ideas

Two years ago, AI broke assessment. Now, it’s helping us to reinvent it. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Also from Dr. Hardman, see:

A new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

…a new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how.

Google DeepMind just shared the results of a randomised trial involving 1,763 students. Half used Gemini’s “Guided Learning” to learn maths; half didn’t.

The result: the group working with AI gained the equivalent of 1.2 to 1.7 years of extra progress compared to those who didn’t.

It’s tempting to read this as “Gemini’s Guided Learning mode works!” But the key point here is that Gemini didn’t work alone….

Look closer, and what made the difference wasn’t just the tech — it was a great teacher making expert use of it.

The Tyranny of College Admissions: Why It’s So Challenging to Have Real Change in K-12 Education — from gettingsmart.com by Jon Alfuth

Key Points

College admissions policy shapes K-12 practice. If colleges continue to privilege course sequences, seat time, and grades, high schools will remain constrained in how far they can move toward competency-based learning.
States and institutions already offer models for change. Wisconsin, Colorado, Indiana, and pilots like CUNY and Michigan Ross show that admissions can incorporate portfolios, demonstrations of learning, and durable skills.

If we could instead orient K-12 education around skill development and application rather than Carnegie Units and grades, we could create a new paradigm for where, when and how students demonstrate college and career readiness. Competency-based education moves schools and systems towards this desirable future that balances knowledge with skills.

Despite tremendous evidence of its potential, efforts to accelerate this shift have been stymied by the tyranny of college admissions requirements and processes. Parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers end up in a quandary. Anyone attempting to shift away from this traditional course sequence is criticized as trying to lock kids out of higher education and we snap back to the way things have always been done.

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.

Pinpoint, Explained | A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all [Caplan]

On 06/05/2026, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, data related items, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, faculty/staff, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, library / librarians, research, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Pinpoint, Explained — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all

.Jeremy prompted ChatGPT to generate illustrations in his post.

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Learn about Pinpoint— from support.google.com

Pinpoint is an AI-powered research platform designed to help journalists and academics analyze large collections of documents. With Pinpoint, you can:

Analyze massive collections: Easily search, filter, transcribe and organize thousands of documents, including PDFs, images, and audio files.
Leverage generative AI: Use Gemini’s capabilities to answer research questions together with supporting evidence found in your documents.
Foster collaborative research: share your work with colleagues and tackle large scale projects as a team. You can also publicly share – supporting community-driven research.

For assistance with Pinpoint, please consult our Community Forum or you can contact our support team.

Cleveland Institute of Art’s Interactive Media Lab Redefines What an Art School Can Be — from edtechmagazine.com

The landscape for specialized colleges and universities such as art schools is shifting as higher education continues to evolve to fit emerging job markets and student interest.

Founded in 1882, Cleveland Institute of Art continuously challenges itself to stay modern and relevant. Years ago, the school’s leadership had the vision to partner with the city to revitalize an area due for reinvigoration.

The result was the Interactive Media Lab, which brings together the university, the city and private industry into a satellite campus that gives students and the community a space to create media, art and experiences with the most up-to-date tools available.

Also see:

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.”

6 Tips for Easily Incorporating Games in Your Learning [learningguild.com]

On 05/31/2026, in business, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, educational games / serious games, elearning, ideas, instructional design, learning, Learning Experience Design, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, training / L&D, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

6 Tips for Easily Incorporating Games in Your Learning — from learningguild.com

To help you incorporate game elements into your learning, we’ve asked our Game-Based Learning Online Conference speakers to share their best tips:

The game design process can support the instructional designer during design and development. …
One of the biggest mistakes in game-based learning is starting with the game instead of the performance objective. …
By redefining the success of gamification as the transition from information to skill, we’ll see a transformation from the well-known initial engagement driver to a tool that helps guarantee long-term encoding. …
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…and more

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.

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

Why universities must become flexible lifelong partners, not one-time providers [Sivarajah]

On 05/28/2026, in adjunct faculty, apprenticeships, business, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, credentialing, curriculum, Daniel S. Christian, Europe, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, internships, leadership, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, MBA, new business models, organizational change, pace of change, participation, pathways, professional development, skills, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, technology (general), UK, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Why universities must become flexible lifelong partners, not one-time providers — from timeshighereducation.com by Sankar Sivarajah
As careers become increasingly non-linear and shaped by rapid change, universities must evolve beyond traditional degree provision, says Sankar Sivarajah. Here, he outlines strategies

From programmes to learning ecosystems
These pressures point towards a broader redefinition of higher education. Rather than viewing education as a one-time experience culminating in a degree, universities increasingly need to see themselves as partners in professional development across an entire career.

This means moving from a model centred on programmes to one focused on learning ecosystems that allow individuals to enter, leave and re-engage with higher education as their needs evolve.

Business schools may be particularly well placed to lead this shift because of their close engagement with employers and their long tradition of educating professionals at different stages of their careers.

But success will depend on more than introducing new modules or certificates. Universities must confront a fundamental question. Are the systems, structures and cultures that define higher education capable of supporting genuinely flexible learning?

The sector has already embraced the language of lifelong learning – the next step is ensuring that universities themselves are built to deliver it.

From DSC:
Long-time readers of this blog have seen this graphic of mine posted over the last 12+ years:
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Also relevant/see:

What if the undergraduate journey were a four-year internship? — from timeshighereducation.com by Michelle Seref
Treating work placements and co-curricular programmes as optional or supplementary misses deeper questions about whether traditional degrees prepare students for careers. Michelle Seref explains

Attending workshops or polishing a résumé in their final semester does not make students career-ready. They need to practise how to work – how to collaborate, navigate ambiguity, manage projects and apply knowledge in context – throughout their academic experience. The reality is that career readiness is not a co-curricular programme; it is an essential part of an integrated curriculum.

To be clear, employers do not expect classrooms to become training centres. What they are asking for – implicitly and explicitly – is graduates who can function in complex environments from day one. That means graduates who can work in teams, communicate professionally with stakeholders, adapt when plans change, apply theory to real constraints and learn continuously on the job.

These capabilities do not develop through passive learning. But experiential learning is often misunderstood as a single, high-impact activity: an internship, a capstone project or study abroad. In reality, its power comes from repetition and progression. One experience introduces exposure. A sequence of experiences builds competence.

We are proposing a paradigm shift: repositioning the undergraduate journey as a four-year professional internship rather than a continuation of the K-12 classroom environment.

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From DSC:
The problem with this innovative idea is that faculty often are not out in the “real world.” The best chance higher ed has to deliver on this idea is via the adjunct faculty members out there. Often, they are the ones practicing what they are teaching. They are constantly pulse-checking — and actively involved with — their industries and have more up-to-date, practical knowledge.

But this is a problem for traditional institutions of higher education, which have treated their adjunct faculty members poorly through the years. Adjunct faculty members hardly make minimum wage, have no benefits, no retirement plans, etc. — plus they have little to no say in faculty senates.

Organizational change would be a requirement.

Three items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 05/26/2026, in adjunct faculty, business, career development, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, policy, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

I Was a University AI Czar. I’m Not Equipped to Teach in the Age of AI. — from jgellers.substack.com by Josh Gellers, PhD

The reason that I claim I am not well-suited to thrive as an instructor in the age of AI is because both AI Enthusiasts and AI Resisters put a lot of thought and energy into completely redesigning their classes in response to AI. This is the one takeaway that I don’t think the Exhausted Majority has fully accepted yet—to excel as a teacher in this AI era, you need to totally revise how you teach and how you assess what students learn in your classes.

I can say this much—whatever solution our industry comes up with, it’s likely to emerge from teaching and learning centers. Contrary to what Paul Schofield wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, pedagogy experts are the best hope we have to equip today’s faculty with the tools required to succeed in this uncertain educational environment. As I always tell my students, “I was trained for 7 years to become a researcher and 2 days to become a teacher.” The idea that only disciplinary experts know how to teach and have nothing to learn from so-called “nonscholars” is so laughable that one has to wonder whether an AI agent jokingly wrote that sad opinion piece to troll the whole academe.

Also from Dr. Gellers, see:

The Worst AI Policy in Higher Ed
How Berkeley Law Boalt-ed From Expertise in Favor of Abstinence

Last week, one of the top law schools in the United States, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, released its final policy on artificial intelligence, effective summer 2026. In the span of a breezy 1.5 pages, the school outlined the challenge AI poses to legal education and how it plans to address this problem. Despite these intentions, this AI policy is, in my estimation, the worst AI policy in higher education I have seen.

From AI Tutors to AI Study Mates— from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
New research reveals how AI can enable real learning — not just productivity gains

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The point isn’t that AI is inherently bad for learning — it’s that the meta-analyses showing that LLMs improve assignment and performance scores are measuring the wrong thing. They’re measuring performance with the AI present, not learning that persists once it’s gone.

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From DSC:
Notice that when an AI-based learning system can remember what you’ve worked on and how you are doing — where you are struggling or doing well — it can have a positive impact on your longer-term learning. That, to me, is where long-term based learner profiles come in.

Later in the article, Dr. Hardman points out that “if we want to deliver AI tooling which supports substantive learning, we need to intentionally create a new category of AI tool for ‘learning at work’ which prioritises learning and development over productivity.” While I agree with that, I do wonder if businesses will care, so long as the work gets done and gets done well. But this calls into mind the word “experience” — something that traditionally has been hard fought to get in the corporate world. But the corporate realm often doesn’t like to pay for experience (beyond key AI-based jobs) when they perceive it’s getting too expensive. Ask all those 50 and over who had or have a target on their backs.

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“The sad fact is that we don’t teach learners how to be good at learning. Whether K12, higher ed, or organizations, it’s just not there.”

— from Clark Quinn’s posting entitled, Thoughts on meta-coaching!

From DSC:
I agree. We could do a much better job at this.

Putting college on the fast track — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
As students grow impatient, colleges try three-year bachelor’s degrees

Some colleges and the accreditors and states that oversee them are adding and approving three-year bachelor’s degrees that require fewer credits than the traditional four-year kind.

Institutions facing enrollment declines hope the new three-year degrees will attract students unwilling to spend the usual amount of time and money that it takes to graduate. States need those graduates to fill jobs.

Nearly 60 universities and colleges are planning, considering or have already launched reduced-credit, three-year bachelor’s degrees in some disciplines. They’re calling them “applied” or “career-focused” bachelor’s degrees.

While earning bachelor’s degrees with fewer credits may appeal to some students, the idea is so new that there’s a key unanswered question: whether employers, graduate schools and licensing agencies will accept them.

From DSC:
Given the often high price of obtaining a degree these days…whether it’s a 4-year program or a 3-year program, the key is whether a student can get a good job coming out of that program. I think the required time doesn’t help as much as making the necessary changes to offer more responsive curricula, relevant programs, and real-world learning experiences (including apprenticeships and internships). I appreciate the experiment to lower the overall costs, but like so many other “innovations,” it’s playing at the fringes. It’s really the same old, same old — just on a shorter time frame.

At current prices, families are FORCED to consider employment prospects. They are demanding a ROI, because they have to.

I was at a meeting earlier this year with other parents and family members who were interested in a particular program at a Michigan-based university. One set of parents really wanted to know if their student would be getting a good job coming out of the program. They didn’t want to take a second mortgage out if the investment wasn’t going to pay off.

Also see:

Here is the link to Chris Mayer’s posting on LinkedIn.

Learning Ecosystems

Cleveland Institute of Art’s Interactive Media Lab Redefines What an Art School Can Be [edtechmagazine.com]

6 Tips for Easily Incorporating Games in Your Learning [learningguild.com]

Two items re: experiments within higher ed as well as offering alternative college models

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