Education in Practice Network

Sarah King reflects on the importance of developing human literacies in the age of AI, drawing from her engagement with a EUniWell-funded project that ran from 2019 to 2021.

We are entering a new phase of learning in the educational rollercoaster that is Generative AI. The early days — when enthusiastic adopters clashed with resolute sceptics and the rest of us hovered somewhere in-between, quietly hoping it might all just go away — are beginning to fade.

We are learning to live with AI, and to work with it in our personal and professional lives. I have used it to draw up travel plans, design flower beds in the garden, source festive presents and, let’s be honest, to avoid the blank-page frustration of knowing what I want to talk about in this blog but not quite knowing where to start.

As our confidence grows, we are also starting to talk about the transformational and longer-term impact that AI will have on education. This conversation is nothing new. In the 20 plus years I have worked in higher education there have been a number of these perceived “disruptors”: the emergence of the VLE in the early 2000s (my first institutional role was a Moodle Champion!),  the explosion of MOOCs in the 2010s (which, for a short while, were predicted to signal the end of the university), and more recently, the Covid pandemic and the lessons we promised ourselves we had learned from the move online.

I think AI will be transformational but, perhaps, not (only) in the ways that we currently imagine. It will make us more efficient and more productive: it has helped me to summarise readings, draft lesson plans, and even design and build a website. But it will also give us a renewed focus on what it is to be human; it will reinforce the value of a campus university, and will create space for us to think creatively, to collaborate, to support and to empathise with one another. This, I think, is where the potential for real transformation lies.

The emphasis on the human dimensions of learning was a focus of a 2019 EUniWell-funded project that brought together heads of educational development at six, research-intensive universities: Birmingham, Semmelweis, Cologne, Linnaeus, Leiden and Nantes. Our project was centred on a changing educational landscape, where globalisation, interdisciplinarity, emerging digital tools, and evolving job markets were impacting on the way we design and deliver teaching. We were looking forwards, anticipating what the 4^th Industrial Revolution might bring and we turned to a book, published in 2017 and entitled Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, written by the President of Northeastern University, Joseph Aoun, and the concept of “human literacy”.

Our project, itself impacted by the consequences of the global pandemic, engaged students, staff, researchers and educational developers in international workshops, designed to stimulate conversations about teaching and learning in higher education. We identified four aspects of human literacy which we explored in detail: cross-cultural agility, interpersonal communication, critical thinking ability, and ethics. Each of the workshops highlighted various aspects of human interaction in relation to these themes and I have attempted to summarise what we talked about and learned and move that conversation forward to today.

Cross-cultural agility

We work in an increasingly global environment, and our students experience learning in increasingly diverse classrooms. We talked about being authentic, celebrating the unique characteristics that each of us bring to a learning environment, respecting our different beliefs and co-operating with each other. We talked about empathy and emotional intelligence, the ability to be flexible and to compromise. Above all, we prioritised a need to be curious, to learn from one another and remove the obstacles (perceived or otherwise) that hold us back.

These essential human skills are more valuable than ever, and our diverse classrooms become the perfect vehicle for developing them. AI might remove some of those obstacles, helping with language barriers or scaffolding conversations, but it can’t offer an emotional response, or contribute its own lived history, and it hasn’t experienced difference, privilege or discrimination.

Interpersonal Communication

This aspect of human literacy focussed on belonging, which became core to our conversations as our project progressed throughout the pandemic. We talked about how communication could foster a sense of belonging but needed to be nurtured through teaching design that gave opportunities for that communication to happen. We talked about the value of meaningful dialogue that is inclusive and collaborative, and we recognised that these skills are not always developed intuitively but have to be learned.

AI can help us to draft emails, prepare meeting notes, translate complex ideas into digestible concepts, but it is not thinking. It doesn’t share our friendships or our lived experiences. A campus university can build a sense of belonging, gradually developing relationships, trust and confidence through interpersonal communication inside and outside our classrooms.  

Critical Thinking

Our conversations recognised that knowledge was everywhere and the role of education was evolving to prioritise creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. We reflected on disciplinary differences, and we wondered whether critical thinking was something fostered in students rather than explicitly taught. We began to focus on experience as a tool for learning, a well-established principle, but one that might take on a renewed importance in a digitised landscape.

The skill of critical thinking, long valued in higher education, can be supported but not replaced by AI. AI can summarise large volumes of text, look for patterns or gaps, even offer different viewpoints, but it can’t assess credibility, or spot bias, or make nuanced judgments about evidence. It can’t reflect, critically or otherwise in a way that challenges assumptions, or motivations.

Ethics

Our final theme was ethics, and how we can develop moral individuals, who recognise their personal responsibilities within society, challenge ignorance and embrace different approaches and solutions. This linked us back to culture and persuaded us that a continual conversation and reflection on how the digital environment is impacting on our private, social and professional lives is key to helping us navigate the opportunities and challenges that are offered by a digital transformation.

This last area of discussion was, and perhaps remains, the most important. Universities provide the space for us to explore ethical dilemmas, take responsibility for our learning and our actions, develop empathy and moral judgment and act on it. AI can help us to articulate these attributes, but not to embody them. That is a human endeavour. I am optimistic that these human literacies will help us to navigate the next phase of AI development. I’m also persuaded that the answers to some of our challenges lie in well-established educational practice and so what we might experience is a quiet transformation, that reinvigorates what we know as good teaching. The principles of inclusive learning: ensuring students feel valued, promoting open dialogue, including diverse perspectives, designing in flexible ways to engage, being clear and consistent in our communication – all of these foster belonging, support cultural agility and help us to communicate with one another. The benefits of group work: encouraging students to work together, embracing different viewpoints, reflecting on our strengths and weaknesses, learning how to collaborate effectively on authentic tasks – these develop communication skills, critical thinking and ethical practice. Active learning, where students are discussing, questioning, reflecting and problem-solving brings all this together to help them to develop the human-centred qualities that we are going to need in the years ahead.

Sarah King is the Assistant Director, Teaching and Learning Development at the University of Birmingham.