Ed/Tech must-readers 040225

DeepSeek – Initial Thoughts and Advice from JISC Artificial Intelligence

It’s been hard to avoid stories about the new Chinese ChatGPT killer DeepSeek in the last few weeks (well unless you were looking here, where I have been waiting for the hype dust to settle). While I wonder whether there is a small amount of bias in this otherwise straight-to-the-point post from Michael Webb of JISC, who seems quaintly concerned about Chinese censorship as the madmen in the US set about burning knowledge to the ground. But it does correct some misconceptions about exactly how good and how cheap this new tool is. For now, I’m happy to sit back and wait a little while longer.

Do higher ed leaders understand how much students learn in the process of coming up with their own ideas in response to a prompt? from Anna Mills

This thoughtful LinkedIn post from writing instructor and early GenAI educational thought leader highlights some of my own concerns about the rise and rise of GenAI tools. She discusses findings of a survey of US college leaders which indicate that they largely see nothing wrong with students writing work based on a plan that they got ChatGPT to make for them, with none of their own thinking involved. She asks whether we are missing the point of doing our own work in the early stages of writing, which is that this is how we understanding and organise our own thinking. I am also growing concerned that we may be outsourcing vital skills that will ultimately reduce our ability to think.

Traversing changing higher education learning spaces: what we bring and what is missing from HERD (Paywall)

Some of my (former?) USyd colleagues have gotten a little philosophical, drawing “on Derrida's concept of hauntology – which posits that the past and future ‘haunt’ the present – to analyse educational experiences”. In practical terms, Vallis et al. explore teacher and student attitudes towards learning and teaching and consider how prior experiences inform current expectations and needs. It’s an unusual approach to examining this kind of thinking but it works.

Understanding the complexity of centers for teaching and learning: introducing a four-dimensional model from Higher Education

In a slightly more orthodox approach, this long-awaited (by me and I’m sure others) article wraps up work by Mihai et al. in interviewing the leaders of 25 US CTLs. This is an important contribution to literature about how institutions enable better learning and teaching practice which addresses their location within institutions, the importance of relationships, the nature of their activities and particularly the risks involved in ‘policing’ learning and teaching and also in being seen to be too close to developing learning and teaching strategies. Which is unfair because they are the people you want in the room for these decisions but it also can put them in the enemy ‘management’ camp in the eyes of some.

Why can’t higher education agree on terminology for third-space professionals? from Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education

Simpson hey? Yes, this is mine - it’s my first proper journal publication (even if a commentary piece), so please be kind. I share a few opinions about why the titles of third space roles like academic developers, educational technologists and learning designers are so inconsistently used in the sector and why we should just stop that.