TWO YEARS AGO, Alison Darcy built a robot to help out the depressed. As a clinical research psychologist at Stanford University, she knew that one powerful way to help people suffering from depression or anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy, or C.B.T. It’s a form of treatment in which a therapist teaches patients simple techniques that help them break negative patterns of thinking.
In a study with 70 young adults, Darcy found that after two weeks of interacting with the bot, the test subjects had lower incidences of depression and anxiety. They were impressed, and even touched, by the software’s attentiveness.
Many tell Darcy that it’s easier to talk to a bot than a human; they don’t feel judged.
Darcy argues this is a glimpse of our rapidly arriving future, where talking software is increasingly able to help us manage our emotions. There will be A.I.s that detect our feelings, possibly better than we can. “I think you’ll see robots for weight loss, and robots for being more effective communicators,” she says. It may feel odd at first
RECENT HISTORY HAS seen a rapid change in at least one human attitude toward machines: We’ve grown accustomed to talking to them. Millions now tell Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant to play music, take memos, put something on their calendar or tell a terrible joke.
One reason botmakers are embracing artificiality is that the Turing Test turns out to be incredibly difficult to pass. Human conversation is full of idioms, metaphors and implied knowledge: Recognizing that the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs” isn’t actually about cats and dogs, for example, surpasses the reach of chatbots.
Conversational bots thus could bring on a new wave of unemployment — or “readjustment,” to use the bloodless term of economics. Service workers, sales agents, telemarketers — it’s not hard to imagine how millions of jobs that require social interaction, whether on the phone or online, could eventually be eliminated by code.
One person who bought a Jibo was Erin Partridge, an art therapist in Alameda, Calif., who works with the elderly. When she took Jibo on visits, her patients loved it.
For some technology critics, including Sherry Turkle, who does research on the psychology of tech at M.I.T., this raises ethical concerns. “People are hard-wired with sort of Darwinian vulnerabilities, Darwinian buttons,” she told me. “And these Darwinian buttons are pushed by this technology.” That is, programmers are manipulating our emotions when they create objects that inquire after our needs.
The precursor to today’s bots, Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, was created at M.I.T. in 1966. ELIZA was a pretty crude set of prompts, but by simply asking people about their feelings, it drew them into deep conversations.
Bailenson contrasts experiencing virtual reality with reading news accounts and watching documentaries.
Caldwell—who used Google Expeditions to deliver a virtual reality experience set in the Holocaust—says that when his students first put on the goggles, they viewed them as a novelty.
Ron Berger, the Chief Academic Officer of EL Education, points to another factor schools should consider. He thinks virtual reality can be a powerful way to introduce kids to situations that require empathy or adopting different perspectives.
keep safety in mindsaving virtual reality for “very special experiences,” keeping it “relatively short” and not getting students dizzy or disoriented. A report Bailenson co-authored for Common Sense Media highlights the research that has—and has not—explored the effects of virtual reality on children. It states that the “potentially negative outcomes of VR include impacts on children’s sensory systems and vision, aggression, and unhealthy amounts of escapism and distraction from the physical world.”
University of Toronto Libraries opened a User Research and Usability (UX) Lab in September 2017, the first space of its kind on campus. The UX Lab is open to students, staff, and faculty by appointment or during weekly drop in hours.
In this 90-minute webinar, our presenter will discuss:
The rationale behind building a physical usability lab and why a physical space isn’t always needed (or recommended)
Experience with community building efforts
How to raise awareness of UX as a service to staff and the University community at large
The evolution of the lab’s services
Next steps
Presenter: Lisa Gayhart, User Experience Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries Thursday November 15, 2018, 1:00 – 2:30 pm Central Time
Google Expeditions can be a fairly inexpensive way to present content. Students who have smartphones (Android or iOS) can download the Google Cardboard app and Google Expeditions for free. VR glasses can improve the experience but are not required.
Ideas for using VR in class
Do you teach biology? Take them on a tour of a virus or a cell.
Are you a professor in the arts? Visit street art around the world or the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Are you a guidance or career counselor? Bring your students to Berklee College of Music or meet a robotics engineer or female firefighter in NYC.
Astronomy professor? Send your students on the Juno mission to Jupiter or to experience the aurora borealis.
Professors of education can build lessons with your students so they can teach elementary students about animal camouflage or take children on a tour of the Aztec and Mayan pyramids.
Respondents on the 2016 POD Membership Survey indicated a strong need for learning center management and leadership skills. This session, facilitated by four center directors from very different institutions, responds to this need. Session participants will examine: 1) management and leadership responsibilities, especially in the context of continual change; 2) strategic alignment of the center’s work with institutional mission; and 3) evaluation of center work and demonstration of impact. Participants will leave with an individualized professional development plan, practical tools, and guiding questions that enable them to seek out relevant sessions and colleagues during the conference.
In this workshop, we explore powerful model (Symposium) for engaging faculty in campus initiatives and supporting them to take a more active role in leading during times of change. We have successfully used symposium to broaden faculty participation in change initiatives, connecting this work to what matters most to faculty and providing avenues for more inclusive collaboration across disciplines and divisions. Much of the workshop will be devoted to helping participants (1) identify areas where they can lead change on their campuses and (2) develop a draft plan for using symposium to increase faculty engagement in these efforts.
Faculty are often unable to complete a proper learner analysis because they know little about the students that comprise their classlist. At our university, we have been surveying incoming students for five years to collect enhanced demographic data and for the past two years have been sharing aggregate, anonymous data with faculty. Resources have been provided on how to make sense of the data for teaching purposes. In this study, we conducted focus groups with faculty to learn how they have used the data and resources and also to find out what additional data would further support their teaching. (My note: big data in education, as discussed by Nancy Sims keynote at LITA Nov, 2018)
Summative peer review of teaching (SPRT) is used in many higher education institutions. Unfortunately, the evaluative “power” of SPRT for making high-stakes career decisions can be limited due to lack of meaningful criteria and faculty resistance (Chism, 2008). To address this situation, our teaching and learning centre engaged in a collaborative culture-change initiative to develop a rubric for SPRT that would serve the University-wide committee with responsibility for final recommendation on matters of promotion and tenure. In this session, we discuss our collaborative process, debrief challenges and how we addressed and/or anticipated these, and share the SPRT rubric. (My Note: CETL)
This session will introduce participants to the gamification of faculty development through an interactive small group design scenario that asks participants to take a traditional faculty development experience and then gamify it using the gamification design framework [1]. Gamification involves the use of game design elements and experiences in non-gaming environments. When applied in faculty development settings, gamification has the potential to encourage faculty engagement and motivation and can lead to behavioral change that can impact their teaching. (My note: ask me; i have been trying to educate CETL directors for the past four years on this opportunity)
On Thursday, virtual reality company HTC VIVE announced its new headset called the Vive Focus, which is aimed at enterprises.
It can be used for business collaboration, training and education, such as teaching medical students about sleep apnea, showing car designers how to fix and prototype a car, and conducting remote meetings in a 3D virtual space.
Although virtual reality is typically associated with consumers, such as for video gaming, the technology is increasingly being adopted for use in professional settings. VR and augmented reality are projected to grow to $162 billion by 2020, and more products are targeting enterprise use.
What makes this hardware significant is that it’s much simpler and more portable for customers to use, says Dan O’Brien, General Manager of the Americas at HTC VIVE (My note: so he said…). Other VR headsets that only developers may use might involve expensive hardware and require users to stay in one place.
VIVE Sync. This can be used to help employees collaborate with each other in a virtual space, especially when they work remotely. Each employee’s avatar can share ideas, show presentations, import images, show videos and more all in a 3D virtual space (My note: Second Life tried this; and failed; Do you have any NEW ideas, Dan?).
What new organizational models and practices do instructional design teams need to adopt?
How can instructional designers best make use of the increasing amount of learning data that is available?
What kinds of evidence-based practices make the most sense for instructional designers?
What are some professional development approaches that provide structure for instructional designers to share their mutual areas of expertise, while focusing on key areas of professional growth?
Learning technologists and instructional designers
Campus teaching and learning center directors and staff
Faculty members and instructors
Senior teaching and learning administrators (e.g., deans, provost office staff)
Librarians
Presentation Sessions: Sessions designed to provide an overview of specific topic areas and successful emerging approaches related to the focus session theme immediately followed by opportunities to interact one-on-one with session presenters.
Project Rounds: A series of institutional cases/examples presented in a sequential, fast-paced format exploring a single project, emerging technology, or campus initiative. Project rounds will be followed by an opportunity for separate discussion with each of the presenters.