From AI to Competency-Based Education: Key Forces Shaping Education With John Baker

🎓 What does the education landscape look like in 2026? From artificial intelligence to competency-based education, the future of learning is being shaped by multiple forces. And institutions need to adapt fast.

In this episode of Teach & Learn, Dr. Cristi Ford sits down with John Baker (CEO, President and Founder of D2L) to explore how AI, immersive learning and skills-focused strategies are transforming education. You’ll hear why non-degree credentials are surging, how AI is reducing course development costs and why human connection still matters in a tech-driven world.

Baker shares practical insights on building flexible learning ecosystems, leveraging AI responsibly and moving beyond outdated standards like SCORM to create engaging, interactive experiences. This conversation is a roadmap for leaders ready to embrace innovation and prepare learners for the future.

💬 “The urgency has never been greater. Institutions need to step up and tackle the big challenges of re-skilling the workforce and preparing students for a new world with AI.” — John Baker

In this episode, Cristi and John discuss:

• the biggest forces shaping education in 2026
• how AI is transforming course design and reducing costs
• the rise of competency-based education and non-degree credentials
• moving beyond SCORM to open, interactive learning standards
• practical strategies for institutional leaders

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Transcript

Dr. Cristi Ford (00:00):

What will shape education in 2026? Join me for a lively conversation with D2L's founder, CEO, and president, John Baker, as we break down the shifts gaining momentum across the learning landscape. You won't want to miss this one.

Speaker 4 (00:15):

Welcome to Teach and Learn, a podcast for curious educators brought to you by D2L.

Dr. Cristi Ford (00:20):

Each week, we'll meet some of the sharpest minds in the K-to-20 space. Sharpen your pencils. Class is about to begin.

(00:27):

Listeners, welcome back to another episode. I'm Dr. Cristi Ford, and today I'm so excited to have a very special guest, John Baker, CEO, president, and founder of D2L. John, this is the first time we've had you on the show. I can't believe I'm on the fourth season, and I've really been looking forward to this conversation. It's really glad to have you here today.

John Baker (00:46):

That's great to join you, Cristi. Much looking forward to the conversation.

Dr. Cristi Ford (00:50):

For my listeners who've been joining us for four seasons, if you don't know a lot about John's background and history, he started D2L more than 25 years ago, and he's seen a lot in the ed tech world. But one of the things that I'm really proud about and I respect about his vision is that his vision and purpose in how he started D2L has never wavered. Transforming the way the world learns, really thinking about that mission-driven, human-centric approach to how technology can enhance the learning experience. I'm pleased to have John here today. I want to do something a little different this year at the beginning of 2026. With so many changes in the ed tech landscape, I want to really have John's perspective on what are some of the things that we can expect? What are some of the things that we may be looking forward to this year? And what are some things we could do together?

(01:40):

John, that's really what I hope for us to spend some time talking about today.

John Baker (01:43):

That's great, Cristi. I think it's going to be a pivotal year ahead. Looking forward to the conversation with you.

Dr. Cristi Ford (01:48):

Absolutely. I really want to tap into all of your years of experience but also your global perspective as an ed tech leader and thought leader to discuss what we can expect in 2026. As you and I have traveled and spent time with institutions and organizations around the globe, we're hearing conversations around skills gap. We're hearing conversations around AI, immersive learning, personalized learning. And one of the things that's been interesting around some of the research I've had the opportunity to lead here at D2L is we're hearing some interesting signals.

(02:20):

For instance, students are using generative AI almost weekly, while most institutions still lack clear policies and procedures. And we know that human connection remains critical even as hybrid learning and online learning continues to expand. And the demand for non-degree credentials is surging. As educators everywhere that we're talking to are looking and asking, "How do we prepare for the future?", I want to just dive in with this first question.

(02:48):

Let's talk big picture. What do you see as the biggest forces shaping education in 2026?

John Baker (02:54):

Well, I think you talked about a number of them there right away, but I think for me, it's a challenging year for a lot of educational institutions. A number of them are under budget pressures from various different sources. There's a lot of challenges in terms of finding employment as new grads coming out of universities or colleges all over the world, not just in the US or Canada. And we're seeing a tremendous transformational force with AI.

(03:21):

I think about harnessing this technology to achieve those outcomes that you just talked about, personalizing the learning experience, making sure that we're building, engaging, and inspiring opportunities for students to really be able to be the best engineer, the best doctor, the best artist, whatever that they're pursuing. Leveraging these technologies, it's more of a how, not a why we're doing it.

(03:45):

And for me, even going back to the 25-year mark, it's always been about what's the most important problem we could solve that would have the biggest impact on the world. And I think right now, the world needs our educational institutions to really go through this transformation to really step up to tackling the big challenges of re-skilling the workforce, helping to prepare students for a new world with AI, and really creating the kind of experiences we've always wanted to create even 25 years ago. Just need to do it this year ahead.

(04:17):

The urgency has never been greater, I don't think, Cristi.

Dr. Cristi Ford (04:20):

I agree with that, John. And as I listen to you talking about re-skilling the workforce, some of the things that we've talked about with institutions and organizations, because we have the opportunity to support K-12 higher education and corporate entities, but there's such a push now for non-credential degrees. Non-degree credentials. And one of the things that I'm really excited about that we do so well is in the space of CBE.

(04:46):

As we're looking at the practical next steps of CBE in 2026, because we've talked about mastery-based and competency-based education for a long time in education, where do you think we'll really see some real outcomes for learners and employers? And how should leaders be measuring success in this new frontier?

John Baker (05:04):

Well, I think the reason why you're seeing a big push for non-credentialed or non-credit is because of the speed and the urgency of this change. It's very hard to get accreditation for a new program to tackle AI in any domain that you can pick. Being able to move swiftly as institutions to tackle this, whether it's a non-credential or non-credit type of program, is a great strategy because there's such a big demand out in the workforce for these new skill sets. You're seeing it in terms of the hiring practices for where folks are positioning their current job descriptions for anyone that's being hired into any of these companies. You're also seeing it show up in terms of entry-level jobs being at risk for a lot of new grads. Because the actual ground has changed, we need to now prepare students to take the job that they would normally get into in two or three years out from graduation.

(05:59):

These are big challenges, and I think a great way to tackle it out of the gate would be to do it in a non-credit, move-fast kind of way for the universities.

Dr. Cristi Ford (06:09):

I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think the other thing, the underlining piece here, that we're finding when working when we work with institutions is helping them to reconceptualize learning objectives to competencies, right? Thinking about, how do you master a skill? What are the steps? How do you reinforce that learning? And I think we do such a good job of that. I know we do such a good job of that in providing technological support for institutions and organizations to do that well. But as I'm listening to leaders today, I guess I'm still wondering how we can help those that may be on the fence to make that shift over into the CBE experience.

John Baker (06:45):

Well, I think our thought leadership clients for many years have been employing CBE to really create better pathways for students to get to the outcome they're trying to strive towards. Recognizing that prior learning. Recognizing that all students don't come in with the same exact background. Being able to personalize that learning experience to them. Demonstrate mastery and to progress. It really does create an opportunity to enrich the learning experience.

(07:09):

The challenge historically is it's been hard to build these competency-based education programs. It's not easy to link all the learning outcomes, define them all, make sure that you got the right assessments being created that demonstrate the mastery. But now we're actually able to leverage AI to be able to do a lot of that hard work for you automatically. It'll actually suggest, is this particular learning activity tied to these outcomes? Are these quiz questions tied to this outcome? And a lot of the hard work has now been made easy.

(07:44):

I think we had a role as a technology company to harness this technology to bring this great new pedagogical experience with competency-based education out to a much broader audience by making it easy for folks to create. I think the other thing that I've seen in the last year is our learning services group, which has about 200 people in that team, has actually worked with clients to actually reduce the cost of developing these new courses by over 50%. What used to cost a lot to create a new program is now costing a lot less because we've been able to, again, harness some of these technologies to automate a lot of the work and to help create these interactive experiences and help drive this engagement in a much faster way.

(08:26):

Now, I think this is critical because, if you talk to business leaders, they're pushing for competency-based education because they feel their people already have a lot of the skillset, but they need a few new skills. Being able to quickly recognize what they've got mastery of and being able to personalize that program for that individual employee becomes critical. I think the same thing applies for undergrads as well, too, but happy to chat more with that, Cristi. It's an important topic.

Dr. Cristi Ford (08:54):

It's an important topic. And I'll say this year I had the opportunity to go to Competency-Based Education Network, C-BEN, and shout out to Charla Long and her team there and our partnership because one of the things that has been so nice to see at that conference and our partnership at D2L is we now support and are the platform of choice for CompetentU. As they are helping institutions, higher education, associations, corporate entities make that shift and really look at it from a research perspective, they've partnered with us to be able to have that be available.

(09:27):

I think, to your point, John, the time is now for institutional leaders, organizational leaders, to really wholeheartedly take that challenge and really be able to meet learners where they are today.

John Baker (09:39):

And those types of partnerships matter because you need to build a capacity for the team, whether you're a university or college, to be able to go off and execute on this big vision. Professional development's a big part of that. I remember SIT in Singapore came to us with a big challenge of trying to move a program to competency-based education within three months. And again, just partnering with them to help them execute on that vision was fun. These are the types of projects that companies like ours or other partners out there in the world love because it's helping to push the envelope forward. It's really enabling us to create a better learning experience for a lot more students. Definitely engage partners on this. Really important.

Dr. Cristi Ford (10:19):

Wholeheartedly agree. I mean, it takes the whole village, right? We have to lift all sails to be able to do this well. To that point, I guess I want to move us along here and talk about the technological advances and new revolutions that are happening in the technology world. And unfortunately, it's not a zero-sum game, that it creates winners and losers, and old ways of life sometimes fall away and are replaced by new modes of living. Let's talk a little bit about AI transformation in learning.

(10:48):

I'd love to hear from you as we think about ... I don't even know if I like the word disruption. I think that there's value judgment with disruption, but is this disruption a good thing for learning? And what roles will emerge as critical in the age of AI?

John Baker (11:05):

Well, I think any technology that comes along as powerful as AI is going to be disruptive. The key is harnessing that technology so that you can leverage it to support the mission that you're on.

(11:19):

But it's a pretty powerful technology. As I said earlier, if we can drive the cost of developing courses down by 50% for our clients, that gives our clients a significant advantage over those that are still doing it the old way. It is disruptive in that context. And then if you look at the learning experience itself, for a student to be able to get automatic feedback on questions or be able to support that instantaneous engagement with the material with great learning activities and experiences that inspire them, if they're getting a better experience from one client that's leveraging these technologies to build a better learning experience, it is disruptive for those that are not because there are market forces at play here with this.

(12:03):

I've seen a few of these waves of technology come in. The internet was certainly disruptive. Mobile was another big wave. Cloud was another. I think this is bigger because, when you look at AI, it fundamentally is not just simply just doing what you were doing before, but now digitizing it in a new way. It can enable us to do new models of learning, like competency-based education, with much greater ease. It becomes something that you really do need to harness quite quickly. And we haven't yet seen this show up yet in the higher education market in a big way yet. Last year, we, I think, saw two RFPs that talked about AI being a critical priority for the university.

(12:45):

Which, by the way, it took us a long time to get people to cloud as well. This year I expect it to be much, much bigger because with a small investment in this new technology, harnessing it with responsibility and with integrity and ethics and ring-fencing the data so you're protecting students and protecting your IP that you've generated, all of these things are now possible. I think we're going to move much, much faster this year to leverage these technologies to have a bigger impact on what I think is the most important is the learning experience, which drives better outcomes, which drives better growth in new ways or better retention for students. These are the important parts.

Dr. Cristi Ford (13:24):

I wholeheartedly agree with that. And before we move on from AI, I want to just give a little shout-out to some original research that we sponsored by the Tyton report around time for class. And one of the things that was interesting to me from that report with over 1,000 respondents was that 42% of students used generative AI weekly, yet 28% of those institutions had policies in place.

(13:49):

When we look at this disparity between the usage of students and of various different facets in learning versus institutional support and policy and procedure, I guess I'd love to hear what you're thinking of what are some risks of not having procedures and policies in place. How can institutions go about designing to really be able to behold the future of learning? I know that we've done some really exciting things with Lumi, but I'd love to hear what you're thinking about in terms of working with institutions around this issue and this gap between student usage and institutional policy and practice.

John Baker (14:24):

Again, I think reach out. We work with a lot of clients all over the world to help implement some of these policies. For us, it's about making sure that we're doing things responsibly with AI. What does that mean? It means, instead of the content of your course or maybe some students' actual assignments going off to an OpenAI interface which then becomes part of the training model for OpenAI, being able to ring-fence that data so that that student work is protected, that privacy of the student engagement's also protected. You can harness these technologies now in ways that enable you to achieve the base-level policy that you want to have for a university or for a college, protecting privacy, protecting student data, protecting your own course material.

(15:13):

I think anytime a big new technology comes in that sort of jumps over the institution and straight to consumer, there is going to be this risk that consumer adoption is going to far outpace the enterprise adoption. You need to move swiftly to put in place some of these policies.

(15:29):

I wouldn't focus so much on the fears around AI. I'd focus more on the opportunities to harness this technology to really create the opportunity for the institution. Working together with other networks of institutions to learn how their policies have been implemented and swiftly putting in place your own becomes really, really important. Couldn't be more, Cristi.

Dr. Cristi Ford (15:54):

Well, I will agree with that. And I'll tell one of the institution that we're working with is created and using AI to be able to go through talking about CBE, go through all of those learning objectives, and they've created an AI agent to then be able to help them to connect those learning objectives to now competencies and now connect that to what's happening in the industry. Something that would've typically taken that institution six to 12 months to do, they're now doing within weeks and being able to keep that content of that course really refreshed.

(16:23):

To your point, this is really the opportunity to focus on the opportunities, but I want to just go back to one risk because I don't think ... We always talk about data, and we talk about data security. And to your point around consumers getting access to this data and utilizing an openly free tool or technology, can you just break down, for the educators that are listening, what is the challenge within putting that student information, that student data, or even their own IP into some of those openly accessible LLM systems?

John Baker (16:54):

Well, I saw that early with some partners that were just simply taking the actual conversations that were happening in classes and putting it out to an open model. Well, those open models now have access to all that data to train their systems. And this is a big challenge.

(17:11):

I think it's a risk from a privacy perspective because now others can potentially prompt that AI and get insights into what happened in your particular class, and I don't think we want that. We do want to put guardrails around some of the types of interactions, some of the privacy for students, especially for younger students.

(17:31):

Now, if a student is making their own choice to use an open model to help them with their particular assignments or help them do some research or anything like that, I'm actually a big fan of because they're going to use these technologies all the time in the workplace. But I think it also comes with a little bit of training and understanding almost like you would with digital literacy, an AI literacy, for students to understand the risks and the ramifications of some of the work that they do with AI.

(17:58):

Now, you're also seeing the negative side of this with AI creating some negative spirals with students. You name it. And I think a basic AI literacy would go a long way for a lot of students and also faculty and staff across the organization.

Dr. Cristi Ford (18:17):

We talk about that a lot. I talk with institutional leadership a lot around what we call the dimensions of AI literacy which was some UNESCO-sponsored research that we actually helped to create an online self-paced course in Brightspace for folks to be able to take advantage of, to your point, to be able to help people think about what is confident literacies? What's civic literacies? What do we know about communicative literacies? There are eight dimensions of AI literacies that came out of this research that were also built upon Doug Belshaw's work of the eight dimensions of digital literacies. To your point, this is a nuanced conversation that has lots of opportunity where we really need to be able to help students to be able to utilize these models really well.

(18:58):

Before we want to move on, though, I want to talk about one other hot topic with the introduction of Google's Homework Helper and OpenAI's new browser. Can we talk a little bit about D2L's approach and what our AI development has been in ways that help preserve intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and academic integrity in classrooms?

John Baker (19:19):

Well, I think I know what you're getting at. You definitely do not want these helpers just basically doing the work for the student. That cognitive offloading and even homework offloading is not a great opportunity for the student to actually grow and become the best that they can possibly be. We, as companies that provide these learning platforms, need to put in place the right controls to ensure that these are actually blocked. Just for clarity, there's work to be done on that front. And I think, as an industry, we need to create standards. Just like when a web crawler would come along to a website, it would have an understanding of what it can and can't use on that website. AI should have a similar practice. It shouldn't fill in the quiz for the particular student. I do think there's a responsibility around helping to inform students, what's expected of them, what's considered fraud, what's considered plagiarism. That could be a quick stop gap until some of the technology standards get put in place across the whole industry to support better management of this properly.

(20:25):

That said, I do think students should harness these AIs to do things that they've always wanted to do. Instead of just simply remembering and understanding something that's happening in a particular course, why not leverage AIs to build a new website that tackles a problem or explains something more clearly or reviews a whole bunch of data that came from a research study and comes up with some new insight that can then be applied to your own growth and own learning? Again, I think technology can be used for good or evil. I choose good. And I think we need to figure out ways to, as an industry, come together to make sure that we're leveraging these technologies in the ways that are going to be highly impactful on the quality of the student's experience.

(21:09):

Now, I think the safest route and the route that we took was to focus first and foremost on the educator in terms of giving them tools very quickly such that they can create lessons, and they can create interactive experiences and quizzes and discussions and assignments in a way that keeps them at the center, gives them agency, gives them control, and helps prompt them in the right ways to get the right outcomes. And in terms of them leveraging these technologies, also helps build literacy around some of the risks and opportunities.

(21:42):

And then more recently, we've been rolling in a lot of functionality around the student experience around virtual tutoring, or, "Can you create a study plan for me for the next two weeks because I'm in a crunch?" Or, "Help me build some flashcard exercises," that would support sort of this space repetition idea of, "I'm doing some reading. I want to do some practice on Friday."

(22:03):

I do think these tools, harnessed the right way, can have a huge impact in terms of improving the student experience, but we definitely need to do some work as an industry to mitigate the risks.

Dr. Cristi Ford (22:15):

Listen, this is music to my ears. We're talking about scaffolding learning. We're talking about space retrievable. Some of the good pedagogical foundational pieces that we know. Gagne's nine principles. We know what good learning looks like. It's really been nice to see the ways in which we've harnessed those opportunities to help students. We did a research study with students who said, "At 2:00 in the morning when I needed homework help," or, "At 3:00 in the morning when I was working on a music score, AI, because my teacher had trained me how to utilize it appropriately, was helpful in me being able to work on an assignment. And then I uploaded that transcript along with my final project."

(22:55):

To your point, there are opportunities here that we have to harness this technology to really help students to be able to learn.

John Baker (23:01):

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm literally reading a book with my six-year-old over the holidays. She's really excited about space repetition and when to use it and when not to use it.

Dr. Cristi Ford (23:12):

I love it. I love it.

John Baker (23:14):

And when she has a choice of books, she picks that one because it must have some nice pictures in it, too, which again goes back to how you design the learning experience has a big impact for students.

Dr. Cristi Ford (23:24):

That's so good. You're teaching her young, John. I love that.

(23:28):

Let's move on and talk a little bit about something that you recently posted about in LinkedIn. Sometimes we focus on just these large changes. We're talking about AI and the development, but in reality, sometimes it's the small incremental changes that make the biggest difference to people's day-to-day.

(23:45):

Can we talk a little bit about something that you've seen shift that few people would talk about that has a big tangible implication for educators? And you know where I'm going to you on this one.

John Baker (23:58):

You were talking about SCORM or-

Dr. Cristi Ford (23:58):

I am.

John Baker (23:58):

Yes.

Dr. Cristi Ford (24:05):

I am. This is such a hot topic when I talk to educators and designers. I'd love to unpack it a little bit here for folks.

John Baker (24:09):

All right. Well, SCORM is this old standard in education that's been around for now over 21 years unchanged. It's very similar to Flash, if everyone remembers Flash from the web era. It's a challenging standard because there's a lot of security issues with it. It's not been updated for over 21 years, and I think it's time for it to go away, but the irony is it's growing faster than ever.

Dr. Cristi Ford (24:36):

It is.

John Baker (24:39):

I think as authoring environments have made it easy to create these packages, which go into different courses all over the world, I think we can do a better job of building better engagement, a better learning experience, and still making that experience portable, can play anywhere, that can be engaging, can have that rich data that's needed for educators, but most importantly, it's also editable. Even if it was created 20 years ago, it can still be edited for the future.

(25:10):

What I've proposed is we should build a new open standard around interactive learning experiences. For us, we're anchoring it on the work that we did with H5P which is already used by 200 million people. It is an open-source project, and it's a great way for us to build interactive learning, but now we need to figure out how do we unpack this big challenge of ... I think one of the commenters on that post said, "It's like an ivy that's invaded your garden. There's no way to get it out."

(25:39):

Well, I think there are ways. And I think this AI that we talked about earlier is actually one way that we are tackling the challenge. We're now at a point where we can take a SCORM package using AI, translate it back into an open interactive experience that is actually multiple time better than what it was in the SCORM package in terms of the quality of the experience for the students and doing it for a fraction of the cost it used to take doing it manually. And we're going to continue to work on that to drive the cost hopefully down to zero to make these transitions as easy as possible.

(26:18):

But the end result is an interactive data-rich learning experience that is portable, that enables students to be able to have the best-quality learning we can, and moving away from this proprietary siloed package that was there before. I know it's a geeky topic.

Dr. Cristi Ford (26:36):

No, it is. It is. But reading your post was so helpful because I didn't realize it'd been 21 years. I think you did a good job of really honing in for learning designers. It's like, "It's bad, but it's what I have." Thinking about some of the implications around data, the interactivity issues. As much as we can, work with our clients and institutions, organizations to utilize H5P and other pieces to create an engaging learning experience. We have a solution. We have opportunities to really think about doing this work differently. We just know sometimes change is hard for folks.

John Baker (27:10):

And we're also not intending on doing this alone. We're happy to work with anyone in the industry that wants to help us shape this new open standard for interactive learning.

(27:20):

Hopefully you reach out. Hopefully engage with our group. Even if you're a client, you want to help shape the future of learning. We're putting a tremendous amount of investment into this this year. I think it's a critical pathway for us because, as you know, Cristi, I think assessment's got to change pretty dramatically. And I think this is a big part of that. If we can have a better format for doing micro-formative assessment as we try to figure out how do we do these bigger assessment changes in the age of AI, I think it will be a game changer for a lot of clients because what we're seeing in the market is we're seeing a lot of students just simply using AI to do assignments, and that's not a great learning experience. And teachers are really struggling with how to tackle this. I think micro-formative assessments on every single page is a part of the strategy.

(28:16):

We want to move swiftly on this. We've got some great tools with H5P. They're open, but I think we can do a lot more in the year ahead.

Dr. Cristi Ford (28:24):

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Shout out to our clients, Deakin University, who wrote a really great article on assessment and it being a wicked problem. We're actually going to have some of those folks on the podcast here shortly and are going to be doing some more work with them in partnership with what we're doing here at D2L.

John Baker (28:42):

Phil Dawson or Jack [inaudible 00:28:44]?

Dr. Cristi Ford (28:44):

Yes, Phil's on the podcast. He's coming.

John Baker (28:46):

Great. They have a wonderful research group called CRADLE-

Dr. Cristi Ford (28:49):

They do.

John Baker (28:49):

... at Deakin. I've been picking his brain for many years on some of the even algorithms for figuring out how to do rubric evaluation.

Dr. Cristi Ford (28:59):

He's focused on feedback right now, so you're on his page for sure.

John Baker (29:04):

Well, that's great. That's great.

Dr. Cristi Ford (29:05):

Well, as we start to wrap up, I really, first of all, thank you for creating the time to be on the podcast this season. But as we're talking about 2026, we're going to be releasing this at the top of the year. Is there any other trend or topic that you wanted to discuss before I have you ... I always like to have my guests finished by filling in a sentence. I'm going to do that last, but is there anything else you wanted to share with us today before we end up there?

John Baker (29:30):

Well, I know this year seems challenging with all of what's happening, whether it's budget, student employability, AI. All of these feel like waves crashing on you. I actually see this as a tremendous opportunity for us to evolve how we do teaching and learning across all of our institutions globally.

(29:55):

I think when we can harness these waves of energy to enact positive change on our campuses, that's going to be the real transformation that we've been aiming for for over 25 years. And I think if we do this right, we make the jobs that each and every one of you are doing just that much easier and much more enjoyable and have a bigger outcome and better outcome for students.

(30:21):

I definitely take an optimistic view going into this year. Even though you read all these headlines of all these doom and gloom, I actually think there's a tremendous opportunity for us to have a really positive impact on a lot of people's lives. Let's just dig in and do it the right way.

Dr. Cristi Ford (30:37):

That's fantastic. I love that call to action for all of us collectively to work on this problem together. The last thing I'm going to ask you to do is finish this sentence for me. The future of learning is ...

John Baker (30:47):

Exciting. Engaging.

Dr. Cristi Ford (30:53):

I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, John, thanks so much for joining us. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. I tried to get you last year for the 25th anniversary, but it didn't just work out. But this time I thought it was really profound to do this at the top of the year in 2026. Thank you for taking some time out of your schedule to spend some time with us and with our listeners everywhere.

John Baker (31:12):

Thank you, Cristi, for the podcast, for all the work that you're doing, and for the lives you're impacting through the research you're conducting. Thank you, and enjoy 2026, everybody.

Dr. Cristi Ford (31:22):

Thanks, John. Thank you to our dedicated listeners and curious educators everywhere. Don't forget to follow us on social media. You can find us on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, at D2L. And subscribe to D2L YouTube channel. You can also sign up for the Teaching and Learning Studio email list for the latest updates on new episodes like this one, articles, and masterclasses. And if you've liked what you've heard, don't forget to rate us. Review it, share this episode, and remember to subscribe so you never miss what we've got in store.

Speaker 4 (31:51):

You've been listening to Teach and Learn, a podcast for curious educators brought to you by D2L. To learn more about our K-through-20 and corporate solutions, visit d2l.com. Visit the Teaching and Learning Studio for more material for educators by educators, including masterclasses, articles, and interviews.

Dr. Cristi Ford (32:10):

And remember to hit that subscribe button. And please take a moment to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, school's out.