I doubt many parts of learning and teaching have not already been touched by the advances in AI technology, from the ability to answer questions posed in a course as part of the end-of-course assessment to creating authentic and realistic videos of the educator, based on a short clip of their voice and appearance. While there are many people better than me looking at the ethics and impact of these technologies (it’s challenging to keep up with the daily news and views, but I’m trying and storing what I find on Flipboard), I am exploring the use of AI as part of the course design process. This ..read more

I heard education and universities described as a ‘system of systems’ today, and this brought together many different strands of thought and experience from my 17-year experience in higher education. It made sense, and I feel I have a better understanding. Certainly, it’s better than it was before. This phrase was spoken by Professor George Siemens in a recording of ‘10 minute chats on Generative AI’ at Monash University. “George discusses the general lack of strong action by leadership in Higher Education in responding to the emergence of widely available and embedded AI technologies. He sug ..read more

I’ve heard this a lot in the last week or so, and it seems it’s taking off – Human In The Loop. HITL. Specifically aimed at the implementation (and acceptance) of AI in the workplace or education settings, it means that we should remember and keep the human as part of the process, to not accept the outcome of the AI instruction or interaction as a point of fact. This is not the first time we should consider HITL. The internet has given rise to the availability of a platform where every view or opinion can (and is) presented as more than just an opinion. If you use Facebook I’m sure you’ve seen ..read more

Everywhere I look now I see a review for a product or service. Amazon, Waterstones, hotels, Facebook Marketplace, Expedia, Google, Screwfix, FutureLearn, Coursera, etc. Even my local plumber who only wants small jobs (leaky tap) and nothing too big (he’s semi-retired and just does it because he likes to keep busy) has a rating/review system on his single webpage now. What’s the most bizarre aspect of this rush to add a review facility to a website or product (Amazon, I’m looking at you here) are the follow-up emails on something I ordered … and the ‘review your purchase’ email often lands in m ..read more

If you have these three anywhere in your life – friends, family, colleagues, managers, leaders – then you are immediately being prevented from achieving your full potential. The difficulty is remembering that it is not you and it’s not your fault. Left unchallenged the behaviour of others will have a detrimental effect on you – it will take hold, sap your confidence, diminish your motivation, and destroy your ability to think creatively for yourself. You will find yourself relying on the person or persons who exhibit these traits to control you and your thoughts. Yes, this is toxic. While taki ..read more

With some 10 blog posts under my belt, starting with a trial run of using ChatGPT and prompts to modernise a Thomas Hardy classic through to the advent of ‘conversational agents‘, I thought I ought to at least look at the limits of AI in education. Based on the previous 10 blog posts, I asked ChatGPT about its limits and “what do you think (1) AI will never be able to do, (2) AI will never be accepted to allowed to do, and (3) Ai will never replace?” Note: As with some of my recent AI-related posts, I have beenusing ChatGPT 4 to get me going and to help me ‘research’ the topic. What you see b ..read more

My last AI-related post, about prompt engineering and curriculum design, took me down a little sideroad as I worked on it, and now I know where it’s going. Note: As with some of my recent AI-related posts, I have beenusing ChatGPT 4 to get me going and to help me ‘research’ the topic. What you see below is something that is me and ChatGPT, prompts have been modified and tweaked to form the article here. Before we start I want to declare that, until recently, I have avoided ‘chatbots’. My experience with them has been the kind of ‘bot you find in a banking app, website customer support, or an ..read more

My thoughts on prompt engineering continue to develop as I read about what others are doing in this space. I want to move on from my previous attempts to understand the landscape of AI and the impact of prompt engineering and to look in more detail. on the impact it can have on curriculum design. My previous posts have covered prompt structure and techniques, adaptation and challenges. I’ve looked at the pitfalls of ensuring accountability as part of our responsible use of AI, and my last post was on the practical innovations of AI use in an educational setting. So let’s bring it back a little ..read more

Inspired by Tom Whitwell’s annual collection of things learned, here are my ’52 things I learned in 2023′. The list is usually presented under the comment that ‘no explanation or context of what it is about the article I learned, just a title and link of something important to me personally or professionally in [year]’, but this year, like others before, has been quite the challenge. 2023 started, for me, on the back of a move out of higher education, joining Edvanza in November 2022. Within a week of starting news broke that Edvanza’a parent company was going to merge us with another new acqu ..read more

Once there was RSS and RSS feeders. Then there was the Twitter ‘favourite’ option (before it was changed to the ‘heart’ icon). Now, with Twitter in free-fall and a platform I no longer use, I needed to find an alternative to find and save content. In the summer of 2023, I returned to my old account on Flipboard. I never really used it before (I can’t even remember when I set it up) but now it seems it’s somewhere I can store useful links and articles as well as use it for finding new sources as well. Some background – Flipboard is a “content aggregation and curation platform” that produces cus ..read more