Month: October 2024

SADIE: Scoping AI Developments in Edtech at Edinburgh University

I wrote a a while back about the start of our SADIE project looking at AI in the third party systems we provide for our students and staff at University of Edinburgh.

Educational technology (EdTech) services have not been immune to the excitement and rushing wave of AI adoption. It is important for learning technologists in central services to understand the risks of new features being rolled out by our existing technology partners and retain the ability to assess and choose which ones we switch on for use by our community.

It is a fast moving space:

  • An AI detection feature was added to the similarity checking service Turnitin in April 2023.
  • Various AI helper tools have been added to our virtual learning environment Learn since July 2023.
  • Wooclap added an AI wizard to generate multiple choice or open questions in November 2023.

All these services are under the control of the University to enable (or not) and are all currently switched off at Edinburgh due to risks identified.

The biggest barrier to adoption for AI tools is likely to be clear assurances from suppliers on the compliance of their AI features with University policy and legal obligations. We need a common process  which will allow us to be consistent in the evaluation and adoption of AI tools and features. 

The processes we will now use have been developed carefully by senior learning technologists with expertise in providing our central systems. For the most part they are an extended reworking of existing processes for the introduction of new non-AI features into services. As ever we need to take into account the workloads of learning technologists and ensure the processes we develop should not be much of a burden on service teams to adopt these and extend them to AI features. 

Since assessing risks of AI tools will soon become a regular or routine part of business as usual, it is important that decisions on the enabling of AI features are transparent to users. The  Edinburgh AI Innovations Service Release Tracker, and the wider SADIE SharePoint site will give the rationale behind the approach adopted and decisions made. It will also provide advice on the risks of using a tool even if it has been made available. 

The adoption of AI tools and features will likely require a review of University policies, potentially including but not limited to the OER, Lecture Recording, Virtual Classroom and Learning Analytics policies, to take account of the risks identified as part of this project. 

The Scoping AI Developments in EdTech at Edinburgh (SADIE) project was set up to standardise an approach for service teams to test and evaluate the utility and suitability of the AI tools and features being made available in the centrally supported EdTech services. The approach developed looked at the risks of adopting a particular feature and calls upon the expertise of learning technologists within the Schools, as well as that of the service managers in Information Services, in evaluating them. 

We will be monitoring progress closely.