Skills and standards can guide a rapidly changing education sector

With all that disruption comes huge opportunity, according to John Kilroy, CPO and founder of the Digital Learning Institute.

“The word disruptive has negative connotations, but the move to online education and AI-driven content is bringing many positive outcomes for the education industry and for learners, who can use AI to develop content faster and make it accessible in new ways.”

He is particularly excited about how AI can unlock deeper personalisation for learners.

“Personalised learning has always been seen as a holy grail and now, through AI, we will see the rise of virtual tutors, and more students having access to personalised learning around the clock,” he says. “It’s going to be amazing.”

The Institute now uses a range of AI tools, including chatbots, Claude and ChatGPT, and also ensures that students themselves get hands-on experience of the technology as they learn.

“It’s really important that they have the opportunity to experiment with the tools that are out there to create their own content,” explains Kilroy.

Rapid change needs due care

The pace of change has been immense, though, and with that comes the need for due care and enabling people to update their skillsets, notes Dublin-based Kilroy.

“We are seeing a shift back to teaching and learning in schools and on campus and in the corporate environment, and the need to manage the balance there, where learners now want more flexibility and accessibility,” he says.

“That means as a sector we need to enable both teachers and learners to engage in new ways.”

Kilroy believes that getting back to the core of standards and learning science will help ensure that people have the skills they need, and will keep the sector on an even keel during the rapid evolution of education.

“As online education and AI have come to the fore, people have realised that you need the proper skill sets to deliver it,” says Kilroy, who set up the Digital Learning Institute in 2021 to elevate standards in digital learning through certification and professional development.

The future, he believes, will involve fundamental shifts in the core skills of people delivering and designing education.

“For the last few years the education sector has been absorbing the changes with the pandemic and AI,” he says. “And what we will see in the coming months and years is a huge demand in the need for upskilling.”

Education gets data-driven, personal and universal

The main push now in education is to enable more personalised, immersive and accessible learning, according to Kilroy, who keeps his eyes and ears open to trends and skills needs in the sector.

“At the Digital Learning Institute we work with our industry advisory committee and with the Learnovate community to stay connected with what the education industry needs,” he says.

“And at the moment we are seeing a big push for data-driven and universal design.”

The advent of generative AI is bringing data very much to the fore, notes Kilroy.

“One of the big trends now is being able to get valuable insights from data,” he says. “With generative AI there is no shortage of data, but we need to be able to get the value from it to help educators and companies to make decisions and to prototype and adapt flexible approaches to delivering education.”

The other big drivers he sees are personalisation and universal design.

“AI can open up personalisation of content, and then we also have to make sure that any learning or education experience is as tailored and accessible to learners as possible,” he says.

Stay curious and keep talking

Education organisations need to be alert to these changes and keep talking about them, according to Kilroy, who stresses the need for curiosity and for open conversations between decision-makers and frontline educators.

“I think for a while now, organisations in the education sector have been trying to figure things out, putting policies in place very much with IT security in mind and experimenting with the various tools that are available now,” he says.

“But I think the experimental phase is probably coming to an end and we are starting to see more applications.”

This AI-driven change can bring about a spectrum of responses among people in the industry, from excitement to terror, he notes, and his advice is for everyone to remain curious about the new technologies and approaches.

“We need more open conversations in organisations, where people can be curious about experimenting with technology and discuss findings and use cases for applications,” says Kilroy.

“Otherwise you have people strategising at high levels and making decisions about the future and that can meet barriers and objections when the impacts reach the people who will be delivering the platforms or the learning.”

Senior executives looking to the horizon will also likely be factoring in the kinds of skillsets and resources they need in the mix among their existing and future workforce, he adds.

“It’s really important that people working in the industry are involved in that narrative, to help shape what the future of talent and skills looks like.”

Ideally, Kilroy would like to see elements of top-down and bottom-up decision making combining so that learning and development companies can reskill and be ready to implement new tools and solutions.

“I think we have maybe six months to a year in the education industry until we hit a major reskilling surge, and we need people to be ready for it,” he says. “Whatever your core skill is at the moment, that’s going to have to change to some extent.”

Get back to basics

Many large companies have spotted the opportunities in AI-driven education, and the disruption that new tools and technologies bring will not stop any time soon, according to Kilroy.

So how can the industry ensure that teachers and learners stay to the forefront and that quality is protected?

Much of it lies in going back to basics, he believes.

“When it comes to generative AI in particular, I think there is a need now to go back to basics. As facilitators of education through this technology, teachers will need really good standards in place, and we need to make sure those standards are underpinned by solid principles and solid science.”

We already know what to do, adds Kilroy.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, a lot of the good practices and core principles in education are centuries old, and I think learning science has been under-appreciated and undervalued for a long time but we will see it emerge now as a key and recognised area of research and application.”

Raise the standards

Kilroy founded the Digital Learning Institute shortly before ChatGPT initially exploded into public consciousness and set off a wave of interest in generative AI.

The Institute’s mission, he explains, is to elevate standards in online education by offering courses for people to become skilled and certified as digital learning professionals.

“Our students are around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds, some from education, some from corporate, and through our courses they learn about high standards and put them into practice,” explains Kilroy. “That’s really our core philosophy.”

Students can enrol in cohort-based online courses, which adds a social and networking element, or they can avail of on-demand online courses that offer even more flexibility. The post-graduate degrees are then accredited through Glasgow Caledonian University.

Some of the students at the Digital Learning Institute are coming into digital education from other backgrounds and industries, underscoring the need to ensure they learn well-grounded principles of teaching and instructional design.

“Many people come into the education sector as subject-matter experts, so it’s all the more important now that they develop an understanding of education and how to facilitate learning,” says Kilroy. “Because the tools are there now with AI, and it’s key that people in education understand how to apply them.”

AI as designer

Practising what he preaches about experimentation and being curious about AI, Kilroy describes how the Institute recently used AI to redesign one of its existing courses.

“The process of designing the course was much faster with AI, and that can open up opportunities to bring other work into the course, because as a course creator you can use your time differently,” he says.

And the student experience?

“In terms of output from the AI-generated design, the course might still look quite similar to the original to the learner, because you have to work towards what the learner wants. The technology might be there to create 100 videos in the time it used to take you to do one video, but that doesn’t mean the learner actually wants 100 videos.”

The Digital Learning Institute has also asked for student feedback on the AI-driven content, with interesting responses.

“The students tell us they can often spot when AI has generated a video, and when they realise that AI is behind it they place less value on the video, which in turn can make them less engaged,” says Kilroy.

“So you have to remember that people are still at the heart of everything in education, the difference now is that AI can do a lot of heavy lifting for generating plans and content, but it still has to work for the teacher and student at the end of it.”

Learning vocation

The learning industry was not always in Kilroy’s sights as a student starting out in college – he began studying agricultural science at University College Dublin and specialised in food science before doing a Master’s degree in Project Management before starting work with Harvest, a company that develops training solutions for businesses.

“I really developed an appetite for instructional design there, and I saw how I could combine my passion for science with a passion for business, that was a really great environment for me,” he recalls.

The Digital Learning Institute has further fuelled his passion for enabling standards and training in education.

“I think it does turn into a vocation,” says Kilroy, who relishes the opportunities now to make a difference into the future.

His advice for others working in the education sector is to focus on solid policies and to encourage people across the organisation to engage with technology, even if they feel they want to avoid it.

“We need everyone to get to grips with the potential risks and benefits,” he says.

“And ultimately we need to support teachers and learners so that they know how to use AI ethically and in a way that unlocks the best learning for them.”