What is #ASEFClassNet?
For over two decades, the ASEF Classroom Network (#ASEFClassNet) has been providing capacity-building opportunities for collaborative teaching and learning and a platform to explore the potential of cutting-edge EdTech tools and the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in secondary, high, and vocational schools in Asia and Europe. Its target group is broad, given its intergenerational & multi-stakeholder outreach. It ranges from students, teachers, school leaders, teacher trainers, researchers, policymakers, and to EdTech experts. Since its inception, about 1,900 teachers from Asia and Europe countries have participated in and become members of the ASEF Classroom Network. As a result, about 35,000 students have been engaged in over 430 Asia-Europe School Collaborations and local spin-off activities.
ASEFClassNet16 School Collaboration
This School Collaboration is a 7-month (June-December 2023) hybrid capacity building programme for teachers, trainee teachers, and school leaders at the secondary education level. It focuses on the topic “Leading Change: Digital Transformation of Education in the Era of AI”. The primary aim of the project is to conduct various capacity, dialogue, and partnership building activities that result in equipping participants with basic awareness, competencies, and strategies on AI&Ed to build smart education systems. It also aims to enable participants to engage and empower students to leverage on AI to improve their learning experiences through spin-off activities.
Programme Design
Stage 1 – Virtual Knowledge & Capacity Building: This activity is conducted online and consists of 3 phases:
Self Learning
Team Learning
Action Learning
Stage 2 – ASEFClassNet16 Conference: The on-site conference (12-16 November 2023) brought the outstanding participants of both tracks together in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference was organised in partnership with UNESCO associated International Research Center for AI (IRCAI).
Stage 3 – ITP Implementation: After the conference, School Collaboration participants will start implementing their Innovative Teaching Practices (ITPs) and showcase their progress at the end of the year.
WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE VIRTUAL KNOWLEDGE & CAPACITY BUILDING PHASE?
Who Joined the Virtual Knowledge & Capacity Building?
The Virtual knowledge & Capacity Building stage brought together 157 teachers, teacher trainers, and academics working at the secondary & vocational education sector from Asian & European countries.
WHO PARTICIPATED IN ASEFCLASSNET16 CONFERENCE
Who Joined the ASEFClassNet16 Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia?
Participants who successfully completed the 3-month long Virtual Stage stage of the ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration & School Collaboration activities and showed outstanding commitment to take action to drive AI in Education innovation forward ethically, effectively, and meaningfully were invited to the conference. The invited participants included 70+ teachers, teacher trainers and academic experts from over 30 Asian and European countries. They emerged in deep conversation to explore and understand the of the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education during the conference.
To learn more about the participants, view the ASEFClassNet16 Conference Participants Booklet here.
Conference Highlights
Welcome Remarks
The participants were warmly welcomed during Day 1 by Mr Boštjan KORITNIK (Deputy Mayor, City of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Ambassador Toru MORIKAWA (Executive Director, Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), Ms Maja BALANT SLOBODJANAC (ASEF Governor for Slovenia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia), and Mr Mitja JERMOL (UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning, JSI and IRCAI, Slovenia); and during the final day by Prof Dr Boštjan ZALAR, Director, Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI).
Learning from the Top Experts
Throughout the conference, participants had the chance to learn from top experts such as Prof John SHAWE-TAYLOR (UNEASCO Chair for AI and Director of IRCAI, Slovenia), Prof Ronghuai HUANG (UNESCO Chair for AI in Education based in Beijing Normal University, China), Mr Mitja JERMOL (UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning based at JSI, Slovenia), Dr Wayne Holmes (Learning Scientist and AI&ED Expert based in University College London, UK), Prof Rhona SHARPE (Teaching & Learning and AI&ED Expert based in University of Oxford, UK), and Mr Borut CAMPELJ (Policy Officer, Digital Education Unit, Ministry of Education, Slovenia).
Innovathon Sessions & Peer Feedback
ASEFClassNet project highly values peer-to-peer learning. Day – 3 (Innovathon Day) of the conference allowed participants to not only learn from each other but also support and build each other’s work through encouragement and constructive feedback.
ASEFClassNet16 Innovation Award
One of the key features of the ASEFClassNet16 project is to empower teachers and teacher trainers in a way that enable them to take action. In total, participants of School Collaboration have designed 48 Innovative Teaching Practices (ITP) and participants of Faculty Collaboration have designed 8 Research proposals during the virtual phase. Among them we invited 34 ITP teams and 7 research proposal teams to the conference in Slovenia. On Day-4 of the conference participants had an elevator pitching session of 90 seconds. Based on the elevator pitches, we awarded 3 Special ITP awards and 3 Best ITP awards to School Collaboration participants and 1 best Research Proposal award to the Faculty Collaboration participants.
Here is a short summary of the projects that won an ASEFClassNet16 Innovation Award:
Awards Won by the Faculty Collaboration Participants
This research Collaboration brings together participants from various institutions in Asia and Europe to jointly discuss and propose solutions to tackle AI&ED challenges across Asia & Europe.
Awards Won by School Collaboration Participants
This ITP addresses student’s concerns about generative AI, their inability to distinguish between human and AI made. Through a cross-cultural collaboration between Austria and New Zealand this project reinforces the distinctive qualities that make us human, such as empathy, critical thinking, and creativity. It encourages critical engagement with AI tools, exploring its risks, limitations, and positive applications through hands-on and reflective activities.
How AI works? This ITP dives inside Machine Learning. The team trains it to differentiate geometric figures and give students some challenges so they can discover everything is categorized. Humans too. But some bias appears. Finally, it reflects about these ethical issues, showing some examples.
This project upgrades the traditional approach to work with a literary text. By bringing new tools to the class the team wants to make literature more fun. AI is used to improve the understanding of the literary object and its context while working on the core skills of the discipline: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Best Project Awards:
Using AI as presentation medium for projects makes education enjoyable, motivating, and effective. The key attention of this ITP is oriented at collaboration and creativity (AI is the tool, not the aim). AI enables immersive learning, while students can also demystify AI with hands-on experience.
This ITP focuses on mapping traces of ‘AIdentity’ and explores the question “Who are you?” through a multidisciplinary approach, utilizing AI tools in High School. It considers humans as a genetic species and a social subject. Teachers and students employ various AI tools, fostering inclusivity, critical thinking, sustainability, and cross-cultural collaboration. The outcome is a diverse collection of student insights on human evolution and reflections through different perspectives, demonstrating their understanding of this complex topic.
This ITP aims to improve essay writing and critical thinking skills. Geography students learn essay basics, generate an essay using ChatGPT, and engage in peer critique. Similarly, English students write opinion essays and use ChatGPT for content and vocabulary. Teachers then provide feedback. They end with a self-writing an essay, which is compared with the AI-generated essay.
Watch the Highlight & Live Streamed Sessions:
The survey report “Asian and European Teachers’ Perspectives on AI and Education”
The survey report “Asian and European Teachers’ Perspectives on AI and Education” is based on the outcomes of the ASEFClassNet16 Open Call survey on AI and Education (AI&ED) between April – May 2023 where teachers shared their perspectives on various aspects of AI&ED. 330 responses from 43 Asian and European countries have been analysed for the survey findings presented in this report. This report aims to serve as a tool to inform relevant secondary education stakeholders about how teachers view the role of AI in education and what they think about AI literacy, and their fears and hopes. The Handbook consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1:
Introduction: This chapter provides brief background introduction to the ASEFClassNet project, ASEFClassNet16 project (School Collaboration & Faculty Collaboration) and the ASEFClassNet16 open call survey that led to the creation of this report.
Chapter 2:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI and Education (AI&ED): This chapter provides a brief and comprehensive overview of AI and AI in Education (AI&ED) to help readers, not familiar with the concepts, better understand the topic and the survey data and findings.
Chapter 3:
The ASEFClassNet16 Survey and Survey Respondents: This chapter provides information about the survey and about the respondents highlighting the aim and methodology of the survey and the respondents’ age, gender, institutional roles, level of internet access in institutions and the subjects they teach.
Chapter 4:
The ASEFClassNET16 Survey Results: This chapter presents the findings of the survey and critically analyses both the quantitative and qualitative the data on various aspects of AI&ED.
Chapter 5:
Conclusion: This chapter concludes the report by highlighting the key findings and hopes and fears teachers have about AI&ED, the future of AIED and AI Literacy, and the roles schools can play to support teachers.
ASEF hopes that this report will contribute to the ongoing critical conversation on AI&ED and raise awareness about teachers’ roles, readiness, and capacity building for ethical, appropriate and meaningful AI&ED innovation.
Download a copy of the report!
