Universities face: *Teachers pension scheme cost increases *National Insurance rises *International student levy *Soaring library costs *Brutally high energy charges *Potential 'free speech' fines *Covid class action There's nowhere to turn really.

"Do not use prescriptive criteria to judge extended writing."

Yesterday, I interviewed a tech guy who told me something too important for me to wait until the podcast comes out for you to hear it: Many free AI detectors have especially high false positive rates because they make money selling software that "humanizes" writing. 1/2

Worth reading. "Cognitive outsourcing [...] doesn’t just mean finding storage space for thoughts we’ve produced through our own mental effort; it means we don’t make the effort ourselves."

My New Year's resolution is to call LLMs 'LLM', not AI. I strongly believe that when employers say they want graduates with AI skills, they mean people who can programme a tool that can detect cancer, not someone who can talk to ChatGPT.

LLMs as a way to move past friction in writing is one of our biggest challenges, IMO. So tempting to just get past the hurdle through the automation, but it's the friction where learning happens. The assignment and the assessment has to value that friction, not just the outcome.

I ended up drafting an email that didn't really lean on research specific to grade school education, but expressed my concerns in the most basic terms. I removed the personal details and have shared it as a template here for folks who might find it useful: bit.ly/TeacherEmail...

Finally! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Acoustic panels can be a game changer: ✔️ Especially for inclusive lunchtimes ✔️ Especially for children with speech & language needs.

I find this disturbing but the snowball has started down the hill now and there is no coming back! #academicresearch

it's wild how the positive use cases are like "save 5 minutes reading a long doc" and "write a generic email faster" and the negative use cases are "get encouraged to dive deeper in psychosis, misogyny, or suicidal thoughts" and we're still on the fence about overall value

I love doing Origin Story because it feels like I’m back in education, only we set the curriculum and we don’t have to do exams. As I’m the son of two teachers, the fact it seems to help actual students (not something we actively considered when we started) is just lovely

Trump sues Everybody!

Insane data from Germany shows how social media is geared towards more fringe political views. The left bar shows the share of uploaded videos by party on TikTok and the right bar shows what videos are shown in the feed. Social media loves the extremes and is NOT a fair mirror of reality.

So important that European educator unions are getting together to agree ways forward on AI in both schools and HE - and especially that they are *not* partnering with big AI firms as the US teachers' union has done.

The stuff I don't know is bottomless. But what I do know, I know, and I know it because I've read it for myself. I've thought about it. I've attempted to articulate my ideas to others, have received feedback from other human intelligences on these ideas and then engaged in more academic conversation

ladies and gentlemen...we got him

This!

The UK is Europe’s cloudiest place. Marseille is the northernmost blue sky capital of the continent. The Mediterranean offers plenty of blue skies of course.

Late to reading this but this is interesting because it isn’t just correlation (like lots of previous studies). They tracked impact over time.

Why can I remember no Labour politician making this point, this well? Everybody except the Greens seems to think the best way to fight Reform is to agree with Farage about everything. This, right here, is brilliant. And genuinely patriotic. And so, so true.

Why is Keir Starmer obsessed with Nigel Farage?

*please share widely* My department (Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) is hiring a corpus linguist who conducts research on second languages. Great place to teach (2/2 load) and do research! See link for more details: go.hawaii.edu/mGc

Super interesting graphic shows what people use ChatGPT for. I can be found in the 10% of people who give their finished writing to ChatGPT for editing. I ask it to critique my writing. It’s pretty good at finding holes in arguments.

More prosaically, as someone pointed out to me recently: LLMs are *always* hallucinating. its just that sometimes their hallucinations appear to map our experienced reality. But the map is never *of* our reality, just *like* it. So the words don’t describe it. 4/4

I'm just annoyed that we were told there weren't enough people at the anti-Brexit marches for them to be newsworthy.

On the subject of Melvyn Bragg, I think of this Private Eye cartoon more frequently than I care to admit, when I’m struggling to raise the energy for a lecture or graduate supervision

Well this made me cry.

@mrmmarsh.bsky.social The upcoming episode of scam secrets was made for you. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Writing will always be a useful life skill. But if AI transforms the economy, will it be an economically valuable skill? And either way - what does that mean for education? substack.nomoremarking.com/p/education-...

In a world of #AI generated "facts" and digitally curated information tailored for the individual, how can #highered support the development of #criticalthinking skills? Our latest spotlight guide draws on advice from academics all over the world to answer this question: ow.ly/gVAN50WxRRn #edusky

Using chatbots to spark deep thinking? They can guide students through questions that mirror the Socratic method. Learn how: www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/when-... #AI #Genai #academicsky #edusky

I don't really care if you read this thread or not 🤷🏻‍♀️

Suppose AI *does* totally obliterate the economic value of being a good writer. Even if that happens, I still think there is a powerful argument for teaching writing because it's a really valuable life skill. substack.nomoremarking.com/p/what-is-th...

@mrmmarsh.bsky.social @skeptic.org.uk Are there any Skeptics articles or podcasts about Brigitte Macron allegedly being a man? I can find articles which explain how the theory spread but nothing that takes the evidence apart as neatly as the Jack the Ripper talk on Thursday.

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays. Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

When you let two copies of Claude talk to each other, they end up discussing spiritual bliss and the nature of consciousness. Fun post that reminded me of that Wikipedia game where you always follow the first link and end up at philosophy. www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-claude...

This is about MFL but the first 9 problems identified apply equally in tertiary education, especially 2. Low Tolerance for Ambiguity 3. Fear of Making Mistakes Publicly 6. Increased Preference for Passive Consumption 8. Erosion of Nuance and Cultural Subtlety 9. Weak Metacognitive Skills

For any German speakers out there, here's an interesting 4-minute radio clip about children's books which have been generated by Artificial Intelligence (KI in German). Nimmerland's Facebook page has been contrasting specific AI books with real ones recently. www.facebook.com/nimmerland.m...

Academia will form these little pockets -- people whose theorizing is outrageous & supported by methods outdated since the 90s -- but once it reaches a critical size those people just review each others papers & grants, form societies, hand out awards etc, like a self-contained parallel society.

The number of UK universities making redundancies has now risen to 98. As long predicted here, this will rise to 100 around about the end of this academic year and then continue to increase over 2025/26. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

This week's university redundancies are the following: *Bangor *Cardiff Met *De Montfort *Liverpool Hope *Plymouth *Suffolk That's after last week's Aberdeen, Arts Uni Bournemouth, Durham, Exeter, Falmouth, Greenwich, Keele, Newcastle, Nottingham and Trinity St Davids.

Everyone who teaches a young person should read this. No joke. open.substack.com/pub/thenoosp...

AI influencers such as Ethan Mollick are already trumpeting the results of a poorly designed World Bank pilot study that employed AI with Nigerian students. This thread provides a fair and measured critique that's worth reading in full. Again I must ask: Why so many shady studies?

So I just put 'malfeasance' into youglish and filtered for UK pronunciation, and it turns out the word has only been used by Russel Brand and two lords. youglish.com/pronounce/ma...

Today's university making redundancies is Greenwich. Yeah, like we don't need any architects do we. This madness will run and run until someone - anyone - gets a grip. While it continues, loads of the cash down the drain used to be yours. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/greenwi...

I think in our eagerness to stop providing students with models we forgot the importance of modelling. Two very different things.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.