I don t think I ve ever read any published article by Dave Cormier that I didn t like, and I ve read quite a few. This latest blog post, A human-centred model for discussing AI in assessment is no exception. In it, Dave describes his framework for discussing AI in assessment with teachers and other course designers, revolving around 3 questions: Did they do it? Have they learned? Are we helping? I…
I am fifth of 26 authors, led by the remarkable Aras Bozkurt, of "Redefining Educational Technology: A Critical Collaborative Inquiry," published in Open Praxis this month. It's a great paper. The result is not the ultimate definition of "educational technology" and it is certainly not the simplest but, as a snapshot of where we are now, I reckon it works pretty well, and the analysis leading up…
In this post I discuss a new paradigm for building plugin-based social applications (e.g. with Elgg or Wordpress) that is grounded in the fact that LLMs are better at creating a plugin from scratch than modifying one that already exists. We don't need to build code, we just need good specs, and LLMs are pretty good at helping us create those, too. This is already very useful, saving thousands of…
I ve just finished giving a brief keynote for IFERP s 3rd EdInnovate conference in Tokyo (sadly, because I love Tokyo in the Spring, I was online). Here are the slides. The conference was great: they put all of the keynotes and invited talks on a single day, with a very international and cross-disciplinary bunch of thought leaders (and me), and many of us were talking about very closely related…
Source: Random Audits as a Scalable Deterrent to Cheating: Using Game Theory to Design Fair and Effective Academic Integrity Systems for the AI Era by David Wiley Though not particularly common, the general principle of only assessing a sample of work with oral exams (viva voces) is well established, and is common practice in a number of institutions (e.g. UC Berkeley or UC London). What s smart…
What does it mean for higher education to work? The problem with claiming (as I sometimes do) that higher education is broken and needs to be transformed is that it begs the question of what it means for higher education to work, and that depends what you think it is for. From the name you d expect that higher education might be for well education, assuming that to be concerned with learning and…
Here are the slides from the first of my two keynotes last week, Tool-using tools Perceptions and misperceptions of generative AI. This one was for the Global AI Summit 2025, hosted at Bennett University in India. The talk covered ground that I ve already blogged about. My big point is that it is not just inaccurate but misleading to think of genAIs as tools: it grants us too much agency. If you…
I gave my second keynote of the week last week (in person!) at the excellent ICEEL conference in Tokyo. Here are the slides: Generative AI vs degenerative AI: steps towards the constructive transformation of education in the digital age. The conference theme was AI-Powered Learning: Transforming Education in the Digital Age , so this is roughly what I talked about Transformation in (especially…
This is my contribution to the inaugural issue of AACE s new journal of AI-Enhanced Learning, Cognitive Santa Claus Machines and the Tacit Curriculum. If the title sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because you might have seen my post offering some further thoughts on cognitive Santa Claus machines written not long after I had submitted this paper. The paper itself delves a bit into the theory…
The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Enhanced Learning (AIEL), a diamond open-access journal published under the auspices of AACE and distributed worldwide through LearnTechLib has just launched its inaugural issue, which includes a paper from me (Cognitive Santa Claus Machines and the Tacit Curriculum). This inaugural issue is a great start to what I think will come to be recognized as a…
For a few minutes the other day I thought that I had invented a new kind of fallacy or, at least, a great term to describe it. Disappointingly, a quick search revealed that it was not only an old idea but one that has been independently invented at least twice before (Berry Martin, 1974; Weinstock, 1981). Here is its definition from Weinstock (1981): a synecdochic fallacy is a deceptive,…
I ve just submitted a journal paper (shameless plug: to AACE s AIEL, of which I am an associate editor) in which I describe generative AIs as cognitive Santa Claus machines. I don t know if it s original but the idea appeals to me. Whatever thought we ask for, genAIs will provide it, mining their deep, deep wells of lossily compressed recorded human knowledge to provide us with skills and…
At short notice I was invited to be guest of honour and keynote at Bennett University s International Conference on Blockchain for Inclusive and Representative Democracy yesterday. I was not able to attend the entire conference my opening keynote was at 9:30pm here in Vancouver and I eventually needed to sleep but I made it for a few hours. I was impressed with the diversity and breadth of the…
Many people brush generative AI aside as being just a tool. ChatGPT describes itself as such (I asked). I think it’s more complicated than that, and this post is going to be an attempt to explain why. I’m not sure about much of what follows and welcome any thoughts you may have on whether this resonates with you and, if not, why not. What makes something a tool I think that to call something a…
Here s a characteristically well-expressed and succinct summary of the complex nature of technologies, our relationships with them, and what that means for education by the ever-wonderful Tim Fawns. I like it a lot, and it expresses much what I have tried to express about the nature and value of technologies, far better than I could do it and in far fewer words. Some of it, though, feels like it…
The latest paper I can proudly add to my list of publications, Venturing into the Unknown: Critical Insights into Grey Areas and Pioneering Future Directions in Educational Generative AI Research has been published in the (unfortunately) closed journal TechTrends. Here s a direct link to the paper that should hopefully bypass the paywall, if it has not been used too often. I m 16th of 47…
Here are the slides from my keynote at Thompson Rivers University s Teaching Practices Colloquium this morning. I quite like the mediaeval theme (thanks ChatGPT), which I created to provide a constant reminder that the problems we have to solve are the direct result of decisions made 1000 years ago. There was a lot of stuff from my last book in the talk, framed in terms of Faustian Bargains,…
Here are the slides from a talk I just gave to a group of grad students at AU in our ongoing seminar series, on the nature of collectives and ways we can use and abuse them. It s a bit of a sprawl covering some 30 odd years of a particularly geeky, semi-philosophical branch of my research career (not much on learning and teaching in this one, but plenty of termites) and winding up with very much a…
Dron, J. (2024). Learning: A technological perspective. Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education, 1(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.25619/dpvg4687 My latest paper, Learning: A technological perspective, was published today in the (open) Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education. Methodologically, it provides a connected series of (I think) reasonable and largely uncontroversial…
Thanks to Stefanie Panke for some great questions and excellent editing in this interview with me for the AACE Review. The content is in fact the product of two discussions, one coming from student questions at the end of a talk that I gave for the Asian University for Women just before Christmas, the other asynchronously with Stefanie herself. Stefanie did a very good job of making sense of my…