2026
-
Pedagogy of the Prompt Substack
Reading the instruction files behind Claude for Teachers.
-
Promised, Provisioned, Functional? Substack
What it takes to make AI infrastructure work in education
-
Announcing Wonderbits Substack
After a long journey of design, testing, research, and many conversations with students and educators, I’m excited to share Wonderbits.
-
To Get AI Right, Schools Should Think Like Architects, Not Shoppers Substack
Education leaders have spent more than two years grappling with artificial intelligence in schools.
-
AI Squats Substack
In the first meeting with students this semester, I shared my New Year’s resolution: doing more squats. They looked at me puzzled. Then I elaborated. I want to do squats when I outsource something substantial to AI, like …
2025
-
From Magic Wand to Flashlight Substack
Rethinking AI for Brainstorming
-
Same Principles, Different Roles: How AI Functions in Two Courses I’m Teaching Substack
Last month, I presented in front of a room full of faculty from across Penn—historians, law professors, health sciences educators, psychology professors—all grappling with the same challenge: What do we actually do about …
-
When Relationships Are What We’re Left With Substack
As I prep for a new semester with a fresh cohort of students, I keep thinking about what I’m actually preparing them for.
-
How Capitalism Captured Our Language—And What It Means for AI Substack
While I am still stuck with making sense of the attention economy, we’re already facing the intention economy fueled by AI.
-
From Jet Lag to AI Lag Substack
When Machine Time Imposes on Human Time
-
On Vibe Reading Substack
What Happens When We Stop Looking at the Text?
-
Cooking with Claude: On Tools, Relationships, and the Evolving Self Substack
Yesterday, I found myself staring at my screen, waiting.
-
Preserving Human Idiosyncrasy: Generative Learning in the Age of Generative AI
A quiet shift is happening in how we speak and write, and most of us don’t even notice it. Words like “delve,” “underscore,” and “realm” are suddenly everywhere in academic writing and speech. “You sound like ChatGPT,” …
-
The Heart of Knowledge: What Chinese Language Evolution Tells Us About the AI Societal Transformation
Consider the character for love: 愛 becomes 爱. In the traditional form, the heart (心) sits nestled within—love literally contains the heart. In the simplified version, that heart disappears. What remains is efficient, …
2024
-
The Many Faces of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is often the elephant in the room, surfacing in everything from high-stakes policymaking and academic research to casual conversations with my barber. It permeates so many aspects of life that it’s hard to escape its …
-
Let’s complicate the idea of infrastructure in conversations about GenAI
First, a blog post Rethinking AI Infrastructure: Beyond the Surface-Level Conversations The current excitement around generative AI has sparked a wave of discussions about its potential to transform various aspects of …
-
Infrastructuring sustainable innovations in education: A quick update
I am excited about the emerging body of work on infrastructuring in the Learning Sciences and beyond. In this post I am sharing a few quick updates on this topic. New JLS paper on infrastructuring A paper titled A …
2023
-
Putting Generative AI in Classrooms
It was more than one year ago when I mused on the topic of integrating AI in education. Now, it feels like that post was made a decade ago! Yesterday, I got a chance to be on a panel on this topic, moderated by my great …
2022
-
Integrating AI in Knowledge Building
Earlier this week, I had the good fortune of joining a panel organized by my colleageus Seng Chee Tan and Alwyn Lee at the 2022 Empowering Learners in AI conference. Several colleagues including Leanne Ma (University of …
-
Network Motifs as Codes
I’ve been working on a framework of applying socio-semantic network analysis to discourse data. Socio-semantic networks are two-mode, dual-layer networks that are made of actors (e.g., learners), semantic entities (e.g., …
-
What role should A.I. play in education?
Listening to podcasts has become a new habit of mine during the pandemic, when cooking or doing dishes, on the way to pick up my toddler, or when my eyes need a break from the screen. Last week, I listened to an …
2021
-
Knowledge Infrastructures: Initial Thoughts
Some initial thoughts on knowledge infrastructures and what it means for knowledge building.
-
Take note: new note-taking facility in Zotero
Over the years, I have been interested in scholarly workflows and, more recently, knowledge infrastructures – for both knowledge workers and young learners. It has become a hobby for myself to reflect on my own workflows …
2020
-
Where is Knowledge Building Analytics Headed?
This year’s Knowledge Building Summer Institute (KBSI) is going to be special. First, it’s held near the end of November, for the first time in summer for folks from the Southern Hemisphere. Second, the conference is …
-
Recognize rigor in learning analytics is multi-faceted
First of all, I’d like to thank our JLA editors-in-chief and SoLAR for organizing this webinar, and more events to come on the topic of rigor. As a community, learning analytics has grown substantially and to a great …
-
Using Web Annotation for Web Annotation Research
In response to a special call for papers from Information and Learning Sciences, a team of us rallied and wrote a review article about Using Social Annotation in Online Classes (see preprint). It was an interesting …
-
A Map of Collaboration Analytics
In a chapter to be included in the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Learning Analytis, Dr. Stephanie Teasley and I tried to write about Collaboration Analytics in a way that integrate ideas from CSCL, CSCW, learning …
2019
-
My Statement of Graduate Advising
Following advice from a fantastic leadership coach from my university, I drafted a statement of advising philosophy in the past summer (yes the summer has already passed in MN). Here it is! Please feel free to leave …
-
A Call for Third-Order Change in Learning Analytics
[Disclaimer: It’s summer time, meaning time for some bold statements.] “Any educational intervention, for the obvious, common-sense reasons mentioned above, can do harm… ignoring side effects is one of the main reasons …
-
Automate for Whom?
I have been working at a large public R1 university long enough – 4 years – to witness steady changes with technology installed in public restrooms. Below is a newly installed automatic paper towel dispenser in our …
-
#LAK19 Conference Report [Part 2]: Main Conference
(This is the second part of a report of the #LAK19 conference. See Part 1 here.) It was the only beginning of many fun conversations when the Main Conference kicked off on Wednesday! Our conference and program chairs …
-
#LAK19 Conference Report [Part 1]: Pre-Conference Workshops
I just came back from the 2019 Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) conference hosted by Arizona State University. This conference, surely one of my favorites, is inching to its 10th anniversary next year. I still …
2018
-
#OAWeek 2018: My Personal Journey
This week is the Open Access Week 2018. Yesterday we spent some time during a student advising meeting talking about the what and why of Open Access. The Open Access Week website has provided a great list of ideas for …
-
An Ongoing Experiment: Public Scholarly Annotation
Background stories I value Open Scholarship and have been practicing it for years – both in terms of doing it and learning to do it. Stian Haklev, an OER and Open Access champion, introduced me to this idea. He built a …
-
Open Textbooks and Open Educational Practices
I was included in an MN Daily story about open textbooks last week. It was actually a bit embarrassing as I thought a few other colleagues would ‘co-star’ with me in this story because there are exciting work on open …
-
Episodes from my trip in China
I am not an ethnographer. But there were a few episodes from my trip to/in China last month that caught my attention, or ‘gaze’. To put these episodes into perspective, my most recent trip to China took place in October …
2017
-
Web Annotation of Research Articles in Learning Sciences
As a member of the Outreach Advisory Board of the Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS), I was really glad to see the journal putting together a web annotation event during December 11-22, 2017. This activity is yet …
-
The Forest
The universe is expanding, but at what price. The Milky Way is a beauty, but at what price. The Sun is shining, but at what price. The Earth looks blue, but at what price. All continents are moving, but at what price. …
-
AERA-NSF Workshop: Data Sharing and Research Transparency (Part II)
Story continued, after Part I. In the 2.5 days of the workshop, the group continued to deepen the discussion on Data Sharing to more concrete and practical items. In Part II of my personal reflection, I summarize key …
-
AERA-NSF Workshop: Data Sharing and Research Transparency (Part I)
It was an honor to be invited to attend the AERA-NSF Workshop on Data Sharing and Research Transparency at the Article Publishing Stage in Washington, D.C. during July 25‐27, 2017. I am attending as an early career …
-
Changing Value and Valuation in Education
In his arguments against the Common Core, Prof. Yong Zhao, a known educational thinker, referred to his home village: When I was growing up, the most valued talent was the ability to handle water buffalos used to plow …
-
Graphing the Reddit Place Sensation with Neo4j
I’ver never liked the April Fool’s Day, until this year when Reddit decided to launch a social experiment called Reddit Place. The idea is simple. The whole world – or all Reddit users – were given a 999 x 999 blank …
-
A biased introduction to Learning Analytics: Kicking-off #UMNLACoP
Today, we kicked off our Learning Analytics Community of Practice at UMN (#UMNLACoP)! Launching this CoP has been a joint effort among the Center for Educational Innovation, the College of Liberal Arts, the Libraries, …