I got covid a few weeks ago, and as a result I had to miss my favourite academic conference – Networked Learning – at which I was due to give the opening keynote. From what I heard, the conference was fabulous, and I appreciated the lovely messages from friends and colleagues through the week.

The disappointment of missing Networked Learning was somewhat compensated for by something great that happened the same week – I have been promoted to Professor at the University of Edinburgh! From 1 August, my title will be Professor of Digital Culture and Education Futures, and I am delighted.

Other nice news has been the acceptance of some pieces of collaborative work that I’m proud to have worked on – all in press and coming soon:

Bayne, S. and Ross, J. (in press) Speculative Futures for Higher Education. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Noteboom, J. and Ross, J. (in press). Speculation: Challenging the Invisibility and Inevitability of Data in Education. in Buch, A., Lindberg, Y. and Ceratto Pargman, T. (eds), Framing Futures in Postdigital Education
Critical Concepts for Data-driven Practices. Postdigital Science and Education series, Springer.

Wilson, A. and Ross, J. (in press). “Your U-Well-Being Journal is due today”: on some possible intersections between surveillance and student wellbeing in the future University. Studies in Higher Education.

I am also happy to share the assignment galleries of fabulous work of students on two of my courses in 2023/24:

• Culture, Heritage and Learning Futures (Edinburgh Futures Institute)
• Digital Futures for Learning (MSc Digital Education)

As ever, I am endlessly impressed by the quality of imagination, thought and criticality of participants on these courses.

Another current teaching project is the five-week, online, Teaching Futures Thinking course that James Lamb and I are delivering this month along with our excellent teaching assistant, Ari Beckingham. The course is being run in collaboration with Professors without Borders, with particpants from all over the world (with an emphasis on the African continent), including Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malaysia, Lebanon, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Italy, the US and Canada. You can read more about the course on Linkedin, and we’ll be sharing our experiences and reflections once the course is finished.

Last but not least, things are moving right along with the AI and Education Futures projects I mentioned in my last post. Craig Steele from Digital Skills Education has written about the BRAID project’s generative AI science show (in progress, to be launched in August at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh).

Finally, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Wayne Holmes recently for the National Centre for Research Methods’ ‘in conversation’ series – our discussion was on the topic of critical perspectives on AI in education and research, and it’s available to watch on Youtube.

image from Alice in Wonderland deck of playing cards, Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand.