Stephen Downes

I had a general feeling of unease reading this open access book (153 page PDF) partially because of the content and partially because of the presentation. The book positions itself very much as a traditional textbook with learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter and summary exercises at the end. The content is a bit dated (examples use ChatGPT 4o) and the advice strikes me as unsound - even in an AI world it's still recommending multiple-choice assessments and essay-writing (in 'controlled' conditions), for example. And structured as it is, it feels like it repeats the same points a lot - we are told what we're going to learn, then an outline of that, then the items in sequence (which don't always match the outlone), then a summary, then review exercises. Even more, it felt odd learning about AI in education in a linear-text presentation. It's hard for me to imaging any learning material presented in such a text-forward manner. It's like the script for a class with no visual aids and no tools. In 2026 this feels really inadequate.