Tag: collaborative learning

Teaching, Learning, Assessment and GenAI: Moving from Reaction to Intentional Practice

GenAI:N3
By Dr Hazel Farrell & Ken McCarthy, South East Technological University & GenAI:N3
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
A digital illustration depicting the intersection of technology and higher education. On the left, a glowing, translucent human brain composed of neural networks rises from an open, illuminated book. On the right, a group of educators and professionals sit in a circle at a glowing round table, engaged in a collaborative discussion. The background features subtle academic symbols like a graduation cap and a chalkboard, all set in a futuristic, tech-enabled environment. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.
Moving from reaction to intentional practice: Exploring the collaborative future of Generative AI in higher education through human-led dialogue and pedagogical reflection. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.

Generative AI has become part of higher education with remarkable speed.

In a short period of time, it has entered classrooms, assessment design, academic writing, feedback processes, and professional workflows. For many educators, its arrival felt sudden and difficult to make sense of, leaving little space to pause and consider what this shift means for learning, teaching, and academic practice.

Initial responses across the sector have often focused on risk, regulation, and control. These concerns are understandable. Yet they only tell part of the story. Alongside uncertainty and anxiety, there is also curiosity, experimentation, and a growing recognition that GenAI raises questions that are fundamentally pedagogical rather than purely technical.

On 21 January, we are delighted to host #LTHEchat to explore these questions together and to move the conversation from reaction towards more intentional, reflective practice.

The discussion will be grounded in the Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education, and informed by the wider work of GenAI:N3, a national initiative in Ireland supporting collaborative engagement with generative AI across higher education.

GenAI:N3: A Collaborative Project for the Sector

GenAI:N3 is a national network that was established in Ireland as part of the N-TUTORR programme, to support technological higher education institutions as they responded to the rapid emergence of generative AI. Rather than focusing on tools or technical solutions, the project centres on people, practice, and shared learning.

At its core, GenAI:N3 aims to build institutional and sectoral capacity by creating spaces where educators, professional staff, and leaders can explore GenAI together. Its work is grounded in collaboration across institutions and disciplines, recognising that no single university or role has all the answers.

The project focuses on several interconnected areas:

  • Supporting communities of practice where staff can share experiences, challenges, and emerging approaches
  • Encouraging critical and reflective engagement with GenAI in teaching, learning, assessment, and professional practice
  • Exploring the ethical, social, and institutional implications of GenAI, including questions of power, inclusion, sustainability, and academic judgement
  • Developing shared resources, events, and conversations that help the sector learn collectively rather than in isolation

GenAI:N3 is not about accelerating adoption for its own sake. It is about helping institutions and individuals make informed, values-led decisions that are aligned with the purposes of higher education.

The Manifesto as a Shared Thinking Space

The Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education emerged from this collaborative context. It did not begin as a formal deliverable or a policy exercise. Instead, it took shape gradually through workshops, conversations, reflections, and recurring questions raised by staff and students across the sector.

What became clear was a need for a shared language. Not a framework that closed down debate, but a set of statements that could hold complexity, uncertainty, and difference.

The Manifesto brings together 30 short statements organised across three themes:

  • Rethinking teaching and learning
  • Responsibility, ethics, and power
  • Imagination, humanity, and the future

It is intentionally concise and deliberately open. It does not offer instructions or compliance rules. Instead, it invites educators and institutions to pause, reflect, and ask what kind of learning we are designing for in a world where generative tools are readily available.

One of its central ideas is that GenAI does not replace thinking. Rather, it reveals the cost of not thinking. In doing so, it challenges us to look beyond surface solutions and to engage more deeply with questions of purpose, judgement, and educational values.

Why These Conversations Matter Now

Much of the early discourse around GenAI has centred on assessment integrity and detection. While these issues matter, they risk narrowing the conversation too quickly.

GenAI does not operate uniformly across disciplines, contexts, or learning designs. What is productive in one setting may be inappropriate in another. Students experience this inconsistency acutely, particularly when institutional policies feel disconnected from everyday teaching practice.

The work of GenAI:N3, and the thinking captured in the Manifesto, keeps this complexity in view. It foregrounds ideas such as transparency as a foundation for trust, academic judgement as something that can be supported but not automated, and ethical leadership as an institutional responsibility rather than an individual burden.

These ideas play out in very practical ways, in curriculum design, in assessment briefs, in conversations with students, and in decisions about which tools are used and why.

Why #LTHEchat?

#LTHEchat has long been a space for thoughtful, practice-led discussion across higher education. That makes it an ideal forum to explore generative AI not simply as a technology, but as a catalyst for deeper pedagogical and institutional reflection.

This chat is not about promoting a single position or reaching neat conclusions. Instead, it is an opportunity to surface experiences, tensions, and emerging practices from across the sector.

The questions we will pose are designed to open up dialogue around issues such as abundance, transparency, disciplinary difference, and what it means to keep learning human in a GenAI-rich environment.

An Invitation to Join the Conversation

Whether you are actively experimenting with generative AI, approaching it with caution, or still forming your views, your perspective is welcome.

Bring examples from your own context. Bring uncertainties and unfinished thinking. The Manifesto itself is open to use, adapt, and challenge, and GenAI:N3 continues to evolve through the contributions of those engaging with its work.

As the Manifesto suggests, the future classroom is a conversation. On 21 January, we hope you will join that conversation with us through #LTHEchat.

Links

LTHE Chat Website: https://lthechat.com/

LTHE Chat Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lthechat.bsky.social

Dr Hazel Farrell

GenAI Academic Lead
SETU

Hazel Farrell has been immersed in the AI narrative since 2023 both through practice-based research and the development of guidelines, frameworks, tools, and training to support educators and learners throughout the HE sector. She led the national N-TUTORR GenAI:N3 project which was included in the EDUCAUSE 2025 Horizon Report as an exemplar of good practice. She is the SETU Academic Lead for GenAI and Chair of the university’s GenAI Steering Committee. The practical application of GenAI provides a strong foundation for her research, with student engagement initiatives for creative disciplines at the forefront of her work. Hazel recently won DEC24 Digital Educator Award for her GenAI contributions to the HE sector. She has presented extensively on a variety of GenAI related topics and has several publications in this space.

Ken McCarthy

Head of Centre for Academic Practice
SETU

Ken McCarthy is the Head of the Centre for Academic Practice at SETU, Ken leads strategic initiatives to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment across the university. He works with academic staff, professional teams, and students to promote inclusive, research-informed, and digitally enriched education. He is the current vice-president of ILTA (Irish Learning Technology Association) and was previously the university lead for the N-TUTORR programme. He has a lifelong interest in technology and education and combines this in his professional role. He has written and presented on technology enhanced learning in general and in GenAI in particular over the past number of years.

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The Transformative Power of Communities of Practice in AI Upskilling for Educators

GenAI:N3
By Bernie Goldbach, RUN EU SAP Lead
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
A diverse group of five educators collaboratively studying a glowing, holographic network of digital lines and nodes on a table, symbolizing their shared learning and upskilling in Artificial Intelligence (AI) within a modern, book-lined academic setting. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.
The power of collaboration: Communities of Practice are essential for educators to collectively navigate and integrate new AI technologies, transforming teaching and learning through shared knowledge and support. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.

When the N-TUTORR programme ended in Ireland, I remained seated in the main Edtech25 auditorium to hear some of the final conversations by key players. They stood at a remarkable intersection of professional development and technological innovation. And some of them issued a call to action for continued conversation, perhaps engaging with generative AI tools within a Community of Practice (CoP).

Throughout my 40 year teaching career, I have walked pathways to genuine job satisfaction that extended far beyond simple skill acquisition. In my specific case, this satisfaction emerged from the synergy between collaborative learning, pedagogical innovation, and an excitement that the uncharted territory is unfolding alongside peers who share their commitment to educational excellence.

Finding Professional Fulfillment Through Shared Learning

The journey of upskilling in generative AI feels overwhelming when undertaken in isolation. I am still looking for a structured CoP for Generativism in Education. This would be a rich vein of collective discovery. At the moment, I have three colleagues who help me develop my skills with ethical and sustainable use of AI.

Ethan Mollick, whose research at the Wharton School has illuminated the practical applications of AI in educational contexts, consistently emphasises that the most effective learning about AI tools happens through shared experimentation and peer discussion. His work demonstrates that educators who engage collaboratively with AI technologies develop more sophisticated mental models of how these tools can enhance rather than replace pedagogical expertise. This collaborative approach alleviates the anxiety many educators feel about technological change, replacing it with curiosity and professional confidence.

Mairéad Pratschke, whose work emphasises the importance of collaborative professional learning, has highlighted how communities create safe spaces where educators can experiment, fail, and succeed together without judgment. This psychological safety becomes the foundation upon which genuine professional growth occurs.

Frances O’Donnell, whose insights at major conferences have become invaluable resources for educators navigating the AI landscape, directs the most effective AI workshops I have attended. O’Donnell’s hands-on training at conferences such as CESI (https://www.cesi.ie), EDULEARN (https://iceri.org), ILTA (https://ilta.ie), and Online Educa Berlin (https://oeb.global) have illuminated the engaging features of instructional design that emerge when educators thoughtfully integrate AI tools. Her instructional design frameworks demonstrate how AI can support the creation of personalised learning pathways, adaptive assessments, and multimodal content that engages diverse learners. O’Donnell’s emphasis on the human element in AI-assisted design resonates deeply with Communities of Practice

And thanks to Frances O’Donnell, I discovered the AI assistants inside H5P.

Elevating Instructional Design Through AI-Assisted Tools

The quality of instructional design, personified by clever educators, represents the most significant leap I have made when combining AI tools with collaborative professional learning. The commercial version of H5P (https://h5p.com) has revolutionised my workflow when creating interactive educational content. The smart import feature of H5P.com complements my teaching practice. I can quickly design rich, engaging learning experiences that would previously have required specialised technical skills or significant time investments. I have discovered ways to create everything from interactive videos with embedded questions to gamified quizzes and sophisticated branching scenarios.

I hope I find a CoP in Ireland that is interested in several of the H5P workflows I have adopted. For the moment, I’m revealing these remarkable capabilities while meeting people at education events in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. It feels like I’m a town crier who has a notebook full of shared templates. I want to offer links to the interactive content that I have created with H5P AI and gain feedback from interested colleagues. But more than the conversations at the conferences, I’m interested in making real connections with educators who want to actively participate in vibrant online communities where sustained professional learning continues.

Sustaining Innovation with Community

Job satisfaction among educators has always been closely tied to their sense of efficacy and their ability to make meaningful impacts on student learning. Communities of Practice focused on AI upskilling amplify this satisfaction by creating networks of mutual support where members celebrate innovations, troubleshoot challenges, and collectively develop best practices. When an educator discovers an effective way to use AI for differentiation or assessment design, sharing that discovery with colleagues who understand the pedagogical context creates a profound sense of professional contribution.

These communities also combat the professional tension that currently faces proficient AI users. Mollick’s observations about blowback against widespread AI adoption in education reveal a critical imperative to stand together with a network that validates the quality of teaching and provides constructive feedback. When sharing with a community, individual risk-taking morphs into collective innovation, making the professional development experience inherently more satisfying and sustainable.

We need the spark of N-TUTORR inside an AI-focused Community of Practice. We need to amplify voices. Together we need to become confident navigators of innovation. We need to co-create contextually appropriate pedagogical approaches that effectively leverage AI in education.

Bernard Goldbach

RUN-EU SAP Lead

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How task design transforms AI interactions in the classroom

GenAI:N3
In a bright, modern classroom with large windows overlooking a green campus, a female teacher stands at the front, gesturing towards a large interactive screen. The screen displays "Task Design & AI Interactions," showing comparisons between "Traditional Tasks" and "Transformed AI Tasks" with visual examples. Numerous students are seated at collaborative desks, working on laptops, with some holographic chat bubbles floating around them, indicating AI interaction. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.
The way educators design tasks is becoming a critical factor in shaping effective AI interactions within the classroom. This image illustrates a dynamic learning environment where thoughtful task design guides students in leveraging AI for enhanced learning outcomes, moving beyond traditional methods to truly transform educational engagement. Image (and typos) generated by Nano Banana.

Source

Psychology Today

Summary

The article argues that the way educators frame and structure tasks determines whether AI becomes a thinking crutch or a scaffold for deeper learning. A classroom debate scenario showed how teams assigned different roles—AI user, content evaluator, information gatherer—could distribute cognitive load and enhance engagement. Prompts that ask the AI to “explain your reasoning” nudged students to interrogate output. But without scaffolding, some teams admitted to overreliance and skipping higher-order thinking. Well-designed tasks promoting interaction, reflection, and collaborative interpretation help AI remain a support, not a substitute.

Key Points

  • Role assignment (AI user, evaluator, gatherer) helps distribute cognitive responsibility.
  • Prompt framing (e.g. “explain your reasoning”) can push AI away from surface responses.
  • Debate structure (real-time questioning) adds social accountability and forces adaptation.
  • Without support, some students fall into dependency, skipping critical thought.
  • The design of tasks—interaction, reflection, scaffolding—is central to ensuring AI enhances rather than replaces human thinking.

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URL

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/in-one-lifespan/202509/how-task-design-transforms-ai-interactions-in-the-classroom

Summary generated by ChatGPT 5

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