Framing Generative AI as EdTech
So far much of my year has been dominated by the widespread availability of generative AI apps, especially ChatGPT given my work in writing analytics. It’s been hectic but interesting connecting across the university, working closely with Kylie Readman (VP Education & Students) and my IML colleagues, to help prepare briefings and policy.
If you’re helping your institution develop responses to this, or are wondering as a researcher in EdTech/Learning Analytics/AIED how to engage, then you may be interested in:
- the UTS position statement on Effective Ethical Engagement with GenAI
- an evolving library from our LX.Lab of resources on AI in learning and teaching for academics with short and longer term ideas for adapting writing assessments
- the TEQSA/CRADLE webinar series (archive / my 8min talk/slides)
- …which was a compressed version of a longer research event I convened below
- thinking aloud about what it means right now, practically, to ask students to evidence their use of GenAI [LinkedIn/Twitter threads]
- …and why in the not too distant future of Human/AI co-writing — this may be the wrong way of thinking about it — and how learning analytics might help.
Framing Generative AI as EdTech
1 hr UTS webinar, 23 February 2023
Simon Buckingham Shum is a Professor of Learning Informatics & Director, Connected Intelligence Centre.
Baki Kocaballi is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science. He is actively researching Conversational Interfaces and Human-AI Interaction.
Shibani Antonette is a Lecturer in the TD School, and actively researching Automated Writing Feedback and AI tools for education.
Generative AI (GenAI) is being hailed as a tipping point in AI, but let’s be clear: when it comes to educational technologies (EdTech), we have not just landed on “terra nullius”. While apps such as ChatGPT and DALL-E were never developed explicitly as EdTech, like so many other interactive tools we use every day, that doesn’t mean they have no educational value when used well. It’s too early to have peer-reviewed evidence of ChatGPT’s educational effectiveness, but prior research in related areas offers both theory, evidence and practice. So in this session, we’ll locate ChatGPT in the broader research landscape. Experts in two key fields will share their work on Automated Writing Evaluation, and Conversational Interfaces, where ChatGPT sits right at the intersection. Sharing brief glimpses of this work, we aim to spark ideas around how we can build on such foundations, to promote effective, ethical engagement with GenAI and avoid going down dead-ends that are already known from pre-GenAI research. [slides]
