communities of practice

Digital Accessibility in 2025 [Taylor]

On 07/27/2025, in accessibility / UDL, business, communities of practice, Europe, legislatures / government / legal, mobile learning, mobile technologies, online learning, online media, policy, United States, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Digital Accessibility in 2025: A Screen Reader User’s Honest Take — from blog.usablenet.com by Michael Taylor

In this post, part of the UsableNet 25th anniversary series, I’m taking a look at where things stand in 2025. I’ll discuss the areas that have improved—such as online shopping, banking, and social media—and the ones that still make it challenging to perform basic tasks, including travel, healthcare, and mobile apps. I hope that by sharing what works and what doesn’t, I can help paint a clearer picture of the digital world as it stands today.

Why EAA Compliance and Legal Trends Are Shaping Accessibility in 2025 — from blog.usablenet.com by Jason Taylor

On June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) officially became enforceable across the European Union. This law requires digital products and services—including websites, mobile apps, e-commerce platforms, and software to meet the defined accessibility standards outlined in EN 301 549, which aligns with the WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

Companies that serve EU consumers must be able to demonstrate that accessibility is built into the design, development, testing, and maintenance of their digital products and services.

This milestone also arrives as UsableNet celebrates 25 years of accessibility leadership—a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come and what digital teams must do next.

Blood in the Instructional Design Machine? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
The reality of AI, job degradation & the likely future of Instructional Design

This raises a very important, perhaps even existential question for our profession: do these tools free a designer from the mind-numbing drudgery of content conversion (the “augmented human”)? Or do they automate the core expertise of the learning professional’s role, e.g. selecting instructional startegies, structuring narratives and designing a learning flow, in the process reducing the ID’s role to simply finding the source file and pushing a button (the “inverted centaur”)?

The stated aspiration of these tool builders seems to be a future where AI means that the instructional designer’s value shifts decisively from production to strategy. Their stated goal is to handle the heavy lifting of content generation, allowing the human ID to provide the indispensable context, creativity, and pedagogical judgment that AI cannot replicate.

However, the risk of these tools lies in how we use them, and the “inverted centaur” model remains deeply potent and possible. In an organisation that prioritises cost above all, these same tools can be used to justify reducing the ID role to the functional drudgery of inputting a PDF and supervising the machine.

The key to this paradox lies in a crucial data point: spending on outside products and services has jumped a dramatic 23% to $12.4 billion.

This signals a fundamental shift: companies are reallocating funds from large internal teams toward specialised consultants and advanced learning technologies like AI. L&D is not being de-funded; it is being re-engineered.

AI Skills Command 28% Salary Premium [lightcase.io]

On 07/24/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, society, staying relevant, student-related, training / L&D, United States, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

New Lightcast Report: AI Skills Command 28% Salary Premium as Demand Shifts Beyond Tech Industry — from lightcast.io; via Paul Fain
First-of-its-kind analysis reveals specific AI skills employers need most, enabling targeted workforce training strategies across all career areas

July 23, 2025 – Lightcast, the global leader in labor market intelligence, today released “Beyond the Buzz: Developing the AI Skills Employers Actually Need,” a comprehensive analysis revealing that artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed hiring patterns across the world of work. The report, based on analysis of over 1.3 billion job postings, shows that job postings including AI skills offer 28% higher salaries—nearly $18,000 more per year—than those without such capabilities.

More importantly, the research analyzes specific skills based on their growth across job postings, their importance in the workforce, and their exposure to AI. This shows exactly which AI skills create value in which contexts, solving the critical challenge facing educators and workforce development leaders: moving beyond vague “AI literacy” to precise, targeted training that delivers measurable results.

Also via Paul Fain:

Addressing the Barriers Blocking Employee Development — from gallup.com by Corey Tatel and Megan Mulherin
In 2024, less than half of U.S. employees participated in any education or training for their current job.

Despite growing awareness, however, participation in skill development is limited. In 2024, less than half of U.S. employees (45%) participated in training or education to build new skills for their current job. About one in three employees (32%) who are hoping to move into a new role within the next year strongly agree that they have the skills needed to be exceptional in that role.

A great example of a learning ecosystem!!! [Christian]

On 07/19/2025, in adult learning, career development, collaboration, communications, communities of practice, experimentation, heutagogy, ideas, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, play, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Read through the article below. It’s an excellent example of a learning ecosystem, one that has been developed and practiced by Tiago Forte.

My 4-Stage System for Learning Anything New — from fortelabs.com by Tiago Forte

Stage 1: Immersion – Get Maximum Exposure
Stage 2: Building – Make Something Real
Stage 3: Structured Learning – Find Your Mentors
Stage 4: Connection – Build Real Relationships
The Secret Ingredient: Cultivating Play in Learning

NotebookLM is one of my favorite AI tools for reading scholarly articles. — from linkedin.com by Med Kharbach, PhD

On blogging (again) [Weller]

On 07/19/2025, in blogs / blogging / vlogging, collaboration, communications, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital learning, education technology, experimentation, ideas, internet, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, lifelong learning, online media, productivity / tips and tricks, social learning / networks, writing, by Daniel Christian

On blogging (again) — from by Martin Weller

I also pondered what functions blogging has provided for me over the years.

Continuity – as an individual you persist across multiple organisations, roles and jobs. Although I stayed in one institution, I had many roles and the blog wasn’t associated with one specific project. Now I have left it continues.
Holistic – you can blog about one topic, but over time I think some personality will creep in. You are not just one thing, you have a personal life, tastes, interests etc which will all feed into what you do. A blog allows this more rounded representation.
Experimentation – there is relatively low cost and risk for much of it (this may not be the case for many people online, we need to acknowledge), so you can try things, and if they don’t work, so what? Also you can try formats that conventional outlets might not be appropriate for.
Development – the blog has been both an intentional and unintentional vehicle for working up ideas, documenting the process and getting feedback, which have led to more substantial outputs, such as books, project proposals and papers. Most importantly though it has been the means through which I have continually developed writing.
Connecting – particularly in those halcyon early days, it was a good way of finding others, working on ideas together, sharing something of yourself. A lot of my career related personal friendships have resulted from blogging.
Publicity – I became at one point (the OU crisis of 2018) something of a public voice of the OU, and have often used the blog for projects such as GO-GN

That’s not a bad return for a lil’ ol’ blog. I couldn’t say the same for academic journals.

Is graduate employability a core university priority? — from timeshighereducation.com by Katherine Emms and Andrea Laczik
Universities, once judged primarily on the quality of their academic outcomes, are now also expected to prepare students for the workplace. Here’s how higher education is adapting to changing pressures

A clear, deliberate shift in priorities is under way. Embedding employability is central to an Edge Foundation report, carried out in collaboration with UCL’s Institute of Education, looking at how English universities are responding. In placing employability at the centre of their strategies – not just for professional courses but across all disciplines – the two universities that were analysed in this research show how they aim to prepare students for the labour market overall. Although the employability strategy is initialled by the universities’ senior leaders, the research showed that realising this employability strategy must be understood and executed by staff at all levels across departments. The complexity of offering insights into industry pathways and building relevant skills involves curricula development, student-centred teaching, careers support, partnership work and employer engagement.

Every student can benefit from an entrepreneurial mindset — from timeshighereducation.com by Nicolas Klotz
To develop the next generation of entrepreneurs, universities need to nurture the right mindset in students of all disciplines. Follow these tips to embed entrepreneurial education

This shift demands a radical rethink of how we approach entrepreneurial mindset in higher education. Not as a specialism for a niche group of business students but as a core competency that every student, in every discipline, can benefit from.

At my university, we’ve spent the past several years re-engineering how we embed entrepreneurship into daily student life and learning.

What we’ve learned could help other institutions, especially smaller or resource-constrained ones, adapt to this new landscape.

The first step is recognising that entrepreneurship is not only about launching start-ups for profit. It’s about nurturing a mindset that values initiative, problem-solving, resilience and creative risk-taking. Employers increasingly want these traits, whether the student is applying for a traditional job or proposing their own venture.

Build foundations for university-industry partnerships in 90 days— from timeshighereducation.com by Raul Villamarin Rodriguez and Hemachandran K
Graduate employability could be transformed through systematic integration of industry partnerships. This practical guide offers a framework for change in Indian universities

The most effective transformation strategy for Indian universities lies in systematic industry integration that moves beyond superficial partnerships and towards deep curriculum collaboration. Rather than hoping market alignment will occur naturally, institutions must reverse-engineer academic programmes from verified industry needs.

Our six-month implementation at Woxsen University demonstrates this framework’s practical effectiveness, achieving more than 130 industry partnerships, 100 per cent faculty participation in transformation training, and 75 per cent of students receiving industry-validated credentials with significantly improved employment outcomes.

2025 Learning System Top Picks — from elearninfo247.com by Craig Weiss

Who is leading the pack? Who is setting themselves apart here in the mid-year?

Are they an LMS? LMS/LXP? Talent Development System? Mentoring? Learning Platform?

Something else?

Are they solely customer training/education, mentoring, or coaching? Are they focused only on employees? Are they an amalgamation of all or some?

Well, they cut across the board – hence, they slide under the “Learning Systems” umbrella, which is under the bigger umbrella term – “Learning Technology.”
…
Categories: L&D-specific, Combo (L&D and Training, think internal/external audiences), and Customer Training/Education (this means customer education, which some vendors use to mean the same as customer training).

“Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide” [Molnick] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 06/23/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, Google, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new media literacies, online learning, online media, Open AI, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, writing, by Daniel Christian

Thoughts on thinking — from dcurt.is by Dustin Curtis

Intellectual rigor comes from the journey: the dead ends, the uncertainty, and the internal debate. Skip that, and you might still get the insight–but you’ll have lost the infrastructure for meaningful understanding. Learning by reading LLM output is cheap. Real exercise for your mind comes from building the output yourself.

The irony is that I now know more than I ever would have before AI. But I feel slightly dumber. A bit more dull. LLMs give me finished thoughts, polished and convincing, but none of the intellectual growth that comes from developing them myself.

Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Which AIs to use, and how to use them

Every few months I put together a guide on which AI system to use. Since I last wrote my guide, however, there has been a subtle but important shift in how the major AI products work. Increasingly, it isn’t about the best model, it is about the best overall system for most people. The good news is that picking an AI is easier than ever and you have three excellent choices. The challenge is that these systems are getting really complex to understand. I am going to try and help a bit with both.

First, the easy stuff.

Which AI to Use
For most people who want to use AI seriously, you should pick one of three systems: Claude from Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Also see:

Student Voice, Socratic AI, and the Art of Weaving a Quote — from elmartinsen.substack.com by Eric Lars Martinsen
How a custom bot helps students turn source quotes into personal insight—and share it with others

This summer, I tried something new in my fully online, asynchronous college writing course. These classes have no Zoom sessions. No in-person check-ins. Just students, Canvas, and a lot of thoughtful design behind the scenes.

One activity I created was called QuoteWeaver—a PlayLab bot that helps students do more than just insert a quote into their writing.

Try it here

It’s a structured, reflective activity that mimics something closer to an in-person 1:1 conference or a small group quote workshop—but in an asynchronous format, available anytime. In other words, it’s using AI not to speed students up, but to slow them down.
…
The bot begins with a single quote that the student has found through their own research. From there, it acts like a patient writing coach, asking open-ended, Socratic questions such as:

What made this quote stand out to you?
How would you explain it in your own words?
What assumptions or values does the author seem to hold?
How does this quote deepen your understanding of your topic?
It doesn’t move on too quickly. In fact, it often rephrases and repeats, nudging the student to go a layer deeper.

The Disappearance of the Unclear Question — from jeppestricker.substack.com Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker
New Piece for UNESCO Education Futures

On [6/13/25], UNESCO published a piece I co-authored with Victoria Livingstone at Johns Hopkins University Press. It’s called The Disappearance of the Unclear Question, and it’s part of the ongoing UNESCO Education Futures series – an initiative I appreciate for its thoughtfulness and depth on questions of generative AI and the future of learning.

Our piece raises a small but important red flag. Generative AI is changing how students approach academic questions, and one unexpected side effect is that unclear questions – for centuries a trademark of deep thinking – may be beginning to disappear. Not because they lack value, but because they don’t always work well with generative AI. Quietly and unintentionally, students (and teachers) may find themselves gradually avoiding them altogether.

Of course, that would be a mistake.

We’re not arguing against using generative AI in education. Quite the opposite. But we do propose that higher education needs a two-phase mindset when working with this technology: one that recognizes what AI is good at, and one that insists on preserving the ambiguity and friction that learning actually requires to be successful.

Leveraging GenAI to Transform a Traditional Instructional Video into Engaging Short Video Lectures — from er.educause.edu by Hua Zheng

By leveraging generative artificial intelligence to convert lengthy instructional videos into micro-lectures, educators can enhance efficiency while delivering more engaging and personalized learning experiences.

This AI Model Never Stops Learning — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now devised a way for LLMs to keep improving by tweaking their own parameters in response to useful new information.

The work is a step toward building artificial intelligence models that learn continually—a long-standing goal of the field and something that will be crucial if machines are to ever more faithfully mimic human intelligence. In the meantime, it could give us chatbots and other AI tools that are better able to incorporate new information including a user’s interests and preferences.

The MIT scheme, called Self Adapting Language Models (SEAL), involves having an LLM learn to generate its own synthetic training data and update procedure based on the input it receives.

Edu-Snippets — from scienceoflearning.substack.com by Nidhi Sachdeva and Jim Hewitt
Why knowledge matters in the age of AI; What happens to learners’ neural activity with prolonged use of LLMs for writing

Highlights:

Offloading knowledge to Artificial Intelligence (AI) weakens memory, disrupts memory formation, and erodes the deep thinking our brains need to learn.
Prolonged use of ChatGPT in writing lowers neural engagement, impairs memory recall, and accumulates cognitive debt that isn’t easily reversed.

Vertical wall printers create large, detailed designs directly on walls, transforming spaces with custom artwork
by @IntEngineering
#Innovation #EmergingTech #TechForGood #Technology

cc: @meisshaily @ylecun @yuhelenyu pic.twitter.com/qAiDaAnpED

— Ronald van Loon (@Ronald_vanLoon) June 18, 2025

From DSC:
This type of thing could seriously spruce up the learning spaces out there! 🙂

The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI [various authors]

On 06/20/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, participation, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, research, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI — from papers.ssrn.com by Barbara Oakley, Michael Johnston, Kenzen Chen, Eulho Jung, and Terrence Sejnowski; via George Siemens

Abstract
In an era of generative AI and ubiquitous digital tools, human memory faces a paradox: the more we offload knowledge to external aids, the less we exercise and develop our own cognitive capacities. This chapter offers the first neuroscience-based explanation for the observed reversal of the Flynn Effect—the recent decline in IQ scores in developed countries—linking this downturn to shifts in educational practices and the rise of cognitive offloading via AI and digital tools. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and learning theory, we explain how underuse of the brain’s declarative and procedural memory systems undermines reasoning, impedes learning, and diminishes productivity. We critique contemporary pedagogical models that downplay memorization and basic knowledge, showing how these trends erode long-term fluency and mental flexibility. Finally, we outline policy implications for education, workforce development, and the responsible integration of AI, advocating strategies that harness technology as a complement to – rather than a replacement for – robust human knowledge.

Keywords
cognitive offloading, memory, neuroscience of learning, declarative memory, procedural memory, generative AI, Flynn Effect, education reform, schemata, digital tools, cognitive load, cognitive architecture, reinforcement learning, basal ganglia, working memory, retrieval practice, schema theory, manifolds

Mary Meeker’s AI Trend-Analysis + other items re: AI in general

On 06/09/2025, in Adobe, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Microsoft, online media, Open AI, organizational change, pace of change, pedagogy, platforms, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, writing, by Daniel Christian

Mary Meeker AI Trends Report: Mind-Boggling Numbers Paint AI’s Massive Growth Picture — from ndtvprofit.com
Numbers that prove AI as a tech is unlike any other the world has ever seen.

Here are some incredibly powerful numbers from Mary Meeker’s AI Trends report, which showcase how artificial intelligence as a tech is unlike any other the world has ever seen.

AI took only three years to reach 50% user adoption in the US; mobile internet took six years, desktop internet took 12 years, while PCs took 20 years.
ChatGPT reached 800 million users in 17 months and 100 million in only two months, vis-à-vis Netflix’s 100 million (10 years), Instagram (2.5 years) and TikTok (nine months).
ChatGPT hit 365 billion annual searches in two years (2024) vs. Google’s 11 years (2009)—ChatGPT 5.5x faster than Google.

Above via Mary Meeker’s AI Trend-Analysis — from getsuperintel.com by Kim “Chubby” Isenberg
How AI’s rapid rise, efficiency race, and talent shifts are reshaping the future.

The TLDR
Mary Meeker’s new AI trends report highlights an explosive rise in global AI usage, surging model efficiency, and mounting pressure on infrastructure and talent. The shift is clear: AI is no longer experimental—it’s becoming foundational, and those who optimize for speed, scale, and specialization will lead the next wave of innovation.

Also see Meeker’s actual report at:

Trends – Artificial Intelligence — from bondcap.com by Mary Meeker / Jay Simons / Daegwon Chae / Alexander Krey

The Rundown: Meta aims to release tools that eliminate humans from the advertising process by 2026, according to a report from the WSJ — developing an AI that can create ads for Facebook and Instagram using just a product image and budget.

The details:

Companies would submit product images and budgets, letting AI craft the text and visuals, select target audiences, and manage campaign placement.
The system will be able to create personalized ads that can adapt in real-time, like a car spot featuring mountains vs. an urban street based on user location.
The push would target smaller companies lacking dedicated marketing staff, promising professional-grade advertising without agency fees or skillset.
Advertising is a core part of Mark Zuckerberg’s AI strategy and already accounts for 97% of Meta’s annual revenue.

Why it matters: We’re already seeing AI transform advertising through image, video, and text, but Zuck’s vision takes the process entirely out of human hands. With so much marketing flowing through FB and IG, a successful system would be a major disruptor — particularly for small brands that just want results without the hassle.

“The AI-enhanced learning ecosystem” [Jennings] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 06/09/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, architecture, Augmented Reality (AR), bots, business, career development, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, curriculum, data related items, design, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, Google, health, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, library / librarians, lifelong learning, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, podcasting, policy, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, skills, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

The AI-enhanced learning ecosystem: A case study in collaborative innovation — from chieflearningofficer.com by Kevin Jennings
How artificial intelligence can serve as a tool and collaborative partner in reimagining content development and management.

Learning and development professionals face unprecedented challenges in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 67 percent of L&D professionals report being “maxed out” on capacity, while 66 percent have experienced budget reductions in the past year.

Despite these constraints, 87 percent agree their organizations need to develop employees faster to keep pace with business demands. These statistics paint a clear picture of the pressure L&D teams face: do more, with less, faster.

This article explores how one L&D leader’s strategic partnership with artificial intelligence transformed these persistent challenges into opportunities, creating a responsive learning ecosystem that addresses the modern demands of rapid product evolution and diverse audience needs. With 71 percent of L&D professionals now identifying AI as a high or very high priority for their learning strategy, this case study demonstrates how AI can serve not merely as a tool but as a collaborative partner in reimagining content development and management.
.

How we use GenAI and AR to improve students’ design skills — from timeshighereducation.com by Antonio Juarez, Lesly Pliego and Jordi Rábago who are professors of architecture at Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico; Tomas Pachajoa is a professor of architecture at the El Bosque University in Colombia; & Carlos Hinrichsen and Marietta Castro are educators at San Sebastián University in Chile.
Guidance on using generative AI and augmented reality to enhance student creativity, spatial awareness and interdisciplinary collaboration

Blend traditional skills development with AI use
For subjects that require students to develop drawing and modelling skills, have students create initial design sketches or models manually to ensure they practise these skills. Then, introduce GenAI tools such as Midjourney, Leonardo AI and ChatGPT to help students explore new ideas based on their original concepts. Using AI at this stage broadens their creative horizons and introduces innovative perspectives, which are crucial in a rapidly evolving creative industry.

Provide step-by-step tutorials, including both written guides and video demonstrations, to illustrate how initial sketches can be effectively translated into AI-generated concepts. Offer example prompts to demonstrate diverse design possibilities and help students build confidence using GenAI.

Integrating generative AI and AR consistently enhanced student engagement, creativity and spatial understanding on our course.

How Texas is Preparing Higher Education for AI — from the74million.org by Kate McGee
TX colleges are thinking about how to prepare students for a changing workforce and an already overburdened faculty for new challenges in classrooms.

“It doesn’t matter if you enter the health industry, banking, oil and gas, or national security enterprises like we have here in San Antonio,” Eighmy told The Texas Tribune. “Everybody’s asking for competency around AI.”

It’s one of the reasons the public university, which serves 34,000 students, announced earlier this year that it is creating a new college dedicated to AI, cyber security, computing and data science. The new college, which is still in the planning phase, would be one of the first of its kind in the country. UTSA wants to launch the new college by fall 2025.

But many state higher education leaders are thinking beyond that. As AI becomes a part of everyday life in new, unpredictable ways, universities across Texas and the country are also starting to consider how to ensure faculty are keeping up with the new technology and students are ready to use it when they enter the workforce.

In the Room Where It Happens: Generative AI Policy Creation in Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Esther Brandon, Lance Eaton, Dana Gavin, and Allison Papini

To develop a robust policy for generative artificial intelligence use in higher education, institutional leaders must first create “a room” where diverse perspectives are welcome and included in the process.

Q&A: Artificial Intelligence in Education and What Lies Ahead — from usnews.com by Sarah Wood
Research indicates that AI is becoming an essential skill to learn for students to succeed in the workplace.

Q: How do you expect to see AI embraced more in the future in college and the workplace?
I do believe it’s going to become a permanent fixture for multiple reasons. I think the national security imperative associated with AI as a result of competing against other nations is going to drive a lot of energy and support for AI education. We also see shifts across every field and discipline regarding the usage of AI beyond college. We see this in a broad array of fields, including health care and the field of law. I think it’s here to stay and I think that means we’re going to see AI literacy being taught at most colleges and universities, and more faculty leveraging AI to help improve the quality of their instruction. I feel like we’re just at the beginning of a transition. In fact, I often describe our current moment as the ‘Ask Jeeves’ phase of the growth of AI. There’s a lot of change still ahead of us. AI, for better or worse, it’s here to stay.

AI-Generated Podcasts Outperform Textbooks in Landmark Education Study — form linkedin.com by David Borish

A new study from Drexel University and Google has demonstrated that AI-generated educational podcasts can significantly enhance both student engagement and learning outcomes compared to traditional textbooks. The research, involving 180 college students across the United States, represents one of the first systematic investigations into how artificial intelligence can transform educational content delivery in real-time.

What can we do about generative AI in our teaching? — from linkedin.com by Kristina Peterson

So what can we do?

Interrogate the Process: We can ask ourselves if we I built in enough checkpoints. Steps that can’t be faked. Things like quick writes, question floods, in-person feedback, revision logs.
Reframe AI: We can let students use AI as a partner. We can show them how to prompt better, revise harder, and build from it rather than submit it. Show them the difference between using a tool and being used by one.
Design Assignments for Curiosity, Not Compliance: Even the best of our assignments need to adapt. Mine needs more checkpoints, more reflective questions along the way, more explanation of why my students made the choices they did.

Teachers Are Not OK — from 404media.co by Jason Koebler

The response from teachers and university professors was overwhelming. In my entire career, I’ve rarely gotten so many email responses to a single article, and I have never gotten so many thoughtful and comprehensive responses.

One thing is clear: teachers are not OK.
…
In addition, universities are contracting with companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Google for digital services, and those companies are constantly pushing their AI tools. So a student might hear “don’t use generative AI” from a prof but then log on to the university’s Microsoft suite, which then suggests using Copilot to sum up readings or help draft writing. It’s inconsistent and confusing.

I am sick to my stomach as I write this because I’ve spent 20 years developing a pedagogy that’s about wrestling with big ideas through writing and discussion, and that whole project has been evaporated by for-profit corporations who built their systems on stolen work. It’s demoralizing.

Reflections on “May Brought Deep Cuts at Multiple Colleges” [Moody]

On 06/04/2025, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, communities of practice, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

May Brought Deep Cuts at Multiple Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Josh Moody
Colleges laid off well over 800 employees last month due to a mix of enrollment challenges and state funding issues. Ivy Tech saw the deepest cuts with more than 200 jobs axed.

With the academic year coming to an end, multiple universities announced deep cuts in May, shedding dozens of jobs amid financial pressures often linked to enrollment shortfalls.
…
But the cuts below, for the most part, are not directly tied to the rapid-fire actions of the Trump administration but rather stem from other financial pressures weighing on the sector. Many of the institutions listed are contending with declining enrollment and, for public universities, shrinking state support, which has necessitated fiscal changes.

From DSC:
I survived several job reductions at one of my former workplaces. But I didn’t survive the one that laid off 12 staff members after the Spring 2017 Semester. So, more and more, faculty and staff have been starting to dread the end of the academic year — as they may not survive another round of cuts.

In ‘The Quilters,’ Men in a Missouri Prison Sew Gifts for Children [Ebert]

On 05/27/2025, in art, communities of practice, creativity, Emotion, ideas, youth, by Daniel Christian

In ‘The Quilters,’ Men in a Missouri Prison Sew Gifts for Children — from thisiscolossal.com by Grace Ebert

In a room bigger than most at South Central Correctional Center in Licking, Missouri, a group of men has volunteered for a creative project that stretches beyond prison walls. For about 40 hours each week, they cut and stitch quilts for children in foster care or with disabilities, sewing vibrant, patterned patchworks and finding joy and camaraderie while doing so.

Learning Ecosystems

Digital Accessibility in 2025 [Taylor]

A great example of a learning ecosystem!!! [Christian]

“Is graduate employability a core university priority?” + 2 other items from Times Higher Education

Reflections on “May Brought Deep Cuts at Multiple Colleges” [Moody]

In ‘The Quilters,’ Men in a Missouri Prison Sew Gifts for Children [Ebert]

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