David Joyner’s Post

I chatted with Times Higher Education about one of my beliefs about the next few years of AI development: we're going to see a growing need for people in the ops sector, not building all-new AI tools but deploying tools in new contexts. I'm predicting a lot of that growth will be in the IT area, personally.

One more day for submissions to this year's Affordable Degrees at Scale symposium! The submission form is short, and there are multiple options for talk type (full talks, workshops, panels, birds of a feather), so if you're interested submit today! The symposium takes place October 14-16, immediately followed by IEEE DEMOCon (formerly IEEE Learning with MOOCs) on October 16-18. (Sidenote: any students or alumni of Affordable Degrees at Scale, such as OMSCS, who are in Atlanta and interested in being on a student panel as well, let me know either in a comment below or via email!)

Immediately after Educational Data Mining this year will be this year's ACM Conference on Learning at Scale! Check out this data story to see more about what will be presented. Registration is also still open at https://lnkd.in/exYyEw85

The 2024 Conference on Educational Data Mining is less than two weeks away, and Joshua Preston here at Georgia Tech put together this fantastic data story summarizing the research being presented! If you're interested in attending, registration is still open! See https://lnkd.in/evHyeXZ7 for more information.

Occasionally I'll come across an idea (...more often than not from Justin...) that I end up referencing almost daily in conversation for the next few months. This notion of adopted vs. arrived technologies as a way of navigating the impact of generative AI on education is one of them. Today it's made me wonder: to what extent to arrived technologies typically start out as adopted technologies until they reach some tipping point? I'm thinking of the how the internet was initially largely adopted by specific universities before going global as an example of a technology that was adopted prior to arriving. AI is sort of similar: schools have been buying AI solutions for a while in adopted paradigm, but the last 18 months have seen a shift to arrival. That makes me wonder: what technologies are currently in the 'adopted' phase that may one day soon shift to 'arrival' with all of its expanded impact?

I wrote up a few thoughts on artificial intelligence and authenticity based on a screenshot my wife sent me of Facebook's suggested responses to a photo I posted recently. "Generative AI is like the high-fructose corn syrup of content" is an analogy I may want to explore more later. I've chosen to feature the picture rather than the post because cats, but here's the post: https://lnkd.in/evFJecG8

What? The IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference is evolving! ... ... ... The IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference has evolved into Digital Education & MOOCs! ...ahem. The IEEE LWMOOCs conference is now the IEEE DEMOcon, a conference on a variety of topics related to digital education—not limited to MOOCs, though MOOC research is still welcome! This year's conference will take place at Georgia Tech from October 16 to 18, immediately after the Affordable Degrees at Scale symposium (which will be October 14 to 16). Authors are invited to submit six-page papers: the paper deadline is June 22, with a 250-word abstract due June 15. I hope to see many of y'all in Atlanta! https://lnkd.in/ejPeHQea

It's almost here! My book, A Teacher's Guide to Conversational AI: Enhancing Assessment, Instruction, and Curriculum with Chatbots, is coming out in ten days! The book was mostly written last summer and fall, and with how fast AI is progressing, I've been a bit nervous to watch the developments over time and see how accurate and relevant the book remained—but I think it's actually only become more relevant. In writing it, I tried to focus on general paradigms of human-AI interaction in an educational context rather than specific nuances of chatbots at the time, and most of those general approaches have only become more common. The book generally breaks down into four sections: a fundamental primer on conversational AI, then dedicated large sections on assessment design with AI, chatbots for instruction, and conversational AI for assisting teachers. The book is available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3Mu7SI7, or you can read more about it at its dedicated web site at https://lnkd.in/ehj8u43k

The third course—AI for Teacher Assistance—launched today on edX, meaning that the full ChatGPT for Educators Professional Certificate program is now available! The program is self-paced and open to everyone. In addition to the certificate on edX, Georgia Tech Professional Education offers a route to obtaining Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for those who earn the certificates, so for those looking to brush up on the role of AI in their classroom while also fulfilling their CEU requirements, there's a route for that, too.