Proceedings of the International Conference on Networked Learning
Since 1998, the biennial Networked Learning Conference has provided an opportunity to participate in a forum for the critical examination and analysis of research in networked learning – particularly in higher education and lifelong learning. Networked learning has become a broader area of inquiry over the years, bringing together research in education and organisations spanning formal, informal, and technology-enhanced learning settings.
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This short paper presents the design phase of an intervention study exploring human-AI collaboration with a virtual human in online teacher education. The study investigates how online K-12 teachers, through collaboration with a virtual human, develop AI literacy, ethical awareness, and pedagogical reflection within their online professional learning environment. The study, to be conducted at an online international school, adopts the ADDIE instructional design model and draws on the European AI Literacy Framework, a framework for teacher professional development, and principles of Networked Learning. The virtual human is a responsive, embodied AI agent powered by generative technology using existing virtual human technology. The virtual human acts as a co-instructor and reflective partner for participating online teachers, supporting them as they explore the educational use of AI and learn to create AI-generated visuals to enhance their online teaching practice. Research objectives include: (1) modelling human-AI collaboration through joint instruction by the researcher and the virtual human to support online teacher professional learning, (2) enhancing AI literacy through experiential learning with AI, and (3) designing an instructional model collaboratively informed by online teacher’s real-life practices, integrating a virtual human as pedagogical support. The intervention is currently in the design phase and, developed by the researcher with input from online teachers, using real cases from their daily practice to ensure relevance and authenticity. Grounded in design-based research, it follows the five iterative phases of the ADDIE model: Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. The intervention consists of a four-week online module that integrates synchronous and asynchronous components, blending human and AI facilitation to foster creativity, engagement, and ethical awareness. Future phases will empirically examine online teachers’ experiences of learning ‘with’ guidance ‘from’ a virtual human and evaluate how this human-AI interaction shapes their understanding of AI’s pedagogical potential, where online teachers learn about AI while simultaneously learning with AI. Anticipated areas of investigation include transparency, emotional authenticity, and the distribution of pedagogical responsibility in human-AI collaboration. By combining instructional design, AI literacy, and professional learning theory, this work contributes to the development of human-centred, ethically grounded AI applications in online teacher education. It also seeks to advance the dialogue on how virtual humans can enrich networked online professional learning communities and support online teachers in shaping the future of education in the age of AI.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lieselot Declercq, Melissa Tuytens, Bram De Wever https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Networked aspects of how school leaders make their organisations ready for applying Artificial Intelligence
This paper examines how school leaders in Australia and Sweden prepare their organisations to adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a focus on the social configurations through which organisational readiness is developed. Although AI in education research has largely concentrated on teachers’ and students’ perspectives, less attention has been given to school leaders’ perceptions of AI and their role in guiding adoption across schools. The study is theoretically grounded in Weiner’s (2009) Organisational Readiness for Change Model, conceptualising readiness through two core dimensions: change commitment (collective willingness to implement AI) and change efficacy (shared confidence in the organisation’s ability to do so). To extend this framework, the paper draws on networked learning perspectives, highlighting how readiness is shaped through leaders’ engagement in professional networks, collegial dialogue, and staff participation and development. A qualitative cross-national design was employed, using semi-structured interviews with school leaders in Australia (n=6) and Sweden (n=4). Interviews explored leaders’ understandings of AI, organisational strategies and visions, perceived enablers and barriers to adoption, and how collaboration with colleagues and external actors supported decision-making. Data were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019), combining deductive coding guided by Weiner’s model with inductive coding to capture emerging themes related to networked learning. Preliminary findings indicate cautious optimism in both contexts, with AI primarily framed as supporting administrative efficiency and idea generation rather than driving pedagogical transformation. Australian leaders reported a stronger commitment, with explicit school-level strategies legitimising action and reducing perceived risk. Swedish leaders’ commitment was often constrained by concerns about academic integrity, data protection, and uneven staff competence, contributing to a “wait-for-policy” orientation and fragmented engagement. Change efficacy was uneven across both settings, frequently depending on individual champions rather than shared routines, although Australian leaders described growing organisational capacity through targeted professional learning and emerging leadership structures. Overall, the findings suggest that more intentional and sustained networked learning infrastructures, alongside clearer system-level guidance, may strengthen organisational readiness and support scalable AI adoption.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jimmy Jaldemark, Rebecca Marrone, Susanne Sahlin, Marcus Sundgren, Maarten de Laat https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The ETF Community of Innovative Educators
The paper presents some reflections on how to support community and network-based learning dynamics among educators, as emerging from the work of the Community of Innovative Educators of the European Training Foundation. In its four years of life, the community has reached over 1600 registered members, organised 48 interactive webinars on different aspects of teaching innovation, collected 127 blogpost and 124 innovative teaching and learning practices, and has fostered the involvement of its members in the co-production of tools to support teaching innovation. We critically reflect on the most important strategies to make sure that within such communities participation transforms into engagement, and engagement produces learning, despite all the constrains and difference that are typical of such communities. We analyse how shared goals, interactivity, diversity, flexible support, awarding mechanisms, and co-creation dynamics contribute to a healthy and growing learning community.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fabio Nascimbeni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This short paper examines how networked learning can enhance collaboration, inclusion, and professional exchange among online schools. Drawing on data from a 2024–2025 ICONS survey, the study explores pedagogical models, shared challenges, and collaboration priorities within the International Community of Online Schools (ICONS), a global network initiated by d-teach online school (Belgium). ICONS brings together 19 K–12 online schools across Europe and beyond, collectively reaching learners in more than 90 countries worldwide, and serving thousands of globally mobile, multilingual, and special-needs students. The research adopts a mixed-methods design combining descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of open-ended responses. Findings reveal a professional and diverse ecosystem of online schools that blend synchronous and asynchronous learning, prioritize humanized digital pedagogy, and explicitly link their missions to SDG 4 and UNESCO’s principles on digital inclusion. While 46.7% of participating schools provide official diplomas, they often operate within fragmented policy systems that fail to recognize their transnational educational role. Three central collaboration priorities emerged from the survey: (1) pedagogical innovation and AI integration to humanize technology in education, (2) quality assurance and cross-border recognition, and (3) teacher professional development through shared modules and peer learning. These findings are interpreted through the lens of Networked Learning theory (de Laat & Dohn, 2019; Networked Learning Editorial Collective, 2021a, 2021b), which conceptualizes learning as a relational process distributed across people, organizations, and technologies. Within this framework, ICONS functions as a networked ecosystem enabling schools to learn with and from one another, transforming isolated innovation into collective intelligence. The paper argues that online schools should not be viewed as substitutes for traditional schooling, but as pedagogically rich and socially connected extensions of educational opportunity that provide continuity and inclusion for learners whose education is disrupted by mobility, geography, health constraints, or other reasons. Policy recommendations call for inclusive recognition frameworks that value online schools as equal partners within education systems, alongside European-level professional development programmes that build teacher capacity in digital pedagogy and AI literacy. By situating online schooling within a networked learning paradigm, this study contributes to ongoing debates on equity, recognition, and collaboration in postdigital education. ICONS exemplifies how distributed professional communities can foster innovation and inclusion across borders, advancing the vision of a more connected and resilient global education ecosystem.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lieselot Declercq, Annabel Declercq, Koen Verlaeckt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Across many education systems, the growing teacher shortage has led schools to rely increasingly on individuals who have not completed formal teacher training. While quantitative studies have explored teacher attrition, motivation, and efficiency, far less is known about how untrained teachers become familiar with their professional role when they enter schools. Grounded in an interactionist perspective (Becker, 1982; Schön, 1983) and theories of professional socialization (Doucet & Viviers, 2016; Lima, 2015), this doctoral study examines how teachers without pedagogical training are socialized to their professional role within the complex social world of schools. Methodologically, the project adopts a collaborative research approach (Morrissette, 2013). Through facilitated discussion groups, untrained and trained teachers will be invited to collectively reflect on situations drawn from their everyday work (Chell, 1998; Mucchielli, 1968). This collective inquiry will not only generate empirical data, but create a space for professional critical reflection, positioning research as a resource for ongoing professional learning. By focusing on processes rather than outcomes, this study addresses both empirical and methodological gaps in the literature. It sheds light on how untrained teachers become familiar with their role in contexts characterised by limited institutional support. More broadly, it raises questions about what it means to become a teacher today, at a time when professional socialization increasingly occurs outside traditional teacher education pathways.
Copyright (c) 2026 Allison Gagne, Joëlle Morrissette https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Early childhood education has been identified as a key federal and provincial government priority in Canada with over 8.4 billion dollars being invested over 2021-2026 (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2018). Included in this significant investment are a variety of funding vehicles aimed at reducing childcare costs to $10/day or less; the development of an operational funding model, wage grid, pension and benefits; the identification of career progression pathways and continuing education requirements, and the creation of new childcare spaces. With only 20% of families having access to a licensed childcare space in BC and the province having only one half of the needed number of early childhood educators (ECE), it is critical that this has been identified as a key area of importance both provincially and nationally. Across Canada, ECE is dominated by female workers (96%) and includes a disproportionate number of visible minority workers (21%). Of the 302,000 child care workers in Canada, one third are immigrant or non-national workers (Charters & Findlay, 2021). This is a challenging sector; it is demanding, emotional work with a high rate of employee attrition and burn-out, all within a competitive environment for employees, particularly in rural and remote areas (Authors, 2025). This project aims to address the critical need for leadership capacity in British Columbia's rapidly expanding early learning and child care sector. Leveraging diverse partnerships and multiple networks, we worked with thought leaders, practitioners, providers, government, and academics to better understand the existing leadership modalities, the key leadership priorities, and the areas needed for innovation to lead and manage quality early childhood programs in British Columbia, Canada. This led to the creation of eight open educational resources (OERs), three courses and a micro credential. Work is still underway to build an undergraduate certificate. To best understand how ECE’s could use the OERs, we initiated a design-based participatory action research study to investigate how education in Early Childhood Education Leadership (ECE-L) can be expanded through the use of these resources. It is the intention that this research project will contribute to a networked "playbook" of implementation ideas for the ECE-L OERs to facilitate wider use and adoption across BC and beyond. This research study shares the OERs created and reports on initial data from one research site, a school district based early learning program.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elizabeth Childs, Kathleen Manion https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
CRE AI A Transnational Framework for Ethical AI Upskilling in the Creative Industries
The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the creative sectors presents a paradigm shift, offering novel tools for artistic expression while simultaneously raising critical ethical concerns. This paper presents the CRE AI project, an Erasmus+ initiative designed to address the dual challenge of skills gaps and ethical literacy among creative professionals. We position the project’s intervention—a transnational, multilingual e-learning platform and community—within the theoretical framework of Networked Learning (NLEC, 2021; Ryberg et al., 2025). The paper argues that the project’s design inherently fosters the collaborative, relational, and technology-mediated learning processes central to networked learning. By creating digital spaces for connection, peer support, and critical dialogue around ethical AI practice among diverse adult learners and educators across Europe, the project moves beyond simple knowledge transmission. It actively cultivates a Community of Practice and a supportive learning network. Using a mixed-methods strategy, the project evaluates increases in learner competence, confidence, and ethical application. The expected results, including sustainable OER and a lasting support network for "ethical creatives," are framed as contributions to fostering equitable, human-centric, and networked professional learning ecosystems in the creative industries. We contend that the CRE AI model exemplifies how targeted educational interventions can leverage networked learning principles to empower creative professionals, ensuring technological advancement is coupled with collective social responsibility and critical digital agency.
Copyright (c) 2026 Viktor Miloshevski, Gert Hurkmans https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Understanding the Data Gaze and Students’ Improvisation of Passages on Chinese MOOCs
A powerful, though not universal, imaginary that posits the ‘rational’ nature of data appears to have taken hold, particularly in the field of digital education. Ranging from invisible learning analytics to self-tracking applications that visualise students’ learning activities, data—or, in many respects, performance data—are regarded as indispensable for driving data-led insight and foresight in education practices. Yet, these metrics often create a space for surveillance in which the data gaze produces meaning and reinforces entrenched educational assumptions. This paper examines the complexity of this gaze within Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), platforms that were once heralded as revolutionary for massifying higher education and facilitating connectivist learning. Specifically, focusing on XuetangX, one of the largest MOOC platforms in China, this study investigates the persistent score indicator on the course learning page, aiming to understand how this indicator ‘gazes’ upon individual students and the way the gaze is returned. This research, rooted in phenomenology, conducted interviews with students from elite Chinese universities to acquire an understanding of their lived engagement with XuetangX. Drawing upon Beer’s theory of the data gaze, the study positions the score indicator as the ‘gazer,’ with students occupying the role of the ‘gazees.’ Viewed through the gazer’s lens, the findings reveal the neoliberal principles underlying the performative gaze of this score indicator, which privileges a fixed model of education and renders individuals responsible for their own learning progress. However, the gaze is not unidirectional or passively received. An interpretation of the students’ responses to the score indicator using Ingold’s more-than-human perspectives unravels different ‘lines’ through which these university students strategically resist the data gaze. Rather than reproducing the preconceived educational assumptions, the gazees are found to be improvising specific passages by ‘swiping’ their way into the gaze. The paper subsequently argues that the data gaze on XuetangX is a dynamic, non-static ‘line of becoming’ where the ongoing educational reality is co-responded, unfolding in the space between the gazer’s expectations and the gazees’ agencing. This theorisation provides critical insights into how data both performs and is performed in the high-stakes context of the Chinese higher education system.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jingyi Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Cultivating Student Voice and Choice in Open and Networked Learning Environments
Networked learning environments are evolving rapidly beyond the confines of centralised learning and content management systems. Our shared approach to designing networked learning is grounded in a student owned and federated model that allows for student agency and ownership of a portfolio of their learning that can be personalized and curated by the learner. In these open and networked learning environments, there is an opportunity for the creation of multiple artefacts and possibilities for remixing, reusing, and creating new and novel experiences for other students and educators to interact with. This requires students to consider and reflect on what they decide to create and how it is shared more broadly while also attending to ethical concerns. This design-based research study investigated the student experience and perceptions of using a networked learning environment to support the creation of community-generated, non-hierarchical teaching and learning resource(s) using a multiple perspectives reflection framework. The tool and framework were used in two graduate level courses offered over a two-year period involving seven participants. Eleven posts and their associated comments/discussions/artifacts were analysed as part of this project. This research reports on the preliminary findings from the evaluation and reflection phase of this three-phased research project. Initial analysis showcases the importance of interactivity, agency, accessibility, structure, and voice in the co-creation of meaningful, engaging, critical learning experiences. These findings provide useful input for the next phase of this tool and for further understanding of what students experience when working in open and networked learning environments.
Copyright (c) 2026 Michael Paskevicius, Michelle Harrison, Elizabeth Childs https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Refracting “tools for conviviality” through the lived experience of machine translation in higher education
This short paper is work-in-progress towards a fuller treatment of a study that adopts a phenomenology of practice approach to analyse the lived experience of machine translation (MT) in higher education, in the context of a bilingual country, Cymru (Wales, UK). The 2021 revised definition of networked learning replaced ‘digital’ with ‘convivial technology’ to state what NL is for, linking with Illichian ideas and thus better reflect the field’s historic commitment to critical pedagogy and emancipatory education. MT, as manifest through Web and mobile applications such as Google Translate, is briefly discussed and considered for its conviviality, in helping students overcome language barriers that are especially acute for non-native Saesneg (English) speakers. However, current instantiations of MT, such as Google Translate, may clumsily confound, rather than facilitate, attempts to obtain useable translation and thus comprehension when mobilised in use. With its Cymru/Cymraeg (Welsh) context, this paper adds a postcolonial aspect as the Welsh Government aims to support the survival of our native language, requiring all educational service providers inside and into Cymru not to treat Cymraeg any less favourably than Saesneg. The Welsh Government expects technology, MT especially, to play a key part in enabling the use of Cymraeg in formal settings, whether for written or spoken Cymraeg. As MT technologies, and their applications, advance, developers advertise gadgets that seemingly dissolve language barriers. Some scientists argue that effective MT would benefit indigenous scientific communities by allowing them to work in their native languages. This could accentuate digital divides, since new technology adoption is skewed in favour of the more financially privileged sections of society. Furthermore, translation and linguistics scholars argue that human translators achieve more than the exchange of equivalent words. With its focus on lived meanings, it is proposed that phenomenology can help to disclose insights into the ways or extent to which MT is a convivial technology. Van Manen’s phenomenology of practice approach operationalises core phenomenological concepts and method, and the work begun by framing a personal anecdote and reflection: a lecturer, lacking confidence in Cymraeg, tries to use Google Translate to humanise an email with a line of Cymraeg whilst on the move. Despite the intent, instrumental use of machine translation may be anticonvivial. Further areas for analysis are briefly proposed.
Copyright (c) 2026 Mike Johnson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Academic Support or Misconduct? Chinese International Students' Experiences with Generative AI in UK Higher Education
As Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT become more common in higher education, they are changing how students approach academic work and expectations. This shift raises questions about how agency, authorship and critical judgement are experienced in learning environments where Generative AI plays a role. Drawing on the framework of networked learning, which sees learning as resulting from interactions between people, resources and tools, this study explores how such interactions may be altered when students rely on Generative AI systems that operate outside of collaborative learning networks. Focusing on Chinese international students in the UK, who often face challenges related to language, academic norms and institutional trust, the research investigates how they use, interpret and respond to Generative AI tools in academic writing. Drawing on constructivism learning theory and posthumanism perspectives, it conceptualises student Generative AI relations not as a simple or straightforward process but as an evolving process influenced by tools, cultural expectations, and university policies. These theoretical lenses allow for a more critical and situated understanding of how Generative AI influence students' agency, perceptions of authorship and sense of ethical responsibility in academic work. The study adopts a three-stage design. First, an online survey explores the scope and purpose of students' use of Generative AI across various academic tasks. Second, a screen-recorded writing task observes how students interact with Generative AI in real-time during an authentic academic activity. Third, semi-structured interviews capture students' views on university rules, ethics and how they make choices. This design helps reveal both students’ visible writing choices and the less obvious thinking behind them. At the time of submission, data collection is still underway and will be completed by early 2026. Preliminary findings will be shared at the Networked Learning Conference to support broader discussions around student agency, academic integrity and ethical engagement with Generative AI in university settings shaped by digital tools. By focusing on the lived experiences of a specific student population, this research aims to contribute to ongoing theoretical and practical discussions on how learning, identity and authorship are changing.
Copyright (c) 2026 Zhixi Li https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Teaching-Presence through the Lens of Performativity in the Postdigital Age
Digital and physical learning environments continuously interact. Teaching is conceptualized not just as “doing” but as an embodied performance that constructs reality. This study explores how Chinese university English teachers perceive and manage student presence and engagement in postdigital classrooms. Framed by the theory of performativity, the research investigates how digital platforms shape teacher-student interactions and pedagogical authority. It addresses two central questions: How do teachers interpret student presence in mediated online spaces, and what strategies do they use to navigate the challenges of these interactions? Adopting a case study approach, this research draws on in-depth interviews with three university English teachers from a liberal arts institution in Beijing. The participants who represent different age groups all had extensive experience with blended teaching, providing rich, practical insights. These three participants are chosen from a larger dataset. A thematic analysis of the interview data was made to identify key patterns in their experiences. The findings revealed differences in how teachers understand online presence. Their understandings ranged from requiring visual confirmation via cameras, to asking for auditory participation, to accepting text-based responses in the chatroom as sufficient. The study shows that these different understandings lead to different teaching strategies. There are three main patterns: some teachers treat the screen like a window into the classroom, others struggle with students who are physically online but mentally absent, and many face a new power dynamic where students’ control over their cameras and mics can challenge the teacher’s authority. In conclusion, the study shows that “presence” in today’s blended classrooms is a complicated idea, shaped by technology, school rules, and the unique relationship between each teacher and student. The findings highlight that to build a real sense of connection, teachers need to be flexible and understanding, rather than just tracking who is logged in. These insights contribute to understanding how to develop more effective and embodied teaching practices in postdigital education. Future research could include a greater number of participants with broader identity, as well as observe online classes over a longer period to provide an even clearer and more detailed picture of these interactions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Yixuan Sun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Conversation games for digital transformation
Digital learning must move beyond tools and skills to meaningfully engage people and help them understand digital technologies and AI in their everyday lives. This paper explores how conversation games can support data literacy development in adult learning education setting. Empirical examples are drawn from a case study conducted in a data literacy workshop attended by continuing education students from diverse professional backgrounds. The workshop used analogue games as a key learning activity to raise awareness about data creation, digital footprints and data types. The games can be characterised as conversation games because they utilise social interaction reflective dialogue as key learning mechanics. Students’ reflections on learning experiences were collected through paper questionnaires with quantitative and qualitative questions after playing the games. After thematic analysis of 62 student responses, three themes were constructed regarding the educational value of conversation games: (1) Inclusive and safe learning environment, (2) dialogic, two-way communication, and (3) social connections. The key argument is that conversation games offer a potential for advancing digital learning due to their inherently social nature. Informed by sociomaterial and networked learning theoretical perspectives, learning is understood as emerging through everyday actions and activities situated within social and material contexts. This paper argues that the conversational and turn-taking format of analogue games created productive networked learning situations through encouraging social connections, and dialogic talking and thinking. The paper concludes that the rule-based interaction and informal sociality of conversation games represent a valuable and productive game-based learning modality for developing digital and data literacies, particularly because digital practices themselves are fundamentally socially embedded and motivated.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fride Haram Klykken, Rosaline Barendregt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Generative AI and Professional Development Design
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes increasingly embedded in educational practice, the need for robust, ethically grounded professional development (PD) for educators is critical. This paper presents preliminary findings from the Frontline Application of Artificial Intelligence and Technology-enhanced Learning in Higher Education (FAITH) project, a design-based research (DBR) project focused on developing and delivering AI-related PD. The literature review highlights the transformative impact of AI across educational systems and identifies key challenges, including academic integrity, diminished creativity, and the need for contextual adaptation. The FAITH project responds to these challenges through a transatlantic collaboration between Mid Sweden University and Athabasca University, resulting in the co-design and implementation of graduate-level, credit-bearing PD courses on AI in education. Part of this project tests Community of Inquiry (CoI) principles to foster reflective inquiry, ethical deliberation, and practical skill development in reference to AI. Broad outcomes of the FAITH project include the successful development of a modular PD curriculum that combines theoretical foundations with hands-on exploration of GenAI tools. Educators engaged in synchronous and asynchronous learning activities, case-based tasks, and collaborative reflections. Participants reported increased confidence in evaluating AI-generated content, designing AI-informed assessments, and facilitating student discussions on the ethical use of AI. The project also established a strategic framework for aligning PD with institutional goals for digital transformation and pedagogical renewal. The discussion emphasizes CoI’s value not only as a pedagogical model but also as a moral compass for navigating the ethical complexities of AI in education. Acknowledging the challenges and possibilities related to educators’ use of AI, PD is important. Providing educators PD in understanding and describing the history and development of AI, possibilities and challenges related to the use of AI as a tool in educational context, as well as reflecting how GenAI can affect the design of learning activities, assessment and examination will be necessary. By promoting inclusive dialogue and intentional design, CoI ensures that AI supports the deeper goals of education: to enlighten, connect, and empower learners. In conclusion, the FAITH project demonstrates that CoI-based PD offers a sustainable, scalable, and ethically grounded approach to preparing educators for the evolving landscape of AI in education.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marcia Håkansson Lindqvist, Martha Cleveland Innes, Peter Mozelius, Jaldemark https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Advancing AI Literacy in Danish TVET through Craftsmanship and Socio-Material Perspectives
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, is transforming how knowledge, skills, and competences are understood and enacted in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Such transformation raises pressing questions about how AI literacy can be meaningfully advanced within educational traditions grounded in material practice and professional identity. Drawing on socio-material theory and Richard Sennett’s notion of craftsmanship, this paper conceptualizes AI literacy as a situated, networked, and relational practice rather than a purely cognitive or technical skill. The paper introduces a framework consisting of five learning strategies: AI Independent, AI Aware, AI Supported, AI Enhanced, and AI Centric learning developed within the Danish [Blinded for review] project. These strategies illustrate how learners can progress from foundational manual mastery toward hybrid forms of digital–material craftsmanship and critical engagement with AI. In this perspective, AI is understood not simply as a tool but as an active participant in educational assemblages that connect humans, technologies, and educational settings. This paper presents part of an ongoing research project which applies a design-based research approach. As part of the research project, we are currently conducting document analysis of ministerial orders for TVET. A preliminary analysis from bricklayer education exemplifies how knowledge, skills, and competences can be mapped across the five strategies. The findings highlight that the fundamentals of craftsmanship remain essential for developing critical AI literacy in TVET. First, students must be able to act independently of AI to later evaluate, collaborate with, and shape it responsibly. Conversely, AI-centric learning opens new possibilities for innovation, design, and ethical reflection, challenging conventional boundaries between human and machine agency. By combining craftsmanship with socio-material and networked learning perspectives, the framework contributes to current debates on what it means to be skilled in an age of intelligent technologies. It provides a vocabulary for teachers and researchers to discuss progression, agency, and relationality in AI-integrated vocational education. Future research will extend the analysis of ministerial orders across vocational domains to examine how AI-related, craft-specific, and transversal competences are recognized, aligned, and developed within networked learning environments.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marianne Haarsbjerg, Marianne Georgsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This conceptual paper engages with the complexities of hybrid learning spaces in contemporary higher education. It conceptualises these spaces as dynamic, socially constructed, and materially entangled practices within the postdigital university. The paper responds to dominant discourses of digital transformation that depict this change primarily as a technical adjustment rather than a pedagogical or cultural process, often overlooking the complexities of everyday pedagogical practice. Central to this approach is a postdigital perspective that highlights the entanglement of human and digital elements in everyday life, rendering binary distinctions between ‘online’ and ‘in-person’ increasingly irrelevant. Framed through the geographies of collaboration, informed by spatial and sociomaterial perspectives, the paper positions hybrid learning spaces as evolving, unfinished, and fluid. Mapping these geographies provides both a methodological and conceptual tool to trace how relational, material, and digital configurations unfold across scales and temporalities, revealing tensions as well as possibilities within hybrid higher education. The paper aligns with the view that current educational narratives—particularly those centred on ‘transformation’—often obscure the contradictions and messiness of actual pedagogical practice. Such narratives tend to portray universities and academic staff as fundamentally flawed and in need of wholesale reform, while overlooking the situated practices that sustain education on a daily basis. By foregrounding the profane acts in education—the ordinary, material, and lived practices of students, educators, and institutions—this paper repositions hybridity not as a product of technological innovation alone, but as a process of continuous negotiation in which ideals, contradictions, and everyday realities converge. Finally, the paper acknowledges the notion of futures-in-the-present to highlight how imagined futures already shape current educational configurations. Within this view, higher education does not move towards a single, predetermined future but unfolds through multiple, contested futures embedded in everyday practices. Thus, it proposes that hybrid, collaborative learning spaces should be understood not as endpoints of design but as unfolding sites of possibility, shaped by diverse learner trajectories and emergent educational relations. Taken together, the paper contributes to recent theoretical debates on space, practice, and technology in networked learning and offers a conceptual foundation for reimagining hybrid higher education as inclusive, socially responsive, and future-oriented.
Copyright (c) 2026 Johanna Pöysä-Tarhonen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Students’ Experiences of Generative AI in Higher Education
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has been widely discussed in recent years, with many studies emphasizing its potential to enhance learning efficiency and transform traditional educational practices. The emergence of generative AI (GenAI) systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini has further accelerated these conversations, highlighting both the promise and the disruption such technologies bring to higher education. However, much of this discussion remains technology-driven, focusing primarily on what AI can do to improve learning rather than how students actually experience and appropriate these tools in their daily study practices. This short paper addresses this gap by examining how GenAI engagement is shaped by uneven conditions of participation across institutional contexts. Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives and postdigital critiques of “digital divide” thinking, the study frames GenAI-related inequality not as a simple access gap, but as emerging through entanglements of tools, infrastructures, institutional norms, and social support. Little empirical work has examined how differences in tool availability, guidance, and institutional arrangements shape students’ ability to engage meaningfully with GenAI, beyond individual “literacy” or willingness to use it. By comparing students’ experiences across university types, this paper shows how GenAI-related inequalities are enacted through everyday practices, including access pathways, support networks, and local norms around legitimate use. This short paper reports findings from an ongoing study of students’ day-to-day digital practices across two different types of universities in China. Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives, it treats students’ engagement with GenAI not as an isolated or purely cognitive activity, but as shaped through dynamic interactions among both human and non-human actors. Using qualitative interview data from students at a highly ranked university and a less prestigious university in East China, the paper examines how access conditions, forms of guidance, and institutional cultures shape engagement with AI tools. The findings show that students’ engagement with GenAI is assembled through different networks of resources and constraints. In the elite university, wider tool availability, stronger infrastructural support, and more established peer and institutional guidance enable more sustained and strategic use of GenAI for academic work. In the less prestigious university, constrained access pathways, limited guidance, and greater uncertainty about legitimate use restrict how confidently and effectively students can incorporate GenAI into study routines. These contrasts demonstrate how GenAI-related inequalities are produced through everyday participation conditions rather than access alone.
Copyright (c) 2026 Yutong Cheng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Networked Learning (NL) scholars aim to radically shift teaching and learning practices through digital innovation, in order to foster greater student empowerment, more holistic learning, and further connection between the university and society. However, implementing this vision is challenging due to the emergent and context-dependent nature of NL environments, as well as the inherent change resistance of postsecondary institutions. In response, NL scholars have advocated for adoption of approaches informed by design and speculative methods, while acknowledging further research is needed to put NL theories into practice. This conceptual paper explores how the scholarship of intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship within an existing organization, could complement existing approaches to implementing NL initiatives. Intrapreneurship scholarship assumes that intrapreneurs will navigate resistance within complex organizational contexts so allocates attention to understanding forces of resistance and potential mitigation. Intrapreneurship theory differentiates between the logic of causation, which drives action that is goal-oriented and planned, and that of effectuation, which drives emergent and non-linear action, with effectuation being more effective in uncertain situations or for radical innovation. Five principles of effectuation are outlined: “bird in the hand” (start with what you have), affordable loss (risk only what you can lose at each stage), “lemonade” (leverage the unexpected), “crazy quilt” (let partners shape direction), and “pilot in the plane” (focus on controllable aspects). Preliminary analysis suggests compatibility between effectuation theories of intrapreneurship and design-based and speculative methods, with all emphasizing exploratory, iterative action embedded in social and material contexts. Moreover, this paper finds that intrapreneurship theory has potential to contribute to advancement of NL initiatives through offering: (1) Insights into how change occurs within the entangled, social, political and material spaces of organizations; (2) Context-dependent knowledge on issues of relevance to those advancing NL initiatives, including research specifically focused on digital intrapreneurship and on intrapreneurship in public institutions; and (3) Affirmation of NL’s insights and approaches, since intrapreneurship scholarship arrive at similar conclusions from different empirical traditions. This is a preliminary, exploratory paper that concludes with potential directions for future research.
Copyright (c) 2026 Amy Zidulka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Untangling the Nuances and Networks of Mobile-GenAI English Learning
Networked learning is defined as learning supported by purposeful connections between people, resources, and technologies (NLEC, 2020). The preliminary results of the research described in this paper focuses on Arab immigrant and refugee women (AIRW) who live in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and their experiences using mAIL technology to learn English. Kearney et al.’s (2012) sociocultural pedagogical framework guided this study. As the research progressed, it became apparent that it is not possible to simply layer GenAI upon mobile learning; rather, the use of AI changed the nature and networking patterns of the learners. This phenomenological study illustrates how mobile GenAI (mAIL) technology alters the admixture of networked learning in both general and subtle ways. In a general sense, the very nature of the large language models (LLMs) is inherently networked as it connects a vast collection of human-produced artefacts/resources (mostly text based) to human learners who access these artefacts via prompts. We suggest that current models of mobile learning can be shifted to better reflect the nuanced interactions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nosaiba Badarneh, Marguerite Koole https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly influencing early childhood education (ECE), presenting both opportunities and ethical challenges. Preschool principals, as key pedagogical leaders, play a critical role in guiding this integration. This study investigates how Swedish preschool principals perceive AI following a targeted professional development (PD) workshop. While prior research has examined AI’s potential for teaching and administration, little attention has been given to leadership perspectives and their alignment with core educational values. A full-day PD workshop was conducted with approximately 40 principals, combining lectures, interactive exercises, and scenario-based role play. Participants explored concepts such as AI bias, prompt engineering, and ethical dilemmas using generative AI tools. Survey data were collected from 28 principals immediately after the workshop, providing qualitative insights into their experiences, concerns, and perceived needs. Thematic analysis identified three areas: strategic and pedagogical potential of AI, competence, confidence and critical literacy, and ethical integration and governance. Findings indicate that successful AI adoption in ECE requires structured PD, clear policy frameworks, and a commitment to democratic, equitable and child-centred values. The study also demonstrates how networked learning principles, including collaborative reflection, peer dialogue and distributed leadership, can support ethical and inclusive AI integration.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lukas Ljungcrantz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Complex digital learning environments in a postdigital age
This paper develops and discusses a conceptual approach to understanding complex digital learning environments within networked learning. Based on previous studies focusing on makerspaces published within the networked learning community this paper explores the makerspace phenomenon in education and initially discusses and suggests that learning environments equipped with digital technologies such as makerspaces could be defined and approached as a ‘complex digital learning environment’. The notion of complexity is particularly useful for understanding environments such as makerspaces because they integrate heterogeneous elements, technological tools, spatial configurations, pedagogical approaches, and social practices, that together shape learning opportunities and constraints. Makerspaces can be recognised as environments that provide access to various tools and digital technologies, enabling users to explore and make artifacts. Makerspaces appear in multiple forms within educational contexts exhibiting various configurations. Although the notion of educational makerspaces is subject to interpretations, they may often be associated with digital technologies such as 3D printers, laser cutters, microcontrollers and robotics. A range of actors across research, practice, and policy have argued that makerspaces in education may serve as a catalyst for unlocking possibilities for teaching and learning activities and outcomes. Interpretations of makerspaces in education may foster networked engagement and collaborative learning; however, they may also foster boundaries for both educators and the learners, both in terms of context, digital technologies and pedagogy. By conceptualising makerspaces as complex digital learning environments, the aim is to move beyond instrumental or purely spatial understandings and instead emphasise the dynamic interrelations between material, digital, and human actors. This perspective allows to foreground how networked learning unfold within and across these environments, and how they are conditioned by both enabling and constraining factors. In addition, this paper argues that emphasising the complexity and potential boundaries of physical digital learning environments may support a shared ground for networked engagement with possibilities and the boundaries of such settings when designing for learning. In particular, acknowledging boundaries such as institutional constraints, access to technologies, pedagogical preparedness, and digital literacy can help educators and researchers collaboratively negotiate design principles that are sensitive to local conditions while still fostering meaningful connections across networks. Thus, the conceptualisation aims to contribute to the networked learning discourse by offering an analytical lens for studying and designing learning ecologies that are simultaneously digital, physical, and networked.
Copyright (c) 2026 Michal Pilgaard, Jacob Davidsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Introducing a podcast as a networked intervention to support first-year students’ transition into higher education:
This paper reports on a first-cycle educational design research study that examines a teacher-led podcast as an intervention to support first-year students’ transition into higher education. Motivated by documented early vulnerabilities and their association with withdrawal, the study investigates whether a podcast can scaffold belonging, clarify expectations, and provide early guidance during the initial phase of study. The networked learning intervention—The Behavioural Science Pod—comprised five semi-structured, dialogical episodes hosted by programme teachers and distributed via the learning management system. Drawing on the Communities of Inquiry framework, the podcast was designed to engage social, teaching, and cognitive presence. Two instruments were used to evaluate the artefact: a survey (n=35) and a focus-group (n=5) interview were used to capture both broad patterns and deeper experiences. Open-ended responses from both datasets were thematically analysed. Findings converged around four themes: usage patterns, perceived benefits, pedagogical value, and areas for improvement. A clear usage pattern emerged: just over half of respondents engaged with the podcast at least once—an uptake exceeding that reported in earlier comparable initiatives. Non-listening was attributed to both internal (e.g., lack of preference for the medium, forgetfulness, no perceived need) and external (time constraints) aspects, underscoring that podcasts are not a one-size-fits-all solution. For listeners, the primary point of use was the very start of studies, a period consistently described as uncertain and emotionally demanding. In this context, the podcast acted as a supportive networked resource that offered orientation, reassurance, and practical strategies while conveying presence and trust through its conversational tone. Students highlighted relational benefits (a felt closeness to teachers; a sense of “being part of the conversation”) alongside cognitive support, with episodes on navigating course literature and working in study groups repeatedly singled out as especially helpful. Interpreted through the Communities of Inquiry lens, the podcast fostered social presence, strengthened teaching presence, and enabled meaning-making indicative of cognitive presence. At the same time, students identified important areas for improvement: wider distribution, provision of transcripts or textual summaries for accessibility and navigation, more episodes and stronger curricular integration—potentially making selected episodes compulsory. Overall, the study demonstrates that a carefully designed podcast can provide low-threshold, multidimensional networked support for first-year students’ transition, while also revealing design constraints and inclusion requirements. The paper contributes practical design rationales and a theoretically informed account of podcasting’s affordances and limitations, and it outlines a forthcoming study that will examine a podcast as the primary medium for an entire course.
Copyright (c) 2026 Saga Dorani Andersson, Jimmy Jaldemark https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This paper draws inspiration from phenomenology and Marvel Entertainment’s Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) to elevate and guard the practices of scholarship, as one response to the encroachment and infiltration of large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into academic knowledge work, thinking in particular. LLMs and GenAI may offer to accelerate labourious knowledge work, and gild with kudos those who thus leverage it, for example in compiling entire literature reviews on demand. We contend that automating aspects of scholarship impoverishes the necessarily relational, embodied and ethical activity of scholars. In this AI-infiltrated era, we present a novel (and fun!) phenomenological stimulant for delegates to the networked learning conference. Rather than the just the usual canonical philosophical writers, our inspiration draws upon some of the main characters of GotG. We argue that GotG may be encountered, attending to their narrative arcs: their dialogue, gesture, sacrifice and relation. These facets, as they play out in moments of grief and generosity, etc. can help us to reflect on our own attempts at scholarly practice through current GenAI-troubled tensions. These lived tensions, as they may texture networked collaborative academic work, are briefly elaborated through four fragments: the disappeared voice, the stillness that registers as absence, the question that got automated and, the speed that erases process. These fragments share a flavour of what the Guardians may address. Brief depictions and insights from the Guardians we include are informed by repeat viewing of the GotG movie trilogy and fan wikis. We begin with Star-Lord, a figure of fragmentation and longing, of disconnection and yet drawing repeatedly back from the brink through music and the call of what matters. We introduce Gamora, as guarding the possibility of ethics amid torrid interminable violence. For us, Rocket and Nebula guard the possibility of healing without erasure. Groot and Mantis guard the quiet forms of knowing. Drax guards the fragility of interpretation. We invite delegates to join us in drawing playful resilience and hope from our GotG interpretive companions and celebrate the freedom to deliberate unplugged inception into scholarly discourse, to guard the conditions of thought and thinking itself.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dr Felicity Healey-Benson, Mike Johnson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The world faces a variety of complex problems and predicaments (Thomas, Williams and Zalasiewicz, 2020) where decisions across all scales that we make now may have profound, unpredictable and/or irreversible consequences. Examples include climate change and biodiversity loss; rapid development and diffusion of generative AI; the decarbonisation of energy, transport and industry; challenges around land use; and challenges around migration. These are multi-scalar, global and highly localised. They have in common that they involve heterogeneous networks or assemblages of humans, non-humans, landscapes, technologies and infrastructures, entangling social, environmental and technological dynamics. In this paper, I suggest that networked learning can offer both a research methodology for studying these problems and a potential form of public pedagogy that may be useful in finding ways to reframe public debate about and understanding of their nature and consequences. To illustrate my position, I describe the processes and findings associated with a recent project exploring imagined futures in which carbon capture (use) and storage (CC(U)S) has been implemented as a way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and so tackling climate change. The project developed place-based participatory speculative fiction as a means of encouraging adults living and working in a range of sectors and places (mostly in Scotland) that are likely to be involved in and so affected by CC(U)S. I consider how learning emerges across a range of multi-scalar networks, and how echoes between the morphologies and topologies of these networks can help generate insights that may be used to inform future public pedagogies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Anna Wilson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Authority and inquiry in the age of generative AI
This study examines how generative AI (GenAI) is taken up in students’ academic work and how its use reconfigures authority, inquiry, and legitimacy within networked learning environments. The study adopts a qualitative case study design situated in the Bachelor of Architectural Technology and Construction Management programme at University College of Northern Denmark (UCN), where third-semester students engaged with GenAI tools, including ChatGPT, Copilot, and Primo Research Assistant, while completing an academic assignment. The empirical material comprises reflective process reports and screenshots of students’ interactions with GenAI, collected from 28 project groups across three course iterations. Guided by a networked learning perspective, the analysis focuses on how human and technological actors are positioned within students’ inquiry processes. The findings show that students primarily engaged with GenAI through short, instrumental exchanges used for idea generation, language refinement, and structural support. While GenAI was frequently described as a collaborator, mentor, or “fifth group member,” its role remained largely peripheral to deeper processes of exploration, reasoning, and collective meaning-making, which unfolded through peer dialogue, supervision, and writing outside the AI environment. The study further demonstrates that students selectively delegated linguistic authority to GenAI, valuing its fluency and efficiency, while retaining analytical and epistemic authority over judgment and interpretation. These findings suggest that, rather than displacing human authority, GenAI becomes part of the learning network in ways that reshape how inquiry is initiated and linguistically performed, while leaving core processes of reasoning and collaboration human-centred.
Copyright (c) 2026 Camilla Gyldendahl Jensen, Mads Dines Petersen, Peter Nørkjær Gade https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Flexibility in Higher Education is increasingly framed as a necessary response to a complex and rapidly changing world, where students must adapt to shifting demands and conditions. Often associated with online and distance learning, flexibility is linked to increased accessibility, learner autonomy, and responsiveness to individual needs. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the push for flexible educational models, exposing both the potential and the limitations of existing structures and practices. Despite its widespread use, flexibility remains a multifaceted and under-theorised concept, encompassing both pedagogical potential and structural challenges. It reflects a range of interpretations and priorities from institutional strategies shaped by market demands and technological innovation to pedagogical and personal approaches that focus on fostering student agency, critical thinking, and adaptability. This paper investigates how university teachers and researchers understand and construct the meaning of flexibility within the context of regular degree programs at a Danish university. Through two workshops involving approximately 35 participants, three artefacts - a flexibility barometer, a personal entry point, and a relationship matrix - were developed to facilitate reflection and dialogue. These artefacts supported conversations at multiple levels, ranging from grounded discussions grounded in participants’ own teaching practices to more open-ended, exploratory dialogues about flexibility as a pedagogical and institutional phenomenon. The analysis shows that flexibility is not merely a matter of logistics or technology, but rather a relational and context-dependent practice negotiated among teachers, students, and institutional structures. Participants highlighted both opportunities and dilemmas associated with flexible approaches, including the balance between structure and freedom, short-term responsiveness and long-term educational value, and tensions between individual autonomy and collective responsibility. Based on this, ten interrelated elements are identified through which flexibility is enacted, spanning timing, location, facilitation, student investment, and organisational infrastructure Rather than reinforcing dominant narratives that present flexibility as inherently positive or easily implemented, this study challenges such assumptions by revealing the situated negotiations, pedagogical considerations, and institutional constraints involved in enacting flexibility. The workshop dialogues revealed how teachers engage with flexibility through critical reflection, drawing on their professional experience and values. The study emphasises the importance of involving teachers in shaping flexible practices. Their insights and pedagogical perspectives are essential to ensuring that flexibility supports meaningful learning and aligns with broader educational goals.
Copyright (c) 2026 Mia Thyrre Sørensen, Maria Hvid Stenalt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Universities as engines of inclusive innovation
In a postdigital society, understood as characterised by rapid sociomaterial and technological change, AI solutionism amid complex geopolitics, pervasive uncertainty, and deepening inequalities, the civic role of universities is being re-examined. This chapter explores how universities can become engines of inclusive innovation by acting as architects, bridgers, and catalysts for ethical and responsible innovation and new avenues of collaborative networked learning. This requires disruption of many assumptions made within universities and in government policies regarding Knowledge Exchange (KE) policies and practices, civic agendas, and a reconsideration of the language that is routinely used to describe potential business, research and cross-sector partners in the community. Drawing on the complementary research and practice of the four co-authors, the paper integrates theoretical and practical insights from recent academic publications and community focused projects. We demonstrate how seed-funded co-designed listening events, catalyst conversations, and community innovation hubs create enabling infrastructures to confront digital and data disadvantage, amplify youth and community voices, and foster trust-based, equitable partnerships. Through a synthesis of theory and practice, we argue that universities, when acting ethically and relationally, can reimagine innovation and KE as a civic good in partnership with diverse community stakeholders. In so doing, there is an opportunity to critically reposition narrow understandings of KE, as instigated and enacted by universities, and reimagine these as co-created civic forms of networked learning. This reframing positions the university, not as an extractive ivory tower, but as a receptive, living ecosystem of inclusive innovation capable of co-shaping equitable futures in uncertain postdigital times.
Copyright (c) 2026 Alex Cole, Sarah Hayes, Michael Jopling, Petar Jandrić https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
In February 2025, the Estonian government launched the educational innovation programme AI Leap (TI-Hüpe), a state–industry partnership aimed at introducing generative AI into upper-secondary education. Initially conceived to provide all teachers and students in grades 10 and 11 with access to OpenAI ChatGPT Edu, the programme was soon developed with a large-scale teacher training component. The initiative was explicitly framed as a continuation of the 1990s Tiger Leap, a national programme that equipped schools with computers and internet access and that has become central in the narrative of Estonia’s transformation from a post-Soviet state into a digital forerunner. This study explores how the expert group behind the early stages of the AI Leap were formed and how their work contributed to legitimising particular visions of education futures. Theoretically, the paper draws on the concepts of education futures and sociotechnical vanguards to analyse how visions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and expertise shape the conditions for educational transformation. Education futures are understood here as practices of anticipation through which actors seek to render the future governable in the present, while sociotechnical vanguards refer to collectives of experts that mobilise social and material resources to steer change in particular directions. The analysis is based on twelve semi-structured interviews with actors involved in AI Leap, including government officials, researchers, consultants, and school leaders, as well as contextual material from media and official documents. The findings indicate that the formation of the expert group responsible for implementing the AI Leap was contingent and network-based rather than the result of formal institutional procedures. The group was dominated by representatives with a background in psychology and neuroscience rather than, as in previous educational reforms in Estonia, by entrepreneurs from the private sector. This configuration shaped what counted as legitimate expertise within the programme, privileging scientific and evidence-oriented approaches over other forms of knowledge. The analysis further shows how this sociotechnical vanguard was embedded within a broader network of policy actors, technologies and institutions through which particular postdigital education futures were stabilised and promoted. AI was framed as an already present and disruptive condition that could neither be ignored nor blindly trusted, positioning governance and pedagogical steering as necessary responses. While generative AI was widely used by students, pedagogical responses remain unsettled, giving rise to what the paper describes as proto-habits, where established practices and anticipated futures coexist.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emanuele Bardone, Ingrid Forsler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Who Bridges the Gaps? Examining the Background, Content, and Role of Knowledge Brokers in Informal Social Networks
Knowledge mobilization can be understood as a dynamic, iterative, and social process through which knowledge is gathered, contextualized, and applied in ways that improve educational systems and professional practices. Rather than being a simple top-down transfer, it involves constant movement between different contexts and purposes, with knowledge taking on new meaning as it is interpreted and used by diverse groups. Increasingly, such processes unfold in informal spaces, particularly on social media platforms where educators, researchers, and other stakeholders exchange resources, address pressing challenges, and attempt to reduce structural inequities. Within these informal spaces, knowledge brokers play an especially important role. They contribute by facilitating access to information, helping groups establish shared goals and mutual understanding, and creating new links across domains where connections might otherwise not exist. Knowledge brokers are therefore not only carriers of information but also translators, connectors, and catalysts for collective learning. Their importance is recognized in practice, as many policy initiatives now deliberately include brokers to strengthen equity-oriented reforms and ensure that information flows more effectively across educational systems. Building on this conceptual understanding, our study introduces an analytical framework designed to examine how knowledge brokers operate in informal social networks. The framework makes it possible to assess how roles, behavioral patterns, and topical foci interact to shape the circulation of knowledge. Applying this framework, we analyzed online education networks, using both structural and content-based methods to capture the connections among brokers and the kinds of knowledge they share. The findings suggest that knowledge brokers indeed serve essential connective functions, exchanging information widely while also exhibiting a tendency to cluster with similar peers, which can limit the reach of their knowledge. Different types of brokers were found to specialize in particular functions, with educators emphasizing classroom practices, researchers highlighting scholarly outputs, and NGOs focusing on resources related to change processes and opportunities. These differentiated roles illustrate how knowledge is translated into usable forms for different audiences. By foregrounding both the potential and the limitations of informal online networks, the framework provides insights that can inform policymakers and partnerships seeking to create more equitable, collaborative, and sustainable systems of knowledge exchange.
Copyright (c) 2026 Martin Rehm, Anita Caduff, Marie Lockton, Alan J Daly https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Group work in primary school - cooperation, collaboration and beyond
Group work is widespread in Danish schools yet recurrently marked by challenges of participation and coordination. Moreover, “group work” is not a single, stable practice but unfolds across instructional configurations with varying interdependence and digital mediation; an issue central to Networked Learning’s focus on evolving connections between learners, tasks, and technologies. Drawing on year-long ethnographic fieldwork in an 8th-grade class, including observations, video and screen recordings, and interviews, the study analyses how students organise contact and manage task complexity in Danish and biology. Building on Strauss’s concept of articulation work, we show that students continuously regulate contact in response to perceived task demands. Cooperation and collaboration emerge not as fixed categories but as fluid organisational modes through which students balance dependency, workload, and coordination. The analysis also identifies two additional forms that exceed this distinction. In codistribution, responsibility is shared yet differentiated, allowing subsets of a group to collaborate closely while maintaining looser cooperative alignment across the subgroups. In copresence, students work side by side within a shared social frame while primarily engaging in individual task completion, drawing on peers only intermittently. Together, collaboration, cooperation, codistribution, and copresence constitute the Co-4 model. The model conceptualises group work as a dynamic balancing of contact and complexity and offers a refined analytical lens for understanding networked learning processes in classroom practice.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jonatan Karnøe, Marianne Riis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Rapid societal changes, particularly those driven by digital technologies and AI, necessitate innovative solutions. Academia and society, therefore, share the responsibility of equipping students with the entrepreneurial and innovative skills essential for achieving a sustainable future. Developing such competencies requires diverse and flexible approaches. One promising pathway is interdisciplinary education, which integrates knowledge and skills from multiple subjects, enabling students to connect theory with practice for holistic understanding and real-world problem-solving. Students’ prior knowledge and experiences are central to this process. Shaped by context, social interactions, and cultural elements, students’ prior knowledge and experiences influence both opportunities for learning and motivation. Creating spaces that value collaboration across disciplinary, cultural, and institutional boundaries is therefore crucial. This study investigates how students perceive learning activities designed to develop entrepreneurial and innovative skills, with a particular focus on collaborations between academia and society. The paper explores how students perceive the effectiveness of such activities and in what ways collaborations across contexts affect students' motivation, future outlook, and readiness for work. The research draws on the BRiliant Innovation through DiGital Engagement (BRIDGE) project, in which three universities collaborated with strategic partners to design Digital Impact Day (DID) events. These events represent non-formal contexts for learning where students, university staff, and companies come together in networked educational settings to address authentic societal and organisational challenges. Findings show that DID events created a welcoming and stimulating space that encouraged engagement and collaboration. Although students faced challenges in working with unfamiliar peers, communicating across diverse backgrounds, and solving problems outside their expertise, they interpreted these difficulties as opportunities for learning, growth, and reflection. Students reported gaining confidence in teamwork, pitching, and problem-solving, as well as expanding their global perspectives on sustainability. Many students also expressed a stronger sense of preparedness for future careers and a commitment to taking meaningful action in their communities. This paper contributes to discussions on the future of teaching and learning by demonstrating how interdisciplinary and networked approaches can foster entrepreneurial and innovative skills across formal, non-formal, and informal contexts. It highlights the potential of DID events as a model for collaboration, preparing students for the complexities of future work and their role in contributing to society.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jussara Reis-Andersson, Jimmy Jaldemark, Marcia Håkansson Lindqvist https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Digital innovation in education is rapidly evolving. The purpose of this paper is to explore the insights and relevant themes highlighted by a group of educational researchers and practitioners from a digital innovation educational conference. The inaugural conference, hosted in April 2025 by the Centre for Digital Innovation in Education, invited submissions to share and discuss current topics in education innovation. Presenters submitted proposals in line with our four conference themes: 1) Pedagogical Innovation, 2) Structural Innovation, 3) Digital Innovation, and 4) Teaching for Innovation. As a site for networked learning, the hybrid online and in-person format supported connections and a shared sense of challenge among presenters and attendees. The session formats (i.e., keynote speakers, paper presentations, workshops, round tables, posters, social networking event, and graduate student luncheon) fostered conversations around contemporary themes in innovative educational practices in both formal and informal capacities. As a social practice, the conference enabled educators, researchers and students to formulate digital and social connections that contributed to broadening their professional communities within the professional development ecology. For the purpose of this content analysis, conference submissions refer to topic summaries from invited guest speakers (n=5) and confirmed proposals (n=46). We conducted a content analysis of the conference submissions (n=51) by coding the data through three different processes: ATLAS.ti and Open AI, Data Analysis by ChatGPT, and human-centred coding. This process leveraged AI to assist with refining and confirming coding. Our three-stage, iterative approach explores qualitative coding through a purpose-built application, an open-source platform, and a human-centred process to improve reliability when using emerging technology. Analysis of the 51 conference submissions revealed the following themes: integration of technology in learning; culturally relevant pedagogy; leveraging digital technologies to foster social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies; digital pedagogy and innovative instructional design; challenges of accessibility and inclusivity; AI and ethical considerations; innovative assessment practices; and faculty development and institutional readiness for digital innovation integration. Our paper offers two significant contributions to educational research: 1) it highlights the current topics and issues that educators and researchers perceive as innovative, relevant and transformative in the area of digital education; and 2) it describes an innovative methodological approach, along with its challenges, of using AI for qualitatively coding conference proposals.
Copyright (c) 2026 Erika Grogan-Graham, Tracy Byers Reid, Dr. Janette Hughes, Dr. Diana Petrarca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
LLM-based Teamwork Role Inferencing for Fostering Social Online Learning
Higher education institutions are progressively implementing online learning modules due to their promotion of equity through scalability, accessibility, inclusivity, and affordability. Despite the advantages, online learning environments face persistent challenges in facilitating meaningful networked learning (NL) opportunities. One particularly pressing challenge is supporting effective NL through group formation and collaborative teamwork. With rising enrolments, manual grouping has become impractical. Random allocation overlooks complementary skills and often produces unbalanced teams, while self-assessment relies on students’ often inaccurate self-perceptions, leading to mismatched roles and group tensions. A substantial body of research has examined strategies for group formation, and many studies have emphasised the value of team role allocation in promoting effective NL. However, little attention has been paid to approaches that infer learners’ collaborative role tendencies from their actual behavioural interactions and subsequently use this information to inform group composition and achieve a better NL experience. Accordingly, this study examines whether large language models (LLMs) can infer higher-education learners’ teamwork role tendencies comparably to human judgment, using data from an international sample of undergraduate and postgraduate learners recruited via Prolific who interacted with a custom-built chatbot in collaborative learning scenarios. The resulting interactions were analysed through an LLM to infer teamwork role tendencies based on previously established Belbin Team Roles. The roles inferred by the LLM were then compared against those coded by human coders, with inter-rater alignment evaluated using Cohen’s Kappa and percentage agreement. Learner responses were coded by trained human researchers using a consensus-based Belin Team Role framework. The findings reveal that LLM achieved a moderate degree of alignment with human coders, suggesting its viability as a tool for inferring learners’ teamwork role tendencies. Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed that the length of learners’ responses to the chatbot is associated with the extent to which the LLM’s inferences aligned with human coders. However, future research would benefit from larger sample sizes and the use of more advanced statistical methods to better capture the effects of interaction quality. This study contributes to the growing body of work on LLM-supported NL by highlighting both the potential and the limitations of using LLMs for role inference. Future implementations should pay particular attention to fostering high-quality learner-chatbot interactions to maximise reliability and pedagogical value to help design for effective social participation in online NL experiences. The findings of this research are expected to advance the development of technology-enhanced, NL practices within online higher education.
Copyright (c) 2026 Wimukthi Madhusanka Thommadurage, Nguyen Nhu Anh Le, Negin Mirriahi, Srecko Joksimovic, Maarten de Laat https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Scaling Networked Learning Through AI-Enabled Program Level Redesign
As higher education increasingly shifts online, institutions face the challenge of creating engaging, collaborative learning experiences that extend beyond individual courses. This paper presents a novel approach to program-level curriculum redesign that integrates networked learning principles with ethical AI support to transform an entire undergraduate professional program. While existing literature demonstrates networked learning's effectiveness in individual courses, research has not addressed how to scale these principles across complete academic programs, a critical gap because students' educational experiences are cumulative and interconnected. We ground our redesign in networked learning theory, which positions learning as a web of purposeful connections among learners, educators, and resources rather than content transmission to individuals. Our conceptual framework operationalizes this through five iterative steps that maintain human-in-the-loop pedagogical authority while leveraging AI capabilities. Throughout, faculty retain final pedagogical authority, with AI serving as a thought partner that proposes while humans decide on pedagogical intent and ethical boundaries. Our five-step process begins with AI-enabled gap analysis against accreditation standards and quality frameworks, proceeds through backward design aligned with networked learning values, develops AI chatbots with explicit ethical guardrails, implements data-informed evaluation tracking both learning outcomes and network participation patterns, and concludes with continuous improvement cycles that preserve traceability for accreditation. This approach makes four distinct contributions to value-based AI-supported learning. First, it demonstrates how AI can scale personalized support while preserving essential social dimensions of learning. Second, it provides a replicable methodology for ethical AI integration that maintains disciplinary values. Third, it addresses digital equity challenges through deliberate design that ensures AI enhances rather than gatekeeps learning opportunities. Fourth, it demonstrates how networked learning principles can create program-level coherence, extending prior course-level research to show how collaboration and community-building become cumulative dimensions of professional identity development. By the conference, we will share concrete artifacts including AI prompt templates, chatbot configurations with ethical guardrails, and assessment rubrics that demonstrate values-embedded AI integration. Our work argues that the future of teaching lies not in choosing between human and artificial intelligence, but in orchestrating their collaboration to create learning networks that prepare students for contemporary professional practice where human judgment and AI assistance are increasingly intertwined.
Copyright (c) 2026 Magdalene Moy, Andrew Feldstein https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Reassembling AI-embraced Networked Learning through Actor-Network Theory
The rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI; AI) is reshaping how learning and knowledge production take place in higher education. As AI generates text, proposes logical structures, and applies academic conventions, learning can no longer be explained as interaction among human actors alone. Judgments about what constitutes a legitimate research decision increasingly emerge through entanglements among humans and nonhuman elements such as documents, institutional regulations, interfaces, deadlines, and algorithms. This shift raises foundational questions central to Networked Learning (NL) theory concerning agency, relationality, and knowledge production. While NL has conceptualized learning as a relational practice grounded in connections among learners, its core concepts have largely positioned technology as a mediating condition, leaving learning agency predominantly human-centered. AI challenges this assumption by actively intervening in meaning-making and judgment. This study aims to reconfigure key NL concepts by introducing Actor–Network Theory (ANT) as a sociomaterial analytical lens. ANT conceptualizes learning not as the outcome of human interaction alone, but as a networked effect produced through ongoing translations among heterogeneous human and nonhuman actors. Drawing on ANT concepts such as generalized symmetry, relational agency, translation, and mediation, the study reinterprets relationality, distributed knowledge creation, self-directed learning, and technological mediation within NL. Empirically, the study examines doctoral research proposal writing as a critical learning context where supervision, institutional requirements, and AI intersect. The analysis draws on phenomenological posthuman interviews with doctoral students, supervisors, and early-career researchers, supplemented by the first author’s research journal. Paired anecdotal analyses reconstruct the same research design scene through NL and ANT perspectives, enabling comparison of how different theoretical lenses foreground actors, relations, and agency. The findings show that research design decisions are not the result of individual intention or collaboration alone, but are provisionally stabilized through chains of translation involving supervisor, supervisee, documents, procedural forms, deadlines, digital systems, and AI. The study highlights how ANT makes visible the complexity of research design, repositions AI as an active translation device, and redistributes agency and power across sociomaterial assemblages. It suggests that NL research may benefit from engaging more explicitly with technology as an active participant in learning rather than as a background condition.
Copyright (c) 2026 Minseon Jeon, Kyungmee Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This paper reports findings from a mixed-methods study examining the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Generative AI (GenAI), to support lesson planning across five primary schools in England. Situated within contemporary Networked Learning scholarship, the study conceptualises AI-supported planning as a socio-technical practice shaped by professional relationships, institutional conditions, and collaborative learning cultures, rather than as a purely technical intervention. The research was conducted within a multi-academy trust engaged in digital transformation and committed to inclusive pedagogy through Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Fifteen teachers across Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1, and Key Stage 2 participated over two school terms, piloting a range of AI tools including ChatGPT, TeachMate AI, Aila, Olex.AI, and Magma Maths. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed, combining baseline and follow-up teacher surveys, reflective journals, structured classroom observations, and pupil voice surveys and focus groups. Quantitative data captured changes in planning time, workload perceptions, and confidence, while qualitative data explored teacher sense-making, pedagogical decision-making, and learner experience. The findings demonstrate a substantial reduction in average weekly planning time of 52.5%, decreasing from 10 hours to 4.75 hours, alongside an increase in teacher confidence in lesson planning from 50% to 100%. Qualitative analysis revealed that AI functioned most effectively as a “co-planner”, reducing the cognitive and emotional burden of planning while preserving professional judgement. Teachers reported improved curriculum alignment, greater pedagogical flexibility, and enhanced prompt literacy. AI-supported planning also enabled faster and more consistent production of differentiated materials, supporting inclusive practice for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), English as an Additional Language (EAL), and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Pupil voice data indicated increased engagement, independence, and enjoyment in AI-informed lessons. The study also identified important tensions. While planning efficiency improved, time saved was often reallocated to other professional demands, highlighting a workload paradox that underscores the need for systemic policy responses. Analysis of the conditions underpinning successful adoption revealed the centrality of values-driven leadership, networked professional learning, psychological safety, reliable infrastructure, and ethical governance. By combining quantitative workload data with rich qualitative insights, this study responds to calls within Networked Learning research for empirically grounded investigations of AI in educational practice. It demonstrates that AI’s educational value lies not in automation, but in its capacity to strengthen collaborative, reflective, and inclusive professional practice when embedded within trusted networks of learning.
Copyright (c) 2026 Julie Carson, Hollie Benfield, Mark Anderson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The paper suggests that a pedagogical advance in universities could be to set up university courses where the digital is integrated more organically into courses and not seen as a separate thing. Drawing on work in postdigital education we suggest that higher education is still trapped in a binary where online courses are seen as analogues, and copies of an original face-to-face course. This vision is historically connected to the early days of the internet where online communities were seen as separate from face-to-face communities in the literature on the internet. The world has moved on, as technology has advanced, to see that every aspect of our lives involves a digital component and the simple separation of online and offline no longer fits with the entangled reality that people live. Many scholars refer to this moment as postdigital. And they are careful to say that postdigital does not mean that we are past the digital, but rather that the digital is part of all life. It is somewhat ironic that universities, in their practice, have not kept up with these changes though the scholars have. This means moving beyond learning management systems (LMS) and integrating numerous forms of digital technology. The LMS can still be part of a university course, but it is one digital tool among many. And the binary between online and offline would be challenged and the hybrid might be a more useful term than online. This could lead to an entangled education where space and time are transformed, as well as creating new forms of interaction and new avenues for communication in the learning process. In such a context, university students could engage actively in their own learning and be provided with spaces to integrate their ideas into the process. The paper shares some examples of these courses referring to them as experimenting communities. In these examples we show how the new forms of interaction and the transformed spaces in which these interactions occur increase opportunities for students to make sense out of the material they are learning and to see learning connected to real world problems and solutions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Klaus Thestrup, Wes, Sarah Robinson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The emergence of AI, particularly Generative AI (GenAI), has introduced powerful new actors into learning networks, creating an urgent need for research on how these technologies may be mediating connections between teachers, learners, and other digital technologies and institutional infrastructures. While GenAI extends connectivity across these networks, it also regenerates and reconfigures the conditions of teaching, learning, and professional practices. As a result, questions of professional ethics, teacher identity and agency are becoming central to understanding how teachers’ work is adapting and changing in the context of AI-mediated learning environments. This paper reports on a six-month study in which 20 K-12 teachers in a Canadian urban school division were provided access to ChatGPT Teams. Teachers participated in phenomenologically oriented interviews at the beginning and end of this period. From these accounts, Lived Experience Descriptions (LEDs) were developed to capture moments of tension, hesitation, curiosity and ethical reflection. Through these teacher-ChatGPT anecdotes, we examine how GenAI provokes technoethical tensions in teachers’ everyday work and learning lives, and, in the process, reshapes their planning, communication, and professional identity. Our analysis reveals that teachers encountered manifold technoethical dilemmas when interacting with ChatGPT. Their concerns extended beyond the appropriate use of the LLM to existential questions about their integrity and identity as teachers when using ChatGPT. Teachers experienced ambivalence when using ChatGPT to assist with professional communication or when imagining what it would be like to incorporate it into their pedagogy. Such anecdotes reveal the importance of professional learning that supports ethical discernment in networked learning contexts. Here, we suggest that the Technoethical Framework for Teachers (TEFT) can strengthen teachers’ ethical attunement and agency as they engage with GenAI in their practice. The paper contributes to networked learning scholarship by situating teachers’ encounters with GenAI within relational and ethical ecologies rather than adoption or policy frameworks. It offers implications for NL researchers, teachers reflecting on the ethical implications of their Technological-Pedagogical-Content Knowledge (TPACK) in light of GenAI, and school leaders developing professional learning and policy around the critically informed and responsible use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in schools. Prior studies have described how teachers engage with GenAI; this paper shows how those engagements are ethically charged and ontologically mediated. By framing teachers’ co-constitutive relationships with ChatGPT as technoethical relations of attunement, we offer both a theoretical vocabulary and an empirical method for studying GenAI in education through lived experience and a new conceptual lens.
Copyright (c) 2026 Sean Groten, Cathy Adams, Jillian Kowalchuk, Cheryl Shinkaruk, Nicole Cunningham, Rebecca Woodruff https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
A theme that emerged from the selection of papers drawn from the 14th edition of the networked learning conference and included in the edited book in the Research in Networked Learning series was that of care. The editorial team noted that while care is an assumed aspect of networked learning, it has not received direct attention in the networked learning literature. What began as a curiosity about the presence of care in recent networked learning scholarship developed into a motivated inquiry to examine both the thematic representation of care and the possibilities researching with a virtual assistant. The guiding question was: What are the distinct ways in which care is thematically represented in recent networked learning literature? The question was answered with reference to the proceedings of the two most recent conferences on networked learning that generated a dataset of 92 papers. This corpus was chosen as representative of the field in the period following the Covid-19 pandemic and the concurrent rise of generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) and other AI-driven applications. These developments and related regulatory debates increased the attention to care and care ethics. The study confirms the limited direct focus on care in the recent networked learning publications. From the small subset of papers that explicitly address the theme, it is evident that care in technology mediated education settings is a troubling concern, spanning practices, approaches, values and beliefs and tensions in the intersectionalities cutting across them. Care demands genuine action towards the mattering of both human and non-human actors. The tensions surfaced suggest that care needs to be foregrounded more explicitly in networked learning to highlight conflicting perspectives, counter hollow political discourse, and emphasise care as integral to design, implementation and practice. As the postdigital entanglement with sophisticated AI-driven technologies deepens, appeals for care and care ethics are expected to intensify. This experimental study conducted with a chatbot illustrates such entanglement. The personal experience of doing this work further underscores the necessity of human oversight – not only to verify and validate the outputs of non-caring algorithmic systems but also to ensure that digital assistants remain accountable tools rather that arbiters of what the world is.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Cutajar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Generative AI in Student Project Reports
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT challenge how knowledge, authorship, and learning are declared in higher education (HE). Written projects have long functioned as the primary medium through which students demonstrate independence, originality, and academic judgment. But as GenAI is integrated into teaching and learning, HE is transformed. This paper examines how students at Aalborg University declare their use of GenAI in project reports and what these documentation practices reveal about the digital transformation of HE. The analysis is based on a dataset of 5.222 publicly available student projects submitted between January 2024 and March 2025. To do this, the study employs a Python-based text analysis pipeline to identify and extract mentions of GenAI in student projects. A total of 787 projects (15.1%) explicitly mention GenAI tools. Projects were divided into low-frequency (1–20 mentions) and high-frequency (21+ mentions) groups, with the low-frequency group (n = 670) forming the basis for a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,152 mentions of GenAI in students’ projects. Analytical categories were developed inductively following the principles of reflexive thematic analysis supported by content analysis. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the potential of large-scale text extraction to examine educational transformation as it materializes in academic writing. The findings show that students use GenAI across a range of activities ranging from surface-level writing support to analytical and methodological applications. Particular attention is given to the theme ‘Going Beyond Writing with GenAI’, where students employ GenAI to refine coding frameworks, structure research designs, and critically reflect on methodological choices. These practices suggest that GenAI is beginning to take up methodological space in project work, functioning as a co-constructive partner in analysis and design rather than just a writing tool. Students also display awareness of GenAI’s limitations, such as its opacity and the “black box” problem, indicating an emerging form of critical AI literacy grounded in reflexivity and transparency. While the method captures only what students choose to declare, this unveiling of students’ usage is valuable, as well as the revealing of what students themselves consider worth declaring in their engagement with GenAI. Findings from the study indicate that the documentation regarding GenAI use is an epistemic and communicative practice through which students negotiate technological agency, authorship, and learning in a digitally transforming landscape of HE.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tobias Tretow-Fish, Anders Kalsgaard Møller, Anders Melbye Boelt, Rasmus Andersen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Dating and Relationships under a Bluesky
Social media platforms increasingly play a central role in how individuals acquire knowledge, form expectations, and negotiate practices surrounding intimate relationships. Rather than relying primarily on formal education or interpersonal networks, adolescents and young adults often prefer digital sources when seeking advice and information about sex and relationships. Platforms such as X, Instagram, and BlueSky provide perceived advantages of anonymity, autonomy, and accessibility, enabling users to engage in the de-identified sharing of sensitive concerns. In doing so, they contribute to the ongoing transformation of “romantic media ideologies,” understood as the taken-for-granted assumptions and discourses that shape how relationships are understood, evaluated, and experienced in contemporary societies. To date, much of the scholarship examining these dynamics has relied on qualitative methods such as interviews, ethnography, or discourse analysis. While such approaches offer valuable insights, they are limited in scope when considering the scale and complexity of digital interaction. Educational Data Science (EDS) offers a promising methodological framework to address this gap. By integrating Learning Analytics (LA) and Educational Data Mining (EDM), EDS provides robust tools for examining informal knowledge acquisition and meaning-making in online spaces. In this study, we apply three specific methods—social network analysis, natural language processing, and large language model annotation/classification—to analyze dating and relationship discourse on BlueSky, thereby extending EDS into a largely unexplored domain. Another dimension concerns the role of social media influencers as emerging “new experts” in the domain of dating and relationships. These figures act as knowledge brokers: they are perceived as credible and authentic, often combining entertainment with didactic or advisory content. At the same time, their interventions are not unproblematic, as advice can be contradictory, selective, and shaped by platform-specific logics of visibility, brand-building, and monetization. Our analyses identify three archetypal user groups—Knowledge-based Authority, Commercial Positioning, and Experiential Discourse. Each group demonstrates distinct communication styles, with varying degrees of formalized expertise and credibility claims. While all engage in advice-giving, their thematic emphases diverge, ranging from wellness and self-care to promotional strategies and lived relational experiences. By mapping these dynamics, the study contributes to scholarly debates on the evolution of romantic media ideologies and the social construction of expertise in digital discourse.
Copyright (c) 2026 Martin Rehm, Elisabeth Muth Andersen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Temporalities of care in networked learning
Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become an integral part of teaching in Indonesian higher education, extending beyond their emergency role during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through the national SPADA initiative (Sistem Pembelajaran Daring Indonesia, or Indonesian Online Learning System), the government mandates universities to use the platform as part of everyday teaching and learning practices. This move not only redefines how learning and teaching are experienced by teachers and students but also entangles new temporal pressure and fragmentation shaping the enactment of care. Drawing on Sharma’s (2014) concept of chronopolitics and Tronto’s (1993) ethics of care informed by a sociomaterial perspective, this study investigates how lecturers enact care across temporal and digital structures in post-pandemic Indonesian higher education. It specifically explores how the technological entanglements reconfigure lecturers’ temporal rhythms, educational care relations and labour dynamics as they adapt to institutional demands of LMS use. This study employs a qualitative, participatory methodology combining photovoice and semi-structured interviews with ten lecturers teaching in different universities across Indonesia who actively used LMS platforms. Participants generated photographs that matter to them, depicting workspaces, tools (digital and non-digital), and humans or non-humans that they felt represented their practices teaching with LMS platforms. The photographs were used as prompts during interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data. Findings suggest that LMS platforms rehape how learning takes place and transform teaching into distributed and fragmented networks. While LMS are designed to simplify teaching, they paradoxically generate new forms of invisible care work, intensifying lecturers’ temporal pressures through monitoring and surveillance, and prompting performative behaviours to ensure their labour is recognised. Lecturers develop ‘radical’ strategies of resistance and self-care, such as delegating administrative tasks, enlisting surrogate labour, or setting strict boundaries on availability, to reclaim temporal control within the temporal architecture of LMS platforms. This paper contributes to sociomaterial and care scholarship by showing how the chronopolitics of digital infrastructures redistribute temporal power, reconfigure educational relations, and shape the enactment of care in networked learning. It argues that sustaining care in networked higher education requires recognising these hidden temporal burdens and reimagining institutional practices that value the embodied, emotional, and material dimensions of academic work.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ahmad Ardillah Rahman, Martin Oliver https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Reassembling ‘Merit’ in the era of Artificial Intelligence
A spectre continues to haunt education: the spectre of meritocracy. Once conceived as a moral and institutional alternative to aristocracy, meritocracy promised to reward one’s ability and effort rather than bloodline (Young, 1958). Yet in the twenty-first century, even as critiques expose its ideological and structural contradictions through demonstrating how it legitimizes and reproduces inequality (Littler, 2017; Markovits, 2019; Sandel, 2020) and how the very definition of merit is not universal but varies across temporal and spatial contexts (Lamont, 2019; Mijs, 2019), ‘merit’ is continuously invoked as a universal measure and a personal trait central to fairness. This paper argues that by paying attention to the socio-material conditions and processes through which merit is empirically conceptualized, enacted, and sustained within educational assemblages, education research can renew its critique of merit’s long-held individualistic assumptions. Thus, this paper recognizes the rise of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) as an inflection point that renders this gap newly visible. As Gen AI becomes increasingly embedded in practices of learning, writing, feedback, and assessment, it unsettles previously taken-for-granted distinctions between human capability and technological function, individual skill and machinic augmentation. By blurring these lines, Gen AI demonstrates the potential to reveal the fragility of ‘merit’ as an individual and embodied construct, necessitating new theoretical vocabularies that allow us to trace merit as a relational, distributed, and mediated construct. Therefore, this paper proposes adopting Networked Learning (NL) as a framework for rethinking merit in the postdigital era, which allows us to understand learning as a relational and distributed processes between different actors and contexts (Goodyear et al., 2004; Fenwick & Edwards, 2010; Gourlay, 2021). Grounded in these insights, produced by connecting NL research with debates on meritocracy and educational justice, this paper concludes by outlining the implications of “networked merit.” If merit is understood as a relational effect rather than an individual possession, then it becomes evident that contemporary disputes surrounding Gen AI, such as whether AI-assisted writing is “cheating” or just another demonstration of “AI-competency,” cannot be resolved through moral appeals to individual integrity alone. Instead, they demand close attention both to the institutional arrangements that define authorship and the technology-entangled micro-practices of learning as sites of merit-generation. In doing so, it positions NL more than a descriptive and interpretive paradigm, as a political and ethical theory necessary for exploring how value, recognition, and justice could be timely ‘reassembled’ in this brave new era.
Copyright (c) 2026 Byungjoon Eric Yoo, Kyungmee Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Bridging individual, group, class, and outside world in online courses
The paper explores how educational programmes can be designed to encompass and connect activities at multiple levels of student engagement — from individual work and group collaboration to class activities and interaction with external stakeholders. The study takes as its point of departure the framework of digital learning spaces, which distinguishes between four spaces for learning: the individual space, the working group, the community of interest, and open connections. Through an empirical case study, the paper investigates how student activities can bridge these learning spaces, and how students experience activities that move between them. The case study is based on the Master’s programme in IT-based Educational Design at Aarhus University, Denmark. Data were collected through a survey (n=46) including six open questions about students’ experiences with activities related to the different levels of learning spaces: group blogging, commenting on blog posts, social annotation, open feedback on assignments, collaboration between students, and dissemination to the outside world. The study examines how the programme succeeds in 1) strengthening of individual student agency of the student, 2) supporting collaborative group work, 3) mobilising and utilising the collective resources of a class, and 4) engaging students in interactions with society. The findings show that students are generally able to move between and participate meaningfully in all four learning spaces. Digital collaboration tools are perceived as highly supportive of close cooperation in distributed groups. Social annotation and open feedback practices are experienced as valuable mechanisms for connecting individual and class-level activities, although they may also challenge students’ sense of personal boundaries and study habits. Activities that extend learning beyond the institutional framework, such as public webinars and workshops, are described as particularly rewarding, creating a sense of professional identity and relevance. The study concludes that designing for digital learning involves not only supporting distinct learning spaces but also creating bridges that enable transitions between them. Attention to the tensions and boundary-crossing between spaces is essential for fostering coherence, inclusion, and meaningful engagement in digital learning spaces.
Copyright (c) 2026 Christian Dalsgaard, Francesco Caviglia, Klaus Thestrup https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Weavers: A Community-driven Approach to Enabling Sustainable EdTech Transformations in South Korea
This experimental design study departs from a problematization of South Korea’s recent attempt to introduce AI Digital Textbooks (AIDT) as part of its national EdTech reform project, highlighting the limitations of a top-down, technology-centric policy approach. Despite the government’s optimistic vision of achieving “personalized education for all,” the initiative rapidly declined following widespread dissatisfaction with its limited functionality, lack of pedagogical integration, and the absence of teacher agency in its implementation. Drawing from this arguably unsuccessful case, the study applies the expanded design framework of Transformative Networked Learning (TNL) (Lee & Bligh, 2023) to propose an alternative, bottom-up model for sustainable EdTech transformations in Korean education settings and beyond. The TNL framework reorients Networked Learning (NL) toward its critical pedagogical roots, emphasizing learning as a process of ontological and axiological transformation. Learning occurs through the dynamic interplay of three communities: an internal community of collaborative reflection, an external community of real-world praxis, and a society as a community of bro ader structural transformation. In this study, these communities are instantiated through the “Weavers” project, which brings together teachers, EdTech company representatives, and educational researchers to co-design and enact contextually relevant, critically informed lesson plans. Fifteen in-service teachers (who are also doing graduate studies) and fifteen EdTech representatives participated in a series of collaborative design workshops—both online and in-person—supported by researchers from Seoul National University. Within this internal community, participants co-developed a critical understanding of EdTech adoption and collaboratively designed technology-integrated lessons. The teachers will next implement these lessons in their classrooms (external community), documenting their practices through multimodal data collection, including classroom recordings and reflective interviews. Insights gained will then circulate back into the internal community for collective analysis, feeding forward into broader society as community discussions among policymakers, administrators, and the public. By embedding critical inquiry and reflective practice within the design and enactment of EdTech use, this study positions teachers not as passive recipients of policy but as active weavers of EdTech transformation. The anticipated outcomes highlight the potential of TNL as a framework for reconfiguring educational ecosystems from within, demonstrating that sustainable innovation in education arises not from technological mandates but from nurturing organic, networked collaborations among students, teachers, researchers, developers, and technologies. Ultimately, the study offers both theoretical and practical contributions toward cultivating a democratic, teacher-driven model of digital educational reform.
Copyright (c) 2026 Sung Hee Lim, Baekhyeon Choi, Kyungmee Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Professional learning networks (PLNs) are topically-focused networks comprised of people, spaces, and tools. They offer an opportunity for professional growth and lifelong learning by fostering ongoing connections that offer resources and interactions. They are inherently unique to each individual, and their development is an ongoing and iterative process. While PLNs are often developed organically by professionals, the concept can be taught to students to prepare them for ongoing learning within their eventual careers. This study explores how graduate students in an online course experience the development of professional learning networks (PLNs) through cultural and epistemic lenses. Students were asked to engage in PLN development on the topic of their choice, whether personal or professional. There were no requirements for the PLN or the extent of its development. Drawing on student reflections about their PLN-building process, the study employs two theoretical frames. First, a cultural network perspective is used to examine the interplay of the individual, their network, and culture. Second, to gain an epistemic perspective, the Networked Knowledge Activities (NKA) framework is used to consider how students engage with knowledge within their developing PLNs. Findings show that PLN development focused on finding relevant resources and identifying and joining pre-existing groups. Additionally, connections to prominent thought leaders on social media platforms occurred. The course space served as a model for engaging in networked knowledge activities, some of which students deployed in their developing PLNs. Of the NKAs, collecting and curating were the entry behaviors, providing immediate content rewards and offering a way to learn about group and space norms. From there, sharing and brokering were likely to occur once individuals began to feel more comfortable. Some students ventured into negotiating knowledge, while few created and shared unique knowledge objects, although more indicated plans to do so in the future. This progression of activities shows the evolution toward more intentional engagement in a professional networked learning setting. Findings show that PLN development is shaped by both internal motivations and external cultural forces. Students made deliberate choices about where to engage, which communities to join, and how to manage their digital identities. Epistemically, they grappled with questions of knowledge legitimacy, relevance, and organization, often developing strategies to manage information overload and align their networks with their learning goals. Overall, the findings suggest that PLN development is not simply a networking task, but requires cultural and epistemic support to facilitate a shift from observation to contribution in professionally consequential online spaces
Copyright (c) 2026 Vanessa Dennen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Art and Science of Networked Learning
This paper explores how the ideals of networked learning are materialised through the ethical and creative labour of a student-led decolonising initiative. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the Decolonising the Curriculum Steering Group (DtCSG), the paper examines how collective learning takes form through acts of care, repair, and imagination. It argues that while networked learning scholarship often assumes collaboration and openness as inherently functional, these ideals depend on continuous work that is ethical, material, and affective. The study is framed within the epistemology of the Fluxus art form, where inquiry itself becomes a participatory and artful event. While ethnography serves as the overarching approach, portraiture provides the analytic and aesthetic strategy for data generation. Together, they stage research as performance, creating a space where learning and analysis occur through co-creation, interruption, and creative gesture. Data include interviews, fieldnotes, and participant-generated artefacts or performances such as digital collages, poems, and asynchronous chat fragments. The paper contributes three main insights. First, it redefines speculation not as a design element but as a performative and accountable practice embedded in the present. Second, it establishes solidarity as the ethical and infrastructural condition that sustains networked learning, extending current theory toward questions of care, access, and responsibility. Third, it conceptualises collective pedagogy as negotiated relation rather than harmony, presenting it as an ongoing process of learning through difference. By performing research as artful inquiry, the study reimagines networked learning as a space of experimentation, relation, and care. It proposes that the future of collective pedagogy lies not in designing better systems but in performing solidarity within the limits and possibilities of the networks we inhabit.
Copyright (c) 2026 Murat Oztok https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This workshop is designed for educators, researchers and leaders across primary, secondary and higher education who are committed to inclusion, accessibility and digital transformation. While the practical examples are drawn from primary education, the workshop deliberately focuses on design principles, networked professional learning practices and technology-enabled UDL strategies that are transferable across educational phases, including secondary and higher education. Participants seeking to understand how technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to design for learner diversity from the outset, and how digital pedagogy and networked learning practices support and sustain pedagogical change, will find this workshop highly relevant.
Copyright (c) 2026 Julie Carson, Hollie Benfield, Debbie Caldwell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Smart Education Stacked Layers for AI-Informed Networked Learning
This workshop is designed for program leaders, instructional specialists, and scholars interested in building a smart education system and exploring critical questions about human-centered design, design justice, and human-in-the-loop approaches in AI-informed networked learning. The workshop will solicit deep engagement with critical questions, inspire creativity, and empower participants to design and implement the smart education system using their activity worksheet as a strategic guide.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ann Duin, Jason Tham, Jessica Campbell, Nupoor Ranade, Gustav Verhulsdonck, Daniel Hocutt, Isabel Pedersen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Doing Networked Learning Research with AI
Generative AI is rapidly becoming part of networked learning environments—but how should we research learning when AI itself participates in meaning-making, interpretation, and analysis? This workshop invites researchers to move beyond seeing AI as a simple tool and instead engage with it as a methodological and epistemic collaborator. Through hands-on activities using generative AI for visual elicitation, qualitative analysis, and interpretive experimentation, participants will explore what it means to do networked learning research with AI. The workshop is designed for researchers who want practical methods, critical perspectives, and concrete ideas they can take back to their own qualitative projects—no technical expertise required, just curiosity and a willingness to rethink agency, data, and interpretation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kyungmee Lee, Nataša Lacković, Nina Bonderup Dohn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Custom chatbots for collaborative learning in higher education
Existing research shows that most educational AI applications continue to mirror dominant teacher-centred approaches and primarily support individual and closed learning formats (Xu and Ouyang 2022). As a result, the role of chatbots in more open, collaborative environments such as problem-based learning (PBL) is still insufficiently explored. Recent reviews highlight a persistent misalignment between learning strategies and the ways chatbots are designed and implemented, pointing to issues of limited contextual precision, reduced transparency, and the opaqueness of proprietary systems (Wollny et al. 2021; Hwang and Chang 2023; Labadze et al. 2023; Otto et al., 2025). These challenges become particularly visible in our local educational context of problem-based learning, an educational approach that reflects key elements of networked learning such as collaborative inquiry, shared construction and distribution of knowledge, and work with situated and open-ended problems in project groups. Within project groups, general-purpose chatbots often fall short in supporting the situated nature of students’ work. Their reliance on broad, general knowledge sources can lead to inaccuracies or irrelevant output when students engage with specialised or emergent project contexts. Moreover, the undisclosed or uneven use of GenAI by individual group members can create opacity in collaborative processes, create shadow workspaces and undermine trust and shared responsibility (Otto et al., 2025). The “black box” character of many commercially developed chatbots further complicates efforts to ensure equitable participation and mutual understanding in group work (Bozkurt et al. 2023).
Copyright (c) 2026 Niels Erik Ruan Lyngdorf, Nicolaj Riise Clausen, Sofie Otto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Click Here if You Agree (to Reclaim the EdTech Classroom through Speculative Co-design)
Any examination of new educational technologies should look beyond the hopes, dreams and promises that inevitably follow in their wake. To fully understand the impact of new tools on teaching and learning, we must also identify what will have been lost and what will have been surrendered when the next shiny thing is (chosen to be) implemented. This workshop seeks to critically examine the language that is used to describe, market and push technologies into the classroom, which is also a language that surrenders our choices, diminishes our agency, and limits the scope of our imagination to the visions pushed by the powerful few. We propose speculative and creative approaches for introducing critical and deeper conversations on edtech in the classroom. Teachers and student teachers encounter a wide variety of voices and registers through which edtech is promoted, criticised and implemented in their schools, which leads to tonal and conceptual dissonances that are difficult to navigate. Edtech products are introduced through optimistic marketing materials and hype that do little to illuminate the actual workings of technology (Wieczorek & Romele, 2025). What exactly does AI-powered personalisation mean? Why does learning require a revolution? What ideas about learning stand behind the visions spun by edtech marketers? Such hype-driven language is in stark contrast to the highly technical and legalistic wording found in terms of service, privacy policies and user manuals that accompany (and obfuscate) edtech’s everyday use. These make it clear that the glorious future is open only to those willing to enter on tech companies’ own terms and conditions. We created this workshop as a space for exploring how we could bring these different registers, tonalities and discourses together. Building on our experiences with initial teacher education, teacher professional development courses and critical edtech methods (Wieczorek, 2025a; Costello et al., 2025; Costello et al., 2023; see also Gidiotis & Hrastinski, 2024; Hrastinski & Jandrić, 2023; Rahm, 2024), we present our ideas for discussing edtech marketing and terms of use with student teachers in a way that exposes the values, intentionalities and power relations hidden behind them. We demonstrate this through a creative activity asking participants to describe tools present in every classroom – blackboards, desks, pens, paper, etc. – through the language that is currently being used to describe (and obfuscate) new edtech products. What hopes might we have once held for everyday teaching aids and learning materials? What licensing agreements do we need to accept to ensure that we use this old-school tech responsibly and for intended purposes?
Copyright (c) 2026 Michał Wieczorek, Eamon Costello https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Assessment in open and social forms of learning
The aim of this workshop is to have participants design the assessment of one learning activity using the models provided. Upfront, two methods have been used to produce the models. On one hand, speculative methods to imagine the future of assessment in higeher education institutions and on the other hand a narrative literature review. Models are conceptual representations that make a situation, phenomenon, or process intelligible, serving both scientific and practice purposes. Two of them, including the material provided with them (e.g. rubric, guide, checklist) are attached in French but will be translated in English for the workshop in case of acceptance. The overall theoretical framework connects assessment, social learning and openness.
Copyright (c) 2026 Barbara Class, Mathilde Panes, Henrietta Carbonel, Jean-Michel Jullien https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Workshop: Capturing Complex Dynamics of Networked Learning Through Visual Mapping
Complex networked learning dynamics in professional and work-related contexts are challenging to observe and difficult to capture empirically – particularly when seeking to understand how such processes evolve over time. To address this challenge, a data collection method has been developed that maps networked learning dynamics and the interactions between people and resources (Goodyear et al., 2004) through a visual mapping technique – for example integrated into an interview. The technique goes beyond simply mapping human and non-human elements and their connections. It incorporates qualitative dimensions such as the strength of connections, the relative importance of elements, questions of legitimacy, boundaries and identities (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2021). The purpose of the workshop is to further explore this method and its affordances for understanding networked learning dynamics. Participants will gain first-hand experience with the technique through a practical exercise and will also learn from insights generated across 45 interviews conducted using the method before workshopping the method to advance it theoretically and practically. The visual interview technique is inspired by situational analysis (Clarke et al., 2022) and social learning theory including system convening. (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2021). During a facilitated process, participants or interviewees will develop a visual representation of for example their work context -mapping connections between actors, the strength of ties, areas of challenge and opportunity, and areas where for example a course or conference is perceived to contribute (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2021).
Copyright (c) 2026 Simon Skårhøj, Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Workshop: Adopting PBL – Hybrid in Resource Constraint Settings
The PBL-Hybrid project, a collaboration between Gulu University and Aalborg University under the Building Stronger Universities initiative, addresses the urgent need for flexible, student-centred education in fragile contexts. Inspired by the persona of Mr. Okot—a working professional facing long travel times to pursue higher education—the project responds to challenges intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic and the broader socio-economic realities of northern Uganda. The novelty of the project lies in the integration of problem-based learning (PBL), design thinking, and digital technologies to create hybrid learning models that support both academic and community transformation. Using the Student-Centred eLearning Implementation Methodology (S-C eLIM), the project follows five phases: Envisioning, Preparing, Piloting, Scaling, and Maturing. It has been piloted across three Master's programmes at Gulu University, engaging over 300 students. The methodology promotes sustainable change by empowering students and facilitators to become active agents in their learning environments. Design thinking fosters creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and real-world problem solving, while technology enhances flexibility and accessibility. The results demonstrate significant shifts in teaching and learning practices. Facilitators and students now co-create learning experiences that link theory with practice, address community challenges, and build 21st-century skills. Despite limited material resources, the project showcases the power of human capacity when supported by innovative pedagogical frameworks. In conclusion, the PBL-Hybrid project exemplifies how higher education in resource constrained context can adapt to post-pandemic realities by embracing inclusive, participatory, and technology-enhanced approaches. It offers a replicable model for universities in similar contexts, aiming to transform education into a tool for resilience, empowerment, and sustainable development.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Tabo, A. Bygholm, H. N. Camacho, V. P. Drateru, V. Canwat, I. Jensen, C. K. Kansiime, W. Kamakech, M. Namubiru, Pakono, D. R. Olanya https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The AI Paradox: How Efficiency is Dismantling the Relational Infrastructure of Transformative Learning
AI agents make students 60% more productive—but reduce their social and emotional communication by 23% (Ju & Aral, 2025). For networked learning, this is a crisis masquerading as progress. We're optimizing for efficiency while accidentally dismantling the relational networks where transformative learning happens. AI doesn't just augment learning networks—it reconfigures them, weakening peer-to-peer ties and replacing dialogue with transactions. This roundtable challenges the productivity narrative and asks: Can we design AI agents that strengthen learning networks instead of substituting for them? What if AI created connection opportunities instead of answering questions? What if it surfaced emotion instead of eliminating "coordination effort"? What if we evaluated AI on network-strengthening rather than task completion?
Copyright (c) 2026 Andrew Feldstein https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Ethical and Epistemological Dilemmas in Doing Networked Learning Research with AI
This round table continues the conversation initiated in the workshop Doing Networked Learning Research with AI, expanding it toward the ethical, relational, and epistemological dilemmas that arise when AI becomes a research collaborator rather than a mere tool. While the workshop focused on how to use generative AI in qualitative research processes—data collection, analysis, and interpretation—this round table invites participants to engage with deeper questions about what it means to do such research responsibly and reflexively. We will discuss how AI’s participation in research assemblages reconfigures human–non-human relations, challenges conventional notions of ethical accountability, and complicates the epistemic boundaries of interpretation. Using Barad’s concept of the agential cut, we will explore how researchers make decisions about what—and who—counts in knowledge production, and what ethical consequences follow from those decisions. Importantly, this session is a standalone discussion: while it directly follows the workshop and extends its themes, participants who did not attend the workshop will be fully able to engage and contribute. The framing and discussion prompts will ensure an inclusive, open entry point for all.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kyungmee Lee, Nina Bonderup Dohn, Nataša Lacković https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
RoundTable: Dealing with system shifts in Education
Increasingly, educators, researchers, administrators and learners are recognising the complexity of the educational systems they inhabit, from the macro-level of university organisations to the micro-level of individual learning environments (Ellis & Goodyear, 2019; Damşa, 2019; Jacobson, 2010). Our educational systems thrive when students are learning and growing as human beings, to become confident citizens of our societies. However, our educational systems are also systems in flux, undergoing significant changes, caused by many factors (Jandrić et al, 2018). The societal and technological structures underpinning our systems are changing significantly due to digitalisation (Rasa, 2025). Increased globalisation has changed the nature of our student and staff population, who require adapted pedagogical approaches to facilitate learning (De Leersnyder et al., 2022). Younger generations have significantly different expectations of our educational system, in line with their values and priorities, growing up as digital-first generations (Katz et al., 2021). These shifts often bring with it foundational questions of the value of education itself, which is a slow, intentional human action seeking deep understanding in a society increasingly dominated by speed of information and action. For the people who are part of these systems and work within these systems, these system shifts present a significant problem. This problem becomes tangible in their actions (e.g. increased technology shifts such as accelerated adoption of GenAI (Nikolic et al., 2024)), their levels of motivation (e.g. significant drop in teachers/administrator numbers (UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2024) and mental health (teacher burnout (Thomas & Reyes, 2024)). However, there is not much support for them on how to deal with these systemic changes. Often, changes are perceived as something occurring beyond their individual or collective control, where they need to undergo the changes but cannot always direct them or choose them (Chatzipoulidis et al., 2023). A first step towards this system-level support lies in the recognition of educational systems as complex systems. But, recognising a system as complex does not equate to being able to deal with and work in complexity to achieve desired results (Chatzipoulidis et al., 2023). This is the challenge of people in education right now. In this context of system shifts, we see core problems emerging: How can teachers, educators, researchers, administrators and learners keep their focus on what is essential in the educational system, namely, that students can still learn and grow? How can they navigate a system that is constantly in flux, in confidence and with steps towards desired results? When systems need to be adapted, how can they be sure that they are adapting the system in meaningful ways? How can they make sure that the new evolving system will be balanced and adequate to the needs of our societies?
Copyright (c) 2026 Kamakshi Rajagopal, Ya-Ping (Amy) Hsiao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Learning increasingly occurs within networks that span formal, informal, online and offline contexts. To understand how such networks support learning, both their structural features and the value they generate must be examined. This round table explores how quantitative or structure-oriented methods such as Social Network Analysis and qualitative or experience-based evaluation frameworks can be integrated to study networked learning more comprehensively. Participants will exchange experiences with analyzing learning in networks, discuss methodological approaches, and identify examples that link network structures to perceived value for learning. Through group dialogue and synthesis, the session aims to outline preliminary principles for an integrated conceptual model and develop methodological recommendations for future research on learning networks.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jelle Nijs, Rianne van Diepen, Esther de Groot, Bart Thoonen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This round table explores a central question emerging across arts education: How can AI function as both an iterative creative tool and a proofreading, copyediting, and writing assistant—and what are the implications of integrating these tools into students' creative workflows? As students increasingly incorporate AI into writing and media production, faculty face persistent challenges: uneven student ability in editing and revision, confusion about and resistance to the uses of AI, and concerns about diminishing authorship and originality. This discussion invites participants to examine AI's dual promise and threat—its ability to scaffold students' writing and iteration processes, its potential to undermine critical thinking, creative autonomy, and labor, and the problematic environmental, ethical, and cultural implications moving forward. Participants will engage with a project implemented in CRE125: Integrated Studio Foundations and CRE350: Creative Media Portfolio 2 (Fall 2025), where students use AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude during brainstorming, drafting, editing, critique, and revision. These activities are framed with structured reflection and readings (e.g., Neil Postman's Technopoly) to interrogate the cultural, ethical, and epistemological consequences of adopting new technologies. This round table aims to open an interdisciplinary conversation on the pedagogical, ethical, and creative stakes of AI integration in arts education—and to collaboratively define best practices for responsible, reflective use.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gordon Glover https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Applying Research Syntheses to Networked Learning Research – Help or Hinderance for Collective Knowledge Creation?
The suggested roundtable aligns with the thematic focus of the conference on research designs/ research methods and responsible research, and is envisaged to foster critical dialogue amongst participants who want to engage or are engaged with the approach of research syntheses in networked learning research.
Copyright (c) 2026 Svenja Bedenlier, Katja Buntins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0