Gerald Ajam

Ideas

Structure teaches, whether or not anyone designed it to.

What people are able to do is partly shaped by the conditions around them. My work is about designing those conditions on purpose, so they support better learning, thinking and action. Then I turn what holds up into something a school or a team can use.

Home

What holds it together

A classroom influences participation. An interface directs attention. A rule changes behaviour. A representation changes what becomes visible. A system creates incentives and constraints.

The work here covers educational technology, learning spaces, futuring and games, among other things. They look like different subjects. I’ve come to see them as different ways of studying the same problem.

Domains

Where I’ve landed, for now

These pages are organised by subject, because the principle travels further than any one project does. Each domain page sets out the question, my position, the distinctions that do the work and what I’d still argue about.

The frameThe designed conditions of learningWhat becomes possible when the unit of educational design is larger than the artefact?Explore the frame

Learning spaces

How might space, participation, tools and routines support the forms of learning intended?

Immersive and extended reality

When does an embodied or spatial digital experience add educational value?

Interactive learning experiences

How should learners act, receive feedback and build explanations inside an interactive system?

Media and multimedia for learning

How should words, visuals and sound combine so that media clarifies rather than distracts?

Evidence of learning

What can the learner now understand or do that they could not reliably understand or do before?

Designing collective thinking

What conditions let a group think better than its members would alone?

The craft mapEducational technology as a craftWhat forms of judgement does the work repeatedly require? Six regions of judgement, each linked to the guides that teach it.Explore the craft map

Notes

Arguments being developed

Notes usually begin with a tension, observation, or distinction that seems worth examining more closely. Each ends on what transferred.

2026 · 09The room is an interfaceA classroom organises what learners can do the way a screen does, so it can be designed and questioned like one2026 · 09The robot that became a social contractWe set out to automate rearranging classrooms, and testing showed the hard problem was agreeing how the room is used2026 · 09The unglamorous leversThe cheapest items in a classroom change behaviour most, because each removes a specific friction or dissolves a specific norm2026 · 09Build as you goMost school spaces should be built in increments, trialled and extended as use cases emerge, except the things that must be done properly once2026 · 09A myth is a finding that travelledMost of what education gets wrong began as something true, and the fix is to measure how far it has travelled2026 · 09Every rule of thumb has an opposite numberA rule of thumb is right inside its conditions and wrong outside them, and the conditions can be named2026 · 09A catalogue of faults is half an instrumentCatching a bad argument settles nothing. Arguing better is a short set of moves, and they can be taught2026 · 09Nobody in the room has to be wrongCollective work has failure modes of its own, and more minds do not cancel them2026 · 09A bias is a design briefAwareness is the weakest counter, and the product controls the conditions2026 · 09Ease of use is not ease of learningThe effort that feels like failure is the effort that teaches2026 · 09What design is, and how it gets practised in edtechDesign is a category of decision, taken mostly by people without the title2026 · 09A principle is not a findingA canon that cannot grade itself is a reading list2026 · 07A design system is not a component libraryComponents scale reuse, and principles scale judgement2026 · 06A thinkpiece is a designed objectA writing genre with a job, an audience and a failure mode2026 · 05Design for translationResearch → principles → tools → changed practice
All notes

Talks

Talks given

A guide is for looking something up. A talk is for putting an idea in front of people who can push back on it.

Five parts · 83 slides

Good work does not speak for itself

For anyone whose work ends in a decision someone else makes

Open the talk
Twelve sections · 61 slides

Designing for learning

For people who build learning products and are not educators

Open the talk
Eight sections · 58 slides

What design is, and what designers do

For anyone who works alongside designers

Open the talk
Ten sections · 64 slides

Zero is an average

For people who design educational technology

Open the talk
ReflectionFive sections · 21 slides

On being a beginner again

After a master’s in entrepreneurship and innovation

Open the reflection
All talks and reflections

Unfinished on purpose

Where the thinking is still moving

Claims being tested in public, questions I’m keeping open on purpose and popular ideas I’m not convinced by.

10 propositions

Working propositions

Claims coherent enough to test and premature to treat as principles. Each says what would weaken it.

Read the propositions
18 questions

Questions I keep returning to

What should educational technology optimise for if engagement is not learning?

See all questions
16 claims

Things I’m unconvinced by

Common claims taken at their strongest, then bounded: where they hold, where they break and a more precise version.

See the claims

Guides

Ideas made operational

A guide asks: if this idea matters, what should someone actually do differently? The guides have their own section, with pathways for each kind of work.

Browse guides Find your pathway

To take away

If structure teaches anyway, someone should design it on purpose.

Pick the domain closest to what you’re working on. Try two of its questions on your own project this week, then see where the positions get tested.

See how I work Start with the frame
Singapore