Artificial intelligence (AI) provokes mixed reactions, both positive and negative. Many institutions are wary of its implications. They question how to prevent misuse, like plagiarism in educational settings, and how to get to grips with the technology. Having said that, organisations generally recognise AI’s advantages, which can be significant and include tailored content and advanced data analysis.
In learning, AI can help deliver impactful experiences, complement human connection and interaction, and assist educators with real-time feedback, personalised learning, adaptive assessment, grading and identifying learning gaps. It has the potential to enhance the learning experience and make course creation easier, potentially changing the learning landscape for educators and students.
Getting started with new technology can be challenging, though, so it helps to hear from the experiences of others. That’s why we made enhancing education with AI the subject of our recent webinar featuring:
- Rob Telfer, D2L’s director of higher education in EMEA
- Dr Carmen Miles, digital education strategic lead at De Montfort University
- Dr Chris Trace, head of digital learning at the University of Surrey
- Stuart Samuels, flexible learning manager, Nottingham Trent University (NTU)
Tap into the complete webinar for the views of our experienced panel. You’ll discover:
Benefits to students of generative AI
Carmen speaks of the empowering benefits to students of being able to generate a summary from a webinar using AI. For neurodiverse students in particular, Carmen sees the value in a tool that can analyse content and present a summary quickly in particular formats.
Stuart meanwhile discusses the benefit of AI for 24/7 flexible, anytime learning. He speaks about NTU’s pilot of a virtual tutor, which allows students to ask questions at any time of day or night when their actual tutors may not be available.
Chris offers a similar view, speaking about simulated conversations that veterinary students at the University of Surrey can have to help them work through medical problems. “There has never really been a more exciting time to be a student or an educator than right now,” he concludes.
Our panellists recognise that AI offers a range of benefits, with Stuart revealing what excites him the most about it: “The opportunity for the personalised adaptive learning journey where the next set of materials is presented to the student based on their response to the previous set. The possibility of adding differentiation at every stage of learning seems really positive.”
Benefits to educators
Our panellists explore a range of AI benefits for educators too, principally around saving time in busy schedules and helping with creative digital content production.
Chris reflects that much of academics’ workload comprises of admin and tasks not directly related to students. AI can help by, for example, streamlining content creation and assessments. Carmen agrees that timesaving features through the learning platform, even just being able to repurpose content, is a benefit but so too is the opportunity for innovation that AI opens up. This, Carmen suggests, includes pedagogies that are time consuming to set up, such as scenario- and problem-based learning approaches.
Stuart talks about another pilot that’s about to launch in which NTU created content using D2L Lumi, an AI-powered feature for building better content, assessments and activities. D2L Lumi helps content creators do things like generate quizzes and assignments from course content, create practice questions, and automate answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).
NTU’s pilot aims to help content creators produce more engaging online content without needing to learn complex tools or have knowledge of the “behind-the-scenes” elements that AI can take care of. That way, Stuart says, educators have more time to put into more meaningful pursuits.
How to navigate the options when choosing AI tools
When new technologies emerge, the market often offers up an array of tools customers must choose between to find the benefits they want. Where do you start? Our panel offers their thoughts on how to narrow down the field.
Chris makes the point that it is important to start with what it is you want to achieve. All too often, people start with the solution—the tool they’ve heard about and want to use. “We should be advocating for better education,” Chris says. “So, when there’s a sound educational need, or something we’re trying to achieve, work through the steps.”
Chris goes on to say that acquiring technology without a plan can result in a myriad of tools at use in the organisation that don’t talk to each other or fit into the system, and that could have hidden costs.
Stuart advocates for questioning the benefits the tool will deliver for students and tutors and for making sure these are measurable. He goes on to mention the sustainability considerations of AI, which he suggests are still emerging, but which all institutions will wish to understand.
Discover more
This webinar on AI covers a lot of ground from education’s response to and adoption of AI to how our panel see AI evolving, including the impact it could potentially have on curriculum planning in education. Watch the recording for the full discussion.
D2L’s events cover a broad range of topics that impact learning and include examples of best practice. Find out what’s coming up on our events page.
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