Speaker 1: Speaking of school and holidays, let's waste no further time
Speaker 1: in getting onto our first topic of conversation for today,
Speaker 1: which is AI in education. And we received an article
Speaker 1: this week by doctor Nix McLain called behind the Hype,
Speaker 1: Why Africa must lead its own AI revolution. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: is rapidly entering African higher education, often through tools developed
Speaker 1: in the West, and doctor Nix McLain argues that while
Speaker 1: AI offers potential benefits, it's unchecked adoption risks reinforcing outdated
Speaker 1: stereotypes and ignoring African contexts because, of course, we know
Speaker 1: that AI is largely evolving in the global North and
Speaker 1: being influenced from culture in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: Joining us now via zoom to explain more about this
Speaker 1: is doctor Nix McClain. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this very early Saturday morning. Next and good morning
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Amy, Thanks so much for the invite. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is very very early, but I'm very happy to
Speaker 2: be awaken in conversation with you today.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I think this is such an important
Speaker 1: conversation as a parent of a high school child and
Speaker 1: potentially looking at going into tertiary education because it is
Speaker 1: no doubt in my mind that AI must be having
Speaker 1: a great impact on the education system.
Speaker 2: It is. I mean it was an absolute disruptor. I
Speaker 2: mean that twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four moment where
Speaker 2: chat ept open AI flooded the market and the uptake.
Speaker 2: I mean that was an incredible disruptor. We saw that
Speaker 2: in our assessments and I'm sure it wasn't only just
Speaker 2: in tertiary secondary, probably primary as well. And it has
Speaker 2: certainly changed the way we do educational and think about it.
Speaker 1: And next, before we go into looking at Africa specifically,
Speaker 1: do you not think that the education system as a
Speaker 1: whole is perhaps outdated now with this disruption coming from AI.
Speaker 2: I think many industries are nut dated, not with this disruption.
Speaker 2: I think what we're needing to do is what the
Speaker 2: disruption has done is it's forced us to think about
Speaker 2: whether we're relevant, are we agile enough? And that applies
Speaker 2: to the education sector, many industries, and I think there's
Speaker 2: something positive in that disruption for all of us.
Speaker 1: Now, you work for an organization called Edge of Fast,
Speaker 1: do you want to tell our listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: about the work that you do?
Speaker 2: Absolutely so, each of us is one of the fastest
Speaker 2: growing private high education institutions in South Africa. We have
Speaker 2: twelve campuses twenty thousand students across the country, so we're
Speaker 2: an a credible growth spirit at the moment. And I'm
Speaker 2: head of research and postgraduate Studies for Edge of US.
Speaker 2: So one of my key areas is to do an
Speaker 2: environmental scan of what's happening out there in the world,
Speaker 2: stay on top of it, and to feed that information
Speaker 2: back into the organization. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: I care about most in the world and my own
Speaker 2: personal research is in ethics of care as relates to technology.
Speaker 1: Sure, you must have a very big job in that case,
Speaker 1: because you know you're scanning the developments, etc. And it's
Speaker 1: all just happening so quickly and evolving at such a
Speaker 1: rapid rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I've got an incredible team that I work
Speaker 2: with my colleagues. We're in essence a fantastic community of practice,
Speaker 2: so we're all open to new changes. We feed that
Speaker 2: information back to each other. We have often sessions called
Speaker 2: best practice Fridays where we are constantly learning from each other.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, and that I think just speaks
Speaker 2: to the kind of mindset we need at this moment
Speaker 2: of disruption is really a growth mindset, being open to
Speaker 2: learning and looking for approaching life for the lifelong learning mindset.
Speaker 1: I'm in conversation with doctor Nix McLain, head of research
Speaker 1: and postgraduate studies at EDGE for US, and we're just
Speaker 1: talking about AI in education, particularly with a focus on
Speaker 1: Africa because that's where we live. Next, tell us why
Speaker 1: you've written in this article that Africa must lead its
Speaker 1: AI revolution.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the first things I thought of, you know,
Speaker 2: in that twenty twenty three twenty twenty four moment, and
Speaker 2: then we well entered into conversation with colleagues around was
Speaker 2: you know, this technology is fantastic, it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about it. But where where's the data set
Speaker 2: coming from? And why are the outputs looking in the
Speaker 2: way that they do. So the content is often from
Speaker 2: a US perspective, US examples pulling from US media, but
Speaker 2: we weren't seeing outputs from local contexts, let alone regional contexts.
Speaker 2: And that immediately sparked something. As I mentioned earlier, I'm
Speaker 2: in ethics of k or the unintended consequence of technology,
Speaker 2: and I wondered what if I was feeling this way,
Speaker 2: how our students may be feeling if they weren't seeing
Speaker 2: themselves represented in the outputs.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's difficult because how does one then
Speaker 1: begin to Africanize so to speak AI.
Speaker 2: I think the place to start is to ask those
Speaker 2: critical questions. So we developed a technocritical framework. So often
Speaker 2: when new technology and smarket, it doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 2: it's AI. For instance, we saw that with TV. I
Speaker 2: mean I say that as if I was around with
Speaker 2: the advent of TV. But there's a technological pessimism that occurs,
Speaker 2: where it's an outright rejection of the technology or optimism
Speaker 2: which is just this unquestioning adoption of technology. And what
Speaker 2: we said was we need to take that middle line,
Speaker 2: which is a techno realist actually, but we added critical theory,
Speaker 2: which asks the questions around power, whose data are we using? Yeah,
Speaker 2: whose voice is present here? Whose voice is missing here?
Speaker 2: And what do we need to do to shift that?
Speaker 2: So it's a long journey, but I do think when
Speaker 2: we start asking those questions and we we enter into
Speaker 2: reflexive dialogue around it. So you know, why are we
Speaker 2: using this technology? Who else should be here with us?
Speaker 2: Who should be involved? In the development, we start to
Speaker 2: shifting in.
Speaker 1: What sort of practical ways is AI being used in
Speaker 1: our education sector at the moment.
Speaker 2: So other than in terms of assessments, which is the
Speaker 2: primary space we see it, and with the students who
Speaker 2: may use AI to generate their essays, for instance, it
Speaker 2: may be used in content generations, so for less in
Speaker 2: outlines or lesson content, and so we've got to think
Speaker 2: very very carefully there then, like why are you using
Speaker 2: this particular tool? And so we encourage the use of AI,
Speaker 2: but we're also saying, if you're going to use AI,
Speaker 2: please ensure that your prompts are advanced and complex enough
Speaker 2: to try and generate content that is a reflexive ortive
Speaker 2: sorry of our contexts, and then to also critically analyze
Speaker 2: that content to ensure that it does speak back to
Speaker 2: our lived experiences, our lived reality.
Speaker 1: Next, you mentioned when I asked you about your role
Speaker 1: that you've got a particular interest in the ethics of care.
Speaker 1: How does that even play into AI.
Speaker 2: So ethics of cares slightly more so, you know, you
Speaker 2: have research ethics, which is about do no harm insure justice.
Speaker 2: With the outcome of research, ethics of care takes us
Speaker 2: one step further, it asks about positionality, So that's about
Speaker 2: who am I in the world, or what is this
Speaker 2: technology in the world, Who's made it, what the power
Speaker 2: structures under it, underneath it, informing it, and you know,
Speaker 2: as a result, what occurs due to the use of
Speaker 2: the technology. It also talks about standpoint, which is how
Speaker 2: I really came into the space, which is I maybe
Speaker 2: situation in this context. So I'm in Africa, I'm in
Speaker 2: South Africa, I'm in high education, and I'm not seeing
Speaker 2: my reality reflected back to me. So what does that
Speaker 2: mean for a student? So in ethics, care really is
Speaker 2: about asking those questions around power and asking for reflexivity,
Speaker 2: so thinking about why do we use things in the
Speaker 2: way that we do.
Speaker 1: You recently spoke at the SARIA conference. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've pronounced that correctly, but basically it's the Southern
Speaker 1: African Regional Universities Association. And what was that conference about?
Speaker 1: And who were some of the people that were gathered there.
Speaker 2: So that was a regional conference bringing together universities across
Speaker 2: the region to be in conversation around transformation and high education.
Speaker 2: And I was speaking there to our technocritical framework and
Speaker 2: talking about how we can think about AI in the
Speaker 2: future for access. So you know, some of the work
Speaker 2: we do as a prior education institution is we look
Speaker 2: at research for real world impact, and so we're really
Speaker 2: concerned with the sustainable development goals, particular standable development role
Speaker 2: for which is put quality education, and so AI can
Speaker 2: be used to enable access to quality education. But what
Speaker 2: we were challenging is that we've got to think about
Speaker 2: the kind of content. So, you know, I want to
Speaker 2: often talk about personalized learning analytics, which is one of
Speaker 2: the most exciting spaces for AI, but we can't yet
Speaker 2: go there until we get technology right because a student's
Speaker 2: learning maybe, you know, we may accept that a student
Speaker 2: may be struggling, but the analytics, the tools that we
Speaker 2: use need to be contextualized in order to really do
Speaker 2: justice to the student.
Speaker 1: The reason I asked you that question is just because
Speaker 1: I'm wondering whether there is enough education about AI in education.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds a bit silly, but you know,
Speaker 1: our is the information trickling down far enough. Our teachers,
Speaker 1: for instance, on the ground at a primary school in
Speaker 1: a low income area in Cape Town, being fed the
Speaker 1: right information about AI and how to use it. Safely
Speaker 1: and properly and correctly.
Speaker 2: That's an excellent question. I think that where we've still
Speaker 2: got a long way to go. You know, in the
Speaker 2: last year, year and a half, what I've seen is
Speaker 2: a fear based response to AI. People are very quick
Speaker 2: to head towards policy, which to me always indicates over
Speaker 2: governance and not necessarily a curiosity. So we for instance,
Speaker 2: I know this is a primary school primary education question,
Speaker 2: but you know, if we think about kind of how
Speaker 2: Age of US has responded. We went for guidelines so
Speaker 2: that it's this living, breathing document where we're constantly adapting
Speaker 2: with the technology and indicating let's be careful, let's be curious.
Speaker 2: And I worry that at primary and secondary level, that
Speaker 2: especially in space where there is the digital divide. You know,
Speaker 2: we have matters around digital literacy and digital fluency, which
Speaker 2: is something we're not talking about as well, that educators
Speaker 2: aren't receiving the information that they need and I instead
Speaker 2: receiving a fear based response which will not serve students
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: Next Unfortunately, we're out of time, but if people would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with Edge of Us or
Speaker 1: find out more about the work that you do, can
Speaker 1: you let them know what the best way to do
Speaker 1: so it would be.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so they can send me an email directly, So
Speaker 2: NYX dot McLaren m c l e A n at
Speaker 2: edge of us dot com or have look at our
Speaker 2: website edgebus dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time on the Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: I hope you're able to go and jump back into
Speaker 1: bed or spend the rest of the morning doing something
Speaker 1: super fun.
Speaker 2: It's a day for adventure, So thank you very much, Amie.
Speaker 2: Have an excellent morning and thanks for the conversation you two.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next Doctor next Claim recently presented
Speaker 1: AI Enabled Access to Quality Education, a case study of
Speaker 1: digital transformation at a South African private HI at the
Speaker 1: regional conference. We spoke about the SARUA conference