There has ironically never been a worse time for EdTech to be this easy to build. While recent studies suggest that simply installing air conditioning has a greater impact on student outcomes than giving every child a laptop, the EdTech industry has come under fire as it continues to push generic, profit-driven, “one-size-fits-all” software that may be benefiting no one. But what happens when the barrier between natural language and functional code completely dissolves? What happens when teachers can make their own software to meet the needs of their students?
Enter “Vibe coding”.
In this session, Dr. James Bedford explores the dawn of University 3.0—a paradigm shift moving away from “Consumer AI” and toward the “Teacher-as-Creator.” With the rise of advanced LLMs, educators with zero technical background can quickly develop their skills to start engineering their own hyper-local, pedagogically aligned technological solutions. Drawing on real-world examples—like building a multilingual Socratic math bot complete with digital canvas integration—this talk will explore how we may be able to finally reject generic platforms in favour of an ‘Entangled Pedagogy (Fawns 2022) empowering us to create tech solutions that meet the specific, localised needs of our students.
Join us as we discuss the superpowers (and the pitfalls) of vibe coding, how to navigate institutional red tape, and why the future of impactful, inclusive EdTech might be built by the teachers themselves.
What You Will Learn:
• The Shift to University 3.0: How the dissolution of the coding barrier is empowering educators to become software creators rather than software consumers.
• Entangled Pedagogy in Action: Why technology, pedagogy, and local classroom context cannot be separated, and how vibe coding solves the “generic software” problem.
• Surviving the “Vibe Trap”: Practical insights on the novelty effect, technical debt, and why building apps with AI requires more than just “prompt and pray.”
• Real-World Application: A look at custom, privacy-centric AI tools currently being built and deployed in Higher Education using natural language.

James Bedford is an award-winning writer and educator with over 12 years’ experience working in higher education. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UNSW and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He currently serves as an Education Specialist in Artificial Intelligence at UNSW College.