Category: Ed Tech

Help! A robot wrote my essay!: Reflections on webinars about ChatGPT

Eleanor Moore ~ Learning Designer

 

With experts across the world sounding alarm bells about the impact of AI (disappearing jobs and widening wealth inequality to name just two issues), how worried should we be about its potential in education?

When ChatGPT burst on the scene in November 2022 with its human-sounding prose and extensive knowledge base, the worried frown in academia suddenly got a lot deeper. With the last bastion of academic excellence – the essay – under threat, learning technologists and academics across the globe are asking: what are we going to do? It will therefore come as no surprise that the recent University of Kent webinars on ChatGPT exceeded the maximum user limit in Teams with 1337 attendees.

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“It’s OK not to know!”: Professor John Hattie and the power of feedback

Hayley Johns ~ Learning Designer 

 

Feedback, according to Professor John Hattie, is ‘one of the most powerful notions we have’ in education – and also one of the most variable.

Earlier this year, I joined an instalment of Phil Anthony’s award-winning Digitally Enhanced Education webinar series to learn more about how institutions around the world are prioritising feedback as a key part of learning. Amid a wide variety of talks on assessment and feedback, a few really stood out. I’m particularly excited to share with you some of the wisdom of Professor Hattie on the power of feedback as a process of constant learning, of asking questions, and of low stakes ‘failure’ in a supportive environment.

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Reflections on the Digital Ways of Working Project (DWEEP) evaluation

Mike Collins ~ Learning Designer

In the past couple of weeks, our colleagues over in the Learning Innovation team published the report of the Digital Working Environment Exploratory Project (DWEEP), an in-practice exploration of the use of virtual environments to support collaboration and hybrid working. The Learning Design team took a lead on the evaluation and reporting, and I had the pleasure of coordinating the effort.

The report itself is great, I heartily encourage you to go and read it. Andrew McDermott’s summary that accompanies it is also a nice accessible hopping-on point, bringing together the key points and narrative of the report into the wider context.

In this post, I’ll take a step back, and reflect on a few of the things that stuck with me from our findings.

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Reflections on the ALT Conference 2022

The in-person ALT Conference experience

By Paul Astles
How did it feel to be at a conference “in person” again?

With the uplifting melodies and syncopated rhythms of some of my favourite bands soundtracking my journey to Manchester, not even the (at times) slow moving motorway traffic could take the shine off what I anticipated to be an interesting few days ahead. The last time I was in Manchester it rained a lot; this time was no different.

As I drove deeper into the city centre, the rain added a rather lovely percussive addition to the music in my car. I was not quite sure what to expect as I approached the conference venue, would there be a sense of community? Or would it feel like a commute on the underground in London?

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