Campus Technology Insider Podcast April 2023
Listen: How Generative AI Will Enable Personalized Learning Experiences
00:08
Rhea Kelly: Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
Imagine a learning environment that, much like a Star Trek Holodeck, changes based on a user's individual requirements. It understands the learner's strengths and weaknesses, anticipates next steps, recommends the best learning content, moves at the learner's pace, and removes unnecessary friction within the mechanics of learning. With today's advancements in generative AI, that vision of personalized learning may not be far off from reality. For this episode of the podcast, we spoke with Dr. Kim Round, associate dean of the Western Governors University School of Education, about the potential of technologies like ChatGPT for learning, the need for AI literacy skills, why learning experience designers have a leg up on AI prompt engineering, and more. And get ready for more Star Trek references, because the parallels between AI and Sci Fi are futile to resist. Here's our chat.
Hi, Kim. Welcome to the podcast.
01:21
Kim Round: Hi, Rhea. I'm so happy to be back and chatting with you.
01:25
Kelly: Yeah, I think you're actually our second repeat guest, so one of the first. I love it.
01:31
Round: Oh, my goodness, I feel so honored. And I love what we're talking about today.
01:36
Kelly: Yeah, so I was thinking that with your background in learning experience design, I'd love to hear your take on the potential of technologies like ChatGPT, just from that perspective.
01:48
Round: Yes. Been doing a lot of thinking about it lately. And of course, every time you jump on LinkedIn, or get any notifications about the major publications like Campus Technology, a lot of discussion about it. And so I'm going to preface my comments today with the caveat that the machine is learning while we're learning about the machine. So it's almost like building the plane while we're flying it. But I'm endlessly curious and cautiously optimistic. I think we need to really understand AI's benefits and limitations. People have talked about that, certainly, as we get into the user privacy and information side of things, I know that we have a lot of campus IT people that listen to this podcast, and that that would resonate with, because how machines really collect and curate and learn their way into data can, can pull some ethical concerns. But now I've talked about the risks. Let me talk a little bit about the things I'm excited about. And understanding we're really in the early days in the evolution of generative AI, and, and we as human partners are in early days of learning how to best leverage it, both as educators and as learners. So we've seen some hype cycles come and go around various technologies, but I think this is a really interesting one. I think akin to the web and the Google search engine, in my mind, this has the potential to disrupt, in a good way, learning, and also cause humans to upskill for the workplace. So even though that responsible use of generative AI is still evolving, there's the potential to remove unnecessary friction from the learning experience, so that students can focus on higher-level critical thinking, and can really level the playing field across the board. So let me just share a personal anecdote. And I'm going to date myself a little bit. So back when I was an undergrad, laptops had not yet emerged, the web was not quite available. And I was doing my term papers on an electric typewriter. And how much of my time was really being spent on the mechanics of learning, versus the critical thinking that perhaps my professor envisioned in assigning that, that term paper. And, you know, as I typed into the night, and worried about running out of Wite-Out, and really revisiting my time management skills, I'm not sure I was having the learning experience that my professor envisioned for me. So I think generative AI has the potential to push student learning really higher, moving learners from remembering to understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating — that Bloom's Taxonomy piece — and help learners become better researchers, better curators, and better decision-makers. And that really helps move that learning experience from that transactional "sit and get" to being a transformational learning experience. So that's what I'm excited about the potential. And we'll have a lot to watch as we, as things emerge.