In this episode of the AI in Education Podcast, Ray and Dan return from a short break with a packed roundup of AI developments across education and beyond. They discuss the online launch of the AEIOU interdisciplinary research hub that Dan attended, explore the promise and pitfalls of prompt engineering—including the idea of the “Uber prompt”—and share first impressions of the OpenAI Academy. Ray unpacks misleading headlines about Bill Gates “replacing teachers” with AI and instead spotlights the real message about AI tutors. They also dive into the 2027 AI forecast report, the emerging impact of the EU AI Act, and Microsoft's latest Work Trend Index, which introduces the idea of "agent bosses" in the AI-driven workplace. And then round off with Ben Williamson’s list of AI fails in education and a startling story of an AI radio presenter nobody realised was fake. Here's all the links so you too can fall down the AI news rabbithole 😊 AI in Education at Oxford University interdisciplinary research hub https://aieou.web.ox.ac.uk/ OpenAI Academy https://academy.openai.com/home Introduction to ChatGPT Edu: Your AI-Powered Academic Companion https://academy.openai.com/home/videos/introduction-to-chatgpt-edu-2025-03-20 AI for Academic Success: Research, Writing, and Studying Made Easier https://academy.openai.com/home/videos/ai-for-academic-success-research-writing-and-studying-made-easier-2025-03-20 Mastering Prompts: The Key to Getting What You Need from ChatGPT https://academy.openai.com/home/videos/mastering-prompts-the-key-to-getting-what-you-need-from-chatgptmastering-prompts-the-key-to-getting-what-you-need-from-chatgpt-2025-03-20 AI 2027 Forecast Report https://ai-2027.com/ 2025 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Report: Shaping the Future of Higher Education Through Technology, Flexibility, and Well-Being https://library.educause.edu/resources/2025/4/2025-educause-students-and-technology-report Melbourne & KPMG AI Sentiment Survey https://kpmg.com/au/en/home/insights/2025/04/trust-in-ai-global-insights-2025.html https://www.innovationaus.com/australians-the-most-pessimistic-in-the-world-on-ai/ Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/2025-the-year-the-frontier-firm-is-born Ben Williamson’s AI Fails in Education on LinkedIn This links to all the individual stories, so head to Ben's story, give it a like, and then click through to the warnings from the stories! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-williamson-7a501b329_top-ai-in-education-fails-so-far-millions-activity-7318038426270806016-pIzp Australian Radio Network digitises diversity with an artificially generated Asian female presenter https://www.startupdaily.net/topic/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning/eye-thy-with-my-ai-australian-radio-network-digitises-diversity-with-an-artificially-generated-asian-female-presenter
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42:21
Designing the Future: Learning Designers Meet AI
Series 11, Episode 11 Designing the Future: Learning Designers Meet AI with Minh Huynh and Cory Dal Ponte In this episode of the AI in Education Podcast, we bring you two powerful conversations that explore the evolving role of learning designers and their growing impact in the world of AI-enabled education. Together, these two interviews reveal the strategic and practical power of learning design in an AI-driven future. First, we speak with Minh Huynh from The University of Sydney Education Innovation team, who shares her journey from being a student of AI to leading its integration within a large first-year biology course. She offers a compelling look into the behind-the-scenes work of learning designers—building trust with academics, identifying barriers to student learning, and co-creating feedback tools that make a measurable impact. In the second half, we’re joined by Cory Dal Ponte from the University of Melbourne. Cory is both a learning designer and a PhD researcher focused on AI literacy. He walks us through some of the GPT-powered tools he’s built - from bots that rewrite learning outcomes in Bloom’s Taxonomy to AI-driven simulated patients for healthcare education - and unpacks what it really means to be AI literate in education today. His custom GPTs are all available for you to use through ChatGPT Bloomify – Converts unrefined learning goals into Bloom’s Taxonomy-aligned outcomes Sim Patient Builder – Helps create simulated patient cases for healthcare education to use with Sim Patient UnderstandMe: Supports creating key understandings from topic aims using the Understanding by Design framework. Corey also mentioned two good resources for thinking about AI competency: UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Educators Conceptualizing AI literacy: An exploratory review, Ng et al. (2021) And finally, you can find some other resources from Cory on his linktree
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48:23
From BYO AI to the Turing Test: What Just Happened in Education?
This week, Dan and Ray dive into a whirlwind of AI news shaking up the education world. From $40K private schools with AI tutors to universities reporting chatbot-driven grade boosts, they unpack what’s hype and what’s happening. Plus, they explore the ethics of AI image generation, energy use in data centers, and whether GPT-4.5 is now officially more human than human. News Alpha School - AI school in Texas News report: https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-private-schools-use-ai-tutor-rockets-student-test-scores-top-2-country https://alpha.school/ Macquarie University students’ exam scores up by nearly 10 per cent thanks to new AI-powered chatbotMicrosoft case study: https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/03/24/macquarie-university-students-exam-scores-up-by-nearly-10-per-cent-thanks-to-new-ai-powered-chatbot/ Building an AI-Enabled Workforce: Impacts for Finance, Technology and Business Education and Training https://www.futureskillsorganisation.com.au/building-an-ai-enabled-workforce-impacts-for-finance-technology-and-business-education-and-training The Future of Jobs Report 2025 from World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/ OpenAI Academy https://academy.openai.com Anthropic launched Claude for Education https://www.anthropic.com/news/introducing-claude-for-education Open AI image generation announcement https://openai.com/index/introducing-4o-image-generation/ Report: Australia’s renewables can power AI and slash energy costs https://www.innovationaus.com/australias-renewables-can-power-ai-and-slash-energy-costs/ UTS Transdisciplinary Innovation course https://www.uts.edu.au/for-students/transdisciplinary-innovation Research The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231 Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 News report: https://futurism.com/ai-model-turing-test
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32:12
How two people built an AI tool for 15,000 students
Yet again, Dan and Ray are the podcast hosts, but Ray’s AI digital twin introduces the episode! This week's guests are: Lee Barrett – Prompt Engineer and AI Advocate at CEnet. Prem Radhakrishnan – AI Technical Manager at CEnet. This episode is a two-level deep dive into the development and deployment of CEchat, an AI-powered chatbot designed to reduce teacher workload and enhance student learning across Catholic schools in Australia. Part 1 of the episode covers the vision, pedagogy, and implementation strategy with both Lee and Prem. Part 2 is a more technical discussion between Dan and Prem, covering codebase customisation, infrastructure, scale, security, and integration. CEchat is an extended school-level implementation of Cogniti, the multi-award-winning open source chatbot from The University of Sydney. We interviewed Danny Liu about the project in this episode: https://aipodcast.education/the-university-of-sydneys-cogniti-ai-bot They also discussed the Rome Call for AI Ethics, which you'll find here: https://www.romecall.org/
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43:44
News & Research: The Global Shift from Policy to Practice
News Stories Covered in the Episode AI Typing Like a Human? – Graham Clay’s LinkedIn post on ChatGPT Operator mimicking human keystrokes https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7292163775963557888/ The Vatican on AI Ethics – “Antiqua et Nova” report on AI, human intelligence, and ethics in education Sacerdotus: Vatican's New Document on AI: Ethical Guidelines and Human Responsibility Australian Government’s AI Study – Treasury report on Microsoft 365 Copilot, estimating it pays for itself if it saves 13 minutes per week Treasury M365 Copilot review estimates 13-minute efficiency gain needed to justify licence cost - Software - iTnews California State University & AI – Providing 500,000 stuents access to ChatGPT Edu https://openai.com/index/openai-and-the-csu-system/ Estonia’s AI Strategy – National AI policy giving all students access to AI tutors https://openai.com/index/estonia-schools-and-chatgpt/ Australia’s New National AI Centre Director – ex-podcast co-host Lee Hicken appointed to lead the centre. For those keeping count, that's the second of the podcast hosts that's now at NAIC, with current hosts Dan & Ray still waiting for the call 😂 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7306940399086903296/ Manus AI Release – A new AI system focused on reasoning and conversation McKay Wrigley's X post Research Papers Discussed "From chalkboards to chatbots: Transforming learning in Nigeria, one prompt at a time" – World Bank blog on AI tutoring in Nigeria, claiming two years of learning gains in six weeks. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/From-chalkboards-to-chatbots-Transforming-learning-in-Nigeria We discussed Ethan Mollick's LinkedIn post focusing on the multiple controlled experiments showing that students can be helped or harmed based on how they use AI “AI Meets the Classroom: When Does ChatGPT Harm Learning?” – Study on ChatGPT’s impact on learning; found that using AI without explanations led to weaker long-term retention. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.09047v1 “Generative AI Can Help Learning” – AI tutors improve test results but can hinder deeper learning if students rely too much on direct answers https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4895486 “Effective and Scalable Math Support: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of an AI- Math Tutor in Ghana” – AI tutor via WhatsApp in Ghana increased learning by the equivalent of one extra school year at $5 per student https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2402/2402.09809.pdf “Generative AI in higher education: A global perspective of institutional adoption policies and guidelines” – Study on university AI policies worldwide; most encourage AI use but lack clarity on inclusivity and transparency https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X24001516
Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming are experienced education renegades who have worked in many various educational institutions and educational companies across the world. They talk about Artificial Intelligence in Education - what it is, how it works, and the different ways it is being used. It's not too serious, or too technical, and is intended to be a good conversation.
Please note the views on the podcast are our own or those of our guests, and not of our respective employers (unless we say otherwise at the time!)
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