student-related

How Constructivism Learning Theory Shapes Modern Instructional Design And L&D Strategy — from elearningindustry.com by Christopher Pappas
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Also see:

Microlearning Trends And Strategies In 2026 — from elearningindustry.com by Christopher Pappas

Three items re: AI in our LE’s (involving corporate training, higher ed, and K-12)

On 06/10/2026, in 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Rethinking Learning Design in Elementary Schools — from edcircuit.com
Why K–5 leaders must redesign—not just adopt—technology to restore attention, deepen thinking, and align AI with how children actually learn

Rethinking learning design in elementary schools is critical as screen time and AI reshape attention, thinking, and student engagement.

Designing for Thinking, Not Just Doing
At its core, learning design must shift from task completion to thinking development.

This requires creating environments where students:

Spend time processing ideas
Work through confusion without immediate answers
Build persistence through challenge

It also requires clarity around the role of technology.

Technology should:

Extend thinking
Provide meaningful feedback
Support exploration

It should not:

Replace effort
Short-circuit reasoning
Eliminate productive struggle

The goal is not to reduce technology use.

It is to ensure that students remain the ones doing the thinking.

Should We Integrate AI into Our Teaching?: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Deciding When AI Belongs — from Faculty Focus by Norman Eng, EdD

Four Questions for Deciding Whether to Use AI

Question 1: Will this AI tool help students use, recall, and demonstrate understanding of core disciplinary content?
Question 2: Will this AI tool require students to apply their learning to a new context?
Question 3: Will this AI tool support—not replace—independent, evidence-based reasoning?
Question 4: Will this AI integration preserve meaningful human interaction?

OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable — from hechingerreport.org by John B. King, Jr.
Addressing high tuition, food insecurity and child care needs are important first steps

Higher education is under siege, with many students and parents balking at high costs. In a series of op-eds, university leaders lay out their efforts to keep college affordable. This is the first in the series.

For many people across the country, paying for college is the largest investment they will ever make. Increasingly, it’s one that feels out of reach.

Over the past two decades, tuition and fees at private, national universities have jumped by 112 percent; at some “elite” and highly selective schools the annual cost of attendance now approaches $100,000.

If higher education is to rebuild public trust, affordability can’t be an afterthought. It must be at the center of our strategic focus.

Also from The Hechinger Report, see:

What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution — from hechingerreport.org by Neal Morton
‘It’s not looking good’: The unemployment rate for recent grads is the highest in five years, but AI is not primarily to blame — at least not yet

Addendum on 6/10/25:

The Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
A guest post laying out a path forward for all institutions.

Most colleges and universities are not actually organized around learning. They’re organized around teaching, research productivity, rankings, revenue, and the preservation of institutional prestige. Students sense this, even when they can’t articulate it. The public senses it, too. Academic researchers themselves have been making this argument for decades, but it has rarely felt more urgent than it does right now.

The Yale report says, wisely, that “trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do.” Universities say they’re about learning. The way to rebuild trust is to actually mean it and to build institutions that prove it.

The Yale committee is right that trust must be rebuilt through action over messaging. The most fundamental action, and the one most often overlooked, is this: Get learning right.

Christian: Could this be a part of our future learning ecosystems?

On 06/09/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, skills, social media, streams of content, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, training / L&D, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Could this be a part of our future learning ecosystems? Education as a personalized content feed.

Coursera wants users to learn through shorter, faster content — from digitaltrends.com by Moinak Pal
Coursera wants online learning to feel more like TikTok
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Online learning platform Coursera is taking a page straight out of TikTok’s playbook. The company has launched a new AI-powered feed designed to serve short-form educational content in a scrollable, personalized format, signaling a major shift in how digital learning platforms may try to keep users engaged.

The feature introduces bite-sized video lessons, clips, and explainers curated through artificial intelligence based on a user’s interests, learning habits, career goals, and previous course activity. Instead of committing to hour-long lectures or full certification programs upfront, users can now discover short educational snippets designed to make learning feel more casual, accessible, and addictive.

Users scroll through a feed of short educational videos and AI-curated learning moments covering topics ranging from coding and business to AI, productivity, data science, and personal development.

Summer 2026 with the Michigan Learning Channel

On 06/05/2026, in education, mathematics, Michigan, parents/guardians, reading, student-related, teachers, United States, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Summer 2026 with the Michigan Learning Channel:
2026 Summer Activity Books Now Available!

Get ready for a summer full of learning, fun, and skill-building! The Michigan Learning Channel’s 2026 Summer Activity Books are now on sale—created to help kids stay engaged, curious, and confident all summer long.

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Former foster youth face very low odds of college or workforce success. Some people are trying to change that [Sanchez]

On 06/04/2026, in colleges, community colleges, Emotion, funding / grants, higher education, learning ecosystem, policy, student-related, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Former foster youth face very low odds of college or workforce success. Some people are trying to change that — from hechingerreport.org by Olivia Sanchez
College-based programs connect students with each other and with basic needs resources

The Guardian Scholars Program at Sacramento State is one of hundreds around the country designed to help students who are former foster youth stay enrolled, thrive academically and graduate with plans to build stable careers. It offers a window into policies that work — from scholarships to housing help to social connections for emotional support — at a time when the federal government has begun focusing renewed attention on these students and holding out the promise of more investment in them.

Former foster youth — a term that includes anyone who has spent time in the child welfare system, typically due to abuse or neglect — have some of the worst college graduation rates of any demographic group. An estimated 8 to 11 percent of former foster youth go on to earn any college degree, compared to 49 percent of adults overall, according to one analysis. They also typically have lower rates of employment and lower earnings than their peers with similar levels of education.

4 Strategies For Teaching With AI Effectively — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Health sciences professor Humberto López Castillo urges students to use AI to help with science research, but never to lose sight of the human element.

Castillo, a trained pediatrician and professor in the Department of Health Sciences, has also seen students use AI in creative ways to promote public health understanding, and as a research tool. For one project, Castillo asks students to explain health concepts from class to non-experts, and since he started encouraging students to use AI, he’s seen the projects get better. Students have created health-themed board games and Hamilton-style rap songs. Others have designed AI to aid in health research in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the technology.

This compassionate and student-centered approach to AI use is part of why Castillo was named Superhuman (formerly Grammarly’s) 2026 Educator of the Year.
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“You are the one who’s responsible for that writing,” Castillo tells his students. “Your name is the only name that’s going to be among the published authors, so you are the one who needs to verify those sources.”

He adds that rather than being a drawback, allowing students to make these types of mistakes with AI use in the college setting has value.

“It is a teaching opportunity,” Castillo says. “This is the moment to make those mistakes.”

What Michigan schools reveal about reversing chronic absenteeism | Time-intensive home visits show promise [Barshay]

On 06/01/2026, in education, education reform, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Michigan, parents/guardians, participation, research, society, strategy, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

What Michigan schools reveal about reversing chronic absenteeism — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
Time-intensive home visits show promise

Absenteeism is a huge and seemingly intractable problem for the nation’s public schools. And Michigan has one of the worst attendance rates in the country.
…
Yet a new study released in May offers hope. Researchers found that some Michigan schools appear to be substantially better than others at getting students to show up, and identified one intervention — frequent home visits to families whose children are absent from class — that was used more often by schools making a difference.

The findings are a reminder that “best practices” recommendations often overstate what researchers actually know. Schools can make a meaningful difference in attendance, but identifying genuinely successful schools is hard, isolating why they succeed is even harder, and simple solutions rarely hold up under scrutiny.

What AI-Enabled Education Actually Looks Like When It’s Working for Workforce Students — from gettingsmart.com by Stephen Griffin

Key Points

Institutions can use AI to make skills, pathways, and job outcomes visible to students and employers in ways traditional transcripts cannot.
Academic affairs, workforce development, career services, and employers need a shared definition of readiness and competency before tools can deliver meaningful value.

The second is portable competency records. Learning and employment records — AI-enabled documentation of what a student knows and can do, expressed in language employers recognize — are the infrastructure that makes credentials legible across the education-to-employment continuum. When a student can show an employer not just “completed Supply Chain Management 101” but “demonstrated proficiency in inventory optimization, route planning, and logistics software at the industry-recognized level,” the credential stops being abstract. It becomes evidence. Building these records requires investment in tools, yes — but more importantly, it requires faculty, workforce development staff, and employer partners to agree on what competency actually looks like before the technology is ever purchased.

Absenteeism: When Students Don’t Show Up, Everyone Pays [Perkins]

On 05/31/2026, in education, education reform, K-12 related, parents/guardians, society, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

When Students Don’t Show Up, Everyone Pays — from thelearningcounsel.com by Dr. Atiya Y. Perkins

The imagined student is disengaged, indifferent, choosing video games over algebra. The actual student is frequently exhausted. She may be the oldest child in a household where a parent is ill, which means she is responsible for getting younger siblings fed and out the door before she can even think about her own way to school. He may be managing an untreated health condition because his family cannot afford consistent medical care. They may have moved three times since September and still haven’t fully sorted out transportation to a building they barely feel they belong to.

Toldson’s research documents more than 70 distinct barriers that contribute to chronic absenteeism, and very few of them have anything to do with motivation. Housing instability, food insecurity, unaddressed mental health needs, and unreliable transportation all appear on that list. So does something we rarely discuss openly: the growing number of students who have caregiving responsibilities that would overwhelm even the most capable and supported adults.

Understanding this should fundamentally change how we respond. A court referral does not help a student whose bus route was eliminated. A warning letter does not make a family that moved last month feel more at home. Instead, these warnings and referrals actively damage the relationship between schools and the families we most need to reach, at precisely the moment when trust is the only currency that matters.

Workplace Readiness: Can Higher Education Develop AI-Ready Students? — from learningguild.com by Eddie Lin and Roshan Bharwaney

For higher education to remain relevant, curricula must evolve. Here are some overarching recommendations for directions in higher education to bridge the skills gaps between universities and workplaces:

AI ethics and safety: Prepare students to navigate issues of fairness, bias, privacy, and societal impact.
Tackling complex questions: Emphasize open-ended challenges that blend structured and unstructured skills and reduce reliance on standardized tests and repetitive drills.
Critical thinking: Develop new assessments for judgment, creativity, and metacognition—essential to supervise AI outputs.
Human-AI synergy: Embed AI fluency across all disciplines, encouraging students to find the niches where human value is maximized.
Industry connection: Maintain close industry partnerships and collaborations including open innovation opportunities and collective intelligence approaches (Bharwaney & Sleeva, 2024).

Experiential learning and communities of practice are central to this vision. Internships, simulations, and cross-disciplinary projects can help students practice human-AI collaboration, resilience, and decision-making in environments that mirror the workplace’s ambiguity and complexity.

Universities that condemn the use of AI by students risk isolating themselves from the realities of today’s workplace, where interns and new hires are expected to be or quickly become adept at using AI for routine tasks and complex projects.

Can colleges still deliver in the age of AI? One Ivy League school is investing $30 million to improve career outcomes — from cnbc.com by Jessica Dickler

Key Points

College students are increasingly worried about what an AI-driven jobs apocalypse could mean for their employment prospects.
To that end, many colleges and universities are racing to recalibrate.
Even at nation’s most elite schools, the focus is shifting to career readiness.

Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs [Field]

On 05/29/2026, in career development, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, ideas, Microsoft, neurodivergent/special needs, student-related, United States, universities, vocational / trades, youth, by Daniel Christian

Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs — from hechingerreport.org by Kelly Field
Colleges now offer career readiness classes and one-on-one coaching for students with autism

Recognizing these strengths, some major companies — including tech giants SAP and Microsoft, and financial institutions Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase — began building neurodiverse hiring programs roughly a decade ago.

Those efforts have yielded significant revenue for companies, some of them say, with EY, one of the big four accounting firms, reporting in 2023 that its neurodiverse employees have generated nearly $1 billion in business value. A study by J.P. Morgan Chase found that its autistic employees were much more productive than its neurotypical ones.

Consumer finance company Synchrony, which plans to hire 15 neurodivergent interns this year, says the program has changed how teams work across the company.

Also on a somewhat-related note and also from Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report, see:

Many boys aren’t interested in school. Can opening more career-focused high schools help?
Some research suggests that career and technical schools keep boys on track to graduation — but seats are limited

Inside the latest global research on school cellphone bans — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
First wave of studies raises questions about other digital distractions and cellphones at home

But the first wave of rigorous research on those policies — including two major U.S. studies — does not point neatly in one direction. Some studies have found modest academic gains from cellphone restrictions. Others have found little to no effect on test scores, even when student phone use dropped sharply. Some studies suggest benefits for low-achieving students, others for girls, and still others for boys. In some places, attendance or student well-being improved. In others, they didn’t.

The scientific process can be messy. Cultural differences may explain why the bans are more effective in some places than others. But almost any education reform will get different results in different places, even within a single country. And the current confusion may also stem from how difficult it is to study cellphone bans in the real world.

Ideally, researchers would randomly assign some students to surrender their phones while others kept them, and then measure the effect on academic performance — the equivalent of a clinical trial for an education policy. But those experiments are difficult to enforce in schools, and so far only one study, conducted among college students in India, has attempted a randomized controlled trial. It produced a notably strong improvement in course grades for lower achieving students.

Instead, most studies rely on rougher real world comparisons that capture only partial effects of cellphone restrictions.

Connecting the Tangled Systems of Reentry Training and Employment [Arrojas]

On 05/28/2026, in adult learning, career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, economics, legislatures / government / legal, participation, skills, society, sociology, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Connecting the Tangled Systems of Reentry Training and Employment — from workshift.com by Matthew Arrojas; via Paul Fain

After release, formerly incarcerated people must navigate a maze of government systems, workforce programs, and parole requirements. They are rarely prepared to do this, and as a result, nearly half (45%) report no earnings within the first year of their release, according to research from the Brookings Institution.

The Big Idea: Reducing those barriers has become an increasing focus for a number of philanthropies and colleges. It’s also a growing labor market imperative.

There’s also an incentive for many states to help this population of potential workers land jobs. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, formerly incarcerated individuals who are unable to maintain employment experience a recidivism rate of 52% over three years, while those who are employed for one year post-release experienced a recidivism rate of just 16%.

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