We are now a few months into the Open GenAI project so I thought I would provide a few highlights of the work that has happened so far.  

We are excited to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Childs onto the project who will help us fulfill the deliverables and bring a pedagogical perspective to this work. Elizabeth comes with a long history of advocating and working with open educational practice and as the Program Head for the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University has a deep understanding on learning and teaching with technology. 

We are excited to be working with UBC Cloud Innovation Centre (UBC CIC) who will be working with us on the development of the AI powered study companion prototype. One thing I loved about the idea of working with UBC CIC was the involvement of working with co-op students in the development. Development of the prototype is just starting, and we plan to have it completed by the end of December. The prototype will be openly accessible on GitHub once development is complete. 

As part of our continued efforts to involve students in the work, we recently worked with the BC Federation of Students (BCFS) to host a student focus group to learn from students some of their experiences, perceptions, and challenges in the use of AI in their learning journey. Once we have the prototype developed, we are hoping to work with the BCFS to get more students engaged in the testing.  If you have students who you think would like to be involved in the testing, please reach out to rdevine@bccampus.ca. 

Elizabeth and I are planning do some engagement sessions with educators to learn more about their experiences, perceptions, and challenges of using AI in their learning and teaching practices. We will be inviting educators into the testing phase to get their feedback on the tool and start to build awareness for educators who are using open textbooks on their courses.  

Hearing from students and educators will help shape our approach to the design of the AI powered study companion we are building with UBC CIC. This will also help inform what other resources we can provide when working with open GenAI tools as we look at years two and three for this project. 

Research is a big part of this work. Harper continues to dig deeper into the use of offline generative AI tools and smaller models as a way to address environmental, privacy, and ethical concerns from the post-secondary sector, and Elizabeth is exploring doing some research to share our experience, learning as part of a way to share back about this work to the larger open community. Join us at our session for the Digital Learning Strategy Forum and watch the blog for updates on how you can get be part of this action research project.