Doug Holton
@edtechdev.bsky.social
faculty development, educational technology, open source, learning sciences... Mostly posting on mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@dougholton
My co-authored essay in Inside Higher Ed on toxic bosses, with bonus bingo card. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...
16 Types of Toxic Bosses (opinion)
If you recognize your boss in one of these prototypes, you can do something about it.
insidehighered.com
A scoping review of generative AI-powered agentic AI in education: Research landscape, agentic capabilities, and insights from the frontier agent paradigm www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Other #AgenticEducation examples mastodon.social/@dougholton/... #AIEd #EdTech #AIAgent
sciencedirect.com
Making Equity-Based Teaching the New Norm Through Institutional Transformation www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... More info at: bettercollegeteaching.org #EdDev #Equity #Teaching #HigherEd
Making Equity-Based Teaching the New Norm Through Institutional Transformation
Published in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning (Vol. 58, No. 3, 2026)
tandfonline.com
Open Educational Resources: A New High-Impact Practice www.aacu.org/research/ope... Key findings from adopting #OER: lower course withdrawal rates, improved time-to-completion, improved student success among populations historically underserved by #HigherEd #OpenEducation #EdDev #Teaching
aacu.org
Uncovering Students’ Mental Models of Generative AI arxiv.org/abs/2607.11692 "Students largely understood GenAI at a surface level but demonstrate limited understanding of how it works & when and why it should or should not be used" #AIEd #EdTech #AILIteracy
AI Summaries Are Not Killing Reading. They Reveal What Reading Already Is ai-in-society.blogspot.com/2026/07/ai-sum… #AI #reading
The Impact of Active Learning on Student Course Performance in STEM Varies by Type and Intensity: A Meta-Analysis www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/16... "achievement gaps closed in course designs where more than 66% of class time was spent in active learning" #Teaching #STEMeducation #EdDev
Active Learning Through Flexible Collaborative Exams: Improving STEM Assessments arxiv.org/abs/2502.01994 & Two-Stage Final Exams: An Assessment Strategy for Enhanced Collaborative Learning and Reduced Student Stress www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #STEMeducation #Teaching #EdDev
The Effortless Trap: Productive Struggle, AI, and the Illusion of Learning arxiv.org/abs/2606.26181 "an unguarded AI helper left students about 17% worse on an unaided exam, while the same model rebuilt to withhold answers erased the harm, and a well-engineered tutor roughly doubled learning" #AIEd
The Effortless Trap: Productive Struggle, AI, and the Illusion of Learning
With AI advancing fast, educators face a dilemma: allow the tool or ban it. Conflicting evidence that it both helps and hurts learning only deepens the confusion. The allow-or-ban framing is a false d...
arxiv.org
Learning physics can derail some students: New research shows the best way to keep them on track phys.org/news/2026-05... Summary of: Relative benefits of different active learning methods to conceptual physics learning www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PhysicsEd #STEMeducation #Teaching
Learning physics can derail some students: New research shows the best way to keep them on track
For many undergraduate students, exploring the complexities of physics for the first time, from wading through advanced mathematics, to absorbing information in a large lecture format, can be a daunti...
phys.org
Now published in open access! Your one-stop shop for the philosophy of language models. It's the spiritual descendant of our two-part preprint from 2024, fully updated. This should be particularly useful for anyone looking for an entry point into this rapidly growing field.
The Philosophy of Language Models
The success of large language models (LLMs) across many domains of AI research has generated intense debate. Some attribute their impressive performance on complex tasks to human-like linguistic and ...
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Unleashing Kid Wizards: AI storytellers, Emerging Entrepreneurs, and Jedi Builders stefanbauschard.substack.com/p/unleashing-k… #AI #education
Single-Session Interventions for Mental Health Problems: Umbrella Review www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... Recent example: using new online mental health tool just once boosts teenagers' hope and emotional well-being medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04... Tool: unlockwellbeing.org.uk #MentalHealth
Single-Session Interventions for Mental Health Problems and Service Engagement: Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
Most people with mental health needs cannot access treatment; among those who do, many access services only once. Accordingly, single-session interventions (SSIs) may help bridge the treatment gap. We...
annualreviews.org
We release open models so they're available to builders working on problems that matter to them. On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, PointCheck is a fitting example. → Read more: buff.ly/pkBXrhw
Building accessibility tools on a truly open foundation | Ai2
PointCheck, an independent project, uses Molmo, MolmoWeb, and Olmo 3 to test web accessibility the way a keyboard user would—by navigating real pages and inspecting what's actually on screen.
allenai.org
The best defense against AI misuse is not better detection but better conditions for learning via @insidehighered www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care... #EduSky #EduSkyAI #TLSky #EdTech #AIinEducation #aisky #ai #plagiarism #cheating
Deter AI Cheating Through Support, Not Detection (opinion)
The best defense against AI misuse is not better detection but better conditions for learning.
insidehighered.com
Why AI literacy must be discipline specific via @timeshighered www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/why-a... #EduSky #EduSkyAI #TLSky #EdTech #AIinEducation #aisky #ai #AIliteracy
Why AI literacy must be discipline specific
A one-size-fits-all approach to AI training risks leaving students unprepared for the discipline-specific demands of their future careers. Rose Luckin explores what field-specific AI literacy looks li...
timeshighereducation.com
In addition to expecting more phishing/hacking attacks in the future, #CanvasLMS schools should expect the cost of the LMS to jump sharply, now that Instructure paid the ransom and are being sued by dozens of schools: www.pcmag.com/news/canvas-... & are owned by private equity (KKR)
Canvas Developer Apologizes for Breach As Class-Action Lawsuits Pile Up
Court records show that at least 18 lawsuits have been filed against Canvas's parent company, Instructure, following last week's hack.
pcmag.com
Doug Holton@edtechdev.bsky.social · 3mo agoI'd recommend faculty backup their #CanvasLMS gradebook community.instructure.com/en/kb/articl... & export student submissions for assignments not yet graded community.instructure.com/en/kb/articl... Be prepared for an increased amount of phishing emails in the future: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
I'd recommend faculty backup their #CanvasLMS gradebook community.instructure.com/en/kb/articl... & export student submissions for assignments not yet graded community.instructure.com/en/kb/articl... Be prepared for an increased amount of phishing emails in the future: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
How do I export grades in the Gradebook? - Instructure Community
You can export scores from the Gradebook and download them to your computer as a CSV file. The Gradebook CSV assignment columns display in the same order as shown in the Gradebook for an individual us...
community.instructure.com
Examples of self-reported measures not correlated w/more objective measures * #AILiteracy arxiv.org/abs/2601.06101 * #ProfDev academic.oup.com/bioscience/a... * #AI offloading www.goedel.io/p/the-machin... * #Teaching www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... * #Learning link.springer.com/article/10.1... #EdDev
How to Assess AI Literacy: Misalignment Between Self-Reported and Objective-Based Measures
The widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in K-12 education highlights the need for psychometrically-tested measures of teachers' AI literacy. Existing work has primarily relied on eithe...
arxiv.org
Vibe-Coding a MultiLingual #Free #Whiteboard: #DrawSplat I read an article the other day. School districts are saving thousands of dollars (hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases) vibe-coding their own educational technology solutions. As a technology director, what solutions might have I…
Vibe-Coding a MultiLingual #Free #Whiteboard: #DrawSplat
I read an article the other day. School districts are saving thousands of dollars (hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases) vibe-coding their own educational technology solutions. As a technology director, what solutions might have I vibe-coded if I had Claude AI or ChatGPT at my beck and call INSTEAD of paying money to expensive companies? My short list resulted in a blog entry due to be published in June with working solutions anyone can take and adapt.
mguhlin.org
Designing a mobile chatbot-based learning journaling system for intrinsic motivation and engagement link.springer.com/article/10.1... #AIEd #Education #EdTech
Designing a mobile chatbot-based learning journaling system for intrinsic motivation and engagement - International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education - Journaling enables students to reflect on their learning processes and thereby strengthen their self-regulation, a key...
link.springer.com
How Cognitive Offloading AI Research Gets Broken Before It Even Reaches You tinaaustin.substack.com/p/how-cognitiv… #AI #research #correction #education
The Long Push To Blame Systemic Problems On Individuals www.sciencefriday.com/articles/its...
The Long Push To Blame Systemic Problems On Individuals
"It’s on You" chronicles how corporations and behavioral economists pushed for huge, systemic problems to be fixed by personal choices.
sciencefriday.com
Alfie Kohn@alfiekohn.bsky.social · 3mo ago1/5 Superb new book by Nick Chater and George Loewenstein: It’s on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems - tinyurl.com/uj4ymmey
Equitable Group Work in Undergraduate Biology Courses: Leveraging a Complex Instruction Framework to Identify Pedagogical Strategies www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/... #Teaching #EdDev #STEMeducation
Equitable Group Work in Undergraduate Biology Courses: Leveraging a Complex Instruction Framework to Identify Pedagogical Strategies | CBE—Life Sciences Education
Group work is a common and effective strategy for promoting student learning while bridging opportunity gaps in undergraduate science classrooms. Despite documented positive impacts of group work in p...
lifescied.org
The DOJ has delayed its accessibility deadline (April 24) by 1 year (2027): www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... The free PAVE tool for fixing PDF accessibility has been upgraded to 2.0: pave-pdf.org Open weight AI PDF OCR models are improving: huggingface.co/spaces?categ... #accessibility #a11y
Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities
By this Interim Final Rule ("IFR"), the Department of Justice ("Department") is revising the regulations implementing title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") to extend the compliance d...
federalregister.gov
Academics Need to Wake Up on AI, Part III www.popularbydesign.org/p/academics-ne… (many good ideas) #AI #research #academics #socialSciences #education
Academics Need to Wake Up on AI, Part III
Most of us do not contribute to human knowledge—AI just made it obvious
popularbydesign.org
SafeTutors: Benchmarking Pedagogical Safety in AI Tutoring Systems arxiv.org/abs/2603.17373 "risk is answer over-disclosure, misconception reinforcement, and the abdication of scaffolding" "multi-turn dialogue worsens behavior, with pedagogical failures rising from 17.7% to 77.8%." #AIEd #EdTech
SafeTutors: Benchmarking Pedagogical Safety in AI Tutoring Systems
Large language models are rapidly being deployed as AI tutors, yet current evaluation paradigms assess problem-solving accuracy and generic safety in isolation, failing to capture whether a model is s...
arxiv.org
ISD-Agent-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-based Instructional Design Agents arxiv.org/abs/2602.10620 Code & data: github.com/codingchild2... Also: Pedagogy-R1: Pedagogical Reasoning Model and Educational Benchmark dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... #AIEd #LearningDesign #EdTech
ISD-Agent-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-based Instructional Design Agents
Large Language Model (LLM) agents have shown promising potential in automating Instructional Systems Design (ISD), a systematic approach to developing educational programs. However, evaluating these a...
arxiv.org
Agentic Workflows in Education arxiv.org/abs/2504.200... Examples: * DeepTutor github.com/HKUDS/DeepTu... * OpenMAIC github.com/THU-MAIC/Ope... * liacript github.com/LiaScript/te... * Claude skills github.com/GarethMannin... github.com/narosemena/m... * Claw-ED github.com/SirhanMacx/C... #AIEd
