Serendipity35

Recently, I read an article about using artificial intelligence (AI) for the instructional design of courses. Initially, that frightened me. First of all, it might mean less work for instructional designers – which I have both been and run a department working with them. Second, it’s hard for me to imagine AI making decisions on pedagogy better than a designer and faculty member.

Of course, using AI for that kind of design is probably limited (at least at first) to automating some tasks like uploading documents and updating calendars rather than creating lessons. Then again, I know that AI is being used to write articles for online and print publications, so it is certainly possible.

I read another article asking “Is Artificial Intelligence the Next Stepping Stone for Web Designers?” and, of course, my concerns are the same – lost jobs and bad design.

Certainly, we are already using AI in websites, particularly in e-commerce applications. But using AI to actually design a website is very different.

Some companies have started to use AI for web design. A user answers some questions to start a design: pick an industry or category (portfolio, restaurant, etc.), enter a business name, add a subtitle/slogan/brand, upload a logo, enter an address, hours of operation, and so on. The AI may offer you a choice of templates and then in a few clicks, the basics of the site are created.

This is an extension of the shift 20 years to template-driven web design. Now, it is based on machine learning techniques with human intervention at the initial stage by providing their desired information and probably again after the site is created to fine-tune.

In my own instructional design work over the years, we have used templates for course shells. Standardizing the way courses look is a good thing in many ways. It makes it easier to do rapid development. That was certainly the situation in spring 2020 as school scrambled to move all their face to face courses online. A standard look also makes it easier for students to move from course to course. 

Though every course should not be the same, the structure and components can generally be the same. This is also useful if you are trying to have courses comply with standards such as Quality Matters or ADA accessibility standards. 

I do a lot of web design these days and many popular companies, such as Squarespace, are using AI and machine learning to get ordinary users started. Does design still require some human intervention? Absolutely. Does the human need to be a “designer”?  Clearly, the goal is to allow anyone to do a good job of creating a website without a designer.

I think there is an overlap between web design and course design. Add AI to either and the process can be made more efficient. I also think that you need people involved. For web design, it's a client and designer. For course design, it's a faculty member(s) and an ID. In my own work, I still find many people need someone with experience and training to create the website, but they can oftentimes maintain it on their own if the updates are simple. For courses, most faculty need help to create but generally not only can "maintain" the course but have to because the IDs can't always be there during a semester.

AI will change many industries and web and instructional design are certainly on the list of those industries. 

"Zoom fatigue” is a new term for 2020 that describes the exhaustion, worry, or burnout associated with overusing virtual platforms of communication. I am sure that Zoom Video Communications (the company) is thrilled to have their name mixed in with "fatigue."  Like other generic trademarks, it is a mixed blessing when your brand becomes the common (lower case) noun or a verb for something. People used to say they were going to "xerox" something to mean they were going to make a photocopy no matter what brand of copier they were using. Today someone might say they have to zoom or have a zoom call to mean they are going to video conferencing. I know that some teachers and students who are experiencing "zoom fatigue" at the end of the year and semester have been using Google Meet, Skype, Facetime, or some other conferencing platform.

Since there are more than 300 million daily participants on Zoom alone, this psychological and physical exhaustion is a real concern. Some people who study this have suggested some counterintuitive explanation, such as that audio is main reason that video meetings are draining. How? Millisecond delays in virtual verbal responses negatively affect our interpersonal perceptions, even without any internet or technical issues.

Being on a video call requires more focus than a face-to-face chat, says another researcher. "Video chats mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy. “Our minds are together when our bodies feel we're not. That dissonance, which causes people to have conflicting feelings, is exhausting. You cannot relax into the conversation naturally."

One of the Google search trends this year has been searching "zoom fatigue", possibly in search of ways to reduce the fatigue. The ways to at least reduce video conferencing exhaustion are not surprising but they may not be easy to put in place. Suggestions such as building in break time, reducing visual stimuli, reducing virtual social events, and using phone calls and email again are helpful but not always an option, especially if you are not the video conference organizer or host.

A psychiatric explanation of zoom fatigue

Zoom fatigue is taxing the brain 

 

 

There is definitely some psychology to design. And UX design is definitely about organization.

There is a principle of organization that comes psychology that I have seen written about in terms of product and service design. It is Miller’s Law.

It was put forward in 1956 - long before UX and web design was a thing - in a paper by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller. In his well-known paper (at least in psych circles), titled "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" he proposed a limit to memory which is now called Miller's Law.

Miller proposed that the number of perceptual ‘chunks’ an average human can hold in working memory (a component of short-term memory) is 7. He found that memory performance is great five or six different stimuli but declines aft so let's say 5-9. If the mind can handle ~7 bits of information when completing a task that requires cognitive effort, then designers need to keep that in mind when designing. That would apply to completing forms and surveys. It applies to lists in menus and lots of other tasks that might be presented to users. What happens when a catalog page shows 15 items?

Miller believed that all of us "chunk" information and that if the information is organized in categories no larger than 9, but preferably ~5 chunks, memory is best served.

A related find - which I learned in a writing course - is about primacy, and recency effect (also known as the serial position effect). These two terms describe how we remember items placed at the beginning and end of an experience, and if we forget some it's likely they will be in the middle. Combining this with Miller's Law and you would say that the bigger the number of items, the more middle to be forgotten.

Originally posted on RonkowitzLLC.com 

Open access logo, originally designed by Public Library of Science, CC0, Link

My wife and I have co-authored an article on online education and how it has changed/developed in response to current crises and how we might look at the pandemic as a stress test for online learning. It will be in a special issue of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology on crises and possible solutions in higher education that will be published in January 2021, and it will be the one “open access” issue that Wiley allows AJES each year.

So, when I saw that Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer at The Chronicle, was writing in her newsletter about "What It Means to Be ‘Open Access’ Now" I was interested and thinking about how many of my colleagues don't know anything about Open Access unless they are publishing in journals.

I have been a longtime advocate of what I call "Open Everything" which is my umbrella term for many open efforts such as open textbooks, open-source software, MOOCs, etc. A typical definition of open access (OA) refers to free, unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books. OA content is open to all, with no access fees. 

Why should a journal offer OA? A good example is OA in science. It addresses a basic value of science: to help advance and improve society by providing immediate and unrestricted access to the latest research. That can accelerate discovery and create a more equitable system of knowledge that is open to all.

Blumenstyk writes about keeping access to education open which has been an issue getting more attention during the pandemic.

"To be an open-access institution used to be pretty straightforward, if not easy: Keep tuition low and set admissions requirements forgiving enough to let students prove themselves even if they don’t seem — or aren’t — academically ready. In recent years, consciousness of students’ basic needs, including food and housing, has also grown. The pandemic has not only accelerated that, but also added new dimensions to the definition of “open access.” Now it means a lot more outreach, time on the telephone (yes, the telephone), and a willingness to bend some established academic and financial rules. That’s some of what I heard during a Chronicle virtual forum a few weeks ago on what’s needed for higher ed to be truly open access in this moment. Here are highlights and other insights that stuck with me from that discussion, as well as my takeaways from another panel on complex universities working together while operating remotely."

What struck Blumenstyk in the forum was that "supporting students’ basic needs has become fundamental to how colleges see their responsibilities" and that "'Right now, students’ economic worries outweigh their academic concerns, said Anthony Munroe, BMCC’s president. And as he put it, 'We have a moral obligation to meet the needs of our students.'”

It is great to see conversations about open access education. That is also an umbrella term in that the use of open textbooks, journals, and software is often the way to lower student costs and allow access to learners who are not traditional, enrolled learners.

As you have probably discovered from clicking links to articles in journals and publications (including The Chronicle) not all of them are free and open, even in some partially OQ publications. But there are some. All articles in open access journals that are published by Elsevier, for example, have undergone peer review and upon acceptance are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download.  

Twenty years ago when I started in higher education and brought up open access to faculty, the most common question was "Why would I give away my [writing, software, courseware intellectual property] for free?" As with science, I could reply that "it's the right thing to do." But Open Access publications reduce permission requirements and eliminate price barriers for readers. In fact, many studies demonstrate that OA literature receives more citations than subscription publications and so get your name and ideas out into the world. 

Conversations about the traits of a resilient college and society before, during, and after this pandemic should include a lot of talk about open access. If this pandemic is truly a black swan event for higher education, then any successes in agility, flexibility, and resilience are critical to students, faculty, and institutions.