Balancing Bots, Bonds and Belonging: learning in the age of AI

The world is experiencing profound upheavals. The rapid pace and intensity of these changes force us to reconsider the essence of learning and education. Navigating a world where teaching could be automated by bots, isolation is widespread, and individuals risk losing touch with their communities is daunting. It is in this environment that we must balance technology, nurture our human connections, and intentionally strengthen a sense of belonging within our communities.

Schools are poised to be the epicentre of this transformation. Human brains are naturally designed for creativity, and I love the energy that sparks from creativity and the thrill of tackling challenges. Right now, we are surrounded by unprecedented opportunities. Teachers, at last, can take on the role of human guides-by-the-side, allowing AI to create personal learning paths that bring out students' unique gifts and augment their passions. Schools must also become the playground for belonging, ensuring that in a changing society, younger generations stay rooted in culture and relationships.

Why the urgency? As Yong Zhao points out with incisive clarity1, the current system is built around a deficit model that will never empower individuals to become truly great. A deficit model assumes that all students must journey through a standard curriculum, remediated if they fall behind or advanced if they excel. Zhao asserts that these systems will only ever produce mediocrity at best, as they revolve around known solutions to known problems.

The imperative to transform education is clear. We face a choice, both as individuals and as communities: Do we pretend that these changes aren’t happening, or do we embrace the creative challenge to redefine how we identify and unleash individual strengths? Learning could become genuinely personal, and as Reid Hoffman argues2, we should see generative AI as the "steam engine of the mind," a tool that will profoundly reshape both our professional and personal lives.

I am energised by the possibilities and will happily provoke forward-thinking conversations on what emerging generations will need to thrive in a world of accelerating change. If we don’t embrace these challenges and opportunities, we risk failing not only the current generation but all those that follow.

Images created via Midjourney

Like every other community, Learnlife faces these same fundamental questions and struggles with similar complexities. The challenge is to maintain balance: becoming highly relational and deeply human while simultaneously adopting AI, adapting our practices, and ensuring everyone becomes adept in this new ecosystem born from the cognitive industrial revolution. 

Adopting AI is just the first step. We must adapt what we do and how we do it to remain relevant and forward-thinking. Ultimately, the goal is to become adept, to ensure that everyone, students and educators alike, flourish in this evolving transformed ecosystem.

Take action – starting with questions

1. How can we remain relevant in a world where AI is rapidly transforming professional and personal landscapes?

2. What risks do we face if we continue to prioritise standardised testing and one-size-fits-all education over personal, learner-driven learning?

3. Are we fostering creativity and personal growth, or are we still relying on a standardised, deficit-based model of learning?

4. How can we balance the integration of AI with maintaining human connections and a sense of belonging?

5. How do we intentionally cultivate a sense of community, alongside cultural and personal grounding in our schools?

   1 Yong Zhao, Artificial Intelligence and Education: End the Grammar of Schooling

   2 An interview with Reid Hoffman, Gen AI: A cognitive industrial revolution

‘for the first time I can see something better than exams.’

‘for the first time I can see something better than exams.’

This simple declaration from an educator visiting Learnlife recently made my day! Exams have for so long been one of the biggest blockers to meaningful change, forcing all to have to play by a mandated rule book that chains them to the past. The increasing mental health issues, very evidently triggered by exams, are a great worry. The pandemic meant that many teachers saw into the home lives of students, recognising that it wasn’t intellectual capacity that was preventing ‘success’, but maybe it was having to hold down a job, or look after siblings or a myriad of other factors.

This is where I pay tribute to the amazing team of Learnlife Learning Guides & their development of new ways to assess learner growth. Ways that are authentic, rigorous, creative & reliable. It’s encouraging that some universities have opened pathways that are not based on exams.

Here’s an overview of the ways learner capability is tracked, measured & demonstrated. The process starts with a notice of intent to graduate, followed by the co-creation of a plan to demonstrate learning:
•           Various projects: Showcases, 360s, Well-being Rites of Passage, Capstone projects
•           Demonstrations of technical skills & personal autonomy
•           Learning journals, Learning Vitae, competencies trackers
•           Competency ‘defences’ based on diverse learning artefacts

These methods aren't just a list; they're part of a dynamic process where learners progress by demonstrating their capabilities, not age. Artefacts can include projects, presentations, papers, challenges, performances, internships, learning experiences, personal rites of passage & much more. For each competency, learners provide a link to their evidence & other information on the tracker.

This is just a very brief overview. The process itself replicates earlier transition requirements as learners move from program to program, not because of age, but based on demonstrating their capabilities. By the end of the ‘Changemaker’ program, learners are very familiar with the concept and process.

As I observe the learners nominate their readiness to transition or graduate, I really love the authenticity of tasks, the rigour required, the ability to demonstrate creativity in so many areas – and the reliability of the ‘checkpoints’. I see high level engagement. I see a desire to push themselves further into experiences where deep learning is necessary. I see something that is so much more challenging and worthwhile than any last minute cramming for what is likely going to be a forgettable exam experience. I see a future that might just free us up to love lifelong learning!

Onwards. Always Onwards.

Wow. 2023. What a year! If we thought the pandemic, continuing climate challenges or the conflict in Ukraine were enough to demonstrate that the concept of a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world was spot on, then the 2023 additions – the game changing realms of generative AI, alongside further devastating conflict in the Middle East, definitely slams this reality home. 

The glaring inadequacies of current school systems have never been more exposed. By failing to transform the goals, purpose and experience of learning, we are fundamentally failing this generation.

Let’s flip our perspective - with a different VUCA as the solution, not just the challenge.
 
There’s a 2.0 version of VUCA that reframes it as Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. Without any doubt we need leaders who can demonstrate each of these qualities. However, I offer an even more evolved VUCA 3.0 version as a way forward – Vision that is Unifying, Creative and Active.

Imagine a future where learning equips individuals to be continuous and autonomous learners, embodying resilience, adaptability and ethical integrity. They learn to grow a self-transforming mindset. In a world of accelerating disruption, and where the future impact of AI on education, along with the role of teachers, is in reality still an enigma, adherence to a rigid curriculum is no longer tenable.

The emphasis must shift to cultivating robust autonomous learning capabilities, empowering individuals to navigate and adapt to any future learning or career path. Recognising lifelong learning competencies as the foundation of any education is now essential – and it's just the beginning.

We must infuse this journey with recurrent opportunities to actively foster resilience, adaptability and ethical integrity in every learner. These should be the levellers and measure of success. Not international comparisons and increasingly irrelevant and meaningless examinations.

Here lies the challenge for every community: to co-create a powerful vision, that unifies the community, catalyses creativity and is focused on action. VUCA 3.0. If we are to thrive into the future, this equation has to be the starting point. How can we look at a newborn child of 2023 and not do everything and anything possible to ensure they will still be thriving in 2123?

Starting From Scratch

Starting from Scratch

When the goal is to provide an entirely fresh experience of learning, with the ambition of unleashing learner curiosity, facilitating stronger learner agency and enabling discovery, then the challenge is to effectively start from scratch again.

Learnlife has tackled this challenge in a variety of ways – and sharing those now might help others look differently at their own context. During its journey toward growing resilient lifelong learning capabilities in learners, the team has considered different ways of approaching curriculum, content and experiences, in order to maximise the wider goals. Those goals also include an outcome where people flourish and thrive into the future, while creating a noticeably positive impact upon their communities and perhaps even in a more global context.

The Paradigm Shift

There is a wider vision driving all thinking connected to creating new ways of viewing schedules and cycles. Inspired by the concepts of heutagogy, the personal learning mindset has helped direct all planning. Every learner will be at different stages on a journey toward growing strong self-determined learning capacity – essential for becoming proficient lifelong learners. Every learner is also likely to be at different stages of self-direction based on their strengths in different areas of learning and their own experiences.

Figure 1 – the wider paradigm

Figure 1 captures this flow from being recipients of content to becoming capable self-determined learners. Terms such as personalised learning are commonly used in relation to learning programmes becoming more student-centred. Learnlife views this as a great step in the right direction, but recognises that personalised learning typically involves a teacher or computer programme selecting the learning experiences for the learner. A personal learning mindset, as a wider goal, aims to enable stronger learner agency and self-awareness as learners, and the ability to generate their own learning pathway, now and into their future.  

Risk and Vision – perfect pairing

The risk is to approach new ways of experiencing learning that are sufficiently removed from traditional or industrial modes of thinking, so as to minimise reversionary tendencies. It is all too easy to simply shuffle the deckchairs rather than take a more iterative future-focused and fresh approach.

To do this, the vision for what might be needs to be bold, loud and accessible. The process of collective envisioning needs to produce a guiding statement, itself instantly understandable and owned by the community. These statements will become the north star guiding actions and choices moving forward. A team approach that ultimately involves learners as the co-creators of their experiences can spark fresh thinking and ideas that were perhaps never first imagined. The process creates a life of its own with continual iterations and improvements moving forward. It is a living vision.

What did we do at Learnlife?  

Initial thinking commenced for younger adolescents participating in the Urban programme in central Barcelona.

Figure 2 Starting Points

The starting point was to consider what did we want to include in a weekly programme. Core to our thinking was the need to grow a community which was very clearly founded on a shared positive experience of relationships. Maslow before Bloom thinking. So, CONNECT became part of every day and week – the first foundational building block. Connecting with self, connecting with others, Connecting with our own bodies.

The Urban programme is set up as a studio-based learning programme. CREATE came next. We wanted the learners to spend a major part of every day in different studios as a way of expanding their horizons and allowing passion to drive them forward.

Blessed with a thriving, creative and energetic urban environment right at the doorstep, DISCOVER became another initial piece of the puzzle. We visioned learning experiences occurring anywhere, everywhere throughout the accessible and surrounding communities, museums, workplaces and start up studios. As a starting point, one day a week was set aside for this. This engagement with the wider Barcelona communities, culture - and challenges, provided an authentic, organic pathway into transdisciplinary thinking.

The first learner-imagined component arose as part of the DISCOVER building block. As learners grew their love of learning, they started to suggest short term workshops that they might lead. Workshops such as those to learn basic Russian, to better understand the physics of skateboarding or the nuances of Catalan cuisine, emerged from the learners themselves. Learner-led discovery. Exactly what we had hoped for – but arising from an evident new joy in learning.

Mindful that there is an existing body of knowledge that can provide a launch pad for applied thinking, EXTEND became part of the weekly schedules. Learners displayed a wide range of understanding and competence with regard to their literacy and numeracy skills, so the Core Concepts Lab (CCLs) workshops were added into the equation. Mindful that the wider vision was for highly personal learning programmes, these CCLs were tailored to the variety of presenting needs. In time, thinking scientifically was included as a further building block.

Learners presented with a number of different language experiences. Most learners could confidently speak two or three different languages. The concept of ‘heart language’ developed. Learners could output in the language that best expressed their emotions. Further EXTEND workshops were created for those who wanted to learn or strengthen a different language.

The final component of the initial model for scheduling learning experiences each week involved learning arising from the reflection process. REFLECT became an essential component of all learning. It also formed a specific way to conclude a cycle of learning. Learners reflected on all their learning in a 360 meeting. These meetings involve a learner finding creative ways of presenting their learning from the current cycle to a selected audience, typically including some peers, a Learning Guide and a parent or guardian. A 360 assessment ends with the small audience providing tips and tops. Tips for further directions in their learning, tops as a way of celebrating the learning.

We’ve Only Just Begun

This post has attempted to capture the starting point of thinking for the learning schedules and wider cycles of the Learnlife Urban programme in Barcelona. With every new week, every new learner and every new Learning Guide, the process is continually enriched with fresh thinking and constant improvements. The team – and indeed the whole community – has embraced a fail forward  mindset, one that views all experiences as being highly valid in growth as lifelong learners. As so often happens on an adventure, it is the unexpected pathways and spontaneous side-tracks that have led to some of the best learning experiences – and the gradual development of a learning ecosystem that no longer thinks of itself as a school with students – rather learners constantly seeking to grow themselves, their community and make a positive impact on the wider world.

Remote and online learning

In a mobile world, learning is no longer confined to a static time and place. Face-to-face and online learning, or a blend of the two, are now equally suitable choices. The goal should be for quality learning in either contexts. The focus needs to be to create a unique online learning environment that suits the needs of the learners, not an online replica of face-to-face school. There are a couple of key challenges. The first is to ensure that any online and blended pedagogy is potentially stronger than a real time learning experience. The second is to ensure that online learning occurs in highly relational, collaborative contexts. No learner should ever feel alone in cyberspace.

Learnlife Learning Paradigm - Element 13: Online and Blended Learning Experiences

Executive Summary

Full Element

In a post pandemic world...

… are we imagining that kids who have experienced more independence and freedom in their learning are really going to want to go back into any school that seeks to reinstate a traditional model.

We have an opportunity to deeply rethink what will best prepare them for a world of constant ‘unprecedented’ change. Let’s take it!