What Is Generative AI, Anyway? In my last post, I went on at some length about what Generative AI is and its limitations. Rather than rehash it all here, I’ll refer you back to that section, but here’s what I think is the most salient point: It’s a prediction machine. And its predictions are often…
What Is Generative AI, Anyway? I won’t recap all of last year’s Detox, which dealt with artificial intelligence technologies in education more broadly. In my talks about AI over the last year, this is how I’ve been distinguishing between AI and Generative AI: “Artificial intelligence” is a catch-all term that encompasses a wide range of…
What Is Algorithmic Test Proctoring, Anyway? Algorithmic test proctoring allows students to take exams away from campus without a human proctor (though some services employ those, too). Students sit at their home computer with their cameras on, and an algorithm notes their behaviours – fidgeting, looking away, movement – and assesses whether these are normative…
What is the LMS, Anyway? A Learning Management System is, at its core, a tool for organizing course materials with the explicit intention of teaching. It has been, and largely remains, the centrepiece learning technology at most institutions. While lots of tools claim to have LMS functionality (like MS Teams, for example), I think there’s…
What are Learning Analytics, Anyway? As we are all increasingly aware, everything we click on leaves a data trail behind it that someone else can sniff out and use to come to all kinds of conclusions about me. Logging in to a loyalty card to check your points balance likely leaves a breadcrumb that allows…
Hello! If you’re reading this, I hope you’re thinking of joining us on this journey (or maybe you’ve already signed up). Welcome. I want to tell you a little more about what you can expect from these posts. If this is your first Digital Detox with us, you can check out the archive to get…
Digital Detox 2023 Archive The Robots Are Coming:AI and the Education Revolution Every week, you’ll read a deeply researched (but always readable!) essay about the state of the academy and the role artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other “innovations” are playing in our sector as we teach and learn together. We’ll share up-to-date thinking from…
It’s been a wild year to be writing a Digital Detox about artificial intelligence; it has felt like the landscape was always shifting under my feet, and while I always read a lot to prepare for the annual Digital Detox, this year it has been like trying to catch an avalanche in a snow shovel….
Over the course of the last seven weeks, what I have hoped to show is the way that all the choices we have made in higher ed have led up to this place where a tool like ChatGPT causes utter panic. A system that demands teaching be done by a precarious work force at scale…
Hello Detox readers, and greetings from deep within my plague house. As most parents of young children will confirm, everything is a virus and the children are always unwell; my little germ factory came home early from school on Tuesday and hasn’t been back since. My thoughts are with anyone who is also living in…