 I feel like I'm on TED Talk. I think this is the advance. OK. Yeah? Yeah, I guess. Are we on? I think so. Oh, yeah. OK, go ahead. All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our session today. Thank you for those of you in attendance. I know we're winding down the conference. Many of you are probably looking to get on the road soon. So again, thank you for attending. We are going to be talking about evaluating the interplay between AI technology, open pedagogy, and competency-based learning. So I'm going to hand it over to Christine for a few moments, my colleague. She's going to introduce us and give you a sense of where we're coming from before we jump into the details. So I do want to start and begin by acknowledging the land that states where we are located is the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, we're located in Calgary, Alberta. So three hours just down the road from Edmonton. We would like to acknowledge that SAIT is situated on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The city of Calgary encompasses a region that the Blackfoot tribes of Southern Alberta describe as Mokinsis, meaning elbow, in reference to its location at the confluence of the elbow rivers. Since time immorale, this region was a traditional gathering place for the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. We are meeting gathered on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which today encompasses the indigenous people of Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Siksika, the Pekani, the Kainai, the Tetsina, the Stoning Dakota First Nations, and Northwest Mady Homeland, region number three. Now, Shrissa is my colleague at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. I know it has MSC on here, but I'd also like to acknowledge that she's currently working on a PhD. So I think that that deserves some recognition here. She's interested in human development and behavior, and she has been with SAIT for over five years. I classify myself as a critical management scholar, so the soddle space is a new space for myself as is open education. And I like to challenge and question how we come to know the things that we know. Now, why is this topic acknowledging the interplay between artificial intelligence so important for us? Well, we know that we are currently in the midst of a crisis, that we have, according to the World Economic Forum, we have more than one billion people who are going to need to be re-skilled, re-trained by the year 2050. This is a monumental task, and one that we can't not think about immediately. We also know, and as we've heard from individuals like Dr. Cable, that we need to think about this in alignment with the UNESCO goals, and that as we've already heard of, so I'm not going to rehash this from what previous speakers have highlighted, but that we really do need to understand how these goals align with those UNESCO goals as well. This leads us to the question that we are asking and that we are discussing today, which has to do with what role does artificial intelligence play at the intersection of open education and competency-based learning? How do these three different components work together? Now, the final piece and the final question that we need to address is how does this interplay help prepare our students for the future? How are we able to prepare them for the workforce, for the environment that they are going to find themselves upon graduation? So just a really quick background information. So both Christine and I are faculty members in the School of Business at SAIT, so we are student-facing. And so really, SAIT is a polytechnic institution where very much work-integrated learning and applied learning perspective and so competency-based learning has been something that our institution has been pushing over the last few years to make sure that we're meeting the requirements of industry. On the screen here, you'll notice I've got a bit of a flow happening. We hear and we've heard at this conference numerous times about pedagogy, open pedagogy and talking about what that looks like in our classrooms and for our institutions. I also wanted to just quickly highlight here that I think as we start to think about competency-based learning and we start to think about who our students are in our classrooms, we need to look at this slightly differently. So the students that we are seeing in our classrooms and in particular in our two-year diploma program are actually changing. So our demographics are no longer younger, fresh out of high school students who recently graduated, you know, 17, 18, 19 year olds. That was our demographic. I don't know, four or five years ago. We now have an average age of 26 years old with our students. We also have students coming in with previous education. So whether it's an undergrad education and in some cases even a master's education. So a lot of our students are at a different stage in their life. A lot of them are looking to relocate to Canada and this is a great path for them. But we also need to think about how we meet them where they are. And that's where competency-based learning helps us flow into what we call androgogy. And I think what we need to think about it in this space of post-secondary education and where we're moving is looking at what I would call or what we've had others call open androgogy. So thinking about how we take adult learners and pull them into this open space and help them develop their own learning journeys and help them develop the competencies that they feel are necessary for success. So this, oh, okay. It doesn't show up very nicely on my screen so I'm glad you can see everything. So this is really where we're coming from. None of these terms are overly new. We talk about competency-based learning. We talk about pedagogy. We talk about AI technology. We know that they're intersecting. So if we think about that intersection of open pedagogy and CBL, we're really talking about that personalized learning space for our students. If we think about AI and CBL, we're starting to think about digital or AI literacy and that AI literacy is a newer term and I think that's kind of where all of this starts to meld together. And then of course with open androgogy or open pedagogy, however you wanna label it for your students and that intersection with AI technology, how can we support our students? How are we supporting our students using AI technology? We don't want to ignore it or tell our students, no, don't use AI because that's going to be a part of the workforce in the future. So how do we prepare them to do it well? So we wanted to look at what's happening in that centerpiece, right? Where all three of those pieces intersect. And so really our aim with this research and we've kind of highlighted this already in our first questions, but our aim is to address that intersectionality of those three areas because we wanna create a framework. How do we create a framework for our students to better prepare them for the changing industry needs? So I'm gonna hand it back over to Christine. So how are we doing this? We really are planning on using a mixed method approach where we are gathering both quantitative as well as qualitative data. And that we know that this is going to be an iterative process where we may adopt and utilize grounded theory, for example, to be able to ensure that we are capturing all of these different important components and conversations because one of the things that we know and a challenge that we'll talk about with the limitations is the technology is changing faster than what we can keep up with. And so it's important for us to be able to capture some of those different perspectives. Now as you can see from this list, and this is not an exhaustive list, but we are really talking about a number of different relevant groups or stakeholders for those of you that are more familiar with that term where we are wanting to capture a holistic approach. We sometimes tend to focus on what faculty want and what faculty need without actually taking a look at the end users. What is it that industry needs help in bridging that gap between the theory that we position in our classrooms and what industry actually needs? So maybe we need to rethink our positioning as well, not just with the students, but in understanding how are we able to design our curriculum backwards? Let's start with what industry needs, talk to students and then work backwards to our institutions and our faculty. Now we do have some limitations. Now there has been a lot of conversations that I've been a part of over the last three days and I'm sure many of you have been as well where you're sitting in a session and you realize, hey, I'm doing something like that as well. This is one current limitation that in understanding the role that artificial intelligence is having, the impact that competency-based learning is having on our classrooms, how all of these different pieces are coming together, other institutions are grappling with these same issues. But because we are so siloed, because we aren't having these ongoing conversations over the course of a year, we have to in some cases wait until we go to OE Global in Brisbane, I have my little koala here, where we can then gather and start to continue some of these conversations. We also recognize, as I mentioned previously, technology is changing faster than what we are able to keep up with. And while chat GPT is the common one that many of us are familiar with, we aren't restricted to just chat GPT. The previous speaker in this room was talking about a new program that D2L is offering, Merchant. We know that we have robotics involved in health and medicine, and that these are all different components that we need to think about and to take into consideration. But that's time-consuming, costly, and we don't have the time or space to keep up with it. Finally, and I don't know if this is a challenge that some of you have encountered, but there can be resistance. Resistance by both faculty, resistance by administration who want to keep things the way that they have always been. And I won't go down that rabbit hole today. So as you can tell, we are very early in this stage. We just recently actually have introduced two OERs to two of our first year business diploma courses. And so again, we're very new in this space. Open Pedagogy is not new for us. It's something that we utilize. We co-create with students on a regular basis, but we really want to start looking at how we can interplay this. I also do not want you to leave here without something to take away from it. So I wanna highlight what others are doing. We talk about pedagogy and pedagogical partnerships. There are a number of institutions that are doing a great job at this already, and this is only one of those intersections that we're talking about. So if you look, there's a great guide on the Elon University website in their Teaching and Learning Center, and it's absolutely amazing in terms of how to get you thinking outside of the box and involving students in the work that's happening on campus. UBC is, and this is, in my mind, this is a simple one. We do this in our classrooms time and time again, almost like a flipped classroom where you have students creating the content, students delivering the discussions that are happening in the classrooms. McMasters in Columbia are doing something where they're bringing in students as consultants, consulting on assignments, consulting on curriculum development and having a say in what that looks like. And again, thinking about who our students are, knowing that that demographic has changed, knowing that we have a larger group of international students, being able to bring those voices into the conversation could be extremely powerful. So how do we bring AI into all of this? Because these in particular can, but they don't talk specifically about AI. So, yeah, how do we bring AI into all of this? What's that centerpiece look like? A couple of things where I think AI can definitely start playing a role for us, especially in that space of open androgogy, looking at personalized learning paths for our students. So how can we use AI technology not only to help students understand what competencies they may lack or where they need to be focusing, but help them find content in our OERs that are related specifically to that information, to those competencies. And along with that, I know I'm jumping ahead, but competency tracking through e-portfolios, having a way for students to track that growth and their progress, have that in a public forum so that they can take that with them into organizations in the future, a way of communicating what it is they're bringing to the table. We know that literacy in the digital world is a big one. So how do we get our students to be more able to work and think critically when working with AI technology, whatever that looks like for them, whether it's doing it through. In one of my classrooms, we do interview questions. I ask them to get AI to create interview questions. We talk about biases in those interview questions because we know they exist. It could be through cases. There's a number of cases out there, case studies that are driven by AI simulation technology. And then of course, matching people, matching people with learning partners or with peers that have similar paths that they're on so that they can learn from each other. And these are some preliminary spaces where AI can be brought in. I know that a lot of people are thinking about AI technology and education and I'd love to open up the floor to have you share what you're doing but also open the floor to any questions that you have. Yeah, I think the microphones are on. And our email addresses are up there if you're wanting to reach out at all. Hi, thank you. Interesting stuff and I'm pleased to see attention in this area. More people need to be in this space because if we're not too careful, AI is gonna happen to us rather than something that we can integrate into what we're doing. So I've tried to do a bit of work on this and actually think the OER part is not the interesting part here so much because it's either gonna be the stuff you're feeding into a generative engine or the stuff you're getting out and okay, the content, yep, cool. The practices around it, I think, is where we need to be focusing. And also on the values around it. And so I tried to write a paper which was about OEP and AI and I couldn't write it because I realized I don't understand what I'm doing, right? I don't really understand all the aspects of this. So I ended up writing a different paper which I saw was more of a foundation paper. And I would say one important aspect trying to make sense of openness in this context. One is transparency and what they call explicability of AI. And that comes with a whole host of issues itself, right? And it also relates to kind of like algorithmic transparency and it's related to sort of algorithmic injustices. And there's all kinds of examples of that, right? And the way that people are represented with bi algorithms and kind of racist ways and gender, all kinds of different criteria where the algorithm is by virtue of not being transparent, it's concealing the way that this is happening and it has potentially huge implications. And another thing I think is important, two more things maybe. One is around the values, so things like DEI, things like inclusion and how do we get those woven into the infrastructure. But the most surprising thing that came out of it for me was we really need to have a much broader perspective, a kind of social and technical perspective on the entire production process of AI which goes right from mining, the minerals that they build the computers out of, how they train the algorithms, they're using people in developing countries to look at unpleasant content and train all kinds of ethical implications. It's much more seismic, a shift than people are perceiving it at first. So I just wondered if that was, maybe that's helpful, maybe it's not helpful, but it'd be interesting to see what your thoughts are around it, thanks. Yeah, I think there's some really important points in what you've shared and there's some things that I'm definitely going to take away from that. One of the things that may be helpful in this space is having students at the table as we're working through this information, getting other parties involved in that conversation as well, yeah. Do you have more to add? Yeah, awesome. So I have no affiliations with this organization. It is a Canadian company based out of British Columbia, but it's on technology stewardship. And a big part of this particular program I had the opportunity to take it was about the polarity of technology and reflecting on our values with regard to technology, are we for or against technology, but also really getting us to think about how our own individual personal values impact the use and our attitudes around it, as well as thinking more broadly about what technology actually is, that one of the first things was how does technology impact you in your day-to-day life? What is one piece of technology? And when I went through the list, because you have to participate, there's discussion posts, and someone had put running water, that that was the most important piece of technology in their day-to-day life. And most of us don't stop to reflect on the technology that is involved in that process, or how do our values impact things like the design of prisons? How do our attitudes of rehabilitation or against imprisoning people also influence the technology that is used? So I think it's very important, and that course was very helpful in highlighting and surfacing some of the issues that you raised. Any other questions or comments? Everybody's tired, like my students? Yes, come on back up. I seem to have had a sudden energy burst. Maybe it's too much coffee in the last 10 minutes or something. The other thing I just wanted to say, because maybe I forgot to say it, there's an open washing thing happening right now, right? Open AI. It's not open at all, right? So I think that's just something to be aware of with these kind of, you know, solutionist kind of things coming along, saying, yeah, we're open. There's only a matter of time before they start charging huge amounts of money, and I can see a situation where some students have a sort of AI assistant while they're learning, and the wealthier you are, the better that assistant will be. There's potentially a new digital divide there where some people have access to these technologies and some people don't, and we see a big difference in their ability to learn and progress that way. So yeah, anyway, that's what I wanted to say, thanks. Yeah, I would agree 100% with that. I think, you know, the technology that we're utilizing in our classrooms, if we're using OERs for our students, as we heard many times, OERs are free to our students, but the work that goes into that, and it's the same with the technology that we're using that's a part of the classrooms, right? If it includes an AI tutor, the cost is going to increase for the institution, which then would obviously increase for the students as well, so, yeah. Any other questions? Thank you, everyone, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your conference. And safe travels home for everyone.