Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Higher Education High Horizons

At CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 in Sydney the closing keynote talk on the first day was "Visions of the higher education horizon: possible futures" by Bryan Alexander, NITLE. But Bryan's vision was still somewhat limited. He saw a future where scholarly papers were "peer reviewed" by anyone human on the planet. I suggest that it is likely that AI systems will also be used to peer review papers. Apart from this there will be a system of reputation as used on LinkedIn: anyone will be able to review a paper, but the amount of weight that carries will depend on your reputation, as judged by your peers.

My ability to enjoy Bryan's presentation was hampered, as has been much of the conference by the unreliability of the WiFi. I sat there wondering who he was (I had never heard of him before). He obviously was know to others in the audience and I wanted to get a quick overview of his work, but the WiFi did not work in the main conference room.

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