People who behaved in accordance with them—for example, by staying away from the overgrown pond bank where someone said there was a viper—were more likely to survive than those who did not.
Compounding the problem is the proliferation of online information. Viewing and producing blogs, videos, tweets and other units of information called memes has become so cheap and easy that the information marketplace is inundated. My note: folksonomy in its worst.
At the University of Warwick in England and at Indiana University Bloomington’s Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe, pronounced “awesome”), our teams are using cognitive experiments, simulations, data mining and artificial intelligence to comprehend the cognitive vulnerabilities of social media users. developing analytical and machine-learning aids to fight social media manipulation.
As Nobel Prize–winning economist and psychologist Herbert A. Simon noted, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.”
attention economy
Our models revealed that even when we want to see and share high-quality information, our inability to view everything in our news feeds inevitably leads us to share things that are partly or completely untrue.
Frederic Bartlett
Cognitive biases greatly worsen the problem.
We now know that our minds do this all the time: they adjust our understanding of new information so that it fits in with what we already know. One consequence of this so-called confirmation bias is that people often seek out, recall and understand information that best confirms what they already believe.
This tendency is extremely difficult to correct.
Making matters worse, search engines and social media platforms provide personalized recommendations based on the vast amounts of data they have about users’ past preferences.
pollution by bots
Social Herding
social groups create a pressure toward conformity so powerful that it can overcome individual preferences, and by amplifying random early differences, it can cause segregated groups to diverge to extremes.
Social media follows a similar dynamic. We confuse popularity with quality and end up copying the behavior we observe.
information is transmitted via “complex contagion”: when we are repeatedly exposed to an idea, typically from many sources, we are more likely to adopt and reshare it.
In addition to showing us items that conform with our views, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram place popular content at the top of our screens and show us how many people have liked and shared something.Few of us realize that these cues do not provide independent assessments of quality.
programmers who design the algorithms for ranking memes on social media assume that the “wisdom of crowds” will quickly identify high-quality items; they use popularity as a proxy for quality. My note: again, ill-conceived folksonomy.
Echo Chambers
the political echo chambers on Twitter are so extreme that individual users’ political leanings can be predicted with high accuracy: you have the same opinions as the majority of your connections. This chambered structure efficiently spreads information within a community while insulating that community from other groups.
socially shared information not only bolsters our biases but also becomes more resilient to correction.
machine-learning algorithms to detect social bots. One of these, Botometer, is a public tool that extracts 1,200 features from a given Twitter account to characterize its profile, friends, social network structure, temporal activity patterns, language and other features. The program compares these characteristics with those of tens of thousands of previously identified bots to give the Twitter account a score for its likely use of automation.
Some manipulators play both sides of a divide through separate fake news sites and bots, driving political polarization or monetization by ads.
recently uncovered a network of inauthentic accounts on Twitter that were all coordinated by the same entity. Some pretended to be pro-Trump supporters of the Make America Great Again campaign, whereas others posed as Trump “resisters”; all asked for political donations.
a mobile app called Fakey that helps users learn how to spot misinformation. The game simulates a social media news feed, showing actual articles from low- and high-credibility sources. Users must decide what they can or should not share and what to fact-check. Analysis of data from Fakey confirms the prevalence of online social herding: users are more likely to share low-credibility articles when they believe that many other people have shared them.
Hoaxy, shows how any extant meme spreads through Twitter. In this visualization, nodes represent actual Twitter accounts, and links depict how retweets, quotes, mentions and replies propagate the meme from account to account.
Free communication is not free. By decreasing the cost of information, we have decreased its value and invited its adulteration.
The real work is how not to hang your self-worth, your sense of success and merits, the fullness of your heart, and the stability of your soul on those numbers.
Just 20% of Americans say they feel overloaded by information, compared with 27% who said they felt overloaded a decade ago, according to data released Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center
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more on information overload in this IMS blog:
Date: Wednesday, April 3rd Time: 3:30 PM to 4:15 PM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 3 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Brian Kane (General Design LLC) Track: Research: Designs, Methods, and Findings Location: Juniper A Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:What happens when you apply design thinking to AI? AI presents a fundamental change in the way people interact with machines. By applying design thinking to the way AI is made and used, we can generate an unlimited amount of new ideas for products and experiences that people will love and use.https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/olc-innovate-2019-session-page/?session=6964&kwds=
Notes from the session:
design thinking: get out from old mental models. new narratives; get out of the sci fi movies.
narrative generators:
we need machines to make mistakes. Ai even more then traditional software.
Lessons learned: don’t replace people
Date: Thursday, April 4th Time: 8:45 AM to 9:30 AM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 4 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Matt Crosslin (University of Texas at Arlington LINK Research Lab) Track: Experiential and Life-Long Learning Location: Cottonwood 4-5 Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:How can teachers utilize chatbots and artificial intelligence in ways that won’t remove humans out of the education picture? Using tools like Twine and Recast.AI chatobts, this session will focus on how to build adaptive content that allows learners to create their own heutagogical educational pathways based on individual needs.++++++++++++++++
Date: Thursday, April 4th Time: 9:45 AM to 10:30 AM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 5 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Maikel Alendy (FIU Online) Co-presenter: Sky V. King (FIU Online – Florida International University) Track: Teaching and Learning Practice Location: Cottonwood 4-5 Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:“This is Us” demonstrates how leveraging storytelling in learning engages students to effectively communicate their authentic story, transitioning from consumerism to become creators and influencers. Addressing responsibility as a digital citizen, information and digital literacy, online privacy, and strategies with examples using several edtech tools, will be reviewed.++++++++++++++++++
Date: Thursday, April 4th Time: 11:15 AM to 12:00 PM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 6 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Kristin Bushong (Arizona State University ) Co-presenter: Heather Nebrich (Arizona State University) Track: Effective Tools, Toys and Technologies Location: Juniper C Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:Considering today’s overstimulated lifestyle, how do we engage busy learners to stay on task? Join this session to discover current efforts in implementing ubiquitous educational opportunities through customized interests and personalized learning aspirations e.g., adaptive math tools, AI support communities, and memory management systems.+++++++++++++
Date: Thursday, April 4th Time: 1:15 PM to 2:00 PM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 7 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Katie Linder (Oregon State University) Co-presenter: June Griffin (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Track: Teaching and Learning Practice Location: Cottonwood 4-5 Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:The concept of High-impact Educational Practices (HIPs) is well-known, but the conversation about transitioning HIPs online is new. In this session, contributors from the edited collection High-Impact Practices in Online Education will share current HIP research, and offer ideas for participants to reflect on regarding implementing HIPs into online environments.https://www.aacu.org/leap/hipshttps://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/HIP_tables.pdf+++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: Thursday, April 4th Time: 3:45 PM to 5:00 PM Streamed session Lead Presenter: Manoush Zomorodi (Stable Genius Productions) Track: N/A Location: Adams Ballroom Session Duration: 1hr 15min Brief Abstract:How can we ensure that students and educators thrive in increasingly digital environments, where change is the only constant? In this keynote, author and journalist Manoush Zomorodi shares her pioneering approach to researching the effects of technology on our behavior. Her unique brand of journalism includes deep-dive investigations into such timely topics as personal privacy, information overload, and the Attention Economy. These interactive multi-media experiments with tens of thousands of podcast listeners will inspire you to think creatively about how we use technology to educate and grow communities.Friday
Date: Friday, April 5th Time: 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM Streamed session Lead Presenter: Michael Caulfield (Washington State University-Vancouver) Track: N/A Location: Adams Ballroom Position: 2 Session Duration: 60min Brief Abstract:Years ago, John Lyndon (then Johnny Rotten) sang that “anger is an energy.” And he was right, of course. Anger isn’t an emotion, like happiness or sadness. It’s a reaction, a swelling up of a confused urge. I’m a person profoundly uncomfortable with anger, but yet I’ve found in my professional career that often my most impactful work begins in a place of anger: anger against injustice, inequality, lies, or corruption. And often it is that anger that gives me the energy and endurance to make a difference, to move the mountains that need to be moved. In this talk I want to think through our uneasy relationship with anger; how it can be helpful, and how it can destroy us if we’re not careful.++++++++++++++++
Date: Friday, April 5th Time: 10:45 AM to 11:30 AM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 10 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Laurie Daily (Augustana University) Co-presenter: Sharon Gray (Augustana University) Track: Problems, Processes, and Practices Location: Juniper A Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:The purpose of this session is to explore the implementation of a Community of Practice to support professional development, enhance online course and program development efforts, and to foster community and engagement between and among full and part time faculty.+++++++++++++++
Date: Friday, April 5th Time: 11:45 AM to 12:30 PM Conference Session: Concurrent Session 11 Streamed session Lead Presenter: Katrina Rainer (Strayer University) Co-presenter: Jennifer M McVay-Dyche (Strayer University) Track: Teaching and Learning Practice Location: Cottonwood 2-3 Session Duration: 45min Brief Abstract:Learning is more effective and organic when we teach through the art of storytelling. At Strayer University, we are blending the principles story-driven learning with research-based instructional design practices to create engaging learning experiences. This session will provide you with strategies to strategically infuse stories into any lesson, course, or curriculum.
Colleges around the country have also started hiring staff members with titles like OER Coordinator and Affordable Content Librarian. Our series looked into how the movement is changing, and the research into the costsand benefits. You can even hear a podcast version here.
Flipped classrooms seem to be growing exponentially
Robert Talbert, a professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University and author of the book Flipped Learning. Talbert recently tabulated how many scholarly articles are published each year about “flipping” instruction, meaning that traditional lecture-style material is delivered before class (often using videos) so that classroom time can be used for discussion and other more active learning.
More professors are looking to experts to help them teach. (Though some resist.)
By 2016, there were an estimated 13,000 instructional designers on U.S. campuses, according to a report by Intentional Futures. And that number seems to be growing.
There’s also a growing acceptance of the scholarly discipline known as “learning sciences,” a body of research across disciplines of cognitive science, computer science, psychology, anthropology and other fields trying to unlock secrets of how people learn and how to best teach.
Students are also finding their own new ways to learn online, by engaging in online activism. The era of a campus bubble seems over in the age of Twitter
Colleges are still struggling to find the best fit for online education
And what does it mean to teach an age of information overload and polarization?
Perhaps the toughest questions of all about teaching in the 21st century is what exactly is the professor’s role in the Internet age. Once upon a time the goal was to be the ‘sage on the stage,’ when lecturing was king. Today many people argue that the college instructor should be more of a ‘guide on the side.’ But as one popular teaching expert notes, even that may not quite fit.
And in an era of intense political polarization, colleges and professors are looking for best to train students to become digitally literate so they can play their roles as informed citizens. But just how to do that is up for debate, though some are looking for a nonpartisan solution.
Falsehoods are spread due to biases in the brain, society, and computer algorithms (Ciampaglia & Menczer, 2018). A combined problem is “information overload and limited attention contribute to a degradation of the market’s discriminative power” (Qiu, Oliveira, Shirazi, Flammini, & Menczer, 2017). Falsehoods spread quickly in the US through social media because this has become Americans’ preferred way to read the news (59%) in the 21st century (Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel, & Sheer, 2016). While a mature critical reader may recognize a hoax disguised as news, there are those who share it intentionally. A 2016 US poll revealed that 23% of American adults had shared misinformation unwittingly or on purpose; this poll reported high to moderate confidence in one’s ability to identify fake news with only 15% not very confident (Barthel, Mitchell, & Holcomb, 2016).
Hoaxy® takes it one step further and shows you who is spreading or debunking a hoax or disinformation on Twitter.
Here’s how to evaluate the potential for mobile solutions
Before they set foot in their first class, incoming college students face a maze of requirements and resources that will be critical to their success. So-called “student supports” abound. Yet forty percent of first-year studentsdon’t return the following year, and a growing number report information overload as they navigate campus life amid newfound independence.
The nine in 10 undergraduates who own smartphones are probably familiar with the xkcd about it. College-aged Americans check their devices more than 150 times per day. So it should be no surprise that a growing body of research suggests that mobile solutions can play a critical role in enhancing the student experience.
1. Is the mobile app native?
We’ve all had the frustrating experience of using a smartphone to navigate a page that was designed for a computer. But when designing native mobile apps, developers start with the small screen, which leads to simpler, cleaner platforms that get rid of the clutter of the desktop browsing experience.
As smartphones overtake laptops and desktops as the most popular way for young people to get online, native design is critical for universities to embrace.
2. Is there a simple content management system?
It’s also critical to explore whether mobile apps integrate with an institution’s existing LMS, CMS, and academic platforms. The most effective apps will allow you to draw upon and translate existing content and resources directly into the mobile experience. My note: this is why it is worth experimenting with alternatives to LMS, such as Facebook Groups: they allow ready-to-use SIMPLE mobile interface.
3. Does it allow you to take targeted action?
At-risk or disengaged students often require more targeted communication and engagement which, if used effectively, can prevent them falling into those categories in the first place.
Unlike web-based tools, mobile apps should not only communicate information, but also generate insights and reports, highlighting key information into how students use the platform.
4. Does it offer communication and social networking opportunities?
Teenagers who grew up with chatbots and Snapchat expect instant communication to be part of any online interaction. Instead of making students toggle between the student affairs office and conversations with advisors, mobile platforms that offer in-app messaging can streamline the experience and keep users engaged.
“There is a long history of people worrying and complaining about new technologies and also putting them up on a pedestal as the answer…
As a society, I think we’re beginning to recognize this imbalance, and we’re in a position to ask questions like “How do we live a more balanced life in the fast world? How do we achieve adequate forms of slow practice?”
xiv. fast world and slow world practices. always-on lifestyle.
p. 3. our devices have vastly extended our attentional choices, but the human attentional capacity remains unchanged. how to make wise choices and figure out what constitutes a wise choice, so we can use our digital tools to their best advantage and to ours.
by paying attention how you use your cellphone, how you handle email, how you feel when you are on FB or Pinterest, or when you multitask, you will be able to see which aspects of your current online practices are working well and which aren’t. seeing these will clearly will allow you to make constructive changes.
premise: we function more effectively and more healthfully online when we are more attentive, relaxed, and emotionally balanced. Also stated as negative: we function less effectively and less healthfully online when we are distracted, physically uncomfortable, and emotionally upset. that happens often when we are online. Good news – we can do something about it.
P. 4 engage and strengthen two forms of attention : 1. the ability to stay focused on what you are doing at the moment. 2. self-observation / self-awareness
p. 24. each excercise follows the same six-part structure
step 1: perform primary practice (email, FB etc)
step 2: observe what are you doing and feelig, paying special atention to what is happening in your mind and body as you engage in your primary practicestep 3: log your observation, in written form
step 4: consolidate observations by summarizing
step 5: formulate personal guidelines based on consolidated observatins
step 6: share and discuss with others
p. 25-26. mindfulness: the ability to direct your attention where you want it to go – to have a choice. in a world, where we are surrounded by advertisements, sales pitches, the biggest, best, and brightest promised of happiness and fulfillment that money can buy, not to mention the clear constant information overload of emails, status updates, tweets, photo albums, Netflix queues, RSS feeds, playin whack-a-mole with phone notifications. I wish I could say that we, could get away, but i don’t think that as a society we can, or even that we should (this is where Turkle cannot help).
p. 27 two modes of attention
p. 27 one is like a flash light in a dark room: you see a chair; move to the left, you see something else.
p. 28 the other mode is to go beyond focusing on a single object, but opening up to the surrounding environment. like the same flash beam, but instead intense narrowed one, this is a diffused allowing to cover more, but with less visual acuity.
p. 29 both modes can exclude each other
p. 30 attentional shift, attentional choice
how to deploy our task focus (focused attention) to our self-awareness (open attention)
the brain has two different attentional systems: one is top-down and is under conscious control. the bottom-up system, an earlier evolutionary development, is completely automated. scanning the enthronement for potential threats, alerting us to them whether we want or not, since it is hard wired.
p. 31-32 interruption have two varieties: external ones: sounds, smells, movements, physical contact. internal interruptions are: hunger, mental activity (remembering late appointment).
we cannot turn alerting mechanisms, but we can minimize distractions.
we cannot turn everything off and eliminate all interruptions. what we can do is to notice them as they arise and make a decision how to proceed and face them – whether to respond in the moment or ignore them.
32. multitasking
it is now clearly established that we can mainly focus on only one thing at the a time. thus we have the ability to prioritize and focus on only one task.
34. emotions and the stress response
p. 40 strengthening task focus
mindful breathing – optional
simplest and most widespread form of attention training uses the breath as the object of focus. when mind wanders, bring back focus on your in- and out-breath: focusing, opening (noticing) and choosing. focus on your breath, notice when you have strayed and choose to come back to the breath
p. 41 strengthening self-observation / awareness
p. 42 Exercise 1. Observing email
In 2013, the librarians at a small academic health sciences library reevaluated their mission, vision, and strategic plan to expand their roles. The school was transitioning to a new pedagogical culture and a new building designed to emphasize interprofessional education and active learning methodologies. Subsequent efforts to implement the new strategic plan resulted in the librarians joining curriculum committees and other institutional initiatives, such as an Active Learning Task Force, and participating in faculty development workshops. This participation has increased visibility and led to new roles and opportunities for librarians.
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Reflections on an Embedded Librarianship Approach: The Challenge of Developing Disciplinary Expertise in a New Subject Area
Embedded librarianship has emerged as a user-centred approach to academic library services, requiring an in-depth understanding of the education and research priorities of students and staff. User-centred approaches require the development of disciplinary expertise and engagement with the research culture of a particular subject area. This paper details the author’s experiences in situating his practice within the discipline of pharmacy and discusses some of the challenges around the scale and sustainability of such specialised support. Regardless of the extent to which a librarian is ‘embedded’, they must see themselves as learners, too, as they develop their understanding of the disciplines they support through an ongoing process of experiencing, reflecting, conceptualising and testing in their practice.
definition: Embedded librarianship differs from traditional librarian roles in its focus on working in partnership with clients, rather than simply providing a support service (Carlson & Kneale, 2011). In this sense, embedded librarianship is user-centred rather than library-centred and requires the librarian to develop a holistic understanding of the environment in which their client groups operate.
most training materials followed a one-size-fits-all approach, where students would be taken from locating background information and textbook chapters all the way to searching for primary evidence in a bibliographic database within the same hour. Most sessions ran over time and were overloaded with content. In some instances, students complained that they had already covered this content in their previous year.
While information literacy as a construct is valued by librarians, the term’s use remains
largely restricted to the library and information science (LIS) field and might even be labelled
undiscovered country for academics (McGuinness, 2006, p. 580). Academics often consider
IL instruction as a service provided by the library and do not see librarians as partners, nor
do they see the value in integrating course-specific IL training (Derakhshan & Singh, 2010).
a spectrum of embeddedness with 5 levels (2008, p. 442), from ‘entry level’, where the librarian might collaborate on assignment development and deliver a standalone IL session, to ‘co-teaching’, where the librarian co-teaches and develops discipline-specific course materials, lectures, assessment designs and grading in collaboration with academic staff. Their findings suggest that student performance is positively related to the level of librarian involvement
phenomenographic interview methodology, where the librarian is positioned as a ‘curricular
consultant’
My note (sarcastic): whoa, what a novelty; it is repeated for two decades at SCSU, but “hot water still not invented” and the ATT still does not have neither a faculty, nor ID, but the only Ph.D. in ID just got laid off.
Hallam, Thomas and Beach illustrate that the library is not singularly responsible for developing information and digital literacies, and therefore, a collaborative approach involving a range of stakeholders including academic staff, learning designers, educational technologists and others is required
