The first ACM-Europe Seasonal School on Adapting Education to AI (AE2AI) took place from September 18th-20th at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen (RGU).
The three-day event was sold out and the 30 participants – students at every level, instructors and instructional designers, ECRs, and representatives of industry – ranged from across Scotland, and as far afield as the USA, France, and Italy.
The event centred around four lectures with follow-on workshops, each of which led into deliverables to be developed collaboratively by the attendees over the weeks and months to come.
The school started Thursday morning over breakfast, with welcomes from sponsors, The Association for Computing Machinery – Europe Council (ACM-E), The Sottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance, Research Theme on Human-Computer Interaction & Interactive Devices – (SICSA HCI), and Robert Gordon University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Technology (SoCET).
Carla Teixeira kicked off the event with a Birds Of A Feather-style session that helped the participants form a framework or mental model of the issues involved in Adapting Education to AI, from the perspective of teachers and of students.
John N A Brown then followed with a lecture on the differences between how humans and current commercial AIs “think” and “learn” and discussed why the offloading of some cognitive work is good, and some isn’t. His workshop got everyone working on trying to conceive of formal metrics for useful models of AI adoption and collaboration.
On Friday morning, Damiano Cerrone walked the participants through the raison d’etre for his innovative AI-based product and consultancy, Urbanist AI, showing how it has been used in projects around the world to push the envelopes of the Venn diagram of architecture, urban planning, and visual communication. His workshop involved forming teams to work on white papers. We expect drafts to be finished imminently, then refined for publication.
Carla Teixeira then delivered the lecture that inspired the most vibrant discussion: “AI is Here. Now What? A story on adoption.” The discussion was so rich and meaningful that her workshop on visualising the experiences, needs, and possible means of helping both students and teachers carried on the following morning. That exercise continues and the participants are currently developing several practical AI-based tool that came out of the ideation sessions.
Menno Cramer closed out the weekend with his fantastic talk: “The Human, the Machine, and the Gap Between.” He then led a workshop in which two subgroups ideated on the meaning and measurability of critical thinking as a teachable, learnable, and testable skill. Certificates were presented and goodbyes were said, but promises were also made to pick up the development of assets immediately. Most participants agreed to meet again next summer, for a longer School in a bigger venue, as our new consortium continues to both solidify and expand.