Leveraging AI to Embrace Open Education: A Workshop

Over the past decade, governments and policies have taken a great deal of interest in spreading awareness about the needs and requirements of educational institutions to adapt to the many changes we are experiencing. The EU has emphasized the need to promote "innovative teaching and learning through new technologies and open educational resources" as a strategy for lifelong learning, further integrated into the EU Development Goals and Flagship Initiatives for 2020 (EU2020). Recent times have seen a dramatic increase in the number of open educational resources (OER) available in learning object repositories. Teachers can use this wealth of information to focus on tasks including personalizing interactions with students and continuing to meet the demands of a changing curriculum and technology landscape. However, the transition from OERs to open educational practices (OEPs) is a complex process that requires multiple reflections (Ossianilsson, 2020). Especially now that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has dramatically shifted priorities on educational changes to respond to, posing a significant challenge to educators' professionalism and skills (Tlilli et al., 2023). The ease of access to and use of such systems and new strategies requires skills and a critical attitude to the use of technology. In this context, we will present data from two workshops, respectively carried out by 22 and 18 participants, in which an AI tool based on an EU project was explored. We refer to ENCORE, a platform for HE lecturers and teaching assistants, teachers, VET trainers/providers, eLearning/staff development units, and undergraduates designed to embrace open education. This tool combines AI to retrieve relevant OERs and also integrate them into teachers’ learning design. Moreover, the tool organizes OER according to the DGE (Digital, Entrepreneurial, and Green) frameworks developed by the European Commission. It provides relevant interactions based on a Revised Bloom’s taxonomy to plan learning goals and align the learning activities and assessment activities. Therefore, it also supports teachers aimed at developing skills required for contemporary challenges such as digitization, climate change, and post-COVID economic recovery. To complete the training system, ENCORE offers pedagogical scenarios created by other educators, available to the participants to get inspired and move from exploration to creativity (Raffaghelli et al., 2023). Our research questions investigated two objectives: to improve participants’ awareness relating to OERs in connection to the DGEs; to explore approaches to scenario design for learning by adopting some of the features of the ENCORE system. Our preliminary analysis revealed a focus on the platform's main potential, both in terms of design and usability. ENCORE emerged as a medium and resource not only for exploring and inquiring about OERs themselves but also as a valuable tool for exploring useful resources for one's purposes and especially for enriching one's own and shared knowledge.