Whitireia and Weltec teaching and research hui - notes

 At the Teaching and Research hui in Wellington, convened at Whitirea and Weltec today. I was invited to provide a keynote on AI and presented on our AI projects, with an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning. There was much to cover and I hope the general message got across. AI is here to stay, we need to apply it to supporting teaching and learning, teacher AI literacy is a pre-requisite and they then need to integrate AI literacies and use AI in a structured way to support teaching and learning.

I then stayed on for several of the sessions (across 6 streams) before leaving for the airport.

I kept to the technology, innovation and business stream as there were presentations across this that had relevance to our work on AI and programme development.

The conference began with a mihi whakatau (Māori welcome). Marie Merdan (research manager/ head of academic success) covered the usual housekeeping/safety briefings. and Leanne Ivil  Operations manager / director of teaching and learning welcomed the participants.  

I then presented the keynote on ‘AI in vocational education: The journey to personalised learning environments’ with an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning and the potential for AI to support personal learning environments. I shared the journey thus far to build capability amongst our teachers, raise AI literacies with both students and teachers, and the challenges presented to integrate AI into various programmes of learning.

Then attended one stream of the presentations.

Akaike’s Information Criterion for Linearly Separable Clusters presented by Maria Eda Arado (presenter) with Roberto Padua. Technical topic on dataset management. Interesting from the point of view of how data is used/drawn on/organised etc.  across various industries and AI. Clustering of data is applied towards optimising data handling. Used the example of marine reserve ecosystems. Shared how clustering evolved and the most popular partitioning techniques, their challenges and some viable solutions.

Adopting AI Technology in Architecture Practices in New Zealand: A Practical Roadmap presented by Minh Nguyen. Discussed if there is future for architects in the age of AI. Overviewed the history of innovation in architectural design technology, From manual (pre-1980) to CAD (up to 2000s) to BIM (2000s), programmable design (2010s) and AI powered design (2020s). Discussed pros and cons of the parametric design process which is complex and takes a lot of learning and how AI supports and accelerates this process. Shared the ways AI can be applied to architecture. Presented the challenges of incorporating AI including costs, capability and the difficulties with reliability. A solution is to use Open Source AI architectural tools. To develop AI literacies with students, identify tasks into visual and text-based tools and help students coordinate these as and when required. Important to realise trust and relationships which are human traits.

Scaffolded Teaching Approach for Improved Engagement and Success in Engineering with Gopal Krishan (presenter), Christy Mathew, Maria Eda Arado & Glynis Valli. Shared a pedagogical intervention, used over the past few years, to increase student success and engagement with engineering mathematics. Traditional high-stakes exams cause high failure rates and stress, a more learner-centred approach is required, shared ways to help reduce stress and improve success. Introduced bi-weekly small tests, scaffolded the sequence of theory, practice and experiment. Placed a focus on feedback, consistency and designed for learning. Shared increased success rates from undertaking the shift with average marks increasing across the board. Student feedback concurred that stress was reduced and understanding improved. The approach is scalable and replicable through using frequent low stakes tests which reduce stress, builds confidence and increases success.

Poster presentations along with brunch followed where I caught up with two researchers (Dr. Brenda Saris and Alice Moore) conducting studies on bridging the learning/cultural divide when teaching Chinese students in the creative disciplines. 

Then a professional development session on ‘Plan smarter. Teach creatively. Hands-On with Copilot’ Alex Craven, Mike Laing, Angela Yates and Josh Clemen. A session for beginners using the standard Copilot365. A Kahoot ice breaker quiz starts the session with questions on level one AI literacy – what is AI? Summarised key points on what is Gen AI and how it can/cannot be used and the need to use Copilot for its corporate security. Went through the differences between the premium and vanilla Copilot365. Demonstrated standard ways to use Copilot to support teaching and admin work tasks.

I leave for the airport partway through the above to travel back down South to Dunedin for OPSITAra, which is the research hui for Otago Polytechnic, Southern Institute of Technology and Ara Institute of Canterbury.