Future prospects of artificial intelligence in education

Developing strategic scenarios to engage educators

Abstract

The application of artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) is a growing field of research. While the potential benefits of AIEd drive interest and investment, developing ethical AIEd applications that mitigate the risk of entrenching inequalities requires input from key stakeholders like teachers and students. The present project aims to give voice to the perspectives of educators in higher education on the possible futures of AIEd. Towards this end, we developed a set of strategic scenarios, each describing a hypothetical AIEd application, and invited educators to evaluate the scenarios in a series of international focus-group discussions. The present paper describes the methodology for developing the scenarios and how they can be used to engage stakeholders in future-oriented discussions. This paper aims to assist interested readers in using or modifying the scenarios for their own research.