STS and AI: A Pedagogical Discussion – Technologies in Practice

In late August, after substantial internal discussions within TiP, we hosted Dr. Ingmar Lippert (Göethe University Frankfurt) and Prof. Laura Watts (Copenhagen University) for a conversation to expand our institutional frames on the topic of AI and pedagogy.

Ingmar Lippert was visiting from the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, in town for the Advisory Board meeting of DecouplingIT. He is at work in his own institution, alongside his peers, to shape conversations about LLM tools in learning, playing with informality reflexive engagement.

Laura Watts is a Professor over at KU Humanities at the Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking, as well as an independent creative consultant and author working on speculative futures. For the event, Laura shared a forthcoming piece written for Backchannels, which draws on her extensive experience supporting writers in STS.

Drawing on role play methods, our guests presented a shared challenge that they were seeking to address: how to open up spaces for discussion and reformulation of AI discourses within Universities? How to surface assumptions and create space for engaging with students on the range of commitments that arise in the classroom and learning context?

The 14 participants in the workshop were invited to form groups and design a poster targeted at a particular group – students, peers, wider learning communities. To the poster, they needed to add a drawing and a statement or slogan to provoke discussion.

Thank you to Laura and Ingmar for supporting these ongoing discussions and providing us with new ways of being in conversation with our peers and students about reading and writing.