New grant to explore the use of Artificial Intelligence in teaching

Professor Bart Rienties and Dr Wayne Holmes in the OU’s  Institute of Educational Technology, have won Erasmus+ funding for a project called "Artificial Intelligence in Teaching”.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having a critical but unclear impact on Higher Education (HE), which urgently needs to be properly understood. The “Artificial Intelligence in Teaching” project (AIT) aims to identify and analyse AI best practices in HE in three countries (Denmark, Portugal and the UK), and to develop a roadmap for future developments and use.

AIT will investigate both dimensions of AI in education: learning ‘with’ AI and learning ‘about’ AI. The first dimension involves AI approaches such as adaptive and personalised learning that have the potential to help teachers do what they do best: focus on the human aspects of teaching, helping learners learn more effectively. However, a proper understanding of the second dimension of AI in education is equally important. This involves raising all HE stakeholders’ awareness and understanding of the full implications of AI for the HE sector and beyond.

The project, which is due to be completed by August 2020, will identify and analyse practical examples, potential uses and best practices of both dimensions of AI in HE; in order to develop a roadmap for the development and application of both dimensions of AI in HE.

The AIT consortium comprises The Open University (UK), Universidade Aberta (Portugal) and Cphbusiness (SmartLearning) (Denmark).

Read more about research in the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology