ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration

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 2,100 teachers from Asia and Europe countries have participated in and become members of the ASEF Classroom Network. As a result, over 35,000 students have been engaged in over 430 Asia-Europe School Collaborations and local spin-off activities.

What is ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration?

ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration was a 7-month (June-December 2023) hybrid exchange and dialogue project for academics and teacher trainers working at higher education institutions (HEIs) or Government Institutions responsible for teacher training. It created avenues for scholarly discussions and resource creation on the topic of “Leading Change: Digital Transformation of Education in the Era of AI” to support educators at the K-12 level as well as to foster collaboration among Faculties of Education. This activity was designed for academic experts (professors, researchers, teacher trainers, etc.) in Higher Education Institutions to engage in critical and timely conversations on integrating ethical and effective AI innovation to identify crucial areas and work in partnerships to create collaborative resources on the topic based on the discussion findings.

This is a new element of the ASEFClassNet project that aims at strengthening collaboration across Faculties of Education and supporting innovation in teaching and learning at the K-12 level.

ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration Programme Design

The programme consisted of 3 stages:

Stage 1 - Virtual Knowledge & Capacity Building

This activity is conducted online and consisted of 3 phases.

Self-Learning Phase: In this phase, participants learned about AI&ED from the experts through webinars and workshops.

Cross-Faculty Dialogue Phase: In this phase, the experts shared ideas with each other through a series of dialogues on the topic to identify crucial areas that need to be prioritised to support integration of AI tools in schools effectively and ethically. The dialogue series took place in 2 stages:

Individual Presentations: In this stage, selected experts delivered sessions to share their ongoing work, exchange information with each other, and look for synergies. The sessions were interactive, allowing for knowledge exchange, and dialogues on the topic.

Group Discussions: In this stage, experts with similar interests jointly developed ideas for collaboration among their institutions e.g., joint curriculum development, pedagogy enhancement, joint research, joint PhD programmes, etc. They came up with ideas that could lead to sustainable peer networks with concrete outputs. Actionable ideas were presented at the ASEFClassNet16 Conference.

Collaboration in Action Phase: In this phase, participants designed research proposal based on what they learned about AI&ED from the experts through webinars and workshops and what they learned from each other during the Cross-Faculty Dialogue Phase. The designed proposals are:

Ongoing Faculty Collaboration Activities:

Critical Studies of AI&ED International Network and Conference
Lead: Dr Wayne HOLMES, Associate Professor, UCL Knowledge Lab, University College London, United Kingdom
Comparative Study on the Introduction of AI into Schools for Equitable and Qualitative Education
Lead: Prof Miki SUGIMURA, Professor, Faculty of Education, Sophia University, Japan
AI&ED Resources for Educators and Learners
Lead: Dr Omar SEGUNA, Education Officer, Directorate for Digital Literacy and Transversal Skills, Ministry of Education Malta
Organising the Wanju Education Fair
Lead: Dr Hyoseon AN, Supervisor, Wanju Education Office, Korea
A Global Scan Report on the Issues, Impacts and Constraints of Digital Transformation of Education and AI to Teacher Training
Lead: Prof Maria Ruth REGALADO, Philippine Normal University, Philippines
SMART (Safeguarding Morality and Accountability in Responsible Teaching with AI): Modules for Teachers and Education Leader
Lead: Mr John Carlo RAMOS, Executive Director & Assistant Professor, Association of Southeast Asian Teacher Education Network (AsTEN) & Philippine Normal University
Creating an AI & Cyber Security Module for Trainee Teachers in Malaysia
Lead: Ms Julieyana JARIS, Academic Lecturer, National Teaching Institution, Malaysia

Stage 2 - ASEFClassNet16 Onsite Conference

The on-site conference (12-16 November 2023) brought the outstanding participants in Ljubljana, Slovenia that provided them an opportunity to work together in person to strengthen their designed activities. The conference was organised in partnership with UNESCO associated International Research Center for AI (IRCAI).

Stage 3 - Implementation of Collaboration in Action Projects

After the on-site conference (12-16 November 2023) in Ljubljana, Slovenia participants embarked on implementing their designed activities after the on-site conference that contributed to the field of AI&ED. So far, 2 projects are being actively implemented. The projects are:

Currently 2 teams are actively working on their designed initiative. The two initiatives are:

Critical Studies on AI&ED Symposium led by Dr Wayne Holmes, University College London: Dr Holmes successfully conducted the Online Symposium on Friday, 2 February, 2024. The Symposium welcomed over 300 participants from all over the world who engaged in an inspiring conversation with the speakers on AI&ED issues. More information on this Symposium and the outcomes will be shared in late February on ASEF’s Website and social media channels. To learn more about the Symposium check here.
Comparative Study on AI&ED across Asia and Europe, led by Dr Miki Sugimura, Sophia University: This initiative is currently designing a comparative survey to map out AI&ED status that will be transformed into a report. It is also organizing a hybrid event in November 2024 where the report will be launched.

Read the full ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration Programme: here.

ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration Participants [Virtual]

The Virtual knowledge & Capacity Building stage brought together 23 academics, teacher trainers, and researchers from 14 Asian & European countries who looks at education innovation issues that concern the secondary & vocational education sector. Learn about the participants here in ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Participants Booklet.

ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration Participants [Onsite]

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.

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.

Awards Won by the Faculty Collaboration Participants

AI-IT Project by the ASEFClassNet16 Faculty Collaboration Participants

Watch the Live Streamed Sessions:

For more information on ASEFClassNet16, please see the Concept Note.

I really appreciated the opportunity to learn from experts in AI and education during the project period, and to exchange ideas with participants who shared similar concerns. Thanks to the feedback received during the collaboration, I gained the courage to initiate new projects for educators and obtained a valuable professional network.

It has been a great experience to meet colleagues from other universities and teachers from different countries to share experiences and views on AIED.

It was very effective learning experience for me. I learned many issues and best practices of digital transformation of education in the era of AI not only by participating in the sessions but also by observing the projects developed by the practicing teachers and interacting with teachers from Asia and Europe continents to learn how they integrate digital and AI tools into their classroom instruction. Visiting the school gave me firsthand learning experience about the curriculum and academic approaches of Slovenia. Thus, the learning experience of the conference and beyond the conference was excellent.