Starting my Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED)

Higher education is going through a significant shift as federal funding is steadily declining and demographic forces are changing student characteristics. A shift to online and remote classes allows universities to reach a new international student body, a vital step to staying competitive. However, with larger virtual courses, technology, particularly AI and adaptive learning systems, are presenting a risk to supplant teachers, relegating them to a merely supporting role. Over this past year when I had to redesign my courses for online delivery, it occured to me that we don't nearly have enough relevant data to evaluate students holistically. This prompted me to apply to the University of British Columbia to pursue my Ph.D. with the research topic of: Here Come the Robots: Augmenting Teachers' effectiveness and improving the student learning experience with artificial intelligence (AI).

My proposed research topic aims to find opportunities for AI to allow instructors to focus on the social dimensions of teaching and learning and reallocating time away from mundane tasks, and address how to assess students holistically in multimodal environments.

Additionally, I'm interested in developing a framework around Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) to address the ethical implications and concerns in data collection to ensure student privacy.