LH123 – OEB Special: Learning and Humanity

There's a little bit of leveling right now in that because of the unknowns of AI, because of the unknowns of what is possible, where are we trying things? Where are we not trying things? By remaking those decisions, there's an unknown that actually we're all kind of grappling with and actually that's a little bit of a level setter. So who is experimenting, who is trialing, who is saying I've tried something and it didn't work and being okay with that? You know, a little bit of that just honesty that we are all learning.

If you're an L and d Learning Technologies UK 2026 belongs in your diary. 29th and 30th of April this year. It's the UK's leading event for technology supported learning, co located with HR Technologies UK, bringing together 15,000 learning and HR professionals. There's a free exhibition with more than 200 exhibitors and 200 seminar sessions alongside a dedicated conference for senior L and D leaders. The focus is practical insight, peer learning and examples from organizations including Google, intel and Merck. Bookings and registration open soon at learningtechnologies.co.uk this podcast is supported by Synthesia. Training videos shouldn't take weeks to make Synthesia lets you turn text into professional multilingual training videos in minutes. It's fast, scalable and so simple anyone can use it. You can write an email, you can make a video.

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Our visit to Online Educa in Berlin before Christmas was the first fourth in a row for this podcast and as usual, we had a wonderful time. OEB is unique in bringing together the worlds of education and workplace learning. It also has a better representation from the Global south than any of the other shows we go to. This rich mix is represented in the fine selection of guests we have for you in this episode. But first let's hear from the Conference chair about the themes and aspirations of the conference. The very urbane Don Taylor Hack Facts.

Donald H. Taylor is a Leading learning analyst, author and friend of the podcast, known for advancing evidence based practice in workplace learning. He is the conference chair of Online Educa Berlin.

So. Hi, Don. Great to have you on the podcast again.

Always good to be back.

Brilliant. Theme of this conference this year is humanity in the intelligent age. So humanity and AI, lots of stuff about that. Humans can be creative, compassionate and kind. As you know, they can also be mendacious, malignant and murderous. How do we make use? Make sure it's the good part of humanity that's reflected in the tech we use for learning without getting into a defensive crouch and just censoring everything and shutting things down.

At the end of the keynote this morning, the opening keynote for the event, I talked about the tie I was wearing, which was a tie from Florence. And I made the point that Florence during the Renaissance was a period of extraordinary flourishing of the arts and sciences and the rediscovery of the age of wisdom of the Greek world. And it was a time of vicious, literal, backstabbing mercenaries, financial sharp dealing, papal intrigue, the latter really on behalf of or driven by the Medici family. And that money that they generated was used to support the beautiful artistic flourishing that we'd still benefit from today. I really think that in life it is impossible to segment and divide these two things. And I think the reason why we exist and flourish as a species is that we have this mixture of people. We have people with good and ill intentions. We have people who've got good intentions and bad intentions some of the time. And we control that by having the right institutions and the right processes and right culture to deal with it. So I think those are the things which we use to control the limit the negative side of humanity and to help the positive side flourish. Drilling down into your question, which is how do we get the edtech side of this sorted out? I think the same thing applies. I think we just have to make sure that there's a culture where some things are accepted and some things aren't, and that we have the institutions, which means possibly regulation, possibly guidance or certification that says, well, this is good and this is not. So, for example, AI coaches are going to be a thing in the future. Fine, it's going to happen. It's already happening. It needs to be done well. Some organization will step in and will provide maybe a certification, maybe an audit for AI coaches to make sure that what's happening is being done in an acceptable way. At the same point, that business about challenging. We need to have a culture whereby people are prepared to disagree about things, but in a way that is, yes, intellectually robust, but also civilized. So we agree to disagree and we find our way to getting to hopefully, an answer that is acceptable. Because if we don't disagree, then some things can go by the board and get accepted without being thought of sensibly. And that way, pernicious, evil things seep into our conversation. And if we challenge everything without it being a civilized way, open to debate, everything gets shut down. There is a middle path, but we need to have that. That's a very long answer, John, to what you. A very simple question you asked me.

No, but it's a good answer and it's an interesting one. And I think you're right that there is, you know, that mixture of good and bad. You know, we had kind of Botticelli, but we also had Machiavelli, you know, for good and ill. And Machiavelli himself is a very useful thinker, but also a rather chilling one. And it's very often combined in certain individuals, perhaps not naming names, but some great scientists and inventors are also strangely racist. And all the rest of it.

Okay, on the point of Machiavelli, it's worthwhile remembering that Machiavelli's the Prince, which is the book he's remembered for, still read. And in fact, I reread it over the summer, and it was effectively a job application for him. He was writing this thing hoping to get a job from Lorenzo Medici on the back of it. No, I doubt if Lorenzo Medici even opened it. You know, he was a guy busy controlling vast tracts of land. He wasn't fussed about this.

Yeah.

And so it's good and evil in all of us, whatever we might make of Machiavelli, he was just a guy.

Trying to get a job and raise his profile.

And raise his profile. Be an influencer.

Yeah. I mean, things ain't so different in a way to the other, I suppose. So through your work with aigler aigler Vinauskeiter, you're very close to the data on AI adoption and maturity. I think it's very interesting. I've recently done some judging work that startled me how wide the gap seem to be between teams who are doing really interesting things right here and now with AI in organizations and institutions and others who seem to be two decades ago in terms of their use of technology. And I've seen this reflected in other places as well. So is it reflected in your data and the work you do with angle that gap?

Yeah. And I would say that the data is anecdotal because it's very difficult to put a number against how advanced somebody's adoption of AI is. But if you imagine a cycling race, there's always a peloton where there's a group out front and there's the rest of the pack. Now, of course, what happens eventually is the peloton crosses the line, then a bit later, the rest of the pack crosses the line. If you think about AI adoption the same way, there is definitely a peloton out front of people who are doing fascinating transformational things, and we've got case studies about that in our reports. And there's a pack behind which are doing, let's say, rather than transformational work, efficiency gains.

Yeah. Domestic, if you like. Sorry, I know a bit too much about Tour de France.

I see. Okay. Right. When you said domestique, I was imagining a maid for some reason, and then because you said it was a French word, I was imagining a French maid. And then, I don't know, it just didn't seem to have quite fit into the whole world of AI.

You had a team leader, and you have others who are domestiques, and their job is to support the team team leader and go back and forth from the peloton to the team cars to get them. They're kind of water bottles, and then to kind of lead them out in sprints and what happens.

Right.

And tire them out, possibly. You've got far too much knowledge of the Tour de France for my metaphor to work.

Yes.

I'm going to go back to my metaphor, which is you've got two groups, and they're unchanging and they're not teams, and you've got a peloton at the front, and you've got your group at the back. And the peloton at the front is doing transformational work. Yes, the group at the back is doing efficiency gains. They're doing interesting stuff, but it's not transformational stuff. Now, the difference between this metaphor and the Tour de France is that in the Tour de France, everybody crosses the line, everybody gets to the finish at the end. I don't think that's happening here. I think we've got a group of people that's going to do interesting stuff and keep doing it and get further away from the rest of the pack, and the rest of the pack will continue on a line, a trajectory of increased efficiency, and that's it. It's not wrong. There is a danger with increased efficiency that we're not making the most use of AI and that therefore. And this is eglar. And my thesis is that by focusing too much on efficiency and content, we lose whatever L and D has to differentiate ourselves because particular generative AI, the production of content, is so easy. So you've just become one of a vast number of people producing content.

Yeah.

So in order to make the most of it and in order to survive, it's crucial to be in the peloton, to be trying to do transformational stuff, because otherwise the rest of the pack eventually is going to get just mown down or left behind.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yes, I think it does. Try and make the metaphor work. You have sprinters in cycling, you have climbers who are very much more slow and steady and good and light and good at going uphill and doing the really difficult stuff. And then you have at the back end of the race, they have something called Le Lantun Rouge, which is a kind of train metaphor. It's the person who's the red light on the back of the whole race. And in this spread of aptitude in adoption of AI in L and D, we see sprinters and we see the odd l' enteur Rouge.

Is there not one stage of the Tour de France where, or at least there's a stage that you can do as an amateur. Is it the Ventou? You go up a hill and there's something called the broom that comes up afterwards.

The broom wagon sweeps up. They sweep up the leggards.

Yeah.

And what do the broom. What happens to them in the broom wagon?

They get driven back to the hotel and told off by the.

Did not finish.

They're not amateurs.

No.

Okay. But that's what I'm going towards is that the risk is we're not all in the same race, going to cross the same line. Eventually. There's a risk that if you're not going fast enough, the broom wagon is going to collect you.

Yes.

And you are going to be a dnf. Did not finish.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, you know, you've got your sprinters like OpenAI and so on, who are really going very fast ahead. Now we've got the climbers like Google, who seem to be coming up a bit behind. But their latest release, people are saying, wow, Google's going to clear up in this because it's not borrowing money to scale up. It's gotten scale already. Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we could. We're going into one of those 40 minute, 50 minute podcasts and we don't know that.

Just to be clear to listeners, there Are two different metaphors going on here? My metaphor is for the people using AI. That's the people in the peloton, the people in the back of the pack. You're using the same metaphor. Hijacking my metaphor to talk about the. Yeah, providers.

I slipped the rails there. Slightly slipped the rails.

And we're going to railway metaphor now. We better get back onto that, I think.

Yeah. At least we can with that kind of mismatch. So another string to your bow is the GSS survey, sentiment survey, which tells us what's hot in learning for the coming year. Last few years have tended to be all about AI. Now it seems everyone's predicting a crash or correction of some kind there. Again, I'm kind of talking about market really, rather than energy use. And at the very least, a bit of a down slope on the hike curve. Without wanting to preempt any of those GSSI results, which won't be out, may well be out by the time we kind of actually publish this. But not at time of speaking. How do you assess the current mood in the learning industries when it comes to AI?

Last year, the sentiment about AI in the L and D community was that once again, Overall, from about three and a half thousand people from 100 countries, it was increasing, intense in the sense that, in answer the question, what would be hot next year? More people were saying, it will be AI. It was greater last year, which I say last year was greater in 2025 than 2024 and 2024 was the year it really took off. So we might say to ourselves, surely the end has come. And actually there was a strand of data in the 2025 report which showed that this was true aggregate, in aggregate across the world. But in the US actually, the interest had peaked in 2024 and was now on a downward slope. Now, what usually happens, and we've seen this in the past, is that once something starts going down in the us, the rest of the world follows. We've seen this many times on the Global Sentiment survey over the 14 years that it's running. So I'm watching the results very closely at the moment. Can I mention the date that it is now on the podcast?

Yeah.

So it's now December 4th.

Yes, that's fine.

And looking at the results at the moment, three things are evident. Firstly, my predicted downturn of AI, which I thought was going to happen, isn't happening. It is maintaining the same level of interest.

Right.

Secondly, there is a continued bounce back by the options that had seemed to be unpopular two years ago, but had recovered a bit last year. Which is to say that value and showing value is increasingly important to people's minds in the current range of results. And also bouncing back up is personalization. Yeah, personalization is seen as being the big thing that you can do with AI in the learning space. So what's happening there is that people are both looking at the tool, the AI, and what you can do with it. The personalization piece and the value thing is learning and development. Looking at this and saying if we don't show our value with AI around, we are cooked. We have to demonstrate our value in some way. That's my interpretation, but I'm pretty sure it's the case.

Okay, thanks for that sneak peek, as it were. Sneak peek for us. Now, by the time this is out.

May have changed, but it's interesting that the people who answer the survey at the beginning have a different set of answers to the people who answer it further on. So it may well have changed by the time the podcast comes out. But the people who answer the survey at the beginning are usually the early adopters. They're usually the people who are right at the innovators, actually, rather than the early adopters. They're right at the leading edge and they're the people with the strongest opinions. And you usually. What happens is those opinions percolate down the line later on. So even if that's not the final result, I'm pretty confident that that uptick in value and personalization will happen next year.

So the early adopters are still there.

Yeah.

How do you feel about the. I mean, you're also an investor, I think. How do you feel about the. Not just rumors of a market crash upcoming, but some people very confidently predicting and assuming it's going to happen.

I think it's inevitable because a lot of. I'm not a market analyst, but if you look at how money is being plowed into the big tech companies in the States and the question will be when do we get a return from that money? There may be very good reasons for the return having to shift to the longer term rather than the shorter term. I'm convinced that there will be a return on this, but it may be unevenly spread. People harken back to the heady days of.com boo and bust.

Yeah, it's kind of not quite like.

That, but it's not quite like that.

Many similarities but in the language.

Yeah. And I think this shows the difficulty we all have in finding ways to model the world. We lean on the heuristic we lean on the experience we've had in the past as being a rule of thumb guide to the future. I don't think anything's like this AI investment we've seen. There are other things going on as well at the same time. So there is no doubt that the American economy is being affected by tariffs, negatively affected by tariffs, and that, for example, soybean exports to China have fallen off a cliff and farmers are suffering as a result. And there are other impacts on the economy which aren't being seen. People are seeing, saying in the stock market because the stock market is reflecting the world of AI. But if things start going downhill, they could go downhill quite rapidly and spiral downwards. It's not just the tech sector that's driving it, it's a broader economic position. Now if that happens, America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold, we can expect that things are going to be rough in the L and D space. Technology generally in the L and D space in particular for a while. I mean, with the dot com crash was, I think about two years before things started to recover properly. We can expect at least the same for when this happens. And let's say it will happen next year and things normally crash in the. I don't know, it's March, June or October, I think, when the crashes tend to take place. All right, so let's see. Personally, I'm. I'm expecting there to be a downturn. I don't think it will be as bad as it's been in the past, but I think it will be long lived.

Okay. In a way that, in a purely selfish way, that reassures me because my worst nightmare is a market crash over Christmas because it makes the podcast suddenly very old news. But yeah, we wait till March. That's so callous, isn't it? And they mow gallus.

So Machiavelli would have said to you, it is better, John, it should be feared and to be loved. So perhaps you need to have an iron, a bit of iron in your backbone facing this and be prepared to be ruthless with your listeners and feared by them rather than loved by them, which I'm sure you are.

Well, I get much too much pleasure from people coming up to me and saying that they love the podcast. Maybe I should feel better if they said I fear the podcast. I actually have noticed a tendency for some people to get kind of slightly tetchy with me. So, you know, the questions I'm asking has happened in the last six months and I wonder what listeners. No interviewees Interviewees. And I think, oh God, does this mean that we're influential? But it matters.

Well, I think you certainly are influential and I think it's okay for people to be testing, but if you're in the seat and you ask the question, you've got to come up with an answer.

Yes, absolutely. Or a bit of abuse. Nobody's actually torn off the microphone yet and walked out.

As in, who was it in the Falklands crisis? John Knott.

John Knott, yeah.

Your Defense Secretary. I've not answered this anymore.

Several times since as well. I can't, can't remember the names.

But yeah, that was a very, it was a very graphic one. He just. Nobody was expecting it. I'm not listening to this anymore. Took the, took the microphone off, walked down.

Yeah, okay. For the better of the cameras. People watching on YouTube only do. Do the face of interviewers when that happens. That is exactly the face, yes. If you're looking to connect with the top minds in learning and talent, there's no better place than an iVentive event. Since 2009, iVentiv has hosted over 300 events for global heads of L and D and D talent. I've attended multiple eventive events myself and found them to be invaluable. Less about sitting and listening and more about real, impactful conversations. It's an unmatched opportunity to collaborate with leading chief learning officers on the challenges they're tackling today. Join the conversation visit iventif.com learninghack that's I V E N T I V.com learninghack as the host of so many such events, you must be in a pretty unique position to spot speakers and thinkers who are getting the ear of learning people. You must have heard more keynotes than a Steinway grand.

I'm suspecting that that's a little line you're rather pleased with, and rightly so.

A bit too pleased with that. So who are the important voices we should listen out for in 2026? You know, probably I see this last year, but it changes a bit, doesn't it?

Yeah, I mean, it is a difficult one. I would. There are people who are doing good stuff now who are doing good stuff last year. So in the AI world. Ross Stevenson, Philippa Hartman, Josh Cavalier. Absolute. I'd also say my co author, Egla Vinasskeiter. Absolutely. Doing really interesting stuff around AI. Exactly. So worth. Always worth following them. Did I mention Ethan Mollock? I mean, he's a guy, he's there all the time, but he's There because he does good work, he's very, very consistent.

Yes.

In terms of learning development particularly, I'm finding a bit difficult to think of people who are taking a sort of big picture view of the future and having a particular learning angle on it that are worth. Particularly worth following. And I don't want to mention anybody and not mention other people, but let me throw the question back at you. Is there anybody you think, Donald, I can't believe you haven't mentioned so and.

So Azeem Azar, who isn't quite in our world, but writes really interesting stuff about kind of the markets and AI and startups in general, which has sort of always been my world work, working as heads of marketing for startups. And so also I started a lot more listening, a wider listening in terms of the doomers on one hand, you know, which includes like the head of Anthropic because then we always forget and Satseger and people like that and the guy who wrote the book that we're all going to die if AGI happens. And on the other end of things, the people who really oligarchs such as David Sachs and that group of people around the all in podcast and all points in between, but mostly the extremes just to get a bit of kind of balance, I think. But that is more general tech and market stuff. Right.

Just about that. I got my phone out because I wanted to just mention Reshuffle, which is the book by Sangeet Paul Chowdhury.

Yeah.

He is definitely worth following on LinkedIn as somebody who gets the big picture of technological change and how we all fit into it and won't necessarily have all the answers, but it's definitely worth following as somebody with the big picture view along with. I think it's Mustafa Suleiman who votes is written very well on AI as well.

Yeah.

So a couple of names there.

Yeah. And of course, all the people you mentioned. Great. And Ross Stevenson, all my fellow podcasters, Andrew Jacobs, David James, Joe Coeur, who will be represented at the conference in February, I think. Plug, plug, plug.

That is a very good point. Those three people you mentioned. Absolutely worth following. I'm often puzzled because I go to LinkedIn. I see David James has written something, I think. Well, I was about to write something about that and he's got there first and written about it very articulately. So definitely worth following.

Yeah, yeah. I think when you feel that twinge of envy and hatred, those are words.

You use to describe yourself, John, I rise above them.

Yes, of course, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Admiration on my part admiration.

Yeah, yeah.

Benchmarking. I think I'll do it online. Well, thank you very much, Don. Again, a very interesting interview and I look forward to the next one.

I look forward to the next one. And tell us more about the event in February very quickly.

Thanks for the lead in, Tom. The podcast Learning Festival 2026 takes place on 26 February at Mary Sumner House, 24 Tutters Street, London, SW1. Speakers include David James, Joe Cook, Andrew Jacobs, Martin Cousins and me. To book your place, go to podcastlearningfest Live. See you there.

Hack FACTS Margaret Korosek is a senior digital education leader at the University of Leeds, specializing in online learning, educational technology strategy and innovation in higher education.

Welcome, Margaret, to the Learning Hack Prototyping.

Thank you, John. I'm so excited to be with you here today. It's great to be at oab and I've been, I've seen you around OEB for many years, so it's one of the times to be with you.

To me, yeah, I think we're here for the third or fourth year, where every year go to the same Christmas market and the same, you know, places, but always something new in Berlin. So you're speaking in the conference about Human Centered AI and educational transformation. So we've got you just before you get to talk, so I hope you're not too nervous, but what are you going to be telling people today?

So there's something about drawing in elements of empathy, of responsibility and transformation. And when I think about those three things, there's several components just to pull out. When we talk about empathy, I think there's something about where are students, what are they coming with now in this world, and how are we helping them become their future self? So when we talk about empathy, it's recognizing where students are coming and what are they coming with, and that might be in recognition of those prior skills. But how can we put the overlay of our responsibility as educators or as educational institutions with that layer of stretch, that layer of opportunity that allows those students to thrive and be okay with that in that liminal space of, well, I know I don't know this, but I've got something within my baggage already and here's the stretch that I can offer, and that doesn't always take the form of full degrees. We'll come on to that one probably afterwards. But the third component is transformation. Like, you know, what does it really mean to balance this curiosity with risk? We can't, as institutions as well as individuals, be really curious and kind of exploratory if we are in a position of uncertainty, it's hard to be curious when things are moving at a pace that you can't keep. You can't keep up because you need.

A certain level of sort of panic mode and.

That's. Right.

Get very narrow in your focus. Right.

So we need to create that space for curiosity and opportunity. And I see that at an individual level, certainly, but also at institutional level.

Yeah. You're throwing me back to my memories of my own student days. We talk about empathy. I think one of the things about recognition when you first come is recognition. Recognizing the limits of your own perspective, so to speak. You know, because I came from a fairly small town, seaside town, went to Sussex University, encountered people from completely different worlds, different countries, different class. You know, it's kind of rooming with them. Go from a private school and you realize the limitations of your own perspective or what you could see. So it's very confusing time. But I think you're saying to be curious, you need to become comfortable in that world.

Comfortable in the discomfort.

Oh, that's. Comfortable in the discomfort.

I think so. Because there is that, you know, tension.

Yeah, yeah.

That's just not quite tangible.

That's kind of a confidence that graduates get. Isn't an experienced sailor? I don't know. But. Okay, tell me. Whereas a lot of people are kind of hiding their ignorance all the time. It's actually one of the slightly annoying things about the graduate class in general, people pick up on as well. It's such that confidence kind of works both ways. And it's proved to be a bit divisive on society. You think, how do you equip people for the current world? Which is very. I know, Going off script here, but I'll move on.

It's okay.

Interesting conversation. How do you equip people? The current very divisive world, which views the whole university experience and the graduate class as looking down on them and not caring.

Yeah, it is a challenge. But I think that's the reality, is that actually everyone. There's a little bit of leveling right now in that because of the unknowns of AI. Because of the unknowns of. Of what is possible. Where are we trying things? Where are we not trying things? By remaking those decisions. There's an unknown that actually we're all kind of grappling with. And actually that's a little bit of a level setter. So who is experimenting? Who is trialing? Who is saying, I've tried something and it didn't work and being okay? With that, you know, a little bit of that just honesty that we are all learning. And I think that's a, that's a juxtaposition as well. From an institutional perspective. What will we are sharing everything with you and we will give you this knowledge. Well, that is shifting. What are the students bringing? That goes to my first point. What are the students bringing with them that educators actually can learn from as well? So that kind of dynamic of just acknowledging that we are all learning regardless of where we sit.

Yeah, I jumped pretty quickly into my own experience. Let's make it more about me. What about your experience, Margaret? What has kind of led you to your current view of these issues in your background in life?

So I feel really lucky actually to have had three kind of key experiences with three different institutions very specifically focused on online education. So let's talk about online education. Online degrees, postgraduate and or undergraduate, but let's just say online degrees in general. And those three experiences are three very different institutional models. And that is an interesting. Has informed very much of what I do before I go into the three institutions though. The core and consistent focus is that it's opening online education is opening up opportunities for students who would not otherwise come to campus. So it's reaching those who need flexibility, who need agility, who need to be able to start, stop, continue. And so that underlies everything that I do actually is reaching those who maybe wouldn't otherwise be able to study. So with that though, the three models are Western Governor's University in the States, University of Derby in the UK and the University of Leeds where I am currently. And so WGU Western Governors University was a disruptive model when it started, late 90s competency based model. It pushed and challenged the notion that seat time is a measure of learning or of quality and that again that students are bringing with them competencies. So the model was accessible, it was very low cost, it was probably more vocationally focused, so very much skills focused. And, and it just fundamentally changed my idea of the notion of one, education and putting the human in the center, the student in the center and two scale.

Sorry, just to interrupt. First one, you were a student in that program or were you giving the program?

No, I was overseeing the learning resources at the time. And then kind of swiftly. It was in the early stages that was. So I worked there. It was in the early days. They had 30,000 students at the time. When I left three years later they had, they had, sorry, 12,000 when I started there had 30,000. Three years later they're now at you know, over 150,000. I think it's over. It's 180 maybe thousand students. So the model is tried and tested, tested and you know, is really has demonstrated the test of time but also scale. And again, that notion of scale is quite interesting because there's a handful that do this kind of the mega university kind of framing and not many do.

Yeah, I interrupted you.

No, no, you're fine. And so the second. So that one, yeah, just really pushed the boundaries of a disruptive educational model. The second one is at University of Derby in the UK. That is a post 92 university. Very much, you know, in the UK that means they gained university status in 1992 along with several other institutions.

Labram government previously would have been a polytechnic or a teacher training.

Exactly, exactly.

So from other universities, very snooty about them at first, very much it's slowly dissolving. But still there.

It is still there. It is still there. But what really worked there is they had a very clear vision, and that's Julie Stone actually had a very clear vision of creating a very specific entity end to end for the student experience for online degrees, if that means marketing the application, the full design and development through to graduation. So the full service, let's say that would allow was kind of a satellite attached to the main institution. So University of Derby online learning became its own kind of thing and in that space, the focus on the students and the focus on wrapping up degrees that were needed in the market matched to epidemic expertise and had that market demand was just phenomenal. I mean launching 13 degrees in like two years was just like the pace, the focus. In some ways the funding model was very tight, very skeletal team, but we just cracked on and that was just one of those moments where you just. I loved it, you know.

So going from here's the education that we have, we're going to give it to you online to here's the education, we haven't been able to give it to you online. But what do you need? What's needed in the community. Community that it can mark to breece.

Exactly. So that was a whole other experience. Right, where it was kind of anchored to a campus experience or anchored to an institution that was primarily campus focused. But they grew, they became a gem in online education in the UK actually and they're still going strong even though they've shifted some of the model. But that again from my own experience, really informed what is possible at that rapid design. The final is University of Leeds where I am currently. Right. So Russell Group University Research Intense has always been highly committed to open education as a founder founding institution with FutureLearn for example, and early on as well. AVRIL LAKACHINI SPORE Online DEGREES yeah, and so those online decrees have always been part of, part of the opportunity there, but it's also operating within a. So it's more about embedding it within the existing ways of working, so ensuring it's fitting in within the institutional models and institutional constructures.

And what do you say? Are they really the defining differences between those different models?

And maybe if you talk about the.

Difference between first two. How about what's Leeds doing?

I think what Leeds is doing is the model of the contact time with students and academics is quite unique. And so that is definitely a distinguishing component is that students honor online degrees at University of Leeds really have that direct contact time with the academic community, those in our research active. So whereas the WGU model is self paced, you know, you do have contact time but it's very much more independent learning.

Yeah.

At Leeds it's very much, you know, you have this academic here to help and guide you and to integrates and weave in their current research, for example. So it's more of an academic model. I would say that is probably a distinguishing factor.

Okay, so you've been at the forefront of education delivered upon line and now of course AI is at the forefront. When it comes to AI, do you think the people in higher ed have the right sort of balance of excitement, excitement about the opportunities versus fears about the dangers? I'm going to tell you something you may already know. The kind of prevailing prejudice in workplace learning when people are in the bars after conferences like this is they say about education they're just worried about cheating on exams and that preoccupies them. They don't see the upside. I mean that's caricature. But I have heard that video.

How do you react to that?

Yes. So it's certainly a seesaw of fear and then just the operational realities. What does that mean? What do we need to secure institutional licenses for? From a very practical side, the seesaw has been challenging. And in the absence of institutional guidance, those on the ground who are willing to test, to trial, to experiment, to play, have been able to crack on it because of in a way, this, this strategic intent and the, the what's actually happening on the ground until that strategic intent lands with something like here's our guidance, here are the tools that you can use, here's what's either allowed or not allowed or you know, Whatever parameters are, they want to present those on the ground, then are able to play in their classroom and say hey students, let's try this. What are you finding? You know, that's where that dynamic again of the academic and the student coming together to learn from each other becomes actually a really important way to inform what is possible. Again, there's so many parameters to consider in that space. But I think you don't play. We're not even learning the basics. I mean individually we all need to experiment and you do and you explore and you learn. But when you talk about an institutional level, okay, this is what we're rolling out. The ramifications and the implications of the interdependencies are quite complex. And so there's. Before that really happens, I think there's considerable time.

I suppose there are opportunities there as well. I mean it's a bit scary if you don't have the governance in place to deal adequately with what's happening in the interaction between students and educators. On the other hand, perhaps it's less oversight. You can kind of crack on and do some MC experiments. Someone's written up in the New York Times, I'm afraid I forget professor in the institution that's a kind of I believe in the States, I think. And he did this exercise where, where he got his students to study philosophy to ask questions of their LLM of choice and then to bring back transcripts of those conversations into their kind of face to face seminars to sell them and they would all be in Jeffrey Barnes, you know Anthropic said this and ChatGPT said this and he found that it was startling for him because students talked to their chat boss in a way they ever talk to their professors.

Where you don't want to kind of.

Unveil irregular point of view. So I say, you know, quite the opposite chapters due to older this and I was not going to help judging this is a subscription. I thought that was a good example of you know, some experiments that people are doing in higher Edokos have the mark on the workplace learning, service things. There's a lot talk about some process re engineering being necessary in learning departments in order to take advantage of productivity improvements which is, you know, see values and priorities are very different in the two spheres. But the idea is that they have to kind of re engineer all of the plumbing especially with Gentec AI coming in. But there's also a sense we'll be able to do things with digital learning with AI. But we wanted always wanted to do but couldn't be Managed before we see things similar happen in education. It feels like bit like structure is quite rigid. We had to work with the same around the start of 2010. This was why is it going so different with workplace learning and education? Answer it's much easier to fire a trainer than a teacher.

Yes.

As Nedi I'm sorry, I'm just bombarding you with word bestselling synthesis.

I love it. It's all right. It's important to have this kind of cross brutalization of sectors and perspectives. But I think the interesting part that you mentioned there and yes you talk about the rigid systems and things like that. I think so much of that is based on governance models and this campus focus and the provision and national, national measures. But fundamentally it's two parts I want to pull out there. Fundamentally there's an identity dissonance with institutions on what they stand for. So we, if we talk about the, the layer of, of AI in some ways that is anchored in the current identity of serving campus dudes. So there's a need certainly to serve our campus. You have campus audience which is the primary, let's say primary audience at the same time of the introduction of AI, potential efficiencies, potential new tools, new ways of learning, teaching, assessing all those is this whole other layer of we need to also diversify our income, we need to be flexible, we need to have more skills based education, we need short courses, we need micro preventions, we need all of these other things. And those other things tend to sit on the periphery.

Right.

Because they are not served by the core provision. Core infrastructure which is campus provision and semester or you know, term. Term cycles.

Yeah.

And so what does happen is on the edges are these alternative ways of working or alternative support models to support some level of flexibility. And so you have the layer of the AI impacting ikc. I'm going to label that as this identity dissonance because not only is there this need to kind of be also perceived as forward thinking and adopting AI and whether that's through call centers or student support or adding a layer of triage that helps. So all of those things are being explored and in some cases implemented. But in addition to that there's the complexity of needing at the shift in education more broadly whereby the degree itself is no longer the only thing that that institution should be offering. It should be more flexible, shorter courses, non credit bearing, expand into professional learning and to build relationships with industry. All of that is not core identity unless they, unless institutions have been in that space already for some time. Yeah, but if you're trying to do all of these things at once, it becomes very, very challenging.

So there's a bit of re engineering going on already. Absolutely. Just join the team. So lastly is in the fields of learning technology, who do you currently follow and look up to and listen to?

Yeah, there's, I mean there's probably too many to name, but I, I will call out kind of two areas specifically. So the micro credential work. Caroline Steele and Herman Vendemer. So Caroline is in Australia, Herman is in South Africa. You're doing some great work on microcontinental.

Oh yes, on iPad.

Yeah.

Buddy buckle.

Exactly. He's a great buddy. He's always a OEP too and a wonderful person. And so I just think, yeah, they're kind of testing a little bit what that means. Again, it's some potential local context, but there's very much that's transferable and for consideration, adoption, et cetera. Well, let's say from the UK perspective where I find it. So that's one area. The other is Joanne Roxburgh actually is really highlighting new educational models. So if you think about our traditional higher education, there is kind of now an increase of alternative models and those are being accredited, they're being given university status, they're being given degree awarding powers, yet they're not kind of the traditional model and they're starting small and then growing. And I think that is a really interesting one because it's a litmus test of tolerance. It's a litmus test as well of what is actually needed where there's demand.

Well, thanks a lot for that, Margaret. I feel I learned something and I feel I've learned more when I listen back. Thank you very much for taking the time.

Thank you so much.

It's a great search.

It's been wonderful to hack facts.

Ibrahim Adadayo Adedairan is a Nigerian educator and learning technology specialist affiliated with the National Open University of Nigeria, focusing on digital learning and access at scale.

So it's great to have you on the podcast, Ibrahim. Welcome to the learning hack.

Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

You'll talk in the conference yesterday was about chatbots and AI in education and you just showed me a very interesting video on TikTok. I think about a Nigerian woman talking all about, about those issues and I'm sure you've got your own views as well. So what did you tell audience about the tools, the trends, the tensions that AI is bringing to learning?

Thank you very much. The Tools, the trends, the tension. There are things that are glaring for all of us to see. And that is why I must start from commending the organizers of this conference, the OEB conference, for choosing a theme that is very apt, a theme that is very germane and to generality of humanity. So I must commend OEB for your work, well done and all the team that are involved. I must actually appreciate you as well, in particular, for the minute fit to hear from perspective from other hands, like Nigeria, where I come from, and to be able to synchronize what is happening over there, but with what is happening here, so that all of us will be on the same page. What I really discussed in my presentation, I was able to establish a fact that AI has come to stay. And it's something that we cannot underestimate. And it is something that we cannot separate from education in this generation. It has come to stay, although some are still denying it, especially some educational academic donors, they're still skeptical about it. Don't use it, but they use it. Telling their students not to use, but they are using it. That is psycho fancy. We need to face the reality of this time, that this is what we need. I propose something to my audience that let us do SWOT analysis of chatbot AI and education in this generation. We need to look at the strengths of AI that will inform the decision we are going to take at the end of the day. Strengths. We cannot hide the fact that the strength is so enormous that humanity cannot do without it.

Yeah.

Then it is to be embraced. The next thing we must look into, we need to look into the weaknesses.

Yeah.

Every good thing may also have the side effects, but that does not make it bad. If we are able to manage and manage well, then I called on all stakeholders to join arm together, work together as a team, as a technologist. The engineers are building. All other stakeholders, like teachers, like counseling psychologists, like social workers, everyone must also come together so that we are all on the same page, so that we build together. Because this is something that can make Omar. If we do not manage effectively well, that is all about the weaknesses, then we need to unanimously explore the opportunities. The opportunities are so numerous, are so worthwhile that we cannot say because there are tensions. Then let us throw it away. You will have thrown away very many good things that you follow. Then finally we need to look at the threats. Imagine a situation whereby the children are at risk of not knowing how to handle AI, of not knowing what questions to ask somebody asking how can I commit suicide from AI and AI is teaching and the child is implementing to the point of death. That is a serious. That calls for serious concern. And this has been happening all around. So we need to look at the threat, a situation whereby the AI can come up with a fake personality. And the whole world will assume that this is the person in the real sense of it. Is that not disastrous? It's not well managed. So all these analyses were made and I was able to now tell them that this is the point at which we need counseling, intervention counseling, psychologists, intervention to be able to work on our minds. This is the time that we need complete overhauling of our minds so that we have positive mindset, we have positive mental attitude. If you're able to do that, then we are able. We'll be able to manage and manage well. Let me quickly talk of four things that will bring about four things in managing the situation so that AI will be continuously useful to rock to our educational system across the world. Number one thing, hearing. We have heard about all these tools. We cannot deny that we are not aware the whole world is away now, although in some places their awareness level may be very low and they are also struggling. I will come back to that to tell me my experience here last year. That brought me here this year, and that brought the projects that I've been able to execute this year. It's wonderful. But let me quickly go back to those four. Four things that will bring four things. Hearing. Another one is listening. Another one is believe. And the last one is action. We have heard about it. We have listened to diverse ways of utilizing these tools to the benefit of humanity. Do we believe in it? Yes, we do. We believe we need these instruments to better the lot of humanity. Then finally, action. We need to put up action in the right direction. And that is why I will continue to commend OIBI and commend your ingenuity. Because I was wondering why choosing me for this presentation, you must have certain insights that will have led you to that. I am still wondering and I'm still appreciating you. Because it must be born out of a mind, a curious mind, a designing mind for you to say this is the person we are to choose.

I mean, you're an interesting person, Ibrahim, and it leapt out the page for me. But it essentially may overestimate my wisdom. A lot of it is very contingent. And I'd see a whole list of people and I hadn't heard of half of them. But I think that's an interesting person. Something told me that you'd be an interesting person to talk to. I'm particularly interested because I was doing an edition of Great Minds on Learning yesterday with Donald Clark from my other podcast and we were covering AI in the Global South. So I thought it'd be great to get someone from the Global south to talk about that. So it's great to hear your SWOT analysis. As a marketing person, I've done many things, SWOT analyses and it's so interesting. Strengths and weaknesses is about where we are at hand with AI opportunities and threats. The external environment. Are there ways in which those opportunities and threats are different in Nigeria to what you would see, say in Germany, in Europe and the Global North?

Thank you very much. That will perhaps bring me to my journey.

Okay.

Since last year, conference attendance till this very moment. But having mentioned those four things, if you're able to manage the hearing, listening, the belief and action very well, it will bring four other things. Positive self image, positive mental attitude, self confidence and self esteem. And with those tools, we'll be able to navigate the period without being injured by what should have profited us. Okay, now let me now go back to the journey. AI as a tool. I was invited last. I came to the conference last year with a paper, a research work on awareness and utilization of artificial intelligence tools in administration of our public secondary schools in North Central Nigeria. What I discovered was flabbergasted. So flabbergasting. You know why I say that I discovered very low level of awareness.

Yeah.

If you are not aware of something, how do you utilize it? If you are not utilizing it, how do you benefit from it? I could see backwardness in that. That in this generation. So how will you be doing great things that is expected of you at this time? Then I delivered the paper here and I went back home. But I went back home with certain things that I've learned. I was greatly inspired and highly motivated that something must be done. I started looking inward that you are looking for AI and administration. How far have you gone as a person regarding AI and your own profession, which is counseling? And then I discovered that I too need to explore where I belong. Because humanity actually needs counseling at a very particular time.

Right. And you've got an interest in E counseling within learning management systems. Yeah. And is that what you're going to tell me about your journey?

Thank you. I'll have to bring that in as a continue.

Sir.

When I got back, I decided to work on what and what can I really do to make counseling available to myriads of people that need counseling. Outside. And we are having paucity of counselors. Even scripturally, the Bible, Proverbs 14:11 says, where there is no counsel, people fall. But in the presence of multitude of counselors, there is safety. So we have paucity of counselors, and people have a lot of issues that need their attention. The youth, the old, the children, the productive age. They're supposed to be very productive job seekers, employers, diverse people, they need counseling.

Then.

I now remember that this is why we have AI to be used to advantage, so that we reach a lot of people with little effort. And that was why I looked in what all the friends in the United States of America that worked with Microsoft. What can we do together? I'm a counselor. I'm in education. You are an expert. Can we build an app that will be so much beneficial to anybody across the world? Said we should be able to do that. Oh, fine. Then we need to collaborate then and start something. And we started building the app. I have the joy to tell you today that the app is ready for use. One thing amazing about it is that we're able to start. The starting point on this app is that we allow counselors across the world to be admitted onto the app.

Yeah.

So that we have counselors with different kinds of expertise. We have counselors with varied backgrounds. We have counselors with different orientations. So that when a client is coming in, the first thing we do for the client is to administer. You can see the work of the AI Administer personality traits, psychological tests on the personality to show us where the person belong. Naturally.

When you say that these are counselors, they're human counselors or they're AI counselors.

Human counselors will work with AI counselors. We are going to work together because now the human counselors are the trainers of AI counselors.

Okay. Training in the sense, not the technical sense of training, the LLM. Exactly, but in a different sense of training them.

Yes. It's a gradual thing that we are going to continue. We are just starting the process because if it's a continuous exercise, you know, before now, we used to think that e counseling will be a bit difficult because of the area of empathy, because of the area of emotions. But today, AI has been trained to show emotions. AI can now get angry, and when you apologize, AI can forgive and overlook and pardon you. So what else are we saying? That we cannot train AI to be doing all these things?

Yes. There's a lot of research saying that people, especially the states, completely bond with their chatbots and think of them as, you know, as Friends, even lovers, people have emotional relationships with ChatGPT, can you see? So which is a good thing. And also, you know, there's threats there, aren't there?

If people are now doing that, why can't professionals take advantage on time to be able to grab the opportunity and use it in a way that will help people rather than disguising doing as.

If masking and hiding. Yeah, hiding. Ibrahim, how do you guard against that threat? The threats that there are in people talking to AIs getting very kind of emotionally attached with them. And we guard against all the weaknesses and threats that you've pinned up in the technology. How do you put guardrails about that around that?

That is why I keep on emphasizing that human must walk hand in hand with air.

Yes.

If we are synergizing from time to time, we'll continue to do research and to upgrade. That's why I am recommending smarter concepts now. What I call smarter concepts.

Yeah.

It used to be smart concept specific. We have to go space.

Yeah.

Measurable. We have to make this measurable.

I can't remember what say. Tell me what the A is achievable. Achievable.

We must see the achievability together and.

T for timely Time bound.

Yes.

Right.

Time bound. Yeah.

So no smart. What about R?

Yeah.

Relevance.

Sorry, Mr. R.

Relevance.

Relevant.

So if all of us consider relevance, then the T is time bound. That is math. I'm not talking of smatter. Can you imagine what the ENR is.

Er, where you end up if you're not careful? No, I don't know. Tell me what the ER is.

E is evaluation.

Okay. Yeah.

We continue to evaluate. We continue to evaluate.

Yeah.

And what is the R?

You tell me.

Research. It was me and continuous exercise. So by the time we are, we can use these concepts.

Yeah.

Professionals coming together, working hand in hand with technology experts.

Right.

We have a long way to go and all this must be done on time.

Yeah.

We must not slack, we must not tarry. Let those that can sponsor researches, let us pour into action on this.

Yes.

This is an area that calls for urgent attention. Our actions and inactions may mean a lot to humanity. And as such we need to act and act first. Someone like me. I am ready as a professional, as an educator. I'm a senior lecturer of counseling psychology and also practice as a counseling psychologist. As a counselor, I have practical experiences. So we need people of such that world come together. And that is why we need to harness all the resources we have. So we are all concerned, whether in Africa or here. In Europe or elsewhere in the world, we all need to come together to save our generation from collapse, but to utilize the instruments of our time. This is an intelligent age and it has come to say utilizing it for the benefit of humanity. So back to the story I was talking about. If you talk of the need for AI, we even need it better in Africa, because I believe we are developing. This is it. Here we are developed. But there are three stages of anything in life according to a management theory. One, establishment stage, two, maintenance stage, then the third is about sustainability.

Sorry for the last one.

Sustainability.

Sustainability.

So if it had been established here, what about maintenance? How do we maintain? For instance, we discovered in this conference that we need a better approach to examination to assessments of students with AI. We need a lot of complete overhauling exercise. We need to restrategize. And all stakeholders must be involved, all agents of socialization must be involved. The home, the school, the government.

The.

Policymakers, the media, all of us need to amalgamate and do things collectively. It is when we are able to maintain, then we can be talking of sustainability.

Okay, and Abraham, you're making me wish that I'd seen your talk now because it's just so interesting and fascinating. Unfortunately, we are limited for time now and I can see the next interviewee queuing up to come and be interviewed. So I have to say to you that I really want to thank you for taking the time and I'd ask anybody to kind of follow you and listen to you and all the other things you've got to say because you've obviously got a great deal more to say that we could cover in this small space of time. But for today, thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you very much. I'm happy that you invited me. God bless.

Cheers. Facts.

Buena.

Gill Galliposo is an emerging learning professional and OEB 30 under 30 awardee recognized for innovative thinking on the future of learning and education.

Great to have you on the podcast. You're one of the 30 on the subject. 30?

Yes.

So many can talk about that. But how did you get into learning tech? Where did you grow up? Where did you study? What's your journey to, you know.

Well, I actually I. You know, my grandpa used to say that education is a vocation. So something that like you're just kind of gravitated towards and it. Looking back now at death, I rings true. I was like the. I was kind of like the teacher's pet. So in the Philippines they had this weird thing where they. The. Every time after an exam, the teacher will choose a student that got 100 and then they will then give that student the rest of the exam papers to mark.

Right.

So then that was sort of like my task as like a 6 year old. I'll just like inquire of people's exams and then I'll give the feedback as to why they got something wrong. And then because I was sort of delegated that task, I just naturally went into more of like a tutor relationship that some of the students that may be struggling. But that site's very much hindsight. Why I would say if you asked me like a few years back, where it started was when I was in university, I initially went into pre dentistry.

Yeah.

And then essentially realized I did not want to look at teeth for the rest of my life. And so I started looking at other courses. Fell into pharmacology, then fell into psychology and after that. So during the psychology route, I had to do a field work into one of the less privileged schools in Canada. So we're at Premise, Alberta. And I had to measure. I forgot what I'm measuring now, but I had to basically interview a couple of the students. And whilst I was walking down the halls, it was so empty and barren, it almost felt like a prison cell.

Yeah.

And that really reflected on the way that the students treated education. Like they felt very bored and kind of like, what is the point of learning? You know, it's like, we're not gonna go like to university anyways. That kinds of comment which made me then think maybe I'm in the wrong field because I feel really strongly about what just happened with me and those students and I want to make a change in this sector. And so then I moved into Bachelors of Education. That's where I did my teacher training. I then pursued a Master's in Digital Technologies Communication and Education or DTCE at University of Manchester. Upon graduation, I got a job offer for University of Leeds as a learning technologist and then it just carried on there. And I've been with University of Leeds since. For almost three years now. Yeah, yeah. And I'm a senior learning technologist.

So the other interviewee this, this morning was Margaret Torresek.

Yeah.

So you work with Margaret. Yes, I know that is complete coincidence because the way that you selected for this was kind of selected. So it's a bit of a posh word for it. I bumped into you at the speech reception last night and you just won the learning battle, the 30 under 30s. Tell us about the learning battle. Because I was supposed to go to that and I Missed it. I was too busy slapping around Berlin. And so what was the learning battle? What did you do? And what was your secret sauce in winning?

So the learning battle is essentially like a. Almost like a free form speech competition, but not really a competition because it's more really just a sharing of experiences and then your peers applaud you and then whoever gets the most applause wins. The topic that we were supposed to talk about was just very simple. What is your most memorable learning moment? And for me, I initially actually didn't want to go up. I was like, no, I don't really want to speak. I don't know what the topic's going to be. And I usually require quite a bit of time to process things and figure out what I want to say. But the moment they said, what is the most memorable learning experience experience for you, instantly I thought about my grandpa, because my grandpa was my first ever teacher, really and truly. And I, as I said, my grandpa was a teacher and she was the one who set teaching as a vacation.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. And so for my speech, it was very impromptu. Like, I fear that if I watch the recording, I'm probably like babbling a lot of like, because I was getting really emotional because it, it did come from a very personal space of just wanting to share how my grandpa is the reason, essentially when he said, what's my journey? It all goes back to my grandpa. Everything that I do, especially when it comes to learning and education, is just an inspir. It's inspired by my grandfather and how sort of really put the human in the center. Before I. I believe people started talking about human centeredness, my grandpa was already embodying that and I got to see and witness that.

So, yeah, so some very early kind.

Of experience in learning when you were.

Teaching other people in your class, and then comparison with another place where it was like a present. And then you come to this and got to an ongoing learning. And so you say it wasn't a competition, but it must have been a competition because you're the winner. A big shiny cup. Yes. So, well, congratulations on that. What did it mean for you to be selected for the 30 under 30 in the first place.

With the 30 under 30? With conferences as big as this, you usually don't see many young faces. It's usually people who have had a lot of experience in the field and people who've established themselves because it is quite a, you know, pricey endeavor. So for me, 30 under 30 being selected for that was. It's like this great opportunity to actually exist in this space and learn from people who've been here like as maybe half my age and just since the.

Cambrian era of some of us.

But also like getting a chance to make a mark.

Yeah.

Is how I see it as well.

So yeah, my gotta give. Which is sure as I'm afraid for ever cynical. It's. We all go to all these conferences and see each other. We just get bored looking at each other and you know, where's the new blood? So 30 under 30 is very popular because you get to kind of get a completely different perspective on things. With that in view, how do you feel looking forward? Those of us who are coming up from the camera near up, we moving towards the back end of our careers and maybe they keep bringing them through something else. There's a lot of muttering off mic and I have to say, hang on a bit, I'll say the quiet thing out loud. People look at AI and say a lot of this stuff is going to disappear. A lot of this is going to disappear or be completely different. For us guys, it's largely academic. But you starting out in the career, how do you see the future?

I don't know if it's a. A weird position that I have because I sort of. I sort of like, I. I'm 28 years old, so I feel like I understand the younger perspective and also the older perspective. But because of that I almost. And because I'm so close. Like my job is literally in digital education and my job is to as At University of Leeds, our stances in regards to artificial intelligence is that we embrace it so that we can use it in an ethical and responsible way. But for me, I don't center my. When I see the future, AI is actually not something that's at the center of it. Because I think by centering AI, we almost underestimate the conversations that are happening with the younger generation. Because I feel like sometimes when we center AI, people see us like, oh, it's catering to laziness. People are going to lose their critical thinking skills. Right. And in the learning battle, actually someone said let them be. And I think that's exactly how you need to almost approach it. Yeah. Is let the students be, let the young generation be and see how they interact with it. Because I'm already starting to see shifts in discourse. I lurk university subreddit pages and when AI first came around, everyone was so keen and using it. All the students were like, you know, this is going to be so helpful. Like, you know, screw plagiarism, things like that. And now the discourse is going to. I can feel my. The way I think shifting. Like students are actually talking about how it's affecting the way they're learning and that they have their own concerns of if I continue to use it the way that I'm using it, am I losing my critical thinking skills and what does this mean when I graduate?

Yeah.

So yeah, students may make mistakes, the young generation will make mistakes in how they approach AI, but they will also learn. Right. So there's that optimism with humanity and the new generation that we can't treat them as if they're children that are just going to use this tool, this technology and let it ruin the entire world. Yeah, I don't think that's the case. I think they will make mistakes but they will learn from those mistakes.

Very important to make it safe.

Yeah.

That difference perspectives is really interesting for the age groups. I have grown up kids, one in full time education still and higher education and there's a lot of anti about it I suppose because they're in the creative professions. You know. Good bit about plagiarism. I wrote Bubble many years ago that's been plagiarized by AI. You can look it up and they're particularly worried whether an illustrator was a musician. So that feels. I hear much more anti AI sentiments actually from younger people than older people. But in the learning space that's a very interesting different perspective I think from what older people feel. Do you feel that is a real generational difference?

Not in my experience but that's because of who I'm exposed to. Because I work at a university you tend to meet very similar minded people who are transparent. So I would say the older generation are quite transparent about the fears that they have. And I very much agree that the younger generation are actually the ones that are sometimes more hesitant to adopt it because of the concerns about plagiarism, ethical usage and things like that. But I think that's where we need to differentiate Gen AI and artificial intelligence almost because I definitely agree with Genai. It's so problematic as it is right now just because there's one subset that's. Or not even just like entire setup but like aspects in that subset that has its harm, like the dangers of using it. It doesn't mean that it can't be helpful. There was this. I forgot the personnel that they said sometimes we're so focused on thinking about what happens when we use something, what happens when we use AI or. But maybe sometimes you should think, think the opposite. What happens if we don't.

Yeah.

What happens if we stop using these technologies? What are we stopping from progressing? So someone mentioned health, for instance, and medicine. Yeah, I think that's another. That's a really important use case to focus on when we think about artificial intelligence.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Maybe we should stop creating stupid videos and Kirkhans.

Focus the energy somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah. It's different because how do you see your own practice area of distance learning, online learning changing over the next. It's difficult to specify a time period because change so rapidly in AI particularly, but perhaps in the next year and next few years.

So specifically for me, I work with academics right now to develop digital learning content, but it doesn't mean it's fully online. So the students are still experiencing. It might be like in person classes, but they host some of their activities online or it's facilitated by technology. So for me, how I see it changing is that it's really going to focus more on the relationships and social aspect of learning rather than like less engaging, you know what I mean? Like, is this like if right now the conversation around elearning for instance, is very much on are they clicking the right things in order to get the proper learning? But I think we're gonna with AI, I think it's really forcing people to reflect on the social aspects of learning and how we can use that tool to facilitate that connection amongst one another in classroom and learning spaces.

And lastly, because I know you have to go up to something else, who do you follow in this space to keep you up to date with what's happening in edtech and the wider areas of tech? Who do you think is really worth listening to?

So my first introduction to digital sustainability was Neil Selwyn. So when I did my master's, one of the articles we had to write was written by Neil Sullivan about digital sustainability. So that was the first instance, my first introduction to that world and really getting me to understand big data and machine learning and just where it is around the world and just what it means sustainably as well. And just that there's different aspects to sustain sustainability. It's not just environment, it's very human, it's also social. And contrary to what people might think is that if you go in that world you might be very anti technology, but really what it asks you to do is to think about how can we use these technologies creatively and efficiently to get what we need and get you to reflect on what is it that we need and what is it that we're trying to get out of these Tools.

Great answer. Thank you very much and thank you very much for taking the time.

Yes, thank you.

Hack Facts.

Paul Baksich is a long standing analyst and consultant in online and distance learning with extensive experience advising universities and governments on digital education strategy.

So Paul, it's great to have you on podcaster. God Blast. Wanted to for a long time. Welcome to the Lily Hack.

Thank you for being here. Yeah.

Theme of this conference is about keeping humans in the loop. But you're talking with Brian Muldigan about what it might be like to run an education without teachers. What does that look like in your view? And how do you justify indulging in such an outrageous speculation of forum of this nature?

Right, well that's a challenge of question. I think in reality Tim's businesses and education is for human benefit. There will be some humans in the loop, but there might be a lot fewer of them and they might be doing different things. And so I think some parts, in a sense we're running a workshop without an answer. Simplistically, Brian and I are looking for the answer from the combined intellect of the people at the workshop. It's not the first workshop of this sort I've been enrolled in and we've had some very good ideas from the workshop we ran last year at OEB and from some national meetings. But obviously AI is key to this. Without that we wouldn't be talking about it. And obviously everyone's worrying about this. I mean if you worried a lot about AI taking over assessment, then you've got to do something different about assessment.

Yeah.

You can't do too much because there's already speculation about the AI simulacrum. Simulacra. This genius simulacra, I think long transismoic level. So taking over the V and you know, being judged by some of the teachers and that's not that far away. So I think it's a question of where will the humans be and what will they be doing and can one do more kind of, you know, snap sampling of things. Who's, who's. Who's guarding the guardians? Who's monitoring the chat bots when they go off on one?

Yeah.

As. As they often do. A lot can be done by just using simple productivity gains on. On the teacher's side. Do teachers need to spend so much time in preparation? No, AIs are already helping. Yeah. To the. Would they mind not doing so much preparation? Probably not. Or possibly school teachers wouldn't mind, but university teachers seem to get more razzle descher from that might mind Interesting about assessment. Everyone hates assessment. Not just the students, but the people who love to market. But every time you say, oh, well, we're going to simplify the assessment or you have less to do, they get really worried and really nervous. And that's been true since my early days of the office university. So you have to follow the money and understand maybe, maybe there's a reason why you don't want to give up marking. One reason, obviously, which keeps a lot of teachers solvent in the summer, is, yeah, if you don't get. If you don't do marketing, you don't get paid extra money.

Is that true? Quite generally, I mean, AI comes in and provides tools that will do the whole nitty gritty stuff that you complain about and hate in your job. Like it, in my case editing podcast, I could let the AI edit the whole thing, but when it actually comes to it and you sort of see what the results of that are, as a producer, you take something out of my cold, dead hands. Will you take my ability to kind of intervene as a human and actually decide what the editing is, what the edit is?

Yes. I think also there's a phrase, the written the oyster, which probably means something completely different. Perils. I think there's a certain grittiness of the real world that you still want and actually can aid creativity. It's a bit like the argument, you know, David Hockney, if you're really doing all your painting on an iPad, is that really quite the same, aren't you? Unless you're a very unusual person, aren't you want to suffer from that sub lack of contact reality? So perhaps you have to do a bit of marking, even if just to train the AI. It's a bit like, you know, I say Africa. Wouldn't it be nice if something could create this Word document for me? But I do a lot of my thinking through the final tweaks of the Word document. I'm not just doing typography, I'm doing thinking as well. Or so I believe, anyway. Yes. I can't think at all until I.

Put lemons on the keyboard. Yes, I take that away. But I do find actually it's useful for AI for first jobs because I immediately disagree with the them.

Yes. And you want to argue with it.

And that's kind of a useful process. But talking the kind of teacherless environment you're scaring us all with. Can you put any more specificity around that? What are the teachers going to be.

Not doing or doing well, they're not going to be. They're not really creating content, which is not a new idea because basically in theory if the OER zealots are for which I was one for many years had had their way changed resources, we would have everything. And the original European Commission vision which I was part of trying to implement and study was that every country would have a national repository of material. And oddly enough at school level it's really only England, not the UK but England who has done that success in recent years with the York Academy. But most other countries don't view them a national repository or school material. And yet school education is desperately standardized. I say desperately because perhaps it's too standardized at university level. There may be more excuses but to be honest, people have been trying for years to do standardized repositories with not much success because universities thrive on pretending to be different from each other. But that probably takes us into our other agendas. So I think the content is is one thing, I think the assessment is another kind of thing. I think there will be humans but needly do so much. There's a kind of whole discussion about shouldn't we just be monitoring critical incidents. So for example, I'm looking at the sweetheart to the corner of my eye as well. If the AI detects that something odd is happening like I stop moving it would alert the teacher in your case you to do something that perform CPR. Now as I'm getting on a bit as my enemies call. So I, I think that's one way the chat bots, I'm not sure. I think they have to be more and this is where I agree with some of the vendors. They have to be in a wall garden because at the moment the chat bot can take you down all kinds of crazy directions. And the way some of these roll ins are linked you can get from chemistry to explosives to drugs to synthesizing a new mind altering substance within about three questions.

That's quite interesting. I mean some people say it'd be a good thing if we kind of dissolved the barriers between different disciplines. I know you know that has been resisted a lot.

I went to Sussex University where they.

Did a bit of that you did contextuals in the American style but now I think they've changed a little bit. Back to your school English.

I think it's a great pity. I mean I, I, I, I, I reflect a lot from the analytic point of view and why we have a four year degree in Scotland and a three year degree in England yet in Flores don't seem to worry about the differences between that but either one, one group for learning less or, or, or one group are learning more. It's all. I quite like the idea of a kind of more general first year. I very much like the idea of more interdisciplinary master's programs but that actually isn't a new topic. When I came into schaping Hallam in 1996 we were working on essentially what we called industrial masters at the behest of the government which were I think one part subject, one part business, one part subject, one part business and one part it. And that was quite a good model. I forget what it was called, but it certainly was the way we worked in those days. Then that fell out of action. I think it's a question of maybe not all disciplines but maybe several. I mean business and it is very important still a lot of the MBAs come out with zero knowledge of it and that just seems bizarre. It's odd 10 years ago. It's really bizarre nowadays.

Yeah, because that's where all the money is.

Well, it's also the business. Business processes are changing on the end there are feed every time you go on to Facebook. The interface is different. Yeah. And there are business reasons driving that. Not just tenant but reasons.

Absolutely. So you've written recently about students use of AI and you say that universities. I'm quoting me now. Universities, with some help from sector level agencies, national bodies and international organizations are upgrading their guidelines on LLMs and academic integrity but at a glacial and occasional pace. From the outside it does tend to look as if educations are locked in a cat and mouse game over AI where students very much have the upper hand use their greater knowledge of and facility with the technology. So if sound like an accurate picture to you? And how do educators stop e cheating from becoming such an obsession that it distracts from making beneficial uses?

Yeah, I think that is a really tough one and there's not an easy answer. I think a lot of the. I mean there's various levels I'm thinking of kind of. You know as well the sages run also in grief processes and such. I mean first of all there's a kind of situation of denial. There's an awful lot of people trying to pretend this isn't as bad as it's made out to be. And of course the vested interests want it to be that way. Students are very good at saying what they expect. What they expect. Professors should say sector agencies are slow. I mean as you know just in most countries changing the school curriculum is a multi year process however keen an incoming government like what Got in the UK wants you can't change these things overnight. So therefore until you change it, it's probably best not to kind of complain too much about how bad it is because then you upset parents. And universities can move born in because they can still operate individually. They really need to in my view operate more as groups. And actually there are some science of the Russian group in this area are operating more as a group. But other groupings of universities don't seem to be so there's this kind of denial phase. Students when you catch them in unguarded moments are much more open. And the student surveys, if you drill into the data you can see a lot going on that probably shouldn't be going on or probably shouldn't be going on this year I think it's not really a science fiction view, but if you look 10 years ahead, I suspect we'll all be using AI a lot, teachers and students, hopefully a bit like with mobile phones in calculators, kids won't be using AI at age 5 any more than it should be using calculators at age 5. And I'm subscribed to the idea that there's far too much use of mobile phones by school age children. So I'm in favor of severe restrictions. And maybe we have to do the same with AI that as you get older and work your way up the educational stages you're allowed to use more and more AI. But it will be difficult because unless you can somehow I don't think you can do this with ethical guideline students, the mid level, typically archetypal lazy students who just wants to pass. And actually if they're at a good university, they just want to pass with that good university. They're probably the prime candidates in my view for looking for a little bit of help from help from their machine friends. And as they're unguarded moments I bogged about that as well. Students will find that and US surveys especially show this is by no means typical. Now it might actually be worse in the U.S. i mean in Europe we like to think things are nice or worse than the U.S. i suspect that would come with your Lucas part. Always. Always. Yeah. So I think the idea of an arms race or the cheaters kind of trying to out outperform the, the, the, the checkers is, isn't really helpful. So unethical guidelines do have their place. But ethical guidelines don't stop bad people doing things and they don't stop lazy people doing lazy things. So it's quite tricky. I'm a great believer in. In reconstructing assessment. The trouble is when you say that everyone says we've got to reconstruct assessment and I have two issues with that which relate to my special interest. One is this sounds like it's going to cost a lot of money and the HD sector in the UK is basically bankrupt. Yeah. And all signs of governments putting a lot more money in and not just in the uk, in other countries. In the UK we bang on about it more. But that's because we publish everything. I think everyone reads. It's happening all the time. Countries too. And the second thing is that no one's quite sure how to reconceptualize the assessment other than by going back to what seemed like old fashioned and probably not entirely in accessibility friendly approaches. Some people say let's have more virus, but that puts a great premium on oracy. Yes. No, I know the government's quite keen in and promoting or. But it puts a great disadvantage for people who can't speak.

Yes.

Or can't listen. So I think we've got to see more examples from the pundits, including me, as to how we're going to reconceptualize assessments. And there are one or two things you can do. If assessments were more multi stage, if you had like the formative stage, then the summative stage that gives the tutor more score to intervene kind of lower, lower, lower way before the kind of final summer comes along. And it's actually a lot harder to game the whole process with AI than it is to game the end product. You know, pressing a button and getting a plausible end product is getting increasingly easy. To be fully aware of literature and drafts and summaries all the way along is a lot harder. Especially when the teacher comes in and says, right, no, let's just talk about your progress now. Yeah, John, stand up and tell us how you're getting on. So I think the way is try and do it without costing a lot more and be more disruptive. In fact, turn it back into a formative process with the summative end, I think might be the way. And maybe we can do that without spending more money because there ain't more money. So something's going to give. If we're spending more on the spend. There are some technical defenses and I've been writing about recently it would help if we had somewhat sturdier attracts the song which rather than write a few words about Hamlet and something Write a few. Write a few words about Hamlet with references in this Microsoft template which we got conveniently available to you. Oddly enough in the ofball world as we call it the vocational education we're actually much better at that assignment templates are are there and you can make the template quite complicated and you can to some extent make a template AI proof. There are things that the AIs can't do with Microsoft Word. On the whole while times will change quite fast, we might be able to buy ourselves a year space to do some thinking before the AIs can do everything automatically. Yeah but I think we have a year or two when we could actually just tighten up a bit without getting into this arms race of you know, I'm Shafi, you're a three and you're gaining how I'm checking it because that's just leading to an awful lot of fuss and annoyance. What's that?

I remember a couple of decades ago perhaps there's been more having a conversation with you about word study and time motion. I can't remember the context. It was a conference which people in workplace learning would now call process re engineering and everything has much grown to name nowadays. We seek to be in a moment now when assumptions about how work is organized in companies and institutions are facing their biggest shakeup since Taylorism maybe. Does that sound my hype? If not, how do we place what might be about to happen to working lives in that long historical context? Data compact are the first industrial revolution and I'd like you to answer that in about three minutes.

Three minutes. Okay. Well I think the first thing I'd say is it isn't as new as you might think. When I came into when I came into Sheffield Hallam into the School of Computing and Management Sciences I thought okay, management sciences. What do I know about that answer? Not so much. And yet I was going to be teaching on essentially MBA taught courses postgraduate level so I very rapidly kind of because I was interested in this topic anyway read around and came across activity based casting and business process re engineering which kind of conceptual systems that came out of the US And I've been very disappointed that BPR seemed to fade away before it got to reorage universities and I'm particularly disappointed that the activity of his costume remained in the kind of we're feeling very tired box and I'm really enjoying the fact that OECD which is kind of the sum of all wisdom of the advanced advanced countries you might say has now recommended that activity based casting in what they call the lite form spelled L I T E in the American way is one of the Answers because we first proposed that in 2002. So it's nice to see that we got something out. But doesn't it take far too long? We've all A lot of business people have forgotten the literature they bet to business school too long ago and they forgot all the stuff they studied.

I think we find out look with learning theory as well. The dawn of great modes of learning going back a bit and everything seemed to happen again and again. 3s Plato onwards and still to be coming back every now and again because it's very easy to forget. It's easy to start to get.

I think sometimes a new generation has to reinvent it with their own approaches. Yeah. I mean like this Israeli everyone likes to say oh we're going to be the the new dislike. You know the previous generation. That's where that older rubbish. Absolutely. And then you have to differentiate yourself for your predecessor just like kids have to say well I'm not going to be like mom and dad even if you turn out by mom and M at the end.

I got a sense that you're kind of tedding in the direction here of obtuse assholes really. This isn't such a great big turnover as everybody is making out. There's going to be.

Well, I don't know. I think what I'm saying is we have analytic tools now which can basically help us a lot with this and we've actually had them for a while which is we haven't for some reason forgotten about them. Perhaps life is too easy or else perhaps Covid kind of stopped us doing strategic thinking. I mean plus it done it's got large extent in many countries I think to me and I think there's still a bit of an if, if driverless cars come in. I think that would probably be the kind of thing maybe more than changing work that would make the average person think well something's changed badly because if you just think about the impact rather than the armies of robots which I think, you know, end of the day Henry the Hoover is going to have to be pretty clever to dust the dust the average house company. I think that if robot cars come in I think that would be transformers and opposed to disrupt. Highly disruptive in terms of, you know, employment. I mean I, I, I know my taxi driver says he wouldn't, he wouldn't be putting his son into, into into this business now. There's not the life in it now.

Yes.

So that could make a big change. Never fully made people realize actually the work work could change radically as well that they just hadn't been paying attention.

Yeah and well when my job knows me what they think they should do about the age of AI I say buy gold and not far ago that's a bit depressing. I know it appealed to you because of the kind of cynicism it's joke.

Yes.

I think basically it seems sad. I mean and a lot of people have written about this in the global south the rich seems to be destined to inherit the earth because only the rich can afford in the compute for yeah no D7 at the well hopefully could spread out bit lower but it has got rather. At least they were in 7 Oscar of the Apocalypse and yeah to 7 is not such a bad Navrakat before or one in the case of some science fiction novels.

This has got very dark. I like it but I'd really love you to come back for a full episode but for now lastly in the fields of burning and technology who you currently follow and look to the sound advice about the way forward.

That'S a tricky one for me actually Gary Marcus in the AI world I follow because he basically he's a tumor. Well he is and he isn't and.

I think there's been a lot of.

Discussion for lots of years about why large language models can't be the complete answer. And I subscribe to the kind of ontology group who says there's got to be some kind of world model in the there and I can cite evidence going back to actually the RV program of the 1980s when this started. I first saw proto LLMs and BT monsters from lamps in the mid-90s. This is an ancient technology. You know his computing has massified and made really really good it's that last 10% might be the tough part and Gary is quite good but that I mean also the personalities are interesting. Let's put their way I think Donald Clark I follow closely to me he's well worth reading and many traditional gurus I actually follow what Tony Bates says very closely. There are his books and he taught courses based on these books. But I'm probably in danger of doing too much thinking for myself as many of the subjects I talk about and work on like costs, costs and time are very esoteric and benchmarking there's probably six people in the world to know anything useful about benchmarking online learning. Yeah so some of my sound is very narrow. So it's not anywhere we follow each other but not really anyone else because anyone else isn't doing this kind of things frat I'VE become too specialized.

Well, that's music to a podcaster's heart, really, because it's all about people geeking out about smaller and smaller fields of study to a degree.

It shouldn't be small. Time should be fundamental to everything. I mean, that's what the physicists tell us.

Yeah.

And yet it's often forgotten.

Time is fundamental to my interview schedule, so I'm going to thank you very much, Paul, and then let's continue this. Another pleasure.

Thank you very much. Pleasure.

That's all on the Learning Hack Podcast for this time. Many thanks to our guests and to our sponsors. The Learning Hack is completely independent and transparently funded by sponsorship. It is produced by John Helmer and hosted by him and also me, Mariana, a Synthesia AI avatar. If you want to help others find us, please like follow, rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

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Now I finally get it.

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