Is Your Institution Ready for the Earnings Premium Buzzsaw? — from ailearninsights.substack.com by Alfred Essa

On Wednesday [October 29th, 2025], I’m launching the Beta version of an Education Accountability Website (”EDU Accountability Lab”). It analyzes federal student aid, institutional outcomes, and accountability metrics across 6,000+ colleges and universities in the US.

Our Mission
The EDU Accountability Lab delivers independent, data-driven analysis of higher education with a focus on accountability, affordability, and outcomes. Our audience includes policymakers, researchers, and taxpayers who seek greater transparency and effectiveness in postsecondary education. We take no advocacy position on specific institutions, programs, metrics, or policies. Our goal is to provide clear and well-documented methods that support policy discussions, strengthen institutional accountability, and improve public understanding of the value of higher education.

But right now, there’s one area demanding urgent attention.

Starting July 1, 2026, every degree program at every institution receiving federal student aid must prove its graduates earn more than people without that credential—or lose Title IV eligibility.

This isn’t about institutions passing or failing. It’s about programs. Every Bachelor’s in Psychology. Every Master’s in Education. Every Associate in Nursing. Each one assessed separately. Each one facing the same pass-or-fail tests.

 

Entrepreneurship: The New Core Curriculum — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Key Points

  • Entrepreneurship education fosters resilience, creativity, and financial literacy—skills critical for success in an unpredictable, tech-driven world.
  • Programs like NFTE, Junior Achievement, and Uncharted Learning empower students by offering real-world entrepreneurial experiences and mentorship.

“Entrepreneurship is the job of the future.”

— Charles Fadel, Education for the Age of AI

This shift requires a radical re-evaluation of what we teach. Education leaders across the country are realizing that the most valuable skill we can impart is not accounting or marketing, but the entrepreneurial mindset. This mindset—built on resilience, creative problem-solving, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to pivot—is essential in startups, as an intrapreuer in big organizations, or as a citizen working for the common good.

 

Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades. — from k12dive.com by Anna Merod
Declines came in both bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded between 2003-04 and 2022-23, an AACTE analysis of federal data shows.

The number of education degrees awarded in the U.S. steadily decreased in the nearly two decades between 2003-04 and 2022-23, according to a new analysis of federal data by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Bachelor’s degrees in education dipped from 109,622 annually to 90,710 while master’s degrees declined from 162,632 to 143,669 in that time span, AACTE said in its report on data from the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Digest #182: How To Increase (Self-)Motivation — from lifehack.org by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel

No matter whether you are a student or a teacher, sometimes it can be difficult to find motivation to start or complete a task. Instead, you may spend hours procrastinating with other activities and that opens an unhelpful cycle of stress and unhappiness. Stressful environments which are common in educational settings can increase the likelihood of maladaptive procrastination (1) and hamper motivation. This digest offers four resources on ways to think about and boost (self-)motivation.

Also see:

 

From siloed tools to intelligent journeys: Reimagining learning experience in the age of ‘Experience AI’ — from linkedin.com by Lev Gonick

Experience AI: A new architecture of learning
Experience AI represents a new architecture for learning — one that prioritizes continuity, agency and deep personalization. It fuses three dimensions into a new category of co-intelligent systems:

  • Agentic AI that evolves with the learner, not just serves them
  • Persona-based AI that adapts to individual goals, identities and motivations
  • Multimodal AI that engages across text, voice, video, simulation and interaction

Experience AI brings learning into context. It powers personalized, problem-based journeys where students explore ideas, reflect on progress and co-create meaning — with both human and machine collaborators.

 

The above posting on LinkedIn then links to this document


Designing Microsoft 365 Copilot to empower educators, students, and staff — from microsoft.com by Deirdre Quarnstrom

While over 80% of respondents in the 2025 AI in Education Report have already used AI for school, we believe there are significant opportunities to design AI that can better serve each of their needs and broaden access to the latest innovation.1

That’s why today [10/15/25], we’re announcing AI-powered experiences built for teaching and learning at no additional cost, new integrations in Microsoft 365 apps and Learning Management Systems, and an academic offering for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Introducing AI-powered teaching and learning
Empowering educators with Teach

We’re introducing Teach to help streamline class prep and adapt AI to support educators’ teaching expertise with intuitive and customizable features. In one place, educators can easily access AI-powered teaching tools to create lesson plans, draft materials like quizzes and rubrics, and quickly make modifications to language, reading level, length, difficulty, alignment to relevant standards, and more.

 

 

10 Tips from Smart Teaching Stronger Learning — from Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.

Per Dr. Pooja Agarwal:

Combining two strategies—spacing and retrieval practice—is key to success in learning, says Shana Carpenter.


On a somewhat related note (i.e., for Instructional Designers, teachers, faculty members, T&L staff members), also see:

 

“A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?” [Hardman] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

From 70/20/10 to 90/10 — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?

This week I want to share a hypothesis I’m increasingly convinced of: that we are entering an age of the 90/10 model of L&D.

90/10 is a model where roughly 90% of “training” is delivered by AI coaches as daily performance support, and 10% of training is dedicated to developing complex and critical skills via high-touch, human-led learning experiences.

Proponents of 90/10 argue that the model isn’t about learning less, but about learning smarter by defining all jobs to be done as one of the following:

  • Delegate (the dead skills): Tasks that can be offloaded to AI.
  • Co-Create (the 90%): Tasks which well-defined AI agents can augment and help humans to perform optimally.
  • Facilitate (the 10%): Tasks which require high-touch, human-led learning to develop.

So if AI at work is now both real and material, the natural question for L&D is: how do we design for it? The short answer is to stop treating learning as an event and start treating it as a system.



My daughter’s generation expects to learn with AI, not pretend it doesn’t exist, because they know employers expect AI fluency and because AI will be ever-present in their adult lives.

— Jenny Maxell

The above quote was taken from this posting.


Unlocking Young Minds: How Gamified AI Learning Tools Inspire Fun, Personalized, and Powerful Education for Children in 2025 — from techgenyz.com by Sreyashi Bhattacharya

Table of Contents

Highlight

  • Gamified AI Learning Tools personalize education by adapting the difficulty and content to each child’s pace, fostering confidence and mastery.
  • Engaging & Fun: Gamified elements like quests, badges, and stories keep children motivated and enthusiastic.
  • Safe & Inclusive: Attention to equity, privacy, and cultural context ensures responsible and accessible learning.

How to test GenAI’s impact on learning — from timeshighereducation.com by Thibault Schrepel
Rather than speculate on GenAI’s promise or peril, Thibault Schrepel suggests simple teaching experiments to uncover its actual effects

Generative AI in higher education is a source of both fear and hype. Some predict the end of memory, others a revolution in personalised learning. My two-year classroom experiment points to a more modest reality: Artificial intelligence (AI) changes some skills, leaves others untouched and forces us to rethink the balance.

This indicates that the way forward is to test, not speculate. My results may not match yours, and that is precisely the point. Here are simple activities any teacher can use to see what AI really does in their own classroom.

4. Turn AI into a Socratic partner
Instead of being the sole interrogator, let AI play the role of tutor, client or judge. Have students use AI to question them, simulate cross-examination or push back on weak arguments. New “study modes” now built into several foundation models make this kind of tutoring easy to set up. Professors with more technical skills can go further, design their own GPTs or fine-tuned models trained on course content and let students interact directly with them. The point is the practice it creates. Students learn that questioning a machine is part of learning to think like a professional.


Assessment tasks that support human skills — from timeshighereducation.com by Amir Ghapanchi and Afrooz Purarjomandlangrudi
Assignments that focus on exploration, analysis and authenticity offer a road map for university assessment that incorporates AI while retaining its rigour and human elements

Rethinking traditional formats

1. From essay to exploration 
When ChatGPT can generate competent academic essays in seconds, the traditional format’s dominance looks less secure as an assessment task. The future lies in moving from essays as knowledge reproduction to assessments that emphasise exploration and curation. Instead of asking students to write about a topic, challenge them to use artificial intelligence to explore multiple perspectives, compare outputs and critically evaluate what emerges.

Example: A management student asks an AI tool to generate several risk plans, then critiques the AI’s assumptions and identifies missing risks.


What your students are thinking about artificial intelligence — from timeshighereducation.com by Florencia Moore and Agostina Arbia
GenAI has been quickly adopted by students, but the consequences of using it as a shortcut could be grave. A study into how students think about and use GenAI offers insights into how teaching might adapt

However, when asked how AI negatively impacts their academic development, 29 per cent noted a “weakening or deterioration of intellectual abilities due to AI overuse”. The main concern cited was the loss of “mental exercise” and soft skills such as writing, creativity and reasoning.

The boundary between the human and the artificial does not seem so easy to draw, but as the poet Antonio Machado once said: “Traveller, there is no path; the path is made by walking.”


Jelly Beans for Grapes: How AI Can Erode Students’ Creativity — from edsurge.com by Thomas David Moore

There is nothing new about students trying to get one over on their teachers — there are probably cuneiform tablets about it — but when students use AI to generate what Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, calls a “truth-shaped word collage,” they are not only gaslighting the people trying to teach them, they are gaslighting themselves. In the words of Tulane professor Stan Oklobdzija, asking a computer to write an essay for you is the equivalent of “going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.”


Deloitte will make Claude available to 470,000 people across its global network — from anthropic.com

As part of the collaboration, Deloitte will establish a Claude Center of Excellence with trained specialists who will develop implementation frameworks, share leading practices across deployments, and provide ongoing technical support to create the systems needed to move AI pilots to production at scale. The collaboration represents Anthropic’s largest enterprise AI deployment to date, available to more than 470,000 Deloitte people.

Deloitte and Anthropic are co-creating a formal certification program to train and certify 15,000 of its professionals on Claude. These practitioners will help support Claude implementations across Deloitte’s network and Deloitte’s internal AI transformation efforts.


How AI Agents are finally delivering on the promise of Everboarding: driving retention when it counts most — from premierconstructionnews.com

Everboarding flips this model. Rather than ending after orientation, everboarding provides ongoing, role-specific training and support throughout the employee journey. It adapts to evolving responsibilities, reinforces standards, and helps workers grow into new roles. For high-turnover, high-pressure environments like retail, it’s a practical solution to a persistent challenge.

AI agents will be instrumental in the success of everboarding initiatives; they can provide a much more tailored training and development process for each individual employee, keeping track of which training modules may need to be completed, or where staff members need or want to develop further. This personalisation helps staff to feel not only more satisfied with their current role, but also guides them on the right path to progress in their individual careers.

Digital frontline apps are also ideal for everboarding. They offer bite-sized training that staff can complete anytime, whether during quiet moments on shift or in real time on the job, all accessible from their mobile devices.


TeachLM: insights from a new LLM fine-tuned for teaching & learning — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Six key takeaways, including what the research tells us about how well AI performs as an instructional designer

As I and many others have pointed out in recent months, LLMs are great assistants but very ineffective teachers. Despite the rise of “educational LLMs” with specialised modes (e.g. Anthropic’s Learning Mode, OpenAI’s Study Mode, Google’s Guided Learning) AI typically eliminates the productive struggle, open exploration and natural dialogue that are fundamental to learning.

This week, Polygence, in collaboration with Stanford University researcher Prof Dora Demszky. published a first-of-its-kind research on a new model — TeachLM — built to address this gap.

In this week’s blog post, I deep dive what the research found and share the six key findings — including reflections on how well TeachLM performs on instructional design.


The Dangers of using AI to Grade — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins
Nobody Learns, Nobody Gains

AI as an assessment tool represents an existential threat to education because no matter how you try and establish guardrails or best practices around how it is employed, using the technology in place of an educator ultimately cedes human judgment to a machine-based process. It also devalues the entire enterprise of education and creates a situation where the only way universities can add value to education is by further eliminating costly human labor.

For me, the purpose of higher education is about human development, critical thinking, and the transformative experience of having your ideas taken seriously by another human being. That’s not something we should be in a rush to outsource to a machine.

 

Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine — from edutopia.org
By regularly working in activities that get students to recall content they’ve learned in the past and apply it, teachers can ensure deeper understanding.

Also see:

  • The Teaching Tips section out at RetrievalPractice.org
    Retrieval practice is a simple research-based teaching strategy that dramatically raises students’ grades. When students retrieve and bring information to mind, this mental challenge produces durable long-term learning. Easy learning leads to easy forgetting. Stop cramming, reviewing, and re-teaching. Instead, simply ask students what they remember. No prep, no grading, just powerful teaching. The science of learning exists. It’s time to unleash it.
 

Nutrition education programs shutter amid funding cuts — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
SNAP-Ed programs teach low-income families about healthy eating habits and food preparation.

University-run nutrition education programs are closing around the country following Trump administration funding cuts. That means low-income families are losing access to information about healthy eating and cooking.

“When you teach people how to eat healthier, the students do better in school, the parents do better at work, that feeds the economy,” Mark Lynch, director of advocacy, told the TV station. “Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.”

From DSC:
“Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.” DC: Yup. We can pay up front and be healthier as a society, or we can try to get people their necessary healthcare later on (probably costing us much more on the aggregate).

Making America Great Again…NOT!

 

7 Teaching Practices that Nurture Student Voice — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

In our efforts to improve school, especially in the United States, student voice has really gotten lost. We focus on test scores, top-down curriculum, and measures of success that never quite get to the humanity of our students. Not only have these efforts not succeeded in raising test scores (Schwartz, 2025), they haven’t given us much satisfaction in other ways, either: In a recent survey, nearly half of educators reported that student behavior was worse than before the pandemic, and that number had grown since teachers were surveyed just two years earlier (Stephens, 2025).

Although there are most certainly individual schools where great things are happening, too many schools are still missing the mark. Too many schools keep trying to address these problems without hearing from the very people who are impacted most: the students. 

But there is another way. Four years ago, I started talking a lot about a new book I’d read called Street Data


Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

 

The World’s Classrooms Are Short 44 Million Teachers — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo
It’s not just pay that’s a problem in retaining and recruiting educators, experts say.

K-12 education worldwide is facing a two-pronged dilemma: A global shortage of 44 million teachers by 2030 and not enough funding to train or retain them, according to a report released by UNESCO and the International Taskforce on Teachers for Education 2030 following the summit. Countries around the world risk not having enough teachers — or not enough high-caliber teachers — for the rising number of students expected to enter primary and secondary school within the next five years.

The report’s findings reflect what some school districts and states have been grappling with in the United States, where research has consistently shown that teachers face lower rates of well-being and satisfaction with pay than similarly employed workers in other fields.

 

20+ Kid Tools for Better Screen Time  — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan and Kevin Maguire
Dad-tested apps to spark creativity (mostly free)

I had a fruitful recent conversation about resources for kids with a fellow dad, Kevin Maguire, who writes the great newsletter The New Fatherhood. If you’re a dad looking for great reads and a sense of community, check out Kevin’s newsletter(Also read Recalculating, by Ignacio Pereyra). Kevin wrote the section below about simplifying screens and shared the tip about muted.io.

The rest of the apps and resources below are ones I’ve enjoyed in recent years with my wife and daughters. From coding with visual blocks to identifying plants on nature walks, these are some of our favorite tools for sparking creativity.


Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) — including a Family section

Take FOMO and flip it on its head. That’s JOMO – the Joy of Missing Out.

At JOMO(campus), we believe digital wellness isn’t just a curriculum—it’s a culture. One rooted in joy, human connection, and intentional living. We equip schools to lead with clarity, care, and courage—helping every member of your community ask: “Who am I becoming in the digital age?”

Our mission is to help school communities create a flourishing campus culture where students are happier, healthier, and more focused — empowering them to make the impact they were born to make.

Our mission is to make digital well-being accessible for every student, fostering resilience and the skills to thrive in a world where digital pressures are ever-present. By teaching digital self-awareness and cultivating joy, we’re committed to supporting students in navigating technology’s challenges with confidence and intentionality.

 

U.S. Law Schools Make AI Training Mandatory as Technology Becomes Core Legal Skill — from jdjournal.com by Fatima E

A growing number of U.S. law schools are now requiring students to train in artificial intelligence, marking a shift from optional electives to essential curriculum components. What was once treated as a “nice-to-have” skill is fast becoming integral as the legal profession adapts to the realities of AI tools.

From Experimentation to Obligation
Until recently, most law schools relegated AI instruction to upper-level electives or let individual professors decide whether to incorporate generative AI into their teaching. Now, however, at least eight law schools require incoming students—especially in their first year—to undergo training in AI, either during orientation, in legal research and writing classes, or via mandatory standalone courses.

Some of the institutions pioneering the shift include Fordham University, Arizona State University, Stetson University, Suffolk University, Washington University in St. Louis, Case Western, and the University of San Francisco.


Beyond the Classroom & LMS: How AI Coaching is Transforming Corporate Learning — from by Dr Philippa Hardman
What a new HBR study tells about the changing nature of workplace L&D

There’s a vision that’s been teased Learning & Development for decades: a vision of closing the gap between learning and doing—of moving beyond stopping work to take a course, and instead bringing support directly into the workflow. This concept of “learning in the flow of work” has been imagined, explored, discussed for decades —but never realised. Until now…?

This week, an article published Harvard Business Review provided some some compelling evidence that a long-awaited shift from “courses to coaches” might not just be possible, but also powerful.

The two settings were a) traditional in-classroom workshops, led by an expert facilitator and b) AI-coaching, delivered in the flow of work. The results were compelling….

TLDR: The evidence suggests that “learning in the flow of work” is not only feasible as a result of gen AI—it also show potential to be more scalable, more equitable and more efficient than traditional classroom/LMS-centred models.


The 10 Most Popular AI Chatbots For Educators — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Educators don’t need to use each of these chatbots, but it pays to be generally aware of the most popular AI tools

I’ve spent time testing many of these AI chatbots for potential uses and abuses in my own classes, so here’s a quick look at each of the top 10 most popular AI chatbots, and what educators should know about each. If you’re looking for more detail on a specific chatbot, click the link, as either I or other Tech & Learning writers have done deeper dives on all these tools.


…which links to:

Beyond Tool or Threat: GenAI and the Challenge It Poses to Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Adam Maksl, Anne Leftwich, Justin Hodgson and Kevin Jones

Generative artificial intelligence isn’t just a new tool—it’s a catalyst forcing the higher education profession to reimagine its purpose, values, and future.

As experts in educational technology, digital literacy, and organizational change, we argue that higher education must seize this moment to rethink not just how we use AI, but how we structure and deliver learning altogether.


At This Rural Microschool, Students Will Study With AI and Run an Airbnb — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Over the past decade, microschools — experimental small schools that often have mixed-age classrooms — have expanded.

Some superintendents have touted the promise of microschools as a means for public schools to better serve their communities’ needs while still keeping children enrolled in the district. But under a federal administration that’s trying to dismantle public education and boost homeschool options, others have critiqued poor oversight and a lack of information for assessing these models.

Microschools offer a potential avenue to bring innovative, modern experiences to rural areas, argues Keith Parker, superintendent of Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools.



Are We Ready for the AI University? An AI in Higher Education Webinar with Dr. Scott Latham


Imagining Teaching with AI Agents… — from michellekassorla.substack.com by Michelle Kassorla
Teaching with AI is only one step toward educational change, what’s next?

More than two years ago I started teaching with AI in my classes. At first I taught against AI, then I taught with AI, and now I am moving into unknown territory: agents. I played with Manus and n8n and some other agents, but I really never got excited about them. They seemed more trouble than they were worth. It seemed they were no more than an AI taskbot overseeing some other AI bots, and that they weren’t truly collaborating. Now, I’m looking at Perplexity’s Comet browser and their AI agent and I’m starting to get ideas for what the future of education might hold.

I have written several times about the dangers of AI agents and how they fundamentally challenge our systems, especially online education. I know there is no way that we can effectively stop them–maybe slow them a little, but definitely not stop them. I am already seeing calls to block and ban agents–just like I saw (and still see) calls to block and ban AI–but the truth is they are the future of work and, therefore, the future of education.

So, yes! This is my next challenge: teaching with AI agents. I want to explore this idea, and as I started thinking about it, I got more and more excited. But let me back up a bit. What is an agent and how is it different than Generative AI or a bot?

 

K-12 to Career — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Ohio eases eligibility rules for high school students to pursue college-level coursework in high-demand fields.

Three Ohio community colleges offer free industry-recognized credentials in manufacturing to more high school students. Also, new career-connected AP courses designed with industry input, a partnership on skilled trade prep for K-12 students, and essays on the race to define the future of credentials and how data and research can inform Workforce Pell.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian