We had some fun today as my Supply Chain students gave their first academic presentations. Perfect, no far from it but everyone gave it their best and took it seriously. It’s no easy task speaking in public, especially for the first time so well done guys, you did a good job out there.

As I start my journey how do you approach publishing? Secondary authorship can be strategic, it lets you support others, spread risk, and build a wider publication footprint. First authorship protects your intellectual spine, it keeps your conceptual identity clear. A balanced mix gives you both.

Open Scholar Ecosystem. A key concept of the thinking.

Open Scholar Ecosystem. A key principal of thought.

Good news, mine and colleagues proposed book chapter has been accepted. “Ambient Instrumentalism and Assessment Misalignment: Academic Integrity in the AI-Mediated University” will hopefully be part of the full IGI Global published book- “Critical Perspectives on Modern Higher Education Issues."

Good to be able to contribute to the AI Connect and Reflect: AI and Education Showcase (January 2026), hosted through the University of Chester AI SIG. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Am I the only lecturer that really does not like teaching in lecture theatres? Give me a room with tables and chairs any day. I almost never feel my sessions go as well when they are held in lecture theatres, it’s something around the inability to move and just a bad dynamic. Rant over.

Today I joined an informal working writing group within my University. This is going to be beneficial.

Do you have a mentor in work? No matter what your age this is one of the best things you can ever do.

My first Friday Medium piece of 2026. When AI Becomes a Tool of Harm: Why X’s Grok Deepfake Crisis Demands More Than Outrage medium.com/@ajfirr/when...

What I learnt from performing my first academic peer review. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Has GenAI (and Gen Alpha) Killed the Textbook? Interesting article, what do you think and should we be worried? www.educationtechnologyinsightseurope.com/cxoinsights/...

I am seeing this personally myself. www.universityworldnews.com/post-mobile....

A small marker on where the Open Scholar Ecosystem thinking currently sits. LinkedIn link below. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Well leaving 2025 in Manchester, UK and starting 2026 in Agadir, Morocco. Have a good one everyone.

AI ‘hallucinations’ suggests breakdowns. In reality, generative systems fabricate continuously, sometimes those fabrications just happen to be correct. The term misleads more than it explains. Accuracy is a coincidence we recognise after the fact, not something the system knows it has achieved.

How do you approach peer review? My own guideline: two reviews per accepted submission, in places where I publish. Enough to give back, not enough to disappear into invisible labour. Only exception, will do one review in journal / space I am actively looking to publish in the future. Thoughts?

The OSE (Open Scholar Ecosystem) has evolved, not as a workflow, but as a way of inhabiting scholarship. Visible thinking, voluntary output, care over optimisation. Work done because it matters, not because it’s demanded. I think this visual represents accurately what OSE has now become over time.

The Open Scholarship Ecosystem (OSE) began as a framework for open publishing, evolved into a culture of ethical scholarly practice, and now functions as a mentality for how I think about knowledge, time, and academic value. That’s the shift over time.

I can’t fully control whether students outsource work or cheat. What I can control is the classroom. My responsibility is to design sessions where theory is understood, unpacked, and made meaningful. What students choose to do with that understanding later is a separate ethical decision. Thoughts?

An ambition for 2026 is to read proper physical books, remember them? My question if you are a reader do you go for fact of fiction? I’ve got a great list of both, maybe I should alternate? Thoughts welcome.

I have made my first attempt at some academic curation this week. I focussed on AI and Ontology papers from 2025. It was quite a fun process, and something I think I’ll do again. zenodo.org/records/1801...

You can read my last Friday Medium writing of the year here if you like. This week I looked at- From Terraces to TikTok: How Football Fandom Has Changed Children's Sense of Belonging. medium.com/@ajfirr/from...

You only ‘fail’ when you give up trying. I had my work rejected from a small academic journal, why? Because I framed it wrong and lack experience. But I’m learning each and every time I fail, and that will mean ultimately I’ll succeed. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

A couple of my preprints got picked up by Scholar. How nice, never had that before. Still learning daily.

My weekly Friday Medium piece is now ready and you can read it here if you like. Its called 'When the Unreal Starts to Matter: How AI Is Quietly Redefining What We Call ‘Reality’ www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Have you ever found yourself or your teaching on TikTok when you haven’t posted it? www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Truth is not the same as belief. Belief feels like truth, but truth requires justification. AI makes believable language easy to produce, which confuses the boundary between what sounds true and what is actually true.

Posted something on LinkedIn today about how Christmas at work isn’t always easy. Festive seasons can amplify the absence people carry, even when they show up and smile through it. A kind workplace is one that leaves room for both joy and heaviness. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

My second video on my new YouTube channel is now available. If your child treats AI like a friend, watch this first. youtu.be/H-o3iVVc3mI?...

My new preprint has been published today. It’s a bit heavy and probably not something I’ll go near again but it got completed and out which I’m pleased about. I’ll be making a more easy to digest version for this weeks Medium writing.

Dads, this is difficult to watch but important to share. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Little teaser into next Fridays Medium writing piece. “From Terraces to TikTok: How Football Fandom Has Changed Children’s Sense of Belonging”.

This is why we as parents need to educate ourselves about the advancements of AI and what this means for our children, good and bad. youtube.com/shorts/pAHuR...

I want to do something to help parents who are totally AI novices understand how things work and what to observe in terms of how their kids utilise the technology. I’ve therefore started a basic YouTube channel which will have simple explainers. I hope it can help. youtu.be/LBTNImf4PQs?...

You can read my weekly Medium writing here if you like. I enjoyed this one as it’s partially about one of my favourite films. As always at the bottom of the story is accompanying podcast produced with Google NotebookLM. Rewatching Groundhog Day in the Age of AI www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Really pleased with my Project Management class today. We used the brand-new PMBOK 8th Edition plus Google NotebookLM to create videos, podcasts and flashcards from verified PMI sources. A great example of how AI can be used well in the classroom. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

I was really pleased to see a piece of my writing re Sora 2 and Children of the Synthetic Age appear in our Faculty of Science, Business and Enterprise Research Round Up for November 2016.

Coming this week to Medium. AI and New Conditions of Human Experience. This is quite a heavy one.

Thinking and sharing in public. Lots going on.

So I’ve decided to approach and journal from Tanzania to publish some work! www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

Coming very soon. Existential–Synthetic Ontology

I am a total sucker for messing with AI tools especially on a Friday afternoon. This was made with Heygen and I never recorded this and I never spoke these words. It’s a digital version of myself, I don’t smile anywhere near as much as this (!) but aside from that it’s pretty good.

You can read my weekly Friday Medium piece here if you like. This week I looked at “When Generations Collide in the Synthetic Workplace“. There is the usual accompanying podcast link at the bottom of the article. medium.com/@ajfirr/when...

Do any educators of primarily international students produce secondary or additional resources for their students in their first languages? That’s what I’m asking here. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew...

For anyone with an interest in entrepreneurship education a small old dataset that I managed to save from being lost on a hard drive! zenodo.org/records/1773...

#SocialMedia The European Parliament has proposed an EU-wide minimum age to access social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions, as countries worldwide follow the Australian model to protect children on the internet.

I’ve found some old slightly tatty datasets from my Young Enterprise days and have managed to turn them into a short Descriptive Archive. Will publish them up on Zenodo for anyone who has interest in that sort of thing, better than then left rotting in a drawer.

Pause before you post; www.linkedin.com/posts/john-d...

Future idea- AI cannot produce an idea without a human seed, and it cannot produce a human seed without lived experience. Hmm.