Harnessing AI for Language Learning: Teacher's Friend or Foe?

Katarzyna Radke, Jean-François Vuylsteke

Summary

The emergence of AI in education has sparked numerous debates. While teachers worry about the risks it brings to their teaching, students explore the newly discovered avenues in an unrestrained way and see AI as an invaluable companion. It seems that both parties need support and guidance to use AI in an informed and ethical way. In our presentation, we will address the issue of harnessing AI for language learning by quizzing the audience and offering an exchange of ideas. We will advocate for introducing a syllabus statement at the start of a new course to let teachers establish boundaries and provide guidelines for the constructive use of AI-driven applications. We will promote the use of an ethical learner checklist and offer examples of how to acknowledge AI contributions. Moreover, we will discuss the necessity of reshaping language tasks to accommodate AI's role in providing the building blocks while ensuring that students retain ownership of the concept, execution, and final delivery of their linguistic production. This presentation will serve as the perfect introduction to the joint practical workshop by Jean-François Vuylsteke and Claudine Grommersch (from Brussels) on utilizing Gen AI tools, such as Copilot and Gemini, in a language class.

Biodata

Katarzyna Radke is the Internationalization Coordinator and a Senior Lecturer of English at the Foreign Language Teaching Center at Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznań, Poland. Her interests focus on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) as a means of Internationalization at Home and digital technology as the tool for language learning. From 2018 to 2020, she completed training in Erasmus+ Transnational Virtual Exchange Project Design, Open Networked Learning and Dialogue Facilitation, provided by EVOLVE, UNICollaboration, ONL and Soliya. Since then, she has actively promoted COIL exchanges between AMU's language center and international higher education institutions worldwide. As a language teacher too, Jean-François Vuylsteke has developed numerous offline / online bilingual collaborative projects for the last 30 years, first with Belgian universities, and then, with international partners in the UK, US, Hungary, Palestine and Poland. He became a pedagogical advisor in his university 4 years ago. Both Jean-François Vuylsteke and Katarzyna Radke share the same interest in the development of class activities supported by new technologies and by generative AI tools in particular.

Presentation Details

Type of presentation: Talk
The presentation is for: General audience
The presentation focuses on: University
The session is: Practical solutions presentation / exchange of practical ideas
Category: New Technologies in English Language Teaching and Learning
Presentation is commercial: No
Speaking on behalf of a publisher, examination board, or commercial organisation? No

Scheduled for

Date: Saturday, 2024-09-21, 11:30 - 12:30
Place: NE 205