At the beginning of Term 3 2024, Barker staff engaged in professional development sessions centred on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within educational contexts. The sessions explored how effective use of technology can improve teacher efficiencies and enhance learning outcomes and academic achievements in the classroom. Dr Matt Bower (Professor at Macquarie University) spoke to staff about leveraging the power of Generative AI in Education. It was highlighted that human interaction with AI yielded the greatest improvement and highest quality outcomes, compared to AI in isolation or without the use of technology. We also contemplated the profound impact that AI will have in the teaching and learning space, as well as how these technologies will impact our students in the future.

With a greater understanding of how AI could impact future careers and tasks, teaching staff then participated in a workshop run by the Barker Digital Learning team. In this workshop, the Digital Learning team focused on how it is the responsibility of all staff to model and teach our students how to ethically, responsibly and accurately use technology to enhance their knowledge of content and improve their learning outcomes. Using Leon Fruze's Artificial Intelligence Assessment Scale (pictured below), we discussed the common dialogue that teachers need to use in their classrooms to model to students how technology and AI can be used during learning tasks. Using the common dialogue and explicitly addressing how students can incorporate AI into each learning activity, from no AI use to full AI integration, student's would gain valuable insight into how to use AI appropriately for research and completion of tasks.

Staff then gathered in small cross-faculty groups to discuss different methods and scenarios in which AI could be integrated into their teaching to improve student learning, versus scenarios where no technology would be most beneficial. This time with colleagues outside of their usual staffroom allowed our teachers to share invaluable knowledge and learn from each other.