AI hype is driving interest in longer term impacts in all sectors of society. Education is not immune. For academics, administrators, and staff, the rapid pace of development of generative AI, coupled with industry driven declarations of how education will change, requires a thoughtful, nuanced, research-informed response.
GRAILE is launching a 12-month speaker series: Sensemaking Lectures. Each month, a speaker will frame a theme of discussion and conversation. Following the lecture, discussions will be held reviewing important literature and exploring implications in educational settings. These discussions will happen asynchronously, with periodic Zoom discussions, with a global community of interested researchers.
2024 Sessions
April 22, 2024 at 5pm EST
AI-based nudges for learning from videos – Dr Antonija Tanja Mitrović
Videos are widely used for learning, but in formal and informal settings. However, numerous studies show that to learn effectively while watching videos, students need to engage actively with video content. We have developed an active video watching platform (AVW-Space) to facilitate engagement with video content by providing means for constructive learning. In this talk, I will discuss the features of AVW-Space and our experiences in using this platform for teaching soft skills. The initial studies with AVW-Space on presentation skills showed that only students who commented on videos and who rated comments written by their peers have improved their understanding of the target soft skill. In order to foster deeper engagement, we designed AI-based nudges, which encourage students to write more and higher-quality comments. The findings from the studies we performed show the effectiveness of nudges. We found significant differences in engagement when nudges were provided. Furthermore, there is a causal effect of nudges on the interaction time, the total number of comments written and the number of high-quality comments, as well as on learning. Finally, participants exposed to nudges reported higher perceived learning.
Dr Antonija (Tanja) Mitrovic is a full professor at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She is the leader of ICTG (Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group). Dr Mitrovic received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Nis, Yugoslavia, in 1994. She is an associate editor of the following journals: Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning (RPTEL), International Journal on Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED) and Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS). She is a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education (APSCE), Distinguished member of ACM, and senior member of AAAI and IEEE. She was awarded the Distinguished Researcher Award in 2011 by APSCE.
Dr Mitrovic’s primary research interests are in student modeling. ICTG has developed a number of constraint-based intelligent tutoring systems in a variety of domains, which have been thoroughly evaluated in real classrooms, and proven to be highly effective. These systems provide adaptive support for acquiring both problem-solving skills and meta-cognitive skills. Although most of the ITSs developed by ICTG support students learning individually in areas such as database querying (SQL-Tutor), database design (EER-Tutor and ERM-Tutor), data normalization (NORMIT), there are also constraint-based tutors for object-oriented software design and collaborative skills, various engineering topics (thermodynamics, mechanics), training to interpret medical images and language-learning. ICTG has also developed ASPIRE, a full authoring and deployment environment for constraint-based tutors. Her recent research focuses on AI-based support for active learning from videos.
Upcoming sessions (Date TBA)
Title: TBA
Wayne Holmes
Having been involved in education throughout his life, Wayne brings a critical studies perspective to the connections between AI and education, and their ethical, human and social justice implications. His recent publications include “Artificial Intelligence in Education. Promise and Implications for Teaching and Learning.” (2019), “State of the Art and Practice in AI in Education” (2022), “The Ethics of AI in Education: Practices, Challenges and Debates” (2022), and, for UNESCO, “AI and Education: Guidance for Policy-makers.” (2021).
Title: TBA
Vania Dimitrova
Vania Dimitrova leads research activity on human-centred artificial intelligence which builds intelligent systems that help people make sense of data, take decisions in complex settings, expand their knowledge, learn from experience, and develop self-regulation skills. Her research explores the use of data and knowledge models to get insights into user-generated content, understand users and influence behaviour, capture knowledge and support information exploration. She is currently President of the International AI in Education Society and Co-Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Medical Diagnosis and Care.
She is Associate Editor of the International Journal of AI in Education, and Frontiers of AI: AI for Human Learning and Behavior Change. She was Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (IEEE-TLT) and a member of the editorial boards for the personalisation journal (UMUAI).
Past Events (see playlist below)
| Feb 22nd 2024 | Supporting and Developing Learners’ Metacognition and Meta-affect | Benedict du Boulay |
| Feb 5th 2024 | The AI University | Donald Clarke |
| May 10th 2023 | Generating Chaos: A Futurist Considers AI Over the Next Decade | Bryan Alexander |
| June 2nd 2023 | Getting Ahead of Ourselves | Adrienne Williams |
| July 19th 2023 | A New Science of Learning with AI | Mike Sharples |
| Aug 8th 2023 | ChatGP-why: When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable? | Emily M. Bender |
| Oct 30th 2023 | Advancing the Science of Collaboration through AI | Dr. Nia Nixon (née Dowell) |
Past Events Playlist
Below are recordings of our past events. Toggle the player on the right hand side to view all our videos.