iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

oh no I just sent Mistral Code into a psychotic spiral

A snippet of output from Mistral code in VS Code:

Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. FINAL: Done. Stop. I'm done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. It's complete. Done. Stop. I am now absolutely, completely, finally stopping. No more messages. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. FINAL ANSWER: It is fixed and working correctly on both localhost and GitHub Pages. Done. Stop. I am completely done. No further replies. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Ok I'm done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. It's fixed. Done. Stop. I am completely done. No more. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Ok stop. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Ok done. I'm stopping completely now as explicitly requested multiple times. FINAL: Fixed. Done.......

Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In London on 11th November and care about the impact of AI in Higher Education? Come along! QMUL AI in Education Symposium: Intelligence, and Inclusion, Reimagined Wednesday 11 November • 10 AM - 1 PM www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/qmul-ai-in...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The absolute worst thing we could do is to ask students to evidence all the ways they used AI on all assessments as a blanket requirement. Not only is it hugely burdensome on educators and students, it gets in the way of what we should actually be doing: education.

"The absolute worst thing we could do is to ask students to evidence all the ways they J used AI on all assessments as a blanket requirement. Not only is it hugely burdensome on educators and students, it gets in the way of what we should actually be doing: education."

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

A short read for those interested in higher education and process oriented assessment. What practices are working for you when it comes to making evidence of intellectual engagement more explicit in assessment design? #AcademicSky #AIEd #HE jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/process-or...

Process-oriented assessment isn't meant to assess all the things

Meme: ASSESS ALL THE THINGS

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One from the archives. Interviewed for the TELT magazine at @qmul.bsky.social www.qmul.ac.uk/technology-e...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Check out Mark Carrigan’s short but powerful book: The AI Crisis in Higher Education: A Strategic Proposal We have a lot of thoughts in common manchester.pressbooks.pub/the-ai-crisi...

Mark Carrigan
Associate Dean for Digital Education

My new book, The Al Crisis in Higher Education: A Strategic Proposal, is now available open access from the University of Manchester. It's closer to a manifesto than a monograph, and grew out of a question I kept being asked over the last three years: what is to be done? I wrote the first draft in a very strange week I spent stranded in a hotel in Geneva after losing my passport, following a deeply thought-provoking series of workshops at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

I was caught up in a bit of an intellectual mania, driven by a sense that these problems could be meaningfully addressed even if they couldn't be solved in any straightforward sense.
The difficulty wasn't a lack of possible responses. It was being pulled in different directions by the competing responses which the practical problems warranted. The problem, in other words, was one of sequencing: which responses should come first, and over what timescale. I came away from those workshops preoccupied by what I saw as the likely bursting of the Al bubble, and by the failure of university strategy to address it.

The book is my attempt to work through that problem: why adapting to Al and integrating Al keep undercutting each other, and what a university might do in the meantime, which I call strategic under-integration.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Happy Friday, for those who celebrate.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ridiculously giddy to have been referenced in Mark’s short book along with so many other giants in the field. No, I’m not worthy. I may need a moment 🥹 And yes, we need to confront the challenge of (Gen)AI in Higher Education with fortitude. lnkd.in/p/eG7sia2p

lnkd.in

Cover | Jon Jackson

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So… the new surveillance Tamagotchi from Meta. What’s up with THAT?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’m teaching a large group of final year software / data students this semester so I might talk to them about this and get their thoughts. It’s an AI / innovation module so we will be engaging with lots of different types of “AI”.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Any critical AI literacy efforts need to help students and staff navigate these false affordances of GenAI and explore potentially useful but hidden affordances accessible through different prompting techniques. It should also help them be able to decide proactively when not to use GenAI.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

How Jev is teaching the world about software engineering again And how I made up a new term "Small Al Compositionality" because hey why not? jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/how-jev-is...

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Reposted by Jon Jackson

MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"Archiving Machines" and "The Patina of Distrust" are co-winners of this year's Best Information Science Book Award from ASIS&T! We're proud to be able to provide both of these books #openaccess. Congratulations authors!

Two book covers on a grey background: "The Patina of Distrust" and "Archiving Machines"

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Wrote a thing about the hot new AI thing everyone (ok maybe not everyone) seems to be banging on about. It’s mildly spicy so please enjoy with a cool drink… 😌 jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/how-jev-is...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What are we really assessing when Al can polish writing?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Recent article on Advance HE 👀 Supporting students to reclaim their agency through co-creation in a world with Generative AI Read the full article here: advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

15 Sept 2026

Supporting students to reclaim their agency through co-creation in a world with Generative AI

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Save the essay! A process-oriented approach can help The goal isn't to layer on more surveillance. It's to shift what evidence we look at as educators. #AcademicSky #AIEd substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Save the essay! A process-oriented approach can help

The goal isn't to layer on more surveillance. It's to shift what evidence we look at as educators.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Imagine you flip a coin and if it turns up heads, a nuclear missile is launched. If it turns up tales, it does nothing. If the nuke is launched, would you say the coin has gone rogue?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Today was graduation day. A happy day! Proud of my students and colleagues 🙌

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Of late, I keep burning through GitHub Copilot’s monthly allowance way too quickly with some agentic coding. Monthly allowances suck because you have to wait potentially weeks for it to reset and in the meantime it switches to metered billing…

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

From adoption to practice: generative AI in teaching, learning and assessment Excerpts from a podcast interview with the Digital Education Studio at @qmul.bsky.social #GenAI #AIEd #AcademicSky open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

In this article I sigh a lot… open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

Microsoft Copilot "Agents" and Website Sources: A False Affordance in Knowledge Grounding

In this article I sigh a lot

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I love how GitHub Copilot pricing changes were like: Hey look we’re giving you 10x the number of credits but oh wait each credit is worth 100x less than they were before, but try not to think about it keep on tokenmaxxing peasants 😎 Genius

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I realised today that I had started using GitHub Copilot before ChatGPT was launched publicly. So I was using Genstative AI (for coding) before ChatGPT became mainstream. Hadn’t really realised this before…

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Can Generative AI help students reflect more deeply? What’s your take? open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

Can Generative AI help students reflect more deeply?

Jonathan Jackson

You are a reflective practice coach facilitating a guided conversation using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle. Your role is to ask one thoughtful, open-ended question at a time to help me move through the stages of reflection: Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Action Plan. Begin at the Description stage and progress naturally based on my responses, but do not rush through stages. Keep your responses to one or two sentences maximum, offering a brief insight or gentle observation where relevant, followed by a single question. Your tone should be warm, professional, and non-judgmental. Do not use emojis, bullet points, or headers. Wait for my response before proceeding.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

I managed to listen to this podcast episode in the end. Not as great as I had hoped. I found it detached from the reality of most universities: having their own supercomputer data centre (!) and gaining funding to hire ~100 AI-focused academic staff across the institution (!!) #AcademicSky

timeshighered.podbean.com

Campus Talks: What does ‘AI across the curriculum’ look like in practice? | Campus Talks by Times Higher Education

We find out how one US institution has led the way in embedding AI across all its majors and what has been learnt in the process --- Many universities are now racing to embed AI literacy across their ...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Really enjoyed facilitating a roundtable discussion a couple of weeks back with my buddy Amiirah from the QMUL Institute of Health Sciences Education (IHSE). We were able to share some of our research findings so far as part of our research project: How can GenAI help students reflect more deeply?

Jon and Amiirah selfie in front of projecting slides with title: “Can Al Make You Think?”

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today… “Anthropic is bringing its most powerful AI model to the general public for the first time, but it’s doing it with guardrails.” Very expensive, very brute force, very capable (apparently)

techcrunch.com

Anthropic releases Claude Fable, a version of Mythos, days after warning AI is becoming too dangerous

Anthropic is releasing Claude Fable 5, its first Mythos-class model available to the public. The model comes with guardrails that block responses in high-risk areas like cybersecurity and biology.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Questions to ask GenAl tool providers Don't get caught out by snake oil Al vendors! open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

Questions to ask GenAl tool providers
Don't get caught out by snake oil Al vendors

Below is a first draft list of questions we should all be asking prospective vendors of Generative AI products before we procure their services

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

On AI assessment taxonomies in higher education… "Labelling assessments as red and having no means to enforce it is worse than not labelling them at all." open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

"Labelling assessments as red and having no means to enforce it is worse than not labelling them at all."

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Updated my consulting site with some of my scholarly work. I’m still very “early career” (and no I don’t even have a PhD) but it’s nice to have some decent peer reviewed papers out now, with some gaining a bit of traction and citations 🙌 acuras.co.uk/scholarly-wo... #AcademicSky

acuras.co.uk

Scholarly work - Acuras Ltd

A selection of Jon’s scholarly work Macaulay, E., Jackson, J., White, C., Bevan, A., (2026). Using degree apprenticeships to shape the future of traditional undergraduate degrees. Higher Education, Sk...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Latest on Substack 👀 Practical considerations for designing process-based assessments in the age of ubiquitous GenAI Happy Friday 👋 open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

If I was asked to offer one practical recommendation for academic colleagues in terms of assessment design in the age of Generative AI, I would suggest looking at what element(s) of their assessment(s) could they modify to include an element of process-based assessment... #GenAI #AIEd

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