By Jason Beaudin
The market space for artificial intelligence products is an unsettled frontier. New companies are racing to showcase the power of their AI-enabled solutions to solve business needs, streamline operations, improve research data analysis, save educators time, and help students learn. At the same time, the unique qualities and data requirements of AI could lead to unintended impacts that must be understood and appropriately navigated. For administrators in educational technology, the intersection of these two forces creates a quandary: how can we best support exploration of the potentially transformative influence of AI on education in a way that is effective, meaningful, and safe?
The complexity of a large institution’s educational technology ecosystem poses unique challenges in this regard. Placing complete control within a central educational technology department can potentially cause drag on the ability of educational units to complete the critical work of updating curriculum and teaching strategies. It also risks dramatically increasing administrative overhead by needing to monitor or intervene in local transactions on a massive scale. In contrast, taking no action opens the floodgates for products with dubious claims of value, duplication of functionality across licensed products, and uncertain risks to students, educators, and the institution.
For educational technology units, which exist in a sort of liminal space by name and in perspective, meeting the challenges posed by this altered, and altering, landscape requires balancing the needs of both sides of our coin with emphasis on:
- Responsible flexibility
- Inclusive decision-making
- Strategic application of funding support
- Human impact
- Common priorities and collaborative dialog
- User education
- Shared vision for the capabilities and practices needed to advance the educational mission of the university
From a philosophical perspective, this means finding footing within our ethics to ensure that we are moving appropriately in promoting good while limiting harm. From a technical perspective, it means aligning ourselves more than ever as true collaborative and strategic partners to stakeholders to understand the needs of learning, teaching, research, and operations. Striking this balance will enable us to advise, guide, and support technology decisions so that our institution’s goals can be met while still mitigating risk where possible and being effective stewards of the resources, both in terms of funds and of data, with which we have been entrusted.
An educational technology unit’s greatest strength rests in the collaborative relationships that it can cultivate – with technology units, with central academic administration, with colleges, and with educators and students. Listening to both the expertise and needs of these groups and helping to connect conversations across them ensures that educational technology experts can see and understand a scope that extends beyond the limits of our immediate purview. Being collaborative partners in these same discussions also allows us to help inform and guide business decisions in a way appropriate to our charge and without overstepping the bounds of our authority.
With new products promising to leverage the power of AI emerging at a remarkable pace, we have to acknowledge that our best approach to supporting learning is not a “one size fits all” solution to capitalizing on the opportunities of artificial intelligence; rather, it must be an approach that supports informed decision-making, interconnected dialog, and collaborative guidance, as well as governance that empowers stakeholders to make the best possible choices that advance the educational goals of our students.
Jason Beaudin is the Executive Director for Educational Technology in MSU IT.