This week's episode is a discussion of the Australian Parliamentary report on AI in Education, "Studdy Buddy or Influencer?". The report highlights both the opportunities and challenges GenAI presents, focusing on student and teacher perspectives, ethical considerations, regulatory approaches, and potential solutions. The report makes many recommendations, with the very first being significant on many levels:

"The Committee recommends that the Australian Government: consider making the use of GenAI in education a national priority"

Dan and Ray are joined by guest, Miriam Scott, an Education Consultant for Generative AI for the Association of Independent Schools of NSW and also Marketing & Events Coordinator for the Association of Women Educators.

Miriam was previously Head of Digital Education at Hillbrook Anglican School, and has produced a number of resources for teachers that she shares on her personal website "Scotty Breaks It Down"

• An AI starter-kit for anyone looking to integrate generative AI in their school for education
• An AI professional development toolkit for teachers

Another News & Research episode this week, and lots of interesting links and research discussed. Here's the weblinks for everything!

News

Deception and Deepfakes - How genAI is Changing Cyber Safety Course: https://spsc.thinkific.com/courses/take/deceptionanddeepfakes/ 

Leon Furzes online course, where he made a free course about deepfakes hosted by a deepfake, with deepfake content about deepfakes https://leonfurze.teachable.com/p/this-course-is-ai-generated 

McKinsey surveyed 1363 working professionals across countries, industries, and demographics about the use of generative AI at their work places.  https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai 

The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf 

Satya Nadella shared 200 examples globally of companies using AI https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/11/12/how-real-world-businesses-are-transforming-with-ai/ 

Rose Luckin's Beyond the Hype report  https://www.educateventures.com/beyond-the-hype 

Brad Smith shares a Digital Twin of St Peters Basilica in Rome https://youtu.be/5dQI_TXYJbU 

Research

Spotting Research Fraud - a website that's fascinating https://www.academ-ai.info/ 

AI or Human? Evaluating Student Feedback Perceptions in Higher Education https://osf.io/preprints/osf/6zm83 

Teacher Learning Network Journal - AI in Education special https://tln.org.au/Web/Web/TLN-Journals/TLN%20Journal%20Public.aspx 

Adoption and Impact of ChatGPT in Computer Science Education: A Case Study on a Database Administration Course https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12145 

Follow-Up Questions Improve Documents Generated by Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12017 

Educational Personalized Learning Path Planning with Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11773 

In September, the Toddle team organised "AI for AussieEd", a week-long series of professional development sessions for teachers, which had thousands of attendees for the virtual sessions.

This episode "Driving Innovation in Australian Schools" was part of the week, and brings you the experiences of three educators, in conversation with podcast hosts Dan and Ray

The guests are:

• Rachel Saunders, Primary School Learning Leader at Concordia College in Adelaide
• Ryan Elwell, Director of Digital Pedagogies & Online Safety Education at the ACT Education Directorate
• Matt Heinrich, Director of Learning Technologies and ICT at St Michaels Grammar School in Melbourne

It was a great discussion, and because it was recorded as a live webinar, we had lots of audience questions coming in online, so in the second half of the episode, you're going to hear questions coming in the chat from live listeners. 

As usual, hosts Dan and Ray brought along their own contributions to the discussion:

Dan came with his deep pedagogical knowledge and insightful education conversation.

Ray brought his Buzzword Bingo card

This week's episode has a lot more news than research. But the research that we spend a bit of time on is the insights on how students in Australian universities are using AI. Really good insights for any educator or leader!

News

AI Detectors Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating—With Big Consequences https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-18/do-ai-detectors-work-students-face-false-cheating-accusations 

Empowering Education Leaders Toolkit https://tech.ed.gov/education-leaders-ai-toolkit/ 

TEQSA Guidance for universities Danny Liu video https://bit.ly/students-ai 

Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said https://www.independent.co.uk/news/openai-ap-san-francisco-experts-microsoft-b2635996.html 

More than a quarter of new code at Google is generated by AI - The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24282757/google-new-code-generated-ai-q3-2024 

Apple are launching their first devices with Apple Intelligence  https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/full-interview-apples-software-chief-craig-federighi-on-future-of-iphone-ai/756B8727-5FFB-422C-AE63-C4600272BD94?msockid=0a3b30f5f88b6061226e245bf9b96140 

Watch out for the Earning reports:  Google just released and Microsoft do this week too.  Always have a listen to these to find out about the momentum in AI.  Alphabet Q3 earnings call: CEO Sundar Pichai's remarks Microsoft Fiscal Year 2025 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call

Research

A Systematic Mapping Review at the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Self-Regulated Learning A call for increased theoretical grounding focus on motivation and diversifying context https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382870027 

Students perspectives on AI in higher education Project website: https://aiinhe.org  Survey highlights: https://aiinhe.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/aiinhe_surveyinsights.pdf  Guidance for students: https://itali.uq.edu.au/files/31707/how-students-use-ai-guide-students.pdf  Guidance for academics: https://itali.uq.edu.au/files/31702/How-students-talk-about- gen-ai-guide-academics.pdf  

This week's episode is an interview with Dr Anna Denejkina, who's an interdisciplinary researcher and Associate Director at The Insight Centre. We discuss her research on youth engagement with generative AI. The conversation explores the multifaceted impact of AI technology in education, addressing benefits such as upskilling and accessibility, as well as concerns related to academic misconduct, job displacement, and misinformation. Key themes include gender disparity in confidence using AI, the importance of critical and empathetic thinking, and the evolving landscape of education assessments. The dialogue also highlights issues of loneliness, anxiety, and the growing equity gap driven by differences in AI adoption across various educational institutions.

Anna talks about her previous research on Young People's Perception and Use of Generative AI, which is a collaboration between The Insight Centre and YouthInsight. Here's a good summary article at The Research Society, and the full research here

We also mentioned the STEM tracker research, which is published by the Dept of Industry here

You can find all of Anna's research publications here

This week we cover a range of AI in Education related news and academic research papers. Here's all the links you need to read more about each of the topics we dicussed:

Australia's Voluntary AI Safety Standard

In September the Australian Government published:

Voluntary AI Safety Standard (68pg): https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/voluntary-ai-safety-standard

Proposals paper for introducing mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings: https://consult.industry.gov.au/ai-mandatory-guardrails

Stanford's STORM

https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/

Students give English HSC exam an F over use of image with ‘hallmarks’ of AI

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/16/nsw-hsc-english-exams-2024-ai-image-paper-1

Investigation into the use of ChatGPT by a Child Protection worker - Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner

https://ovic.vic.gov.au/regulatory-action/investigation-into-the-use-of-chatgpt-by-a-child-protection-worker/

To what extent is ChatGPT useful for language teacher lesson plan creation? https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09974

Have We Reached AGI? Comparing ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to Human Literacy and Education Benchmarks https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09573

The Life Cycle of Large Language Models: A Review of Biases in Education https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11203

The Future of Learning: Large Language Models through the Lens of Students https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12723

How to Mitigate the Dependencies of ChatGPT-4o in Engineering Education https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12693

StuGPTViz: A Visual Analytics Approach to Understand Student-ChatGPT Interactions https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12423

Apostles, Agnostics and Atheists: Engagement with Generative AI by Australian University Staff https://eprints.qut.edu.au/252079/

Welcome to the first Episode of Series 10, where we are going to take some time to review some of the fundamental changes we're going to be seeing as AI becomes more pervasive. 

In this Episode we're taking a different approach, with Dan and Ray using Google's NotebookLM to create AI-delivered mini-podcasts about each other, which leads to a discussion about the backgrounds of both hosts, and a discussion about how this new AI might be used in education.

Obviously, both Dan and Ray conclude that AI won't replace them...yet!

For your own experiments, you can find NotebookLM at https://notebooklm.google.com/

The two mini podcasts in this episode were produced by simply feeding NoteBookLM with the hosts LinkedIn profiles (in PDF format - available as a download from any individual's LinkedIn page).

We'd love to hear how you're using NotebookLM, and other AI tech, in your work. The easiest way to get hold of us is via our LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-in-education-podcast/

And if you're enjoying the podcast, would now be a good time to leave a review in your podcast app - whether you're using Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify, we'd love it if you left a rating and review.

This week we're joined by the brains behind South Australia's EdChat chatbot. It was the first state in Australia to start pilot a custom built generative AI chatbot for their schools, and we spent some time with the team to understand the success story.

In the podcast, we heard from Simon Chapman (Director of Digital Architecture and Operations) and Cody Little (AI Technical specialist), both from the Department for Education South Australia

Find out more about the South Australia Department AI approach: Artificial intelligence (AI) in schools – information for parents and carers (education.sa.gov.au) and details on their trial - Nation-leading trial in SA schools to focus on the safe use of AI (education.sa.gov.au)

• Microsoft have written a case study on their News Centre here: Learning in the AI era: How South Australia’s Department for Education is empowering students and teachers with AI in the classroom - Microsoft Australia News Centre
• Video of their amazing work: Department for Education South Australia | Reimagine Education 2024
• 9 News report : Artificial intelligence set to shake-up South Australian high schools (9news.com.au)
• AI Safety - AI content safety
• Towards the end of the episode we also talked about Career chat: SA Career Chat

Unbelievably, it's our 5th Anniversary (AI-nniversary?) and to mark the milestone of an AI podcast that's had more pivots than a robot's legs, and more chat than a chatbot, we've pulled together some of the top episodes from the 108 episodes of the podcast so far, and got the band back together (regretfully, we were unable to persuade Beth Worral, who co-hosted in 2022-2023, to come back for our party podcast - she'd reached escape velocity), so you'll hear Dan, Ray and Lee reminiscing like old men in a shed.

Great Guests & Top Episodes

Our very first guest - Microsoft's Troy Waller in AI for Accessibility in 2019

Our most listened episode from 2019 and very first external guest - the brilliant Dr David Kellerman in Using AI to personalise learning at UNSW Sydney

Our top 2020 episode was A Brief History of AI, which looked backin to the human obsession with creating artificial replicas of themselves. When did it start, who started it, what is the AI winter and how did it accelerate so quickly in the last 10 years. (And even faster in the last 4 years since?)

In 2021, another great guest topped our episode charts, with Feel the force: Emerge to the future with Sly Lee as Sly talked about his work around VR and AR and the mergeing of physical and virtual worlds

For 2022, it was the Christmas edition that hit the heights, with all four co-hosts - Beth, Lee, Dan & Ray - together for the quizzically named Christmas, Infinite Monkeys and everything

By 2023, we were back on solid pedagogy again, with the episode AI - The fuel that drives insight in K12 with Travis Smith (the kind of title a marketing manager would love?)

And, although we've not yet reached the end of 2024 and we've got some great episodes ahead, the top episode this far is University of Sydney and the future of assessment with Danny Liu and Adam Bridgman

We also had fond memories of:

• The AI in Popular Culture episode from 2020
• Martin O'Sullivan's tales from Turing House School in From AI Detectors to Heartwarming Help: Two Tales of AI in a school
• Elle Graham (aka Woodes) in Music, Creativity and Minecraft with Woodes
• Practical lessons from chatbot land with The Search for the Education Holy Grail in NSW, with the stories shared by Dan Hart and Michelle Michael 

News

This week's news we rushed through includes "Study Buddy or Influencer?", the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into the use of Gen AI in the Australia Education System  https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Employment_Education_and_Training/AIineducation/Report

NSW EduChat has been extended for all teachers in all New South Wales Schools - https://www.innovationaus.com/nsw-teachers-to-get-time-saving-genai-tool/ Learn more about the NSW EduChat chatbot in the first episode of Series 9

Microsoft announced Copilot Wave 2 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2024/09/16/microsoft-365-copilot-wave-2-pages-python-in-excel-and-agents/

OpenAI's new model o1-preview came out - and it's much, much better and logical reasoning and maths Find out what people think by looking at what Ethan Mollick is saying about it (and, as I suggest on the podcast, keenly watch Dan Hart's posts as he's benchmarking it now in the context of EduChat)

Google released a podcast-generator as part of NotebookLM, which turns any kind of paper/book etc into a short podcast. To find out what it's like I gave it the top research paper from the podcast last time and you can compare it versus me! There's a quick demo review by Ethan here and you can login and have a play directly here: https://notebooklm.google.com/ (it has two main uses, because on top of this autopodcast, it's original purpose was to allow you give it a pile of documents and it can work with all of them at the same time for q&a, summaries etc)

Research

Here's the links to all nine papers we discussed in this week's episode:

Generative AI in Real-World Workplaces https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prodnew/2024/07/Generative-AI-in-Real-World-Workplaces.pdf 

Can Large Language Models Make the Grade? https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3664693

PlagBench: Exploring the Duality of Large Language Models in Plagiarism Generation and Detection https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.16288 

The global landscape of academic guidelines for generative AI and Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18842 

"Is ChatGPT a Better Explainer than My Professor?": Evaluating the Explanation Capabilities of LLMs in Conversation Compared to a Human Baseline  https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18512

Perceived Impact of Generative AI on Assessments: Comparing Educator and Student Perspectives in Australia, Cyprus, and the United States https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X24000729

Jill Watson: Scaling and Deploying an AI Conversational Agent in Online Classrooms https://dilab.gatech.edu/publications/jill-watson-scaling-and-deploying-an-ai-conversational-agent-in-online-classrooms/  https://dilab.gatech.edu/test/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ITS2024_JillWatson_paper.pdf

Integrating AI in College Education: Positive yet Mixed Experiences with ChatGPT https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05810

The AI Companion in Education: Analyzing the Pedagogical Potential of ChatGPT in Computer Science and Engineering https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05205