OLWeekly

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

Things like classes and assignments and credentials are the least valuable things about higher education. They're all relatively recent inventions and were developed in order to accommodate mass education. Rather than re-litigate that argument, however, I want to focus on what's good about higher education. What's worth preserving that will carry on even in the age of artificial intelligence? Here are a few thoughts.

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Can you ever really think what someone else is thinking?
Víctor Verdejo, Psyche, 2026/10/23

I think of this often in the sense that I wonder whether people around me can know or understand what I'm thinking about. My conclusion is that they most certainly cannot. But if we don't share thoughts with each other how can we even communicate? This is a good discussion, and I align (more or less) with Kit Fine's suggestion that "communication is not really a matter of thought identity, but thought coordination. What matters is not the intrinsic properties of two people's thoughts or the extent to which those are the same. What matters is how those thoughts are related. For instance, treating our thoughts as if they are about the same things often suffices for understanding and joint behaviour." 

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AI is stealing students’ ability to think critically–Journalism 101 may be an antidote
Sireesha N. Rutter, Jupiter Middle School, eSchool News, 2026/10/23

I wouldn't say journalism is for everyone - it takes a certain skill to approach a stranger and ask them to give you information, even if you are backed by press credentials. That said, my experience in student journalism meant the world to me and the fact that I have a career at all is a testament to the skills and attitudes it helped me acquire. And that's what's described here: "In our classroom-turned-newsroom, students analyze information, verify facts and consider different viewpoints for every story they publish. They wrestle with ethical dilemmas, use their own judgement and write their own copy. " There's one big difference, though. My journalism experience was voluntary, not part of a course or class, and not something managed by a teacher or professor. We - the students - ran the newspaper ourselves. This included not only writing and reporting, but layout and design, advertising, financial management, even office supplies and printing contracts. It makes a difference.

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What Will It Look Like If Investment in Learner Wallets Pays Off?
Mason Pashia, Getting Smart, 2026/10/23

This post introduces us to something called LearnKit. The white paper describes it as follows: "LearnKit is a learner-centered data infrastructure designed to give individuals access to, control over, and the ability to act on their own learning data across K-12, postsecondary education, and the workforce." The work is credited to a Gates Foundation initiative authored by Karen Cator, Valerie Greenhill, and Sharon Leu, but I can't find that anywhere online. The white paper is very high level (by contrast I've spent all days in the weeds looking at digital signing, authentication and decentralized identity protocols, including the W3C's verified credentials data model (hey, we each pick our own interests in our retirement)).

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The Wrong Ban: The Heritage Committee Backed a Targeted Ad Ban for Kids and Stopped Short of a Social Media Ban, Yet the Government Chose the Reverse
Michael Geist, 2026/10/23

Michael Geist writes of a federal committee that "considered two potential bans, one on targeted ads for kids and the other on underage access to social media. The committee recommended the ad ban and stopped short of the social media one, but the government reversed the approach, declining the ad ban while legislating the social media ban for under-16s." I would also favour an ad ban, but it's tricky. There isn't really a difference in principle between an ad directed at kids, and the manipulation of an algorithm to direct certain sorts of messages to kids. Advertising doesn't have to be (and often isn't) simply "buy this" or "you need that". A lot of it is aimed at self-image, perceptions, lifestyles and choices. The way an online gambling company, say, might want to normalize betting on sports.

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What is Experiential Learning?
Clark Aldrich, 2026/10/23

This is just a preview of a concept for an upcoming article, and normally I would just wait for it, but I think this 'experiental learning map' is worth sharing, even though it's still in draft form (illustrated). I probably wouldn't place specific products (especially 'pro editions') intop a map like this. And I think that the range of experiental learning is a lot more broad than the obvious workplace focus informing this current version. The two axes makes some sense - the 'human vs simulation' on the y axis is clear, though the 'training vs growing' needs some sharpening. Terms like 'executive' and 'heroic tribes' don't really belong on axes names. Maybe something like 'predefined vs chaotic' might better reflect the range. Still, I think this is a good time to be thinking about what experiential learning looks like and how we can describe what we're bulding.

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Too simplistic and problematic: a decolonial critique of the North–South binary in international higher education
Samia Chasi, Savo Heleta, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2026/10/23

This article criticizes the depiction of the world in terms of a global North and South as too simplistic. "While it is well documented that European colonialism, Euro-American neo-colonialism and coloniality have created and continue to maintain structural global inequalities and inequities across the globe, the world cannot be seen, at least not anymore, only through the lens of Northern wealth and Southern poverty." The authors don't recommend a specific alternative framing, but they do suggest "two possible gestures" instead: "understanding identities of humans as dynamic and fluid rather than fixed and stagnant aligns with the understanding of the North and South as complex, nuanced and changing categories," and "the 'idea of a global subaltern' that transcends the North–South binary and works towards the creation of a more just world for all."

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

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

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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PHP2Shell: PHP Patches Two Critical RCE Vulnerabilities, Urges Immediate Updates
Saeed Abbasi, Qualys, 2026/10/21

Services around the world that depend on PHP (that would include things like WordPress and Pixelfed) are either offline or being repaired today as a result of a new and critical PHP vulnerability. Here's the official announcement. I have one website running on PHP, my leftish.media blog. I checked and there isn't a patched PHP Docker container available yet, so I set a reminder to check tomorrow. Anyhow, this page has information about the vulnerability and, more importantly, what you need to recover from it.

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A Successful Incubation
DIF, 2026/10/21

The Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) universal distributed ID (DID) resolver has been shot down, with users now being directed to a second tier of providers, including especially GoDiddy, who created the DIF's reference implementation, and thisDID, by GoPlausible. "Both deployments are deployed and funded by DIF members, who maintain the respective reference implementations they are based on through DIF." This might be thought of as a maturation of the specification, though of course there are risks that it will be commercialized and enclosed. See also the DIF Identifiers & Discovery Working Group.

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The 'scenius' of open doctoral knowledge
Doug Belshaw, Substrate, 2026/10/21

Doug Belshaw links to and discusses the idea to the 'scenius'. The linked article notes, "Culture isn't created by outliers. Most new movements and leaps forward in culture usually come from groups of creatives encouraging each other; competing with and arguing with each other; reacting for or against each others' work." Belshaw comments, "there's a new article out by Drs Helen DeWaard, Verena Roberts, Leo Havemann, and Gabi Witthaus entitled Disputatio in the Digital Agora: Opening the Doctorate Through Dialogue. I wonder what would have happened had my own doctoral studies eveolved in the open, among a community of interested people. That wasn't an option back then, and my pursuit of connectionist knowledge in a philosophical sense was a solitary struggle that was ultimately unsuccessful in landing me the title and the degree.

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A generation of non-thinkers
Mia Travers-Hayward, CCPA, 2026/10/21

"If personal AI tutors seem too good to be true," writes  Mia Travers-Hayward, "that's because they are. This vision is built on a lie. Tech won't save our school systems. AI tutors can't substitute the care of a human teacher." I have two things I need to say about this (you can read the argument and supporting evidence for yourself). First, it is way too early to be talking about what AI can or cannot do in education. Second, the whole concept of 'AI tutors' is based on some sort of direct instruction fantasy model, and this is not how education in the future will play out. Will people still need care in the future? Sure. Will they need to get it from teachers? Debatable.

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The Real Kevin Bacon
Owen Lacey, The Pudding, 2026/10/21

This is a great visualization of some basic principles of graph theory using the 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' as an example. This is "a game where players try to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six steps, where each step links two actors who co-starred in a film." But Kevin Bacon isn't the most connected actor; he's not even close. Who is? Who's next? Via Alan Levine.

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AI can weaken relationships between people - and teams suffer as a result.
Ben Werdmuller, 2026/10/21

Ben Werdmiller writes, "When people see AI as a more competent, trustworthy, and preferable source of input than a colleague, they replace human interactions that otherwise would have built or maintained trust." My response, only partly in jest, was that "Maybe the colleagues should try being better colleagues?" I am reminded of the time a couple years ago a manager suggested that a colleague help me with my coding and server setup and the response was, "Just use Claude." People are pulled in multiple directions and don't always have time and inclination to help with your project. The 'team', meanwhile, is a way of getting you to help with their projects, and to put yours on the backburner. Anyhow, here's the HBR article Werdmuller is discussing.

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The Value of Process and Artefact
Tim Klapdor, Heart Soul Machine, 2026/10/20

Tim Klapdor uses the example of a hamburger to illustrate the difference between process and product, but I think a better example might be the shirt on your back. My grandfather used to manufacture those shits on a farm in rural Quebec. Today, they're manufactured by poverty-level workers in Asia. In the future, they may be manufactured by AI. The shirts are in all cases identical, but the process - and the lives and values it sustained - are very different. Would it be better to have robots make shirts? Maybe. Did people care when the manufacture switched from my grandfather to a wage-slave in a sweathouse? Not really. As Klapdor says, "This isn't a new argument." I think process matters, but I also think the use of new technology is often a better process what what we do now.

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The End of ISTE (Sorta)
Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff, 2026/10/20

As Tim Stahmer reports, ISTE has changed its name from the International Society for Technology in Education to the International Society for Transforming Education. Its new focus "says that while technology 'remains central to the organization's work', it will now only be 'one lever' for 'transforming students' classroom experience'." Stahmer comments, "As I've been ranting about in this space for more than twenty years, we've done a very crappy job of integrating technology into the process of teaching and learning. The devices and software have always had the potential to be transformative. Most of society, however, fiercely resisted attempts to substantially change the institution known as 'school'."

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The Compliance Trap: Rescuing Learning Targets from Administrative Wallpaper
Eric Sheniger, A Principal's Reflections, 2026/10/20

"For years," writes Eric Sheniger, "learning targets have devolved into a performative administrative ritual. They have become just another box to tick on a weekly walkthrough rubric. Target written in student-friendly language? Check. Visible from all corners of the room? Check. Good to go. That checklist mentality drains the practice of its real power." Checklists have a purpose. They remind pilots to lower the landing gear. They remind surgeons to check which side they're operating on. But they aren't intended to substitute for the full scope of an activity. Everything - including teaching - is complex, and goes beyond simple checklists.

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Rote is back. Or at least something very like it
Melissa Haley, EduResearch Matters, 2026/10/20

This article offers a response to what is described as a growing trend toward rote teaching, "a form of teaching organised around tightly controlled sequences, pre-determined lessons, fixed pacing, and limited space to adapt, respond or pursue emerging inquiry. This approach shifts teaching practice away from responsiveness to learner need. It is more about following a one-size fits all prescribed script." There's a school of thought out there that suggests all students can (and need to) learn the same way (this is what justified the anti-learning-styles hysteria). "Across many education systems, standardisation is intensifying. Policymakers frame sequenced curricula, explicit lesson structures, and tightly aligned assessments as solutions to uneven outcomes, equity gaps, and workload pressures." There are good reasons to resist. "Rote approaches have long been criticised for producing narrow, surface-level learning, prioritising repetition over understanding and compliance over thinking."

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Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications (2026)
ISED, Government of Canada, 2026/10/20

Canada's 'tri-council'* funding agencies have announced a revised open access requirement for publications. "Each postsecondary institution and research hospital eligible to administer CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC funds is required to develop and publicly share an institutional OA strategy (and) retain sufficient rights and apply an open license, such as a Creative Commons (CC) license, to the Accepted Manuscript (AM) and/or Version of Record (VoR) used to comply with the Policy." In addition, they need to "ensure the peer-reviewed research article is immediately and freely available in a Canadian institutional repository or made available through a trusted Canadian platform at the time of publication, even where the article is freely available on the publisher's website." This replaces an 2015 policy that granted much more to publishers. Via Coalition Publica. (* Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

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Pedagogical Weight
Ann, All Things Pedagogical, 2026/10/20

According to Ann (no last name), "there is a weight of expectations that we all carry in eduspace, and sometimes those expectations are things we put on ourselves and not necessarily things folk have put on us realistically." the term, as the title suggests, 'pedagogical weight'. I'm sympathetic, but having worked a variety of jobs over my career, I can attest to the reality that this weight exists in every occupation, save perhaps that involve no mental preparation at all. But that's not to dismiss the fact of the weight. We all feel it, we feel it a little more when people are protesting in the streets, and we feel it in the face of war, disease, and the remaining horsemen. And while it may be that "folk just have no real interest in engaging in virtual spaces as they used to anymore, because.... there's too much weighing on them," it may also be because virtual spaces, as we know them today, don't do anything to address that weight, other than to make it heavier. (p.s. I don't know how it started as a linguistic convention, but the use of 'folk' to refer to 'people' will never not sound strange to me).

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zoomlandia
Todd Conaway, The Whole Classroom, 2026/10/20

This was Neil Postman in 1985, long before Zoom - or for that matter, the internet - was really a thing. "In courtrooms, classrooms, operating rooms, board rooms, churches and even airplanes, Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, authenticity and celebrity." So while I appreciate Todd Conaway arguing here that we should be thinking of more in-person things we should be doing, I would argue that this doesn't solve the problem it's supposed to be solving. If I had to put it in a nutshell, what happened is that (with the rise of suburbia) connection became privilege. Being 'in the room' became the mark of the elite. And online media - at least from my perspective - became a way to push back against that. 

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Another upcoming publication
Colin Beer, Col's Weblog, 2026/10/19

This post describes an upcoming publication, but it raised an interesting (and unintended, I'm sure) line of thought in my own mind. Colin Beer writes, "hospitals operate in complex environments where decisions involve incomplete information, changing circumstances and expertise distributed across many professional roles... healthcare organisations have developed sophisticated governance arrangements that connect information, professional judgement, coordinated action and organisational learning." By contrast, he writes, "universities have adopted some of the technologies associated with these approaches... However, we argue that they have not developed the underlying organisational capabilities needed to make these technologies genuinely effective." Now totally off topic, my train of thought: suppose AI made it so that anyone could become healthy just by using a chatbot. What would our reaction be? Would we be concerned that people still indulge in unhealthy behaviours? Would it matter any more that we can't tell when a person is 'becoming unhealthy'? Would we be concerned about the fact that people don't need hospitals any more? Something to think about.

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Fifty questions in five minutes about the future of news
Richard Gingras, On the Evolution of Media, 2026/10/19

Richard Gingras poses fifty questions posed by Richard Gingras at the Newsgeist Unconference in Hamburg, Germany. He chairs the board of Village Media and is a co-founder and board member of the global Center for News, Technology, and Innovation. My response comes from two perspectives: first, as an observer and commentator on news and new media generally, and second as a sometime journalist with my own online publication (which you're reading).

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Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026)
Journal of Learning Engineering, 2026/10/19

From the website: "The inaugural issue of the Journal of Learning Engineering (JoLE) brings together six articles exploring the foundations, applications, and future directions of this emerging field." Topics include a discussion of why learning engineering needs data architecture (15 page PDF), foundations to future in learning engineering (? page PDF), bridging research and practice in learning engineering (3 page PDF) and teacher education through learning engineering (19 page PDF).

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When the Work Stops Making the Worker
Carlo Iacono, Hybrid Horizons, 2026/10/19

"A physicist says a machine redid his doctoral year in ten hours and found his errors," writes Carlo Iacono. He asks, "What will 'labor' mean in academia from now on?" Iocono takes a long time to get to the answer (people who use AI to write simply must learn to write more concisely). Anyhow, he finally writes, "here is my answer to his question. Labour in academia, and in a good deal of work beyond it, will have to mean what it always meant quietly and never had to mean alone: work done for the sake of the person it makes." This upends the equation. We will have to pay people to learn, for taking the years it takes to solve problems the machine can solve in a few minutes.

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The AI Challenge is Coming into Focus
Alex Usher, HESA, 2026/10/19

Alex Usher makes two points, one of which is pretty good, and the second of which is a bombshell. The first is that AI proponents expect massive GDP growth without the need to people develop AI skills. It will just work. That seems a little unlikely on both counts. But still. The second point is "AI is wreaking havoc on many traditional forms of assessment." Moving back to traditional forms of assessment (blue books, oral assessments) simply won't scale. " I believe very firmly that AI is putting universities and colleges in something very close to mortal danger," he writes. Without reliable assessment, degrees aren't trusted. And if degrees aren't trusted, why would anyone continue to support the university system. "If we don't solve the assessment problem in a way that students and employers see as valid, then that's literally the whole ball game." Now I agree with this, but I don't think there's going to be a way out (the 'end-of-program' assessment Usher suggests is literally a non-starter). To survive, colleges and universities are going to have to change their value proposition. 

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Mark Zuckerberg's new toy is a parasite. Please don't fall into his latest trap.
Ariana Bindman, Sfgate, 2026/10/19

This is a column from SFGate warning people about MUSE, Meta's personal agent AI. "In addition to storing logins and passwords and linking your bank account information, it wants to see your messages, personal calendar and contacts, requesting more sensitive information than virtually any other AI app, according to ZDNET." The concern isn't so much that it has this information as what it wants to do with it. "The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us," media theorist and CNN columnist Douglas Rushkoff wrote in 2013. "They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers."

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

"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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8 types of web applications and examples
Hostinger Tutorials, 2026/10/21

This article describes "8 main types of web applications, how they work, and real examples to help you choose the right solution for your project." It's an introductory article, useful for people who aren't familiar with the different types of web pages they may encounter, and helpful for people thinking about something they may want to build (this sort of conceptual clarity is really useful if building with AI).

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Sovereignty isn't a place
Tom Watson, Tomcw.xyz, 2026/10/20

People typically associate sovereignty with a nation or place, but as micro-nations like Sealand demonstrate, sovereignty isn't about place, it's about what you can do. In this post, Tom Watson argues, "sovereignty is about meaningful choice and the ability to act on it. Having alternatives, yes, but also having the knowledge, money, rights and practical means to actually pick one." That means the sovereignty of nations, communities, businesses, organizations and individuals are different. Each has different needs and priorities. Governments are concerned with security while individuals are concerned about their data, for example. 

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Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Models
Pierre Beckmann, Matthieu Queloz, arXiv, 2026/10/19

This is a really interesting paper that considers the question of whether large language models (LLM) understand. As the authors write, this depends a lot on what we mean by 'understand'. To clarify, they identify three types of understanding: conceptual understanding, which "involves the model developing internal representations ('features') that are functionally analogous to human concepts; state-of-the-world understanding, which "involves forming an internal representation of the state of the world by grasping contingent empirical connections between features"; and principled understanding, which is "the ability to grasp the underlying principles or rules that unify a diverse array of facts." Through various examples, they show that LLMs can attain all three forms of understanding, however, they do it very differently from how a human would. They employ a variety of mechanisms running in parallel to do so, and hence don't demonstrate the same preference for parsimony - that is, for a single over-riding principle - that humans do. Great paper. Via Pierre-Yves Oudeyer.

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