Hello fellow educators!

I came across a prediction this week. In the 2026 Predictions for AI in Higher Education, Oliver Short predicted that by late 2026, using generative AI for everything will become taboo. Not because institutions will crack down, but because students themselves will start to self-regulate and establish group norms around the use of AI.

Their idea is that peer-to-peer accountability will emerge organically. Learners will recognize the cognitive distance that develops with leaning on AI for every task, and real thinking will make a comeback.

If students are going to develop their own social norms around AI use, then we as educators can have a parallel version of that work. Something like pedagogical self-regulation, where we get to decide the most valuable assessments and assignments in this current AI-environment.

That feels like a meaningful distinction, because the work of choosing these types of assignments is harder and slower than writing an AI policy or running every submission through a detector. It asks us to look honestly at the work we've inherited or created in the past, every care plan template, learning plan, and worksheet and sit with the harder question: would I still assign this, knowing a chatbot can complete it in under a minute?

For some assignments, the answer will be yes, because the thinking is in the doing. For others, the answer is honestly no. And I don't think that's a failure on our part, but a sign of how quickly the ground has shifted under all of us. We have to move beyond "catching" students and instead deeply examine what we ask of them.

That's the unlock I'm working toward. Not abandoning the care plan or the case study, but loosening our grip on the version of it that was built for a pre-AI classroom.

---

So I want to hear from you:

• What assignments have you already started rethinking because of AI?
• Are you grading care plans differently than you did two years ago?
• And finally, would a deeper dive into alternative grading practices (mastery rubrics, specifications grading, pass / not yet, reflection-paired work) be useful to you? I'm gauging interest in writing more on this, and your reply will help me decide if this is of value to this community.

Hit reply and let me know. I read every one.

---

🧭 Active Learning Tool

-a teaching technique to engage students

What if you intentionally invited failure into the classroom through a low-stakes "impossible project" that builds clinical judgment and prepares students for real-world events?

💡 Inspiring Resource

-a link worth clicking

I read Ness Labs every week and leave the newsletter feeling more okay with my own pace, my own quirks, my own way of doing things. Anne-Laure Le Cunff has a writing gift.

🗂️ Research Snapshot

-an actionable research finding

Discover how a fast-paced, 6-minute presentation technique can boost student satisfaction while keeping clinical skill scores high.

113 Cherry Street #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205

To make sure you keep getting these emails, please add martha@breakoutRN.com to your address book or add me to your school's safe sender list. Want to unsubscribe from all emails for good? No worries, just click this link, and off ya go: Unsubscribe​

Update Preferences​