Enough with the Innovating!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In education today, the call to innovate is constant. Institutions are urged to adopt new platforms, automate feedback, personalize learning pathways, and scale support through artificial intelligence. These tools promise efficiency, adaptability, and insight. But they also transform what we mean by teaching and learning.

There’s a growing body of work that questions whether more technology always means better outcomes. Organizational theorist Javier Fernández-Pacheco helped popularize the term exnovation to describe the deliberate removal of outdated or harmful systems—an intentional simplification that clears the way for more grounded, human-scale practices. Exnovation isn’t resistance for its own sake. It’s a strategic unbuilding.

But exnovation assumes something was once useful and has now run its course. What about systems that were never a good fit for teaching and learning in the first place?

That’s where outovation comes in.

The word outovation doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but it has occasionally surfaced in business and legal writing, where it typically refers to skipping steps or leapfrogging competitors in order to “out-innovate” them. That’s not how I’m using it here.

In the context of education—particularly at a time when artificial intelligence, learning dashboards, and predictive analytics are reshaping teaching and assessment—outovation offers a different idea. It means innovating by refusing: subtracting layers of automation and complexity in order to restore meaningful human engagement in the learning process.

While innovation often seeks novelty and exnovation removes outdated systems, outovation takes a different approach. It questions not what’s next, but whether the direction we’re headed is worth continuing.

Much of today’s educational technology is designed for efficiency: faster grading, scalable support, customized delivery. But learning rarely fits that model. It’s slow, reflective, and often uncertain. When systems begin to anticipate or replace human decisions, they risk minimizing the agency of students and instructors alike.

Outovation challenges that drift. It asks whether ease should be the primary goal. In practice, this might involve asking students to write self-reflections before receiving feedback, or using AI-generated texts as material for critique rather than answers to be accepted. It might mean giving students more influence over assignment design or evaluation criteria—not as a novelty, but as a way of deepening their role in the learning process.

These practices don’t reject technology outright. Instead, they reconsider its purpose and its limits. Outovation is less about stepping back and more about stepping aside—making space for learning that is deliberate, relational, and grounded in choice.

Not Work. The Work.

Universities contain many tasks that resemble academic labor: posting updates, logging into course platforms, meeting minimum discussion requirements, reviewing dashboards, and responding to retention alerts. These tasks are easy to observe and measure. They often serve as proof that teaching and learning are taking place. For the purposes of policy and accountability, this is considered Work. And as Sarah Jaffe noted, work won’t love you back.

But there is another kind of work that matters more and is harder to document. It appears when students take ownership of a project, revise their goals, and make decisions about how to share their learning. It happens when they collaborate to solve a problem no one has assigned, or create something that didn’t exist before—a podcast, a public presentation, a new way of framing a question. It includes peer feedback that improves the work and strengthens the relationship. This is The Work—the kind of learning that requires agency, creativity, and trust. The Work is the part of teaching that we love.

While technology can reduce the time spent on many instructional tasks, it can also obscure or replace the more open-ended forms of learning that define The Work. When AI generates both the student’s submission and the instructor’s response, the exchange is minimal. When predictive data drives classroom decisions, it can narrow the range of what students are allowed to attempt.

Outovation addresses this shift. It involves choosing not to rely on systems that limit participation or creativity. This might mean allowing students to propose their own assignments, develop group projects, or shape the criteria by which their work is assessed. It may take more time and offer fewer standardized outputs, but it creates conditions where students act as authors, not just respondents.

In A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More urges Richard Rich to consider becoming a teacher, telling Rich that he would be a great teacher. When Rich asks, “If I was, who would know it?” More replies, “You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.” The moment underscores the value of work that may not be widely visible but is deeply meaningful to the people involved.

Higher education increasingly rewards what can be counted. But The Work—what fosters inquiry, expression, and shared discovery—often happens outside those boundaries. Naming the difference between Work and The Work is essential. One satisfies the system. The other serves the learner. The question is, will AI replace The Work with Work?

A Child Is Innately Wise and Realistic

Before data dashboards, predictive models, or algorithmic tutoring systems, A. S. Neill founded a school based on a simple but unconventional idea: that children, if left to follow their own interests and internal motivations, would choose to learn. Summerhill, which opened in 1921, was not just a progressive school. It was an early example of what we might now call outovation. It was a refusal to impose systems that interfere with personal agency.

Neill did not oppose structure altogether. He opposed control that presented itself as care, and authority that framed itself as moral development. He wrote, “A child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion… he will develop as far as he is capable of developing.” (Quoted language reflects the gender norms of the time). In the current context—where educational technology increasingly aims to guide, predict, and modify behavior—this statement raises important questions.

At Summerhill, students decided what and whether to study each day. There were no mandatory tests or grades. Lessons were available but not required. The goal was not to eliminate order, but to build a culture based on trust. Neill believed that meaningful learning could emerge from choice rather than enforcement, and that discipline mattered only if it came from within.

This philosophy appears again in the 1971 film Billy Jack, which centers around the Freedom School, an alternative school run by Jean Roberts, played by Delores Taylor. Though fictional, the Freedom School reflects many of the same principles. It draws inspiration from progressive education models of the 1960s and 70s, including Summerhill, civil rights-era Freedom Schools, and free school experiments. The school emphasizes student-centered learning, creative expression, and open dialogue rather than standardized curricula or discipline. It brings together students from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds in a deeply segregated town, and encourages them to engage with social and political issues. While the school fosters trust and autonomy, it is met with hostility from the surrounding community. Billy Jack, played by Tom Laughlin, protects the school. In one of the film’s defining moments, he says, “When policemen break the law, then there isn’t any law—just a fight for survival.” His role dramatizes the tension between institutional violence and educational idealism, highlighting how vulnerable trust-based models remain in the face of systems built on control.

These two examples—one real, one imagined—offer complementary views of what education can look like when it is rooted in freedom rather than compliance. Outovation does not mean removing structure or avoiding technology. It means evaluating whether systems support or suppress autonomy. It asks whether current practices in higher education, such as automated writing tools, rubric-based scoring systems, and behavioral alerts, are helping students grow or simply managing their actions.

The risk is that we adopt tools that sort, monitor, and correct behavior without examining their long-term effects. When assignments are generated by AI, and grades are issued by automated systems, students may learn to perform for the system rather than engage with the material. The experience may look organized, but it lacks the depth and agency that real learning requires.

Summerhill and the fictional Freedom School both remind us that freedom in education is not the absence of structure, but the presence of meaningful choice. Outovation builds on that principle by asking how we can design learning environments that support trust, independence, and responsibility—even in a digital age.

Famous for the Cheese

Reggio Emilia is widely known for its Parmigiano-Reggiano, but in the field of education, it is recognized for a distinctive pedagogical approach rooted in curiosity, autonomy, and aesthetic attention. After World War II, a group of parents in the region—working with educator Loris Malaguzzi—created a network of schools that rejected authoritarian models and emphasized children’s capacity to construct meaning through experience.

The Reggio Emilia approach does not have a fixed curriculum. It begins with relationships: between children and adults, between learners and their environment, and between students and the materials they use. Rather than delivering standardized content, teachers observe and document student activity, then shape their guidance in response. The focus is on inquiry rather than instruction, and on interpretation rather than repetition. Children are seen as active participants in their own learning, capable of forming theories and expressing ideas.

In the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, the environment is often called “the third teacher.” Alongside adults and peers, the physical space is understood to play an active role in shaping how children learn. Classrooms are designed with intention: to provoke curiosity, to support autonomy, and to invite collaboration. The arrangement of materials, the openness of space, and even the quality of light are part of the pedagogy.

If the LMS functions as the third teacher in online education, then we must ask what lessons it conveys. Unlike the Reggio Emilia classroom, which is intentionally designed to provoke curiosity and support autonomy, the LMS is often built for control and efficiency. It teaches that learning is linear, modular, and tightly scheduled. It suggests that deadlines take precedence over dialogue, and that knowledge is delivered from the top down, not constructed in community. The structure of most LMS platforms reinforces the idea that visibility and compliance are stand-ins for engagement and understanding.

In this way, the LMS participates in a hidden curriculum. It doesn't just organize content; it shapes how students understand what learning is. If it promotes passive consumption, rigid conformity, or detachment from process, it cannot claim to be a neutral space. Reggio reminds us that every learning environment teaches something. If the LMS is to act as the third teacher, it must be reimagined not as a delivery system, but as a space that invites inquiry, sustains presence, and reflects care.

In many Reggio-inspired classrooms, the learning environment resembles a studio or workshop rather than a traditional schoolroom. Students work with wire, clay, mirrors, wood scraps, pulleys, water, and cardboard—not as toys, but as tools for exploration. These materials are offered as open invitations rather than fixed tasks. A similar philosophy appears in the documentary The Land, which depicts a Welsh adventure playground where children build, dig, and experiment under minimal adult supervision. What might seem chaotic is actually intentional. These are not compromises driven by budget constraints. They are choices designed to support initiative, experimentation, and autonomy.

This approach also reflects outovation. It does not oppose structure but questions systems that determine answers before students have formed their own questions. Where many educational technologies promote personalization through predictive algorithms, Reggio emphasizes meaning through personal interpretation. The key question is not how efficiently content can be delivered, but how learners engage with what they see and what they are trying to express.

Although often associated with early childhood education, the questions raised by Reggio Emilia are relevant in higher education as well. What would it mean to design courses that support uncertainty, reflection, and open-ended inquiry? How might we document learning in ways that support growth rather than assign value? What if the learning management system served as a record of learning rather than its framework?

Reggio Emilia is known globally for its cheese. But its educational philosophy offers an equally enduring legacy: a reminder that learning begins with trust, and that some of the most important aspects of education require conditions that cannot be automated.

Blue Books Won’t Save Us

Pen-and-paper exams are experiencing a revival on college campuses. According to Gizmodo, blue-book sales have increased significantly—up 30% at Texas A&M, nearly 50% at the University of Florida, and almost 80% at UC Berkeley. The Wall Street Journal describes blue books as “every student’s worst nightmare,” now reintroduced as a response to concerns about generative AI.

The appeal is understandable. Instructors faced with AI-generated essays are turning to tools that feel secure and familiar. A blue book offers no prompts, no autocomplete, and no access to outside tools. It represents a version of authorship that seems harder to fake.

But as Philip Bunn of Covenant College notes, the kind of thinking involved in writing a paper outside of class cannot be easily recreated in a timed exam. What is lost in the shift to blue books is not just time, but the process itself: revising a claim, testing a structure, returning to an idea with a different perspective. Blue books might preserve the appearance of originality, but they can eliminate the conditions that support reflection.

This is the limitation of reactionary responses to technology. Choosing older tools may reduce certain risks, but it does not necessarily support better learning. The assumption that analog tools ensure authenticity is flawed. Simply reverting to paper does not restore trust or deepen engagement. It replaces one constraint with another.

Outovation takes a different approach. Rather than banning laptops or reverting to older formats, it asks what values we are trying to protect. If the goal is to support student voice, we need assignments that allow for exploration and interpretation. If we want to preserve learning, we must design for process and uncertainty, not just for control. Blue books may prevent misuse of AI, but they do not automatically bring back the kinds of thinking institutions say they want to foster.

The real need is not for a return, but for a clearer evaluation of what can be subtracted to make room for better learning. Outovation offers that lens. It helps distinguish between reacting and rebuilding. Between superficial work and substantive engagement.

Hold That Tiger

In the 1988 film Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Preston Tucker attempts to introduce a new kind of automobile. His design includes features such as a rear engine, seatbelts, and pop-out windshields. These ideas are ahead of their time, but the greater challenge is what they represent. The automotive industry responds by shutting him down.

A similar pattern exists in higher education. Institutions often reward modest improvements while discouraging structural change. Many initiatives labeled as innovation are limited in scope. They refine processes, add technology, or improve efficiency, but they do not alter the foundation.

Some models show what structural change can look like. Colorado College’s Block Plan organizes the academic year into single-course sessions lasting three and a half weeks. This model reshapes teaching and learning by removing the distractions of simultaneous coursework. It is not an add-on; it is a different structure.

Outovation supports this kind of work. This aligns with the work of David J. Staley, who argues that the crisis in higher education is not technological but imaginative. In Alternative Universities, he describes models that depart from standard assumptions. These include universities built around interdisciplinary majors, mobile campuses, and human-AI learning partnerships. His aim is not reform, but redesign.

Outovation is not about resisting technology or romanticizing older models. It involves removing assumptions that limit the design of new systems. Most educational innovation stays within boundaries. Outovation challenges those boundaries and makes space for alternatives.

Higher education will not be transformed by improved platforms or more data. It will require new structures, created through deliberate design. Tucker’s project failed in the short term, but it revealed what was possible. The same clarity is needed now.

Timpano

In the 1996 film Big Night, brothers Primo and Secondo prepare an elaborate dinner in a final attempt to save their struggling restaurant. The centerpiece is the timpano—a layered dish of pasta, meatballs, eggs, and cheese, baked into a large, intricate mold. The meal is prepared with precision and care and meant to impress a restaurant critic. Despite the effort, the anticipated guest never arrives, and the restaurant is not saved.

The final scene of the film shifts away from the spectacle. Secondo wakes early and makes a simple omelet. He shares it with Primo. They eat silently. This moment, not the elaborate dinner, becomes the emotional resolution of the film. It is quiet, unadorned, and centered on presence rather than performance.

Higher education today often emphasizes large-scale initiatives, high-visibility platforms, and performative change. Institutions announce strategic plans, integrate new technologies, and position themselves as leaders in innovation. These gestures resemble the timpano: complex, ambitious, and designed to impress. But they do not always address the deeper needs of teaching and learning.

Outovation offers a different orientation. It values simplicity that is intentional. It supports structures that prioritize care, attention, and presence over spectacle. This can be seen in models like Deep Springs College, where students participate in manual labor, self-governance, and rigorous academic study. The college has no student affairs staff; students make key decisions themselves. It is isolated by design, and grounded in three equal commitments: labor, governance, and intellectual life.

Deep Springs has also faced legal and cultural challenges. In 2011, its trustees voted to admit women. A group of alumni sued, citing the college’s founding trust. The case went through multiple court decisions before a California appeals court upheld the trustees’ decision in 2017. Coeducation began the following year. The conflict made clear that Deep Springs was not designed to maintain tradition for its own sake. It was built to evolve.

Other institutions also demonstrate structural alternatives. St. John’s College centers its curriculum on the Great Books. The college eliminates majors, electives, lectures, and textbooks. Instead, it organizes learning around shared reading and discussion. Students read texts in the original language and pursue ideas through dialogue rather than delivery.

Minerva University presents another model. It is fully online and globally distributed. Students move between cities while taking synchronous, seminar-style classes. There are no physical campuses and no conventional course structures. The model emphasizes cognitive science, cross-cultural learning, and deliberate engagement with technology.

These institutions do not improve upon the dominant model. They replace it. Each begins from a different assumption about the purpose of higher education. They prioritize transformation over transaction, depth over scale, and intentional design over inherited forms.

Outovation draws from these examples. It does not suggest that every institution replicate them, but it does call for a shift in mindset. Complexity is not always a measure of value. Some of the most meaningful educational experiences emerge from designs that are focused, coherent, and grounded in human connection.

The timpano in Big Night is memorable, but the omelet conveys something more lasting. In education, as in food, not everything has to be elaborate to be significant. A strong course, like a shared meal, often succeeds because it is simple, well-constructed, and made with care.

References

Bunn, P. (2023, March 3). Blue books in the age of AI. Mere Orthodoxy. https://mereorthodoxy.com/blue-books-in-the-age-of-ai/

Gould, L. (Director). (1996). Big night [Film]. Rysher Entertainment.

Jaffe, S. (2021). Work won’t love you back: How devotion to our jobs keeps us exploited, exhausted, and alone. Bold Type Books.

Laughlin, T. (Director). (1971). Billy Jack [Film]. Warner Bros.

Malaguzzi, L. (1993). History, ideas, and basic philosophy: An interview with Lella Gandini. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education (pp. 49–98). Ablex.

Neill, A. S. (1960). Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing. Hart Publishing Company.

Staley, D. J. (2019). Alternative universities: Speculative design for innovation in higher education. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wall Street Journal. (2023, September 1). The blue book strikes back: How college professors are fighting AI with paper exams.

https://www.wsj.com

Westbrook, F. (Director). (2014). The Land [Documentary film]. Play Free Productions.