Campus Technology Insider Podcast July 2024
Rhea Kelly 12:17
What do you think the state of the industry is in terms of meeting all those recommendations? Are companies making progress toward AI trust, or do you feel like they have a long way to go?
Kevin Johnstun 12:30
So I think the industry is changing. So it's hard to answer this question in terms of like, what is the state of the industry, because we're seeing a lot of new entrants into the ed tech space with kind of this generative AI moment. And so it's hard to know for sure exactly what it is, but we do, we are seeing examples of folks who are, you know, putting out things that are showing the ways in which they're trying to be transparent about what they're doing and how they're building in safety, and, and, you know, other kinds of considerations, such as evidence. But yeah, I think right now, it's, it's really big in the K-12 space — we have outside data that we didn't produce that indicates that, you know, the average district is using over a thousand different ed tech tools. And so it's a lot of different actors, and it's hard to kind of figure out exactly where they're all, they're all at.
Rhea Kelly 13:28
Yeah, I have heard from districts where, you know, they're struggling to standardize, or just at least cull down the number of, you know, tools for the same purpose that are in use. Because it's hard for IT to support so many different things at once.
Kevin Johnstun 13:43
Yeah, absolutely. And it's hard to get kind of quality assurances on each one of those different things.
Rhea Kelly 13:49
Yeah, yeah, and cybersecurity issues as well. So although this guide is geared toward the ed tech developers, are there things that educational institutions can learn from the recommendations? Because, like to me, it seems like it could translate well into, let's say, questions that, you know, any university should ask of their ed tech providers, or, or even just a set of expectations to guide their technology decision-making.
Kevin Johnstun 14:18
Yeah, for sure. So you can think about this and what comes next in the, kind of, from the Office of Ed Tech, it's kind of a classic kind of supply and demand piece here. So we've talked developers, about what they need to do, but of course, there's a, there's a demand side of that, that also is kind of mirrored in what we're saying to developers. And we're actually in the process of building an educator toolkit and setting up some guidance for higher education institutions as well through a higher ed brief. And so those will kind of clarify specifically what is the, in the purview of education institutions or districts or schools. But it's not hard to see some of these, these parallels. So if we're asking developers to make sure they have a plan for how they're going to build evidence, then schools are going to need a plan for how they can help developers get the data they need to build evidence. And then likewise, if it's safety and security that we're thinking about, schools need to be prepared to ask the right questions of developers so that they can get the assurances they need in terms of safety and security. And then on civil rights, very much so we, you know, we're saying developers, you need to be aware of civil rights responsibilities. But in many cases, those civil rights responsibilities fall on the schools to, ultimately, you know, protect the civil rights of their students. So you can see all of the kind of mirrors that are are happening here. And that's why one of the shared responsibilities that I mentioned is the chance for ed tech developers to build capacity, help work with schools to build capacity so that they are short, you know, helping to bring them along, so that both of them can ultimately work together better down the line.
Rhea Kelly 16:21
What are some next steps for your department? I mean, I'm kind of wondering what your approach is in terms of updating these reports. Is there a timeline? Because the technology changes, it seems like by the second, so what, you know, what are you guys looking at doing to keep up?