading Technology Institutions Unveil Cognitive Computing Courses Leveraging IBM Watson.

Road to Xavier Gamification for Student Engagement

Gamifying student experience.  Local Xavier University is using gaming dynamics to engage both Candidate students and Freshmen to the experience of the University.  Nice example of dynamic gamification using badges.

In Cinci.com: " ... Last year, it added a game, spiking interest in the site by allowing future Musketeers to earn points for creating a profile, checking out their classmates’ profiles or reviewing their financial aid package.  The game is an example of how colleges are looking for any way possible to engage students so they will stay on campus.

For this year’s freshman class of more than 1,200 members, activity on the website more than doubled compared with last year, with March and April the busiest months as students neared their final college decisions. ... "  

SlateUp: A New Knowledge Community

Just brought to my attention: SlateUp.   More to follow as it evolves.  Membership now by invitation to .edu accounts.    Check out the site for more information.  Sponsored by Fortune 500 companies.  More to follow here.    Join us:

" ... SlateUp is a student community built by students. Our goal is to transform the way we learn and facilitate free flow of knowledge amongst students. Through Slateup.com we have made a few tools available to help you do just that - Share Knowledge! We will keep adding tools to the site based on your suggestions  ... " 

Watson in College

In GigaOM:  more steps towards a revolution in AI?   How do you learn and collaborate like humans?  Our own journey into AI used similar methods, but the large enterprise does not have the research patience or funds of an IBM.  More progress to watch.   The choice of  RPI is also interesting.  While a choice of hotbeds of AI, like Stanford or MIT, might seem more likely, I like the reality of a school that does not have a set legacy of AI use.    " ... IBM decided Watson could use a college education and so will join here us at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. With its help, we hope to further advance artificial intelligence in a number of key areas. The Watson program is already a breakthrough technology in AI. For many years it had been largely assumed that for a computer to go beyond search and really be able to perform complex human language tasks it needed to do one of two things: either it would “understand” the texts using some kind of deep “knowledge representation,” or it would have a complex statistical model based on millions of texts.... " 

RPI view and press release.