King's College London

We’ve sat down with King’s Digital Learning Designer, Jamie Brigg, to hear about his involvement in developing the course and the interesting features it has to offer, including AI generated songs!

What is the AI in Education course?

This is a comprehensive course on the broad use of AI and generative AI more specifically in education.

It explores questions on the future of education now that AI is an increasingly prominent feature in our everyday lives. The course also offers practical tips and tricks on how to use AI tools in various educational settings in creative and useful ways that avoid or mitigate potential issues. For example, there’s a section on critical AI literacy, preparing educators to equip students with the skills to critically engage with AI tools in the same way we would want to engage with other technologies.

The course begins with an introduction to AI in education; how we’re currently using it and how we might want to use it differently. It then looks at the future of AI, touching on topics such as ethics, employability of students and the role it has to play in teaching.

It’s all about the inevitable presence of AI in education, what this means- the good and bad- and how to navigate it.

What’s the process been for developing this course, working with King’s Academy and multiple contributors?

This course is unique because it involves many different voices. In addition to Martin and the King’s Academy team, the course has over 30 contributors, ranging from students, academics, professional services staff and people external to King’s.

I’ve really enjoyed working with such a range of perspectives, but naturally it’s raised challenges with consistency and meeting deadlines. The key to success has been focusing on what we want the learning outcomes to be for students, then working backwards from there to integrate multiple voices in a way that sticks to these outcomes and creates a (hopefully) fruitful learning experience for those taking the course.

Martin and the King’s Digital Project Managers have played a crucial role by organising all these people and bringing them into a shared vision for the course.

What’s your role been as a Learning Designer?

This has fallen under a “course refresh” because we ran an original version called Generative AI in Higher Education in 2023. What I’ve been doing is making changes to the course content whilst maintaining the original structure which is based around core learning outcomes.

I’ve been supporting the programme leads to convert their subject expertise into a format that will be engaging for students on the FutureLearn platform. My usual projects focus on developing King’s online master’s programmes, so it’s been interesting to work on something a bit different and develop new skills.

Can you tell us about your favourite feature of the course?

For me, it’s the constant integration of AI outputs- Martin has introduced AI songs and AI avatars who comment on some of the course topics. We encourage students to reflect critically on the presence of these outputs in the course.

I think this is a powerful way of exposing students to the risk, possibilities and potentials of AI. For example, one of our AI avatars discusses fake news and information bias. Having this topic coming from an AI impersonating a human really gets you thinking.

And finally, how do you help students actively engage with the content?

We’ve embedded active learning throughout this course to ensure students are consistently engaging with the content and applying their learning.

Every step ends with a discussion prompt where learners are invited to leave comments and reflections, much like you would on social media. In the previous course, we saw some interesting debates and conversations between learners happening in these sections.

We’ve also included ‘try it out’ prompts where learners are asked to actively engage with tools. This might involve using a large language model of their choice (e.g. chat GPT or Copilot) to generate something relevant to educators, or we might provide learners with an AI output and ask them to reflect on it.

Throughout the course, you’ll be encouraged to really think about and question AI whilst building your understanding of its current and possible future role in education.

Begin the AI in Education course for free here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ai-in-education/2