On the 17th of March, Prof. Donald Clark presented a talk on his books 'Artificial Intelligence for Learning: How to use AI to Support Employee Development' and 'Learning Experience Design: How to create effective learning that works.'
'We can benefit from AI and technology at universities'
In the engaging and interactive session, Prof. Donald Clark explained how to use AI to personalize learning content and improve learner's engagement, how AI can be used to improve the assessment, evaluation, and measurement of learning in organizations. Prof Clark is a staunch supporter of AI in education: 'we can benefit from AI and technology at universities. Teaching goes beyond only talking to people. We must look at technology in a serious way that is efficacious, we have evidence that it is. We, educators, can step up to this. it is a great opportunity to do it better.'
Ethical questions
'Often people are concerned with ethical issues associated with AI and technology, he noted. Prof Clark explains that while it is important to assess the ethics behind the technology, often, so-called ethical issues are simply matters of design issues. 'Many issues are quite simply glitches in the development of AI solutions. As AI uses data to learn, you have to literally ‘train’ models with data. An algorithm may well confuse X with Y but it has no comprehension that it has. More importantly, the elimination of mistakes or known problems, like overfitting, are well known and a huge amount of effort goes into trying to reduce the errors. This is why we see AI solutions improve, sometimes dramatically over time.'
Teaching goes beyond only talking to people. We must seriously look at technology, we have evidence that it is efficacious."
New possibilities
We live in the modern era of AI, data and algorithms. 'For the first time, we have learning technology that doesn’t just help us teach and learn – it can learn itself. Whether as a learner or teacher, learning technology extends the mind in several dimensions. The use of learning technology can reach into long-term memory, which is the fundamental aim of learning. AI and data-driven systems allow pedagogic techniques like personalisation, deliberate practice, spaced practice and motivational pedagogies such as behavioural, nudge theory to be delivered. ' Prof Clark used examples like Netflix, British Airways and the NHS to illustrate the successes of AI, which can be translated to improve and upgrade education and learning.
Prof. Donald Clark
Donald Clark is an EdTech entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in online learning, games, simulations, semantic, adaptive, social media, mobile learning, virtual reality and AI projects. As well as being the CEO of Wildfire Ltd. he also invests in- and advises EdTech companies.