Author Archive

publish or perish

Hundreds of gibberish papers still lurk in the scientific literature

The issue began in 2005, when three PhD students created paper-generating software called SCIgen for “maximum amusement”, and to show that some conferences would accept meaningless papers.

Springer also sponsored a PhD project to help spot SCIgen papers, which resulted in free software called SciDetect.

The publishers who posted the most SCIgen content were Trans Tech Publications, a Swiss publisher, which published 57 SCIgen papers, Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP), based in India, which had 54; and Atlantis Press, a French publisher that was acquired by Springer Nature this March, with 39.

SCIgen papers are extremely rare: Labbé and Cabanac estimate from their screen that they make up a mere 75 papers per million in the computer-science literature. They are a far smaller problem than are, for instance, suspected paper mills.

the existence of these papers is an indication of the harmful effects of a ‘publish or perish’ culture, and an example of how nonsensical work can still make it into conference proceedings or journals.

 

Positive deviants

‘Positive deviants’: Why rebellious workers spark great ideas

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210528-positive-deviants-why-rebellious-workers-spark-gr-ideas

Organisations tend to see rebels as troublemakers – but suppressing these individuals and their ideas could backfire.

There is psychological evidence that rebelliousness is essential for creativity. Harvard psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg spent more than five decades researching individuals who had made ground-breaking contributions to science, literature and the arts, seeking to understand what drove their creativity.

To investigate the benefits of rebelliousness further, a team led by Paraskevas Petrou at the Erasmus University Rotterdam recently surveyed 156 employees from various industries in the Netherlands. They measured rebelliousness via a questionnaire that asked participants to rate their agreement with statements such as:

  • I break rules
  • I know how to get around the rules
  • I use swear words
  • I resist authority

If they are committed to creativity, leaders should take practical steps to ensure that progress is achievable, ensuring that the “rebels” have the available space, funding and time to pursue innovative ideas that may appear crazy, unwarranted or out of place at the time, but that could subsequently save the organisation.

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more on disrupt in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=disrupt

microcredentials Australia

Stacks on: Get the max from micro-credentials

https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/shift-to-short-courses-and-online-learning-to-expand-careers-20210322-p57cvl.html

“This measure will provide additional options for students and the recently unemployed to engage with higher education across a wider range of fields, which will help further the position of the nation and our workforce to move out of the economic downturn,” a department spokesman said.

“There is some crossover between the terms ‘micro-credential’ and ‘short course’; both are generally something shorter than a full qualification. The short courses are a type of micro-credential. The short course is a credit-bearing micro-credential, meaning that it can be used to ‘stack’ into a full qualification at a later time.”

” The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network said the cyber security workforce had grown by 4000 to 26,500 since 2017. The sector grew by 6 per cent a year, compared with overall national growth of 2 per cent a year.”

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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential

The iLRN SOXR 2021 Outlook Report

 

State of XR & Immersive Learning 2021 Outlook Report
p. 12 about VR and AR
p. 15 about social VR platforms
p. 39 CAVE like environment for Nursing students

p. 43 The FUTURE Time Traveller is a project developed and co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme and coordinated by Bulgaria’s Business Foundation for Education in partnership with seven national organizations.

p. 46 obstacles – disabilities

p. 48 California State University Northridge, which has developed an MA in Instructional Design with a focus on XR and immersive games and simulations

 

Amazon Health Care

https://newrepublic.com/article/162553/amazon-care-pharmacy-big-tech-universal-healthcare

Microsoft has a data initiative with Providence St. Joseph Health, which operates dozens of hospitals in the United States. In 2019, Google signed a deal with the Mayo Clinic to manage and parse health records for “insights,” explaining that cloud computing and data analytics would provide better performance. Google also reached an agreement this week with HCA Healthcare, a large hospital chain

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more on data privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=data+privacy

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