2024 National Conference on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education

Jon Allen

Commercial Director Graide

Jon Allen is the Commercial Director at Graide - an AI powered knowledge assessment platform that reduces the time that tutors & educators spend marking work whilst improving the quality, consistency and timeliness of feedback to learners.

Talk Title: Graide – AI assisted Essay Grading

Demo and discussion around Graide uses AI as a co-pilot to reduce marking times and improve feedback to students - from STEM to AI assisted Essay Grading.

• Jon Allen on LinkedIn

Sue Attewell

Co-lead the National centre for AI/JISC

Sue Attewell is the co-leader of the National Centre for AI in tertiary education where she is actively involved in driving the advancement of AI capabilities within our member institutions. The centre plays a critical role in this regard by providing thought leadership, piloting AI products, and conducting sector-focused research with a key focus on ensuring that AI adoption in the education sector is guided by ethical considerations, and responsible and inclusive practices creating an environment where AI technologies are utilized in a manner that benefits all learners.

Talk 1 title: GenAI and  the challenges of institutional adoption

Generational AI has real potential to change education, but with great promise comes great challenges. In this session we will explore the current state of GenAI in UK educational institutions, identify the key challenges and barriers to its adoption, and discuss some practical strategies to overcome hurdles. From ethical considerations and technical limitations to stakeholder resistance and policy implications.

Talk 2 title: Exploring Accessibility & AI in Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a key component of many assistive technologies. Recent advances in AI are now presenting a range of exciting opportunities, but also new challenges for the enhancement of accessibility in education. This session will explore some of the emerging ways AI, and in particular generative AI, tools are being used to enhance support for students and staff across the tertiary education sector. While also discussing the challenges of utilising these tools safely and effectively in this rapidly changing space.

Sue Attwell on LinkedIn

Michael Callaghan

Reader, Ulster University

Michael Callaghan is a Reader in Games and Multimedia at Ulster University. He is a world-leading and award winning academic in the emerging field of serious games and remote/virtual laboratories. He has published widely in the fields of serious games for engineering education, Virtual and Augmented Reality and remote and virtual laboratories with over 70+ peer-reviewed publications in these areas.

He has been principal investigator/co-investigator on funded projects from the AHRC, DETI, INVESTNI, INTERREG, JISC and the Higher Education Academy and carries out regular consultancy and academic enterprise activities in serious games and virtual worlds. He won the best paper award in 2008 and 2014 at the REV series of international conferences for his work in engineering education and was part of a team that won best short paper at @immersiveLRN, the 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network in 2020.

In 2016, he led a team of staff and students who were the overall winners of the 4th International Educational Games Competition held at the 10th European Conference on Games Based Learning in Paisley, Scotland. In 2021 he was part of a team that won best paper award at the IEEE TALE 2021 conference for the paper Serious Game for Medical Imaging in Fully Immersive Virtual Reality.

Workshop A

Beginner’s Guide to AI with exploration of the State of the Art.

This workshop will include an introduction to Generative AI with a number of practical exercises to get you started. You will be provided with links and materials to adapt for your own purposes, to help get acquainted with generative AI tools, and consider if and how you may incorporate using them into your everyday life, whether professional or personal.

Bring your own device.

Michael Callaghan on LinkedIn

Jeremy Carter

CEO SentiraXR

Jeremy Carter has over 25 years’ experience in the learning and assessment technology sector. He has held various board level positions at technology companies and is the CEO of SentiraXR.

Talk Title: The use of Generative AI for interacting with patient avatars

The talk will cover our development work of virtual reality training simulations for medical education and outline our experiences of using generative AI NLP.

Workshop: Generative AI, Virtual Reality, and Medical Training simulations: A live demo

We'll demonstrate a range of healthcare training simulations that will include medical history taking, tracheostomy, and drug delivery.

• Jeremy Carter on LinkedIn

Dr Martin Compton

King's College London

Martin has been an educator for over 30 years, affording him ample time to realise that it takes a lifetime of teaching to get the hang of it. In that time, he has had the privilege of teaching children, young people and adults. His teaching has spanned secondary schools, international schools, further education colleges and universities both in the UK and overseas.

In July 2023 he took up a post at King's College London where he was employed to lead on curriculum and assessment design but as it turned out he spent most of his time looking at ways in which the opportunities and threats of AI will necessitate changes to pedagogy, assessment and feedback practices across higher education. He is now the College Lead for AI in Education. He also loves painfully extended metaphors.

Talk title: The AI literacy frontier: boldly going together into the undiscovered country

A year beyond our initial first contact with ChatGPT, the Russell Group has set a course with their principles on generative AI's use in education, acting as an essential guide for the USS Academia. Foremost among these is the commitment to fostering AI literacy: an enterprise where universities pledge to equip students and staff for the journey ahead. This mission, however, navigates through sectors where perspectives on AI range from likely nemesis to potential prodigy.

Amidst the din of divergent voices, the necessity for critical, cohesive, and focused discourse in our scholarly collectives is paramount. In this talk Martin argues that we need to view AI and all associated opportunities and challenges as an undiscovered country where we have a much greater chance not only of survival in this strange new world but also of flourishing if we navigate it together. This challenge to the conventional knowledge hierarchies in higher education suggests genuine dialogue and collaboration are essential prerequisites to success.

Martin will chart the course he's pioneered at King’s College London, navigating through the nebula of complex AI narratives. He will share insights from a multifaceted strategy aimed at fostering AI understanding and literacy across the community of stakeholders in their endeavour to ensure the voyage is one of shared discovery.

• Dr Martin Compton on LinkedIn

Julien Denoel

Co-founder, Bodyswaps

Julien Denoel is an experienced Co-Founder in Immersive Technologies including AR/MR/VR/XR/AI/Metaverse/Web3.  Over the past 8 years, Julien has enabled the delivery of Virtual Reality solutions for global organisations such as Adidas, UEFA, Samsung or KPMG, and co-founded Bodyswaps, the leading VR platform for soft skills training. Julien is a regular speaker and a guest lecturer on immersive technologies at UAL: CSM, INSEEC London and CREA Geneve.

Talk title: Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for enhancing doctor-patient communication skills: A case study by the Royal Society of Medicine

This talk will showcase how VR and AI can create realistic and engaging scenarios for training healthcare practitioners in effective communication skills with patients and share our experience in designing, developing and deploying a module on Navigating Angry Conversations co-created in partnership with the Royal Society of Medicine. It will identify the key features and benefits of VR+AI for communication skills training in healthcare, discuss the practical and pedagogical challenges of implementing immersive technologies in healthcare education and evaluate the current feedback on the module so far

• Julien Denoel on LinkedIn

Dr Loretta Goff

University College Cork (UCC)

Dr Loretta Goff is the Academic Integrity Education Officer at University College Cork (UCC), based in the Skills Centre. She creates, manages, and delivers training and resources on academic integrity, academic misconduct, ethical use of generative AI, and AI and assessment for both students and staff at UCC.

Loretta also is also a member of Ireland’s National Academic Integrity Network (NAIN). Loretta led the National Forum Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE 2022) funded project “(AI)2ed: Academic Integrity and Artificial Intelligence”, which used a students-as-partners approach to experiment with generative AI in relation to assessment and learning design across disciplines, ultimately producing a Toolkit for the Ethical Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Learning and Teaching.

Talk Title: Academic Integrity and Generative AI in Teaching and Learning

While generative AI tools represent a serious threat to academic integrity when used inappropriately, they also present an opportunity for digitally enhanced learning, teaching and assessment when used in ways that do not bypass intended learning outcomes. It is vital that, as these tools become more ubiquitous, both students and educators are advised how to use them ethically and critically.

This talk will share the project design and results of the “(AI)2ed: Academic Integrity and Artificial Intelligence” research project, including guidance on maintaining academic integrity when using GenAI tools as well as discipline-specific case studies of use developed by student-staff partners that showcase assessment and learning design reflective of the changing landscape of higher education.

• Connect with Loretta Goff on Linkedin

Peter Kilcoyne

TeacherMatic, Director at Transform Education

Peter has worked in Further and Higher Education since 1986 as a Teacher, Curriculum Manager and Learning Technology Director. He is best known for setting up the Blended Learning Consortium in 2015 which has grown to include over 160 Further Education Colleges working together on developing online content and sharing best practice in all things digital.

In addition to his work in the UK Peter has worked on a range of international projects providing onsite support and training in the use of blended learning in Universities in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya and Zambia in partnership with Computeraid International. Peter is currently leading a World Bank funded project to develop a blended learning strategy for the Ministry of Education in Jordan.

Peter started developing TeacherMatic in October 2022 in partnership with 3 colleagues and with the support of the UFI VocTech Trust. Since its launch in April 2023 TeacherMatic has been adopted by over 30 schools, colleges and universities and has over 4500 active users.

Workshop title: Revolutionise Teaching with AI using TeacherMatic

TeacherMatic is an intuitive , user friendly platform designed to help educators make use of generative AI for planning, creating learning resources, developing assessments and building courses. This session will cover the thinking and philosophy behind TeacherMatic, show examples of how it can be used and share feedback from its user community. Participants will learn about how TeacherMatic can save them time as well as improve their creativity as educators.

Peter Kilcoyne on LinkedIn

Dr Charles Knight

Advance HE

Dr. Charles Knight is the Assistant Director of Knowledge and Innovation at Advance HE. He is leading the organisational response to AI and co-ordinating work looking at how AI can transform HE infrastructure, and business models and what the role of the human actor in an AI ubiquitous future.

Talk Title: Beyond Assessment - AI Frontiers in Higher Education

This talk will explore current Advance HE work with its global members on how HEIs are adapting to and making use of Generative AI in spheres beyond assessment. It will provide a snapshot of cutting-edge practices and provide some analysis of possible future directions for GAI in HEIs.

• Dr Charles Knight on LinkedIn

Joyce Mahon

PhD candidate, UCD

Joyce Mahon is a PhD candidate at University College Dublin, Ireland, specializing in the integration of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Pre-University Education. She earned her Master's degree in Data Science from South East Technological University, Ireland, and a Master's in Information and Communication Technology from the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Additionally, Joyce is qualified to teach a variety of post-primary subjects, such as Computer Studies, Mathematics, Accounting, and Business. With over two decades of teaching and lecturing experience spanning primary, post-primary, further, and higher education sectors, Joyce has most recently worked with Technological University Dublin and Laois Offaly Education and Training Board.

Talk title: Capabilities of Generative AI on Irish and UK Computer Science School Leaving Examinations

In recent years, the advancements in AI and Natural Language Processing have been nothing short of groundbreaking. With AI's growing footprint in education, there is a compelling need to understand how new AI tools fare in structured academic settings. In this talk, we will explore ‘How ChatGPT performs on recent A-Level Computer Science and the Leaving Certificate Computer Science examinations’.

• Joyce Mahon on LinkedIn

Hugh Meenagh

Microsoft Education Ireland

Hugh is an education specialist at Microsoft, supporting schools and organisations on their digital transformation journey. Having served as a school Principal for 6 year, he has 16 years in education and grounds much of his work in his experiences as an educator, school leader and digital educational transformation advocate.

Talk title:  AI - A Principal's Perspective

This talk will showcase how teachers and school leaders can start using Microsoft Copilot AI in their current practice, how learners are already using AI, and what all of this means for the future of education.

Hugh Meenagh on LinkedIn

Rory Meredith

Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation, Coleg y Cymoedd

Rory Meredith is the Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation at Coleg y Cymoedd, a prominent Further Education College in the South Wales valleys supporting the academic and professional growth of over 10,000 learners and 800 staff members across four distinct campuses.  Rory’s professional trajectory has seen him transition from a career as a former professional singer, songwriter, and music producer to that of a passionate innovation and future-focused educationalist, highlighted by his achievement as the first Welsh alumnus of the Singularity University Executive Programme in 2019.  Rory is an active member of Jisc’s National Centre for AI in tertiary education, helping to shape the future of AI in the education sector. His recent accomplishments include securing significant funding from the Welsh Government for the implementation of two ambitious AI projects, developed in strategic partnership with ICS.AI, aimed at transforming the learner recruitment process and enhance experiences through the development of a Teaching and Learning Copilot.

Talk title:  Evaluating and Implementing Generative AI for Learning and Teaching – Insights from Coleg y Cymoedd’s Journey.

This session will provide a practical approach to evaluating generative AI in education, based on the evolving experience of Coleg Y Cymoedd’s AI transformation journey using the SMART AI Learning and Teaching Copilots from ICS.AI.  Rory will share the journey towards AI transformation at the college, detailing how they’ve developed their AI vision into a practical project plan, including effective strategies for engaging colleagues and stakeholders, and how they navigated funding challenges for their evaluation projects. Martin will showcase the capabilities of the SMART: AI Copilot platform, bringing the potential of AI to life across student and educators use cases, including demonstrations of it in action.

Rory Meredith on LinkedIn

Martin Neale

Founder and CEO ICS, UK's first Microsoft AI Inner Circle Partner

As CEO of ICS.AI, Martin is an experienced entrepreneur and a visionary in digital AI innovation, with a track record of launching over 20 Microsoft-aligned technologies. Passionate about generative AI, he sees it as the key to the fifth industrial revolution. Martin's expertise propels the company’s innovation, transforming the UK public sector and revolutionising the entire university lifecycle. Martin is driven by the endless potential of AI, focusing on its transformative capabilities in the education sector. He strongly believes in the thoughtful and ethical integration of AI, aiming to provide personalised and immersive experiences. Under his leadership, ICS.AI stands at the forefront of AI innovation and is committed to unlocking new possibilities for educational institutions, driving them towards a future shaped by digital transformation.

Talk title:  Evaluating and Implementing Generative AI for Learning and Teaching – Insights from Coleg y Cymoedd’s Journey

This session will provide a practical approach to evaluating generative AI in education, based on the evolving experience of Coleg Y Cymoedd’s AI transformation journey using the SMART AI Learning and Teaching Copilots from ICS.AI.  Rory will share the journey towards AI transformation at the college, detailing how they’ve developed their AI vision into a practical project plan, including effective strategies for engaging colleagues and stakeholders, and how they navigated funding challenges for their evaluation projects. Martin will showcase the capabilities of the SMART: AI Copilot platform, bringing the potential of AI to life across student and educators use cases, including demonstrations of it in action.

• Martin Neale on LinkedIn

Dr Chrissi Nerantzi

Professor, Creative and Open Education, University of Leeds

Creative HE

Chrissi Nerantzi, Sandra Abegglen, Marianna Karatsiori, Antonio Martínez-Arboleda, Michael Salkow, Andrea De Lusignan & Sarah Nutt

Talk title: Crowdsourcing creative experimentations with generative AI for learning and provocations

The four editors of the 101 creative ideas of using AI in education from the UK, Canada and Greece together with MA students in Digital Education at the University of Leeds will come together to  discuss with delegates the first collection that provides insights into the early experimentations with generative AI by open educators, researchers and students. The session will provide a unique opportunity to share provocations by the speakers who will take an idea from the collection each and use it as a seed for a provocation to stimulate audience participation. Together, the speakers and attendees will engage in a collaborative examination of the intersections between generative artificial intelligence, creativity, openness and education, fostering a dynamic discussion, sharing experiences and ideas around generative AI.

Chrissi Nerantzi (NTF, CATE, PFHEA) is a Professor in Creative and Open Education in the School of Education, a Senior Lead of the Knowledge Equity Network and the Academic Lead for Discover and Explore at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

Sandra Abegglen, is a Researcher in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary, in Canada, exploring creativity online and in hybrid education settings.

Marianna Karatsiori is a lecturer at the University of Macedonia in Greece. Her main interests are teacher education, foreign language learning, educational policy guidance and reform.

Antonio Martínez-Arboleda is a Professor in Open and Digital Education in the School of Languages at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, and a Senior Lead of the Knowledge Equity Network.

Michael Salkow, University of Leeds is a learning and development professional with experience in the public and third sectors and expertise in digital learning technologies and design practices for digital learning.

Andrea De Lusignan, University of Leeds is a passionate educator with over a decade of experience shaping dynamic learning environments, both in the corporate and education sectors. Adept in curriculum development, technology integration, and innovative teaching methods.

Sarah Nutt, University of Leeds is a Learning and Development professional living in Zürich, Switzerland, studying towards an MA in Digital Education at the University of Leeds to support and improve her learning and development practices.

• Chrissi Nerantzi on LinkedIn

Coco Nijhoff

Senior Teaching Fellow (Library Services) Imperial College London

Coco Nijhoff is Senior Teaching Fellow (Library Services) at Imperial College London. Coco is responsible for the strategic development and management of the library’s information, digital and academic skills programmes. She works with library teams to deliver high-quality and responsive library content, underpinned by a nationally recognised Information Literacy curriculum, in alignment with the College’s Learning and Teaching Strategy. She has led the development of the library’s education strategy and has created a Community of Practice for library staff who teach as part of their roles.

Talk title: Everything old is new again: Generative AI and the education remit of the academic library.  

Support for students to develop skills in searching for, critically evaluating, ethically using and creating and communicating information is something academic libraries have always done. How do these fundamental skills evolve with the advent of generative AI and how can we adapt quickly to amend and enhance the curriculum? Existing Information and Digital Literacy frameworks are an opportunity to expand our thinking as we develop our understanding of what AI Literacy must encompass.

This talk will discuss the generative AI paradigm shift through the lens of skills development for students from a library perspective, as well as the need for responsive and considered staff development.

Workshop title: Reflecting on the impact of generative AI on our roles.  Maximum participants: 12

This 2-hour workshop will use the Lego© Serious Play© (LSP©) method (Lego© Group, 2010). LSP© is a facilitation method using Lego© bricks and was originally developed for organisational development contexts, with applications in UKHE institutions for teaching. It is carried out by a trained facilitator in the LSP© method. The workshop presents an opportunity to address the learning that’s been required of each of us as this technology evolves at speed. Participants will use LSP© to build models as a means to reflect, consider and share experience, focusing on the challenges of keeping up with generative AI and adapting accordingly in roles in HE contexts.  This workshop is aimed at teachers, lecturers, technologists, librarians and other HE academic and professional staff with limited to moderate knowledge of generative AI tools.

Objectives

• To understand the impact of generative AI within our roles
• To explore our hopes for generative AI in Higher Education

• Coco Nijhoff on LinkedIn

Dr Tony Payton

Founder, SentiraXR

Dr Tony Payton has worked in higher education for 32 years as a lecturer/researcher in healthcare sciences and has over 120 peer reviewed publications including in Nature and Nature Genetics (h-index 48, >11,000 citations). He chairs the VR@Manchester (University of Manchester cross-faculty virtual reality steering group), and the JISC XR Healthcare steering group, which coordinate XR activities both at Manchester and across the UK.

In 2019 he founded VREvo Ltd (brand name SentiraXR) which creates VR training content for healthcare professionals (winner of the Insider Magazine "Most Exciting Tech Companies 2021", and "North West Top Tech Competition 2020").

Talk Title: The use of Generative AI for interacting with patient avatars

The talk will cover our development work of virtual reality training simulations for medical education and outline our experiences of using generative AI NLP.

Workshop: Generative AI, Virtual Reality, and Medical Training simulations: A live demo

We'll demonstrate a range of healthcare training simulations that will include medical history taking, tracheostomy, and drug delivery.

• Dr Tony Payton on LinkedIn

Professor Mike Sharples

Professor Emeritus of Educational Technology, Open University

Mike Sharples is Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology at The Open University, UK. He gained a PhD from the Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh on Cognition, Computers and Creative Writing. His expertise involves human-centred design and evaluation of new technologies and environments for learning.

He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. He provides consultancy for institutions worldwide including UNESCO, UNICEF, universities and companies. He founded the Innovating Pedagogy report series and is author of over 300 papers in the areas of educational technology, learning sciences, science education, human-centred design of personal technologies, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

His recent books are Practical Pedagogy: 40 New Ways to Teach and Learn and Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers both published by Routledge, and An Introduction to Narrative Generators, published by Oxford University Press.

Keynote Talk Title: Generative AI and Education: Opportunities and Issues

AI is disrupting education. Students, teachers and academics can access software that writes essays, summarises scientific texts, produces lesson plans, engages in conversations, and drafts academic papers. These are already being embedded into office tools and will soon be interconnected into an AI-enhanced social network.

I will introduce the state of the art in generative AI, including capabilities and limitations of current AI tools, and discuss how it is transforming education. I will suggest new roles for AI in supporting teaching, learning and assessment. Rather than seeing AI solely as a challenge to traditional education, we can prepare students for a future where AI is a tool for creativity, to be operated with great care and awareness of its limitations.

• Professor Mike Sharples on LinkedIn:

Dr Muskaan Singh

Lecturer at Ulster University

Dr. Muskaan Singh is a Lecturer in Data Analytics at the Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC), within the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems, Ulster University (UU) and a member of the cognitive analytics research centre (CARL).

Her research interest is centred around Natural language Processing with a particular focus on practical applications. She has published at prestigious venues (A* and A-ranked conferences/Journals) such as ACL, NAACL,COLING, INLG, SIGDIAL, AAAI, PACLIC, LREC, INTERSPEECH, AAAI, EMNLP, WeCNLP and ASIS&T.

She was also organizer of Automatic Minuting community events: SummDial at SIGDial 2021, AutoMin shared task at Interspeech 2021, SummDial at Dubdial 2022, AutoMin shared task at INLG 2023 and Fake News Detection from Social Media Text at RANLP 2023.

Talk title: Demystifying the Technology behind Generative AI

This talk explores the fascinating realm of Generative AI, which combines art and science to create machines capable of producing realistic and creative outputs. It will explore the underlying mechanism of transformers with ChatGPT and DALL-E algorithms drastically changing the AI innovation. It will include real-world examples from various industries showcasing the potential of Generative AI. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how this technology works and its profound impact on our rapidly evolving world.

Muskaan Singh on LinkedIn

Dr Sarah Thelen

University College Cork

Sarah is a Lecturer in Teaching and Learning Enhancement (Digital Education) in the Centre for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland. She coordinates the Certificate in CPD in Digital Education and teaches modules across UCC in Digital Education and US history.

She has over 10 years experience as an Instructional Designer and over 20 years of experience teaching in Higher Education in both the US and Ireland. Her current research explores the intersections between Generative AI, assessment and research methods; digital history; and serendipity and sociability in online spaces. Her research has been published in Teaching and Learning Inquiry, New Directions in Teaching and Learning, the Journal of American Studies, and in edited collections.

Workshop title: AI + Assessment Hackathon: Future Proofing Assessment

Worried about what AI means for your assessments? Interested in thinking of ways to design (or redesign) assessments to be less susceptible to AI use? Come join us for an AI and Assessment Hackathon!!  Work in groups to explore ideas around AI and Assessment and come up with things (both big and small!) that we can use in our own teaching practice – whether immediately or in the future.

• Dr Sarah Thelen on LinkedIn