Our National centre for AI in tertiary education summer event took place on 24th June 2022. It was an opportunity to show our progress over the last year and share our plans for next year.
The day started with an introduction to the work of the national centre for AI in tertiary education. Covering our aims, our approach around pilots, information, deep dives and events. We thevn discussed our plans for the next year. We will focus on helping with readiness for AI. And continue with pilots and deep dives around key challenges areas. We also discussed how we aim to provide support and advice on emerging AI trends. We discussed the rise of foundational models, such as GPT-3 and how they might affect assessment. The environmental impact of AI, and advances in techniques in understanding how AI models work and what that might mean for education.
We then moved to a session focusing on the first of our pilots – a chatbot, based on Bolton College’s Ada. Covering how chatbots and digital assistants can add value to educational institutions. Aftab Hussain, architect of Bolton College’s Ada explained why and how they developed Ada. After this we moved to a panel session with Aftab, Chris Baldwin, Sandwell College and Shelagh McLachlan, Ayreshire college. We discussed insights and practicalities of implementing chatbots. A key learning point was the ongoing need to update and improve the question sets.
After a lunch break we continued with our pilots starting with Graide. Graide is an AI assisted assessment and feedback tool for STEM subjects. It will make suggestions based on previously graded answers, dynamically learning in as few as three responses. We covered the current pilot and roadmap plans for future Graide development.
Bodyswaps was our third pilot which focused on the intersection of AI and VR. Our pilot was on employability skills. Bodyswaps enables students to improve their interview skills. Students respond to AI personalised feedback from within the VR role play environment.
We finished with an overview of our deep dives, what we have learnt from them and plans for next year. We have identified over 40 user cases to date. Our summer focus is on enrolment and induction.
You can find recordings for all sessions here
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