Although we are typically predisposed to think of academic writing as rooted in evidence, storytelling can provide a lens for visualizing different futures and developing de facto hypotheses, as demonstrated by the “future histories” of Macgilchrist et al. (2020) and the “vignettes” of Selwyn et al. (2020).

The Learner

Simon is constantly under pressure to fulfill his various obligations. Not only is he trying to keep up with a stressful work environment during the day, but he is also working to pass a series of regulatory exams required for his role. Fortunately, his organization implemented a new learning environment that identifies his strengths and weaknesses and then dynamically tailors his learning program accordingly. Without this adaptive, AI-driven learning environment, Simon doesn’t think he’d meet the required timelines to pass his exams.

The Educator

Marissa is responsible for creating and administering educational programs within her organization. In the past, she spent much of her time creating, maintaining, and updating learning materials. However, some years ago, she secured buy-in from senior leadership to design and implement an AI-driven adaptive learning platform. With AI helping generate both static and dynamic content, the effort required to bring this concept to fruition was far less than anticipated. The organization has since experienced markedly better learner outcomes and shorter timelines to program completion. This success has earned Marissa recognition as the organization’s learning architect.

Assignment Three

The future of educational technology is rife with opportunity. One such opportunity is to leverage AI’s capabilities to create adaptive learning environments (Bozkurt et al., 2023). In my assignment three paper, I will use peer-reviewed literature to explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of adaptive AI learning environments and discuss critical aspects of effective implementation, set against a backdrop of vignettes presented from the perspective of both the learner and the educator.

References

Bozkurt, A., Xiao, J., Lambert, S., Pazurek, A., Crompton, H., Koseoglu, S., Farrow, R., Bond, M., Nerantzi, C., Honeychurch, S., Bali, M., Dron, J., Mir, K., Stewart, B., Costello, E., Mason, J., Stracke, C. M., Romero-Hall, E., Koutropoulos, A., . . . Jandrić, P. (2023). Speculative futures on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI): A collective reflection from the educational landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), 53–130. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568

Felicitas Macgilchrist, Heidrun Allert & Anne Bruch (2020) Students and
society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology, Learning, Media and
Technology, 45:1, 76-89, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2019.1656235

Neil Selwyn, Luci Pangrazio, Selena Nemorin & Carlo Perrotta (2020) What
might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction, Learning, Media and
Technology, 45:1, 90-106, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2020.1694944

Statement of AI Use

I did not use generative AI for this blog post, although I do use Grammarly for checking spelling and grammar, which presumably uses some form of (non-generative) AI to accomplish these basic review tasks. Given that we have a reasonable amount of time to write our assignment 3 papers, I do not plan to use generative AI, as our class discussions have raised concerns for me about the implications for learning and the development of critical thinking, despite finding it useful for previous course tasks, especially when searching for quality reference material candidates.