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Feature Article
What's Good In Higher Education?
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2026/10/22

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Principles and Practice of Deep Representation Learning
Sam Buchanan, Druv Pai, Peng Wang, Yi Ma, GitHub, 2026/10/22

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This is "a modern fully open-source textbook exploring why and how deep neural networks learn compact and information-dense representations of high-dimensional real-world data." It's a daunting read - and to be honest, I gave the first chapter a careful read but have only skimmed the rest (though it's now on my virtual bookshelf for future reference). I think people who are serious about understanding how we learn and how machines emulate this should at the very least read that first chapter. It contains what is to my understanding an accurate history of artificial intelligence (including the important early work in computation, cybernetics, and information theory). The aim of the book is to give us a framework that explains how neural networks work to generate intelligence. They authors write, "intelligence is not about collecting all informative data in advance and training a model to memorize their (low-dimensional) distribution. Instead, it requires computational mechanisms that can continuously improve current knowledge of the distribution and acquire new information when needed. A fundamental characteristic of any intelligent being or system - whether an animal, a human, a civilization, or the entire scientific community - is the ability to continuously improve or gain new information or knowledge on its own."

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Beyond Issuance: Who Is Responsible for Making Digital Credentials Useful?
Wendy Palmer, Lifelong Learning Edge, 2026/10/22

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Wendy Palmer comments on Accredible's State of Credentialing report which argues, among other things, that "Credentialing programs have entered an accountability era. As expectations rise, organizations are increasingly expected to demonstrate the impact of their programs - not just issue credentials." She picks up on that point to explore "how we measure the value of digital credentials, and whether the measures we're using really tell us what we need to know about their quality and impact." She asks, "are we conflating the quality of the learning experience with the quality of the credential that represents it?" After all, "they aren't quite the same thing. A course might be exceptionally well designed, delivered and assessed. It might meet every institutional quality standard. Yet the credential issued at the end often simply says that someone successfully completed the course. What does that communicate to an employer." Via Doug Belshaw. 

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Designing for Kindness
Kona Jones, Instructure, 2026/10/22

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"The single most important strategy we can use to help our students succeed in our courses is to care about them as learners and as human beings," says Kona Jones from Richland Community College. What I like about this article is that it contains not just the platitude in the introduction, but a detailed description of how exactly to design for kindness, using her own mathematics course as an example, with concrete steps taken to make sure people feel looked after and cared for in the course. This includes things like a "checklist of all the important things that students should be doing", "videos that students are able to download", asking "what are your preferred names and pronouns, what's your preferred name and preferred pronoun", "backup plan for completing assignments if you experience internet or computer issues", and more. 

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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