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Tales 4 Teaching shares stories of purpose within higher education. Join us for expert insights, engaging interviews and thought provoking discussions that will inspire your teaching. Presented by Deakin Learning Futures.
All views expressed are those of the Tales 4 Teaching team and may not reflect those of Deakin University.
Joan: Welcome to Tales4Teaching, a podcast where we explore stories with purpose in higher education. We’ll share expert insights, engaging interviews, and thought-provoking discussions that will inspire your teaching. On behalf of Deakin University I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands and waterways on which you are located. I acknowledge the Wadawurrong people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners on which this podcast was recorded, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present and future.
My name is Joan Sutherland and this is Tales4Teaching, brought to you by Deakin Learning Futures.
My name is Joan and I'm here with Jesse McMeikan, who is the Manager of the School of IT innovation Group. Hi, Jesse. How are you?
Jesse: Hi, Joan. How are you?
Joan: Good.
Jesse: Thanks for having me.
Joan: No worries. Now, last time we actually spoke on this podcast over a year ago now. Can you just explain how your role has shifted or the projects have shifted?
Jesse: Yeah. Happy to, um, I guess it's kind of related to the growth of the School of I.T. in general. So, our school, as you know, we run a really large final year program and that's oriented around product development. So that's the industry capstone program. And so when I first joined it was very much about how do we engage industry, into, teaching and learning into our courses for all our students. But from there, you know, working on product development, we've kind of noticed or we learned that students have areas that they have to work on around their sort of entrepreneurship, the sort of the entrepreneurial mindset. Their sort of ability to innovate when they're building products. And so from there, our team's grown, um, and we've added some new staff. So we now run kind of the portfolio sort of areas within School of IT around obviously the large capstone program. And then we also have team members now that manage our sort of hackathons, our bootcamps, skills workshops, that sort of thing. And we've recently now started working in that area of student engagement. So that's around our kind of ability to bring students back on campus, get them engaged in different activities and things like that. So, yeah, we've a lot going on. Yeah, we've naturally grown. And, um, that's kind of a good thing, I guess.
Joan: How's that going getting people back on campus?
Jesse: Look, it's a challenge. Um, I think we are fairly large school now in IT, you know, it's like we've we've scaled up. So we've always sort of had that challenge of scaling. Part of the solution to that scaling problem is, um, you know, technology. So Covid has, I guess, fast forwarded where we were sort of heading in terms of we were very early in adopting Microsoft Teams, as you know, I think we talked.
Joan: Yes I remember that that was how I met you.
Jesse: So that was we were sort of one of the first movers in there. And so when, um, you know, Covid came around, the disruptions, we were actually pretty well prepared. But now that we're sort of growing, enrolments are back, you know, our cohort has gone from that Covid period of, uh, a lot of sort of career changes, so a lot of mature students, um, that were, you know, taking time off now and thinking, you know what, maybe it's time to make that career change. Maybe it's time to do a postgraduate, get a master's or something. So we had that cohort change and our international student numbers slowed down. But now that we're out of Covid they've come back and so that scale has grown. We've got a very interesting sort of diverse cohort. But technology has been a way that we've been able to scale that up. So that has impacted our ability, I guess, in the way that we teach, we don't necessarily have as much face to face time as we used to, but look, that's part of where we're sort of trying to fit in. We are trying to add more things to the calendar and itinerary of students that they can participate in. So if you want to engage in activities and different face to face networking opportunities, bootcamps, skills, workshops, things like that, um, then you can, you can.
Joan: Well, interestingly, talking about technology being an enabler, we actually spoke, as I mentioned earlier, just over a year ago, uh, and we discussed how you're preparing students to use AI in a changing environment. So looking back, what progress have you seen in student readiness to engage with AI and other technologies?
Jesse: Yeah. Look, I reckon if I, if I remember correctly last time we spoke, I mean, my thought process was all I'd be noticing was I wasn't seeing as many students using AI as I expected a year ago. Mhm. Well they have definitely now. Yeah. There's definitely cottoned on. Um, so look it's, it's, it's interesting to see how they, how they using it obviously you know overnight you see the assignments and the written thing, communication pieces that they're doing is suddenly miraculously perfectly formatted, no spelling mistakes. Um, so you know, as an assessor or someone that's having to read it, look, it's it's good. And, you know, I guess this is just a, it's a change that we're all going to have to get used to. Um, you know, I imagine in the same way that I remember when I was at university and we had obviously Microsoft Word and word processors that was a big change. And so, you know, I guess now the way to think about the sort of generative AI models, at least from a text point of view, is they kind of like their thought processors. So you've got a thought, and this is going to help you process that thought and put it down into text. So that's one way that students are using it. I think students are using it in interesting and innovative ways. Um, it's hopefully prompting them to think differently as well. The thing that we want to encourage students not to do is to become dependent on it, because we still need freethinking people, right? We need them forming their own thoughts. So as we were saying, like a thought processor. It's your thought and it's not just being generated by an LLM. So I think that's the distinction. But but that's entirely up to students. Yeah. Students have to make that call on their education.
Joan: So you mentioned about changing the thought process. Has it helped you change your assessment practices? Has that shifted in like you were saying that, you know, students assignments are really well written. There's no grammar, no spelling mistakes. They're all really well referenced, it's magically appeared. Has it made you rethink about how you would assess them, or whether that would be assessment criteria that you would assess against?
Jesse: I think it has. I mean, I think it we haven't really codified a lot of this yet at the university and, you know, in terms of teaching and I'm sure you've you've talked to some people about this for us. Um, it's hard now with these new tools to assess knowledge. But if you wind back to what universities were and have been for, you know, centuries, they were they sort of strongholds of knowledge, right. Expertise. You had a sort of expert cohort. They had done the PhD, done the research, and they held onto that knowledge that it was an exclusive club, you know, over the last like 30, 40 years or whatever with the internet and like that knowledge is now sort of it's leaking out. It's dispersing. That's right. Um, and so knowledge is kind of free and knowledge is, it's everywhere and so you have to think about how students applying that knowledge. I think I think we're doing we're making some interesting strides in that space and that we were heading down that area, um, with sort of our teaching, with the use of OnTrack and things like that and I think that will be critical for us moving forwards in how we assess. But yeah, it is it is difficult. We don't know what the the correct answer is. We're still working it out just like everyone else.
Joan: So you mentioned technology being an enabler for you and when we first spoke, uh, you were big on MS Teams. You were one of the first adopters, I believe. So how has the AI landscape, but not only the AI, but the technology landscape changed for you then to enable that, student interaction and student engagement over the last year or so?
Jesse: I think from a technology point of view, there's change. I guess what I can talk about is like the changes in behaviour of students as it relates to the use of technology. So, you know, we as I was also saying before, we've switched to a lot of online learning that's allowed us to scale. What we find you know, you find students, uh, managing their time differently now. Well you deliver the content, the classes on the Monday and you don't see them accessed until the following Sunday. So in some ways, students, uh, they're boxing their time is saying, you know what I'm working or I've got things going on or kids or whatever that compresses a week into a short amount of time and so the questions, I think in terms of like our delivery and how we're doing it is, you know, you think about how people consume media and information. Yeah, I guess because we're in this world now that's accelerated since Covid, where everything's moved online. It's a fight for attention. Yeah, it's there's a lot of white noise there. So we have to think about how we're how we're going to approach that. Um, you know, we can either use the carrot or the stick. Yeah. Sometimes we try to use the stick. We say, you know, we need this done by that time. You do kind of create a bunch of problems for yourself then, because when you try to force students to do something, um, they'll either try and find ways around it or they will they will try and, you know, argue their point against it. You know, you'll get some resistance. So yeah, it's it's a changing, it's a really interesting changing space at the moment.
Joan: It's good to look at it that look at it from the behavioural perspective versus just the output that you're going to get and just the technology, so having a well-rounded view, it's really good to hear that you're looking at the box time that they're actually giving you and what ways around it I suppose you can give that carrot to them to lead them along the learning journey. So last time we talked about looking beyond ChatGPT to leverage AI in different aspects of education and industry. Can you share any projects or initiatives your students have been involved in to, illustrate the broader integration of AI?
Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, our students do, uh, use a lot of, uh, machine learning, for example. So we've had a couple of projects. We had one, actually, that won the National iAwards, which is sort of what industry I would sort of industry. Yeah. Um, it awards. So they, they went, they took the, the Victorian iAward and then they did the, the national awards. That was quite competitive. So that yeah, there was a lot of people, industry also involved in that. That project basically the idea is you put a whole bunch of microphones out in the Otway, uh, National Park, the Otway Forest. And so the idea there was, um, using those microphones to record the sounds of birds and animals, so classifying, you know, different animals in migration patterns. So that's just like a fairly interesting use of, of image classification. And so like look, the interesting thing about that is what we have had the students doing for the last couple of years on that project is something that we're really teaching them, which is, you know, how to actually do this, how to, you know, set up and code this stuff in Python. Yep. Um, so how to actually build your own kind of like models, right. And they had to do a lot of labelling. They labelled something like 2000, 3000 different images like manually to do this, to train them all. So it's great that they're learning the fundamental basics. The challenge now though is, these tools that are now being put out there in a lot of these open source tools as well. You don't have to actually do this sort of manual stuff anymore. So that's that's making us scratch our heads a little bit as well because we're like, well, on the one hand, we need to teach them the fundamentals. But on the other hand, like most, is the industry just going to move to a point where they're just going to use these giant models and students don't actually have to build this stuff anymore themselves. And this has happened in like 12 months, right? So you have these things called multimodal models that are coming out now. So multimodal means just like multiple different models working together. So whether it's used to be just text input, text output, but now you've got images right. You've got video, you've got sound. And actually what's quite interesting in this space is what Meta is doing. So your Mark Zuckerberg meta, Facebook open sourcing all these models right. And Meta comes out and they're just open source it and I just they just give it to everybody. And so you know students at the moment can can download, you know 72 billion parameter model or you know, you can even download a 405 billion parameter model, which you can then use that to teach your own models. Yeah. So it's kind of changing. Like I don't actually think we have to do the same sort of stuff anymore.
Joan: Do you think AI is shifting that? So if we go back to like Covid and what Covid did for online teaching whilst Deakin was very prepared because we were online first, um, for that online teaching mode, AI is shifting teaching practices as well, maybe not as quickly as we would like to see it, but it is shifting. Do you think it is shifting or is it making people question a bit more around that pedagogical stance and where you start and what you end up?
Jesse: I think, look, I actually think it will. Yeah. I just don't think it's happening necessarily right now. Yeah. And that's sort of where I think we it's just, you know, you know right. It's hard to stay on top of this. It's moving so fast. We will have to be changing the way we teach. But but the industry and the world around us is going to change as well. Like it's going to be rapidly changing everywhere. And so nobody really knows right now. So we're kind of we're in a sort of uncharted space where I think we, we have to think about what is the best, like, how do we create the best humans? Yeah, everyone's talking about how do we create the best models, like how do we create the best humans in this space? How do we create people that, um, can think properly? Can make the right decisions, can find purpose in this technology driven world? Yeah. It might not be the current format that we have now, which is kind of how do we give people, um, the skills so they can find purpose and meaning in a world that's going to change around them really, really quickly.
Joan: And it continually is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. You've talked a little bit about, um, preparing students for job, the job market. How do you feel higher education students have evolved in preparing them for an AI influenced job market? Like, are we doing as much as we can do or are we on the right track? What do you think needs to be done in order to meet that industry need, given that you connect with industry so much?
Jesse: You know, it's it's it's a really hard question to answer. You know, you take a look at some of even these some of the law firms. Yeah. Even some of the big accounting firms, they have these sort of well known projects now they're using. I'll rewind. We're kind of heading into this space, um, with AI called like AI, agentic AI, which is like AI agents. So these are this is kind of the next thing that we're going to see over the next 6 to 12 months, which is AI's that just do stuff. They do a task or a role and they can just kind of self reason, make their own decisions. You know, they either work for you or they work for someone. So this, this, this is like a job. Yeah. All right. So you got AIs now that are going to be doing jobs for people. That's going to that's going to impact the job market in a huge way. Yeah. Now people say this is going to lead to a productivity explosion. This is going to lead to more kind of economic activity that that might be true, but it might not necessarily replace jobs 1 to 1. Simple to say like, oh, well, you know, the coal miners are going to have to go and learn how to code, you know. Well, yes, some of them should go online to code, but probably not going to replace 100 coal mining jobs with 100 coding jobs. Might be like, yeah, with AI it might be like five. So there's going to be these challenges and I think that we have a responsibility as well as educators to do our very best to prepare students. Students also need to be thinking about this for their career, in terms of their goals, their ambitions, and what they want to do in the world. Because you have to live in this world. Yeah, okay. And you have to be clear eyed and open about it. Students are also a stakeholder in that education, so it's not enough to just be studying something and thinking there's going to be a job there. I mean we've been saying this for years. This is not something new, but it's accelerating. Look, if you can if you can do if you've got a job that took a staff member a week to do and you pay that staff member $100,000 a year and an agentic AI can do that job in less than a minute, it could do that task in less than an entire application, like an app on your phone can get coded, tested, deployed, go through DevOps and get published in front of you in, like, under three seconds. Um, so then you kind of in this space where, where like. If you're a business and you've got this on on call, like, what are you going to do? Graduate positions are the thing that's kind of actually most on the threat. Joan: What you were saying with students taking a role in their education, what other as far as new skills or competencies, um, that are more critical for them in this evolving world? They come into university, whilst we're not going to teach them all of the tech because it changes so fast, what other skills or competencies are they leaving with to prepare them for the job, to be job ready for industry? Jesse: Well, you know, hopefully it's some of the stuff that we're trying to do in our school, which is around teaching students to be entrepreneurial and and think creatively about solving problems. Because even though all these big sort of companies, you know, software as a service platforms are accelerating and they're taking market share, they're using the same tools that, yeah, like we could use ourselves. So that's why we kind of all have to be entrepreneurs. Like, yeah, or at least we have to be thinking creatively about how we also use these tools for different things because the barrier to entry is actually going down. It's not going up, but it's just like, are you going to get off your bum and learn it and do it and be sort of self-motivated, you know? Motivation, right? In this world of everything on demand, AI are doing everything for you. Like, what's that going to do to motivation? Like, you got to be motivated. Yeah. So yeah, this is this is the thing.
Joan: Hmm. Oh, gosh. Well, a lot to think about.
Jesse: Yeah, yeah, it is.
Joan: And a lot about future thinking, but we don't know what that looks like, so in the here and now, I'm hearing like a lot of creative problem solving, that entrepreneurial spirit, that motivation to get things done for yourself though, like we're learning that next, uh, thing, I suppose, because even myself, I don't come from a tech background, I'm an education background. But learning about large language models and just how you were saying about coding and, you know, things like that, it's you have to go and do those things to have a base level of understanding, otherwise it's open AI. What they're telling me is the truth, you know.
Jesse: You know, the interesting thing too, is, you know, this chat we're having now, we've talked a lot about students. Yeah. We haven't talked much about ourselves. Yes. And we haven't talked much about universities.
Joan: I know what you're saying in the sense that the intelligence will be there in AI, let's say. I wonder if it will come full circle where people will seek connection and seek people not just to tell them things, but maybe to critically think and have the ability to question and to problem solve and how you actually do that.
Jesse: Really, people are going to be seeking out being in a real classroom. with people. Probably going to pay a premium for that. So it's kind of like you need to be mindful of what is in the interests of, you know, where, where are we going. We might actually the short term strategy that we have, so yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting space. And I think, um, you know, this knowledge, as we were saying, the knowledge is free. So really it's about how we curate that. Yeah. And you could, you could feasibly see within the next five years that it won't necessarily be that they, like, you have a lecturer that's an AI, but you might you might have a tutor.
Joan: You're hearing a lot about the chat bots and the tutors and getting smarter and smarter. But and I, I don't know if people will just get over them, like if you or will it just be the norm that you just go there and you ask a question, you have a conversation with yourself, even if it's voice or text, whatever that looks like.
Jesse: It's a bit Black Mirror, isn't it? It's it's like it's like sitting in a, in a little glass box talking to yourself. Because actually in some ways that's really that's what LLM are. They are just um, regurgitating past facts. They're not they're not alive. So they're not uh, they're not seeing the world for, for what it is right now. They're determining, predicting what you know is the answer to whatever query you've given them based on past knowledge that we've, that we've built. So yeah, it's a, it's a funny, it really it starts to ask you like yeah what is intelligence?
Joan: Yeah it does it's a great question. Yeah. So look I want to thank you for your time today. We've covered a lot I feel, a lot of information. But as we look to the future, how can educators or institutions continue to support students and staff, like to navigate the new technologies as they arise or in the AI world.
Jesse: I think it probably starts with our selves being aware and up to date as much as possible about this. Um, you know, a lot of the time with these new technologies, like rapidly moving technologies. I noticed this also in the, in the sort of the crypto craze, and that was the blockchain craze when that was happening a few years ago. A lot of these new technologies, it takes a long time for it to filter down into, you know, public published research, right. Um, so there's not a paper about these things because you've got all these entrepreneurs and start-ups and things that are just innovating as they go, sort of this like organic innovation explosion and that sort of happened in that space. And it's going going up and down and whatever is yet to be seen, kind of where that actually gets applied. But the same thing is happening with AI. And so, um, I think you really have to be proactive in your ability to like, be in tune with the zeitgeist of, of the times. And, um, you know, that's probably something that we need to get better at doing, because if we're informed, then our students are going to learn from us because they still look to they still look to us as the people that know what's going on and are educating them. Right. Um, it's going to be a weird kind of dichotomy if the students are more up to date than us because, um, I think it is very important that people are kept up to date because it's it is it's moving so fast and there's a danger that it moves so fast that like, we just get swamped and we don't even know then where to go.
Joan: And on that, I'll say thank you for your time and thank you for your insights. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks, Jesse.
Jesse: Thanks, Joan. Thank you.
Joan: Thank you.