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Is Google Scholar a Filter Bubble?

Written by terrya
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Is Google Scholar a Filter Bubble?

A major  goal of net-based  mass media is to customize the feed that is delivered to each viewer received a unique screen that matches their interest and more importantly their likelihood of purchasing some product or viewing some paid for message.  This phenomenon was labeled as “filter bubble” by author Eli Pariser – meaning that certain results are filtered out creating a bubble of unawareness that surrounds each of us.

I remember my first vivid encounter with these covert filters when I was building a web site some years ago for the Westwood Unitarian Congregation. I was flattered when I noticed that a Google Search started turning my site up not only on the first page of search returns but increasingly in first or second place. I naively imagined that our site was becoming the most popular Unitarian destination in Canada.  Sadly,  I came to realize that this top end response  was only being enjoyed by myself. Google searches filters had determined that I really liked that site (based on my subsequent keystrokes) and thus presented a filtered result of searches for Canada and Unitarian.  Obviously the search engine had established a personal profile for me and was feeding me what it thought would be of most interest to me.

More recently, the use of filters by Facebook to provide customized news feeds to individual users has raised both technical and ethical issues. The diagram below by TechCrunch demonstrates a small part of the filter system used by Facebook and other media outlets.

Facebook Filter bubbles

One can argue the value of these filters (how many ads for women’s perfume do I really need or want to see?) but they come a cost of reducing the variability that exists throughout societies and may leave us blind to ideas or events that we may  have both interest and expertise.

This is no more critical a problem than in academic research.  When doing any quality work and especially that associated with PhD study, the candidate as an obligation to purview all of the relevant literature.  Long gone are the days when this could be accomplished by a few afternoons in the periodical section of the library. Today this means searching through the academic databases – extracting and reading everything relevant to the topic.  This can be done using proprietary search indexes such as Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) or rival product Scopius, however I have long argued that these indexes discriminate against both new Journals in the discipline and especially those that are Open Access.

Google Scholar is my first choice for such searches for a number of reasons. First it providing broader coverage than its competitors that includes documents from the grey literature (conference papers, reports, white papers etc.). Second it indexes far more journals in the educational discipline than either Scopius or SSCI. Third, empirical tests have shown that the results are not significantly different when using any of these indexes (see Harzing, A.-W. K., & Van der Wal, R. (2008). Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis. Ethics in science and environmental politics, 8(1), 61-73.)  Finally, and critically importance for scholars in developing countries and those non affiliated with a relatively rich university, is that access to Google Scholar search is free of charge (unlike SSCI).

So tying these two threads together (choice of search engine and covert filtering), leads to an obvious and important question. Does Google Scholar filter results?  Or can one expect different search results to arise when different scholars with different experiences, interests and use profiles?

I was pleased to hear that has question has been addressed and the results did not displease me (ie they made it past my filtering to be presented to you, in this blog!!). The study:

Yu, K., Mustapha, N., & Oozeer, N. (2016). Google Scholar’s Filter Bubble: An Inflated Actuality? Research 2.0 and the Impact of Digital Technologies on Scholarly Inquiry, 211.

compared Google Scholar research results using variety of default and advanced settings  (see abstarct below) and it concluded “that the filter bubble phenomenon does not warrant concern.” Unfortunately the chapter and the book are not open access however the main points can be seen from the Google Book abstract or the publishers preview.

Thus, my faith in and appreciation for the service provided by Google Scholar has increased.

 

 

 

ABSTRACT:

This chapter investigates the allegation that popular online search engine Google applies algorithms to personalise search results therefore yielding different results for the exact same search terms. It specifically examines whether the same alleged filter bubble applies to Google’s academic product: Google Scholar. It reports the results from an exploratory experiment of nine keywords carried out for this purpose, varying variables such as disciplines (Natural Science, Social Science and Humanities), geographic locations (north/south), and levels (senior/junior researchers). It also reports a short survey on academic search behaviour. The finding suggests that while Google Scholar, together with Google, has emerged as THE dominant search engine among the participants of this study, the alleged filter bubble is only mildly observable. The Jaccard similarity of search results for all nine keywords is strikingly high, with only one keyword that exhibits a localized bubble at 95% level. This chapter therefore concludes that the filter bubble phenomenon does not warrant concern.

 

My Work, Open Scholarship, Unitarian,

Quality in Online Learning Presentation

Written by terrya

I was asked to do a video conferencing talk to a meeting of three Mexican Universities yesterday. They are attempting to come up with a common set of criteria to define and measure the quality of their online courses.

QualityPerhaps I was not the best person to ask, as I have very mixed feelings about quality control systems dealing with emerging  technologies and pedagogies.  In particular, I hate it when quality standards impeded innovation and opportunity for experimentation. I hope I got across the complexity- if not a solution!   I illustrated the challenges of defining quality by presenting the different quality measures associated with each of the Three Generations of Distance Education pedagogy from a 2011 article by Jon Dron and myself.

I did however end with a plug for one of the most respected non-profit quality consortia Quality Matters, but I fear I didn’t clearly answer my own title question – Quality Online Teaching and Learning – Is it really different than campus-based education?  It Depends! – not least of which depends on the pedgaogy employed

Here are the slides I used:

Distance Education, My Work

Our Spanish adventure

Written by terrya
Our Spanish adventure

Unlike most of our voyages, this month I was accompanying my wife Susan on a trip to her conference. She registered in the 16 European Symposium on Suicide Prevention that took place this month in Oviedo, Spain. We took the opportunity to rent a car and bought a GPS with European maps (thank god!) and travelled through most of northern Spain. We headed up to the Basque country with stops in Pamplona (fortunately no running bulls this month) and then to the beautiful, but tourist plugged town of San Sebastian. We then motored through Basque countries, many mountain passes and tunnels (a bit white knuckled at 120 Km/H) to visit Guernica (site of first mass civilian bombing and immortalized by Pablo Picasso) and then to Bilbao.

guggenheim-museum-belboaOf course, like all good tourists we couldn’t miss the Guggenheim Museum and it did not disappoint.

We then headed west to Oviedo, capital of Asturias.  I didn’t attend much of Susan’s conference, except for a couple of sessions in which Danish and Belgian online Suicide prevention systems were presented.  I was impressed with the scientific rigour with which these interventions were tested – though trying to randomly assign suicidal participants to interventions presents a variety of ethical challenges.

We also travelled by car, (I know it was cheating) along some of the Camino de Santiago routes, trying to assess if we have the interest and the legs for such adventures. I had not realized the number of different Camino routes nor the number of pilgrims on them. I learned that  in one day they ‘processed” over 600 pilgrims who were finishing the pilgrimage in Santiago.

We then headed south to Madrid with a stop in Leon. I was fortunate to be invited to give a talk at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, which is the largest University in Spain with all courses delivered at a distance. Like Athabasca University, this University has had considerable challenges moving from its roots as a correspondence university to interactive online delivery. We visited many of the tourist spots and of course the famous museums in Madrid – though the huge line ups at the Prada scared us away.

Next we headed back to Barcelona, but we ventured into the hinterland for a brief visit to Belchite

belchite-1296 This town was left in ruins after a horrendous battle during the Spanish Civil War and a new town was built beside the ruins. These ruins now stand as a monument to the destruction of war, though they seem far off the tourist trail and we were the only visitors that day. It is strange that, unlike the American Civil war which is celebrated by numerous monuments and re-enactments, Spaniards seem to want to forget this sad time in their history. Perhaps because the “good guys” lost??

We then headed to Barcelona. As always, Barcelona with the inspiring architecture was a treat.  It was interesting to see the progress on the Sagrada Familia, sagrada-familiaGaudi’s most famous design. It looks to be on track for completion marking the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death in 2026. The new stain glass (abstracts and NOT crucifixion scenes) in the windows (though still far from complete) adds blue and green hues to the whole interior – in keeping with the natural and forest like feeling. I am sure that this is the most spectacular building that I have seen anywhere and I hope to live to see its completion!

I then spent 2 days and 2 web-cast lectures with my old friends at Open University of Catalonia.  The first talk was a repeat plus additions from a chapter I recently did on Theories for Online Learning and Research.

For the second talk, I overviewed the chapter that Jon Dron and I (mostly Jon) did on the Future of E-Learning.

After a great weekend with friends in Barcelona – we even made it to the beach and to watch my first game of handball, we headed back. Susan home to Edmonton and me to Helsinki, where I am the “opponent” in a PhD defence here on Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

Distance Education, Personal, Travel

1st Birthday – Riverdale’s Little Free Library

Written by terrya
1 Comment
1st Birthday – Riverdale’s Little Free Library

IMG_4262My Little Free Library celebrated its birthday with a party for its patrons on Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t terrific, but the rain held off long enough for cake, music and wine!

IMG_4271

The only challenge is that the party goers each bought books and the Library is already FULL!  I had to open Riverdale Little Free Library Annex #1 – a cardboard box (see photo above). I am confident though that we will be getting a run on reading as the proverbial winter chill sets into Alberta.

I built a new reading bench and carved “Libellus Libertas” which I think and hope is Latin for Books Free – as in ‘take a free book’ or ‘books are freedom’

IMG_4275

Reflecting on the 1st year I can make a few observations:

  1. Physical maintenance on the building has been minimal. I spruced up the exterior (for the party) with a quick coat of varnish, I had left over from another project. I’ve had to replace one of the door knobs and that’s about it.
  2.  The upstairs, library studio flat had no bird tenants although it was guarded by a fat sparrow for a week or so this spring.
  3. The Head Librarian has become a promiscuous reader, as he has started way more books than he finishes and is currently reading 6 books.
  4. The collection size has remained quite steady (current glut not withstanding). I’ve culled about 20 books that weren’t moving, but most seem to disappear in about 2-4 weeks.
  5. I’ve met many more neighbours and been thanked for the library by many.

So all in all a great 1st year. This winter, I plan to build at least one more library.

Little Free Library, Personal

Downe’s great summary article, but…….

Written by terrya
1 Comment
Downe’s great summary article, but…….

The good news is that Stephen Downes has posted the  full text from a chapter he wrote for New Models of Open and Distance Learning in Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs, Editors: Mohamed Jemni, Kinshuk, Mohamed Koutheair Khribi,  2016.

This is good news for two reasons – the first is that the full Springer book retails for $139 – but you can get it as an ebook for ONLY $109!!. This means the text is basically unavailable to the vast number of practitioners and scholars who would likely find it of great use.   The second reason is that it is a really good historical summary – describing the dance of education and technology as they have evolved with each other over the past half a century.

The bad news is that the very first sentence of the chapter (and first of the whole book!) is blatantly false.  Stephen writes “Historically most learning that has ever taken place has taken   place in a classroom with a teacher giving instruction and students reading books and writing on paper.”

Surely Stephen is not arguing that he “learned” to program the Painted Porch Mud in the 1980’s; devised Connectivism, or co-invented MOOCs by sitting in a “classroom with a teacher giving instructions”! In fact only a very tiny fraction of the “learning” that has ever taken place historically and of course 100% pre-historically, has occurred in a classroom. Only beginning in  the 19th Century have a few children of rich minorities been able to learn part of what they learned in life in a classroom. For the vast majority there were no classrooms for them to attend.   Even more so today, learning takes place from Google and Wikipedia searchers, from mass media, from social connection and the innumerable historical and pre-historic ways of learning – observation, apprenticeship, story-telling, guided practice and many more ways of learning.

Obviously Stephen’s mistake is to conflate learning with formal education. It is common enough because it is in the interests of teachers, educators and professors to promote their work context and their own self-interest by elevating education to encompass all forms of learning- but it does not. That is why it is especially strange to find this slip from Stephen Downes who has build a career and inspired many, based upon his championing of learning – and not only that subset that happens in classrooms. It is especially ironical that within the essay Stephen covers formal and non formal learning and argues that both have benefited from the wealth of online resources and communities.

Having gotten this irritation out of my system, let me strongly recommend this chapter. It helps if you mentally do a cut and paste and switch ‘education’ for ‘learning’. Perhaps Stephen will do it for us.

As with all of Stephen’s writing you get very clear, precise and knowledgeable argument, illustration and rationale.  And similarity with all his writing as you always get a good dose of “Downism” – where Stephen injects his personal insights, experiences, opinions and convictions.  The sections on PLE’s and PLN’s are especially good as is Stephen’s overview of connectivism. Strangely, this overview chapter ends without a summary or conclusion, but PERHAPS you have to cough up the $139 for that. So as not to make the same mistake with this post, let me again recommend this article for anyone trying to figure how both ‘learning’ and ‘education’ have evolved to both exploit and create technologies and pedagogies to make the most of our networked world.

 

 

Distance Education, MOOCs

Front Lawn Fun-Raiser concert

Written by terrya
Front Lawn Fun-Raiser concert

Susan and I were really pleased to host a fine evening of music last evening here in Riverdale. Our neighbour Cam Neufeld is touring this summer with IMG_3983Jez Hellard & The Djukella Orchestra (Jez and bassist Nye Parsons). Jez and Nye are from the UK and royally entertained us with  a rich collection of origional and traditional  tunes.IMG_3998

 

 

 

 

The concert was a fund-raiser in support of the two Syrian families that have been sponsored here in Riverdale. So always good to be able to support a good cause, while having a great time and listening to some fine music. As you can see the Little Library did double duty as a welcome sign.IMG_3994

 

Little Free Library, Personal

Order of Athabasca University

Written by terrya
Order of Athabasca University

Yesterday at Convocation in Athabasca, I was deeply honoured by my former colleagues at Athabasca by being installed into the Order of Athabasca University. Most other members have been individuals from the community who have made exceptional contributions to the University. I was the first Faculty member (other than Dominique Abrioux, who also served as President) to be so honoured.  The hupalo started with the blurb below published in the Edmonton and Calgary daily newspapers.image003

It continued at Convocation where Rory McGreal made a terrific and over flattering introductionIMG_0928 to me at the beginning of the  ceremonies. Rory’s introduction contained comments from Mark Brown, Alan Tait, Morten Paulsen and Wayne Macintosh – thanks to each of you.  The life stream of the whole convocation ceremony is streamed at goo.gl/ZziwsG . Rory and my part begins around Minute 53

The celebrations ended  with a banquet. All very moving, and I am trying hard to not leave with a swollen head! But thanks to all who have helped make my time at Athabasca very personally rewarding and recognized!!

It was also flattering to have AUPress over 40% discount on three of my authored, edited or co-authored books.IMG_3962

 

I was asked to do a 3 minute speech which I addressed to the graduates and to the wider Athabasca Community. Here is the text;

Madame Chair;  Mr. President;  Distinguished guests;  Members of the Platform party;  Graduands: Ladies and gentlemen:

Thanks to each of you!

I think I am the first faculty member (who wasn’t also a president) to win this award, and so I feel very deeply honored for your recognition—of not just my contributions—but of our work, together, here at Athabasca University.

Today is a day primarily for the graduates—and thus, I would like to use this time on the stage to congratulate each of them—and their family members and friends networks that you created —who have helped to get them here today.

All of my research has been focused on the distance learning experience. One of the most common questions is:

“Is distance education as good as campus-based education?”

Well … my colleagues and I have been asking this question for more than 30 years! And in roughly 90 per cent of studies, the results have shown that there is NO significant difference in learning outcomes.

And even when there is a difference it is likely to be in favour of distance learners. However, there is certainly more to being educated than just simply ‘learning outcomes.”

What distance education students build—and usually in larger doses than campus students—is self-efficacy. The belief in yourself and the knowledge that you can succeed in the tasks you set for yourself.

Distance learning builds knowledge and belief in yourself and an empowered understanding that you can achieve your goals.

You didn’t earn a distance education degree without being—or getting—good at creating and meeting deadlines and producing quality output—usually without the help of peers or classmates.

And so, today I celebrate your earned increase in self-efficacy!

But, to be sure, this graduation milestone does not mark the end of your learning. Technological and social change continues to happen—and more rapidly than in it changed in the past.

Luckily, I know this for sure: Because of your experience with AU, you are armed with the confidence and the knowledge that you can learn—and learn successfully.

You have self-efficacy. You can succeed—and you will succeed—as life-long learners.

Finally, I want to speak to my colleagues and friends in our broader Athabasca University community:

Bear with me as I don my sailor’s cap,—one of the pleasures of retirement! —obviously, as an institution, we’re continuing to sail through some rough waters. We are facing weather winds and that are very hard to predict. However,  “the glass is rising”. Certainly there is value and risk in every decision we make.

But I want to continue to urge us to use the ever-increasing power of networks—and importantly, our own networking skills—to work together to build a new kind of university: A university that is not like the Athabasca University of 1970, nor that of 2016, for that matter.

But one that marries academic knowledge, collegial support and governance with cost-effective ways to study and teach. Alone, and together, we need to support and create better and more effective personal, academic, administrative and community networks.

These networks have demonstrated they produce the power to be critical components of the new ‘net-era’ university—and thus, they are a challenge for each of us to navigate—but a necessary one.

Oh, have I mentioned the Athabasca Landing yet?

Thank you very much!

Distance Education, My Work, Personal

Success with FlyKly Wheel and Kickstarter – at last

Written by terrya
Success with FlyKly Wheel and Kickstarter – at last

Despite what may be an idealistic techno-solution, I was attracted the FlyKly video when I first saw it advertised two years. The video shows a cool European 20+ cruising along on his electric assisted bike and then EASILY able to take it off (theft issues?) and or share the wheel with his girl friend. The unique thing about this design is that the battery and all controls are right in the hub of the powered back wheel. I thought my wife just might also be interested in an electric assist on her commute to her counseling office. So….

I got out my Visa card and soon I had contributed to the KickStart folks for nearly $500 – a big amount in those day even if the Canadian dollar was at near parity with the US dollar.   Then the wait. Weeks, turned into months, turned into years. The good news was that the original company had merged/been bought out by a company with a better battery. So redesign and longer waits!! Finally an email note that they were shipping! Then a second note saying that US and European customers would get the first shipments – Don’t they like Canadians??? Promised dates for delivery slide by. Finally not 2 days after I wrote a nasty email asking if they were just a rip-off company – my FlyKly Smartwheel arrived.

IMG_3841First surprise, my last bike had been stolen and in the meantime I had upgraded to one with disc brakes- the FlyKy wheel doesn’t work with disc brakes. Second surprise, I had ordered the wrong size! Both Susan’s and my bike have 28” wheels and I had ordered a 26” wheel. So shopping on Kiiji, I found a pretty good used mountain bike for $90.

Finally a test drive! But alas, the new wheel was ‘skipping” on almost every revolution of the wheel. After expending all my knowledge about chain skipping, I knew it was time for a bike shop visit. But then horrors – I lost the wheel’s electric charger. It had to be either in the house or in the garage and I thought it had to show up someplace. Months pass and sadly it is still missing, so I very reluctantly paid $159 US plus $50 shipping to order what I thought should be $20 charger. A few more months go by… Finally it arrives and I’m off to the bike store. It turns out the chain was not tensioned properly when the cassette of gears was removed from the mountain bike. So $35 for a chain tensioner and $30 labour and I was set to go.

Well it’s a wonderful invention! The wheel parameters, by which one sets the amount of electrical assist, maximum speed for the assist and the amount of braking (and recharging when pedaling backwards on down hills) are controlled via an App on my smart phone and connect via Bluetooth. The wheel itself as no controls – it starts by itself after a few seconds pedaling. It gives a very nice push, and goes into neutral when you stop pedaling. Unfortunately, the chain doesn’t synch with the three gears on the front crank and so I am stuck with a one-speed bike. However it does really well on the hills and cruising on the flat at a good speed is easy to manage.

Of course I’ll have to see how it survives and the BlueTooth connection from the Iphone is not very good, but it works! So all told I’m in for about $900 Canadian and I see they are now retailing for $999 US. My first Kick Starter experience and despite the delays it may be a winner!

Personal

What’s So New about the New Atheists?

Written by terrya
What’s So New about the New Atheists?
atheist data cloud

Image from https://allahbepraisedlettheglassberaised.wordpress.com/

Last week I gave the Sunday sermon at Westwood Unitarian Congregation here in Edmonton.  While trying to organize my book shelves, I noticed that I had nine different books on Atheism – many by authors labelled as “New Atheists”.  In most Unitarian Churches members are allowed and encouraged to present a sermon on a topic that they find of interest and hopefully of relevance to the other members. I therefore created this talk.

Atheist Sermon text

Atheist Sermon text

The talk was generally well received and as always, the author learned as much or more than the listeners through the preparations.

The work is about 10 PDF pages and took 30 minutes to present, so you may wish to just skim it.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed!

Unitarian