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Improving skills and competences of VET teachers and trainers in the age of Artificial Intelligence

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UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers

Graham Attwell 1263 Views , , , , , , , , ,
Last weeks UNESCO Digital Learning conference attracted attendees from over the world and significant press and social media interest. Much of the focus was on AI and education, especially around the UNESCO publication of what they say is the first-ever global Guidance on Generative AI in Education and Research, designed to address the disruptions caused by Generative AI technologies. A recent UNESCO global survey of over 450 schools and universities showed that less than 10% of them had institutional policies and/or formal guidance concerning the use of generative AI applications, largely due to the absence of national regulations. The UNESCO Guidance sets out "seven key steps for governments should take to regulate Generative AI and establish policy frameworks for its ethical use in education and research, including through the adoption of global, regional or national data protection and privacy standards. It also sets an age limit of 13 for the use of AI tools in the classroom and calls for teacher training on this subject." Perhaps more significant for those of us working on competences for teachers and trainers in using AI for teaching and learning (as in the AI pioneers European project) was the publication of the UNESCO AI Competency Frameworks for Teachers and School Students. In a draft discussion document they say the "AI CFT responds to the stated gap in knowledge and experience globally and offers initial guidance on how teachers can be prepared for a growing AI-powered education system." They go on to explain:
The AI CFT is targeted at a wide-ranging teacher community, including pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators and trainers in formal, non-formal education institutions, policymakers, officials and staff involved in teacher professional learning ecosystems from early childhood development, basic education, to higher and tertiary education.... The purpose of the AI CFT is to provide an inclusive framework that can guide teachers, teaching communities and the teacher education systems worldwide to leverage the educational affordances of AI, and develop the critical agency, knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to manage the risks and threats associated with AI. It promotes the responsible, ethical, equitable and inclusive design and use of AI in education.
The draft discussion document provides a diagram of a High-level Structure of the proposed AI Competency Framework for Teachers.
Further diagrams provide progression routes and more detailed contents for the Framework. The main criticism in social media was not so much the content of the Framework, but that the Framework is based on Blooms taxonomy, with some asserting that the taxonomy is outdated and doubts being raised as to whether teachers would be able to follow an orderly progression route around AI. UNESCO Have asked for feedback on both the Framwork for Teachers and the Framework for students on an online form.
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AI and Education webcasts from UNESCO’s Digital Learning Week

Graham Attwell 1438 Views , , , , ,
In my last post I mentioned the UNESCO Digital Learning Week, taking place in Paris next week and amongst other things including a series of discussion about AI in education. It seems over 1800 people have registered to attend the event face to face. However for those of us not lucky enough to be in Paris some of the sessions are being made available by web cast in English and French. You can find the full program including details of of which sessions are on the webcast on the UNESCO Digital Learning Week web pages. And to make things easy for you I have extracted from the extensive programme a list of the sessions around AI in Education which can be followed by webcast (the address for the webcast is not currently available but I expect it to be linked from the programme by next week). Tuesday 5 September 10:45 – 11:15 DIGITAL LEARNING AND AI IN EDUCATION: UNESCO’S INTEGRATED APPROACH Moderator: Mr Fengchun Miao, Chief, Unit for Technology and AI in Education, Future of Learning and Innovation, UNESCO
  • Ms Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO
  • Mr Manos Antoninis, Director, Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, UNESCO
  • Mr Sobhi Tawil, Director of Future of Learning and Innovation, UNESCO
Wednesday 6 September 11:30 – 13:00 Plenary session 4 EduGPT: the missing middleware? Moderator: TBC
  • (Title to be announced) Representative from Alef Education, UAE
  • Merlyn Mind's education-specific AI platform Mr Satya Nitta, CEO, Merlyn Mind, USA
  • EduChat: A large-scale language model-based chatbot system for intelligent education Ms Yuling Sun, Associate Researcher, East China Normal University, People’s Republic of China
  • MathGPT - The core engine for next-generation personalized tutor Mr TIAN Mi, Chief Technology Officer, Tomorrow Advancing Life Education Group (TAL)
14:00 – 15:30 Plenary session 5 AI COMPETENCIES FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS Moderator: Mr Yao Ydo, Director, UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE) Presentations of draft UNESCO AI Competency Frameworks for teachers and students:
  • Mr Fengchun Miao, Chief, Unit for Technology and AI in Education, Future of Learning and Innovation, UNESCO
  • Ms Kelly Shiohira and Ms Natalie Lao, experts for the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for School Students
  • Mr Mutlu Cukurova and Ms Shafika Isaacs, experts for the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers Reactions:
  • Ms Ramza Jaber, Chief of Cabinet, Minister of Education and Higher Education, Lebanon
  • Ms Lindiwe Matlali, Founder & CEO, Africa Teen Geeks, South Africa
  • Mr Pedro Philippi Araújo, Student, XôDengue project, Brazil
  • Representative from Education International (TBC)
Thursday 7 September 9:30 – 11:00 Plenary session 6 REGULATING AND FACILITATING THE USE OF GENERATIVE AI IN EDUCATION Moderator: TBC
  • Ms Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO
  • H.E. Mr Murhaf Al-Madani, Assistant Minister of Education for Development and Transformation, Saudi Arabia (TBC)
  • Ms Sindey Carolina Bernal, Vice-minister of Digital Transformation, Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies, Colombia
  • Ms Mona Laroussi, Director, Institut de la Francophonie pour l’éducation et la formation (IFEF-OIF), Senegal
  • Mr Villano Qiriazi, Head of Education Policy Division, Council of Europe (TBC)
  • Mr Yonah Welker, Tech Explorer, Public Evaluator, Board Member, Future of Algorithms, Research & Policy
  • People’s Republic of China Regulations on GenAI (TBC)
11:00 – 11:30 LAUNCH OF UNESCO GUIDANCE FOR GENERATIVE AI IN EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 16:00 – 17:25 Public lecture and dialogue REIMAGINING THE FUTURES OF KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH WITH GENERATIVE AI Moderator: TBC Keynote addresses:
  • The potential danger of unsafe AI systems beyond ChatGPT Mr Yoshua Bengio, Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal and the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila – Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute, 2018 A.M. Turing Award laureate
  • (Title to be announced) Mr Yann LeCun, Vice President & Chief AI Scientist, Meta, 2018 A.M. Turing Award laureate Reactions and dialogue:
  • H.E. Ms Ester Anna Nghipondoka, Minister of Education, Arts and Culture, Namibia
  • H.E. Mr Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, UAE
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AI skills and competences for teachers

Graham Attwell 2131 Views , , , , , , ,

Photo by 杰 肖 on Unsplash

UNESCO have long been active in AI in education, seeing it as a critical support for the United Nations Sustainability Goal SDG 4 for which they are the lead agent: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. There are three main strands to their work:

  • AI and the Future of Learning
  • Guidance for Generative AI in education and research
  • AI Competency Frameworks for Students and Teachers 

In a flurry of announcements and posts on LinkedIn over the summer, Fengchun Miao, Chief of the Unit for Technology and AI in Education at UNESCO, has released details of forthcoming initiatives in this field.

In 2022 UNESCO published the “K-12 AI Curricula: A mapping of government-endorsed AI curricula”, the first report on the global status of K-12 AI curricula. “All citizens need to be equipped with some level of competency with regard to AI. This includes the knowledge, understanding, skills and values to be ‘AI literate’ - this has become a basic grammar of our century,” said Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education of UNESCO.

Building on this work, UNESCO have released two draft Competencey Frameworks, one on AI for students and the other AI for teachers. According to Fenchung Miao "The AI competency framework for teachers will define the knowledge, skills and attitudes that teachers should possess to understand the roles of AI in education and utilize AI in their teaching practices in an ethical and effective manner."

The drafts of the two AI competency frameworks will be presented and further refined during UNESCO's Digital Learning Week which takes place in Paris from 4-7 September 2023.

The EU funded AI pioneers project is also committed to identifying AI competences for teachers and trainers in Vocational Education and Training and Adult Education based on the EU DigCompEdu Framework, At first site, although there may be some differences in how the Frameworks are presented there appears to be no barriers to incorporation of the UNESCO Framework within DigCompEdu.

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What data is there to support the use of AI in VET and Adult Education?

Graham Attwell 431 Views , , , , , ,

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Of course researchers and practitioners in vocational education and training (VET) and in Adult Education are long used to their secondary status compared to School and Higher Education. And although Learning Analytics has been around for quite some years now, there has been little consideration of its use in VET and in workplace learning.

Is it is good to report that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research together with the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training have funded a study on artificial intelligence offers benefits for implementing personalised and adaptive learning environments (PALE; Schumacher, 2018). PALE are digital learning systems that continuously analyse and leverage education-related data to adapt the learning environment to individual needs and constantly changing requirements

As the authors of the study, Four Perspectives on Personalised and Adaptive Learning Environments for Workplace Learning, Yvonne M. Hemmler and Dirk Ifenthaler, say"

A major challenge in designing trusted PALE for workplace learning remains the identification of reliable indicators. Indicators are variables (e.g., interests, demographics, location) that reveal useful information about learning behavior and that are processed by specific algorithms to personalize and adapt the learning environment. Reliable indicators are crucial for PALE as accurate and comprehensive information about learners and their contexts is needed to design effective interventions to support learning processes and outcomes.

The research identified three profiles as being central to the collection of data for developing and implementing personalised and adaptive learning environments. These profiles were examined against different perspectives: Pedagogical perspective, ethical perspective , data analysis perspectives and Information perspective.

The results are cautious. “Despite rich datasets and advanced analytics methodologies, not all approaches utilising artificial intelligence in education seem to be effective for workplace learning.” They conclude that so far "no wide-scale organisational implementation of artificial intelligence for workplace learning exists and no empirical evidence is available for supporting the assumption that PALE improve the performance of involved stakeholders and organisations."

However, they suggest “Interdisciplinary perspectives on adoption models as well as on pol icy recommendations may help to move the pioneering efforts on artificial intelligence for workplace learning forward”

References

Schumacher, C. (2018). Supporting informal workplace learning through analytics. In D. Ifenthaler
(Ed.), Digital workplace learning: Bridging formal and informal learning with digital tech-
nologies (pp. 43–61). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3- 319- 46215- 8