What's "Ryelands AI Lab"?
The Ryelands AI Lab was a series of lessons aimed at primary schools that were created to give students an introduction to Generative AI.
Who's it for?
The work will be of interest to anyone interested in the challenge of how the education system should teach how to use and think about Generative AI.
We aim to roll out a learning package based on this work nationally, it could easily reach 20,000 schools, 250,000 teachers, and in just a few years, 10s of millions of young people.
Approach
The project used ideas from Design Research as an overarching project management strategy. Many things were designed (lesson plans, an AI tool, worksheets, etc) and at each stage the team folded what they learned from each design challenge back into the project. This way of working allowed the curriculum to develop quickly and the research team to learn a lot about the teaching approach.
Contribution
The project demonstrated that a ‘hands-on’ learning approach can be very effective for teaching young people to use, but also to think about, AI. It also helped to highlight what support teachers need to deliver this kind of material. Finally, it also demonstrates how Design Research can be used as a dynamic and flexible project management strategy.
Why is it in the Observatory?
Ryelands AI Lab demonstrates why taking the Design Research approach and applying it to project management can be very valuable. In circumstances where a project’s context is changing very quickly using Design Research offers a very powerful ‘rapid response methodology’ that other approaches are likely to struggle with. The project demonstrates that when new technologies like AI come along, Design Research can provide rich perspectives on their impact very quickly.