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edX

Plataforma de cursos abiertos masivos en línea

In your experience as a provider of technological solutions in the educational sector, how have you observed that AI is impacting the educational and administrative processes of higher education institutions?

edX is the online learning platform from world-leading digital education company 2U, Inc. We recognize the profound impact artificial intelligence (AI) is having on educational and administrative processes.

Generative AI holds immense potential for learners, educators, and employers alike. Learners can benefit from using AI as a learning pathway explorer, project collaborator, personalized tutor, or lifelong-learning companion. Educators can create engaging content, tailor individual learning experiences, and optimize assessment tools. Employers have only scratched the surface of the possibilities AI can offer.

We remain steadfastly committed to maximizing how technology and people can work together toward achieving great outcomes.

How does your organization ensure that teachers are trained and have the digital skills necessary to integrate AI and other emerging technologies into their teaching practice?

Our Educator Engagement and Development team is dedicated to providing training and resources to educators in our partner powered programs. Specifically for AI, the team has facilitated several live, interactive seminars focused on the ethical considerations and practical applications of AI in higher education. In other educator training and programs, they include guidance on integrating or adapting to AI within the context of the respective topics. The team also holds monthly AI working groups with educators to ensure ongoing discussions on the impact of AI in academia, offer current recommendations, and collaboratively address the specific challenges encountered by individual instructors.

One of the challenges of implementing artificial intelligence is ensuring that its use is ethical and equitable. What steps is your organization taking to ensure that AI is used responsibly and without perpetuating bias?

Our Learning Strategy team developed a guiding framework that supports responsible and ethical use of AI tools, especially generative AI, in our organization and in support of our partners. The framework includes benefits, guardrails, accuracy and bias, data privacy, innovation, and open source. We believe that generative AI, when thoughtfully and responsibly applied, offers tremendous value: It can be transformative to learner access and outcomes, enhance educators’ curriculum authoring and teaching capabilities, and expand our partners’ reach.

Additionally, boot camp instructors show learners how to use AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot, and ChatGPT, in addition to AI capabilities in tools and platforms already in our content such as Figma, to help them comprehend the material and apply their new skills more effectively. We also ensure there are modules around using AI ethically and responsibly in our programs so that learners understand this as well.

Since your tenure, how have you incorporated AI-based tools or technologies? Could you exemplify some functional applications?

AI content is in high demand and here to stay. Inside the business, we are using AI to enhance our services and capabilities, like marketing, placement, faculty engagement, and more. As educators, we have a responsibility to ride this technological tide, embracing AI as a tool to empower our profession and reshape our practices.

In 2023, 2U was one of the first online education companies to create new AI-enabled tools on our platform, aimed at empowering learners and educators to achieve world-class learning outcomes. From our in-platform learning assistant edX Xpert to the edX ChatGPT plugin, learners are actively using these tools to discover career-relevant learning pathways, receive learning assistance, and get real-time support.

We’ve created AI-powered tools on edX to give learners even more ways to discover career-relevant learning pathways and access real-time support. We’ve launched robust and flexible AI reskilling and upskilling opportunities for companies seeking to attract, train, and retain their talent. And we’re leveraging AI to enhance the services we provide our partners, everything from marketing support to faculty training. Read 2U’s Chief Platform Officer’s, Anant Agarwal, article to learn more about the AI innovations and outcomes on edX.