The Community Voice.

At AIED 2022, held in Durham, UK, a panel discussion took place in response to the following provocation:

The AIED community has researched the application of AI in educational settings for more than forty years. Today, many AIED successes have been commercialised – such that, around the world, there are as many as thirty multi-million-dollar-funded AIED corporations, and a market expected to be worth $6 billion within two years. At the same time, AIED has been criticised for perpetuating poor pedagogic practices, datafication, and introducing classroom surveillance. The commercialisation and critique of AIED presents the AIED academic community with a conundrum. Does it carry on regardless, continue its traditional focus, researching AI applications to support students, in ever more fine detail? Or does it seek a new role? Should the AIED community reposition itself, building on past successes but opening new avenues of research and innovation that address pedagogy, cognition, human rights, and social justice?

As the panel discussion raised many interesting issues for the future of AIED, the panellists, all leading members of the AIED community (Ben du Boulay, Art Graesser, Ken Koedinger, Danielle McNamara, and Maria Mercedes T. Rodrigo) were subsequently invited to publish their thoughts in an opinion piece in the IJAIED (along with Peter Brusilovsky, René Kizilcek, and Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta). To extend the discussion, several leading researchers from outside the community were also invited to contribute (Rebecca Eynon, Caroline Pelletier, Jen Persson, Neil Selwyn, Ilkka Tuomi, Ben Williamson, and Li Yuan).

Now that some of AIED’s leading community members and some leading researchers from outside the community have had their say, there remains an important gap. What are the thoughts and opinions of the wider membership of the AIED community? This half-day workshop will be dedicated to opening up the conversation, so that everyone in the community can have their say, and can contribute to the future development of AIED. The workshop will be centred on seven questions, with participants working in small groups before reporting back to the workshop.

Important information

Workshop: Monday, July 3 2023 (time tbc)

Venue: TO BE CONFIRMED

Workshop paper: “AIED. Coming of Age? The Community Voice.”