Research Update: 8 papers on AI in Education you need to know for 2026   In this episode, Ray and Dan provide a rapid-fire rundown of the most significant research papers hitting the AI in Education space so far in 2026. After a series of news-heavy episodes, the hosts catch up on the data behind synthetic avatars, grading accuracy, and the psychological biases we hold against AI.   Key highlights include:   Synthetic Lecturers: Exploring stakeholder perspectives on digital twins and the emotional reaction to the term Deepfake in academia.   The Grading Gap: Why ChatGPT tends to be more sycophantic and generous with weak work compared to human instructors.   The Disclosure Penalty: New findings from 16 experiments showing why humans devalue creative writing the moment they know AI is involved.   Prompting Hacks: The "Groundhog Day" method 😂 Why simply repeating your prompt twice can boost accuracy across 70 different AI systems.   Tools for Researchers: Insights into Jasper Roe's research checklist and the "Paper Banana" tool for automating scientific diagrams.   Links to all the research papers discussed 

• Can synthetic avatars replace lecturers? An exploratory international study of higher education stakeholder perceptions|
  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41239-025-00568-4 
  
  
• Who grades best? Comparing ChatGPT, peer, and instructor evaluations across varying levels of student project quality
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2025.2588682?src= 
  
  
• The Artificial Intelligence Disclosure Penalty: Humans Persistently Devalue AI-Generated Creative Writing
  https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001889 
• The older "Transparency Dilemma" paper referenced too:
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597825000172 
  
  
• Asking generative artificial intelligence the right questions improves writing performance
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X25000141?via%3Dihub 
  
  
• When AI only asks: how question-driven dialogue shapes prewriting in the classroom
  https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2026.1740044/full 
  
  
• Prompt Repetition Improves Non-Reasoning LLMs
  https://arxiv.org/html/2512.14982v1 
  
  
• How to Use Generative AI in Educational Research
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/how-to-use-generative-ai-in-educational-research/916142E735B678F86A59240BFE651F5C  
  
  
• PaperBanana: Automating Academic Illustration for AI Scientists
  https://dwzhu-pku.github.io/PaperBanana/
  https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23265