It was my pleasure last week to deliver a mini-workshop at the Independent Schools of New Zealand Annual Conference in Auckland. Intended to be more dialogue than monologue, I’m not sure if it landed quite where I had hoped. It is an exciting time to be thinking about educational governance and my key message was ‘don’t get caught up in the hype’. Understanding media representations of “Artificial Intelligence”. Mapping types of AI in 2023 We need to be wary of the hype around the term AI, Artificial Intelligence. I do not believe there is such a thing. Certainly not in the sense the popular ..read more

I briefly had a form up on my website for people to be able to contact me if they wanted to use any of my visualisations, visuals of theory in practice. I had to take it down because ‘people’ proved incapable of reading the text above it which clearly stated it’s purpose. They insisted on trying to persuade me they had something to flog. Often these individuals, generalists, were most likely using AI to generate blog posts on some vaguely related theme. I have rejected hundreds of approaches in recent years from individuals (I assume they were humans) who suggested they could write blogs for m ..read more

The vernacular definition of plagiarism is often “passing off someone else’s work as your own” or more fully, in the University of Oxford maternal guidance, “Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.” This later definition works better in the current climate in which generative AI assistants are being rolled out across many word-processing tools. When a student can start a prompt and have the system, rather than another individual, write paragraphs, there is an urgen ..read more

It is my privilege to serve alongside Alison Fields as co-editor of the Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, an international high-quality peer-reviewed academic journal. I also have a piece in this issue entitled ‘Definitions of the Terms Open, Distance, and Flexible in the Context of Formal and Non-Formal Learning‘. Issue 26 (2) of the Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning (JOFDL) is now available to the world. It begins with an editorial looking at readership and research trends in the journal post-COVID, followed by a thought-provoking Invited Article about the nat ..read more

Introducing a short guide entitled: “Writing Good Learning Outcomes and Objectives”, aimed at enhancing the learner experience through effective course design. Available at https://amazon.com/dp/0473657929 The book has sections on the function and purpose of intended learning outcomes as well as guidance on how to write them with validation in mind. Sections explore the use of different educational taxonomies as well as some things to avoid, and the importance of context. There is also a section on ensuring your intended learning outcomes are assessable. The final section deals with how you mi ..read more

During the Empower Learners for the Age of AI (ELAI) conference earlier in December 2022, it became apparent to me personally that not only does Artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to revolutionize the field of education, but that it already is. But beyond the hype and enthusiasm there are enormous strategic policy decisions to be made, by governments, institutions, faculty and individual students. Some of the ‘end is nigh’ messages circulating on Social Media in the light of the recent release of ChatGPT are fanciful click-bait, some however, fire a warning shot across the bow of ..read more

Have you got some time for professional development over the holiday period? Or do you have colleagues or design teams working on course designs over the holiday period? Anyone who has ever tried to assess or teach to poorly learning outcomes, and then tried to defend their practices or results, will tell you that getting it right at the offset saves a huge amount of effort and heartache. Intended Learning Outcomes are the foundations of any sound well-aligned course and programme design. Being able to create effective well-structured learning outcome is a valuable skill required of all learni ..read more

Who should universities watch? The question is to what extent universities feel the need to step into the developmental space around XR technologies, and who should they be watching. Which evolutionary pathways will win out is unknown. Meta/Facebook has brand identification with the Metaverse concept in its advocacy of VR. Given the serious trust issues with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the challenge to revenue from Apple’s changing advertising policy, and TikTok’s growing share of advertising revenue, the future of Meta is uncertain. Google has innovated in the XR space for several year ..read more

Press coverage of recent cryptocurrency disruptions and the significant staff reductions at Twitter and Meta is giving pause for thought amongst investors and futurists, as well as university leaders considering the future of the Metaverse. The fact that you may feel like you cannot keep up with the news is understandable. The collapse of the cryptocurrency platform FTX, the apparent meltdown underway at Twitter and the 11-year sentence handed down to Elizabeth Holmes for the Thanos fraud do all have something in common. The digital world is sufficiently obscured from the majority of people, s ..read more

I am not selling anything here. That should be self-evident given that my answer to the question “what is currently possible within the Metaverse?” is, not much. I could even suggest nothing, because ‘it’ doesn’t exist yet, certainly in the form it aspires to. What we have instead are partial experiences, glimpses into the promise of what the future holds. In part one of this four-part blog, I explored the definitions of what the Metaverse might be. We don’t have it yet. Recent press (including this from the NYT), in part the reason for the delay in issuing this second of four short articles ..read more