Generative AI: Its Implications and Opportunities, for Policy, Pedagogy and Practice within the Mathematical Sciences

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Event Description

Guest Speaker: Dr. Michael Grove (University of Birmingham)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) describes algorithms, including ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot, that can be used to create new content, including text, computer code, images, and audio. Whilst the technologies are themselves not new, recent advances in the field have led to a new era where the way in which we approach content creation is fundamentally changing at a rapid pace.

Generative AI tools are becoming accessible to a much wider audience and so have the potential to impact our teaching, learning, assessment, and support practices in increasing ways. These technologies offer the potential to support academic staff in the creation and assessment of course material, and new opportunities to engage students in problem solving, critical thinking, analysis, and communication. But to use these technologies effectively, academic staff need to understand how generative AI tools work within the context of their disciplines and higher education more widely, and students need to be provided with clear information on our expectations for disclosing where such AI technologies have been used within their work. It is also important that students understand the role of generative AI in the development of their graduate attributes, since the ability to use these tools in an effective and ethical manner is likely to be a skill increasingly required and expected by employers.

Within this talk I will consider the implications and opportunities for higher education institutions associated with the rapid rise in generative AI technologies. I will focus upon my own experience of using these tools within the mathematical sciences, including with learners, but I will also discuss the pedagogic and policy level implications for higher education institutions drawing upon work undertaken at the University of Birmingham.

Prior to Michael Grove becoming an academic member of staff within the School of Mathematics, with responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the School’s teaching and learning provision, he was the inaugural Director of the University of Birmingham’s STEM Education Centre. He is the former Director of the National HE STEM Programme, a three-year initiative which he co-developed and for which he secured funding totaling £21million from the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales.

Between 2009-2012 the National HE STEM Programme had a remit to enhance the way in which universities recruited students and delivered programmes of study within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. He has been a key figure in supporting the STEM subjects deemed strategically important and vulnerable by government in 2005, when he worked to establish the More Maths Grads initiative (2006-2009), a £3.3million project designed to increase and widen participation within the mathematical sciences at university level. Previously he was Associate Director of the UK Maths, Stats & OR Network, a subject centre of the Higher Education Academy to enhance learning and teaching within the mathematical sciences at university-level.

A physicist by background, Michael works within the University of Birmingham and nationally on issues relating to learning and teaching within higher education. He established the University of Birmingham’s Mathematics Support Centre in 2012 to ensure all undergraduate students have access to prompt support to aid their learning of mathematics within any discipline, and this forms one of his main research interests. He has made an international contribution to furthering mathematics support provision, and in recognition of his work in this area he was appointed Associate Director of the sigma Mathematics and Statistics Support Network which was first established through the National HE STEM Programme and then sustained by a further grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (2013-2016). Most recently he has been involved in re-establishing a national induction course and series of postgraduates teaching workshops for those new to teaching and learning mathematics and statistics within UK higher education in conjunction with the Isaac Newton Institute (INI), Cambridge, supporting colleagues to adapt their teaching for online delivery through the UK’s TALMO initiative, and more widely through his work with the IMA, working to enhance learning and teaching policy and practice within the mathematical sciences in higher education.

His learning and teaching interests include supporting students at the transition to university, particularly in relation to non-specialist learning of mathematics; the teaching of mechanics, enhancing modeling and problem-solving skills, and helping mathematics students develop the graduate skills and abilities needed for a successful transition into the workplace. He supports the professional development of new academic members of staff and part-time teachers, and in 2005 established a national series of workshops (which have been now been adopted internationally) designed at aiding postgraduate students who are new to teaching mathematics at university – he has also written books and guides on this subject.

In 2010, Michael established a highly successful national programme of activity to promote and support scholarship, evaluation and research in learning and teaching within the STEM disciplines in higher education, and has published guides and resources for those who are looking to begin their activities in this area. Most recently he has been responsible, under the auspices of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, for establishing an annual mathematical sciences teaching and learning workshop series, raising the profile of disciplinary scholarship and educational research, and creating a new national University Teaching Award for the mathematical sciences (the IMA John Blake University Teaching Medal).