EP 36 - Miriam Reynoldson: The Open Letter Shaking Up the AI-in-Education Conversation

In EP 36, John and Jason talk to Miriam Reynoldson of Melbourne, Australia, about the Open Letter From Educators Who Refuse the Call to Adopt Gen AI in Education.

See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

Join Our LinkedIn Group - Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)

Guest Bio:

Miriam Reynoldson is a learning design specialist, educator, and design facilitator working across higher ed, VET, and professional learning. She is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD exploring the value of learning beyond formal education in postdigital contexts. Miriam researches and writes about education, sociology, and philosophy, and teaches educational design at Monash University.

You can connect with Miriam at https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriam-reynoldson/ or her blog https://miriamreynoldson.com/

Resources:

• The Open Letter: https://openletter.earth/an-open-letter-from-educators-who-refuse-the-call-to-adopt-genai-in-education-cb4aee75
• The Library of Babel listserve space: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/assembly
• The Design Justice Network: https://designjustice.org/
• Michelle Miller’s “Same Side Pedagogy”: https://michellemillerphd.substack.com/p/r3-117-september-15-2023-reflection

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Middle Music: Hello (Chiptune Cover) by RoccoW is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

Miriam Reynoldson EP 36

[00:00:00]

Jason Johnston: Miriam, you are part of an open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt gen AI in education. Would you, for us, summarize what this letter's about before we get into the details?

Miriam: So it's a really short letter. It's a 400-word statement that essentially positions a certain stance for educators, in saying, "I choose not to use GenAI to teach, to assess to build my course materials. And I do not want to sell these products to students to do their work, either.

John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

Jason Johnston: Hey John. Hey everyone. And this is Online Learning in the second half the Online Learning Podcast.

John Nash: Yeah. We're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation that we've been having for the last almost three years now about online education. Look, [00:01:00] online learning has had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but a lot still isn't. And so how are we going to get to the next stage?

Jason Johnston: John, that's a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

John Nash: I think that's a great idea. What do you want to talk about, today,

Jason Johnston: Today I'm not sure we've covered this at all. How about we talk a little bit about AI for a change, right?

John Nash: Never

Jason Johnston: That's a joke. Never heard of it.

Well, I'm Just very excited today to be talking with Miriam Reynoldson.

We connected on LinkedIn, and she is somebody I just really wanted to have this conversation with around ai. She's an instructor and a student, a learning designer in Melbourne, Australia. Welcome, Miriam. Would you maybe just introduce yourself to our listening audience a little bit?

Miriam: No worries. I am a bit difficult to introduce because I really don't know where I am. I'm kind of juggling multiple identities at the moment and across multiple universities. So, [00:02:00] probably my primary identity in this conversation is mostly my teaching at Monash University. I'm also doing my PhD exploring non-formal learning in digitally mediated spaces at RMIT. I do a little bit of teaching there as well, and I'm also a digital learning design