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openAIED Presentations in December 2020

Presentations from Andrew Gargett, Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, and Alison Fox, Senior Lecturer in Teaching and Learning (The Open University).

Wednesday 2nd December, 14:00 – 15:30
ONLINE: Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect Link for OU Staff
Link for external participants

Presentation 1: Topics in Social AI
Dr Andrew Gargett

Abstract:
While AI research and technology is becoming established in almost every sector of many national economies, from education and healthcare, to retail, transport, agriculture, automotive and professional services, it is far less clear how AI is impacting on other domains of our lives, including the social, psychological & cultural. My work in AI has taken me from more research-focused areas of modelling social and cultural features of communication and action between agents (natural and/or artificial), to more industry facing roles applying AI techniques, often at scale, to address business challenges across a range of industry sectors. This talk will attempt a kind of synthesis of these experiences. I will also report on an initiative within the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics around “social AI”. In order to bring these threads together, I will devote some time to considering the impact of the increasing push from within research and industry toward more socially responsible AI.

Bio:
Andrew Gargett recently joined The Open University’s School of Languages and Applied Linguistics, as a Lecturer in AI (July 2020). From February 2016, he led the AI team at the Hartree Centre, within the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Prior to this, he completed a Marie Curie Research Fellowship (2013-2015), at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, on the Gen-Meta project (automatically understanding and generating metaphor in natural language).

Presentation 2: Keeping humanity in AI in Education research
Dr Alison Fox

Abstract:
This presentation is based on a chapter drafted for a book under contract to Routledge entitled The Ethics of AI in Education: Who Cares? Data, algorithms, equity and biases, in educational contexts, edited by Wayne Holmes and Duygu Bektik. This was the result of an invitation to apply an ethical framework developed over the last 10 years, drawing together four ethical traditions, to the field of AI in Education research. This presentation will cover this analysis to identify a range of dimensions to keep in mind to ensure that humanity is retained within the field of AI in Education research.

Bio:
Alison is a Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching in the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport in WELS. She has developed interests in research ethics, including acting as part of the working group revising the British Educational Research Association ethical guidelines launched in 2018, as Ethics Advisor to a Horizon2020 project led by Cambridge University and is currently Deputy Chair of the OU HREC. She has led the design and running of two open courses about research ethics: A University of Leicester/FutureLearn MOOC People Studying People: Research Ethics in Society and is hosted at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-research and an OpenLearn Badged course, here at the Open University, launched in October 2020 called Becoming an Ethical Researcher can be found at: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/becoming-ethical-researcher/content-section-overview-0?active-tab=description-tab

Show & TEL: Presentations – 10th November 2020

AGENDA
OpenTEL: Show & TEL
10th November 2020 (09:30 – 16:00)
** Join Online Here **
Link for students and external participants

09:30 – 09:40     Welcome and Introduction
Eileen Scanlon  

09:45 – 10:05     Presentation 1:
Introducing RoboLab: an integrated robot simulator and Jupyter notebook environment for teaching and learning basic robot programming
Tony Hirst

10:10 – 10:30     Presentation 2:
Impact of the OpenLearn Create course ‘Support Through Court: Domestic Abuse’
Elizabeth FitzGerald and Hugh McFaul Continue reading →

Ethics in Educational Technology Project

In the past six months educational technology has received an increasing amount of attention in the media, as many schools and universities have begun teaching at a distance. Rather than a recent fad however, educational technology has a long history going back several decades, although recent events have catalysed uptake. As educational technology becomes increasingly integrated into learning in schools, universities, workplaces, and people’s free-time, it is more important than ever to consider how to use it ethically.

With this in mind, the Open University’s openTEL research group has initiated a project to examine the ethics surrounding technology enhanced learning (TEL). Often ethics is spoken about in relation to one TEL domain (such as AI or learning analytics), but, in reality, most issues span the gamut of topics in TEL. Data ownership is as relevant to accessibility or citizen science as it is to learning analytics. The Ethics in TEL (EthTEL) project therefore examines ethical issues around educational technology holistically.

If you would like to share your experiences and opinions on ethics in educational technology, then EthTEL is currently collecting answers to a short survey. The survey can be accessed at https://bit.ly/edtechethics and should take around 10 minutes to complete. Whether you’ve experienced educational technology as a student, educator, learning designer, researcher, or some other role, we’d love to hear from you!

The results of the survey will be posted in a freely available report on the openTEL webpage.

If you’d like to hear more about the EthTEL project then please join us at the next Show and TEL event on 2nd November. Guests external to the OU will be able to join using the link https://bit.ly/OUedtech.

Update to Guidance: Designing Learning for Autistic and Neurodiverse Students – Revised by Marilyn Long and Tim Coughlan, November 2023.

Designing-learning-for-autistic-students-revised-version-2023Download

 

Collaboratively created guidance from the OpenTEL Open & Inclusive SIG, July 2020

Autism and neurodiversity
Autism and neurodiversity are labels used to describe people who have certain differences in the way in which they think and in the way they interact with society. Typically, people on the autism spectrum may be less aware of, bound by, aligned to or responsive to societal expectations or constraints. This different way of thinking can be an enormous strength, and some great thinkers and innovators are autistic. However, this can lead to challenges for autistic people, especially in settings like the workplace and education, where specific things are expected that might not align with an autistic person’s skills or abilities.

This guide aims to help raise awareness of some of the differences autistic people may experience, and to help educators design learning, activities, tutorials and assessment that can help autistic students demonstrate their potential on a more level playing field. It was collaboratively created with autistic people (OU staff and students.)  Continue reading →

Young People’s use of nQuire to Ascertain Adults Perception of and Attitudes Towards Single-Use Plastic

By Dr. Charlotte Dean, University of Hull; School of Education

This article describes how young people participating in the University of Hull’s Plastic Citizen project utilised nQuire to tackle a question that they had around exploring adult’s perceptions of and attitude towards single use plastics.  The Plastic Citizen project was just one of several projects, within the University of Hull’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) funded Evolving a Circular Plastics Economy (ECPE) programme, which had the overall aim of tackling some of the key issues and challenges around the problems caused to the environment by excessive use and disposal of single-use plastic. The Plastic Citizen project aimed to do this specifically through examining the attitudes and approaches of young people to the issues relating to the circular plastics economy and by empowering them to undertake and share their own research using Citizen Inquiry methodologies. This transdisciplinary project brought together researchers from three different areas in the University of Hull (Education, Politics and Chemistry), along with external stakeholders such as community-based youth projects, schools and specialist education providers.

Continue reading →