Keynote Speakers

C. Edward Watson. American Association of Colleges and Universities (USA)

Keynote: Embracing AI as Essential Learning: Preparing Students for Life Beyond College

Generative AI tools have had an astonishingly quick impact on the ways we learn, work, think, and create. While higher education’s initial response was to develop strategies to diminish AI’s influence in the classroom, it is now clear that AI competencies and literacies must be embraced as essential learning for most colleges and universities. These responses and realities create a challenging tension that higher education must work to resolve. Drawing from his new book, Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Dr. C. Edward Watson will detail the challenges and opportunities that have emerged for higher education, especially in terms of pedagogical practice and student learning. The core focus of this keynote will be on concrete approaches and strategies higher education can adopt, both within the classroom and across larger curricular structures, to best prepare students for the life that awaits them after graduation. It will also detail the pedagogical possibilities regarding how AI can have a positive impact on student learning.

Workshop: Exploring AI for Teaching and Learning

Designed for those who are interested in employing AI within the context of their curriculum and/or courses, this hands-on workshop will begin by providing participants with a guided, hands-on exploration of key generative AI tools currently being used today. The world of generative AI is not monolithic, as there are a variety of systems and each has different strengths and weaknesses. After exploring this landscape, the workshop will shift to specific applications of AI within teaching and learning settings. A key theme will be how faculty can ensure their students achieve the learning outcomes of their course while also engendering AI competencies and literacies that are of increasing demand in the world of work. Assignment design, feedback, and grading will be key topics. A hallmark of this session will be opportunities for attendees to explore AI within the specific context of their own course. Relatedly, participants are encouraged to bring at least one assignment they plan to use in the fall semester or have recently used and would like to reconsider within the context of opportunities presented by AI.

About C. Edward Watson

C. Edward Watson, Ph.D., is the Vice President for Digital Innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). He is also the founding director of AAC&U’s Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. Prior to joining AAC&U, Dr. Watson was the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia (UGA) where he led university efforts associated with faculty development, TA development, learning technologies, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He continues to serve as a Fellow in the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education at UGA and recently stepped down after more than a decade as the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. His most recent book is Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). Dr. Watson been quoted in the New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Campus Technology, EdSurge, EdTech, Consumer Reports, UK Financial Times, and University Business Magazine and by the AP, CNN and NPR regarding current teaching and learning issues and trends in higher education.

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Amy Smith. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

Keynote: Is Human-Centered Design becoming less Human?

Human-centered design (HCD), the practice of putting the user’s experience at the center of the design process, was popularized in the 1990’s and moved into the mainstream in the following decades. It is generally considered the gold standard for user participation in design, but a deeper look at participation raises some questions about ways to enrich user engagement that takes greater advantage of their knowledge and creativity and gives them a greater role in decision-making and direction-setting. While a wide variety of tools and techniques have been developed to get user input to inform the HCD process, the degree of participation of these users can vary significantly, ranging from simple feedback sessions to interactive focus groups to activities that involve users in different parts of the design process. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are working on creating large language models (LLM) simulations to create personas for human subject research and applying them in human-centered design. While this may facilitate the focus on the user experience in the design of the product, is it at the expense of user engagement in the process?
In this talk, Ms. Smith will present a framework for thinking about participation in the context of design, looking at HCD and other user-focused design paradigms. She will highlight the tangible and intangible benefits of engaging users in the design process, drawing on research and experiences from MIT D-Lab. Finally, she will engage the audience in small group discussions around the role of AI in design to lay the groundwork for further conversations throughout the conference.

Workshop: The Participation Compass: A tool for navigating through the participation landscape

Whether for engaging students in field-based projects or for developing new products, participation of the end-user is an important component for effective design and innovation. When done well, participation can lead to numerous benefits, improving both the final product and enhancing the design process of design itself by giving agency to the users involved in the process, however, effective participation requires enabling conditions that are often difficult to achieve in complex contexts. Students and practitioners engaging in fieldwork need to consider many factors when selecting the appropriate approach to participation for their projects. This frequently requires them to make difficult tradeoffs between the desired benefits from participation and the feasibility of implementing it effectively. Different approaches to participation (consultation vs. partnership vs. leadership) yield different benefits and require different levels of investment and enabling conditions. The Participation Compass guides students and practitioners through the process of identifying the appropriate type of participation for their project based on the benefits they want to achieve and the constraints they have to work within. This workshop will take participants through the use of the Participation Compass and the underlying participation framework that supports it.

About Amy Smith

Amy Smith is the founding director of MIT D-Lab and senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She served in the US Peace Corps in Botswana and has done field work in Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, South Africa, Nepal, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Mali, South Sudan, Ghana and Zambia. She won the BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventor's Award and the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Invention for her work creating technologies to improve the lives of people living in low-resource environments. In 2002, she founded MIT D-Lab and began teaching a series of courses and field trips that focus on the development, design and dissemination of appropriate technologies for international development. She also founded the IDEAS competition, the International Development Design Summit and the International Development Innovation Network. She was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2004 and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010 for her work to promote local innovation. She currently co-leads the Humanitarian Innovation Initiative at D-Lab, advancing participation and participatory design among people who have been forcibly displaced by conflict. Her design and research interests are in local innovation ecosystems, water testing, treatment and storage; agricultural processing and alternative energy.

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