Ed & Tech must-reads 230626

AI and trust, academic integrity forum call for papers, assurance in practice, the value of learning and teaching units and AI economics for dummies.

Author

Colin Simpson
June 23, 2026

black and white papercut print a winged arm in the foreground points to the sun.Text says fly. In the distance a winged figure shedding feathers falls to the sea.

Icarus Fly - C Simpson

Knowing my track record lately, these posts will turn out to have been written in GenAI and completely undercut the points being made. The fact that I write this says something about the erosion of trust and the sense of betrayal that many people are finding in the discourse right now. Anyway, humanities academic Crystal Fleming tells a story across a number of tweets/bleets/bloops about a keynote speaking not acknowledging that their talk was written “with” Claude. The keynote observes that his use of these tools has made him feel useless as an intellectual. The reflections on this drift over Marxism, Feminism, phenomenology and beyond but overall I get a sense of us having shot ourselves in the foot. There is a lengthy tail of comments that are also well worth a read.

Given our trust issues with GenAI, this forum (which I have attended and enjoyed in the past) is probably worth investing some time in. Registration is $30 AUD and submissions to present close on Fri 26th June. Here is the blurb:

This fully online event provides a forum for sharing knowledge, best practice and key questions in the challenging and fast-paced field of academic integrity.

The 2026 Forum will consist of keynote speakers, panels, stream presentations and digital posters on good practice.

All sessions at the 2026 Forum will be recorded and these recordings will be made available to those who had registered. Digital poster presentations in the form of short video recordings will also be available in the lead up to the forum.

What does assurance of learning actually look like in practice? from Needed now in Learning and Teaching

Jessica Marrington, Chris Zehntner, Neil Martin and Jo-Anne Ferreira (University of Southern Queensland) share their experiences of working to operationalise the sometimes vibe-based discussions around how we ensure that students’ work demonstrates their learning. They offer a framework-in-progress for program level assurance using a quasi two lanes approach. This view of assurance design is one not often seen by academics teaching individual units but it is a vital illustration of the high level thinking that occurs in centres for learning and teaching like the USQ Learning and Teaching Futures Unit.

In addition to undertaking high-level work to help assure learning, centres for teaching and learning (or learning and teaching units, if you will) play a key role in promoting a strong educational culture and developing academic capabilities in tertiary education. This webinar, hosted by Wendy Taleo (Flinders), features Ruth Greenaway (SCU) and Kevin Ashford-Rowe sharing their experiences and challenges and how these centres contribute to institutional transformation. A session that anyone with an interest in or responsibility for such centres can not afford to miss.

AI Economics for Dummies from McSweeneys

With the eye-watering sums being bandied about after the IPO of Musk’s SpaceX, which is primarily a vehicle for his gross AI platform Grok, I feel that it would be easy to think that we have found new rivers of gold. This barbed set of examples from Andrew Singleton in McSweeneys spell out some of the baffling assumptions underpinning decision making in a sector which powers 1/3 of the US economy. For now.

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