Since 2023, nearly every educational AI tutor has adopted the same design philosophy: withhold the direct answer and offer a guiding question in return. Khanmigo, ChatGPT's study mode and Gemini's Guided Learning all rely on this approach. The underlying pedagogy is sound, yet two recent trials suggest we have been focusing on the wrong thing entirely.
instructional design
4 posts in this category
A programme team accepts a change to their assessment brief from someone who has never taught the course, on the strength of a five-minute conversation. A year earlier, someone else in the same room proposed almost the same change and got nowhere. Same idea. Different person carrying it. That is what decided the outcome.
3rd July 2026
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5 min
Earlier today I attended a webinar organised by the Community for Educational Innovation (a European Commission initiative) titled Educating to Thrive in the Digital World. One of the interventions was by Julian Estevez, Professor at the University of the Basque Country, who posed a deceptively simple question: Personalised education with AI — a myth? His presentation was brief introduction for a full argument, and it was the kind of thing that immediately starts pulling threads.