higher education

New tests show that AI can design like an expert Instructional Designer: so what next? [Hardman]

On 10/16/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Open AI, tools, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Here is Phillipa’s posting on LinkedIn.

Light Bulb Moments from 100 Episodes — from intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com by Derek Bruff

Per Derek:

Welcome to the 100th episode of Intentional Teaching! I am very excited to reach this milestone, and I am deeply grateful to all my guests and all my listeners for making this possible. I learn so much from my guests, and I’m thrilled to know that folks out there appreciate the interviews and the show.

In this 100th episode, I take a look back at some of the light bulb moments I’ve had interviewing guests over the last four years. What quotes and ideas and examples have really stuck with me and informed my work?

My hope is that you’ll find these moments interesting and perhaps useful to your work in higher education, and that this clip show might interest you in digging into the podcast archives and listening to some older episodes.

Anthropic released a law student plugin. It’s designed to act as a tutor, but it will brief cases, build outlines, predict exam questions based on sample exams, and many other skills.
I’ll show you how to install it in the comments. You should expect your students are using this. You should probably use it for your footnotes.

— Paul Weitzel (@IThinkIAgree) October 13, 2026

Online Course Video Statistics — from markstudios.com by Mark Santos

“Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How many people take online courses, how big the platforms are, how long course videos actually hold attention, how many learners finish, what the money looks like, and which popular online course statistics do not survive being traced to their origin.”
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Want to Close the Skills Gap? Bring Learning Closer to Work — from campustechnology.com by Elise Awwad

Key Takeaways

The skills gap is a workforce access problem as much as a talent problem: Employers broadly plan to upskill workers, yet many employees still lack sufficient time or access to AI training.
AI fluency compounds where workers already have access: Employees who use AI regularly build confidence and capability, while those whose jobs keep them farther from the technology risk falling further behind.
Upskilling works better when learning is integrated with work: Employers and higher education should create pathways that combine technical and durable skills with on-the-job application, rather than treating reskilling as an individual responsibility.

The skills employers say they cannot find are increasingly the skills they expect employees and candidates to arrive with, fully formed, at their own expense.
…
Upskilling or reskilling is often framed as an individual responsibility: a matter of initiative, of staying current. But if employers need these skills, they have a stake in making sure workers have a realistic way to develop them.

How to spot bias in your own teaching – and what to do about it [Folayan]

On 10/08/2026, in adjunct faculty, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, pedagogy, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

How to spot bias in your own teaching – and what to do about it — from timeshighereducation.com by Dami Folayan
Bias can materialise as a set of habits no one thought to question. Here’s how to look at your own teaching with clear eyes

Bias in higher education rarely announces itself, but this hidden problem is within a lecturer’s power to put right.

Imagine a criminology lecture on violent offenders, where the slide shows a young Black man in a hoodie. There might not be intended harm or overt racism behind the choice, but that stock image has taught the class something the syllabus never intended: who to picture when we think of a criminal.

Bias takes many forms, and in my research on race, gender and inequality in higher education, it rarely shows up as overt hostility. Far more often, it’s a habit no one has stopped to question, in how we choose examples, award marks and decide who we expect to struggle, whether along lines of race, gender, class or disability.

This bias shapes outcomes because a student who feels out of place gets less from a course than one who thinks it was made for them. These habits sit within our own teaching, so they’re ours to correct.

[Gifted article] Most college students get grants. See how they cut the price at 2,100 schools. [Wallack, Moriarty & Douglas-Gabriel]

On 10/08/2026, in business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, funding / grants, higher education, parents/guardians, society, student-related, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Most college students get grants. See how they cut the price at 2,100 schools. — from washingtonpost.com by Todd Wallack, Dylan Moriarty and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel (this is a gifted article)
The Post created a list that shows the average cost to attend over 2,100 U.S. colleges. This tool allows you to see a school’s sticker price compared with the average real price — factoring in the average amount students get in grants and scholarships.

You might have seen us report recently that students often don’t pay the full sticker price for tuition at expensive schools.

So how much does college actually cost where you live?

We put together a searchable list of more than 2,100 four-year colleges and universities across the country so you can see how much colleges cost on average after factoring in grants and scholarships, including money students receive from the government, private organizations or the schools themselves.

The Age of Perpetual Change — from educause.edu
Artificial intelligence (AI) has risen to the number one spot on the 2027 EDUCAUSE Top 10. But its rank signals urgency more than consensus, and higher education is still grappling with what AI-driven change could mean for institutions. In many ways, AI embodies a broader reality: We’re living in an age of perpetual change.

2027 Top 10 Overview
Technological innovation is outpacing our ability to manage and harness it. The political and economic winds around us are erratic. And higher education itself is undergoing profound shifts that will reshape how our institutions function.

While this atmosphere breeds uncertainty and anxiety, it can also inspire innovation and growth. The 2027 EDUCAUSE Top 10 highlights how the higher education technology community is responding to those opportunities.

The Education Design Lab’s Reimagining Community Colleges Summit [Lauritsen]

On 10/08/2026, in career development, change, changing business models, communities of practice, community colleges, design, experimentation, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, United States, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
A couple of key quotes jumped out at me here:

And what would have to change for every learner to experience a college that knows them, believes in them, and is connected to the community where they hope to build a life?
…
The ideas these colleges started with aren’t necessarily the ideas they’re pursuing now, and that’s exactly the point. Through human-centered design, they listened deeply to learners, employers, faculty, staff, and community partners. They challenged assumptions and changed direction based on what they learned. What they are building reflects the needs, strengths, and aspirations of their communities. That is what designing with people looks like.

Priority 1: Getting a View and Setting a Vision Across Systems — from michaelbhorn.substack.com by Michael B. Horn, Angela Jackson, Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, and Danny Curtis

The shift required to prepare learners for a labor market defined by rapid skill change and more complex transitions cannot be accomplished by any one system. Nor is it enough for K–12, higher education, and workforce development to improve independently. They must work together—aligning programs, sharing resources, creating smoother transitions, and building models that combine academic learning with real workplace experience. Career readiness is not simply a goal these systems share. It is a shared outcome that they produce together as parts of a single talent pipeline.

For that reason, the first priority for states is not a single programmatic reform. It is creating a coherent, cross-system strategy. K–12, higher education, and workforce agencies— and the providers they oversee—need a common understanding of the current system, the future state they are trying to build, the changes required to get there, and the progress they are making toward those changes.
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New study: 15 community college presidents on what it will take to lead higher ed’s next chapter [eddesignlab.org]

On 09/19/2026, in career development, change, changing business models, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

New study: 15 community college presidents on what it will take to lead higher ed’s next chapter — from eddesignlab.org

Community colleges are at a pivotal moment.

As learners, employers, and regional economies change, these institutions have an opportunity to lead the next evolution of higher education — if they can move beyond structures built for a different era.

In the Lab’s new study, Insights from 15 Community College Presidents on the Future of Learning in a New Economy, leaders share their perspectives on the opportunities and barriers facing the sector, as well as the institutional changes needed to help more learners access economic mobility.

Their insights validate Education Design Lab’s Future of Learning framework, which asks five essential design questions:

How might we make skills and competencies visible?
How might we create stackable pathways that credential skills along the way?
How might we make learning universally flexible through multiple modalities?
How might we guarantee applied learning opportunities for every learner?
How might we ensure every learner has access to adequate support services?

Will smart glasses make it too risky to speak up in class? — from timeshighereducation.com by Georgia Luckhurst & Kieran Phelan
AI-powered glasses may boost learning but they also pose obvious threats to privacy, academic integrity and the sanctity of the seminar room as a safe space to explore ideas. Are universities doing enough to head off the risks, asks Georgia Luckhurst – while Kieran Phelan suggests they are not

Smart glasses can superimpose information on to a viewer’s field of vision, and they can access apps and communicate with your phone. Some are hands-free while some require touch, and some also respond to voice automation. Most controversially, they can take pictures and record footage, potentially without anyone else knowing that it is happening. And they are becoming ever more common.

But, for academia, the biggest issue associated with smart glasses may be a decline in intellectual risk-taking and freedom of expression, Murray said.

How useful are smart glasses in improving accessibility in higher education? — from timeshighereducation.com by Helen Nicholson-Benn
Smart glasses have the potential to support learning for disabled students, but this technology also comes with significant privacy concerns. Helen Nicholson-Benn looks at how to balance functional benefits with data security and safeguarding

Consider how different models of smart glasses might be used to improve accessibility in higher education. A deaf student might use XRai’s ar2 captioning glasses during a lecture to view live captions in their eyeline, allowing them to follow the content without looking down at a separate screen. A visually impaired student might use Envision’s Ally Solos glasses to generate a description of images on printed material or read text during a class. The glasses provide a hands-free option rather than scanning the materials with their smartphone.

These examples are hypothetical, and smart glasses are far from an everyday teaching tool, but that may be about to change. Smart glasses available today are far more capable than their predecessors, particularly boosted by developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Which brings up the topic of how to handle these technologies in the classroom:

Are device-free classrooms the way forward? — from timeshighereducation.com by Georgia Luckhurst
US universities embrace laptop and phone bans, but professor suggests policies may be more about political positioning than pedagogy

Growing numbers of US universities are making some of their courses “device free”, drawing mixed enthusiasm from edtech experts.

In the latest move the University of Chicago is introducing a no-laptops and no-phones policy on three of its 15 required undergraduate modules, aiming to “reduce distractions and encourage face-to-face discussions”. Exceptions remain, including for students with disabilities.
…
Device-free policies appear in other countries, experts suggested, despite the trend picking up pace in the US.

How to Reduce Cognitive Load in Digital Lessons — from educationtechnologysolutions.com by etsmagazine

A digital lesson can be beautifully designed and still make learning unnecessarily hard.

Students may be asked to watch a video, remember an instruction, find a link, switch tabs, interpret unfamiliar icons and submit a response—all before they have dealt with the idea the lesson was meant to teach.

That friction is often mistaken for rigour. It is not. Productive difficulty comes from thinking about the content. Avoidable difficulty comes from navigating the lesson.

The goal is not to make learning effortless. It is to spend students’ limited attention on the knowledge and skill that matter.

The above article links to:

Managing cognitive load optimises learning — from edresearch.edu.au
Implications for policymakers

Risks and Rewards of IoT in Higher Education [Dickson]

On 09/16/2026, in 24x7x365 access, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, higher education, internet, IT in HE, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, the downsides of how people use tech, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Risks and Rewards of IoT in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Akeya Dickson
Shadow IT is flooding college and university networks as students move back to campus. Here’s how higher ed IT leaders can secure their networks without impacting the student experience.

Connected minifridges, smart speakers and internet-based gaming consoles are among the devices students are bringing to college that IT departments may not have accounted for — or even know are connected to the campus network. These devices may run on default passwords and have little to no security configuration, making them an attractive and vulnerable entry point for a cyberattack.

For higher ed IT, the stakes couldn’t be higher. According to the Zscaler ThreatLabz 2025 Mobile, IoT and OT Threat Report, the education sector saw an 861% rise in malware attacks from Internet of Things devices between 2024 and 2025.

Several items re: the changes needed within higher education

On 09/14/2026, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, culture, dangers of the status quo, entrepreneurship, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, lifelong learning, new business models, reinvent, skills, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Below are several items that were either mentioned by Matt Tower or I came across them via offshoots of items that he linked to:

Future Universities Alliance Names Inaugural Innovation Sandbox Cohort — from provost.duke.edu
Program incubated by Duke brings together higher education innovators from 23 countries for year-long peer exchange

The Future Universities Alliance has selected 49 institutions from 23 countries for the inaugural cohort of its Innovation Sandbox, a 12-month peer learning program for higher education leaders advancing ambitious, institution-level innovation.The cohort brings together founders of new universities, administrators and faculty leading high-stakes changes within established institutions, and leaders of proven models exploring how their innovations can travel to new contexts. Participants were chosen through a competitive process that drew applicants from around the world in its inaugural year.

A makeover for college: No gym, no meal plan and two years of work — from npr.org by Jon Marcus

An entirely new college is being planned here to change not only how higher education is delivered, but at what price. It also proposes to highlight ways the current business model no longer works, as evidenced by the 152 colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2016, and the 442 others that a new projection says are at risk.

So deeply entrenched are the problems confronting higher education that a growing chorus of innovators says the easiest way to fix them is to begin again from scratch.

All undergraduates should get work-based learning, v-cs say — from timeshighereducation.com by Jack Grove. NOTE: this item is behind a paywall.
Bold plan to support graduate employment would require placements for 1.4 million students annually

Learning Ecosystems

The Education Design Lab’s Reimagining Community Colleges Summit [Lauritsen]

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