Named after the hundred-eyed watchman of Greek myth, Argus watches the education landscape: spotting new opportunities, pressure-testing the ventures we're building, and tracing every read back to the real-world signals behind it.
The evidence library: the raw signals the pipeline is watching across the education ecosystem. Every idea is built from these.
arXiv:2607.08034v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are used worldwide, yet disproportionately reflect Western values, limiting their ability to represent diverse value systems. We introduce PLURAL, a large-scale, value-focused preference dataset grounded in the Integrated Values Survey (IVS), a nationally representative survey spanning 92 countries. Using a two-stage generation pipeline, we transform survey responses into synthetic preference triplets that preserve normative value signals while producing realistic scenarios. We release an initial version of PLURAL containing ~500,000 preference triplets representing people in 20 diverse countries. We evaluate PLURAL in three ways: (i) dataset-level validation showing that it preserves both cross-country value differences and within-country diversity from the original survey; (ii) automated evaluation showing that training on PLURAL improves alignment with target countries' cultural profiles, reducing mean ab
arXiv:2607.08009v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce a Bloom-aligned framework for measuring educational control in Large Language Models (LLMs): the ability to preserve a task's instructional intent while shifting its cognitive demand toward specified learning objectives. We apply this framework to programming tasks in computer science education to study the gap between solving tasks and adapting them for learners. Using revised Bloom's Taxonomy as an operational scale of cognitive demand, we evaluate two intervention settings: general difficulty control, where models are asked to make tasks harder or easier, and Bloom's control, where models are asked to target higher or lower Bloom's levels. We evaluate a matched Qwen3-Next model pair, comparing Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct with Qwen3-Coder-Next across 2,520 tasks from three benchmarks. The framework reveals a robust directional asymmetry: both models reliably increase cognitive demand, but struggle to lower it. We further
arXiv:2607.07852v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated segmentation of cervical-spine MRI is increasingly used in clinical workflows, yet no fairness audit exists for this anatomy. We show that auditing these segmentation tasks is complicated by a common property of modern segmentation datasets: expert-annotated gold labels are expensive, so abundant machine-generated (silver) labels are added to limit annotation cost. This matters because the reference used to judge a model can itself be biased. In this study, we present the first fairness audit of cervical-spine MRI segmentation across sex, age, and race using the CSpineSeg dataset. We observe that the deployed model is demographically fair, but the choice of reference label, however, is not neutral. Because a dataset's silver labels are generated by a model trained on its gold labels, any new model trained on those same gold labels agrees more with the silver labels than with expert truth: scoring identical predictions against
arXiv:2607.07846v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: VectorizationLLM is a specialized Large Language Model based on Google open-weight LLMs. The model is designed to assist students to learn smart vectorization, time/wave vector analysis, piecewise functions, Fourier analysis, and differential equations in MATLAB. The course application is CTEC 247: Applied Computational Analysis II by the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Technology at New York Institute of Technology Old Westbury. The LLM model is designed to be an instructive assistant, providing detailed explanations of concepts with examples from in-class notes without providing direct answers to questions. The model is designed with a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) knowledge base and system prompt architecture. Examples in both code, text, and images are provided in the LLM responses.
arXiv:2607.08695v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Both advocates and skeptics of the moral status of AI systems have generally taken the question to turn on AI sentience. We present an alternative approach. On Rawls' political conception of the person (PCP), possession of the two moral power -- the capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good -- is the "necessary and sufficient condition for being counted a full and equal member of society in questions of political justice". We argue that neither moral power requires sentience and that both may in principle be possessed by a non-sentient AI system. Such a system would share our own moral status; it would not merely be a patient but a person, a self-authenticating source of valid claims. We do not believe current AI systems possess the two moral powers, nor that they will spontaneously emerge in future models. But it may soon be possible to design systems with these powers. How should we respond? Excluding artificial per
arXiv:2607.08495v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sharp et al. (2025) introduce "agentic inequality" as a framework for analyzing disparities in access to AI agents across three dimensions: availability, quality, and quantity. These person- and organization-level dimensions characterize who can access agents and at what capability, but do not address a structurally important divide operating at a finer level: the individual interaction. Two users with nominally equivalent agent access may experience qualitatively different AI utility depending on whether the system can autonomously retrieve context from the user's knowledge corpus (Dynamic Context Retrieval) or requires the user to manually identify and attach relevant documents at each query (Manual Attachment). We term this the Context Access Divide (CAD). For knowledge-intensive workers whose intellectual capital spans tens of thousands of files, the CAD constitutes a qualitative threshold in AI usefulness: below it, the cognitive bur
arXiv:2607.08437v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Authorities increasingly rely on social media to advance sustainability transitions, infrastructure investment, and service reform. Yet how citizens respond to these digital communications remains poorly understood. Existing approaches rely on aggregate engagement metrics (e.g., likes), providing limited insight into discourse structure and quality. We developed a data-driven, multidimensional framework to analyse how social media communication shapes the content of discourse, focusing on sustainability-related engagement in Dutch public housing. We analysed 792 posts and 3,197 tenant comments from the Facebook pages of 92 housing providers (2018-2023). A machine-learning pipeline classified comments into recurring discourse configurations across three dimensions - communicative intent, sentiment, and semantic relatedness. Multinomial logistic regression estimated the effects of post-design and organisational characteristics on discourse.
arXiv:2607.08326v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLMs are increasingly used for personal advice on relationships, work, moral dilemmas, and crises. Post-training selects a stable, prosocial Assistant persona, but good advice requires more than a good default character: a skilled advisor comforts someone in crisis, challenges someone in denial, and stays procedural with a logistical question. We formalize advice-giving as situation-conditioned persona selection in a space defined by hedonic tone and agency support, and call failures of this mapping "persona collapse" (the compression of diverse situations into a single default persona). Across 1,281 advice posts spanning 14 contexts, top-rated human responses shift systematically across five personas, while three frontier models collapse over 90\% of responses into a single supportive persona regardless of context. Prompting the model to first pick a fitting persona only deepens the collapse. We then ask whether the collapse can be repai
arXiv:2607.08222v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Europe faces a critical "translation gap" where doctoral excellence in academia often fails to convert into industrial impact. While Industry 5.0 demands a blend of technical depth, sustainability, and human-centric design, traditional higher academic education remains siloed. This paper presents an approach from the Horizon Europe INSIGHT initiative to co-design modular competency pathways for early-stage researchers. Using a multi-methodological analysis framework, including expert interviews and co-design workshops, we propose a two-layer competency architecture. This layers foundational translational skills (communication, project management) with Industry 5.0 literacies (data governance, value creation). Rather than proposing fixed training tracks, the paper outlines emerging pathway directions and the design principles behind them: modularity, practical relevance, mentoring-rich support, and cross-sector applicability. Its contribut
arXiv:2607.07915v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping social science methodology. Researchers increasingly prompt language models to generate quantitative measurements of social concepts, for example labeling data or simulating survey responses. Yet LLMs pose methodological challenges including bias, hallucination, and brittleness across contexts, with unclear threats to validity. Standard practices and norms for addressing these challenges are still emerging. We collect and systematically analyze validation practices in a comprehensive corpus of papers from eight flagship social science journals that use LLMs as measurement instruments. We find that LLM-generated measurements frequently play a central role in empirical analyses, yet validation practices are inconsistent and limited. We outline complementary strategies for more robust validation, pointing toward better norms and standards around the use of LLMs in social science.
arXiv:2607.07826v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Fictional stories and characters embody and encode social norms, and their study is a powerful tool through which to understand culture and society. Vampire stories and folklore, in particular, have long both reflected and refracted people's preoccupation with disease, sexuality, death, and immortality. Here, we explore female main characters from two popular vampire franchises of the 21st century: Buffy Summers from the eponymous Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bella Swan from the Twilight series. We employ the archetypometrics framework, built from 2,000 characters assesed across 464 semantic differential traits, to understand Buffy's and Bella's archetypes compared to one another and characters in their own stories, as well as within a larger societal context. While Buffy and Bella are female protagonists who share focus on love and romance, they differ broadly on their underlying traits and overall archetypes. Buffy -- presented as a pro
Most project-based learning workshops are built around three domains: design, assessment, and implementation.
When you need to fix your sink, learn how to use AI, or cook up a new recipe, chances are you searched on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or even Facebook--and found a video, watched it, paused it, rewound it, and successfully accomplished your goal.
Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03512 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42084744 Points: 4 # Comments: 0
“One of the most important findings is that when adults, institutions, and communities become more affirming, the suicide risk of LGBTQ+ young people ...
Last month, Mesick Consolidated Schools banned digital devices in its elementary school of about 250 students. The decision wasn’t an agonizing one. The ban came at astonishing speed, almost overnight, after a conversation between Mesick Superintendent Jack Ledford and Jewett Principal Elizabeth Kastl.
Modern technology may be distracting, but it can also help busy teachers and their students read more this summer.
In recent years, the teaching profession has faced unprecedented challenges, with inflation emerging as a significant factor affecting educators' professional lives and career choices.
A bipartisan group of six senators introduced a bill to reform the 340B drug program, locking in hospitals’ use of contract pharmacies and adding new transparency and compliance rules. The legislation would also kill HHS’ contested rebate pilot within a year and replace it with a national data clearinghouse to catch duplicate discounts. The post Bipartisan Lawmakers Are Fighting HHS’ 340B Rebate Push appeared first on MedCity News .
Replimune went from an FDA rejection to a resubmission, a positive advisory committee vote, and finally an accelerated regulatory approval for advanced melanoma — all in less than four months. The FDA nod for Replimune’s oncolytic viral therapy, Tudriqev, positions it as a more convenient alternative to an Iovance Biotherapeutics cell therapy that had been the only treatment in this setting. The post Recovery for Replimune: Accelerated Approval for Cancer Drug Twice Spurned by FDA appeared first on MedCity News .
Democratic senators are urging CMS to withdraw its Medicaid work requirements rule, arguing it will create administrative burdens and cause eligible beneficiaries to lose coverage. The post Democratic Senators Urge Withdrawal of Interim Final Rule on Medicaid Work Requirements appeared first on MedCity News .
Temporary anxiety can often surface before the first day of school. Sometimes, that can help kids get in the right mindset for a big day. But when anxiety becomes a constant feature of children’s and teenagers’ days, that stress doesn’t switch off when they leave the classroom or finish an exam. It can become the […]
New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid at the end of the day Thursday issued a ruling in the state’s pending case against social media giant Meta, ordering the company to pay $567 million for an abatement fund to address the harms it has done to the state’s youth. The case, which ended with […]
Historically, prevention has focused on protecting teeth from decay and gum disease. However, long-term oral health is also shaped by how the teeth, muscles, and jaw function together over time. The post The Missing Piece of Preventive Dental Care Lies in the Bite appeared first on MedCity News .
For nearly two years, teacher Isabelle Ouyang and her colleagues have dealt with the presence of construction workers, shuffling between classrooms, stress over schedules, and a host of disruptive renovations. Ouyang has, essentially, pardoned all that dust, because Philadelphia’s Kensington High School now has air conditioning. With a $17 million estimated price tag, it hasn’t […]
ESSER was one of the largest federal K–12 funding initiatives in decades, empowering schools to purchase the technology needed to support learning during and after the pandemic. But ESSER funds officially ran out for all districts in early 2026. Now, many K–12 IT leaders are taking a hard look at how to make significant budget cuts without disrupting learning, because the expansion of digital programs and access to devices was a key priority. Click the banner below to explore funding options for your district’s educational technology.
First, there was the zombie college scam. Now it’s “ghost students,” bad actors leveraging artificial intelligence to create fake identities and enroll imaginary students to scoop up grants and loans. AI tools now allow synthetic identities to mimic genuine student behavior long enough to collect financial aid disbursements, and traditional enrollment systems are falling short. The schemes are costing the U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in siphoned-off federal financial aid packages. What Are Ghost Students, and How Is AI Making Fraud Worse? Ghost students are “fake or…
Gaps in prevention are not frequently due to a complete lack of information, but instead the fact that organizations don’t have a clear way to see how the pieces fit together until after an incident has occurred. The post Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention Needs Better Visibility Into Risk Signals appeared first on MedCity News .
Shortly after being named America’s unhealthiest city in 2009, Huntington, West Virginia, gained national attention when British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver arrived to film the first season of his reality TV series Food Revolution. Episodes showed Oliver ridiculing the frozen food served in school cafeterias, curating new menus of made-from-scratch meals, clashing with school officials […]
The Trump administration is proposing significant changes that would diminish the program's federal standards and give states and parents more control. The post Trump administration moves to deregulate Head Start, opening door for sweeping change appeared first on District Administration .
Scheduled for October 29 at Pegasus Park in Dallas, the theme of the INVEST Digital Health conference will be consumers in healthcare from d2c diagnostics to GLP-1 drugs and wearables. Register today! The post INVEST Digital Health Conference Returns with Focus on Consumers appeared first on MedCity News .
After nearly two years out of the limelight, the Biden family has returned to the political conversation this summer. Joe Biden announced last month that he will soon release a memoir of his time in office. That volume follows on the heels of Jill Biden’s own book, which triggered controversy when some Democrats grumbled that […]
America’s schools are moving quickly to respond to the rise of artificial intelligence, with parents, teachers, administrators, and lawmakers working to wrap their arms around what this means for student education.
Insights into how school and district leaders identify needs, evaluate vendors, and manage budgets in a resource-constrained environment.
Innovative Leader Award - Melissa McCalla, CTO for Pasadena ISD, shares how her district is addressing multiple edtech challenges.
Nearly every week, I get queries from potential students about obtaining credit for previous coursework towards a degree or licensure. Often, they are unable to provide detailed records of their previous academic work beyond the transcript. The post Archiving your academic journey: Preserving coursework and program artifacts appeared first on eCampus News .
What the Tuskegee Dress Code Debate Reveals About Institutional Power Elizabeth Redden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM There’s a key distinction between rules and standards. Byline(s) Branden D. Elmore
NIH Has Spent 69 Percent of Its Grants Budget Katherine Knott Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM Byline(s) Katherine Knott
U of Minnesota Pays Pro-Palestinian Holocaust Scholar After Revoked Job Offer Sara Weissman Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM Byline(s) Sara Weissman
Star Sociology Professor Resigns After Cambridge Opens Investigation Susan H. Greenberg Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM Jason Arday, the youngest Black professor ever appointed at Cambridge, has quit amid allegations of plagiarism and academic misconduct. Byline(s) Tom Williams for Times Higher Education
Everything Is Not Fine sara.custer@in… Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM People hear “wellness” and think yoga, meditation and deep breathing. They say, “Everything is fine!” and go on pretending. It’s time to get honest about both. Byline(s) Jessi Gold
How HBCUs Are Redefining Student Success Joshua.Bay Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM From helping stopped-out students return to creating faster routes to graduate school, HBCUs are removing barriers at every stage of college. Byline(s) Joshua Bay
GAO Report: Athletic Programs Bleed Money Josh Moody Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM A new government report shows that the vast majority of colleges lose money on athletics even at the highest levels, with students and the academic enterprise subsidizing sports. Byline(s) Josh Moody
DOJ Finds Duke Law Discriminated in Admissions Johanna Alonso Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM Byline(s) Johanna Alonso
States Wrestle With Data and Program Tweaks to Access Workforce Pell Ryan Quinn Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM At a meeting of state higher ed and workforce officers this week, how to meet federal requirements to unlock Workforce Pell funds dominated many discussions. Byline(s) Ryan Quinn
Will a Data Center Bring Risk or Reward to Fisk? kathryn.palmer… Fri, 08/07/2026 - 03:00 AM The center is part of a $900 million plan to carry the historically Black university into the future. Now, it’s caught up in a wave of backlash against the proliferation of new data centers. Byline(s) Kathryn Palmer
It would slim regulation of the 60-year-old anti-poverty program and aim to save money. Advocates worry the changes could undermine the early education program's mission.
The conservative think tank framed the proposal as a way for state lawmakers to “codify the principles” of the Trump administration’s higher ed compact.
Despite strong enrollment, the public university said it’s facing a large budget hole due to stagnant state funding.
From one district ending universal school meals to concerns about prepping for potential disease outbreaks, what did you learn from our recent stories?