Experimenting with the Future of Higher Education: harnessing AI to pave the way towards a new model of learning
- beatriz buarque
- há 2 dias
- 5 min de leitura
Those close to me know that my career is underpinned by three themes: education, peace, and technology. I'm passionate about a transformative type of education, I understand diversity and inclusion as a pathway to peace, and I adapt to new technologies, looking for ways to improve learning experiences and make a positive impact on society. When I was invited by the University of Hertfordshire to design the module International Conflict and Peace, I saw it as a gift, an opportunity to experiment with the future of higher education.
What is my dream model of education? How could AI be used to achieve that? These were the questions on my mind when I started designing the course material, and I'm sharing this experiment here with the hope that it will foster deeper conversations about the future of higher education and inspire colleagues to use this transition moment as an opportunity to express their creativity through teaching.
Incorporating Social Media Aesthetics into Asynchronous Learning through AI and Audiovisual Effects
One of the things I've noticed recently is that students often struggle to assimilate content conveyed through asynchronous learning materials, and I personally think this difficulty is mostly derived from two factors:
when producing asynchronous learning materials, there is still an attachment to a model of learning that wasn't originally designed for that. Many of us go over slides as if we were presenting our research at a conference. Others just speak to the camera, producing content that resembles an online version of a lecture.
younger generations have grown up with social media, so they're used to easily skipping content they don't find engaging. There is already evidence that exposure to social media affects attention, making it more difficult to remain focused on a specific task. It may explain, for instance, the lower level of engagement with video lectures and readings.
Observing my son's engagement with long videos on Instagram and YouTube, I noticed something though. Younger generations have not lost their ability to watch a video until the end... They may have become used to a specific aesthetics that make content particularly apealling to them. It is as if they were speaking a different language than the one spoken by many academics.
Many of us are still attached to a traditional model of education whereas many youngsters are effectively learning through a new form of communication: one that is more conversational, that plays with visual and audio effects, and that sounds more authentic.
With that in mind, I decided to incorporate social media aesthetics into my asynchronous learning materials. Both AI and the editing skills I developed when working as a journalist years ago were decisive here. Claude helped me speak the language of my students. After writing the script for each video, I asked for its assistance to adopt a more conversational tone, and when recording the videos I also gave myself permission to improvise. An AI video editor gave me access to a range of audiovisual resources and animated captions, making the content more inclusive and engaging, allowing me to bring examples and key concepts to life by matching my speech with relevant video clips.
As I enjoy playing with audio effects, I made the most of them to add surprise elements and strategic pauses. The video below gives you an idea of the final result. All the video clips featured were AI-generated. The synchronisation between video clips and speech as well as the audio effects were introduced by me.
Diversifying the IR Curriculum with an AI Video Editor
The video clips generated by the AI video editor were not exempt from biases. These became particularly evident when addressing topics related to democracy and colonial legacies. Video clips representing elections were mostly US-based, reinforcing the discourse that America is a democracy champion. Video clips representing colonialism were mostly reduced to armies of white men. Rather than reproducing biases or giving up on the idea of illustrating my speech, I relied on my creativity to come up with alternative solutions. The video below illustrates how I found a way of visualising my claims on colonialism through a mix of animated text and images.
Interestingly, the video I would consider the most challenging one (the one exploring indigenous approaches to peacebuilding) wasn't that difficult to edit because the tool suggested video clips representing a wide range of indigenous communities. Perhaps this is the material where I most vividly expressed my creativity, because I wanted students to feel immersed in approaches to peacebuilding often overlooked in IR courses and, by doing so, I was consciously honouring my Brazilian indigenous ancestry.
Paving the way towards a new model of learning
AI tools are far from neutral or perfect, but by critically engaging with them and constantly reflecting on our collaboration, they can help us further develop our human agency and stimulate our creativity.
When it comes to education, my experiment shows that AI can create new ground for creative pedagogies, diversity, and inclusion. Rather than representing a threat, it can help us move towards a new model of education, one that is more in tune with technological advances, the internationalisation of education, and the cognitive changes experienced by younger generations.
The feedback received from students confirms this insight. For the first time, I reached 100% satisfaction. All students who responded to the survey (n=6) expressed confidence in their ability to learn about International Conflict and Peace through the resources provided. Here are some of the comments they shared about what they found most useful:
The experiment worked, and its positive impact on student satisfaction could potentially increase university ratings and result in a more skilled workforce. Now the critical question is: how can we scale this? I won't romanticise my experiment. I only had two months to design the course material, and I did that while handling three different jobs. It didn't have a negative impact on my wellbeing because editing is therapeutic to me and I had fun doing it. However, I am aware that many colleagues don't have previous experience in editing videos, and precarious contracts often restrain our creativity instead of stimulating it.
It isn't enough to only provide academics with access to AI tools. I personally believe that, to remain relevant in the future, universities must rethink their entire approach to education. This involves investing more in teaching development, reducing the size of classrooms to enable a more individualised learning experience, and expanding and diversifying the cohort of teachers to meet the specific needs of students, effectively preparing them for the job market. We have a long way ahead, and the actions we take today will undoubtedly shape the future of higher education.
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