AI & Education: Critical and Applied Perspectives

What does it mean to learn in a world of “thinking machines”? This course approaches that question from a critical and applied perspective. Artificial intelligence is not simply a technology to be adopted, resisted, or managed; it exposes longstanding contradictions within educational systems, including the assumptions through which institutions define knowledge, the models of cognition that shape teaching, and the assessment practices that determine which performances count as learning. Through readings, discussions, experiments, and projects involving generative AI, students will examine educational and AI systems, explore epistemological tensions in theories of cognition and learning, and design responses to AI’s colonization of teaching and learning. Students will also experiment with Critical AI Literacy, problem-framing, and the redesign of learning activities around AI’s affordances, limitations, and risks.