I attended today’s EmpowerED session when I saw a colleague from our London Campus, Viji Jayasundara, was presenting on the ‘Science of Compassion in the Age of AI’. It was a good talk on the nature of that part of the work of an educator in which humans excel, and Generative AI is unlikely to be able to replace. Namely, the skills related to compassion and empathy. Definitely some things I can take away and add into my own sessions on instructional design, accessibility, etc. The screenshot above is from Viji’s presentation, a checklist of verbal and non-verbal signals for effective communication such as using “inclusive eye-contact to include everyone to the group task”.
The first talk was from Gil Dekel at Southampton, “AI is Not a Football Team”, and argued that AI technology isn’t something to be supported or decried, but that we needed to be able to understand the benefits while managing the risks. I wasn’t entirely convinced by Gil’s argument, as there was no consideration to the damage being done by GenAI technology, both to the environment and to the human creators who are being disempowered by the very technology that has been built upon their stolen work.
Following Viji was Adele Cushing from Birkbeck was presented on their experience of using Teachermatic to assist with assessment and feedback. Adele acknowledged the controversy of using AI in this area, but reported that staff said it helped them to cope with marking fatigue and to ensure consistency. Some of their staff were doing their feedback ‘the old-fashioned way’, and then comparing their work with Teachermatic’s feedback.
Finally, Stuart Parkin from Manchester Metropolitan University talked about “Tackling Barriers to Active Learning with the Active Learning Spectrum”. This was a really interesting talk, about how students learn better when actively engaged in the process, rather than simply watching or listening to a lecture. Stuart and colleagues have created a tool, an Active Learning Spectrum, plotting different types of learning activity to how simple or complex they are, with examples and research on the benefits of each.
You know I attended this one because I got a certificate. (Never mind that I missed the first session due to an overlapping meeting, and waited for it to be available on their YouTube later.)