The Dutch AI Coalition

Education Working Group: The Quadruple Helix in Action

Turner has joined the Dutch AI Coalition (NL AIC). In late 2020, Jeroen Visscher of Turner launched the Education Working Group, in which the education sector, research institutions, and the government collaborate to make meaningful use of AI for the benefit of students and teachers. The working group kicked off with a series of roundtable sessions involving teachers and students. How did that go? And what were the results?

Education Working Group: The Quadruple Helix in Action

The Education Working Group of the Dutch AI Coalition (NL AIC) has completed a series of roundtable discussions with students, teachers, educational institutions, government agencies, and the business community. What began as a process of listening to students and teachers culminated in eight concrete pilot projects to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education. It was a successful process that demonstrates just how valuable the quadruple helix approach is in practice. The result? A clearly defined AI need identified by the Education sector and numerous pilot projects that will undergo Continuous Development!

Start by listening

The goal of the four roundtable discussions was to define the AI needs within the Education sector. The first step was to understand and explore these issues: What are the experiences and opinions of pupils, students, and teachers? After all, the ultimate goal of the Education Working Group was to gain a clear picture of the potential applications of AI in education. It is important to understand, within that context, which experiences are specific to the COVID-19 period and which are unrelated to it.

Where Students See Opportunities

Next, the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI in education were explored. For students, AI is important for personalized learning and maintaining control over their education. With personalized learning, students aim, among other things, to tailor the amount of homework to their learning objectives and their level of understanding of the material. Taking control is primarily about personal data shared with educational institutions, because having their progress “monitored” can be stressful. But consider also the use of AI for choosing a major.

“Together with a diverse group of students, we took part in a discussion about the challenges, opportunities, and problems we face in Education. In the active and informative sessions with the working group members, we then worked together to explore solutions that AI can offer to address these issues. And it seems to have gone well! Hopefully, the AI solutions we came up with will help make Education more fun, easier, more personalized, and more engaging for all students in the future!” Bram, an AI student at the University of Groningen.

Where Teachers See Opportunities

Teachers find that by using AI applications, they have more time to devote to individual students. Think of using AI for grading assignments and providing substantive feedback to students. Or understanding exactly how online classes can be improved—where do students struggle? Analyzing data to help specific students was also mentioned. All of this is valuable input for the working group.

Eight pilot ideas

The next step was to formulate concrete ideas and applications for the working group. There was no shortage of ideas: some came from the roundtable discussions themselves, while others came from outside them. Ultimately, eight concrete ideas and applications were formulated in the areas of personalized learning, learning how to learn, instant feedback, college and career counseling, and “learning analytics.” During the final roundtable, the working group reviewed, refined, and improved these concrete ideas and applications in order to jointly define the first next steps.

Cover more ground faster

In September, the working group will present an agenda that includes an action plan for the implementation phase for each of the eight ideas. “We have experienced the power of the quadruple helix model offered by the Dutch AI Coalition. When you connect all the stakeholders—students, faculty, educational institutions, government agencies, research organizations, and the business community—new insights and connections emerge. We can also better align AI innovation opportunities and solutions with the needs of students and faculty. With the momentum generated within the working group, we are now taking concrete steps toward realizing those solutions.” — Jeroen Visscher, chair of the Education Working Group.