AI Has Some Way to Go Generating Images

Image by Open AI,
19 December 2024

AI generated images have started appearing to illustrate social media posts by individuals, corporations and media companies. These can be a bit odd. An example is an AI generated graphic for Australian Army Innovation Day. This shows a soldier in the foreground apparently looking at a handheld screen, but wearing a completely opaque VR headset over their eyes. Despite all their high tech equipment, none of the soldiers have noticed a drone dropping ordnance on them. The soldier in the foreground has high tech gear, but is wearing old camouflage. This was probably produced with a request like 

Every business is a tech business

Speaking at the launch of the ACS Digital Pulse report John Griggs, ACS CEO, said "Every business is a tech business". This is at the National Press Club in Canberra. The point wat that all businesses need technical staff. The problem is that as the report details, universities cannot produce enough graduates and school leavers don't want to enrol anyway.

The ACS solution is non-traditional paths, through certification, and microcredentials. One problem I can see is convincing the workers, employers and regulators that the alternative pathways are as good as traditional education. This is similar to the poor reputation online learning has had: research shows it is as good, if not better than classroom based learning, but there is still a perception it is inferior. 

The Fax on National Security Secrecy

Greetings from the seminar "Neither Confirm Nor Deny: National Security Secrecy and Australia's Liberal Democracy" from ANU. Emily Hitchman points out that technology has presented a challenge for national security in the past, with fax machines providing a way to breach security long before Wikileaks. This may have an effect on the AUKUS agreement with the USA and UK. One way I suggest would be the question of nuclear weapons. 

ps: I am actually in a bus shelter waiting for a bus to take me to the University. I am listening to the presentation via video conference on my phone. A tip is to use "driving mode": this turns off video and the microphone, avoiding embarrassing images and noises on the conference when you are out and about (it also reduces the bandwidth required on your mobile connection). 

Generative AI in Health Education

Greetings from the ANU Generative AI in Health Education Symposium in the ANU Moot Court in Canberra. This reports on work to produce and trail guidelines for teaching medical students. This felt like an extension of ASCILITE 2024 in Melbourne last week, as it covered some of the same topics and some of the same people were running the event.

Professor Martyn Kirk, Associate Dean Education, College of Health and Medicine, suggested using generative AI for formative assessment, bit not summative. The idea being the AI could be used for helping students learn, but then they be tested at the end to check they really know what they need to know. I suggest blending the assessments, not having this split between formative and summative. In equity terms not having a large test at the end will allow inclusion of students (such as myself) who can't cope with large exams. It will remove the unnecessary anxiety it causes for many other students. It will also result in more authentic testing, under conditions like a workplace.

The guidelines were trailed in second semester 2024. Students were comfortable using the tool (Microsoft Copilot) and found it helpful for learning. Most students did not receive any training on the tool, but did receive guidance on its use. The approach taken was to issue guidance and leave it to course conveners to tell students about it. Staff and students were provided with assistance in the use of such tools. This is similar to the way in the ANU Techlauncher program we ran a workshop to run students through what Copilot could do, or not do, to help them with an assignment. 

One question which came up was the energy used by Generative AI. Students worry about the effect on the environment. In 2008 I was commissioned to design a course on Green Computing. In this students looked at energy consumption by data centers generally. AI is a more energy intensive form of data center. There are ways to reduce the energy use and carbon emissions resulting. This is something which perhaps should be raised with students generally, not just technical specialists.

One of the courses using generative AI was on climate change and health. In this course tutors demonstrated the use of AI to students in their work. This included using AI to simulate a person for the student to interact with. This was done with face to face and online tutorials. In this case students were given prompts to use with the AI. This extended the student's understanding, where previously they just asked one question and pasted the answer. The approach of simulations could be applied, I suggest, in other disciplines. 

In a course on immunology students could use AI for preparing presentations, but not for writing up their laboratory notebook. How you stop students using AI for the notebook is a challenge. One way would be to require the students to compose directly into an online tool. As with the climate change course, students were given sample prompts to help them. 

The symposium then switched from AI for teaching medical students to teaching students to use AI in medicine. Dr Andrew Tagg, Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and Emergency Consultant at Western Health, Melbourne, pointed out that AI is already used routinely in diagnosis of cancer from x-rays. He argued that AI should be used more widely to deliver medical care. As someone who recently had to wait 11 hours for medical treatment, this could be a good idea. One area where AI might be useful would be in helping patients filling in the forms they are given. 

The issue of the environmental effects of AI came up again in discussion. It was suggested generating one image took as much energy as charging a mobile phone. This sounded an over estimate to me by three orders of magnitude. The Jevons Paradox came up in discussion: rather than saving effort will AI just result in more resources being used, rather than oit being used sparingly.

ps: Greetings from the ANU College of Health & Medicine located between the Canberra public and private hospitals.  Professor Kirk is giving a workshop for the staff and students at the hospital and those of us at the morning symposium were invited along. One tip is if you are having difficulty with your medical student understanding something ask Generative AI explain it to a ten year old. In groups we were tasked with coming up with something. I was teamed with an anesthetist, so we asked Microsoft Copilot to come up with aspects of a particular condition, then produce multiple choice questions. This worked very well. We were then asked to have AI summarise a paper, so I got it to do one of mine, which worked well. I then asked it to make a ten slide presentation in Powerpoint, then add notes and graphics. 

The University as a Sociopath

Previously I wrote about the Loyalty Tax on Academic Staff. The idea being that staff who are loyal to the institution are not rewarded with loyalty, or good conditions, but instead exploited. This may be because, I suggest, the institution suffers from Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), commonly referred to as sociopathy. It may seem odd to attribute a human condition to an organisations. But organisations are legal persons, in that they can enter contracts, employ people & in the case of educational institutions shape the behaviour of their students. 

Organisations, like sociopaths, may lack empathy & seek to exploit people by manipulating their emotions for their own benefit. This can be seen in advertisements where organisations claim to care about their customers. Obviously an organisation can't really care and is using this marketing device to attract customers. The same can apply to the staff of universities: the university is not capable of caring about the staff, but pretending to do so may be cheaper than providing good wages and conditions. 

This is not to suggest universities are inherently evil. However, we should be careful not to project characteristics, such as care and empathy, ontio an organisation. Staff and students of universities need to carefully check what they are signing up for: what is it agreed they will get. Unwritten understandings are not worth the paper they are not written on. 

There have been numerous studies of ASPD amongst university leadership, such as Perry (2015) and Forster & Lund (2018). However these address the problems individuals can cause within an organisational structure, not the behaviour of the organization itself.

References

Forster, N., & Lund, D. W. (2018). Identifying and dealing with functional psychopathic behavior in higher education. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 38(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1002/joe.21897

Perry, C. (2015). The “dark traits” of sociopathic leaders: Could they be a threat to universities? The Australian Universities’ Review, 57(1), 17–25. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.306702837325703

ASCILITE 2025 at University of South Australia

Greetings from the closing session of ASCILITE 2024, where University of South Australia  have been announced at the hosts for the conference next year. This will be one of the last events hosted by the university before it formally merges with University of Adelaide. The theme is "Continuous Change" with is appropriate for higher education. Given the Australian Government's failure to have a coherent policy, a better theme might be "Bin Fire". 

Mobile Learning Post COVID-19 in the GenAI Era

Greetings from ASCILITE 2024 where Vickel Narayan, Massey University, New Zealand, is speaking on "Navigating the Terrain:Emerging Frontiers in Learning Spaces, Pedagogies, and Technologies". I am one of the authors on this short paper, along with others in the ASCILITE Mobile Learning Special Interest Group and got to say a few words about it. The challenge is to take learning out of the hands of the teacher and out of the classroom into the real world, of a facsimile of it. Perhaps we need GenAIGogy.

Heutagogy Has Stood the Test of Time, Unlike Powerpoints in Lecture Theatres

Greetings from ASCILITE 2024 at the University of Melbourne. This morning Chris Kenyon is talking about how he co-created heutagogy at Southern Cross University. Originally it was to be autogogy (for "self" directed learning). 

ps: I was a little distracted as the power cable for my laptop is jammed in the table hinge on my chair. The main lecture theatre in Arts West at University of Melbourne has a mains power socket between each seat. About a decade ago I thought this was a good idea. But after a few minutes use of the first installation at ANU it became apparent this is a very bad idea. It is difficult to reach under the chair to plug in the power. 

Art West has the sockets higher up so they are easier to read, but this turns out to be worse. The plug is aligned with the small folding desk on each chair. If you forget to unplug, and fold the table, the cable falls down and jams the hinge. In normal circumstances this is inconvenient, but consider a fire evacuation, with hundreds of people trying to get out in a hurry, entangled in cables. I suggest retaining the sockets for front row seats and removing all others.

Virtual University in Australia?

Torrens Building,
Adelaide, Wikipedia

Greetings from ASCILITE 2024 at University of Melbourne, where Michael Sankey is discussing the virtual university. He nominated Torrens University as the closest to this in Australia, which is a reasonable assessment. However, I doubt that this would be a salable product. As far as I know, there is no regulatory requirement for universities to have campuses. But purely online education is perceived as low quality. For this reason universities emphasise their physical campuses. This at times is farcical, such as multiple institutions who offered courses from the Torrens Building in Adelaide. Each instution would photograph the building, showing their banner only.

Turnitin tracking how students turn in assignments to combat AI

Greetings from the ASCILITE 2024 conference at University of Melbourne. I had intended to go to a research talk, but I couldn't find the "Light Green Room", so I stumbled into a presentation from Turnitin on their AI detection tool (this is in a room with check green carpet & mould coloured roundell patterned wallpaper, so I don;t know what it is called). 

Last year Turnitin released an AI writing report with paraphrase detection. This did not appear to work well and ANU decided to switch it off. But perhaps it is time to look at the product again and see if now works acceptable. One aspect I had difficulty understanding is Turnitin is addressing paper based assessment (are universities really returning to paper based assessment.

Turnitin are building a student composition space. The idea is the student writes their assignment within Turnitin. This is an implementation of the "show your work" approach. The tool will have a word processing function. With this approach you can see when the student did what. 

Turnitin are also building an offline digital exam system. This is similar to standalone products already in use. 

A new similarity report is al in the works for Turnitin. One small example is allowing for margin comments. 

AI & Education at ASCILITE 2024

Greeting from the opening of the ASCILITE 2024 conference at University of Melbourne. In the first presentation, Professor Gregor Kennedy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at UoM drew parallels between the challenges of AI in education today and online learning decades ago. In one way this is reassuring, as we have managed to incorporate online learning. In another way this is troubling, as there are many who still struggle with online learning, or deny its value, despite decades of research and experience. Hopefully we will do better with AI in a couple of decades.

Slow Progress in the Third Space

Greetings from the Third Space Symposium at University of Melbourne. Along with workshops elsewhere on campus, this precedes the ASCILITE 2024 Conference, which starts tomorrow. The symposium was preceded by weeks of Third Space Slowposium. I am still trying to work out what the slowposium is and where it is. But at least I have found the symposium. 

The workshops and symposium are being held in the Arts West building at UoM. The building has the look of an Escher sketch brought to life. Building elements are apparently thrown together at odd angles (as if several buildings were fused). One room is carpeted in a bold tartan, which would be okay but the walls are covered with wallpaper using the same pattern.  There is a very functional circular lecture theatre, but the outside wall consists of wooden studs and noggins with polyester acoustic panels between, giving the look of an unfinished building site. This might all be taken as a metaphor for this space, where we are making it up as we going along, with whatever materials are at hand. 

Design Exercies Game Participants Needed

Erika Wood, PhD Student in computing at the Australian National University needs volunteers to help her with the Design Exercise Game. 

Loyalty Tax on Academic Staff

There are frequent expression of concern and even despair on social media, from casual academic staff at universities who feel taken for granted. They don't have high or secure pay, and feel they are not consulted. The usual solution put forward is collective action to force management to improve conditions. However I usually respond by suggesting they ensure they have employment options outside academia, & encourage their research students to do likewise. Some academics find this offensive: of course they know they could get a job elsewhere but they love working in academia, or their field is not one in demand elsewhere. But I suggest they need to consider if they are paying the loyalty tax. 

Well known in the services industry, the loyalty tax is where customers keep their account with the same supplier, year after year. The customer may be told they will receive discounts for loyalty, but instead the supplier knows they can put up prices and reduce service. Occasionally I will hear an academic complaining about being treated badly by their employer after many years of loyal service. But if the employer know the staff member will not quit, there is no reason to provide good conditions. 

It occurred to me academics are paying a loyalty tax. I thought I might write a paper about it, but found many had done so years before:

"The gratitude or loyalty tax describes the expectation that URMM faculty forgo promotion or advancement at other institutions out of a sense of obligation to their current institution [8]. In addition to preventing URMM faculty from achieving career advancement, this may cause the URMM faculty member to experience unhappiness, low work performance, and low work satisfaction." Campbell, Hudson, Tumin, pp.202–206, 2020).

"Lois Defleut used the phrase "loyalty tax" to describe the cost incurred by the faculty who remain at the same university for many years (Blum, 1989). As discussed by Botsch and Folsom (1989), this built-in loyalty tax penalty will be the greatest in the academic fields with the highest demand for faculty." (Fraas, p. 3,1993). 

 'In fact the phenomenon of salary compression is often referred to as a "loyalty tax".' (Barbezat, p. 761, 2004).

This is not to say that staff organisations should not press for improved conditions and individual academics should just give up and bale out to jobs in industry. However, it is in the power of each person to improve their own conditions & those of their students by being ready and able to work elsewhere. If you are teaching research students with ambitions of working in academia, point out to them the very small chances of a well paid, secure job this way. Help look at the alternatives and get the skills and qualifications needed. Such training will still be of use if they are not of the lucky few who get a permanent university job.

References

Barbezat, D. A. (2004). A Loyalty Tax? National Measures of Academic Salary Compression. Research in Higher Education, 45(7), 761–776. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40197392

Campbell, K.M., Hudson, B.D. & Tumin, D. Releasing the Net to Promote Minority Faculty Success in Academic Medicine. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 7, 202–206 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00703-z

Fraas, J. W. (1993). A Faculty Consistency Pay Program. ERIC Number: ED362108 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED362108

Talked on Radio 3AW Melbourne about Y2038 Problem

Had a call from 3AW breakfast Melbourne this morning about a Year 2038 Problem.

Apparently, a Victorian government body has been sending out invoices with the date 2038 on them. This is a known problem similar to Y2K. But not the end of the world. 

Guiding Aircraft Globally from Canberra

Greetings from the new 4th floor at Canberra Innovation Network where Dr Craig Benson, CIO of Skycraft. His company provides communication for commercial aircraft globally, using Australian made satellites. Craig described how this space company doesn't do expensive "rocket science". 

I asked Craig if Australian Defence cancelling a $7B satellite project created opportunity for companies like Skycraft. He said Defence should use Starlink as much as possible.

Best of ASCILITE 2024

I have booked to attend the ASCILITE 2024 computers and education conference at the University of Melbourne, 1 to 4 December (being a joint author on one paper). But conferences with multiple streams can be a bewildering experience, so I like to do a best of, in advance. Here are my picks:

Sunday December 1, 2024 09:00

Third Space Symposium: Working well in tertiary education

Dark Green Room B101 (512 capacity) - 2.12.24 December 2, 2024 15:30

David Parsons et al - What does the Ideal Postgraduate Micro-Credential Look Like? A Student Perspective

Pink Room 153 (150 capacity) - 2.12.24 December 2, 2024 11:00

Ekaterina Pechenkina - Navigating the complex terrain of online professional learning

December 2, 2024 12:00

Taneile Kitchingman et al - Implementing an interactive oral task to assess undergraduate psychology students’ attainment of pre-professional competencies

December 2, 2024 15:30

Amanda Samson et al - From Campus to Career: Leveraging Technology to Improve Work Readiness and Industry Engagement

White Room 453 (60 capacity) - 2.12.24 December 2, 2024 14:10

Mehrasa Alizadeh et al - Investigating the impact of online learning platforms on student engagement and learning outcomes: Comparing Zoom with VR

Light Blue Room 253 Tuesday 3rd December

11:00 - 12:00 Scaling-up technology-enhanced authentic learning across a university-wide curriculum innovation program Presented by Elisa Bone

Dark Blue Room 456

14:10 - 14:30 Navigating the terrain of academic publishing in educational technology Presented by Linda Corrin et al

Wednesday 4th December Light Blue Room 253

11:00 - 12:00 Navigating the Generative AI Response: Reflections from Four Universities Presented by Tania Broadley

Australian Universities Need to Prepare for Post-pandemic Risks

This morning I voted not to freeze Australian National University staff pay. This proposal, formally called "Pay Variation to The Australian National University Enterprise Agreement 2023-2026", was put to staff by the management of the university in response to financial difficulties. I have every confidence the new Vice Chancellor can make changes to improve the university's financial situation, in circumstances not of their making, while meeting commitments to staff. But there will need to be changes to the way education is delivered to meet coming challenges.

A decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, the then ANU VC strongly suggested staff learn to teach better. So I set about learning how to teach students at a research intensive university using modern technology. One issue I identified in my studies was the need to be ready to teach online in the event students were unable to get to campus due to a regional crisis. Having investigated this topic at three universities, I urged Australian universities to put in place contingencies, as had been done at other universities in our region. I was able to help ANU, but unfortunately, Australian universities mostly chose not to follow the example of their regional counterparts, and were less than prepared for a foreseeable and foreseen crisis. University staff did the best they could under difficult circumstances, but not as well as they could have done with proper planning.

Australian universities face ongoing challenges, from international competition, new technologies, a deteriorating international strategic situation, climate change and potential economic shocks. Having failed to prepare for a pandemic has proven to be a poor strategy, as will failing to prepare for these other foreseeable contingencies. In my submission to the Higher Education Review I set out some approaches which could be applied. Recently I visited Singapore institutions, seeing the way they very effectively integrate vocational education.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Next on the EduTech Asia 2024 tour of Singapore higher education is Ngee Ann Polytechnic. We are in the Optometry Centre. This is a fully functional centre open to the public and staffed by students.

This is conceptually similar to the Hive in the computer science building at ANU. It is set up as a computer consulting company's office for students to work on projects for real clients.
 

The polytechnic 
features digital automated eye test equipment as well as traditional analogue tools in their space. 

Temasek Polytechnic Singapore

Greetings from Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore. The closest equivalent in Australia would be a large TAFE, such as Canberra Institute of Technology. This is part of the EduTech Asia 2024 conference. We are in the T P Interactive Digital Experiments with AI Studio (IDEAS). This has a false floor, similar to a computer room, allowing easy recalling. There is a theatre style framework to attach screens, lights, & sensors. Students projects using augmented reality are on display.

For engineering students, TP has an advanced manufacturing lab. As well as computer controlled machines, there is a stimulated control centre, with workstations and a wall display. These have been cleverly located in the foyer of the engineering building, rather than hidden away.

E-waste not a major challenge with generativeAI

Wang, Chen, Zhang, Tzachor (2024) suggest that the demand for generative AI will create an e-waste problem of 1.2 to 5.0 million tons  for 2020 to 2030. They also suggest this could be made worse by political restriction on access to more advanced  efficient chips and rapid replacement of old hardware. I suggest the problem is not that large and energy use will remain a larger problem than e-waste.

One aspect the authors do not mention is the lack of price signals between server providers and the end user with current generative AI services. This is likely to be self correcting. Currently demand for generative AI is being generated by offering of free services to the public. As the user is not paying for the service and there is therefore no built in fee for responsible disposal of created e-waste, there may be a later problem. Some speculative AI ventures are likely to become bankrupt leaving a toxic legacy (similar to the mountains of scraped e-bikes left by failed startups). However, as users come to rely on Generative AI services, vendors will introduce charges, which can cover e-waste costs.

Currently generative AI server farms are using generic Graphic Processor Unit chips. These are the same chips used for cryptocurrency server farms. The environmental issues are similar with both. There have been articles about AI consuming as much power as small countries (just as there were for crypto). However, there is more of a mainstream use for AI, which will allow for better long term regulation of environmental effects. With its abundance of renewable energy sources and a stable regulatory environment, Australia could provide a popular location for AI centers. This would allow a small query to be sent across the world and answer sent back, effectively embedding the renewable energy in the answer. 

There may also be scope for reuse of older, slower, more energy using AI chips in locations with abundant renewable energy. As more efficient chips were installed close to the user in high energy cost countries, the old hips would be installed further away. Rather than store energy in batteries to run these chips, it may be cheaper to shut them down when the sun isn't shining & the wind isn't blowing. How to do this is something engineers and computer professionals can learn to optimize with specialist training (Worthington, 2012). 

Reference

Wang, P., Zhang, LY., Tzachor, A. et al. E-waste challenges of generative artificial intelligence. Nat Comput Sci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00712-6

Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070

Silent Disco at EduTech Asia

Greetings from stage 2 at EduTech Asia where I am about to have a fireside chat with Professor Angela Lee from Sunway University Malaysia. 

A "fireside chat" format was used, with the speakers in comfortable chairs in a row, each with a microphone. As there was only to of us, we took turns to ask each other prepared questions (although we soon went off script). This made for a comfortable, informal atmosphere. 

As for content, Professor Lee talked about using AI for analysis of the data generated from the student's study, to check how they are doing, offer helpful advice and improve the course. I talked about how I helped teach students to use AI in their assignments.

This is on the expo floor with the roar of delegates, so everyone wears headphones. These are the type used for a Silent Disco. This works well and might be useful for some educational environments.

ps: One question from the floor was on generative AI institutional policy. I was surprised by this as I assumed that by now every educational institution would have a policy and guidelines for staff and students, but apparently not. So I suggested looking at those from the Australian National University:

1. Guide for students: best practice when using Generative AI, ANU 2024
3. Artificial Intelligence including generative AI, ANU Library Guide, 2024
5. Generative AI and data governance, ANU guide for staff
7. ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI, statement from Professor Maryanne Dever, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Digital), 2 May 2023
9. AI in Academia: Where does ANU stand with ChatGPT?, Woroni (ANU Student Newspaper), 15.6.2024 
10. AI for learning and assessment, powerpoint presentation for students, 2024

Observation for Learning

Professor Hazel Melanie Ramos,
Nottingham University

Greetings from EduTech Asia 2024 in Singapore. I am attending the first workshop on the use of observation, before the mail conference starts tomorrow. Professor Hazel Melanie Ramos from Nottingham University's Teaching and Learning Observation College is talking about how teachers can learn from observing peers and being observed in their class technique. An online tool is used to prompt the participants. The approach can be applied from primary school teaching to university. One example given was for the Higher Education Academy fellowship process. 

ps: I am speaking tomorrow at EduTech on AI and curriculum.

ANU Learning and Teaching Innovation Showcase

Greetings from the ANU Learning and Teaching Innovation Showcase in Canberra. Staff are giving short talks on their teaching innovation, and there are three workshops: 1: Blended Learning - Small Changes, Big Impact, 2: Creating Accessible Digital Content, & 3: Teamwork & Transdisciplinary Community of Practice. I picked the third workshop as I teach students to work in teams. 

Dr Andrew Carr

The first of the short talks was on teamwork, being by Dr Andrew Carr on the "Case Method", where he has students do stuff. He contrasted the traditional approach where you tell the student stuff, versus giving them the task of finding, sifting and making sense of information themselves. Dr Carr, learned about the case method at Harvard Business School. It is useful to see you can do this on a small scale, just for one lesson, as well as for semester long projects.

Dr Penny Kyburz

The second talk was by Dr Penny Kyburz on scaffolding for entrepreneurship. The problem is that students tend to select projects provided by external clients, rather than develop their own. Providing startup grants did not help. An alternative tried was to send students to an entrepreneurship competition run externally. With this experience a tech entrepreneurship program for ANU, between the business and computing faculty. 

ANU Group Computing Projects on Display Tuesday 29 October 2024 12 noon

Over the last eight years I have frequently written in blog posts, public presentations, media interviews and academic papers about the Australian National University's Techlauncher program. In Canberra next week you have the opportunity to hear from the students and see their work. Each team produces a poster, displayed at the ANU Computing Showcase. Come along and ask them what they did, and how they did it. 

Sustaining Adaptation

Greetings from the University of Technology Sydney, where Dr Joshua A. Lewis is talking on water management in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Human settlement on the river delta creates difficult land use issues. 

Research Whisperer on The economics of Australian universities

Jonathan O'Donnell, the Research Whisperer, has published a thoughtful item on The economics of Australian universities. Firstly he points out that Australian universities are ‘liberal arts’ institutions, and only a few are private. Income is mostly from student fees (domestic ones subsidised by government), with little from government research grants or private endowments. What not mentioned is that Australia law requires universities to undertake research in multiple fields: an institution which specializes in education, or research in one field, cannot be accredited as a university in Australia. 

Dr O'Donnell points to the "pernicious culture of over-work in universities". The solution to this, I suggest, is professional training. Academics who have been trained only in research are open to exploitation. Not given enough time to carry out teaching or administration, a culture which sees long unpaid hours as heroic can develop. Instead staff can be trained to use tools and techniques to get the job done in the time available.

I am not sure I agree with Dr O'Donnell's characterization of Australian universities as ‘liberal arts’. While there is a separate system of vocational institutions for trades training, Australian universities were established and continue to provide doctors, lawyers, engineers and other working professionals. Recent reforms by government might be seen as a way to reinforce this emphasis on professional education.

Of Australia's 42 universities, 38 are public (set up by governments), and 4 private. One of the private universities, Torrens, is for-profit, with the rest non-profit. Torrens, is an unusual institution and deserving of more study. 

Podcast on E-portfolios for Education

Recently I was delighted to be interviewed for a podcast by Kristina Hoeppner on the use of e-portfolios in Mahara's  'Create. Share. Engage' series.  We talked about how these are used in the ANU Techlauncher program, using techniques I learned as a student of Debra Hoven at Athabasca University. With this approach the student is guided through the development of the portfolio, including peer feedback, and as part of their coursework, rather than being left as something extracurricular to complete later. 

A slight variation on this, is to have the student prepare the portfolio in the form of an application for a real job which they would like on graduation. This makes sense as a capstone exercise, at the end of a program of study, as many students are then looking for jobs. This transforms the portfolio from something which might be of use to the student one day, to something of vital importance right now. At the moment I am overseeing the assessment of 400 student portfolios by a dozen tutors.

Stephen Dunkerley on Leadership

Stephen Dunkerley,
Matsue Leadership & Consulting

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society in Canberra where Stephen Dunkerley from Matsue Leadership & Consulting is talking on leadership. He started with an example of what language to use to convince a technical versus non-technical boss. The difficult example was recommending croudstrike just after the hack. This follows today's workshop for ANU students on how to get a job.

What do employers want?

Greetings from the final TechLauncher workshop at the Australian National University. This is a chance for students to not only listen to potential employers but also talk to them. Of course many computer students already have jobs, as they have in demand skills. There are some extra requirements for computer people, such as a Github account to show they can code. The workshop is held in "The Hive" which is an open plan area set up to look like a typical shared office environment. 

Bianca Sawyer,
Quantum Brilliance

Today we have Kevin Landale from Digital Atelier,  Bianca Sawyer from  Quantum Brilliance, and Jonathon Stapels from Overflow Solutions.

Kevin Landale,
Digital Atelier

These workshops are intended to help students, but a bonus for staff, such as myself, is to meet interesting people from interesting companies. The three company representatives (who are also company founders) talked about how they ended up where they are. 

Jonathon emphasised that applicants should be ready to talk about why they applied in everyday language. 

Jonathon Stapels,
Overflow Solutions

Bianca emphasised the importance of a cover letter focused on relevant qualifications, skills and experience, not just "sixteen pages of CV" and no "Spam CVs". Kevin said he uses behavioural pre-screening questions, unrelated to technical skills. Jonathon asked if job ads should give the specifics upfront, or talk about the learning opportunities in the job and he was surprised that students preferred the upfront version. The students then talked about what they studied and what they aspired to work on. One student said they wanted to work at a large company, at which point the employers discussed the pros and cons. 

Future of Teaching in Australian Universities

Last week, Professor Genevieve Bell, the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University announced an ANU realignment: Renew ANU, to address budget pressures. Many Australian universities, and those in other countries, are experiencing similar pressures. This is to suggest some ways changes could be implemented to improve the education delivery by universities generally. This follows the broad approach I suggested in a submission to the Review of Higher Education. As with that submission, these suggestions are are my own, and may not represent the views of any organisation I am associated with.

Teach Students How to Learn, Work and Not Cheat

Universities could reduce costs and improve the quality of learning by teaching students study, teamwork, writing, assessment techniques (of the type which ANU offers in professional practice courses, such as Responsible Innovation and Leadership;  and Holistic Thinking and Communication. This could be enhanced to identify students with specific learning difficulties. Rather than wasting staff resources investigating cheating, student can learn techniques to avoid charges of plagiarism, which will also be useful in their career to protect their own intellectual property. 

New Courses on Technology and Society

ANU plans for consolidation are more modest that those in South Australia, where two universities are merging: University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia (I dropped in to visit them a few weeks ago).  The ANU has proposed to include the Fenner School of Environment and Society, the Mathematical Sciences Institute, and Centre for Public Awareness of Science in the ANU College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics to create the ANU College of Systems and Society. Such mergers creates the opportunity for new cross fertilization between academics. Universities, I suggest, could and should be offering  courses on the technical and social aspects of the major challenges Australia and the world are facing, including global warming.

Courses on technology and society can be offered by universities as part of conventional degree programs, as well as for microcredentials, and in service professional development. The University of New South Wales is building a new Canberra campus with an emphasis on courses for Australian Public Service (APS) staff, including using stackable microcredentials. This could be done using the format of courses such as COMP7310 ICT Sustainability. The Australian Computer Society commissioned me to design this course for in service professional development, to be delivered online. I then modified the course for ANU computer science graduate students, then again with an on campus option (Worthington, 2012). The same approach was applied for delivery of part of the ANU Techlauncher program (Worthington, 2019). This blended/online option was fortuitously added a few months before COVID-19 struck, allowing a switch from campus based to online delivery, with no changes in content or assessment (and a switch back to on campus).

Such courses can set context, and pose questions for students to address, rather than provide large quantities of technical content, which require constant revision. These courses can also use small regular assessment items to keep students working between major project tasks. 

 Role in Teacher Tech Education

The ANU Centre for Public Awareness of Science is respected for its education of science communicators. Such centers at universities could help with the teaching of science and the use of technology in teaching and training. This could avoid duplicating programs offered in training in the vocational sector and university school teaching programs, addressing advanced requirements. This could be in cooperation with the centers most universities have for learning & teaching.

An example of the incorporation of an existing center in teaching is the way the ANU Careers & Employability unit teaches students about careers. Rather than wait for students to go to the unit for extra curricula advice, several schools of the ANU welcome the careers staff into the classroom to teach the students. Academic staff then set assessment to ensure students focus on the topic. This could be done with topic of teaching, which is part of many disciplines. This can be aligned with professional requirements for areas such as engineering and computing, using standards such as the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

New Teaching Methods

Immersive Reality

Immersive Reality (XR): that is Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and other forms of technology based simulation, offer ways to enhance the teaching of technical disciplines. Until recently this was prohibitively expensive for most teaching, due to the need for specialised devices, and teaching spaces. However, IR can now use student provided equipment (smart phones and low cost glasses), in standard teaching rooms (Cochrane, et Al., 2022).

The ANU School of Computing's Escape Room provides an example of low cost IR, being essentially a room dressed up with colored lights, but using very advanced pedagogy (Pereira Nunes, et.Al, 2024). The Escape Room is colocated with "The Hive" a simulation of a computer project workspace for Techlauncher Project students (Browne, et Al, 2020). 

Hackerthons and simulations could also be used for education in addressing problems facing society. As an example the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit rprovides a format for a learning activity which just needs assessment added. 

Other Support for Experiential Learning

The ANU provides experiential learning in computing with the award winning Techlauncher program. Other ANU schools and other institutions have similar group projects as a capstone activity. While valuable for the student, and an essential part of professional accreditation, such programs are difficult to deliver and can be expensive without the right tools and pedagogy. The lessons learned from the Techlauncher program could be passed to others. As an example, the use of a reflective e-portfolio in the form of a job application (Worthington, 2019). 

References

Browne, C., Boast, L. J., Blackmore, K., & Flint, S. (2020). Capstone design projects, the project value map and the many eyes process: balancing process and product to deliver measurable value to student and client. The International journal of engineering education, 36(2), 586-599. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7342405

Cochrane, T. D., Narayan, V., Aiello, S., Alizadeh, M., Birt, J., Bone, E., ... & Worthington, T. (2022). Analysing mobile learning designs: A framework for transforming learning post-COVID. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 38(4), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.7997

Pereira Nunes, B., Kaur, G., Chan, A., Sharpe, S., & Soto Ruidias, R. R. (2024). Exploring Educational Escape Room as an Assessment Tool for Computer Science Courses. In Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2 (pp. 803-803). https://doi.org/10.1145/3649405.3659494

Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070

Worthington, T. (2019, December). Blend and flip for teaching communication skills to final year international computer science students. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9225921/

Australian French Research Collaboration

 

Greetings from the Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN) meeting at the Canberra Innovation Network. Dr Charles Gretton and,l Dr Nian (Jenny) Jiang are talking about how research can have real world impact. Charles talked about both AI research improving industrial processes and Jenny development of new instruments. Charles pointed out 5% of ANU Techlauncher students go on to found companies. Jenny talked about joining Cambridge University just as COVID-19 lockdowns started.

Charles said "There are a lot of batshit stupid ideas being funded, so get your better idea out there!".

The 2024 AFRAN Forum on the  role of research and innovation in industry, policy and public dialogue is at ANU 4 to 6 Nov 2024, and is free.

Better Fitting Body Armour for Australian Soldiers

Greetings from the University of Canberra where Dr Celeste Coltman just pitched on better fitting armour for soldiers. This was at First Wednesday.

Energy, Digital and People Skills for Australia

Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable

Greetings from the Engineers Australia HQ, where I am taking part in the Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable. This is organised by the Pearcey Foundation to work out what skills will be needed for the transition to zero emissions economy, and how to get them. This is recognising that even if you have the technology, you need people who can build and repair it. This is not just people bolting stuff together, but also those programming the systems to run it, thus my interest*.

After a welcome from the acting EA President, we had some statistics of the supply of engineers. Highlights were that Australia is dependent on importing trained engineers and it will take 70 years at the current rate to achieve parity between male and females. This is much the same as the computing profession. There is an obvious way to increase the number of domestically trained engineers: attract more females, but that will require changes to training and jobs. That could also solve another problem with technical training: the need to teach people skills. At the ANU I help teach computer students to work in teams in the Techlauncher program.

It took 30 minutes before AI got a mention in the presentations. This was a relief as for the last few years AI seemed to be in the title of every talk. ;-) The approach taken here was AI enhancing work.

Some of the good news was that engineering skills are transferable. This suggests that engineers could move to renewable industry from others, such as mining. The bad news is the reverse is also the case, with the mining industry in particular having a demand for staff and money to attract them. Also there are about 40% of qualified engineers working outside an engineering role who might be attracted back. Engineers Australia produced a Clean energy workforce capacity study submission (May 2023).

The roundtable switched to comedy with discussion of smart toasters talking to smart fridges. This had a serious side as a way to manage energy use and also as a potential privacy risk. 

A topic I want to raise with the roundtable is the government's recent restrictions on international students: will this reduce the supply of engineers and computer professionals? What can we do to increase the domestic supply? Microcredentials were mentioned and I wonder if they will help people already qualified in engineering or computing to transition to renewable energy. Shortly after I typed the last few sentences the chair invited me to speak, so I said it.

The next speaker proposed an updated energy risk assessment. An example given was the vulnerability Australia has importing the components for building renewable energy systems. Also it was claimed that in a few years there will be no one in government qualified to conduct such a study.

* Way back in 2008, the Australian Computer Society commissioned me to write a course on Green Computing. The ACS and ANU first ran the course in 2009 and it is still offered by Athabasca University in Canada, 15 years later. The course is still on the books at ANU, perhaps it is time to revive it.

Students to Catalog Art Works?

Work by Graham Radcliffe

Yesterday I visited the Phoenix Sculpture Garden near Brisbane. This is dedicated to the work of Graham Radcliffe, including unfinished pieces in his workshop. It reminds me of Barbara Hepworth's studio at St Ives. You have the sense the sculptor just downed tools for a cup of tea. 

I suggested to Margit Rradcliffe inviting teams of university students to scan and catalog the work. This could involve engineering, computing and art students. Anyone interested can contact her at the gallery. 

How did pagers explode?

Part of being associated with a university is making yourself available for expert commentary. Yesterday I had a request from SBS News to talk about exploding pagers. I could have said "No, I am on holidays". But instead I propped my phone up on a suitcase and was interviewed for a segment six minutes into the national nightly news: "How did Hezbollah's pagers explode in Lebanon and Syria?".

As it happens, when working at HQ Australian Defence Force in the eatly 1990s, I tested the use of a pager, while travelling around defence bases in northern Australia by RAAF aircraft. The units were able to receive messages in remote areas and while in flight, making them useful.

One feature which I noticed was that it was possible to send a test message to a pager which was apparently switched off. The only way to prevent this was to remove the battery from the unit. I suggested it is likely that something like this was used for activating a few grams of explosive hidden in the pagers. Also I warned that some of the pagers could have not been delivered to their intended targets and pose a danger to the community, worldwide. 

ANU Computer Interns Available

Greetings from Canberra Innovation Network's First Wednesday pitch night. I am here to let people know the Australian National University has computer interns needing placements to hone their skills.