Insights

What we actually think about AI in learning design

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 05:16:48 GMT

AI is genuinely useful in learning design, and it is not a substitute for knowing what good learning looks like. The teams getting value from it are clear about where the line sits: the tool drafts, the human directs. As outputs get more polished, that line will matter more, not less, because the gap between something that looks like learning and something that works will get harder to spot.

By Lizette Bell. Head of Learning Services

At EduTECH this year, I listened to a provider of an AI tool generating a full VET module in under four minutes. The output was described as being exactly right: learning outcomes, activities, assessment, all of it, mapped for you. Most of the current conversation about AI in education lands in one of two camps: this breathless enthusiasm (AI will replace the grind, do all the work for you) or flat-out fear (AI will hollow out teaching and flood courses with generic content). Neither camp is asking the right question.

Vocational education needs more than good policy. It needs people.

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 03:45:24 GMT

Australia's tertiary reform will be judged by what happens in a small number of places. The TAFE Centres of Excellence concentrate the ambition of the whole agenda into a handful of institutions and priority sectors, and they will succeed or fail on whether they can get hold of specialist people. That is a supply problem before it is a policy problem, and it is the part nobody has solved.

By Celeste Kocabay. Head of Faculty Services

Real money, a higher quality bar, and a serious attempt to knit vocational and higher education into one system. Policy does not deliver itself, though, and the sharpest test of that is already visible.

Workload management is now a compliance problem

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 03:25:57 GMT

Workload allocation used to be an internal fairness question. It is now a financial and regulatory one. Australian universities have repaid hundreds of millions of dollars to staff, almost none of it because anyone set out to underpay, and the same standard of evidence is now arriving in vocational education. The institutions that can see their own allocation clearly will be the ones that can defend it.

By David Bowser. Founder & CEO

This is not a story about bad employers. It is a story about what happens when the systems underneath a payroll cannot keep up with the agreements sitting on top of it. The detail below is Australian, but any system that combines complex academic workloads with collectively bargained pay will recognise the pattern.

Vocational and further education is having its moment

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 03:03:03 GMT

Australian vocational education is being rebuilt on four fronts at once: how it is funded, how quality is judged, how qualifications are built, and where it sits alongside higher education. The providers who gain most will be the ones who treat this as the moment to fix their own systems, rather than waiting for the reform to settle.

By David Bowser. Founder & CEO

For a long time, vocational education sat in higher education's shadow. Less funding, less status, less attention. That is changing, and faster than most people outside the sector realise. The detail below is Australian, but the pattern will look familiar anywhere a government has decided that technical and further education matters more than its funding history suggests.

Governance, quality and systems reform in VE: What I took from EduTECH 2026

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 02:44:18 GMT

Rethinking Workload Planning in Tertiary Education - Curio Group

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 12:03:50 GMT

How to Be a Standout Facilitator of Online Learning

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 12:03:50 GMT

Why Student Evaluation is Broken: Using Cookies and Science - Curio Group

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 12:03:50 GMT

Capping International Student Numbers: A Complex Issue - Curio Group

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 12:03:50 GMT

Inspiring Words for New PhDs - David Bowser

hello@curio.co (Curio Group) — Tue, 06 May 2025 03:13:53 GMT