This paper describes a case study of one large asynchronous college-level organizational psychology class taught during COVID-19, in which a major intent was to develop virtual teamwork skills in students. A literature review yielded four challenges of virtual teams in higher education-communication, trust, connection and social bonding, and joint commitment and accountability. The course offered students an opportunity to authentically develop strategies to manage these challenges. Course design, team assignments, and instructional strategies utilized are described. Results from a survey completed by 89 (out of 115) students in the course revealed student-generated strategies and recommendations for virtual team collaboration.
Popenici, S. (2022).Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures: Critical Narratives of Technology and Imagination in Higher Education, 228 pp, Routledge.
Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures: Critical Narratives of Technology and Imagination in Higher Education critiques the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational technology. The author explores the historical definition of “intelligence” and uses that historyto critically examine AI and the risks associated with its continued growth. Ultimately, the author concludes that the expansion of AI requires educators to reimagine technological priorities in educational spaces and how those priorities can be leveraged to support student learning.
This book was written by Stefan Popenici, Academic Lead for Quality Initiatives in Education Strategy at Charles Darwin University, Australia. Defined by the author, its purpose is “to explore some of the key areas thatwere ignored or remain superficially investigated in the enthusiasm for a technological revolution” (Popenici, 2022, p. 1). Rather than investigating the technical aspects of machine learning, the book explores various characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI) and their potential to affecteducational technology (edtech) as well as student learning outcomes.
The introduction begins with an overview of the global crises that havedominated the beginning of the 21st century. Holistically, however, the book focuses on the “Americanisation of higher education” (Popenici, 2022, p. 73). While it expands to consider other countries and regions, its focusremains on American ideology and the trends it sets in edtech, which contribute to a field that is “Americanised in subtle and complex forms” (p. 1).
After the introduction, the book is divided into three overarching sections, which are separated into nine chapters that examine the history of AI against reflections on the authors’ personal experiences. The first section considers the ideology behind definitions of “intelligence,” how that history has merged into mythologies that define “The American Dream,” and how the two have combined to form narratives surrounding AI. The author also links intelligence research to eugenics and genocide, among other things. The second section explores AI in higher education, including considerations of automation, surveillance, and worldwide crises affecting student learning. The author also discusses the way AI has contributed to “significantly broadening the role of surveillance and data collection in education” (Popenici, 2022, p. 120). The third and final section imagines how AI might affect the future of higher education and how educators can re-imagine ways “to think for the common good, to speak truth to power, and to genuinely master critical thinking” (p. 145). In this way, the author also seeks to expose AI’s influence into “the constant erosion of intellectual life in academia and excessive focus on quantitative criteria and various forms of exploitation,” which the author calls “the open secrets of higher education” (p. 172). Ultimately, the book’s conclusion returns to its introduction to “imagine and build sustainable solutions for the future,” which require critical investigations into “how and if AI can help universities and students to avoid a dystopian future of continuous surveillance, control, and authoritarianism” (p. 6).
This book’s strength lies in its comprehensive critical analysis of allcomponents of AI, from its historical definitions to its potentials for growth as well as for harm. The author explores the challenges associated with building sustainable AI to support pedagogical best practices; he also discusses the systems and algorithms that contribute to a culture of surveillance in higher education. While the text is deeply critical of aspects of edtech, it showcases the ethical considerations that will be necessary for a wide-spread adoption of AI in the future. This content is especiallyrelevant to academic leaders and administrators, who make decisions surrounding AI adoption, as well as to faculty, instructional technologists, andinstructional designers, who are on the front lines of AI's future in higher education.
Published November of 2022, Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures was released at the same moment that OpenAI launched the prototype of ChatGPT, a chatbot built on a large language model that generates unique text in response to user input (OpenAI, 2022). This publication date gives the text a unique perspective capturing an edtech landscapepoised to become dominated by considerations of generative AI; however, this timeline also limits the author’s consideration of the rapid affect this technology has had on higher education. Additionally, it is necessary topoint out that while the author makes a convincing argument for the American ideological trends that have infiltrated many aspects of higher education across the world, a further analysis could include more explicit contrast of how other countries have approached AI in both policy and procedure.
Ultimately, this book takes a nuanced view of AI through the changing lens of higher education. It describes “the main failure of the university”to be one where imagination has been replaced with an “obsessive focus on big data, surveillance and predictive analytics, edtech gadgets, and software applications” ((Popenici, 2022, p. 173). Instead, the author imagines afuture of “new and courageous solutions, in a new paradigm, with new priorities and a rejection of education as a commodity with students as customers in a market” (p. 184). When explored through this lens, the author shows “the rise of AI” to be “just another reason to accept that this is thetime when we must start to imagine” new approaches to higher education (p. 197). In this way, Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures shows the way that educators will need to critically analyze AI toimagine both the risks and benefits that it might pose to the future of edtech and how that future will translate to new opportunities for studentlearning.
