‘Remixing is tasty’ (Gideon Burton, https://www.flickr.com/ photos/ wakingtiger/ 3156791341, CC BY SA 2.0)

Remixing is the art of copying, adapting, transforming, reorganizing, and/or remaking existing materials to produce something new (Katz, 2024). The process of remixing empowers one to be creative and enhance how they reuse existing materials.

In education, teachers and students depend on several instructional materials to help improve the teaching and learning process. The principle of remixing in education emphasizes the adaptation and integration of existing ideas to enhance curriculum design, pedagogy, and assessment. This allows teachers to modify existing curriculum by engaging in borrowing, adapting, and merging concepts and /or ideas from various sources, including technology, to meet diverse student needs, create innovative learning experiences, and enhance learning outcomes (Meidi Meidi, 2011).  This implies that teachers gather information from multiple resources and adopt or adapt it to their classroom context.

Remixing materials can provide teachers and students with opportunities to access resources without limitations while expanding their applicability, trying to align their teaching with the needs of students and promoting inclusivity (Swancutt et al., 2020). The principles of remixing in an educational context can also help improve students’ ability to navigate, modify, and ethically use digital resources. In addition, it can challenge students to find innovative solutions by remixing and iterating on ideas. In terms of pedagogy, teachers can use their pedagogical content knowledge to critique and possibly adapt their instructional strategies to ensure that the lessons or content they intend to teach are contextually relevant for their students. When teaching, teachers can adapt various techniques and resources they came across from other sources to scaffold teaching and learning activities in their classroom context. Through the use of various scaffolding techniques, teachers can better understand how their instructional modifications and adaptations influence learning, which can, in turn, lead to a more unified approach between how the curriculum is planned and its final implementation in the classroom.

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Conversely, while adaptation is essential for meeting diverse needs, it can also lead to inconsistencies in curriculum delivery if not aligned with overarching educational standards. This highlights the need for ongoing professional development and support for teachers in their adaptation efforts.

Remixing assessment practices could involve adjusting assessment policies, documents, contents, and components to align with current real-world educational tools and practices. This could include how teachers repurpose the use of technology to assess how students tell stories, carry out scientific investigations, and develop new artifacts based on existing ideas. It could also include using digital platforms to give students the same worksheets that would have been done traditionally. Doing this will not only assess the students’ subject matter knowledge but also how they navigate the online platform, share ideas or resources online, and all that. However, I believe that how teachers remix educational materials might depend on factors like educational policies, personal beliefs, and possible collaborative frameworks that support teacher adaptation.

The practice of remixing in education is increasingly relevant with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which offers tools for educators to reproduce instructional materials and content effectively. Studies have shown how the use of AI teachers can remix established curriculum by incorporating AI tools to support diverse learning needs, particularly in special education contexts (McMahon & Firestone, 2024). Using AI tools to remix learning content has actually promoted the creation of adaptive learning systems that help teachers tailor educational content to individual student needs (Sumartono et al., 2025). Using AI tools has also encouraged collaboration to refine assessment methods, contents, and learning outcomes among teachers.

Benefits of adaptive learning (Image from Anand Choudhary)

To reiterate an argument from the video “Remix is the art of copying”, however, the act of copying has always been stigmatized in education and often associated with negative connotations like plagiarism. However, the use of advanced learning technologies like AI, simulations, coding, and robotics platforms seems to promote more of the process of copying, debugging, and re-creating ideas. Thus, copying can serve as a valuable learning tool, particularly in programming and design contexts.

I think the issue of copying can be right and wrong depending on the context in which it been practiced. In a programming context, it can be used as a constructive tool to help students understand complex concepts. In design thinking, it could enhance creativity and innovation if properly modified to create something new. Nevertheless, I think there is a need for more education or guidelines on the various ways copying can be done correctly and constructively in the form of remixing and incorrectly in forms that can be connoted as wrong intent or academic dishonesty. Remixing can be seen as a legitimate form of creativity and innovation, fostering collaboration rather than discouraging it.

References

Lin, H. & Fishman, B. (2009). Scaffolding teacher adaptation by making design intent explicit. In Dimitracopoulou, A., O’Malley, C., Suthers, D., & Reimann, P. (Eds.), Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Practices: CSCL2009 Community Events Proceedings (pp. 159-161). Rhodes, Greece: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Meidl, T., & Meidl, C. (2011). Curriculum integration and adaptation: Individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Current Issues in Education, 14(1).

Swancutt, L., Medhurst, M., Poed, S., & Walker, P. (2020). Making adjustments to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. In Inclusive education for the 21st century (pp. 208-243). Routledge.