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.
2023 Sessions
September
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).
October 4th
Advancing the Science of Collaboration through AI
Dr. Nia Nixon (née Dowell)

Dr. Nia Nixon (née Dowell), Assistant Professor in Education UC-Irvine, is Vice President of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) and the Director of The Language and Learning Analytics Laboratory (LaLA-Lab). The LaLA Lab includes researchers with backgrounds in cognitive science, information, psychology, and statistics. The LaLA-Lab takes a multi-disciplinary approach that builds on theories and methods in the cognitive sciences, human-computer interaction, and computational social sciences. Dr. Dowell and her team conduct research on socio-cognitive and affective processes across a range of educational technology interaction contexts and develop computational models of these processes and their relationship to learner outcomes.
November
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).
December
Soft skill development and AI
Antonija Tanja Mitrović

Mitrovic did her MSc and PhD at the University of Niš in Niš, Serbia. Before moving to the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand and rising to the level of professor.
Mitrovic specialises in artificial intelligence methods in online-learning systems, particularly in modelling the students’ understanding based on previous questions and using the model to select future questions.
Past 2023 Events (see playlist below)
May 10th | Generating Chaos: A Futurist Considers AI Over the Next Decade | Bryan Alexander |
June 2nd | Getting Ahead of Ourselves | Adrienne Williams |
July 19th | A New Science of Learning with AI | Mike Sharples |
August 8th | ChatGP-why: When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable? | Emily M. Bender |
2024 Sessions
January
Title: TBA
Benedict du Boulay

Benedict du Boulay is an Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Engineering and Informatics at the University of Sussex and Visiting Professor at University College London.
He has two main research areas. The first is the Psychology of Programming where his main work has been in the area of novices learning programming and the development of tools to assist that process. The second is the application of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Here he is particularly interested in issues around modelling and developing students’ metacognition and motivation.
He was President (2015-2017) and is currently Treasurer and Secretary of the International Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education and an Associate Editor of its International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. He has edited/written 9 books and written some 190 papers in the areas indicated above.
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February
Title: TBA
Olaf Zawacki-Richter

Olaf Zawacki-Richter is a professor of educational technology at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences and Director of the Center for Open Education Research (COER). Olaf has over 25 years of professional experience in the field of open, distance, and digital education.
Dr. Zawacki-Richter has authored over 150 journal articles and edited several books – all published open access. He is an Associate Editor of the “Online Learning Journal” (OLJ) and a member of the editorial board of the “International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning” (IRRODL), “Open Learning”, the “Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education” (Turkey), and the “The Journal for Higher Education Development” (Austria). In 2022 Olaf published together with Professor Insung Jung the open-access Handbook of Open, Distance, and Digital Education (ODDE) in Springer’s Major Reference Series.
Playlist Past Events
Below are recordings of our past events. Toggle the player on the right hand side to view all our videos.