Human Teachers and AI Teachers Would you be surprised if you pulled a random person off the street, shoved them into a classroom full of students, and then found that they weren’t a particularly effective teacher? Of course not. And why wouldn’t that be surprising? Because effective teaching requires a great deal of knowledge and skill, and the person you pulled off the street most likely had no relevant training. ...
As I’ve been (re-)reading OER adoption research through a more critical lens I’m seeing a recurring pattern of significant threats to validity in the designs of studies purporting to measure the impact of OER adoption on student outcomes. While there are numerous methodological issues to consider, in this essay I’ll discuss three. Specifically, I’ll share: three questions you should ask when you read research about the impact of OER adoption on student outcomes, the reasons why you should care about the answers to those questions, and the questions the study is really addressing when the answer to any of the three questions is “no.” Three questions to ask when you read research on the impact of OER adoption Ask yourself these three questions when you read OER adoption research - especially research that claims to find a positive impact on student outcomes. ...
Helping people adopt evidence-based practices is notoriously difficult. Even in matters of life and death, evidence-based practices frequently go unadopted or take an incredibly long time to enter widespread use. As Bauer, et al. (2015) explain, It has been widely reported that evidence-based practices (EBPs) take on average 17 years to be incorporated into routine general practice in health care. Even this dismal estimate presents an unrealistically rosy projection, as only about half of EBPs ever reach widespread clinical usage. ...