AI Education Podcast

In this episode of AI in Education, Dan and Ray sit down with Leigh Williams, CIO of Brisbane Catholic Education, to dive into one of the most ambitious AI rollouts in Australian schools. With 78,000 students and 13,000 staff, Leigh and her team implemented Microsoft Copilot at scale—reducing teacher workloads by 9+ hours per week and even boosting teacher recruitment. But it’s not just about efficiency. Leigh shares how AI is reshaping learning, tackling the digital divide, and even reducing student stress. We also explore the ethics of AI in education, Brisbane Catholic Education’s commitment to the Vatican’s "Rome Call" for AI ethics, and why gender balance in AI leadership still has a long way to go. We also have a fascinating discussion about other ways that they are using technology to support learning, including FisherOne, their online school. Training resources Leigh talks extensively about the effort they have put into training and support for their teachers and students, and we wanted to share some of the Microsoft resources we know are useful if you're rolling out Copilot to your school: Microsoft Learn: Enhance teaching and learning with Microsoft Copilot Microsoft Adopt: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat resources for education

Dan and Ray welcome Graham Brown Martin, a seasoned expert in education technology, for a very(!) thought-provoking conversation about navigating education in the rapidly evolving age of artificial intelligence. In this episode: Discover Graham's journey through multiple technological revolutions—from early mainframes and pioneering laser-disc technology to modern-day AI. Hear stories from Graham's past, including his role in bringing together provocative figures like Katherine Birbalsingh and Malcolm McLaren to challenge the status quo in education. Reflect on the historical context of industrial revolutions and their ongoing influence on our current educational systems. Understand why Graham argues that education is still stuck in outdated 19th-century practices and how the pandemic reinforced rather than changed this dynamic. Explore why Graham believes relational skills, creativity, empathy, and human collaboration will define education and employment in the fifth industrial revolution. Graham's call to action? Shifting educational and economic models to prioritise human-centric skills and societal value.   Find out more about Graham on his website: GrahamBrownMartin.com Follow Graham on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahambrownmartin/ 

Dr. Nici Sweaney, founder of "AI Her Way" and a champion for gender equality, shares her remarkable journey from butterfly ecology to AI consulting. She discusses the importance of ethical AI strategies in education, emphasizing AI literacy for educators and students. Nici highlights the impact of AI on equity, particularly regarding women's representation, and stresses the need for diverse voices in AI design. With a focus on Australia's unique challenges, she advocates for clear strategies to integrate AI in schools responsibly.

In this episode, Ray and Dan are joined by Danny Bielik, President of the Digital Education Council, to discuss the findings of a global AI faculty survey. With insights from 52 institutions across 28 countries, Danny shares how higher education faculty are adopting AI, the biggest concerns around academic integrity and assessment, and why AI literacy is still a challenge for many. Key topics include: 🔹 The real impact of AI on teaching and learning 🔹 How universities are using AI for teaching materials and admin 🔹 The debate on AI and job security for faculty 🔹 Why assessment and academic integrity need a rethink 🔹 How institutions can benchmark their AI strategies 📌 Links & Resources: 📄 Download the Global AI Faculty Survey Report 🌍 Learn more about the Digital Education Council 🔗 Follow Danny Bielik on LinkedIn

Book Club Podcast? Before we even got to the News and Research, this week we discussed the AI-related books we're currently reading: Dan's reading: Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson (TED Talk) Why Data Science Projects Fail, by Douglas Gray and Evan Shellshear (An interview with Evan) Ray's reading  The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, by Kate Crawford (Wikipedia page) News Links Links to the reports and news we discuss in the episode: OpenAI's new Education newsletter https://openaiforeducation.substack.com/ Ethan Mollick's new "AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching" course on Coursera https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching World Economic Forum "Future of Jobs report" https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/infographics-94b6214b36/ Student expelled and deported because they were accused of using ChatGPT by their professor. So they're suing their professor https://www.fox9.com/video/1574324 Digital Education Council Global AI Faculty Survey 2025 https://www.digitaleducationcouncil.com/post/digital-education-council-global-ai-faculty-survey We'll discuss this report with one of the authors in next week's episode UK government policy paper on "Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-artificial-intelligence-in-education/generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-education Year13 Case Study on AI use https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/2024/12/13/guiding-school-leavers-with-ai-support-year13s-mission-to-democratise-opportunities-for-young-people/ AI Use by industry employees - US, 2024 https://www.nber.org/papers/w32966 In the discussion of energy use by AI, Ray mentioned some stats from this research report: "The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans"  https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf Research Papers And finally, links to the research papers we discussed this week ChatGPT and Its Educational Impact: Insights from a Software Development Competition https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03779  How to Align Large Language Models for Teaching English? Designing and Developing LLM based-Chatbot for Teaching English Conversation in EFL, Findings and Limitations https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04987  AI Meets the Classroom: When Does ChatGPT Harm Learning? https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09047  Are Large Language Models Good Essay Graders? https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13120  An Education Researcher's Guide to ChatGPT https://osf.io/spbz3  A Step Towards Adaptive Online Learning: Exploring the Role of GPT as Virtual Teaching Assistants in Online Education https://osf.io/preprints/edarxiv/rw45b  The AI Assessment Scale (AIAS) in action: A pilot implementation of GenAI-supported assessment https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET/article/view/9434     

This week we get to catch up with Katie Ford of Microsoft Australia, who tells us about the projects that have been happening in AI in Education around Australia, and shares some of the lessons learnt from the projects as well as what she is learning through her own research focus. The examples Katie discusses are: Tasmania Department of Education: Collaborated with Microsoft to enhance their data estate and prepare for AI applications aimed at identifying vulnerable children during COVID, helping to reveal overlooked demographics and improve interventions. University of New South Wales (UNSW): Engaged in multiple initiatives including embedding AI intelligence into complex institutional systems and processes, and developing the Academic Success Monitor to predict and intervene early with students disengaging from education. This proactive outreach is personalised and has shown positive impacts on student success rates. South Australia Department of Education: Pioneered the use of generative AI in classrooms, equipping educators with AI tools to enhance teaching and learning, making it one of the first in the world to adopt such technology at this scale. New South Wales Department of Education: Implemented AI thoughtfully to support educators, focusing on significant time savings and improved experiences in the classroom, with a commitment to reducing teacher workloads by five hours weekly. NSWEduChat Brisbane Catholic Education: Conducted a successful pilot with Microsoft Copilot, saving educators an average of 9.3 hours per week, which led to a wider rollout across the board to boost productivity and support staff well-being.  Brisbane Catholic Education to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to 12,500 educators and support staff, in largest rollout for K-12 globally - Microsoft Australia News Centre University of Sydney: Developed Cogniti to enable academics to control generative AI usage within their courses, facilitating the creation and monitoring of AI agents to enhance educational delivery and student monitoring. Torrens University: Used Azure OpenAI to overhaul their Learning Management System, addressing user experience feedback, enhancing accessibility, and saving both cost and labour significantly. Of course, we get diverted off course along the way, with a mention of platypus spotting, and Ray's visceral hatred of automated supermarket tills gets ha mention

And we're back! After a relaxing summer holiday Down Under (the school year finishes late December and doesn't restart until after the end of January in Australia) we've made it back to the studio to talk again. In this first episode of the 2025 'AI in Education' podcast, hosts Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming reflect on the major events and developments in AI during 2024. They discuss the importance of continuously addressing the adoption gap, the evolution of AI tools, and the pace of change in AI technology, exemplified by recent announcements like Project Stargate and DeepSeq. The episode transitions to predictions for 2025, where they foresee the year being dominated by the rise of AI agents, increased research on AI's efficacy, and the exploration of AI's role in education. They also emphasised the need for ongoing experiments and adaptability in organisations to keep up with rapid advancements.

We look back on the highlights of 2024, and the mass of stories, challenges and inspirations we had throughout the year. And what a year - AI in education has been moving so fast we even invited two digital AI podcasters to take over half the episode. And, worryingly, they did an amazing job - listen for yourself... We're going to take a break over the Australian school holidays, but then we'll be back with at the end of January 2025. If you miss us, then please go and give us a rating or review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and that'll encourage us to return with even more energy for 2025! We mention far too many stories and episodes to list them all, but one thing we mentioned a few times are the top five episodes from 2024, which in chronological order are: Assessment and Swiss Cheese - Phill Dawson - Episode 9 of Series 9 https://aipodcast.education/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9 From Burnout to Breakthrough: Amanda Bickerstaff on AI's Role in Education https://aipodcast.education/from-burnout-to-breakthrough-amanda-bickerstaff-on-ais-role-in-education  Jason Lodge - Guiding Through Assessments https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments  University of Sydney and the future of assessment https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment  Is AI the saviour of teaching? Leanne Cameron's perspective on AI across the teaching profession https://aipodcast.education/leanne-camerons-perspective-on-time-saving-for-the-teaching-professions 

A heap of news stories this week means we didn't cover any research at all! AI isn’t a tool, it’s an environment by Josh Thorpe https://wonkhe.com/blogs/ai-isnt-a-tool-its-an-environment/  Australian Senate report into Adoption of AI https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI/AdoptingAI/Report  Ethan Mollick's course on Coursera: "AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching" https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching  I'll also recommend his book - Co-Intelligence - as a great Christmas gift for yourself or a friend Open AI announced Open AI Pro @ $200/m https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pro/  We like Ethan Mollick's example that showed what it could do - solving this problem and creating a working app in 15 minutes - see here: https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lcldsn2grk2z   Microsoft Copilot with vision for consumers  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/2024/12/05/copilot-vision-now-in-preview-a-new-way-to-browse Demo example: https://youtu.be/H3-hHiITH_g  Sora released https://openai.com/index/sora-is-here/  ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode finally gets visual context on the 6th day of OpenAI https://www.zdnet.com/article/chatgpts-advanced-voice-mode-finally-gets-visual-context-on-the-6th-day-of-openai/  Apple released iOS 18.2 with integrated AI https://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-18-2-rolls-out-to-iphones-try-these-6-new-ai-features-today/  Google Gemini 2.0 with real time speech and vision https://aistudio.google.com/live  We're on Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/aiineducation.bsky.social  "The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans"  https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf  Microsoft's Zero-Water Solution for Data Centre Cooling https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/microsoft-unveils-zero-water-cooling-for-ai-data-centres 

This week's episode discussed the new AI toolkit for generative AI strategies from Australia's Higher Education regulator, TEQSA  The full toolkit is available here: https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/corporate-publications/gen-ai-strategies-australian-higher-education-emerging-practice  During the episode we referenced some of the podcasts when we'd had the chance to interview some of the people from The University of Sydney who were used as case studies in the toolkit, and here's the link to previous podcast episodes that might be helpful to go back to for more depth: The University of Sydney's Cogniti AI bot https://aipodcast.education/the-university-of-sydneys-cogniti-ai-bot  The University of Sydney's Two Lane approach to assessment https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment  We'd also recommend listening to conversations with two leaders on post-AI assessment Jason Lodge at the University of Queensland  https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments  Phill Dawson at the CRADLE centre at Deakin University  https://aipodcast.education/website/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9