Creative applications of AI in Education

This is an open access book, published by Springer (2024) - titled - Creative applications of AI in education - and edited by A. Urmeneta and M. Romero.

There are 12 chapters with five opening/general chapters, three from the K-12 sector and 4 from the higher education sector. 

Of note is the chapter on 'AI in professional and vocational education' which has a case study on automotive mechanics' training (which is very brief). 

All in, worth a browse, with some transferable principles across to vocational education. 

Practical pedagogy

 Book published in 2019 by Routledge. Mike Sharple's draws on the innovative pedagogy series published yearly by the Open University since 2012.

The book 'Practical pedagogy'  works through the various pedagogies sorted into 6 categories. 

- Personalisation includes adaptive teaching, spaced learning, personal inquiry, stealth assessments and translanguage.

- Connectivity introduces crossover learning, seamless learning, incidental learning, learning from gaming, geo-learning, learning through social media, and navigating knowledge.

-Reflection summarises 'explore first' teachback, learning through argumentation, computational thinking, learning from animations, learning to learn. assessment for learning and formative analytics.

- Extension has threshold concepts, learning through storytelling, learning through wonder, learning in remote science labs, context-based learning, event-based learning, and learning for the future.

- Embodiment includes embodied learning, immersive learning, maker culture, bricolage, and design thinking.

- Scale refers to massive open social learning, crowd learning, citizen inquiry, rhizomatic learning, reputation management, open pedagogy, humanistic knowledge-building and communities. Some discussion of the contents of the book found here.

The last chapter discusses 'pedagogies in practice'.

Practical AI for instructors and students - A Wharton interactive crash course

 This series of five videos, from the Wharton School, provides good overviews of integrating AI into education. Each video is around 11 minutes. The contexts are for higher and compulsory education. 

The first video introduces the important concepts of AI. The second covers Gen AI and large language models.

The next three videos provide demonstrations, examples and discussion on prompt engineering, how to use AI as a teacher, and how AI can be used as a personal tutor by students. All emphasise the importance of prompt engineering which in turn relies on learners' foundational literacies and subject conceptual knowledge to be able to evaluate AI outputs and then work out the correct prompts to use, to improve the relevance and quality of outputs. The ability of 'personalised tutors' utilising AI will need to be examined with respect to the academic and foundational literacies required to access the power of AI to support personalised learning environments (PLEs). 

The two presenters Associate Professor Ethan Mollick (faculty director) and Dr. Lilach Mollick (Director of Pedagogy) provide quick overviews and encourage teachers to draw on their experience to make the most that Gen AI offers. 

Two recent papers summarise the work undertaken which are applied in the videos:

Mollick, Ethan R. and Mollick, Lilach, Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts (March 17, 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4391243 

Mollick, Ethan R. and Mollick, Lilach, Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts (June 12, 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4475995

innovating pedagogy 2023 report

 This year's Innovating Pedagogy report provides some good overviews of emergent pedagogies. The report is compiled yearly by the Open University in the UK, this year, also with contributions from the University of Cape Town. The project's home page provides links to previous reports, going back a decade plus to 2012. 

Of note, is that Generative AI is the first pedagogy discussed. Gen AI is also mentioned in the last pedagogy - entangled pedagogies of learning spaces - with some connections to the rhizomic nature of learning as people tap into a range of resources and viewpoints availed through the internet. Of note to vocational learning also is the summary of thoughts and concepts on multimodal pedagogy, although it focuses on communications across many modes, rather than the learning of multimodal skills.

A good overview providing discussion as AI impacts across all educational sectors.