Ed & tech must-reads 25th Aug 2026

Webinar: Using Cogniti agents to improve learning: Practitioner case studies Thurs 27th Aug 12pm AEST from ASCILITE TELedvisors Network

The University of Sydney’s Cogniti platform for building AI agents to support learning and teaching continues to grow, recently added to the official Microsoft Store. Join presenters from USyd (Andrew Bartlett), Uni of Auckland (Bettina Schwenger, Andrea Kolb, Marion Blumenstein) and Queensland Uni of Technology (Sam Cunningham) as they share their innovative uses of this platform. Hosted by Henk Huijser (QUT and TELedvisors)

Webinar: Teaching Reimagined: Digital Innovation, Technology and Impact Thurs 27th Aug 1pm AEST from HERDSA

And if after the Cogniti showcase you are still hankering for more, this webinar from our friends at HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia) showcasing innovative practitioners from CQU (Jahan Hassan), Griffith Uni (Bill Platz) and QUT (Paul Van Opdenbosch) - all winners at the 2024 Australian Awards for University Teaching.

Artificial Intelligence Policy from UC Berkeley Law

Law academics can be special people to work with - a mixture of practical workplace experience and absolute refusal to be told what to do by anyone. I have never come across another discipline where threats from both staff and students to sue the school get their own standing agenda item at faculty meetings. (I exaggerate a little, maybe). The impact of GenAI on the legal field in the last few years has been significant, with regular stories about hallucinated submissions and tales of courts clogged with slop driven cases. So it is perhaps unsurprising that as the GenAI backlash proceeds, it might find a home in a law school. UC Berkeley’s law school has decided to take a very hard line about the use of GenAI by students in virtually all activities - brainstorming/conceptualising, structuring papers, drafting/writing work, revising work and even grammar checking. (Obviously use in exams is also right out). Interestingly, the answer to the first question in the attached Q&A about whether the law school is banning AI is simply “No”. This goes on to explain their thinking and is pretty to the point.

ed.advisors is live from me

I’ve mentioned previously that I’m setting up a parallel publication/blog/whatever this is to let me explore my research passion of third space practitioners in higher ed (learning designers, educational technologists, academic developers - some of the unseen people behind good learning and teaching). Progress has been made and interested people can sign up to get weekly must-reads newsletters (probably on a Friday) and some long form pieces from time to time. For now, you can learn a little more about who I am and why I have the audacity to think people will want to read this, what the HE third space and EdAdvisors mean and why they matter, and some useful resources from other people in this arena.