I was delighted to speak with Cristi Ford, D2L’s VP of Academic Affairs, about durable skills and AI in higher education. You can find the episode in all the usual places: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-teaching-skills-can-complement-the-use-of-ai/id1663544722?i=1000649960964 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1iYsMHqAKXzts9i4skDHPE YouTube (audio only): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE6bbJHSa-A Show Notes: https://www.d2l.com/podcasts/teach-and-learn/how-teaching-skills-can-complement-the-use-of-ai-in-education-with-michael-feldstein/ Cristi is a delightf ..read more

I recently gave a keynote on AI at the durable skills-themed D2L Ignite conference in Orlando. I took the following positions: Durable skills, unlike so many educational buzzwords, is a genuine civilizational shift that requires our urgent attention. AI does not cause it. It just made the change obvious. AI genuinely will cause profound and unforeseeable changes to the way we live. I gave a highly personal example to make this point vivid. Teaching skills are durable skills that translate quite well to the AI world. Other skills, such as those required to design and test solutions to complex ..read more

In my last post, I explained how generative AI memory works and why it will always make mistakes without a fundamental change in its foundational technology. I also gave some tips for how to work around and deal with that problem to safely and productively incorporate imperfect AI into EdTech (and other uses). Today, I will draw on the memory issue I wrote about last time as a case study of why embracing our imperfect tools also means recognizing where they are likely to fail us and thinking hard about dealing realistically with their limitations. This is part of a larger series I’m starting o ..read more

In my last post, I introduced the idea of thinking about different generative AI models as coworkers with varying abilities as a way to develop a more intuitive grasp of how to interact with them. I described how I work with my colleagues Steve ChatGPT, Claude Anthropic, and Anna Bard. This analogy can hold (to a point) even in the face of change. For example, in the week since I wrote that post, it appears that Steve has finished his dissertation, which means that he’s catching up on current events to be more like Anna and has more time for long discussions like Claude. Nevertheless, both peo ..read more

Let’s assume we live in a world in which students are going to use ChatGPT or similar tools on their assignments. (Because we do.) Let’s also assume that when those students start their jobs, they will continue to use ChatGPT or similar tools to complete their jobs. (Because they will.) Is this the end of teaching as we know it? Is this the end of education as we know it? Will we have to accept that robots will think for everyone in the future? No. In this post, I’m going to show you one easy solution that solves the problem of assuming students will use generative AI by incorporating it into ..read more

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of consulting for the Education Design Lab (EDL) on their search for a Learning Management System (LMS) that would accommodate Competency-Based Education (CBE). While many platforms, especially in the corporate Learning and Development space, talked about skill tracking and pathways in their marketing, the EDL team found a bewildering array of options that looked good in theory but failed in practice. My job was to help them separate the signal from the noise. It turns out that only a few defining architectural features of an LMS will determine its fitness ..read more

As readers of this series know, I’ve developed a six-session design/build workshop series for learning design teams to create an AI Learning Design Assistant (ALDA). In my last post in this series, I provided an elaborate ChatGPT prompt that can be used as a rapid prototype that everyone can try out and experiment with.1 In this post, I’d like to focus on how to address the challenges of AI literacy effectively and equitably. We’re in a tricky moment with generative AI. In some ways, it’s as if writing has just been invented, but printing presses are already everywhere. The problem of mass dis ..read more

As regular readers know, I recently announced a design/build workshop series for an AI Learning Design Assistant (ALDA). The idea is this: If we can reduce the time it takes to design a course by about 20%, the productivity and quality impacts for organizations that need to build enough courses to strain their budget and resources will gain “huge” benefits. We should be able to use generative AI to achieve that goal fairly easily without taking ethical risks and without needing to spend massive amounts of time or money. Beyond the immediate value of ALDA itself, learning the AI technique ..read more

I recently announced a design/build workshop series for an AI Learning Design Assistant (ALDA). The idea is simple: If we can reduce the time it takes to design a course by about 20%, the productivity and quality impacts for organizations that need to build enough courses to strain their budget and resources will gain “huge” benefits. We should be able to use generative AI to achieve that goal fairly easily without taking ethical risks and without needing to spend massive amounts of time or money. Beyond the immediate value of ALDA itself, learning the AI techniques we will use—which are more ..read more

Want to build an AI tool that will seriously impact your digital learning program? Right now? For a price that you may well have in your professional development budget? I’m launching a project to prove we can build a tool that will change the economics of learning design and curricular materials in months rather than years. Its total cost will be low enough to be paid for by workshop participation fees. Join me. The learning design bottleneck Many of my friends running digital course design teams tell me they cannot keep up with demand. Whether their teams are large or small, centralized or i ..read more