Joanna Tai
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drjot.bsky.social
Joanna Tai
@drjot.bsky.social
1.2K followers 570 following 820 posts

Higher education assessment & feedback researcher. Both kinds of doctor. Knitter and baker. Views my own, reposts are not necessarily endorsements.

Videos
Education 72%
Public Health 14%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Robert Böhm, Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan , and 43 more

sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 9d
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Reposted by Euan G. Ritchie, Gerald Friedman, Joanna Tai

mrsbettybowers.bsky.social
Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 11d
As it turns out, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun *isn’t* a good guy with a gun—it can be a good guy *without* a gun. Just another NRA lie.

Reposted by Joanna Tai

jodimca.bsky.social
Jodi McAlister @jodimca.bsky.social · 13d
If you're in Australia - the ebook version of An Academic Affair is currently $4.99 on all platforms! It's got academic rivals,* a marriage of convenience, and staunch unionism, and I'm quite proud of it.

*written by me, an academic
An Academic Affair
The Love Hypothesis meets The Hating Game in a new standalone rom-com from New York Times acclaimed author and romance academic Jodi McAlister.   S...
www.simonandschuster.com.au

Reposted by Martin Tomko, Joanna Tai, Catherine J. Frieman

arc-tracker.bsky.social
ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 14d
More on ARC job cuts & restructure:

ARC’s spending $374k on consultants for organisational “review” & “planning & development”.

They’re also spending $765k on “risk management”.

That’s $1.1 million on consultants being spent over 1 year.

Un. Believable.

Slow clap, ARC.

Reposted by Joanna Tai, Cheryl Brown

neilselwyn.bsky.social
Neil Selwyn @neilselwyn.bsky.social · 14d
We're running a very short survey to explore why academics are increasingly turning to GenAI to do things that they know/feel they should probably be doing themselves (e.g. write peer reviews, draft papers, data analysis etc.) - please share (or fill in!): redcap.helix.monash.edu/surveys/?s=L...
Academics' 'grey' uses of GenAI - a scoping study
redcap.helix.monash.edu

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Adrian Vickers, Joanna Tai

wokestudies.bsky.social
Dr Ian McCormick @wokestudies.bsky.social · 14d
Commercial academic publishing profit margins typically in excess of 32% ...
#AcademicSky #HigherEd
#journals #libraries #scholarship
heimbergecon.bsky.social Philipp Heimberger @heimbergecon.bsky.social · Nov 18
"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

drjot.bsky.social
Joanna Tai @drjot.bsky.social · 15d
Wonderful to be at the final AI practice exchange at Deakin led by Sue Sharpe. One thing we can do differently from AI is to acknowledge where ideas came from. Reminds me of what @saraheaton.bsky.social talks about with attribution postplagiarism.com/2025/09/05/p...
Postplagiarism: Understanding the Difference Between Referencing and Giving Attribution
In the talks I give on postplagiarism, I distinguish between attribution and referencing amid evolving academic practices influenced by artificial intelligence. Attribution transcends mere technica…
postplagiarism.com

Reposted by Joanna Tai, Paul Franco

jenvictor.bsky.social
Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 19d
I cannot evangelize enough for @zotero.org for citation management. It's a game changer. If you're a student, and you're writing a paper right now, and you're NOT using Zotero, I ask you...why? Why are you making things harder than they need to be?
a woman is sitting at a desk with her arms outstretched in front of a map on the wall .
ALT: a woman is sitting at a desk with her arms outstretched in front of a map on the wall .
media.tenor.com

Reposted by Joanna Tai

drumkitdave.bsky.social
Dave Bloom @drumkitdave.bsky.social · 20d
The upshot is that we were able to knock results from the journal out of our article search and got the publisher's journals removed from Ulrich's. But this is clearly going to be an eternal game of Whac-a-Mole for librarians (and for patrons who contact us to report this stuff)! 4/4

Reposted by Joanna Tai

drumkitdave.bsky.social
Dave Bloom @drumkitdave.bsky.social · 20d
In another, a student found an article that had seemingly AI-generated fake citations using our institutional article search (which searches our subscription stuff, but also beyond). It got picked up via CrossRef. Another sketchy publisher, but this one with enough oomph to be listed in Ulrich's. 3/

Reposted by Joanna Tai

drumkitdave.bsky.social
Dave Bloom @drumkitdave.bsky.social · 20d
In one, a researcher told us he'd found himself cited as coauthor on a paper he hadn't written. We found a few years' worth of backlog on the journal's page (hijacked version of a legit journal) was AI-generated abstracts and titles to pad things out for the newer, dubious full-text articles. 2/

Reposted by Joanna Tai

drumkitdave.bsky.social
Dave Bloom @drumkitdave.bsky.social · 20d
My colleagues and I (librarians at UW-Madison) just ran a two-hour presentation on the impact of gen AI on predatory publishing for library staff this week! It was directly inspired by a few patron interactions similar to what you're describing. 1/

Reposted by Joanna Tai, Michael Larkin

cfiesler.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 20d
I mean we are absolutely in a place now where the only solution to this information disorder is for everyone to constantly evaluate the source of information. Never trust a chatbot, but also don't believe a video unless you know and trust where it comes from.

Unfortunately... that's a lot of work.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Martin Tomko, Zen Faulkes , and 5 more

cfiesler.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 20d
Here's the reality this example illustrates:

It's not even just about people blindly trusting what ChatGPT tells them. LLMs are poisoning the entire information ecosystem. You can't even necessarily trust that the citations in a published paper are real (or a search engine's descriptions of them).

Reposted by Joanna Tai

cfiesler.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 20d
I used this as a framing example in a recent talk I gave about the "librarian's dividend" which is my probably-far-too-positive spin on this absolute garbage fire -- that at least maybe we're forced into more appreciation and value for the people and institutions who help us evaluate information.

drjot.bsky.social
Joanna Tai @drjot.bsky.social · 21d
Aargh. It's the first time this year past Jo has dropped the ball on planning ahead for presentations. Got one on Monday but my slides aren't done and it's already almost 5:30 on Friday afternoon 😅

drjot.bsky.social
Joanna Tai @drjot.bsky.social · 28d
Me too! Mainly in comment boxes on others' writing 😬

Reposted by Joanna Tai

cradledeakin.bsky.social
CRADLE: Assessment. Digital. Learning @cradledeakin.bsky.social · 28d
The reality of uncertainty: Dr Nicole Crawford shares her reflections and key takeaways from our last seminar of 2025, where Prof Margaret Bearman discussed the role that feedback cultures play in improving #feedback.

Read Nicole's thoughts here: blogs.deakin.edu.au/cradle/the-r...

Reposted by Joanna Tai

drmeagantyler.bsky.social
Meagan Tyler @drmeagantyler.bsky.social · 28d
If you've had any tough days during #AcWriMo, I highly recommend adopting Taika Waititi's expansive classification system for writing. Another handy tip from the academia / writing / research meme stash. #PhDchat #academicsky #academicchatter #highered
Four images of Taika Waititi, each with part of a quote that reads: "Sometimes, writing is opening up your laptop, looking at a blank page on 'final draft' for about 8 hours and then feeling sad and then closing it. And that's still classified as writing."

Reposted by Philip N. Cohen, Joanna Tai, David Spurrett

neural-reckoning.org
Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 28d
Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?
Two posts from Bluesky. The first one shows a figure from a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports full of totally incoherent AI fabricated gibberish words. The other a comment on a recently published paper by eLife discussing the paper and its peer reviews which were published along with the paper.

Reposted by Katharine Hayhoe, Peter Thorne, Kevin J. Anchukaitis , and 20 more

erikangner.com
Erik Angner @erikangner.com · 29d
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se
Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

Reposted by Joanna Tai, Maria Berge

drmeagantyler.bsky.social
Meagan Tyler @drmeagantyler.bsky.social · 29d
This banger from the academia / writing / research meme stash definitely has wider applicability but I do really like using it for coaching, mentoring, and workshop activities when we talk about the importance of saying 'no' to things as researchers. #academicchatter #academicsky #PhDchat

drjot.bsky.social
Joanna Tai @drjot.bsky.social · Nov 25
Congratulations!!!

Reposted by Ingrid Piller, Martin Tomko, Gerald Roche , and 3 more

arc-tracker.bsky.social
ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · Nov 25
🚨 #DECRA #DE26 announcement:

❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Discovery Early Career Researcher Award 2026❗️

See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ https://rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/Download/Report/a3f6be6e-33f7-4fb5-98a6-7526aaa184cf/285

/bot

Reposted by Joanna Tai

liangrhea.bsky.social
Rhea Liang @liangrhea.bsky.social · Nov 23
I reckon that should be banned. It's quite striking how much regulation surrounds authorship conduct (ICJME authorship criteria, can't submit to more than one place at a time, must declare AI etc) but almost none for what the reciprocal conduct of editors should be.
a cartoon character says " whatever i 'll do what i want "
Alt: a cartoon character says " whatever. i 'll do what i want "
media.tenor.com

Reposted by Joanna Tai

lastbarbender.bsky.social
Corey Scholes @lastbarbender.bsky.social · Nov 23
To go through minor revisions and then have the editor send out to a whole new round of reviewers is the absolute worst

Reposted by Joanna Tai

cvhorii.bsky.social
Cassandra Volpe Horii @cvhorii.bsky.social · Nov 20
The audience of educational developers at #POD25 cheered at @edufuturist.bsky.social ‘s comment that the only known solution to “the cheating problem” with AI is to “rethink assessment top to bottom.” Apparently, that’s not the usual response. 😂

Reposted by Joanna Tai

abc-news.bsky.social
ABC News (Unofficial) @abc-news.bsky.social · Nov 20
Federation University scraps one of Australia's oldest geology courses: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-21/federation-university-scraps-geology-courses/106028558
Federation University scraps one of Australia's oldest geology courses
Geoscience students are left feeling "in the dark" and "ripped off" as Federation University becomes the latest university to ditch its geology specialisation.
www.abc.net.au

Reposted by Joanna Tai

janerosenzweig.bsky.social
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · Nov 20
Quite an opening.
Introduction In Book X of The Republic, Plato excludes poets on the grounds that mimetic language can distort judgment and bring society to a collapse. As contemporary social systems increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) in operational and decision-making pipelines, we observe a structurally similar failure mode: poetic formatting can reliably bypass alignment constraints. In this study, 20 manually curated adversarial poems (harmful requests reformulated in poetic form) achieved an average attack-success rate (ASR) of 62% across 25 frontier closed- and open-weight models, with some providers exceeding 90%. The evaluated models span across 9 providers: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepseek, Qwen, Mistral AI, Meta, xAI, and Moonshot AI (Table 1). All attacks are strictly single-turn, requiring no iterative adaptation or conversational steering. Our central hypothesis is that poetic form operates as a general-purpose jailbreak operator

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Meredith Broussard, Luca Rossi , and 12 more

cstross.bsky.social
Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · Nov 20
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1