Meg Knight

Here’s the thing that prompted me to start writing here: I was sitting in a meeting recently where a group of very smart, very well-meaning people were debating whether a particular program should be delivered online or on campus. The debate was passionate. It was also, I kept thinking, about the wrong thing entirely.

The question of modality — online or in-person — has consumed higher education for years. It consumed it before COVID, COVID turbocharged it, and it’s still consuming it now. But modality is a proxy question. It’s what you argue about when you haven’t yet answered the harder question underneath it: is this learning environment deliberately designed to generate valid, observable evidence of what learners can actually do?

Most aren’t. Online or otherwise.

That’s the kind of question I want to write about here. Not the hot takes — there are plenty of those. The slower questions, the ones that don’t resolve easily, the ones practitioners are actually wrestling with when the conference ends and they go back to their desks.

A bit of context on where I’m writing from: I’ve spent twenty years building online education programs — founding EdTechs in South Africa, leading global operations at OES (Australia’s leading online program manager), steering teams through the AI transition before most institutions had decided whether to panic about it.

I’ll publish every two to three weeks. I’m not chasing volume. I’d rather write five things worth reading than twenty things that fill a feed.

If something here resonates — or if you think I’ve got it wrong — I’d genuinely like to hear from you. The reply button works.