Introduction

Yeah, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much, Reg, for the invitation.

Speaker Background

My name is Hervé Didiot-Cook, so I work for a company called Anthology, and Anthology provides language management, learning management system, so the kind of e-learning platform that you have available.

I think in Switzerland, like in France, Moodle is quite popular, so I don't know if some of you have been in higher education, have used, you know, accessed the course content from Moodle.

So prior to joining Anthology, 10 years ago, I spent 70, 20 years in higher education. I used to be a lecturer. I taught French for social scientists at the London School of Economics.

Personal Experience

That was a long time ago, but one thing I was really, really, really almost obsessed about was critical thinking.

At the time AI didn't exist, but the students could go on the internet and get all sorts of stuff.

So, you know, what are you saying? Why are you saying it? Give me the evidence.

And at the time, that was a long time ago, we still had a viva.

So every single student had to do a piece of research, original research. So if they were doing economics, they would pick up a topic with their tutor and write it in French, and at the end of it, you know, of course, with full academic reference, bibliography, etc., etc., and then at the end, they submit their paper.

We had the plagiarism software, you know, we've heard of you, one of the most... A common one in the market is Turnitin.

Run it through the plagiarism software and then they would have Aviva. And they knew that we would use technology.

Introducing AI in Education

So if you are really interested in AI in higher education, an amazing chap called Jean-Marc Seigneur is organizing a meetup at the university on the 24th of June. So sorry, Reg, but I'm plugging that event.

Can I move to the next slide?

Oh, it's translated in Italian. I'm famous in Italy.

I'm going to be... Or maybe it's me, or I don't know. Maybe it's the AI going mad.

Ethics and Frameworks

So what did we try to do? So yes, of course, we talk about AI, but artificial intelligence is not intelligent and it's not artificial.

So we can talk about it later on, or there's some more people to enlighten you about that here.

So what we did, we set up with our clients, so there are universities, business schools, but mostly universities and some corporations who are using our LMS, and we worked together in order to build a kind of ethical framework, you know, so because they're academics, of course they'll be digging and, you know, The institution has to opt in.

So should your institution, your university decide to use AI, you're going to have a committee, you're going to have people like Maxime who are going to want to have a test environment and say, OK, I'm going to try. I want to hack. I want to make sure that this is really safe for once it's done.

Once the university has approved the use of AI within the platform, I will show you how, if you are a teacher, if you are an academic, you are in charge. It's your responsibility to validate the output.

I'll show you the little checkbox whereby, have you checked it for bias and have you checked it for accuracy? yes, I know what I'm doing, I know my subject, or maybe I'm not too sure, I might do a bit of research on the side because this is really weird what the AI is, the output is really, really weird.

And finally, no student's data, when you're using our LMS, no student's data is used to change the large language model. If you are producing something, if you are working on a textbook and you are using this textbook in order to generate a set of questions, self-knowledge check or formative test or some final examination, on the textbook you are about to publish or you're thinking you're thinking to publish next year, you know, we will be not using this item in order to train the large language model.

So this is to set the scene.

Examples of AI in Academic Activities

What I'm going to show you today, and I hope you will help me, so we have a series of tools so you can generate tests. you can generate grading rubrics, you can generate a learning module, you can generate, you know, we've got something like eight or ten tools available, but the one I'm really interested in and I'd love to use with real students, but this is what some academics have done,

so I don't know if you heard of Francis Galton you know he wrote about eugenics you know great great reference okay and this lecture wants their students to interact with him so the person now is is an amazing a great historical figure in psychology okay and basically the academics want the students to be able to reflect on the key concept that this this author came up and there is a clear reference you know please review the work of Francis Galton page 114 117 in your textbook so it's combining you know what you have to read as your as a student with with the AI the other the other example

is, so we have lots of, quite a few medical schools, lots of them, quite a few medical schools are like, oh yes, you know, when you do medicine in the UK, in order to educate you as a medical student, sometimes the university has to hire and pay actors, you know, to act as patients, okay, so you can imagine the cost of, you know, and the logistic of bringing proper actors you know to to train your students so here here this is a epidemiology and to summarize you know what the the lecturer is trying to do the activity challenges students to use empathetic non-judgmental communication to build rapport our strategic follow-ups question and uncover uncover critical epidemiology clues basically the patient is a drug addict okay she has she

They have some form of addiction. How do you train medical students or psychological students, you know, students in psychology to deal with these patients?

So I'll share the slides online.

And the last one before I do the demo, you know, Reg is waiting. What is he going on with his slides?

Am I good? Am I good?

Oh, I thought you stopped everything. The screen went blank.

We're talking about ethics. Ethics, business, business school students.

Okay, right, what are you going to do? This activity is presented to students towards the end of the course.

all the principle of accounting have been presented in the course and now they are ready for a role playing as an advisor to unethical Mr. Stephen because Mr. Stephen he has to do his you know in France you have to declare your tax by June okay he's got to file in his online report for his les impôts en France and he's like oh damn you know I don't It's painful, you know, when you are doing so well in Geneva to pay so much money to the French government because you are, you know, transfrontalier, you know, half a million of French people are going backwards and forwards and have to declare their tax. Some of them have to declare their tax in France.

So here again, you know, trying using ethics as a catalyst for accessing intelligent application of learning, problem solving, customer service. So that's one example.

Platform Demonstration

Demo time.

Am I going to be able to do this? It doesn't show.

It doesn't show. I will steal the presentation.

Do I swap? Oh, I'm going to stop it. I need to stop the presentation.

Can you see? Can you see? Yes.

OK. There we go.

So demo.

So this is what our platform looks like. I think they all look more or less the same. Maybe ours is a bit more visual.

Oh, you're coming for the best. You're coming for my demo. Excellent.

So this is an empty course. This is an empty course.

I just received a phone call. I'm working for the University of Geneva. The PVC called me.

He's a new PVC, Pro Vice Chancellor, and he has a big idea. He wants ethic and sustainability for all first year students. Here they are meeting next week. The committee is meeting next week.

Can you give me a course on ethics and responsibility? Because I'm a PVC. I don't have time.

I'm an astrophysician. The University of Geneva is amazing in medicine and astrophysics. I don't have time, but by tomorrow, I want a first drive.

Bloody hell, I don't know anything about ethics. So I'm going to use the AI to generate a series of modules about ethics and sustainability.

I haven't touched anything, it's already going. What I'm going to do in the prompt, so basic course, I can't type, course for all first-year students, Okay, I can't select course item because I've never written a book or anything, an article on ethics or sustainability. Level of complexity, so it goes from secondary to masters, PhD, they are first-year students, let's put it in the middle.

what did he say he wanted four modules he wanted okay let's do I think he said five he said five okay or six let's go six okay I'm gonna regenerate this I want six modules and with a level of complexity roughly you know end of secondary beginning beginning of higher education So I've got, I've got, so this learning module are just empty shelves, yeah? So it's just give me the structure for the committee. I just need, I just need, you know, the key topic for the course.

I've got a series, a series of theme. I want, okay, I want it by, he said, the PVC said by week, so we are six weeks. Okay, what does it cover? Understanding, yeah, come in, come in, come in. Exploring, oh, ethical theories, that's really good.

Social justice, of course. We want consumption choice, we were talking about McDonald and ethics, we want that. Corporate responsibility, of course we want.

Oh, indigenous perspective on sustainability. uh we don't have an indigenous population in geneva but i like i like the idea of having that on on the course i select i select them i just check you know check and i add them to the course so it generated pictures because we want you know nowadays students love We want something quite visual. However, you know, I look at the pictures and of course they have been generated by DALI 4, DALI 3.

They are not great. So I just want to edit and I want to find a better, much better picture.

if i am french i'm going to force the sequence okay they're going to go from one module to another if i'm british because i'm also british i might not force the sequence i don't know about the pvc and the university of geneva but what would you do maxim what do they do in switzerland they force everything on they i'm not sure i understood what forest okay you have to go from one activity to another you are no longer a free agent you will go from one exercise to another from one topic to another Okay, so it's forced. Yeah, Switzerland, you know.

Then in terms of the picture, because it's a bit, you know, the AI is generating, you know, the quality is not great. You have access to a copyright-free database of picture.

And it's just happened that I believe in wind turbines. Okay, so I'm going to choose that beautiful wind turbine. Some of you might object, you know, because they're not that environmental friendly, but they are popular in some places, but could be also a topic for discussion. And this is it.

Generating Tests

Okay, so I'm within a module and I want to generate, I want to create quickly, quickly, quickly, just to check the quality of the AI. I'm gonna generate a test. Okay, so here again, I click and I want to auto-generate questions. Again, how many questions?

Let's have 506, so I'm going to select three. I'm lacking, I'm tired. I've got to do this report for tomorrow. I'm going to let the AI to inspire me.

It has already generated some stuff. I'm going to regenerate. Shall I regenerate? What does it look like?

Match the sustainability concept with their description. That's easy, isn't it? Yeah, as a first week introduction, it's a quiz for fun.

Question two, discuss the role of ethical theories in shaping sustainable practice. For the first course, that might be a bit tough. Anyway, this is auto-generated content and needs to be checked for accuracy and biased.

Okay, so you as an instructor, as an academic, you are responsible to check. I've checked, I've thoroughly checked, and I want the first three, or maybe the fourth is too difficult. I'm going to have this question, and I add these to my assessment, and I put a funky title, not to scare my students because they don't like to be tested, but, you know, mini quiz, mini quiz for fun.

and I've explained to them it's formative assessment, you know, so formative assessment at the University of Geneva, doesn't count towards the final mark, it's for fun, okay, this is for fun. All right, and I can do all sorts of stuff, you know, where I decide and configure the test how I want it. I just check again, all right, this is all right, etc., etc., okay.

So here I am. I've got my test ready. I can see the test here.

And now what I want to do, and this is the last thing I'm going to show you because I am hungry as well.

Interactive Tools

I love this little, I want to be able, my students to discuss, you know, interact.

I used to when I was at the LSE I used to try to get external speakers okay people from the the world of politics the world of art etc etc but at time we didn't have teams we didn't have video conferencing and it was just so so hard to get external speakers you know to get this level of interaction with

someone extraordinary someone amazing you know painter writer a politician an ambassador etc etc here with the eye conversation as i uh to show you um you can get you can get there so you got two two uh two parts either socratic questioning so really opened you know eugenics sustainability ethics you know really really opened

But what I like using is the role play.

So we're going to do a role play, and I'm going to copy and paste a prompt I wrote early on.

And in this prompt, The prompt is in two parts. I'm going to put the two parts in the prompt so you can see.

Can you see? Can you see?

So small. So small.

I apologize. I apologize.

I'm going to go next.

So here is, I put the prompt, I come back to, no, I need to tell you about the prompt. Sorry, I thought we would be able to see it.

Okay.

Role Play Example

Exceptionally, you have been granted five questions for a chat with the legendary entrepreneur, Elon Musk, to discuss ethics and sustainability. Make sure you are prepared for this unique opportunity.

then don't forget you will be asked to complete a piece of self-reflection. Both your interaction with Elon Musk and your self-reflection will be assessed.

Check the grading rubrics. We have grading rubrics to understand how you will be assessed. Oh yes, grading rubrics is...

for you as an examiner, as a marker, but also for your students to understand what is an A, what does mean 70% or what 70% means outstanding, excellent in the UK. In the US, it doesn't mean much because you take a test, you're expected to have 80%. You know, the pass mark in the UK is 30%.

In America, it's 50%, I think, and in France, you're going to need to have 10 out of 20. So if you don't have grading rubrics and you're teaching international students, then good luck, okay?

So grading rubrics are super, super important in terms of transparency, in terms for you.

Oh my God, the pizza are here.

Where am I? Where am I? Okay.

And then a piece of self-reflection. Self-reflection, you know, how did it go? What did you learn, you know, about your interaction with Elon?

Of course, of course, I know that students, in the same way they could access the internet, they can access to chat, le chat, you know, le chat, Gemini, chat GPT, some can afford to pay 20 bucks a month, some can't afford... I use Gemini and chat, chat for French, Gemini for English. So you can use AI to generate your submission.

However, when I read your work, I want to be able to hear your voice. I've met Maxime. Oh, I think I sussed out the guy.

If I'm assessing him, because I've heard him throughout the year presenting, et cetera, I can think, I can think. The students next to Maxime, I don't know him, he's very discreet, he doesn't speak, so will I be able to recognize him?

But anyway, I'm bluffing, I'm an academic. I want to be able to hear your voice, Maxime. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to tell if you are using AI.

So the more personal and self-reflective your contribution is, the higher mark you will be. I will apply the grading rubrics. If I can hear Maxime's voice and something really good and punchy, he will get a top mark.

So I'm coming back to the prompt. So I'm going to choose the avatar. We said Elon. We said Elon Musk.

okay the image we don't want space dog but I think I've got I've got I've got a picture of of Elon come on come on where are you Elon yes you're here does it doesn't he look good yes he looks amazing okay I'm just making sure that he fits in the picture okay

Personality trait, come on, help me. He's under huge pressure today, isn't he? Pressure. Just today, I think he got the sack from the Trump administration.

He's got to think about, you know, sorting out, you know, under huge pressure. What would you say? He's highly confident, isn't he highly confident?

Highly confident. Do you think it's condescending? Oh, they're so Swiss.

They're so quiet. Can you help me with the prompt? Confident. Would you say it's condescending, Reg?

Of course. Condé. Condé.

I have adjectives, but maybe we don't want to elaborate on that. no we are training students we want to be careful but also the PVC drives a Tesla so I've got to be very careful the PVC and some of my fellow academics love their electric car okay so I've got to be to be careful so highly highly highly under pressure the quality of the response I saw the quality when you see quick complexity of the response When you see level of complexity, it's not the complexity of the level, I should have mentioned that, it's the complexity of the language used.

So it's nothing to do with the complexity of the topic, you know, ethics or sustainability, it's the language used. It's first year students. Let's challenge them. They're good at the University of Geneva.

I've saved it. So here we go. The students can see the prompt.

This is what they've got to do. They can see, you know, that Elon, you know, the character they're gonna deal with is under huge pressure.

They got five minute, you know, they got, no, five interaction, five interaction with, five question with Elon, okay. Time is short, okay.

So, here we go. Here we go for a chat.

My name is Elon Musk. My responses are generated by AI. We are very transparent, therefore may have bias or not be accurate.

Please share your initial thoughts on the topic. So where we go?

Thank you for your time. So, may I call you by your first name? Okay, create a rapport with Elon.

Okay, I'm just a first year student. Sure, you can call me alone, but let's not waste time, precious time on formality.

You've got five questions with someone who arguably reshaped multiple industries. Use them wisely. Your approach to this conversation could be telling.

Oh my God, he's putting me under pressure. Do you think that ethics... And sustainability should be, I can't type, under pressure taught in university.

in universities ethics uh i think it's gonna is quite forgiving sustainability okay Oh my god, that's a fairly surface-level question, but I'll entertain it. Of course, ethics and sustainability should be taught in university, it's foundational.

But let's be clear, theory doesn't move the needle. People spend too much time debating moral principle in cushy classroom and not enough time grappling the hard realities of implementation. For the engineers here, you should like that.

In industry like energy, AI and aerospace, fields have disrupted. Ethic and sustainability need to exist in tension. Oh, interesting.

In tension with innovation. It's people who can navigate that tension dynamically rather than just about innovation. They'd rather just talk about it.

Who makes a real impact? Your next question, better, deeper.

Help me, I'm a first year student. What's the next question? What do you... What do you... What do you understand

I'm thick, I'm first year students, by ethics. I want some definition from Elon. Come on, Elon, help me.

Has he got moral principle? Oh, we could ask him. Ethics, it's a framework, fluid, not static.

Oh dear. For making choice that align with principle of integrity and sustainability while advancing progress. It's not rigid moral posturing, it's about adaptive decision making with increasingly complex systems.

In my world, ethics isn't just abstract philosophy, it's a practical tool for navigating challenges like AI accountability, clean energy stewardship, or even existential risk of space exploration. Let's cut through the nice sounding buzzword and understand ethics as a dynamic interplay between ideals and achieving meaningful outcomes. Do you have a question that challenges my perspective or should I take the wheel?

Okay. Do you think it was ethical to wave a Nazi-looking salute in a public arena.

Oh, he's gonna hit me. He's gonna hit me. You are bringing... Okay, I've looked for it, didn't I?

Controversy with the crowd salute at the Tesla event. Let's untangle this without censorshipism, shall we? First, context matter.

I need a pizza now. So you get the hang of it. And here, of course, I'm going to add the self-reflection, which is super, super important.

Assessment Strategies

Why do I make this summative assessment as opposed to formative? If it's not summative, if it doesn't count towards the final mark, I know students all too well, they're not going to bother with it. So I'm going to give them points.

I don't know what the University of Geneva regulation is in terms of what can I do in that kind of activities.

There's all sorts of regulation to follow.

But for me, I would make it part of... part of the assessment.

Conclusion

Thank you very much