The future of AI and education

Join us for a conference exploring the future of AI and education across the post-primary and higher education sectors.

About the event

Co-organised by the Royal Irish Academy, the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics and the Adapt Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content, this conference will consider the future of AI and education in Ireland through the lens of enhancing literacy and exploring the adoption and integration of AI in teaching, learning, and assessment.

Generative AI is having an unprecedented impact on education across the globe and is being widely discussed and addressed in the media and in academic contexts. This half-day event will look at AI in the context of second and third-level education and in particular the shift from banning AI to encouraging digital literacy and responsible, critical use. The conference aims to bring together a variety of perspectives to explore the integration of AI in education, reflecting on challenges, opportunities, safeguards and policy.

The conference will include a keynote and two discursive panel sessions, the first looking at enhancing AI literacy in teaching and learning, and the second looking at integrating AI literacy in assessment.

The keynote will be delivered by Professor Wayne Holmes, Full Professor of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Education at University College London. In his talk he will reflect on the ethical, human, and social justice implications of the application of AI in education and set the context for the ensuing panel discussions.

This event was programmed by the RIA's Engineering & Computer Sciences Committee and Languages, Literature, Culture & Communications Committee.

Provisional Programme

9:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-10:15 Opening Remarks: Malcolm Byrne TD, Chair of Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence

10:15-11:00 Keynote: Wayne Holmes, Full Professor of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Education, University College London

11:00-12:30 Panel One: Enhancing AI Literacy in Teaching and Learning

Chair: Noel O'Connor, Full Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University and CEO of Insight Centre for Data Analytics.

• James O’Sullivan, Teaching & Learning Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence, Higher Education Authority
• Phil Hanna, Dean of Education in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast
• Tara Cullinane, student in the College of Engineering and Architecture, University College Dublin
• Sue Sentance, Director, Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, University of Cambridge

12:30-13:15 Lunch

13:15-14:45 Panel Two: Integrating AI Literacy in Assessment

Chair: Andrew Hines, Director of Graduate Research at University College Dublin’s School of Computer Science

• Roisín Morris-Drennan, Acting Head of Qualifications Standards and Certification, Quality and Qualifications Ireland
• Geraldine O’Neill, Associate Professor and educational developer, University College Dublin Teaching & Learning
• Adrian Kirwan, Critical Skills, Maynooth University
• Michael McEnery, Business Manager at the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, Northern Ireland

14:45-15:00 Closing Remarks

Speaker Bios

Wayne Holmes

Wayne Holmes (PhD, University of Oxford) is full Professor of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Education in the UCL Knowledge Lab, IOE (UCL's Faculty of Education and Society), at University College London. He holds a UNESCO Chair in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Education (International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence, under the auspices of UNESCO, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia). He is also an Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia), and a Foreign Expert at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai (China). Having been involved in education throughout his life, Wayne brings a critical studies perspective to the connections between AI and education (AI&ED), and their ethical, human rights and social justice implications.

James O’Sullivan

James O’Sullivan is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Digital Humanities, University College Cork. He is currently seconded to the Higher Education Authority as Teaching & Learning Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of Towards a Digital Poetics (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and the editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities (Bloomsbury 2023). His research has appeared in a number of international peer-reviewed publications, including Poetics, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Humanities Quarterly, the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing. Dr O’Sullivan is currently Lead Researcher on CASCADE, a Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Network developed to train early career researchers in cultural and text analytics. See jamesosullivan.org for more on his research.

Philip Hanna

Professor Philip Hanna serves as the Dean of Education for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Queen's University Belfast. With a background as a Professor of Computer Science Education, he is particularly passionate about technology and its implications for the future of education in a rapidly evolving world. He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and, in 2017, received a National Teaching Fellowship for improving alignment across primary, secondary, and tertiary computing education.

Tara Cullinan

Tara is a fourth-year Master’s student in Electrical Engineering with Business at UCD. Having started her undergraduate studies in 2021, she experienced firsthand the growing influence of AI in higher education. Motivated to explore the topic further, she joined the student podcasting team ‘Bridges and Bytes’, where she co-produced an episode examining how AI is impacting traditional closed-book college assessments. She is excited to continue to discover how emerging technologies, in particular AI, are reshaping the future of learning as she continues her studies.

Sue Sentance

Sue Sentance is the Director of the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University in 1993, and since then has worked as a secondary teacher, teacher trainer, university lecturer and researcher, including leading many initiatives in the field. In her current role she leads on research projects spanning AI education, physical computing, programming education and teacher professional development. Sue was awarded the BCS Lovelace Medal for Education in 2024 for her services to computing education.

Roisín Morris-Drennan

As Acting Head of Qualifications Standards & Certification at Quality & Qualifications Ireland (QQI), Roisín is responsible for establishing national standards of knowledge, skill and competence for QQI awards. Within QQI, she has also coordinated system-level research and analysis of trends, activity, policy and practice of relevance to the quality of Irish tertiary education. She has led enhancement initiatives such as QQI’s Rethinking Assessment programme and is currently progressing the development of statutory quality assurance guidelines on work-integrated learning. Roisín was formerly a Principal Officer in the Department of Education in Northern Ireland with responsibility for planning and performance management.

Geraldine O’Neill

Associate Professor Geraldine O'Neill is an educational developer in UCD Teaching & Learning, University College Dublin. In her time both in UCD and working in the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, she has supported and researched many teaching, learning and assessment projects, including: assessment for inclusion; GenAI and assessment; choice of assessment; feedback approaches and work-integrated learning. In 2020, she received one of Ireland’s inaugural National Forum/RIA Teaching and Learning Research Fellowships. This presentation draws on her recent collaborative research on ‘Insights on using GenAI: Through the lens of an Assessment for Inclusion Framework’.

Adrian Kirwan

Dr Adrian Kirwan teaches academic writing with the Critical Skills programme at Maynooth University (MU). His current research and teaching focuses on the use of GenAI as a writing tool and the development of critical AI literacies. He is a member of the MU’s GenAI advisory group, co-author of its institutional GenAI guidelines and runs training for academics on these technologies. An historian of science and technology by training, he has a strong interest in the interaction between society, science and technology.

Michael McEnery

Michael McEnery is a senior education leader with over 30 years’ experience. He worked as a practitioner across schools in London and Northern Ireland before joining CCEA as subject lead for ICT. He currently leads the Business Qualifications Unit at CCEA overseeing a multi-disciplinary team delivering over 70 qualifications. He has led major initiatives in adaptive assessment, digital skills, qualifications’ arrangements, and AI in assessment, and represents CCEA on key UK-wide education and assessment groups. With a Doctorate in Education from Queen’s University Belfast focused on eLearning, Michael brings deep expertise in computing/IT pedagogy, assessment, and inclusive curriculum/qualifications design.

Hybrid Tickets

This will be a hybrid event meaning attendees can join online or in person in the Royal Irish Academy. You can select your ticket preference when booking. Please do not book more than one type of ticket per person. The webinar link will be shared the day before the event. Please note, we will not be monitoring the online chat function during this event. 

Queries

If you have queries relating to this event, contact Fionnuala Parfrey by email: f.parfrey@ria.ie

Access requirements

Have you got any access requirements that we can assist you with, so that you can fully engage with our event? Please let us know by contacting our access officer in advance of the event by email: accessofficer@ria.ie