Generative AI in Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities
Recently, the rise of generative AI technologies has reshaped the landscape of various sectors, including higher education. This talk will highlight the transformative potential of generative AI in designing personalized learning experiences, fostering creativity, and enhancing research capabilities in academia. While the prospects are promising, integrating these algorithms also brings challenges – from ethical considerations to ensuring the authenticity of academic results. We will look at case studies to illuminate how institutions can harness the power of generative AI while managing its complexity to redefine the future of higher education.

Re-imagining academic writing in the digital age
In today's educational landscape, there is a pressing need for educators to reassess the purpose and value of academic writing for a range of reasons. Traditionally, writing has held a central position within our educational systems, dominating how we record and validate learning. In this presentation, we will delve into the stages of the writing process and how people learn through this. We will interrogate how technology can both facilitate and capture these crucial phases. My goal is to suggest alternative means of representation of learning beyond traditional academic writing outputs which can still leverage the opportunities for learning that the writing process offers.
 

Machine Translation in Higher Education: a case for enriching our digital literacies
When learners produce coursework, they are likely to use tools to facilitate the writing process. This will become more pronounced if they write in a language that is not their L1. In that light, Machine Translation (MT), specifically free online translation tools such as Google Translate or DeepL, has become of increased relevance for Higher Education (HE), due to the impressive improvement in translation quality since the switch from statistics-based translation to Neural Network Technology. However, the use of MT also raises questions about authorship, academic integrity and responsible use. This talk will explore the notion of MT literacy and argue that a constructive engagement with this technology could be a useful addition to HE-relevant digital literacies, where it is currently not represented. This would serve both the fair treatment of users of MT and an improved awareness of good practice in MT for students, academic tutors and researchers.