Daniel Schofield, Professor of Media Education, and Vegard M. Frantzen, Associate Professor of Media Education, are both affiliated with the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning (IPL) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway. Together, we lead the research group MEDLiE and share an interest in Media Education, media literacy, and ‘media bildung’, as well as the role of media in learning, teaching, upbringing, and societal participation.

We are pleased to take over the editorial responsibility for seminar.net. We would like to thank Yngve Nordkvelle and the previous editorial team, which was based at University of Inland Norway, for their work with the journal over many years, and also for giving us the opportunity to take over the role of editors. We also want to thank Jonas Christoffer Berger, Research Fellow at University of Inland Norway for his important work with administrating this issue and for helping us with big and small questions, and Docent Bjarke Lindsø Andersen from University College Absalon in Denmark for joining the editorial team and for important contributions to this issue! Last, but not least, we owe a big thanks to all peer reviewers, we really appreciate that you make this important effort for the research community!

In this issue, we want to highlight perspectives that can contribute to a critical and constructive conversation about media, education, and society in a time where rapid technological change is intensified and increasingly complex. Digital media, and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, have in a very short time become a fundamental part of how we communicate, learn, create meaning, and understand the world around us. The development of artificial intelligence renews the relevance of many of the questions that Media Education has long addressed: What are the consequences of new ‘hot’ technology becoming an integral part of knowledge production, dissemination and assessment? What opportunities and challenges do this create for schools, universities, and society as a whole?

Through this issue, we aim to open for reflection, dialogue, and new insights into how media, new technology and artificial intelligence shape our understanding of learning, teaching and participation. The issue features the following contributions:

Cristina Obae, from the University of Lapland, Finland, presents the article TPACK-XD: Expanding the TPACK Framework for Metaverse-Based Higher Education Learning Environments. In this paper, Obae investigates the knowledge and competencies educators need to effectively design curricula for Higher Education Metaverse-based Learning Environments (HEMLE), encompassing immersive technologies such as VR, AR, MR, and AI-supported metaverse environments. Drawing on expert interviews with immersive education practitioners and platform developers, she identifies key knowledge domains required for teaching in these immersive learning environments. Based on her findings, she proposes TPACK-XD, an extension of the TPACK framework that places greater emphasis on learner knowledge, design knowledge, and contextual knowledge.

The article Teacher Agency in the Context of Evolving Educational Technology is written by Satu Piispa-Hakala, Sini Kontkanen and Teemu Valtonen, all from University of Eastern Finland. They examine how teacher agency is manifested in increasingly digitalised education. Drawing on responses from 198 Finnish teachers, the study demonstrates that teachers' capacity to influence their own practice and use of technology is shaped by material, social, and structural factors. The authors emphasize that teacher agency is not merely a matter of technological competence, but also of the professional choices and decisions teachers make regarding the pedagogical use of technology, both individually and within professional communities.  The study argues that efforts to develop digital teaching and teacher education should be grounded in and support teachers' professional agency and judgement.

In the article Artificial intelligence as a support tool for providing feedback on coursework in higher education: A pilot study, Anne Torhild Klomstén, Vegard M. Frantzen and Mikhail Fominykh, all from NTNU, Norway, examine how an AI assistant can be used to provide feedback on students’ academic writing in higher education. The article is based on a pilot study where AI-generated feedback is compared to feedback provided by learning assistants. The article analyses the students’ experiences and discusses the extent to which both forms of feedback align with predefined assessment criteria, and the similarities and differences in their use of feedback and ‘feed forward’. The findings indicate that both AI and human feedback largely align with the assessment criteria and support students’ further development. However, they differ in their approaches: the AI assistant provides more explicit, criteria-focused, and action-oriented guidance, while learning assistants offer more contextualized and relational feedback. Although students preferred feedback from learning assistants, the study suggests that AI and human feedback can function as complementary forms of pedagogical scaffolding, with AI serving as a valuable resource rather than a replacement for human support.

The article Perceived impact of flipped classroom on university teachers’ teaching job demands and resources is written by Jere Riekkinen, Mari Murtonen and Heidi Salmento from University of Turku, Laura Hirsto, Sanna Väisänen and Markku Saarelainen from University of Eastern Finland, and Petri Nokelainen from Tampere University. This is an article that studies the teaching method Flipped Classroom (FC) in a higher education context. This implies that the students come prepared and start their learning process before the formal teaching activity begins. Based on qualitative interviews, the article explores how university teachers participating in a FC pilot project experienced the implementation of the FC approach in their teaching. The study finds that, although the teachers did encounter some challenges, they more often experience working with FC as a resource than as a source of increased demands.

In the article How to study contemporary digital teaching materials? Merging traditional textbook analysis with analysis of digital materials, Peter Bergström and Lina Spjut from Umeå University examine contemporary teaching materials by means of traditional textbook analysis combined with multimodal approaches to analysing digital materials. Twelve digital teaching resources are studied, by analysing layout, structure and content through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings suggest that this combined method provides a more comprehensive understanding of digital teaching material than existing methods. In this way, the authors find considerable variation in how layout, structure and content are designed and combined across different resources.

Happy reading!