Interesting Reads This Week

Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up, and get your own copy of the news that matters sent to your inbox every week. Sign up for the On EdTech newsletter. Interested in additional analysis? Try with our 30-day free trial and Upgrade to the On EdTech+ newsletter.

This was a big week in UK higher education, with A-Level results released and university-bound students finding out where they’ll be studying this autumn. It’s been a minute since I last had to open my own A-Level grades, so what did I end up reading instead?

Visibility

I plan to cover Tyton Partners’ new report in more detail in a separate post, but one chart on the visibility of Generative AI features in the LMS struck me as both surprising and disconcerting.

That’s 93% of frontline staff, advisors, and administrators responding to the survey who either don’t know their LMS has AI (70%) or believe their LMS doesn’t have generative AI (23%), plus another 4% who say they don’t use it. Two things could be going on here.

Time lag - The survey was conducted in March 2025. You could argue that the largest LMS in North America by market share (Instructure’s Canvas) is only now ramping up its generative AI capabilities, while Moodle still has little in the way of built-in functionality (outside of partner tools). D2L and Blackboard’s AI capabilities are more established, though D2Ls big boost in capabilities is more recent.

Missing perspectives - The survey didn’t capture faculty perspectives, and most current generative AI features are faculty-facing, such as those supporting content development. Nor did it capture student perspectives, even as newer LMS features are beginning to target student users.

This finding is noteworthy. It should be a cause for concern, and at the same time, an opportunity for vendors.

On the margins of middling to bad

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently published a post on how to respond to the existential crisis facing higher education. I realize they’re a consulting firm and don’t want to give away the good stuff for free, but much of the advice feels predictable, and some of it, frankly, is questionable. I’d also challenge how many of their recommendations truly qualify as “near term.”

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.