AI is not going away but although it is well and truly here we may still ask: “Are we there yet?”

The Irish learning technology sector has certainly responded via for example N-TUTORR and SATLE funded initiatives; AI literacy courses and programmes; guidelines from the National Forum for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education; the National Academic Integrity Network and The AI Advisory Council; and a wide array of policies and responses to the challenges posed have been developed (and redeveloped) by educational institutions big and small.

In seeking to explain this phenomenon, GenAI has been posited as a type of “arrival” rather than “adoption” technology, one that we must adapt to rather than consciously adopt or integrate (Klopfer et al, 2024). But although this framing might describe how quickly it appeared, (everywhere all at once), it does not fully account for the differentiated, context-specific, intentional and agentic responses that educators have offered.

“Are we there yet?” could also be translated as: is this as good as it gets? We may ask if have we reached a waypoint at which to assess and appraise maturity in the GenAI cycle and those of other emerging technologies and ideas such as microcredentials, AR/VR/MR etc.

And are our values as good as they get? If so, will we defend, treasure and sustain particular educational goods such as diversity, equity and inclusion?

For this and much, much more we warmly invite learning technologists, practitioners, teachers, researchers, students, leaders and learners to come together to embrace the messiness of these questions and share in the not-yetness of our responses (Collier & Ross, 2017) at the Irish Learning Technology Association’s annual and epic EdTech conference.

We invite contributions on topics including but not limited to the below:

• Gen AI
• LLMs for education
• The AI opportunity cost
• AI response types
• Accessibility and UDL
• Innovative and creative practices in teaching and learning
• Classroom technologies
• Online learning
• Learning analytics
• Students as partners in assessment design
• Micro-credentials
• Sustainability and digital learning
• Audio-visual and creative media for teaching and learning
• VR/AR and XR
• Learning design models, practices, and applications
• Theories and conceptual frames of learning and technology
• Open education, OERs and open science
• Democratic classrooms
• Student communication in and beyond the discussion forum
• EdTech procurement

Under the auspices of our 2025 host SETU, The South East Technological University, you are invited to Ireland’s oldest city of Waterford to hear a fantastic range of talks, including from keynote speaker Professor Jen Ross of Edinburgh University, and Professor Ale Armellini of the University of Portsmouth.

We look forward to seeing you and please consider submitting a proposal from March 12th.

References:

Collier, A., & Ross, J. (2017). For whom, and for what? Not-yetness and thinking beyond open content. Open Praxis, 9(1), 7-16. http://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.9.1.406

Klopfer, E., Reich, J., Abelson, H., & Breazeal, C. (2024). Generative AI and K-12 education: An MIT perspective.