Ed & Tech must-reads 310326

Canvas unrolls AI teaching agent from InsideHigherEd

Canvas is far from the only LMS joining the stampede to incorporate GenAI tools in their platforms but the language that they have used in their announcement (alongside every borderline psychopathic utterance we have heard from AI tech bros in recent years about eliminating labour costs) does not sit well. The main concern is their focus on automating “low-value tasks” like rubric generation, content alignment and discussion reviews, which handwavingly “frees educators to focus more on mentoring, feedback and meaningful learning experiences”. This article jumps around a bit, from the implications of the short-lived Einstein app to ‘dead-classroom’ theory but it does capture some of the big picture issues relatively well. The fact that Instructure is happy to downplay the vital importance of thought course design says a lot about their understanding of learning and teaching.

One Credential, Many Journeys: Persona-Aligned Assessment for Postgraduate Microcredentials in Emerging Technologies from ACE ‘26: Proceedings of the 28th Australasian Computing Education Conference

Conference season has kicked off early for the nerds at the Association for Computing Machinery and they have already (very effiiciently) published the proceedings of their ACE’26 event. Authors Tubino and Zaidi (Deakin uni) describe their use of a persona based approach in IT microcredentials to provide learners with authentic learning pathways which are highly relevant to the professional development in emerging areas of practice. The courses blend core mandatory tasks with role-specific optional ones which collectively provide a set of skills and knowledge necessary to grow as a practitioner. This ticks a lot of boxes in terms of adult learning principles and I have a feeling that we will be seeing more of this in higher level courses before long. Well worth a read.

The Five Biggest Pitfalls of Collaborative Grouping (And How to Avoid Them) from Spencer Education

In Australia we recently had the shadow minister for higher education (Julian Leeser) put out a seemingly random call for universities to scrap group assignments. After a number of people explained why they are used and their value in developing key work/life skills, this faded away. But he wasn’t wrong about one thing - they are not beloved by students because they are often poorly designed and managed and/or students are not explicitly equipped with the skills needed to succeed. In this in-depth post, John Spencer (sans Blues Explosion) explores five common points of failure in group assessments (including one student doing all the work/dominating ideation) and offers sensible strategies for educators and students to address these. Worth bookmarking.

Webinar: Is it time to move beyond grades? Weds April 15th 2pm AEDT from Deakin CRADLE

Juuso Nieminen notes that decades of criticism of the use of grades has achieved little change and calls for more thought into “reassembling the work they have traditionally done in higher education”. I’m not entirely sure what this will look like but I am keen to find out.

Recording now available: Third Space Identity - Learning Designers and beyond from ASCILITE TELedvisors network

Ingrid D’Souza (Monash) and I undertook doctoral research at around the same time into the nature of third space practitioner roles in learning and teaching in higher ed but somehow we never really chatted about it. So it was great to finally hear what she found and to note the many overlaps with and interesting diversions from my own work. The challenges of inconsistent titles and loosely defined roles were key commonalities. This is an issue when it means that educators don’t understand the roles sufficiently because it weakens trust and can mean that expertise goes unheard. If you missed the webinar, it is well worth a watch.