Thought exercise: What does learning tech at a utopian university look like? Think Star Fleet Academy. Or imagine the best school you can think of, go out 100 years, and then imagine what the learning tech experience would be like at that school. They’ve somehow made all the right choices, they’ve been unburdened by nostalgia or tradition, or sunk cost fallacies – and they’ve created an environment that is …. Like what? What would it be like?
Elisa Baniassad is the Academic Director of the Learning Technology Innovation Centre and a Professor of Teaching in Computer Science.
I posed that very question to the leadership team at the brand new Learning Technology Innovation Centre (LTIC) a couple of weeks into its inception. What came back was inspiring: LT at a utopian institution would spark joy; It would feel seamless and stable; It would feel playful to use, both as an educator and as a learner; it would support technological innovation and transformation; it would be cutting edge; It would feel responsive and safe; Users would have a sense of agency and positive influence over the environment.
Next question: What’s stopping us from having that too? Or, a more active question: how do we get that too? Because we must. My guiding belief is that the utopian vision is the actual future of the University as an institution, and if we don’t realize that vision, then UBC will be relegated to the past.
We converged on three primary goals for LTIC: Keep Users Working (helping people who are blocked by the technology), Keep the Lights On Brightly (making sure the ecosystem is stable, seamless, and vibrantly so), and Accelerate LT Innovation and Inquiry (enable educators to transform learning through technology). These goals dovetail with the sustained goals held by the CTLT (The Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology), which is to support pedagogical transformation, including through the application of learning technology.
Learning Tech didn’t used to be a big deal – it used to be kind of an eccentric side quest for people who liked to tinker, or make their lives more complicated than they needed to be. I was one of those people. As a computer science research professor, who was procrastinating on many other parts of my job, I found learning technology a rewarding distraction – I could build something, and it would make students’ lives better, and my life better, immediately! I didn’t have to do LT – I didn’t have to make a little language creation environment; I didn’t have to make a visualisation of all the student sentiment across the weekly check-ins for a semester; I didn’t have to use analytics to figure out if I was doing a good job. In fact, in the 90s and early oughts, it was more or less discouraged – it was not-for-credit work, that didn’t count against promotion or tenure or merit. But somehow it still felt like the right thing to do. And, again, that motivator of procrastination is a strong one.
Soon, WebCT, the niche project that Murray Goldberg had been working on at the end of a hall, while I was a grad student endlessly marking (on paper) two doors down, would just be everywhere. By the time I got to my first academic post at Chinese University of Hong Kong, the learning management system (LMS) was in full swing, with discussion forums, and a nice replacement for a grading spreadsheet. It didn’t yet change what we taught, but it did dramatically transform the way we administered education. Some astute users noted that the content delivery aspects of these tools did drive a bit of educational conformity – certain kinds of quizzes are supported, others not. Certain kinds of content are easy to display, others not. It meant that educators were speaking through the grammar of LMS, rather than in their own vernacular. The medium is the message.
Even still, learning technology has, largely, remained a tool of teaching administration: Autograders, automatic feedback generators, communication mechanisms, peer grading calculators – these are tools that replace clerical tasks. They do not approach content creation or interpretation. How could they? Content creation and choose your own adventure education was what, in computer science we would call, a “hard problem”. Educators were willing, grudgingly, to give up some of their individuality and voice for administrative expediency, but at least the content and narrative was theirs.
But then AI busted through that hard problem with what I (as a Software Engineer, who has an affectionate chip on my shoulder that the AI folks were right all along) would call brute force. Learning tech is no longer relegated to clerical, or repetitive tasks. It is a thinking agent – and it is having a profound influence on not just what we teach, but how we teach, how we ask questions, what we ask questions about, and even how we answer those questions. To call it disruptive is too soft – cataclysmic, is perhaps a better term. AI is here, and it’s coming for our content.
AI is changing education, and we, as a top tier educational institution, must not be passengers on that ride. Just like LMSs converged quizzes, forums, and delivery mechanisms, into a standard vocabulary, the race is on to define what education will look like in the AI-enabled era. Will LMSs become GPTs before GPTs become LMSs? We don’t know! But we cannot stand by and wait to find out! UBC has its own very distinct voice in education, with its principles enshrined in the Collective Agreement and its strategic plans – we value Scholarship of Teaching, and Educational Leadership. Even when faced with budget challenges and economic realities, we remain steadfastly committed to decolonisation and Indigenisation, and to a profound and meaningful definition of diversity, equity, inclusivity, and access and accessibility. We care personally about each one of our thousands of students.
Paradoxically, artificial intelligence may hold the key to affording more humanity in education. Up to now, the bounds of what is possible and feasible have always been a stumbling block to embodying our academic principles in teaching. We have felt collectively weighed down by our sheer scale, challenged in our capacity and ability to show care personally in large classes, and to tailor instruction as individually as we would like. Learning technology was always intended to help mitigate these challenges, but has itself been limited in what it can provide. Now things have changed: The technology has risen to meet us in realising our utopian educational dreams!
It is out of this cataclysm, that LTIC was born, spurred on by the goals of the refreshed strategic plan: Maximise UBC System Strengths, Create Flexibility for Learners, Excel in the Development and Application of Emerging Technologies, and Discover and Innovate for Impact. All the original learning tech needs to be stable, refreshed, engaging, functional, and well curated – the lights must stay on brightly. And the LT Hub, with its excellent reputation for assisting with LT, has to continue without any disruption whatsoever. Before LTIC, LT innovation and inquiry were placed in a niche zone that was considered a nice-to-have. It’s a need-to-have now. As Rich Tape, lead of the LT Incubator said as I was preparing this piece: Our doors are open, and our minds are open.
So … what’s stopping us from achieving the utopian learning tech environment?