We were informed this week that Ryelands AI Lab project, which we will present a paper about at the 2024 Designing Interactive Systems conference in early July, has won a Best Paper award!
I’m super proud of the whole team’s efforts here, not least Jesse Josua Benjamin who worked incredibly hard to deliver the project and refine the article, but also everyone else who helped with the writing and the teachers and students at Ryelands Primary School.
You can access the pre-print of the paper here (the final version will go live soon).
You can view all the materials we created for the project on this Miro board.
Key Contributions
I think the project makes some powerful points about AI and AI education, and having attended a roundtable discussion on those topics at the Department for Education recently, I know that the questions we were asking are things they are looking for answers to.
Alongside side the insights about AI, however, another contribution the paper makes is about Design Research. The whole project applied Design Research principles as an overarching approach, a way of conceiving the project, and a way of managing the strategy. This is Design Research as a ‘rapid response methodology’ for obtaining valuable insights on situations, such as the adoption of AI.
Compared to other methodologies, Design Research is incredibly nimble, adaptable, inclusive, and creative. As an organising principle for how to deliver research that is rich in insight but fast to respond, Design Research is a crucial part of our research and innovation landscape.
Take part?
The project lives on. Supported by some ‘impact acceleration’ funding we are currently carrying out a series of interviews with teachers showing them this project and trying to understand what we need to do to make this package more widely available to schools. Also, from late 2024 through to 2026 we will be employing a senior research associate to continue the project. Could that person be you? If so then please reach out to discuss.
