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AI, Student-Centered Learning, and DEI at SXSW.EDU

May 15, 2023

Salonee Seecharan

This past March, members of the Office of Digital Learning’s media team traveled to Austin, Texas for this year’s South by Southwest Education Conference and Festival (shortened as SXSW EDU). While there, attendees had the chance to watch keynotes from distinguished speakers, individual sessions, screenings, and performances, among many other activities. Over the course of four days, our team was able to observe and take note of the many various areas of rising innovations, and each member had a chance to write some quick takeaways from their time there:

Matthew:

In between enjoying the amazing food and weather in Austin, the SXSW EDU conference offered a lot of insight into the current challenges rising in the education space and highlighted opportunities to tackle these issues in the future. An overabundance of ChatGPT talk aside, most of the panels I attended centered on the implementation of extended reality (XR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies in learning environments and the effects of AI in assessment and curriculum. There was a lot of detail put into deciphering how these technologies can be usefully applied (for example, if assessment AI is used in a student-centered approach, it can create individualized tracks that can shape a student’s learning more successfully by incorporating them in their own data – the idea of self sovereignty) as well as the hesitancies involved in their utilization. Questions of digital equity were a common theme, stemming from concerns on intentionality (why were these applications created?) and bias (multiple cases of entire languages being left out/erased from AI databases). Many of these were left open-ended, but that’s because this is a relatively new and rapidly evolving challenge, and it left me with my own questions about the work I do and areas of improvement in creating more equitable materials.

KC:

For my sessions, I focused more on learning more about engaging with GenZ and Gen Alpha through the sessions “The Power of Telling Stories with Technology” and “Making Learning Fun with Short-Form Video.”. These presentations emphasized the importance of leading with purpose, creating relatable real-world stories, and leveraging the power of short-form video to engage younger audiences.

In a world where young people are avoiding traditional news consumption, horizontal storytelling has emerged as a key factor in engaging them. Social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube have become the first point of contact for many, and educators are encouraged to go where the conversation is already happening to make learning more accessible.

Four key principles emerged from these presentations for making short-form educational content effective:

Relevance: Students should be able to understand why the content matters and how it relates to their lives and future.
Real-world scenarios: Showcasing various experiences helps learners understand how the content applies in real-world situations.
Representation: Seeing oneself in the content encourages motivation and connection.
Brevity: Keeping videos under ten minutes and aligned with the curriculum ensures that the content is digestible and engaging.
Additionally, it’s crucial to grab the audience’s attention within the first three seconds of the video. To do this, presenters emphasized the importance of equity, integrity, and representation. For instance, newsrooms should reflect the diversity of their audiences and empower first-hand voices rather than merely covering stories.

As educators venture into creating short-form educational content, they must also understand the power of social media platforms. TikTok acts as a search engine for explainer videos, while YouTube offers a platform for longer-form content. This new approach requires educators to be creative, empathetic, and authentic in connecting with their audience.

Using comments sections for engagement and community-building, and being open to feedback and collaboration, can further enhance the learning experience. Encouraging students to produce short-form videos themselves can also be an effective form of assessment and an opportunity for them to share their stories.

By leveraging technology and understanding the needs of younger audiences, educators can create engaging, authentic, and impactful learning experiences.

Colin:

There was a lot to take away from the event as a whole. The first keynote given by refugee activist Luma Mufleh was an inspiring start to a fun week filled with inspiring talks, screenings, and performances. I had a lot of screenings in my schedule which I found really good from a media perspective and from the stories that were being told. My favorite one was called The Secret Song which was about a Music teacher’s unique way of teaching being interrupted by the COVID pandemic. It was really great to hear the directors and people in the screenings talk and answer questions after the screenings as well. There was a really cool VR talk given by Aurelia O’Neil on how VR can aid in the learning process of dyslexic students. She showed a clip of a VR game that uses multisensory learning by displaying words in 3D space for the user to interact with and transform into the object the word was representing. It was a cool glimpse into what’s being done for a group of students that might not always be at the forefront when designing a course. This idea of accessibility and equity was a focus of many of the talks and it gave me something to think about in terms of the work we do here. It’s exciting to see what’s being done in the world of digital learning to help students of different learning backgrounds succeed, while knowing there are a lot of creative solutions still out there.

The Secret Song documentary
- Website
- Trailer
- A TED talk with Doug Goodkin
Talk on Extended Reality helping Dyslexic Students
- Investigating XR’s Effectiveness in Multisensory

Alyssa:

I primarily attended the film screenings and performances. Many of these were incredibly inspiring, but one performance in particular stood out to me and kept me thinking about it long after I returned home. Molly Joyce’s performance and presentation, “Disability as a Creative Source,” started out with a beautiful and surreal original music piece. She then presented on both her artistic journey and her disability journey, using many means of accessible communication. Alongside wonderfully talented sign language artists, she had descriptions of all of her imagery on her slides, and also audibly described her images before continuing on with her presentation every time she changed a slide. Everything was so fluidly integrated in her presentation – it aesthetically flowed, and the accessibility was intentional and thoughtful. Throughout the rest of the presentation, she performed more of her music pieces, explained the music equipment she uses often, and led the audience through an interactive performance wherein we typed our responses to questions like, “What is resilience to you?” and “What is independence to you?” Our responses appeared on the presentation screen, a screen reader read them outloud one at a time, and Molly’s music played as the soundtrack – it was a very moving and beautiful experience. As I left that session, it made me hyper aware of the areas of the conference that were not accessible; the areas of our everyday lives that are not accessible. Especially coming from a creative field, where my job is to make media, visuals, and experiences accessible, engaging, and intentionally designed – the performance shed light for me on how it can be done. It is not an impossible task, and not even a hard task, to achieve this level of accessible engagement. But it does require forethought and thinking beyond yourself.