Course Catalogue

View Specification Document | Reading List

This course focusses on the ethical issues of AI in education with education broadly understood to include formal and informal education from early childhood through to adult and lifelong learning. As AI permeates education and reshapes the learning landscape, students, educators, and policymakers are inevitably confronted with both the opportunities and the challenges of its integration. Premised on neither a utopian nor dystopian stance, this course introduces students from a range of diverse backgrounds and educational contexts to the ethical challenges of AI in education which must be addressed if we are to capitalise on the potential of AI to enhance education while ensuring equitable access and benefit to all, locally and globally.

Face to face

■ 10 x 1 hour lectures and 10 x 1 hour seminars

None

None

1 - With reference to relevant ethical theories and principles, design and justify a guideline document for the ethical use of AI in a particular educational setting (1500 words or equivalent) 40%

Assessment weighting: 40% of the course

Assess ILOs: 2, 3, 4

2 - Select an issue of ethical concern in AI and education and analyse this applying one or more of the ethical theories and associated principles studied in the Course (2500 word essay) 60%

Assessment weighting: 60% of the course

Length/ format: 2500 words written essay

Assess ILOs: 1, 2, 3, 4

This course will introduce ethical theories and principles emerging from and required by AI in education. It will invite students to imagine and critically articulate the principles that ought to guide AI in education, drawing on diverse ethical traditions and contexts. Through debate, discussion, and design activities, students will explore and critique issues relating to learning, relationships and mental health; equity, sustainability, bias and discrimination; transparency and accountability; and data ownership, privacy, security and safety, access equity; epistemological justice concerns stemming from the dominance of particular information resources within AI systems, and the equitable distribution of AI literacy and the capabilities required to use AI effectively. By the end of the Course, students will have developed a nuanced understanding of the ethical use of AI in educational contexts and of ways in which ethical frameworks might be re-imagined promoting learning which is just and equitable.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1 - Demonstrate a critical awareness of a range of ethical theories and principles relevant to AI in education
2 - Identify and interrogate current ethical issues in AI and education in real world contexts and apply ethical theories and principles to analyse its ethical dimensions, and translate principles into actionable guidance
3 - Demonstrate the capacity to apply a critical awareness of ethical equity and sustainability to the use of AI in education
4 - Critically (re)imagine ethical frameworks for AI in education to promote access equity, epistemic justice (addressing the dominance of particular information resources), and equitable AI literacy/capabilities, and propose context-appropriate design or policy responses.