Professor Michael A. Cowling

28/08/2026

What does it look like when a university truly connects its students with the Apple developer community? Happy Feel Good Friday, and what a couple of days it has been at /dev/world Melbourne 2026 (www.devworld.au), where RMIT School of Computing Technologies was proud to be the Education Sponsor! This was our first time being involved at this level, and it absolutely won't be the last. So much to celebrate this week. 🎉

First, our students. I had the privilege of running "From Apple Classroom to Industry Impact: A Student Showcase on Apple Platform Development", and three groups from the Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI) at RMIT and the Apple Foundation Program at RMIT presented their work to a room full of professional Apple developers. A further two groups from HAPI and AFP then featured in the "AI/ML × Digital Health Mashup" student segment, bringing our total to five student groups and seven students (Anisha, Hami, Ji (Jordan), Patrick, Raksha, Sowmiya and Salman) on the stage for 2026 . 🙌

Then there's Ace Authors, our Apple Platform Architect in HAPI, who delivered a cracking session titled "No Cloud, No Limits: Distributed Agentic AI with MLX and Swift", deeply technical, brilliantly delivered, and a real showcase of the research muscle we're building in the hub. Ace, you absolute legend! 🥳

What made me proudest though wasn't just the technical knowledge on display — it was the innovation. These students are building apps that solve real problems, and the feedback from professional developers in the room was overwhelmingly positive. When industry practitioners stop to tell you that your students impressed them, you know you're doing something right. Have a great weekend all! 😊

20/08/2026

Are we doing enough in Australian higher education to put teaching excellence front and centre? Happy Wisdom Wednesday, and this week I'm sharing a great summary from our friend stephen matchett at Future Campus of a new report by Emerita Professor Elizabeth Johnson from Deakin University, but the full report linked in Stephen's story is well worth a read too!

The report makes a case I find really compelling: that universities should retain autonomy to define what teaching excellence looks like for their context, but that the Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) threshold standards should be strengthened to ensure a meaningful floor across the sector. I'll admit I put a lot of weight on those HESF threshold standards when I'm assessing teaching quality myself, so seeing a recommendation to strengthen them is something I wholeheartedly support.

What I love most about this framing is that it doesn't try to prescribe a one-size-fits-all model — it trusts institutions while raising the bar for everyone. That feels like exactly the right balance for a diverse sector like ours. What do you think — is teaching excellence getting the attention it deserves at your institution?

Academics do not need formal qualifications to teach, unlike their colleagues in TAFE and schools – and a landmark report has stopped short of suggesting they be required to do so.

14/08/2026

Feel Good Friday and I know you’ve probably already seen posts about it, but what else would I want to do except celebrate the graduation from CQUniversity of Dr Josiah Koh from earlier this week? 😁 Josiah is genuinely one of the best doctoral students I’ve had and I’m so proud to see him walk across that stage!

Whilst at the venue we were trying to remember how Josiah, Dr Meena Jha, Kwong Nui Sim and I connected and I think it was just one of those supervisor emails you sometimes get! And how lucky we were that it happened, because he turned out to be a great student, listening so well to the feedback, learning so much, and also publishing plenty on the way!

So congratulations Josiah and look forward to seeing what comes next, I’m very confident it will be awesome! So happy to have been a small part of it. And have a great weekend all. :)

12/08/2026

Should education ministers be worried about technology use in schools, or are they worried about the wrong things? Happy Wisdom Wednesday, and this week I'm sharing a piece from The Conversation that Lodge nails as always — link below!

Jason Lodge from The University of Queensland tackles the question head-on, and the wisdom here is a familiar but important one: the concern shouldn't be technology in schools per se, but how and why it's being used. There is no comprehensive national data on how much time Australian children spend on devices at school, and the rules are just as patchy — which means policy is being made in an evidence vacuum. That's a problem whether you're pro-tech or anti-tech.

For those of us in educational technology, this is a reminder that the conversation has to move beyond "screens good" or "screens bad" and into the harder territory of pedagogy, evidence, and intentional design. Sound familiar? Pedagogy before technology — always. What do you think education ministers should actually be focusing on here? Have a good remainder of the week all! 😊

There is no comprehensive national data on how much time an Australian child spends on a device at school. The rules are just as patchy.

10/08/2026

Is it possible to be exhilarated and exhausted at the same time? Happy Motivator Monday, and today’s post is an easy one because Ace Authors and I are back into campus after a full day of putting prospective Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI) at RMIT students in Apple Vision Pro, both super tired but also super excited about what comes next! 😉

RMIT STEM College was well represented this year in the Marquee in the RMIT University Alumni courtyard in the city and despite a slow start we ended up putting lots of students in the headset and answering questions about our RMIT School of Computing Technologies offerings and our own minor. Plus I hear the Apple Foundation Program at RMIT learning space was hopping too, lots of interest!

All of which means I’m super excited this week for what 2027 will bring, but also on my third coffee of the morning at 11am! Oh well, such is . Hope you all had a good weekend too and enjoy the upcoming week! 😜

31/07/2026

How do you feel when someone you’ve had the privilege of knowing goes on to have an award named after them? Happy Feel Good Friday, and this week I’m celebrating the incredible news that the ACS (Australian Computer Society) Queensland has named their regional technology award the ‘Geoff Augutis Regional Technology Award’ at the upcoming ACS Queensland Tech Awards 2026! 🎉

I had the privilege of supervising Geoff through his doctorate, but honestly the doctorate was almost a footnote in a career defined by giving back. Geoff has spent years as a tireless advocate for technology and community in Bundaberg and regional Queensland — founding Queensland Computers, pouring his energy into local initiatives, and somehow always finding time to help others despite being one of the busiest people I know.

Geoff is a genuine example of what it means to use technology for community good, and the kind of person who makes everyone around him want to do more. Having an award named after you is a rare and special honour — and if anyone deserves it, it’s Geoff. Congratulations Doctor. 😜

*PS: The award recognises outstanding IT projects with real impact on regional Queensland communities, and nominations are now open — link below. Do you know someone who deserves this recognition? Link below.*

https://tech.awardsplatform.com

28/07/2026

How often do public health researchers and computer scientists actually talk to each other? Happy Wisdom Wednesday, and this week I'm sharing a paper I'm really proud to be part of, published this week in Frontiers in Public Health, arguing that public health and computer science departments are sitting right next to each other on campuses around the world — and barely talking — and it's open access so you can read it yourself! Link below.

The paper, authored by Seble and Yianna from The George Washington University and IT for Health and Education Systems Equity (ITfHESE), with myself and Evangelos from RMIT proposes an elegantly simple idea that making a CS and Health Science connection is some of the lowest-hanging fruit in academia: no new infrastructure, no major grants needed, just deliberate bridge-building between two disciplines that desperately need each other in the AI era. We then propose a six-step framework for making that happen, from shared vision and cross-departmental communication through to aligning incentives and embedding ethical governance from the outset.

Of course, it also made natural sense for Evangelos and I to collaborate on this — the Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI) and the MedTech Research and Innovation Hub - both part of the RMIT STEM College Innovation Hub program - already work closely together, and this paper is a great example of what happens when you actually build those bridges. What bridges are you building in your own institution? ;)

The current communication gap between Public Health (PH) and Computer Science (CS) academics is striking: public health professionals speak in terms of incid...

24/07/2026

What happens when millions of people lose their AI boyfriend or girlfriend overnight? Happy Feel Good Friday, and this week I'm sharing a piece I co-wrote with my colleague Joey Crawford from the University of Tasmania for The Conversation Australia + NZ, on China's crackdown on AI companions and what Australia can learn from it. Joey already shared it this week, but that's not going to stop me sharing it for Feel Good Friday! 😄

China's new regulations took effect on 15 July, forcing platforms like ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen to shut down AI companion features used by hundreds of millions of people — with some users genuinely grieving the loss of relationships they'd built over years. Joey and I argue that while an authoritarian crackdown isn't the Australian way, we can and should prioritise developing human connection skills to resist unhealthy overreliance on AI, and leverage existing regulatory frameworks like eSafety to mitigate social harms.

It feels good to be writing about something that matters beyond the classroom, and even better to be doing it with a great collaborator. Have a great weekend all — and maybe put the phone down and call a real human today! 😊

Chatbots that relieve loneliness have a major downside, and we must safeguard against it.

23/07/2026

Did you know that eight years ago I met Dr Karl Kruszelnicki for the first time, and he made time for a newbie just starting out in science communication? Happy Throwback Thursday, and I'm thrilled to say that a few weeks ago in Sydney I texted him on a whim — and once again he made time for me at the ABC Australia studios in Ultimo, even after a full day of recording. And I finally got the photo in front of the TARDIS I missed in 2018! 😄

Back in 2018 I was a new science communicator looking for advice, and Karl didn't just give me five minutes — he spent the whole day with me. We went from the ABC studios in Ultimo to his office at the University of Sydney, where Australia’s original Julius Sumner Miller himself watched over us from the photos on the walls. It was one of those days that genuinely shaped the direction I took.

Dr Karl has been the University of Sydney's Julius Sumner Miller Fellow for thirty years, and this July that remarkable chapter comes to a close. That kindness he showed a young science communicator back then — twice now — is exactly the kind of communicator I aspire to be. Thank you Karl — and here's to whatever comes next! 😊 Happy Thursday all.

22/07/2026

Do you remember Robert and Susan? Happy Wisdom Wednesday, and this week I’m sharing a little thinking rather than a reading — a reminder of one of the most elegant ideas in higher education teaching theory that I find myself returning to again and again. And as a bonus, I found a paper on it that is open access so you can read it yourself! 😁

John Biggs, in his landmark work Teaching for Quality Learning at University, introduces Robert and Susan to illustrate a fundamental problem in university teaching. Susan is the naturally deep-learning student who thrives under almost any approach. Robert is the surface learner who conventional teaching consistently fails. Biggs’ argument — and the foundation of his constructive alignment framework — is that we shouldn’t design curricula for Susan. We should design them so that even Robert ends up learning the way Susan does, by aligning teaching activities and assessment so deeply that surface approaches simply don’t work anymore.

It’s a deceptively simple idea, but it cuts to the heart of why pedagogy before technology matters so much to me. Are you designing for Susan, or for Robert? And honestly — which one were you as a student? And for more details, see the paper from the Higher Education Research Society of Australasia’s HERD Journal below! 😁

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a f...