9.15am (coffee + networking)

10am – 4.30pm (inc. lunch), Friday 10 November 2023, University of Technology Sydney [venue map]

A joint event hosted by the Connected Intelligence Centre and the Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society

We’re full! Registration now closed.

There have been several “AI winters” over the decades when early hopes fizzled out. But they laid key foundations, and right now we are in the sweltering heat of a new AI summer. Most experts in AI and education recognise that we’ve crossed a line into a new level of capability, with profound implications for teaching and learning. 

However, we all know that glossy ed-tech hype requires healthy doses of real world mud and sweat to really embed into effective practice. Hence the symposium’s title. We’ll see where new frontiers are being drawn, but with just as much attention to understanding what it’s like (or will soon be like) ‘in the trenches’ introducing AI to teachers and students, with appropriate safeguards.

This is not primarily a technical event. The speakers have been invited based on their work foregrounding how human-centred values, ethics, meaningful consultation and leadership can come together to invent futures we want to learn and teach in. 

This symposium is the opportunity to create some reflection space, learn about local and international developments, and strengthen ties between the primary, secondary and tertiary education communities — leaders, educators, technologists, researchers and policymakers are all welcome.

We are delighted to welcome Tamara Sumner, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, which leads the NSF National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming. Tammy will deliver our opening keynote, details below.

This will be accompanied by brief talks from other researchers, with a unifying theme being how we involve teachers in shaping AI futures: Simon Buckingham Shum (UTS), Simon Knight (UTS), Shibani Antonette (UTS) and Kalervo Gulson (University of Sydney). This will be followed by roundtable conversations.

Full Program

Keynote: Reimagining AI in Education at the Institute for Student-AI Teaming (iSAT)

Prof. Tamara Sumner, Institute of Cognitive Science and Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

The NSF National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming (iSAT) is an interdisciplinary research community dedicated to transforming K-12 classrooms into more effective, engaging and equitable learning environments for all students. Towards this end, we are developing and studying how AI partners can support both students and teachers to engage in rich forms of collaborative learning. We believe that turning AI from intelligent tools towards social, collaborative partners in the classroom will help teachers get back to doing what they do best – inspiring and teaching students. We have integrated 60 researchers from 14 research areas, as well as community partners from two school districts, to engage in foundational research in curriculum development, design and rapid prototyping, data curation and annotation, algorithm development, experimentation and evaluation, and community resource development. In this talk, I will focus on two AI partners we are currently developing and studying in partner classrooms, and describe how our work is being guided and informed by our Responsible Innovation Framework. Ultimately, the mission of iSAT is: 

• To develop foundational theories and AI technologies for creating next-generation collaborative learning environments composed of diverse student-AI teams.
• To grow the diverse workforce of the future by engaging 5,000 middle and high school students in innovative AI education through AI-enabled pedagogies.
• To serve as a national nexus point for empowering diverse collaborators to envision, co-create, critique and apply student-AI teaming in their communities.

Tamara Sumner is the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She leads an interdisciplinary research and development lab that studies how computational tools – combining cognitive science, machine intelligence, and interactive media – can improve teaching practice, learning outcomes and learner engagement. This research and development team combines expertise in cognitive science, learning sciences, science education, user-centered design and evaluation, learning analytics, and speech and natural language processing. She is the Principal Investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded TalkMoves and SchoolWide Labs projects, and a co-Principal Investigator in the inaugural NSF National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming.

If you have any questions please email the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) via cic@uts.edu.au.