In this episode, John and Jason react to the new button in Google’s Notebook LM that allows users to make an instant podcast. Will it be a threat to educators' voices and hard-working podcasters everywhere? See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

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Links and Resources:

• NotebookLM


• Jason’s article “Better Definitions of Distance Education”
  
  • The AI Deep Dive Podcast based on the article.
  
  
  
  

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

[00:00:00 ] Jason: That's onlinelearningpodcast.com.

[00:00:03 ] John: Perfect. And that was a real human doing that.

[00:00:06 ] Jason: That was a real human, even though I sounded a little more. I leaned into the mic to make it sound a little more podcasty.

[00:00:12 ] John: Good. Well, we'll have to work on our upbeat banter between

[00:00:16 ] Jason: guess so.

[00:00:16 ] John: too.

[00:00:17 ] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:20 ] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast.

[00:00:25 ] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last couple of years about online education. Look, online learning's had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but a lot of it still isn't. How are we going to get there, Jason?

[00:00:40 ] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:00:45 ] John Nash: That's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:00:48 ] Jason: Nice to see you. How's Sweden?

[00:00:50 ] John: Sweden is good. It's a little rainy here, but now the sun is coming out. It looks like we'll have a nice weekend here. So, it's

[00:00:57 ] Jason: Yeah. Good.

[00:00:59 ] John: So, Jason, what do you think about Google's notebook the LM and what it's doing in particular with these that we'll make from content? Yeah.

[00:01:12 ] Jason: was wild, we've been at this at least a couple of years talking about, at least between you and I, and then like a year and a half here in the podcast, talking about AI and some of its effects on education primarily, but also just on a lot of the creative work that you and I do in different ways.

Right. And I joked with somebody that, was fine when AI came for the graphic designers because, I'm not a graphic designer and, when it came for the writers and because I've never been that enthralled with the five paragraph essay anyways,

[00:01:45 ] John: yeah.

[00:01:45 ] Jason: the, the podcasting

[00:01:47 ] John: it's fine that AI put the writers and the graphic designers out of business, but this part about podcasters, that's just too far, That's right. Exactly.

[00:01:55 ] Jason: Notebook LM has been at it for about a year. I believe is the first time that I used it. And it had some nice features of pulling in different content and so on, but they just popped out this podcasting feature and I was blown away by how natural it sounded and then how like up and positive and excited the podcast hosts were about everything that it talked about.

John maybe we can listen to a couple of clips that we made. Here's one that I made actually out of a 2020 article that I had published around creating new definitions of distance education. And so, yeah, anyways, let's listen to a little bit and, and see what you think.

[00:02:44 ] John: Yeah, let's do that, because I think that'll show the banter and the give and take.

[00:02:48 ] Notebook 2: Totally. Technically, both are distance learning, but they're totally different experiences.

Night and day. And I think that's why you started seeing researchers like Simonson and Seeprasad trying to add more to the definition.

[00:03:01 ] Notebook 1: They were really emphasizing things like two way communication, individualized instruction, that kind of thing.

[00:03:06 ] Notebook 2: They knew those old definitions were too simple for this new world of online learning. It wasn't just, are the teacher and student in the same room anymore.

[00:03:14 ] Notebook 1: But even with those additions, finding one definition everyone agrees on. Still tough.

[00:03:20 ] Notebook 2: Moving target for sure. And it matters. It's not just a theoretical debate.

[00:03:24 ] Notebook 1: Right. This whole definition dilemma has real consequences.

[00:03:28 ] Notebook 2: Big time.

[00:03:29 ] Notebook 1: Like that whole thing with Western Governors University WGU.

[00:03:32 ] Notebook 2: Oh yeah, the WGU case is a perfect example of why this matters. So you've got this university, huge online enrollment, all about competency based learning, really innovative stuff.

[00:03:43 ] Notebook 1: And then they got in trouble with the U. S. Department of Education, I vaguely remember this.

[00:03:47 ] Notebook 2: Yeah, big audit back in 2017, and suddenly they're being accused of basically running a glorified correspondence course.

[00:03:53 ] Notebook 1: Seriously, what was the problem? Did they just forget to file some paperwork or something?

[00:03:58 ] Notebook 2: It was more about how they were defining, or not defining, distance education.

See, the Department of Education was about ready to pull their Title IV funding, make them pay back a ton of money.

[00:04:10 ] Notebook 1: Whoa. All over a definition. All because the auditors

,

[00:04:13 ] John: yeah, that was really interesting.

Was also a little blown away by the attempt at sort of natural banter between two people in English what's available now is English only. I can put it to you this way. The people that we're working with here at Kristianstad University in Sweden we met them actually our, they came back from a flight from Madrid, and we landed from Atlanta, or no, well, actually from Amsterdam in Copenhagen, and we were on the same plane to Copenhagen. We got on the train together to come to Kristianstad. So, we were sitting there and they're talking about how they're using 11 labs. And they're really happy with them to do some, some capturing lecture and just some presentation. And I said, well, let me just show you. And so, off my phone, while we're going 70 miles an hour on the train, I played a little bit of a piece of a podcast, just 15 seconds, but they put their ears down to it and they both looked up and said, that's pretty amazing. They think it's better than 11 labs. I do too. Then of course they're first to say, and that's very Americanized banter and really just only centered on that. And so, it'll be interesting to see.. That's my first thing.

I think the other thing is that the there's too much banter. It's almost trying too hard to make it seem like the the hosts, and there's a male and a female co host on these podcasts, that they're just really into whatever it is they're talking about. And it's, I'm not sure how you tone that down or you can the LLM in brackets or something,

[00:05:47 ] Jason: Right.

[00:05:48 ] John: prompt, because it's all based on a piece of content that you give the notebook. So that's a little concerning. And then there may be some, as we're learning, talking to colleagues, you shared an email with me from someone, you know, that, you know, there's an article that was posted or a blog post about the, it's a little bit gendered and sort of the male host may be talking more than the female host.

That's not great. It doesn't have the ability to critically look at stuff. I don't know how you program that into the prompt, but those are things that I've been thinking about since you raised them with me before we got on the line today. Yeah.

[00:06:21 ] Jason: And cause we, we know that AI

[00:06:24 ] John: so upbeat.

They're so upbeat.

[00:06:27 ] Jason: is mean centric. Like it gives us the average of things most often. And I wonder if that's some of what is playing out as well. It's interesting? The people you're traveling with to get their impression to them, that just sounded like typified American kind of podcasting because I think that there's a way in which that is true.

And so, I wonder about how. How much of an average the notebook LM responses to pod like this is the absolute most average podcasting feel that you could get a man and a woman and some of these, perhaps some of these gendered kind of responses and ways in which they response. Yeah. And yeah,

[00:07:12 ] John: It's almost like you could give it any content. Content that's even mediocre or bad ideas and it would be like putting lipstick on a pig. They're, they're

[00:07:20 ] Jason: going to just

[00:07:20 ] John: say, Oh, this

great

y'know

[00:07:22 ] Jason: right. Yeah, I noticed that