Media, Arts and Humanities Education Away Day Event
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters (Unsplash)
MAH 2024 Education Away Day Event
Education and Changing Technologies in Media, Arts and Humanities
- What are the larger (national and Sussex University) contexts for changing technologies in Higher Education - what's happened already and what's happening now?
- How are we already engaging in leading edge creative, digital and employability skills through the courses that we teach
- The extent to which we are being disrupted by AI and other technologies
- Challenges of AI and other tech and how to respond
- What are we doing well - case studies
- Are we missing opportunities to embed skills and appropriate usages of AI and other technologies in our teaching, to help our students to learn to work with it and benefit from it ethically, and develop relevant and transferable skills through our courses
- Opportunities for productive and positive curriculum change and course development
1.15pm Welcome - Prof Ed Hughes - Associate Dean (Education), Media, Arts and Humanities
1.15pm Prof Graeme Pedlingham - Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) Graeme Pedlingham will address changes and challenges in the regulatory environment for MAH and the Foundation Year
1.30pm Prof Claire Smith - Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Education and Innovation) Claire Smith will discuss updates to Curriculum Reimagined, and will explore the effects of disruptive tech on the Sussex curriculum and the sector
1.45pm Prof Kate O'Riordan - PVC for Education and Students, Kate O'Riordan, responds with thoughts on the impact of technological and sector changes on our path forward at Sussex; followed by discussion
2pm Generative AI and education - insights into the latest tools and resources: Helen Morley (Learning Technologist, Educational Enhancement) and Dr Sarah Watson (Academic Developer, Educational Enhancement) - and challenges to assessment - Dr Aaron Kahn (Senior Lecturer & Head of Modern Languages)
2.40pm A brief intro to the work of the SHL and the relationship between research, education and digital tools and methods - Dr Ben Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities)
2.45pm Generative AI - opportunities for learning and employability. Large Language Models, definitions, practical demonstration, student case studies - Dr Chris Kiefer (Senior Lecturer in Music Technology)
3.30pm Tea break
3.50pm Critical AI Studies, an intellectual project in the Humanities, its history and relevance to teaching - Dr Beatrice Fazi (Reader in Digital Humanities and Head of Media and Cultural Studies)
4.15pm 'Generative Pre-Trained Jo Walton’ - real-time interactive problem solving, brainstorming and discussion of future directions - Dr Joseph Walton (Research Fellow in Arts, Climate and Tech)
4.45pm Wrap up - Prof Liz James (Dean)
5pm Drinks and informal discussion
Media Arts and Humanities has long been at the forefront of creative and digital methods in teaching. There are many examples in our teaching and research, but here are a few:
- learning the skills of documentary and fiction film-making to tell socially relevant stories
- creative writing including embedding digital methods
- digitising art and music to enable forensic analysis and comparative examinations of centuries' old artistic practices
- digital archiving for accessibility
- using panopto for accessibility
- using zoom to enable break-out rooms and polls
- using padlets, pollev, trello etc to engage students with less exposure than traditional seminar contributions, which may help initially less confident students
At the same time Media, Arts and Humanities continues to stand for the value of long-established teaching methods, including lectures, seminars, practicals, debates and fieldwork.
Recent and rapid developments in Generative AI have exposed a clear tension in Higher Education between creative opportunities for learning, and challenges around academic integrity. The Government's policy paper on Generative AI in education (Oct 2023) notes that the arrival of ChatGPT and Google Bard produces 'opportunities and challenges for the education sector'.
Addressing opportunities and challenges is vital for reasons including:
- In the context of a 'pro-innovation' approach the Office for AI is carrying out research into skills needed for future workforce training; it is evident that being able to work creatively with AI will be part of many of our graduates future employment settings and it is vital that we are seen to be part of preparing them.
- The University's own Community of Practice work indicates that well-informed students are more likely to resist using ChatGPT inappropriately
- Clear and principled approaches are the best routes to defending academic integrity
- Clear and principled approaches are likely to be most powerful baselines for nurturing transferable digital, creative and employability skills amongst our students
During the afternoon colleagues will be invited to respond to the themes and questions of the afternoon through Q&A, discussion, collaborative feedback (can be either digital or paper based). The event will be documented and a report produced to help shape and inform current and future directions.
All are welcome but please contact Prof Ed Hughes (e.d.hughes@sussex.ac.uk) if you wish to attend.