Author Archives: Bart Pursel

Artificial Intelligence and Education

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An interesting aspect of this course is the use of a tool called BBookX, both in the creation of our course textbook, as well as the use of BBookX by students to complete an assignment later in the course. At a high level, BBookX is designed to help instructors find free resources, and quickly combine them in to a textbook. In the education technology world, this is considered a tool to facilitate the creation of Open Educational Resources (OERs). Two aspects of this software that make it compelling to examine from an IST perspective:

The BBookX iteration loop

Human-assisted machine learning – BBookX uses machine learning algorithms, that work on top of Wikipedia, to try and find the most interesting and relevant content a user is searching for. They algorithms are conceptually similar to the algorithms that power websites like netflix and amazon; the more the algorithms ‘know’ about you, the more accurate they become. In BBookX, you search for articles, you accept or reject articles that are returned, and by participating in this activity, the algorithms get smarter, returning more interesting and relevant content each time you go through this iteration loop.

Design-based research – Over the last two years, we spent time collecting data from both students and faculty that use BBookX. Through the application of a DBR approach, we discovered that the tool isn’t being used as an OER book creation tool. Rather, it’s being used a brainstorming or ideation tool. Users are interacting with the algorithms in a way to discover new content, that can then be included in a lecture, homework assignment, or case study (Pursel et. al., 2016)*.

We will learn more about artificial intelligence later in this course, including things similar to BBookX that use AI to support education. We’ll also look at AI in more mainstream areas, such as self-driving cars. AI is a great example IST topic, because it combines elements of technology, working with a wide range of information, and intersects with people in fascinating, sometimes unanticipated, ways!

* Pursel, B., Liang, C., Wang, S., Wu, Z., Williams, K., Brautigam, B., … & Giles, C. L. (2016, April). BBookX: Design of an Automated Web-based Recommender System for the Creation of Open Learning Content. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web (pp. 929-933). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.
Chicago

The Growth of eSports

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As a lifetime gamer, I’m finding myself spending more time spectating games over the last few years on websites like twitch.tv. Most of my friends and colleagues, even ones that play games often, find this idea of watching other people playing games strange on one end of the spectrum, and dumbfounding on the other end of the spectrum. As I think about what makes spectating eSports so compelling, a few things come to mind:

The technologies that enable spectating. Twitch.tv is a lot like watching television with a live chat. For me, it’s not very compelling, but based on the volume of chat during popular events that certainly seems to be a draw for some. I find the experience of watching a game like DOTA 2 through the game client very enjoyable, as I have much more control over the viewing experience compared to being a passive viewer (like TV). I can control the camera, and decide which players I want to follow. I can pull up various types of graphs and charts to dive deeper into the game, and see specific trends or key moments that changed momentum of the game.

A second aspect of eSports I find fascinating is that, in many instances, the announcers are more popular than the players. People know specific announcers, and recognize their voices when they dial into various streams.  A possible reason for this is that many announcers are ex-players, and they often have their own very popular streams on Twitch.tv.

Lastly, we’re starting to see eSports on ESPN and other major networks. Below is a (hysterical) clip of Robert Flores trying to cover DOTA 2:

I think it’s fairly obvious that we’ll start to see more eSports on TV, but will the opposite also be true? Will services like Twitch.tv start to broadcast professional sports? Even more interesting, will regular people like you and me be able to syndicate a stream of a professional football game (as an example), and put our own commentating on top of it, for anyone in the world to listen? Also, what would it look like if the viewer had the ability to cut between different camera angles in real time, while watching a professional game on TV? I think we’ll see a lot of interesting cross-pollination as eSports grows that will create innovative and compelling new viewing experiences.