Fostering Dialectical Learning in the AI-Infused Business School

When: 9:30am -11:00:am Monday 04 December 2023

Where: RH207 or   https://vuw.zoom.us/my/simsim

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, have spurred diverse academic reactions, spanning from outrage and calamity to dismissal. Their capacity to produce formidable guesswork challenges traditional assessment strategies. This seminar redirects the focus toward learning by exploring the theory and practice of dialectical learning and its application in my pedagogical approach.

In the theoretical part, I reinterpret Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT) as an inherently dialectical framework. A brief history of dialectics will connect ELT to core dialectical principles of oppositional relations, construction, and transformation, accentuating their importance for effective learning and teaching.

The practical part delves into strategies for fostering dialectical learning. This encompasses project-based prosocial engagement, ethical evaluation of technological harm, constructive team consultations, and individual reflective journaling.

Reflecting on student feedback, I propose that dialectical learning can help students place AI-shaped submissions into a context of a future tool that complements learning without substituting for it, while also improving pedagogy. My two tentative and provocative conclusions are:

1) If AI compromises our assessment, then our assessment strategy is the problem, not AI: Promote project-based learning and reflective journals to ensure genuine, relevant student experiences and growth.

2) If we want better assessment, we need to divest from pointless exams and invest in high-quality feedback: Finals don’t foster transformative learning, but individualized feedback does. Invest in tutors and embrace AI for feedback enrichment.

BIOGRAPHY:

Dr Raffaele F Ciriello serves as a Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney Business School. His research focuses on digital innovation for the common good, using dialectical inquiry, practice theory, and qualitative methods. His work appears regularly in renowned journals and conferences - and it gets rejected from there even more regularly. Raf engages with software firms, startups, NGOs, banks, and IT consulting houses for research and teaching. Before joining Sydney, Raf served as Assistant Professor at IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), earned a PhD and M.Sc. from University of Zurich (Switzerland), and a B.Sc. from University of Stuttgart (Germany). He was recognised as a Distinguished Member of the Association of Information Systems in 2021, which does not impress his two sassy preschoolers at all.

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