Ed & Tech must-reads 21102025

Educator priorities for PD, designing learning spaces for accessibility, are GenAI users psychopaths?

Author

Colin Simpson
October 21, 2025

rock woman in black playing guitar and singin in front of red courtains

Sometimes I go out - Adalita playing with Bleak Squad

What’s that? You don’t speak German? (It’s ok, neither do I) - But which teaching competencies do they want to learn? Self-identified priorities ranked from Journal for Higher Education Development

There is an English version of this very interesting paper from Brown, Petchey, Martensson, and Niebert (from a selection of Swiss unis) and it is well worth the read. They surface the common tension in higher ed which can be found between centrally based education/academic developers and disciplinary academics around what kind of skills and knowledge are prioritised in learning and teaching. They explored open texts from 863 teaching staff across 16 departments across STEM and HASS domains (though favouring HASS) to understand the nuts and bolts of what educators most seek guidance in. These covered student engagement, course development, specific teaching methods (discipline focused), assessment and student diversity. Theory, online/blended teaching and tools (presumably ed tech) did not rate highly overall, seldom crossing the 10% mark. Though I have to wonder if these academics wouldn’t necessarily seek that from more pedagogically focused ed devs or if being STEM heavy they felt more comfortable in that space. It was also a pre-GenAI study. Some interesting reading.

The blurb for this promising looking event explains this better than I can.
What if learning spaces were designed for everyone?

Learning spaces shape how we connect, grow, and thrive – yet too often, they exclude. The 2025 Symposium: Designing Learning Spaces for Neurodiversity and Disability brings together educators, designers, researchers, and people with lived experience to ask: how can classrooms and campuses truly include everyone?

Over two days, keynote speakers, panel discussions, and workshops will explore the barriers that persist and the opportunities for change. Highlights include international expert Professor Magda Mostafa, pioneer in autism and neuro-inclusive design, and Dr Jodie Wilson, whose lived experience has made her a leading voice for disruption and equity. Guided by symposium convenor Assoc. Prof. Ben Cleveland, the program blends research, advocacy, and personal stories to reimagine education environments that enable participation for all.

Registration is $60/$30 per day.

Most people rarely use AI, and dark personality traits predict who uses it more from PsyPost

It’s pretty hard to go past a clickbaity headline that suggests that psychopaths seem to use GenAI more than neurotypical folk. At first glance, it seems to be about a reputable piece of research but in reviewing the article itself, I came across this line which raised some eyebrows - “Finally, we observed that self-reported AI use and actual AI use were only moderately correlated (ρ = 0.329)” - correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think we get to do that with p values. P values - and forgive me as I butcher this explanation - tell us whether a statistical datapoint is likely to be reliable (sigificant) or not based loosely on whether there is a 1 in 20 chance - p = .05 - it might not have happened by fluke. The study also tracked user data visiting specific GenAI websites but given how hard the GenAI peeps are working to put it everywhere, it would seem that people are presumably not only going directly to chatgpt.com. This would seem to be one of those articles leaning in to Colbert’s ‘truthiness’.

One more quick reminder about our upcoming webinar next week, showcasing the great work of Joan Sutherland and Nicholas English in the space of practical (useful) educational technology evaluation in the age of GenAI. Not to be missed.

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