It would be wonderful if we could eventually create a kind of ecosystem that would allow you to develop and deploy innovations much faster.
More Than ChatGPT
When ChatGPT was launched a year ago, it caused a storm in education (and beyond). The tool allowed students to have their essays, papers and other homework done by AI at the touch of a button. Whereas artificial intelligence was initially still a distant concept for many teachers, now, as a teacher, you really can't ignore it. The potential of AI became tangible overnight. But AI is more than ChatGPT. The integration of AI in education offers huge opportunities and possibilities, also - or perhaps especially - for teachers. You can see this in this year's NOLAI co-creation projects: only 1 out of 10 is about Generative AI.
Co-Creation Projects
NOLAI's first ten co-creation projects started in September. Jeuring: "We are involved in several co-creation projects as a focus area. One project we are involved in is Smart Recommendations. In this, we are going to see if we can use an online environment to give students taking the Computer Science course recommendations based on their progress." The Efficient Queue project also revolves around the subject of Computer Science. "In this, we are going to develop an application that, on the one hand, can answer simple help questions from students with a chatbot and, on the other hand, help students sharpen a complex question in such a way that teachers can help their students faster."
Promising Determination and mAIchart
Another project involving Jeuring's focus area is mAIchart, which revolves around mathematics in primary education. For secondary education, there is a similar project: Promising Determination. Both projects are based on the same concept: merging information from different applications to give teachers a useful overall picture of individual pupils' progress. You can read more about mAIchart in this article.
Years of Ambition
"In my career, I have been involved in a number of education projects that did not succeed. The reason was that it proved impossible to bring together data streams from different applications. However, in the NOLAI projects mAIchart and Chance Determination, I think we will manage with this. Thanks to people with different backgrounds, the funding, and the status of NOLAI in the Netherlands, there is enough power behind NOLAI to succeed. So, I see this as a bit of a retake. When I first started, I thought it was very obvious: you have information about students here, information about students there, it's about the same thing, so you can bring that together, and then you can have and make better connections. This is still obvious, and many teachers ask about it, but to get it done is a much bigger job. If this succeeds in NOLAI, then I think we have really achieved something, and we can take many more big steps."
Ecosystem
"For AI in education, we still very often have to set up and develop a lot of technology from scratch or we use available technology from a company. Issues we have with this are that it often doesn't quite meet the users' needs, or there are problems with privacy, for example. It would be great if we could eventually create a kind of ecosystem where you can develop and distribute innovations much faster and expand technology without extensive testing to see whether it works. This year, we are starting with ten projects, but there are still lots of other things we want to do to support teachers and students with AI. If such an ecosystem eventually emerges, that would be wonderful."
