resistAInce Podcast: Marketing
In this, our first episode, Associate Professor Christopher Moore speaks with Dr Mercedez Hinchcliff and Associate Professor Michael Mehmet from the School of Business about the meeting of education, marketing and Artificial Intelligence.
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If someone else can create value five times faster and at three times better quality with the technology, then you're redundant.
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That creativity was the lowest I'd ever seen in the eight years of teaching the subject.
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The job market doesn't look like it did when you first started your degree, and that's a scary thing.
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I believe that you have the ability to come up with some creative problem solving solutions without the use of AI. But there's no right answer,
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there's only an answer that works for now.
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resistAInce: AI in the Age of Education is a media series exploring perspectives on artificial intelligence in higher education.
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Each episode brings guests into conversation to develop ideas, follow connections across disciplines and contexts, and situate AI within the longer histories of teaching, learning, and researching at the University of Wollongong.
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Welcome to the resistAInce: AI in the Age of Education.
1:02
I am Christopher Moore, the Academic Lead for AI-enabled Education at the University of Wollongong.
1:08
Today, we start the conversation with marketing, business and advertising, which are the related fields that have a very interesting relationship with generative AI.
1:18
Artificial intelligence has been sold to us through marketing. Some of it traditional, and much of it through industry leaders like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amadei, CEO of Anthropic, who sometimes make very dramatic predictions about the future of AI.
1:39
At the same time, marketing itself is being remade by the very tools it helps to sell.
1:45
To study marketing today is to be right in the middle of whirlwind change.
1:51
The field has been here before in its way.
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For more than a century.
1:55
Marketing and advertising have applied psychology, data, and automation to the work of capturing attention and shaping desire.
2:03
Generative AI is the newest chapter.
2:07
And the question for educators is what we owe our students as we hand them the powerful tools, more powerful than anything that has come before.
2:18
To think this through, I am joined by two colleagues who work at the centre of IT.
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Doctor Mercedez Hinchcliff is the Deputy Dean of Education in the Faculty of Arts, Society and Business.
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She came to work in higher education after a career in corporate banking, including senior roles with the Bank of America and Citibank; and she brings an industry informed perspective to her work on curriculum transformation, inclusive pedagogy, and student engagement.
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Her research spans equity and inclusion in higher education, community-based work integrated learning, and sustainable development in marketing education.
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Associate Professor Michael Mehmet is a Marketing scholar in the School of Business and the architect of the first university subject in generative AI for Marketing.
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His research ranges across digital marketing, multimodal evaluation of marketing communications, and socially conscious marketing, including work published in the Journal of Marketing on First Nations, Birthing on Country.
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He has collaborated with Google and OpenAI and consulted for government and industry.
3:35
Welcome both.
3:35
Thank you very much.
3:38
To start the conversation, we're going to talk about the future of marketing.
3:43
Mercedez, given the change that you've been leading with the new AI major, what's the biggest shift in the marketing communication specifically; and what are the main challenges that you're facing?
3:57
Sure.
3:58
Well, I think the some of the main challenges we'll start there are on AI literacy in AI - I guess expectations from industry, as well as students, as well as the institution.
4:12
So these are challenges that are creating, I guess unique roadblocks for us because we don't have a lot of the answers yet.
4:23
What industry might need, what students need, what the industry needs is still under an enormous amount of pressure and investigation right now.
4:32
So, you know, we're, I guess we're at a really great pivotal moment in our lives to say, let's pause, let's take a minute here and say that we may have had a disruptor, which is generative AI, but that is also probably one of the most beneficial things that also that we can use for our students, for our industry and for education.
4:54
So starting from that standpoint, I think RenAIssance is really important in driving that conversation with all, with educators such as yourself and, and Michael, with, you know, collaboration with our students and with industry into finding out their needs, as well as, you know, what our capabilities are as an educational institution.
5:17
What can we help provide for our students in turn to provide for, for industry?
5:23
So going back to the AI major, that's one of the the newer things that we are working on at the at the university; based on feedback from our lectures, our subject coordinators, our subject matter experts, saying that there is a real need to not only teach how to use AI, but also how to think with AI and in marketing and advertising.
5:47
That is the biggest thing that I - because I straddle both the education role, but also as a lecturer in advertising and how disruptive it has been to creativity of our students.
5:59
So I'll pause there and see.
6:01
Yeah.
6:02
Thank you.
6:04
Michael, what are some of the- what are some of the capabilities that you think marketing graduates will need say in the next three to five years that aren't currently in the curriculum or that you are now introducing to the curriculum?
6:22
Is- what's more important?
6:24
Is AI literacy more important, or prompt crafting?
6:29
Is AI governance and ethics more important, or is strategy and using the AI practically more important, or is there something less obvious?
6:41
It's a great question.
6:42
I think the first thing we need to be careful of is ranking and prioritising.
6:46
Sorry, not prioritising, but ranking what's more important than anything else, because they're, they're essentially all interconnected and we need to make sure that we're kind of on top of all of them, but obviously to varying degrees.
6:58
Now the, the prompting, you can almost outsource the prompting now to the AI to get it to prompt for you.
7:04
So I think, the part that we're changing, particularly my subjects, I'm changing the most is what I like to call judgement layers.
7:13
So it's not necessarily: "Can you use a tool?"
7:19
"Can you decipher output from a tool?"
7:22
But: "Are you robust and resilient enough and agile enough to adapt to whatever change is coming towards you?"
7:29
Because no matter what the, you know, the software or the app or whatever it looks like, you're going to have to be able to be agile and you're going to have to learn to learn and you're going to have to learn to teach yourself.
7:41
So it's that ability to be agile and that ability to make clear judgements.
7:48
And what I mean by judgement layers is can you use a tool, critique it, get intuitive aspects to it, like work with it, and then decide on whether that output is good or bad.
8:02
But the one aspect I don't think we are teaching, and to be honest, not many people have probably thought of is the governance around justifying to clients when something doesn't go right, when you've used AI as part of that process.
8:15
So how do you have a difficult conversation where you've outsourced part of your task to AI and it hasn't gone well?
8:22
So I think moving forward, teaching students to engage in conversations that have formulated based off what's gone wrong with AII, think it's going to be an important step forward.
8:37
Did you want to add their Mercedez?
8:39
Yeah, I, I think it's really important that you just brought up that governance side and ethics side of AI.
8:44
So, you know, going back to what we found very important with the, the new major that your subject now becomes a core part of is that governance and ethics part.
8:55
So we are currently creating a new subject that will, you know, and again, it has to be evolutionary, right?
9:02
We can't say that this is what it's going to be forever.
9:06
It is something that has to evolve.
9:08
Like you said, you know, there are changes to generative AI every day that we log on, there's something new.
9:14
So this subject really needs to be adaptive to what current issues are, you know, or I guess what, what generative AI is throwing at us each day.
9:25
But we, we, we do value that.
9:27
And that is so important, I think for us to have that ethical component.
9:31
And that's where we think the students should start.
9:33
It's an important point that you make because it's literally the first week's work that they they do in my subject is ethics.
9:40
And that's because if it goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong.
9:43
So it needs to be a foundational element in not just the subject, not just the course, but also in business practise.
9:50
Because most of the horror cases that we hear aren't from university students, they're actually from when businesses apply these technologies and they don't go well.
9:57
So that's something that I think universities can create a conversation around.
10:01
We can upskill our students in it and there they can take that to industry and upskill industry rather than us tailoring to them.
10:08
They can actually learn from us.
10:11
The ethics, I mean ethics, ethics in higher education is never going away.
10:16
You know, we've always taught the ethical component.
10:19
It's just how that looks is different now and how is supplied is also very different.
10:23
Absolutely.
10:24
But again, we're thinking about, you know, I'm about when I went to university, the only thing I had to submit an essay on was a typewriter, OK?
10:32
Yeah.
10:33
And I'm a little bit, I am a little bit older than you guys in this room, OK.
10:38
You know, But then it developed.
10:39
Yeah.
10:40
And then it developed into being able, you know, to have Google.
10:43
Well, ethics changed at that moment that the Internet came.
10:47
OK.
10:47
And then ethics changed again once we had access, free access to information and not having to use microfiche.
10:54
Right, So, so ethics is something that has always been here, always will be, but it'll always be evolving.
11:02
And it's all of our responsibility to make sure— We've been having this conversation for four and a half thousand years,
11:06
I don't think we're going to solve it anytime soon.
11:08
No, that's- and it's not about solving, it's about evolving.
11:12
That's what I'm saying.
11:12
But that's why I say that tension,
11:13
Let's- don't try and resolve it.
11:15
Like I, I think a lot of people are trying to get to a right answer and I don't think there is a right answer.
11:20
There might be a contextually relevant answer, but I don't think there's ever a right answer.
11:25
Well, there's there might be a wrong answer, but there might not be a right answer.
11:29
It's a bit hard to articulate ethics in a podcast sometimes. There's an interesting conversation that pops up a lot in talking about governance and ethics.
11:38
And, and that is how much risk are we willing to put up with when we're using an AI tool, how much it can cost us, but also what can go wrong.
11:51
And that's a really interesting factor to think about the relationship between governance and ethics and how, how risk plays a part.
11:58
I, I like the comment that you made about the, the skills of needing to learn.
12:03
I, I think it was Alvin Toffler in, in the 80s and Future Shock that said that that the illiterate of the 21st century would be those who are unable to learn, unlearn and relearn.
12:15
And it's interesting how even though we're talking about massive generational change with AI technologies, we're still actually relying on fundamental principles of education.
12:22
Yes.
12:23
And I don't think they're going to go away in a hurry.
12:25
In fact, I think they're going to become more important.
12:28
It also makes it difficult though, for educators because we can't teach the tools, because those tools will change...
12:34
Chris, I think what we need to do is actually just let go of that.
12:37
I think there's a tension that people try to resolve that doesn't need resolving.
12:41
And I don't mean that in like that's the easy option, pick it.
12:44
I mean like there's tensions in every aspect of your life, work, relationships.
12:48
I think sometimes tensions are just there to highlight when there's no right answer, but you have to navigate as best you can.
12:55
So I think some- those tensions, I think we just should just learn to live with and just manage them the best we can.
13:02
I think probably something that's really important for for me as well is that AI can give us a lot of answers.
13:10
It can point us to answers and it can give us answers.
13:13
But one thing that's really important in our subjects, I think it's to get students to ask the right questions.
13:19
And I don't know that generative AI can always ask the right questions.
13:22
It can help lead us to those.
13:25
But, I think that that's where the human-centred approach comes from is for that student and that experience, that human experience to come in and to ask the right questions at the right time.
13:38
That brings the tension though.
13:40
And again, not- we don't have to resolve it, but that brings attention is how do you balance content knowledge versus skill development?
13:48
And should a subject deal with both, or only one?
13:53
And how do we map that across the course?
13:55
That's something that but that's at your level that you need to answer.
13:59
So I think that that's another question that not just UOW but all universities going forward is how do they have a balanced curriculum that teach tools, teach thinking, teach critical thinking, but also teach fundamental concepts that are needed for the course.
14:14
And that balance, I think is something that we need to kinda, it's not again, not figure out.
14:20
There's a tension that we have to sit with.
14:22
And that answer will change year on year as tools develop.
14:25
Well, we can think about when, when you and I were back at university, or probably I- I probably started earlier; earlier than you even, that the computer first came out when I was at university.
14:35
So potentially the, the instructor then had to show us how to turn it on, okay? And, you know, what- at that time, I think it was Yahoo that was my Internet browser or IE at the time.
14:49
How to press a button, how to click things.
14:52
And you know, after a while that just became inherent, you know, that the students understood how to open the computer.
14:57
They understood what the start button was.
14:59
So obviously now, we don't start a subject by telling students to open your laptop.
15:03
Go this way.
15:04
It'd be the same thing as prompting an AI, right?
15:07
For right now, we understand that the literacy is in, in generative AI and how to prompt and how to use AI tools is probably, you know, infancy stages, the last few years. That maybe we do have to pause and do some skill development as we go.
15:21
But we realise that this might be something that goes away with the same thing of opening the laptop and and pressing the, you know, "HTTP"... in order to "WWW".
15:31
Now we don't have to say that anymore, but, you know- so I think that, that it is, it's balanced, it's iterative, but that's education, right?
15:39
As we learn and that's what we do here.
15:41
That's that's our strength is, is education, is that as we learn, we can adapt to those things.
15:47
So, so my answer is that yes, I think we do need a certain amount of skill development.
15:51
So that is part of the, you know, what you do in your subject and what we do in our- in the major.
15:56
But from there, that's where we evolve, I think into content, into critical thinking, into literacy.
16:02
The only reason I would start with fluency over critical thinking first, is you can get paralysis if you over-fixate on critical thinking. Because there's a point where you can overthink things where you don't make a decision and you don't create outputs.
16:16
So I think with the fluency that gives students the opportunity to create the outputs.
16:20
The critical thinking comes through the chaos, which I always enjoy creating chaos in my classrooms because that's when you have to think and solve things.
16:27
So I think that the skill development is important.
16:30
You build up their fluency, then you bring in the critical thinking by intentionally causing chaos in a safe space.
16:35
And when you layer it that way, you kind of get students to understand not just the what's happening, but the why.
16:42
And then they can kind of reverse engineer the why for themselves.
16:46
But I think it's really important.
16:48
So I have a question to follow up on that conversation.
16:51
And it's about the, the, perhaps we could frame it as the critical end or the critical reception of AI technologies.
17:01
As academics, we're inherently critical about things.
17:04
We're — sometimes overly — and I sometimes feel that that creates a kind of lag in the institutional AI fluencies.
17:17
And so some of us have incredible AI fluency and others don't.
17:21
And we as an institution have to address that.
17:24
But I think that's also true of students.
17:26
There is a, there is a, a very healthy antagonism that students and the public have towards AI for, for various reasons.
17:36
How are we- how we, particularly in this new curriculum, how, how are you going to manage students and, and academics who may be very oppositional to using AI in teaching and learning?
17:54
Sure, that's a, that's a very good question.
17:57
And we, and we see that, right?
17:59
We do see staff and students and, we have to respect that, right?
18:04
So we have to deliver our courses and our subjects that often... pragmatism as well and realism, you know that everyone, whether they like AI or not, it's something that they're using whether they know it or not.
18:21
But how can we do it in the most responsible way, is important.
18:25
And that's why we're starting out with that ethics and responsible uses in AI that sometimes there are things that we, we don't like, but we do have to understand what they are and what they do.
18:39
So it's not about forcing AI on, on staff or students, but it is about understanding what the world is right now with AI in it.
18:47
I think that is important.
18:48
Yeah.
18:49
I think it comes down to value.
18:51
Like, if you can achieve something and create value without the use of technology, then you're not at a disadvantage.
18:58
But if, if someone else can create value five times faster and at three times better quality with the technology, then you're redundant.
19:08
So it's about, where can you extract value from that?
19:12
Now, people who resist, they can resist for moral reasons.
19:14
Look, datacenters, how much energy do they use, how much water do they use?
19:18
It's very fair to say I don't want to use anything because of the environmental impact.
19:22
That's 100% fair.
19:24
But yeah, I think it all comes back down to like the value that you can contribute to something and the value that people are expecting from you.
19:31
Because if teachers don't, for example, an educator doesn't want to use a technology to write multiple choice questions, for example, that's fine.
19:37
It's just going to take you 5 times longer to get maybe slightly worse output, but that's your choice.
19:43
But if you value that experience and you value dedicating your time to that, that's OK.
19:51
But if you value your time to dedicate to research, then you probably will learn how to use a tool in order to save you some time.
19:56
So I think it all comes down to what people value and what those who are engaging in that want from that experience and want from that exchange.
20:03
I think, you know, one of the things too, that I'm changing in, in my advertising subject is we've always had computers out like, you know, like you do at a desk and, and we do group work and we're, we're working with the Internet and you know that I work with Canva a lot.
20:18
Is that for-
20:19
I'm asking them now to actually shut their computers for the first 10 minutes.
20:25
So I'm asking them to take a breath and to brainstorm without the use of generative AI and they can do whatever they want during that time, but they have to put their phones away.
20:35
They put their computers away,
20:37
and, and I think it does two things.
20:39
One is that, you know, speaking a little bit to what you're saying about value, it maybe shows them what the value add is— potentially— potentially, but it's also allowing them to really have the belief that, you know what, I can create something.
20:53
I am still creative without AI tools.
20:57
I can still come up with something of value without AI.
21:02
And then once I open AI, maybe that's what augments my idea.
21:07
But sometimes I feel, and I'm sure you'll talk about this a little bit later as well, is that sometimes I feel that AI takes away that cognitive space or that safe creative space...
21:18
Cognitive debt is a massive issue— It is.
21:21
And so, I want students to always, and that's one of the ways that we can prepare our students, right? Is to be that thinker, yes? Critical thinker, but also that creative thinker.
21:32
I'm going to, you know, I'm giving you a problem.
21:34
I don't want you to go straight to AI because I believe in you.
21:38
I believe that you have the ability to come up with some creative problem-solving solutions without the use of AI.
21:46
It's that friction of construction, of production that actually teaches you how to evaluate, right?
21:52
So if you take that humanness that, that, yeah, that friction, that struggle, you actually diminish resilience later on.
22:02
So you're actually doing a disservice if you get them addicted to AI drugs, right?
22:07
So, what Mercedez is suggesting and what she'll implement this session is really, really good. Because what you're doing is, a little bit of struggle is not a bad thing.
22:18
And it's something that again, when I just- for that first question, we need to find that balance inside our subjects and inside the curriculum.
22:25
And I think it's really important to let them struggle because it's the friction that helps them be better analytical and better critically, later on.
22:34
I can't resist but to push back a little bit on the issue of friction. Particularly when it comes for neurodivergent learners; and for learners and students who experience enormous amounts of friction in their, their daily life.
22:50
And one of the, the most interesting kind of examples to look at is where AI might provide mechanisms for support for overcoming friction and eliminating friction in a productive way that supports learning.
23:09
I, I definitely take your point.
23:10
It's, it's a well understood— but if you teach, if you get AI to teach you how to brainstorm, that's very different to the getting AI to do the brainstorming for you, though. Which is about then an AI literacy about how to use AI appropriately.
23:24
That, that's, that's the, the I, I- I understand what you're saying, but I think in the case of Mercedez, I know her very well.
23:32
So she's going to give them a lot of material on how to brainstorm before she asks them to brainstorm.
23:36
So she'll essentially upskill them in that particular technique before- I know her very well,
23:41
so I already know she's going to do that.
23:43
So 100%, I take your point.
23:45
It does alleviate a lot of anxiety around new learnings.
23:48
100%.
23:49
And to go in the opposite direction, the, the brainstorming and, and we'll, we'll start, we'll, we'll get into talking about creativity more specifically.
23:57
The... one of the, the interesting things in the way in which large language models work is that they tend towards the median, they tend towards the average.
24:07
They will try and smooth out the, the, the, the oddball, the off the wall that- the thing that doesn't fit the model.
24:20
And so that's where creativity can...
24:23
And that's very true in marketing.
24:26
So if you ever sat down and actually asked any of the major large language models to put you together a strategy or put together a campaign for you, it gives you very much the safest option.
24:36
Use Instagram, use TikTok.
24:37
Use this, use that.
24:39
And it's, it's, it's very bland to be honest.
24:41
Like it has a creative element to it and it certainly has a cohesive element to it.
24:46
But you're not pushing the boundaries of creativity, that's for sure.
24:49
Mercedez, would you like to talk a little bit more about the way in which you think that, that students might be currently experiencing the relationship in terms of creativity and how the industry is, is changing with regards to creativity and the, the value of human labour in doing tasks that can be automated quite easily and and offloaded to the AI, but somehow are crucial in order to make products, campaigns. Communicate messages in ways that are that deeply resonate in human ways.
25:26
Yeah, absolutely.
25:27
And, you know, one of the first questions that I ask my students is who here thinks they're creative?
25:33
So half of my students are from, from, from you guys, from, from the creative side of things, which are great.
25:38
And they all raise their hands.
25:40
Yes, I'm very creative.
25:41
And the other half of my, my subject come from business.
25:44
Sometimes they're engineers, sometimes they come from medicine because it's on, you know, it's on the general schedule of electives and they don't raise their hands.
25:51
And, and so I think, well, what is creativity?
25:54
You know, is it- and most, you know, people from these quantitative side of things, the black and whites, think that creativity is the, the ability to paint this beautiful picture or to take a beautiful picture of the nature.
26:06
And yes, well, that is absolutely creative.
26:08
That's not the only thing that creativity is. Where, where I teach that creativity is about looking at a problem from a unique angle.
26:16
And so some of the things that I, I show, you know, one of, some- one of my favourite ads is about living in a world that doesn't fit. That, you know, and you spoke about neurodivergent.
26:26
This one ad is where a person is a- where everybody is, is in a wheelchair, right?
26:34
And, and the, you know, that the- everything was made for the person in a wheelchair.
26:40
So the buses were made for- the telephones, the the desks, the- there was no stairs, and there was one person who was not in a wheelchair walking around and they had to navigate the streets of New York as a person who was not in a wheelchair.
26:57
Now, AI did not come up with that.
27:00
It was a human that lived experience in a wheelchair that said: "Well what if?" The same ad goes to a library, having all books in Braille and somebody who had vision could not read the book And it makes you stop in your tracks, because that is creativity.
27:19
So that's what I try to bring out from my students is saying:
27:22
but, once you have that idea, boy, can AI help you get to the next place, right?
27:28
Because you don't have to go out potentially and take video.
27:32
AI can generate that for you.
27:33
You don't have to do pictures or potentially get models or involve human participants, where needed.
27:39
So that's where AI can take that amazing idea that you've had, that creative solution and bring it to the next level.
27:47
That's what I'm trying to teach in advertising.
27:50
Yeah.
27:51
Fabulous, thank you.
27:52
I'll follow up on that then Michael in talking- and ask you to talk specifically about your experience then working with students and the way you have introduced AI agents into your subjects where that agent is working with students to help them develop a personal brand.
28:14
Yes. How— My favourite assessment task of all time.
28:17
How, how then do you encourage students to retain that creativity while getting advice or, or kind of coaching and and help from an AI agent?
28:27
Well, as you know, Chris, my agent doesn't give answers.
28:30
And I think that's the core thing.
28:32
It asks probing questions.
28:34
It, it gets to the root of who the student is.
28:37
And it was, I was absolutely amazed because part of that assessment task is we sit down at the end of the session and we interview the students as if it was a job interview.
28:43
And, and when I- one of the questions is like, you know, reflectiv: how did you get to this?
28:49
And it was, I was amazed by how many of them said they started using AI first, realised it wasn't who- it wasn't representing who they were.
28:57
And they actually rejected the AI and actually started using the agent in order to self reflect on who they were, get to the core of what they want to be "when they grow up", you know, and get to the fundamental, psychological and spiritual cause.
29:13
Some of them delved deep into their spirituality to actually figure out what they want to do for a career path because they wanted to go down more social aspects rather than more commercial aspects.
29:21
And so it was- the agent worked out wonderfully well as a reflective tool and a self exploration tool and then a coaching tool. Because it then, it helped them reflect on who they were, but then helped them put a plan together in order to execute that.
29:39
And then obviously they used other tools to create the- creating the content and whatever was needed.
29:44
But the agent itself was, yeah, it was very, it was very much used for self exploration and then coaching and without giving answers.
29:52
And I- they absolutely loved it.
29:54
I was amazed by how many of them were complementary and I was also amazed about the different ways they ended up using it, which was actually super fascinating.
30:02
And this really highlights the difference between a generalised large language model that students might use to help them with an assessment, versus a, agent, that the subject coordinator trains, producers to fit a specific learning task.
30:20
Yes. That isn't replacing creativity, but is maybe helping those meta-cognitive thinking and planning approaches.
30:27
The thing I loved about it is, international students that come from cultures that don't typically come to their tutor or coordinator and ask questions had an avenue.
30:36
For those students who are typically introverted and don't like sharing their feelings in an open space, they had a space and the extroverts in the room who were gladly talking about themselves for 30 minutes, they had a quiet space where they could learn to reflect.
30:50
So, it kind of helped all different people from different backgrounds and different personality types with different traits.
30:55
So, it was actually quite good.
30:57
I really enjoy it when I see students using my agents at 2:00 and 3:00 AM in the morning.
31:01
I'm like, thankfully they didn't message me.
31:02
And you want to go back to encouraging staff or potentially overcoming some of the barriers staff have.
31:10
I only received one email out of 193 students for that assessment task and that was, they were asking why their other subject didn't have it and I already told them that this was just customised for this particular assessment task so, it reduces some of the admin load.
31:26
The negative side of that is, through those questions I get to know students.
31:31
So there are pros and cons to it, but we spent so much time in class discussing it, that really wasn't a problem.
31:38
So Michael, you mentioned then, job interviews. Mercedez, what does it mean for an industry then, where we, we're being told and we're kind of seeing large amounts of entry level positions be taken up by AI.
31:57
How do you think this is impacting the next generation of, of marketing, advertising graduates and how is it affecting workplace skills?
32:10
Sure.
32:11
So, I mean, what we're trying to do is, I guess take a holistic approach to the student.
32:17
And if they understand those entry level skills and they know how to do them, they know how to get AI to help them through it, then they're ready and they're prepared for, for the workforce.
32:28
It's a, it's a new dawn for us because when, you know, back when, when we graduated from university, we didn't really need to have the skills.
32:37
We just needed to, you know, have the degree or the knowledge, but not how to apply that knowledge just yet.
32:44
So the industry really is demanding that now. That, that students understand not only the theory and the understanding behind it, but how to apply it.
32:53
So that's now, that's now our role, I guess, as, as educators is to make sure to prepare them. Now,
33:01
And I think I'll go back to something Michael said earlier, that that I think it's important for us to, to graduate students who can, who can, I guess, evolve over anything that's happening.
33:13
So we've given them the skills to learn, right?
33:17
To learn how to create, how to solve problems, no matter what.
33:22
So it doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter if entry level is gone or if medium level, the entry level is not gone because entry level is still here or here or here.
33:32
We are all going to enter into the workforce at a new place.
33:35
And we just had, that bar has been set and now it's up to us to make sure that the students can meet that bar.
33:41
Entry level is still entry level.
33:43
It just is a different bar.
33:45
It's a, it's, it's, it's interesting because I, I spent a lot of time talking to practitioners, both part of my research and their friends.
33:53
So I spent a lot of time talking to them.
33:55
And it's interesting that, it's not entry level positions going, it's, it's the activities and tasks that they were asked to do.
34:07
And some of those and as you know, can be automated without a human being there.
34:13
So what, what the main difference is, is they're asked to come in and say, 10 years ago, they would come in at an entry level position and be asked to make decisions that really had low impact, low risk.
34:27
And if they stuffed up, it didn't really matter.
34:30
They learnt, they build up their, their judgement skills, they build up their decision making skills, their intuition built up.
34:38
Now they're expected to come in and make decisions because those inconsequential tasks are now gone.
34:45
They're asked to make decisions that actually have impact, like- and sometimes, substantial impact straight off the bat.
34:53
So the, as we talked about before, the risk factor of decision-making for them has now gone up.
34:59
It's not just the activities, or what they have to produce, or the thinking behind it.
35:04
It's the, it's the impact of their decisions that are increasing.
35:07
So, we have to create scenarios within universities that mimic the type of decisions they have to make, right?
35:15
And that's something that I'll try to build into both my subjects now.
35:20
And, it's- the hard part is communicating to the student that the job market doesn't look like it did when you first started your degree.
35:28
And that's a scary thing.
35:29
Like some of them, some of them started three, three and a half years ago and these sort of decisions weren't being made.
35:36
And so now they have to make decisions in a different way, using different tools and justify them in a different way.
35:43
And the impact of them is much higher than it used to be.
35:46
So we have to, we have to better create scenarios in our classrooms that mimic what's happening, because they don't have time to make bad decisions when they hit the ground. They have to start making good decisions straight away, which kind of- then they have this love/hate relationship with AI because they over-trust it, or they under-trust it.
36:04
And so we have to build up their confidence in both and kind of get them somewhere in the middle where they can critically look at it.
36:10
So, I'm very compassionate when someone goes to redesign a subject, because we're not going to get it right the first time, or even the second time.
36:20
Like it might take a couple of iterations before you get it right.
36:23
And I think, people like Mercedez in high positions need to be quite compassionate towards us and understand that we're not going to get it right, like 100% of the time every time, because those scenarios are dynamic.
36:34
They're changing like week-by-week.
36:36
So, you know, which puts a lot of pressure on academics to keep up-to-date with what's happening in industry.
36:41
And so, and then the process of getting that, as you know, into your classroom takes a little bit longer than two weeks.
36:47
So, I think, overall, I think what would be interesting is we, if we look at some structural agility inside the university from an administrative perspective to combat what's going on in the, in industry at the moment.
37:02
I think that's maybe a discussion beyond this conversation that needs to happen, just to allow academics some flexibility.
37:10
That's a great point, Michael.
37:11
And it's, we're definitely going to have that conversation as part of this series.
37:16
I'd love to be on that panel.
37:19
I want to thank you both for joining us and, and kicking off the conversation today.
37:24
That was really fabulous and and I really enjoyed it.
37:27
Are there any points that you want to conclude on or or leave us with to finish?
37:32
All right, well, building on Michael, I think what what you said a little bit about making mistakes in the classroom.
37:37
I think that that's really important, that that we, I guess somebody in in my position too, tells academics that, you know, is great.
37:45
We should be trying to experiment right now.
37:48
We should try- and and then it's OK to not always get it right.
37:52
I, I'm still teaching and as we were, you know, talking about in, in my advertising subject, just last year, I wanted to do a mid-session task where I allowed students to use AI or not use AI.
38:05
So I allowed them to do something as a creative task.
38:10
What I found, unfortunately, was that maybe due to fear, or time, or, you know, they didn't believe enough in themselves; that they, you know, that the people, the students who used AI relied on AI and didn't really critically evaluate their outputs in AI, were not successful in the task.
38:31
The creativity was the lowest I'd ever seen in the eight years of teaching the subject, on this one task.
38:38
It was, you know, it was horrible actually for a subject coordinator to to be reviewing these tasks that usually bring me such joy, actually brought me the opposite, such angst.
38:48
And, and you know, and so that had me re-evaluate.
38:51
OK, So what am I doing here with this?
38:54
I need to set some other guidelines, or I need the students to, to really look at this from a human-centred angle first, before applying the AI.
39:03
And that's what gave me the idea to close the computers for the first ten minutes and to maybe remove, you know, computers altogether for some of the assessments.
39:13
And again, I think that it's really important that, that we build, I guess the confidence in our students, that they are capable without computers, that humans still have a place here and, and, and that every student is, you know, is wonderful and can come up with something really creative and, and great.
39:33
And so I think that I, I failed my students last year by not- not failed them with an "F", but I, I personally failed my students by not thinking about it enough, right?
39:44
So I think it is very important for us to challenge ourselves and to say- and to forgive ourselves when we don't always come up with the, the right, the right answer and to try again.
39:55
And so I am, I'm trying it again.
39:57
And I hope that I can be sitting here with you next year.
39:59
And that you say, say, "Mercedez, how did it go?"
40:03
And I will say "It was wonderful, Christopher."
40:05
"We've gotten some really creative, yeah, some creative outputs from our students."
40:10
But I guess at the end of the day, I want to say that we, we also it's-
40:13
It's also our job to make sure that students believe in themselves and who- and their capabilities...
40:19
Yes, and I'm going to build off that last point.
40:21
I think we need to create more ambiguity and more chaos for them, because I think by having overly structured things, we actually deprive them the opportunity to grow.
40:32
And I think AI is a great opportunity, not to cause chaos because that's kind of sounds more malicious, but, everyone I talk to that's employing our students, in particular, wants them to be agile and wants them to be able to provide value in ways that they probably haven't even thought of yet.
40:51
So we have an opportunity as educators to create an environment where we can give them that skill set, that confidence, that belief in themselves that they can kind of handle whatever comes their way.
41:03
But that doesn't happen in structured environments.
41:06
That happens in safe, but slightly chaotic environments.
41:10
And I think we, we, I, I think, yeah, look, if I was to appeal to people, I'd go: chuck some greyness into your subject.
41:18
That's what we need.
41:19
We don't need so much black and white.
41:20
We need some greyness and we need them to feel uncomfortable.
41:23
Not unsafe, but uncomfortable.
41:26
Yeah.
41:26
And I might build on that as well for the, for the AI major.
41:30
I, I completely agree with that.
41:31
So, a couple of the things that we are proposing to go into this, is an industry partnership.
41:37
Yeah, great.
41:38
So, as part of the core for this major, we will have iAccelerate, who is our incubator.
41:45
They will work with local industry and the local industry will come to the students and give them a problem and some students will solve that problem with AI and some students will solve it without, potentially, or augment it with AI, I think.
42:01
So that's a really exciting role, so that students get that opportunity to work with real problems, real local industry to see how they can solve those problems with using their brains and using AI.
42:15
So I have a question for both of you.
42:18
Would you like to see conscientious objectors, students who are radically opposing AI in your subjects?
42:28
Of course, absolutely.
42:30
I'd want to see a conscientious objector.
42:32
I would like to see that in every class.
42:35
I- you know, I love it when I have students that come in — love it.
42:40
The worst thing for an educator is when you have 30 to 60 students sitting in a classroom— Nodding. Nodding!
42:47
No, challenge me.
42:49
You know, I mean, I— That's why we have PhD students—
42:52
Yes, so—
42:52
They challenge our beliefs.
42:54
Most definitely.
42:55
No.
42:55
Absolutely.
42:56
So I think it, you know, as educators, it is our responsibility to consistently, continuously learn, OK?
43:04
And we have to adapt.
43:05
And we cannot do that just by textbooks, because we- as we know, textbooks are already a few years old.
43:11
But we can do by getting our students to in a respectful way, just as we should with them in a respectful way to challenge us...
43:19
I set up a ChatGPT challenge.
43:21
I said, you come up with a question and you get chat to answer it.
43:24
And I'll answer it and we'll see who has a better answer.
43:26
Wonderful.
43:27
And I smash Chat every time.
43:29
And then they all look at me and go: "OK, we better listen to this guy, he knows what he's talking about."
43:33
So I, I actively encourage— But as educators too,
43:37
we're not here to teach them really, anymore the the content necessarily.
43:42
But we are definitely here to teach them how to evaluate the content, how to challenge the content.
43:48
So I absolutely welcome any objectors to my class as long as they're not throwing things out.
43:52
Yeah, Yeah.
43:52
As long as it's respectfully done, yes.
43:54
We don't only want conscientious objectors, though.
43:56
We, we also want compassion.
43:59
That that one of the things that you mentioned, Michael, was the need to forgive ourselves, for when we get things wrong.
44:06
Very hard thing to do, Chris.
44:07
You've got to learn.
44:08
It's a practice that we need to practise. But I also think we need to teach students how to forgive themselves, but also forgive us when we get things wrong, or don't meet all of their needs in the way that they expect...
44:21
You know what would be a really great podcast as to- what's the core of that?
44:25
Because I think that's it.
44:27
That's an institutional thing that's been 300 years in the making, where you've got the professors sitting on the top and they're talking down and everyone's going, I'm absorbing the knowledge of God here and like, no, we've got to break that out, that that's just not working anymore.
44:41
This is all about co-creation.
44:42
We we're learning off each other and we evaluate and we're iterating as we go.
44:45
That's how it works these days.
44:47
Yeah, yeah.
44:48
I had a great mentor that described when you're introducing a new subject, that it's like making pancakes. Like the first couple are going to be terrible, until you get the pan right, the mixture right, you get everything running smoothly.
44:59
But those first two subjects are the most important because they set the, the temperature for, for the subject and the development going forward.
45:08
And I don't know about you guys, but a subject would barely last 12 months without complete change these days.
45:16
I, I, I changed mine halfway through the session.
45:19
Like the, like the, the foundational concepts and the content that's inside of it.
45:22
I, I can't wait until next year.
45:25
It's just, it's sometimes it's too late.
45:27
So Michael, how do we keep up with industry?
45:29
How do we keep up with the, the, the industry that our students are going to be working in, but also the technological change that keeps coming down the line?
45:39
That's a great question.
45:40
Firstly, got to take the pressure off, because industry itself doesn't keep up with industry.
45:43
So we've had multiple guest speakers come in from highly reputable organisations that, globally and nationally and their own teams are struggling to keep up with it.
45:55
So I think firstly, let's just take the pressure off.
45:59
We need to do the best we can.
46:01
Secondly, how do we bring that into the classroom?
46:04
Personally, I'm always in favour of scenarios.
46:07
I like scenarios because they have students make decisions in scenarios.
46:11
We have to- they, it's best if they learn in those scenarios, whether it's through simulations, through real clients, whatever that is.
46:18
But most importantly, we have to teach them.
46:21
Again, I'll go back to it.
46:22
We have to teach them how to teach themselves.
46:24
They need to be lifelong learners and they need to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable, because change is the only constant.
46:31
So we have to make sure that they're OK with that.
46:33
There's no right answer.
46:35
There's only an answer that works for now.
46:37
There's no long term right answer.
46:38
And I think it's really important for educators to consistently be out in industry.
46:45
So I think it's also a responsibility, even though industry, right now, they are asking a lot of questions and they are turning to us.
46:52
They are asking the university, you know, our local community is saying what, what can you teach us?
46:57
What, what do we need to know?
47:00
What do our graduates need to know?
47:01
I know that I want my- you know, the next employee to be able to do XYZ, but I don't know how to get them there, or I don't know how to upskill the rest of my staff who've been there for 20 years.
47:11
So I think the most important thing that we can do is to keep that conversation open with industry as well.
47:16
And that's, you know, that's probably an evolving nature of an academic, right?
47:22
We're known for teaching and research, but we're also now I think conduits to the community.
47:27
So especially for something, you know, for, for a university such as University of Wollongong, where our community and local presence is so important.
47:36
I think it's really important for people like Michael and, and all of our peers to, to really be in contact as much as we can with industry, to bring them into the classroom, to have that conversation, that really honest conversation with them.
47:51
But potentially we don't know the answer to that yet.
47:54
And that's really hard sometimes for academics to say—
47:57
I'll give you one example, putting the AI marketing subject together, I did 500 hours worth of courses and did 500 hours additional, just mucking around, right?
48:07
So at that point, I'd put 1000 hours in where most practitioners were spending an hour or two a week.
48:13
So I was way ahead of them.
48:15
So academics, just based on how our lifestyle works, we have the capacity to actually lead this discussion, particularly for SMEs.
48:23
I don't know about, we're not going to compete against Google, but, but SMEs we definitely have the ability to be ahead and to actually assist them.
48:30
So what Mercedez is saying is great.
48:33
I think what we need is maybe a safe space to have those conversations in.
48:37
I think that's something that the university could assist in creating, so we can actually have a, an intermediary meeting point, would be really good- and iAccelerate, for example, would be a great conduit for that.
48:48
It's also why scenario teaching is is so useful because it's a place where you can share all that expertise that you've gained with the students in real time, applying it to a specific problem, not just didactic.
49:01
Here's the theory.
49:02
You go and apply it, but actually working together to apply it.
49:06
And I think what's interesting too about our- about, I guess this demographic of students, is that the majority of them have jobs.
49:13
So when we were at university— Sometimes two— yeah sometimes two, you know, so when we were at university that, that was your job back then.
49:20
And, and now that's just, it's a different world.
49:23
So students are actually community and industry as well.
49:26
So it's really great learning from them and they can bring that, you know, bring that into the classroom.
49:32
And that goes again to not necessarily chaos, but but things that it's not so regimented in your classroom that you can have that open discussion with students: "Who's working here?"
49:43
"Where, where do you see this happening?"
49:45
You know, what do you, where do you see the gaps, you know, in, in industry?
49:48
And you get some really great, you know, great, I guess, conversations and examples from our own students in industry, so...
49:55
My favourite thing is when you go: "What's going on?" and they go: "Well, after I've done your course, now my boss has made me the tech leader in the organisation."
50:02
So, the youngest person in there is actually the one who's leading the discussion.
50:06
So, which is great, like, because that means, you know, we're actually teaching them something that's worthwhile.
50:09
But as you said, they're actually sometimes leading the discussion inside the organisation, not the ones that are sitting there trying to absorb the knowledge.
50:16
So, it's actually a really interesting dynamic at the moment.
50:19
Perfect.
50:20
I think that is a great point to conclude on.
50:23
Thank you, Michael.
50:25
Thank you, Mercedez, and thank you for joining us in the first conversation in the resistAInce media series: AI in the Age of Education.
If someone else can create value five times faster and at three times better quality with the technology, then you're redundant.
0:08
That creativity was the lowest I'd ever seen in the eight years of teaching the subject.
0:12
The job market doesn't look like it did when you first started your degree, and that's a scary thing.
0:18
I believe that you have the ability to come up with some creative problem solving solutions without the use of AI. But there's no right answer,
0:27
there's only an answer that works for now.
0:34
resistAInce: AI in the Age of Education is a media series exploring perspectives on artificial intelligence in higher education.
0:44
Each episode brings guests into conversation to develop ideas, follow connections across disciplines and contexts, and situate AI within the longer histories of teaching, learning, and researching at the University of Wollongong.
0:57
Welcome to the resistAInce: AI in the Age of Education.
1:02
I am Christopher Moore, the Academic Lead for AI-enabled Education at the University of Wollongong.
1:08
Today, we start the conversation with marketing, business and advertising, which are the related fields that have a very interesting relationship with generative AI.
1:18
Artificial intelligence has been sold to us through marketing. Some of it traditional, and much of it through industry leaders like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amadei, CEO of Anthropic, who sometimes make very dramatic predictions about the future of AI.
1:39
At the same time, marketing itself is being remade by the very tools it helps to sell.
1:45
To study marketing today is to be right in the middle of whirlwind change.
1:51
The field has been here before in its way.
1:54
For more than a century.
1:55
Marketing and advertising have applied psychology, data, and automation to the work of capturing attention and shaping desire.
2:03
Generative AI is the newest chapter.
2:07
And the question for educators is what we owe our students as we hand them the powerful tools, more powerful than anything that has come before.
2:18
To think this through, I am joined by two colleagues who work at the centre of IT.
2:23
Doctor Mercedez Hinchcliff is the Deputy Dean of Education in the Faculty of Arts, Society and Business.
2:31
She came to work in higher education after a career in corporate banking, including senior roles with the Bank of America and Citibank; and she brings an industry informed perspective to her work on curriculum transformation, inclusive pedagogy, and student engagement.
2:49
Her research spans equity and inclusion in higher education, community-based work integrated learning, and sustainable development in marketing education.
3:01
Associate Professor Michael Mehmet is a Marketing scholar in the School of Business and the architect of the first university subject in generative AI for Marketing.
3:13
His research ranges across digital marketing, multimodal evaluation of marketing communications, and socially conscious marketing, including work published in the Journal of Marketing on First Nations, Birthing on Country.
3:29
He has collaborated with Google and OpenAI and consulted for government and industry.
3:35
Welcome both.
3:35
Thank you very much.
3:38
To start the conversation, we're going to talk about the future of marketing.
3:43
Mercedez, given the change that you've been leading with the new AI major, what's the biggest shift in the marketing communication specifically; and what are the main challenges that you're facing?
3:57
Sure.
3:58
Well, I think the some of the main challenges we'll start there are on AI literacy in AI - I guess expectations from industry, as well as students, as well as the institution.
4:12
So these are challenges that are creating, I guess unique roadblocks for us because we don't have a lot of the answers yet.
4:23
What industry might need, what students need, what the industry needs is still under an enormous amount of pressure and investigation right now.
4:32
So, you know, we're, I guess we're at a really great pivotal moment in our lives to say, let's pause, let's take a minute here and say that we may have had a disruptor, which is generative AI, but that is also probably one of the most beneficial things that also that we can use for our students, for our industry and for education.
4:54
So starting from that standpoint, I think RenAIssance is really important in driving that conversation with all, with educators such as yourself and, and Michael, with, you know, collaboration with our students and with industry into finding out their needs, as well as, you know, what our capabilities are as an educational institution.
5:17
What can we help provide for our students in turn to provide for, for industry?
5:23
So going back to the AI major, that's one of the the newer things that we are working on at the at the university; based on feedback from our lectures, our subject coordinators, our subject matter experts, saying that there is a real need to not only teach how to use AI, but also how to think with AI and in marketing and advertising.
5:47
That is the biggest thing that I - because I straddle both the education role, but also as a lecturer in advertising and how disruptive it has been to creativity of our students.
5:59
So I'll pause there and see.
6:01
Yeah.
6:02
Thank you.
6:04
Michael, what are some of the- what are some of the capabilities that you think marketing graduates will need say in the next three to five years that aren't currently in the curriculum or that you are now introducing to the curriculum?
6:22
Is- what's more important?
6:24
Is AI literacy more important, or prompt crafting?
6:29
Is AI governance and ethics more important, or is strategy and using the AI practically more important, or is there something less obvious?
6:41
It's a great question.
6:42
I think the first thing we need to be careful of is ranking and prioritising.
6:46
Sorry, not prioritising, but ranking what's more important than anything else, because they're, they're essentially all interconnected and we need to make sure that we're kind of on top of all of them, but obviously to varying degrees.
6:58
Now the, the prompting, you can almost outsource the prompting now to the AI to get it to prompt for you.
7:04
So I think, the part that we're changing, particularly my subjects, I'm changing the most is what I like to call judgement layers.
7:13
So it's not necessarily: "Can you use a tool?"
7:19
"Can you decipher output from a tool?"
7:22
But: "Are you robust and resilient enough and agile enough to adapt to whatever change is coming towards you?"
7:29
Because no matter what the, you know, the software or the app or whatever it looks like, you're going to have to be able to be agile and you're going to have to learn to learn and you're going to have to learn to teach yourself.
7:41
So it's that ability to be agile and that ability to make clear judgements.
7:48
And what I mean by judgement layers is can you use a tool, critique it, get intuitive aspects to it, like work with it, and then decide on whether that output is good or bad.
8:02
But the one aspect I don't think we are teaching, and to be honest, not many people have probably thought of is the governance around justifying to clients when something doesn't go right, when you've used AI as part of that process.
8:15
So how do you have a difficult conversation where you've outsourced part of your task to AI and it hasn't gone well?
8:22
So I think moving forward, teaching students to engage in conversations that have formulated based off what's gone wrong with AII, think it's going to be an important step forward.
8:37
Did you want to add their Mercedez?
8:39
Yeah, I, I think it's really important that you just brought up that governance side and ethics side of AI.
8:44
So, you know, going back to what we found very important with the, the new major that your subject now becomes a core part of is that governance and ethics part.
8:55
So we are currently creating a new subject that will, you know, and again, it has to be evolutionary, right?
9:02
We can't say that this is what it's going to be forever.
9:06
It is something that has to evolve.
9:08
Like you said, you know, there are changes to generative AI every day that we log on, there's something new.
9:14
So this subject really needs to be adaptive to what current issues are, you know, or I guess what, what generative AI is throwing at us each day.
9:25
But we, we, we do value that.
9:27
And that is so important, I think for us to have that ethical component.
9:31
And that's where we think the students should start.
9:33
It's an important point that you make because it's literally the first week's work that they they do in my subject is ethics.
9:40
And that's because if it goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong.
9:43
So it needs to be a foundational element in not just the subject, not just the course, but also in business practise.
9:50
Because most of the horror cases that we hear aren't from university students, they're actually from when businesses apply these technologies and they don't go well.
9:57
So that's something that I think universities can create a conversation around.
10:01
We can upskill our students in it and there they can take that to industry and upskill industry rather than us tailoring to them.
10:08
They can actually learn from us.
10:11
The ethics, I mean ethics, ethics in higher education is never going away.
10:16
You know, we've always taught the ethical component.
10:19
It's just how that looks is different now and how is supplied is also very different.
10:23
Absolutely.
10:24
But again, we're thinking about, you know, I'm about when I went to university, the only thing I had to submit an essay on was a typewriter, OK?
10:32
Yeah.
10:33
And I'm a little bit, I am a little bit older than you guys in this room, OK.
10:38
You know, But then it developed.
10:39
Yeah.
10:40
And then it developed into being able, you know, to have Google.
10:43
Well, ethics changed at that moment that the Internet came.
10:47
OK.
10:47
And then ethics changed again once we had access, free access to information and not having to use microfiche.
10:54
Right, So, so ethics is something that has always been here, always will be, but it'll always be evolving.
11:02
And it's all of our responsibility to make sure— We've been having this conversation for four and a half thousand years,
11:06
I don't think we're going to solve it anytime soon.
11:08
No, that's- and it's not about solving, it's about evolving.
11:12
That's what I'm saying.
11:12
But that's why I say that tension,
11:13
Let's- don't try and resolve it.
11:15
Like I, I think a lot of people are trying to get to a right answer and I don't think there is a right answer.
11:20
There might be a contextually relevant answer, but I don't think there's ever a right answer.
11:25
Well, there's there might be a wrong answer, but there might not be a right answer.
11:29
It's a bit hard to articulate ethics in a podcast sometimes. There's an interesting conversation that pops up a lot in talking about governance and ethics.
11:38
And, and that is how much risk are we willing to put up with when we're using an AI tool, how much it can cost us, but also what can go wrong.
11:51
And that's a really interesting factor to think about the relationship between governance and ethics and how, how risk plays a part.
11:58
I, I like the comment that you made about the, the skills of needing to learn.
12:03
I, I think it was Alvin Toffler in, in the 80s and Future Shock that said that that the illiterate of the 21st century would be those who are unable to learn, unlearn and relearn.
12:15
And it's interesting how even though we're talking about massive generational change with AI technologies, we're still actually relying on fundamental principles of education.
12:22
Yes.
12:23
And I don't think they're going to go away in a hurry.
12:25
In fact, I think they're going to become more important.
12:28
It also makes it difficult though, for educators because we can't teach the tools, because those tools will change...
12:34
Chris, I think what we need to do is actually just let go of that.
12:37
I think there's a tension that people try to resolve that doesn't need resolving.
12:41
And I don't mean that in like that's the easy option, pick it.
12:44
I mean like there's tensions in every aspect of your life, work, relationships.
12:48
I think sometimes tensions are just there to highlight when there's no right answer, but you have to navigate as best you can.
12:55
So I think some- those tensions, I think we just should just learn to live with and just manage them the best we can.
13:02
I think probably something that's really important for for me as well is that AI can give us a lot of answers.
13:10
It can point us to answers and it can give us answers.
13:13
But one thing that's really important in our subjects, I think it's to get students to ask the right questions.
13:19
And I don't know that generative AI can always ask the right questions.
13:22
It can help lead us to those.
13:25
But, I think that that's where the human-centred approach comes from is for that student and that experience, that human experience to come in and to ask the right questions at the right time.
13:38
That brings the tension though.
13:40
And again, not- we don't have to resolve it, but that brings attention is how do you balance content knowledge versus skill development?
13:48
And should a subject deal with both, or only one?
13:53
And how do we map that across the course?
13:55
That's something that but that's at your level that you need to answer.
13:59
So I think that that's another question that not just UOW but all universities going forward is how do they have a balanced curriculum that teach tools, teach thinking, teach critical thinking, but also teach fundamental concepts that are needed for the course.
14:14
And that balance, I think is something that we need to kinda, it's not again, not figure out.
14:20
There's a tension that we have to sit with.
14:22
And that answer will change year on year as tools develop.
14:25
Well, we can think about when, when you and I were back at university, or probably I- I probably started earlier; earlier than you even, that the computer first came out when I was at university.
14:35
So potentially the, the instructor then had to show us how to turn it on, okay? And, you know, what- at that time, I think it was Yahoo that was my Internet browser or IE at the time.
14:49
How to press a button, how to click things.
14:52
And you know, after a while that just became inherent, you know, that the students understood how to open the computer.
14:57
They understood what the start button was.
14:59
So obviously now, we don't start a subject by telling students to open your laptop.
15:03
Go this way.
15:04
It'd be the same thing as prompting an AI, right?
15:07
For right now, we understand that the literacy is in, in generative AI and how to prompt and how to use AI tools is probably, you know, infancy stages, the last few years. That maybe we do have to pause and do some skill development as we go.
15:21
But we realise that this might be something that goes away with the same thing of opening the laptop and and pressing the, you know, "HTTP"... in order to "WWW".
15:31
Now we don't have to say that anymore, but, you know- so I think that, that it is, it's balanced, it's iterative, but that's education, right?
15:39
As we learn and that's what we do here.
15:41
That's that's our strength is, is education, is that as we learn, we can adapt to those things.
15:47
So, so my answer is that yes, I think we do need a certain amount of skill development.
15:51
So that is part of the, you know, what you do in your subject and what we do in our- in the major.
15:56
But from there, that's where we evolve, I think into content, into critical thinking, into literacy.
16:02
The only reason I would start with fluency over critical thinking first, is you can get paralysis if you over-fixate on critical thinking. Because there's a point where you can overthink things where you don't make a decision and you don't create outputs.
16:16
So I think with the fluency that gives students the opportunity to create the outputs.
16:20
The critical thinking comes through the chaos, which I always enjoy creating chaos in my classrooms because that's when you have to think and solve things.
16:27
So I think that the skill development is important.
16:30
You build up their fluency, then you bring in the critical thinking by intentionally causing chaos in a safe space.
16:35
And when you layer it that way, you kind of get students to understand not just the what's happening, but the why.
16:42
And then they can kind of reverse engineer the why for themselves.
16:46
But I think it's really important.
16:48
So I have a question to follow up on that conversation.
16:51
And it's about the, the, perhaps we could frame it as the critical end or the critical reception of AI technologies.
17:01
As academics, we're inherently critical about things.
17:04
We're — sometimes overly — and I sometimes feel that that creates a kind of lag in the institutional AI fluencies.
17:17
And so some of us have incredible AI fluency and others don't.
17:21
And we as an institution have to address that.
17:24
But I think that's also true of students.
17:26
There is a, there is a, a very healthy antagonism that students and the public have towards AI for, for various reasons.
17:36
How are we- how we, particularly in this new curriculum, how, how are you going to manage students and, and academics who may be very oppositional to using AI in teaching and learning?
17:54
Sure, that's a, that's a very good question.
17:57
And we, and we see that, right?
17:59
We do see staff and students and, we have to respect that, right?
18:04
So we have to deliver our courses and our subjects that often... pragmatism as well and realism, you know that everyone, whether they like AI or not, it's something that they're using whether they know it or not.
18:21
But how can we do it in the most responsible way, is important.
18:25
And that's why we're starting out with that ethics and responsible uses in AI that sometimes there are things that we, we don't like, but we do have to understand what they are and what they do.
18:39
So it's not about forcing AI on, on staff or students, but it is about understanding what the world is right now with AI in it.
18:47
I think that is important.
18:48
Yeah.
18:49
I think it comes down to value.
18:51
Like, if you can achieve something and create value without the use of technology, then you're not at a disadvantage.
18:58
But if, if someone else can create value five times faster and at three times better quality with the technology, then you're redundant.
19:08
So it's about, where can you extract value from that?
19:12
Now, people who resist, they can resist for moral reasons.
19:14
Look, datacenters, how much energy do they use, how much water do they use?
19:18
It's very fair to say I don't want to use anything because of the environmental impact.
19:22
That's 100% fair.
19:24
But yeah, I think it all comes back down to like the value that you can contribute to something and the value that people are expecting from you.
19:31
Because if teachers don't, for example, an educator doesn't want to use a technology to write multiple choice questions, for example, that's fine.
19:37
It's just going to take you 5 times longer to get maybe slightly worse output, but that's your choice.
19:43
But if you value that experience and you value dedicating your time to that, that's OK.
19:51
But if you value your time to dedicate to research, then you probably will learn how to use a tool in order to save you some time.
19:56
So I think it all comes down to what people value and what those who are engaging in that want from that experience and want from that exchange.
20:03
I think, you know, one of the things too, that I'm changing in, in my advertising subject is we've always had computers out like, you know, like you do at a desk and, and we do group work and we're, we're working with the Internet and you know that I work with Canva a lot.
20:18
Is that for-
20:19
I'm asking them now to actually shut their computers for the first 10 minutes.
20:25
So I'm asking them to take a breath and to brainstorm without the use of generative AI and they can do whatever they want during that time, but they have to put their phones away.
20:35
They put their computers away,
20:37
and, and I think it does two things.
20:39
One is that, you know, speaking a little bit to what you're saying about value, it maybe shows them what the value add is— potentially— potentially, but it's also allowing them to really have the belief that, you know what, I can create something.
20:53
I am still creative without AI tools.
20:57
I can still come up with something of value without AI.
21:02
And then once I open AI, maybe that's what augments my idea.
21:07
But sometimes I feel, and I'm sure you'll talk about this a little bit later as well, is that sometimes I feel that AI takes away that cognitive space or that safe creative space...
21:18
Cognitive debt is a massive issue— It is.
21:21
And so, I want students to always, and that's one of the ways that we can prepare our students, right? Is to be that thinker, yes? Critical thinker, but also that creative thinker.
21:32
I'm going to, you know, I'm giving you a problem.
21:34
I don't want you to go straight to AI because I believe in you.
21:38
I believe that you have the ability to come up with some creative problem-solving solutions without the use of AI.
21:46
It's that friction of construction, of production that actually teaches you how to evaluate, right?
21:52
So if you take that humanness that, that, yeah, that friction, that struggle, you actually diminish resilience later on.
22:02
So you're actually doing a disservice if you get them addicted to AI drugs, right?
22:07
So, what Mercedez is suggesting and what she'll implement this session is really, really good. Because what you're doing is, a little bit of struggle is not a bad thing.
22:18
And it's something that again, when I just- for that first question, we need to find that balance inside our subjects and inside the curriculum.
22:25
And I think it's really important to let them struggle because it's the friction that helps them be better analytical and better critically, later on.
22:34
I can't resist but to push back a little bit on the issue of friction. Particularly when it comes for neurodivergent learners; and for learners and students who experience enormous amounts of friction in their, their daily life.
22:50
And one of the, the most interesting kind of examples to look at is where AI might provide mechanisms for support for overcoming friction and eliminating friction in a productive way that supports learning.
23:09
I, I definitely take your point.
23:10
It's, it's a well understood— but if you teach, if you get AI to teach you how to brainstorm, that's very different to the getting AI to do the brainstorming for you, though. Which is about then an AI literacy about how to use AI appropriately.
23:24
That, that's, that's the, the I, I- I understand what you're saying, but I think in the case of Mercedez, I know her very well.
23:32
So she's going to give them a lot of material on how to brainstorm before she asks them to brainstorm.
23:36
So she'll essentially upskill them in that particular technique before- I know her very well,
23:41
so I already know she's going to do that.
23:43
So 100%, I take your point.
23:45
It does alleviate a lot of anxiety around new learnings.
23:48
100%.
23:49
And to go in the opposite direction, the, the brainstorming and, and we'll, we'll start, we'll, we'll get into talking about creativity more specifically.
23:57
The... one of the, the interesting things in the way in which large language models work is that they tend towards the median, they tend towards the average.
24:07
They will try and smooth out the, the, the, the oddball, the off the wall that- the thing that doesn't fit the model.
24:20
And so that's where creativity can...
24:23
And that's very true in marketing.
24:26
So if you ever sat down and actually asked any of the major large language models to put you together a strategy or put together a campaign for you, it gives you very much the safest option.
24:36
Use Instagram, use TikTok.
24:37
Use this, use that.
24:39
And it's, it's, it's very bland to be honest.
24:41
Like it has a creative element to it and it certainly has a cohesive element to it.
24:46
But you're not pushing the boundaries of creativity, that's for sure.
24:49
Mercedez, would you like to talk a little bit more about the way in which you think that, that students might be currently experiencing the relationship in terms of creativity and how the industry is, is changing with regards to creativity and the, the value of human labour in doing tasks that can be automated quite easily and and offloaded to the AI, but somehow are crucial in order to make products, campaigns. Communicate messages in ways that are that deeply resonate in human ways.
25:26
Yeah, absolutely.
25:27
And, you know, one of the first questions that I ask my students is who here thinks they're creative?
25:33
So half of my students are from, from, from you guys, from, from the creative side of things, which are great.
25:38
And they all raise their hands.
25:40
Yes, I'm very creative.
25:41
And the other half of my, my subject come from business.
25:44
Sometimes they're engineers, sometimes they come from medicine because it's on, you know, it's on the general schedule of electives and they don't raise their hands.
25:51
And, and so I think, well, what is creativity?
25:54
You know, is it- and most, you know, people from these quantitative side of things, the black and whites, think that creativity is the, the ability to paint this beautiful picture or to take a beautiful picture of the nature.
26:06
And yes, well, that is absolutely creative.
26:08
That's not the only thing that creativity is. Where, where I teach that creativity is about looking at a problem from a unique angle.
26:16
And so some of the things that I, I show, you know, one of, some- one of my favourite ads is about living in a world that doesn't fit. That, you know, and you spoke about neurodivergent.
26:26
This one ad is where a person is a- where everybody is, is in a wheelchair, right?
26:34
And, and the, you know, that the- everything was made for the person in a wheelchair.
26:40
So the buses were made for- the telephones, the the desks, the- there was no stairs, and there was one person who was not in a wheelchair walking around and they had to navigate the streets of New York as a person who was not in a wheelchair.
26:57
Now, AI did not come up with that.
27:00
It was a human that lived experience in a wheelchair that said: "Well what if?" The same ad goes to a library, having all books in Braille and somebody who had vision could not read the book And it makes you stop in your tracks, because that is creativity.
27:19
So that's what I try to bring out from my students is saying:
27:22
but, once you have that idea, boy, can AI help you get to the next place, right?
27:28
Because you don't have to go out potentially and take video.
27:32
AI can generate that for you.
27:33
You don't have to do pictures or potentially get models or involve human participants, where needed.
27:39
So that's where AI can take that amazing idea that you've had, that creative solution and bring it to the next level.
27:47
That's what I'm trying to teach in advertising.
27:50
Yeah.
27:51
Fabulous, thank you.
27:52
I'll follow up on that then Michael in talking- and ask you to talk specifically about your experience then working with students and the way you have introduced AI agents into your subjects where that agent is working with students to help them develop a personal brand.
28:14
Yes. How— My favourite assessment task of all time.
28:17
How, how then do you encourage students to retain that creativity while getting advice or, or kind of coaching and and help from an AI agent?
28:27
Well, as you know, Chris, my agent doesn't give answers.
28:30
And I think that's the core thing.
28:32
It asks probing questions.
28:34
It, it gets to the root of who the student is.
28:37
And it was, I was absolutely amazed because part of that assessment task is we sit down at the end of the session and we interview the students as if it was a job interview.
28:43
And, and when I- one of the questions is like, you know, reflectiv: how did you get to this?
28:49
And it was, I was amazed by how many of them said they started using AI first, realised it wasn't who- it wasn't representing who they were.
28:57
And they actually rejected the AI and actually started using the agent in order to self reflect on who they were, get to the core of what they want to be "when they grow up", you know, and get to the fundamental, psychological and spiritual cause.
29:13
Some of them delved deep into their spirituality to actually figure out what they want to do for a career path because they wanted to go down more social aspects rather than more commercial aspects.
29:21
And so it was- the agent worked out wonderfully well as a reflective tool and a self exploration tool and then a coaching tool. Because it then, it helped them reflect on who they were, but then helped them put a plan together in order to execute that.
29:39
And then obviously they used other tools to create the- creating the content and whatever was needed.
29:44
But the agent itself was, yeah, it was very, it was very much used for self exploration and then coaching and without giving answers.
29:52
And I- they absolutely loved it.
29:54
I was amazed by how many of them were complementary and I was also amazed about the different ways they ended up using it, which was actually super fascinating.
30:02
And this really highlights the difference between a generalised large language model that students might use to help them with an assessment, versus a, agent, that the subject coordinator trains, producers to fit a specific learning task.
30:20
Yes. That isn't replacing creativity, but is maybe helping those meta-cognitive thinking and planning approaches.
30:27
The thing I loved about it is, international students that come from cultures that don't typically come to their tutor or coordinator and ask questions had an avenue.
30:36
For those students who are typically introverted and don't like sharing their feelings in an open space, they had a space and the extroverts in the room who were gladly talking about themselves for 30 minutes, they had a quiet space where they could learn to reflect.
30:50
So, it kind of helped all different people from different backgrounds and different personality types with different traits.
30:55
So, it was actually quite good.
30:57
I really enjoy it when I see students using my agents at 2:00 and 3:00 AM in the morning.
31:01
I'm like, thankfully they didn't message me.
31:02
And you want to go back to encouraging staff or potentially overcoming some of the barriers staff have.
31:10
I only received one email out of 193 students for that assessment task and that was, they were asking why their other subject didn't have it and I already told them that this was just customised for this particular assessment task so, it reduces some of the admin load.
31:26
The negative side of that is, through those questions I get to know students.
31:31
So there are pros and cons to it, but we spent so much time in class discussing it, that really wasn't a problem.
31:38
So Michael, you mentioned then, job interviews. Mercedez, what does it mean for an industry then, where we, we're being told and we're kind of seeing large amounts of entry level positions be taken up by AI.
31:57
How do you think this is impacting the next generation of, of marketing, advertising graduates and how is it affecting workplace skills?
32:10
Sure.
32:11
So, I mean, what we're trying to do is, I guess take a holistic approach to the student.
32:17
And if they understand those entry level skills and they know how to do them, they know how to get AI to help them through it, then they're ready and they're prepared for, for the workforce.
32:28
It's a, it's a new dawn for us because when, you know, back when, when we graduated from university, we didn't really need to have the skills.
32:37
We just needed to, you know, have the degree or the knowledge, but not how to apply that knowledge just yet.
32:44
So the industry really is demanding that now. That, that students understand not only the theory and the understanding behind it, but how to apply it.
32:53
So that's now, that's now our role, I guess, as, as educators is to make sure to prepare them. Now,
33:01
And I think I'll go back to something Michael said earlier, that that I think it's important for us to, to graduate students who can, who can, I guess, evolve over anything that's happening.
33:13
So we've given them the skills to learn, right?
33:17
To learn how to create, how to solve problems, no matter what.
33:22
So it doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter if entry level is gone or if medium level, the entry level is not gone because entry level is still here or here or here.
33:32
We are all going to enter into the workforce at a new place.
33:35
And we just had, that bar has been set and now it's up to us to make sure that the students can meet that bar.
33:41
Entry level is still entry level.
33:43
It just is a different bar.
33:45
It's a, it's, it's, it's interesting because I, I spent a lot of time talking to practitioners, both part of my research and their friends.
33:53
So I spent a lot of time talking to them.
33:55
And it's interesting that, it's not entry level positions going, it's, it's the activities and tasks that they were asked to do.
34:07
And some of those and as you know, can be automated without a human being there.
34:13
So what, what the main difference is, is they're asked to come in and say, 10 years ago, they would come in at an entry level position and be asked to make decisions that really had low impact, low risk.
34:27
And if they stuffed up, it didn't really matter.
34:30
They learnt, they build up their, their judgement skills, they build up their decision making skills, their intuition built up.
34:38
Now they're expected to come in and make decisions because those inconsequential tasks are now gone.
34:45
They're asked to make decisions that actually have impact, like- and sometimes, substantial impact straight off the bat.
34:53
So the, as we talked about before, the risk factor of decision-making for them has now gone up.
34:59
It's not just the activities, or what they have to produce, or the thinking behind it.
35:04
It's the, it's the impact of their decisions that are increasing.
35:07
So, we have to create scenarios within universities that mimic the type of decisions they have to make, right?
35:15
And that's something that I'll try to build into both my subjects now.
35:20
And, it's- the hard part is communicating to the student that the job market doesn't look like it did when you first started your degree.
35:28
And that's a scary thing.
35:29
Like some of them, some of them started three, three and a half years ago and these sort of decisions weren't being made.
35:36
And so now they have to make decisions in a different way, using different tools and justify them in a different way.
35:43
And the impact of them is much higher than it used to be.
35:46
So we have to, we have to better create scenarios in our classrooms that mimic what's happening, because they don't have time to make bad decisions when they hit the ground. They have to start making good decisions straight away, which kind of- then they have this love/hate relationship with AI because they over-trust it, or they under-trust it.
36:04
And so we have to build up their confidence in both and kind of get them somewhere in the middle where they can critically look at it.
36:10
So, I'm very compassionate when someone goes to redesign a subject, because we're not going to get it right the first time, or even the second time.
36:20
Like it might take a couple of iterations before you get it right.
36:23
And I think, people like Mercedez in high positions need to be quite compassionate towards us and understand that we're not going to get it right, like 100% of the time every time, because those scenarios are dynamic.
36:34
They're changing like week-by-week.
36:36
So, you know, which puts a lot of pressure on academics to keep up-to-date with what's happening in industry.
36:41
And so, and then the process of getting that, as you know, into your classroom takes a little bit longer than two weeks.
36:47
So, I think, overall, I think what would be interesting is we, if we look at some structural agility inside the university from an administrative perspective to combat what's going on in the, in industry at the moment.
37:02
I think that's maybe a discussion beyond this conversation that needs to happen, just to allow academics some flexibility.
37:10
That's a great point, Michael.
37:11
And it's, we're definitely going to have that conversation as part of this series.
37:16
I'd love to be on that panel.
37:19
I want to thank you both for joining us and, and kicking off the conversation today.
37:24
That was really fabulous and and I really enjoyed it.
37:27
Are there any points that you want to conclude on or or leave us with to finish?
37:32
All right, well, building on Michael, I think what what you said a little bit about making mistakes in the classroom.
37:37
I think that that's really important, that that we, I guess somebody in in my position too, tells academics that, you know, is great.
37:45
We should be trying to experiment right now.
37:48
We should try- and and then it's OK to not always get it right.
37:52
I, I'm still teaching and as we were, you know, talking about in, in my advertising subject, just last year, I wanted to do a mid-session task where I allowed students to use AI or not use AI.
38:05
So I allowed them to do something as a creative task.
38:10
What I found, unfortunately, was that maybe due to fear, or time, or, you know, they didn't believe enough in themselves; that they, you know, that the people, the students who used AI relied on AI and didn't really critically evaluate their outputs in AI, were not successful in the task.
38:31
The creativity was the lowest I'd ever seen in the eight years of teaching the subject, on this one task.
38:38
It was, you know, it was horrible actually for a subject coordinator to to be reviewing these tasks that usually bring me such joy, actually brought me the opposite, such angst.
38:48
And, and you know, and so that had me re-evaluate.
38:51
OK, So what am I doing here with this?
38:54
I need to set some other guidelines, or I need the students to, to really look at this from a human-centred angle first, before applying the AI.
39:03
And that's what gave me the idea to close the computers for the first ten minutes and to maybe remove, you know, computers altogether for some of the assessments.
39:13
And again, I think that it's really important that, that we build, I guess the confidence in our students, that they are capable without computers, that humans still have a place here and, and, and that every student is, you know, is wonderful and can come up with something really creative and, and great.
39:33
And so I think that I, I failed my students last year by not- not failed them with an "F", but I, I personally failed my students by not thinking about it enough, right?
39:44
So I think it is very important for us to challenge ourselves and to say- and to forgive ourselves when we don't always come up with the, the right, the right answer and to try again.
39:55
And so I am, I'm trying it again.
39:57
And I hope that I can be sitting here with you next year.
39:59
And that you say, say, "Mercedez, how did it go?"
40:03
And I will say "It was wonderful, Christopher."
40:05
"We've gotten some really creative, yeah, some creative outputs from our students."
40:10
But I guess at the end of the day, I want to say that we, we also it's-
40:13
It's also our job to make sure that students believe in themselves and who- and their capabilities...
40:19
Yes, and I'm going to build off that last point.
40:21
I think we need to create more ambiguity and more chaos for them, because I think by having overly structured things, we actually deprive them the opportunity to grow.
40:32
And I think AI is a great opportunity, not to cause chaos because that's kind of sounds more malicious, but, everyone I talk to that's employing our students, in particular, wants them to be agile and wants them to be able to provide value in ways that they probably haven't even thought of yet.
40:51
So we have an opportunity as educators to create an environment where we can give them that skill set, that confidence, that belief in themselves that they can kind of handle whatever comes their way.
41:03
But that doesn't happen in structured environments.
41:06
That happens in safe, but slightly chaotic environments.
41:10
And I think we, we, I, I think, yeah, look, if I was to appeal to people, I'd go: chuck some greyness into your subject.
41:18
That's what we need.
41:19
We don't need so much black and white.
41:20
We need some greyness and we need them to feel uncomfortable.
41:23
Not unsafe, but uncomfortable.
41:26
Yeah.
41:26
And I might build on that as well for the, for the AI major.
41:30
I, I completely agree with that.
41:31
So, a couple of the things that we are proposing to go into this, is an industry partnership.
41:37
Yeah, great.
41:38
So, as part of the core for this major, we will have iAccelerate, who is our incubator.
41:45
They will work with local industry and the local industry will come to the students and give them a problem and some students will solve that problem with AI and some students will solve it without, potentially, or augment it with AI, I think.
42:01
So that's a really exciting role, so that students get that opportunity to work with real problems, real local industry to see how they can solve those problems with using their brains and using AI.
42:15
So I have a question for both of you.
42:18
Would you like to see conscientious objectors, students who are radically opposing AI in your subjects?
42:28
Of course, absolutely.
42:30
I'd want to see a conscientious objector.
42:32
I would like to see that in every class.
42:35
I- you know, I love it when I have students that come in — love it.
42:40
The worst thing for an educator is when you have 30 to 60 students sitting in a classroom— Nodding. Nodding!
42:47
No, challenge me.
42:49
You know, I mean, I— That's why we have PhD students—
42:52
Yes, so—
42:52
They challenge our beliefs.
42:54
Most definitely.
42:55
No.
42:55
Absolutely.
42:56
So I think it, you know, as educators, it is our responsibility to consistently, continuously learn, OK?
43:04
And we have to adapt.
43:05
And we cannot do that just by textbooks, because we- as we know, textbooks are already a few years old.
43:11
But we can do by getting our students to in a respectful way, just as we should with them in a respectful way to challenge us...
43:19
I set up a ChatGPT challenge.
43:21
I said, you come up with a question and you get chat to answer it.
43:24
And I'll answer it and we'll see who has a better answer.
43:26
Wonderful.
43:27
And I smash Chat every time.
43:29
And then they all look at me and go: "OK, we better listen to this guy, he knows what he's talking about."
43:33
So I, I actively encourage— But as educators too,
43:37
we're not here to teach them really, anymore the the content necessarily.
43:42
But we are definitely here to teach them how to evaluate the content, how to challenge the content.
43:48
So I absolutely welcome any objectors to my class as long as they're not throwing things out.
43:52
Yeah, Yeah.
43:52
As long as it's respectfully done, yes.
43:54
We don't only want conscientious objectors, though.
43:56
We, we also want compassion.
43:59
That that one of the things that you mentioned, Michael, was the need to forgive ourselves, for when we get things wrong.
44:06
Very hard thing to do, Chris.
44:07
You've got to learn.
44:08
It's a practice that we need to practise. But I also think we need to teach students how to forgive themselves, but also forgive us when we get things wrong, or don't meet all of their needs in the way that they expect...
44:21
You know what would be a really great podcast as to- what's the core of that?
44:25
Because I think that's it.
44:27
That's an institutional thing that's been 300 years in the making, where you've got the professors sitting on the top and they're talking down and everyone's going, I'm absorbing the knowledge of God here and like, no, we've got to break that out, that that's just not working anymore.
44:41
This is all about co-creation.
44:42
We we're learning off each other and we evaluate and we're iterating as we go.
44:45
That's how it works these days.
44:47
Yeah, yeah.
44:48
I had a great mentor that described when you're introducing a new subject, that it's like making pancakes. Like the first couple are going to be terrible, until you get the pan right, the mixture right, you get everything running smoothly.
44:59
But those first two subjects are the most important because they set the, the temperature for, for the subject and the development going forward.
45:08
And I don't know about you guys, but a subject would barely last 12 months without complete change these days.
45:16
I, I, I changed mine halfway through the session.
45:19
Like the, like the, the foundational concepts and the content that's inside of it.
45:22
I, I can't wait until next year.
45:25
It's just, it's sometimes it's too late.
45:27
So Michael, how do we keep up with industry?
45:29
How do we keep up with the, the, the industry that our students are going to be working in, but also the technological change that keeps coming down the line?
45:39
That's a great question.
45:40
Firstly, got to take the pressure off, because industry itself doesn't keep up with industry.
45:43
So we've had multiple guest speakers come in from highly reputable organisations that, globally and nationally and their own teams are struggling to keep up with it.
45:55
So I think firstly, let's just take the pressure off.
45:59
We need to do the best we can.
46:01
Secondly, how do we bring that into the classroom?
46:04
Personally, I'm always in favour of scenarios.
46:07
I like scenarios because they have students make decisions in scenarios.
46:11
We have to- they, it's best if they learn in those scenarios, whether it's through simulations, through real clients, whatever that is.
46:18
But most importantly, we have to teach them.
46:21
Again, I'll go back to it.
46:22
We have to teach them how to teach themselves.
46:24
They need to be lifelong learners and they need to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable, because change is the only constant.
46:31
So we have to make sure that they're OK with that.
46:33
There's no right answer.
46:35
There's only an answer that works for now.
46:37
There's no long term right answer.
46:38
And I think it's really important for educators to consistently be out in industry.
46:45
So I think it's also a responsibility, even though industry, right now, they are asking a lot of questions and they are turning to us.
46:52
They are asking the university, you know, our local community is saying what, what can you teach us?
46:57
What, what do we need to know?
47:00
What do our graduates need to know?
47:01
I know that I want my- you know, the next employee to be able to do XYZ, but I don't know how to get them there, or I don't know how to upskill the rest of my staff who've been there for 20 years.
47:11
So I think the most important thing that we can do is to keep that conversation open with industry as well.
47:16
And that's, you know, that's probably an evolving nature of an academic, right?
47:22
We're known for teaching and research, but we're also now I think conduits to the community.
47:27
So especially for something, you know, for, for a university such as University of Wollongong, where our community and local presence is so important.
47:36
I think it's really important for people like Michael and, and all of our peers to, to really be in contact as much as we can with industry, to bring them into the classroom, to have that conversation, that really honest conversation with them.
47:51
But potentially we don't know the answer to that yet.
47:54
And that's really hard sometimes for academics to say—
47:57
I'll give you one example, putting the AI marketing subject together, I did 500 hours worth of courses and did 500 hours additional, just mucking around, right?
48:07
So at that point, I'd put 1000 hours in where most practitioners were spending an hour or two a week.
48:13
So I was way ahead of them.
48:15
So academics, just based on how our lifestyle works, we have the capacity to actually lead this discussion, particularly for SMEs.
48:23
I don't know about, we're not going to compete against Google, but, but SMEs we definitely have the ability to be ahead and to actually assist them.
48:30
So what Mercedez is saying is great.
48:33
I think what we need is maybe a safe space to have those conversations in.
48:37
I think that's something that the university could assist in creating, so we can actually have a, an intermediary meeting point, would be really good- and iAccelerate, for example, would be a great conduit for that.
48:48
It's also why scenario teaching is is so useful because it's a place where you can share all that expertise that you've gained with the students in real time, applying it to a specific problem, not just didactic.
49:01
Here's the theory.
49:02
You go and apply it, but actually working together to apply it.
49:06
And I think what's interesting too about our- about, I guess this demographic of students, is that the majority of them have jobs.
49:13
So when we were at university— Sometimes two— yeah sometimes two, you know, so when we were at university that, that was your job back then.
49:20
And, and now that's just, it's a different world.
49:23
So students are actually community and industry as well.
49:26
So it's really great learning from them and they can bring that, you know, bring that into the classroom.
49:32
And that goes again to not necessarily chaos, but but things that it's not so regimented in your classroom that you can have that open discussion with students: "Who's working here?"
49:43
"Where, where do you see this happening?"
49:45
You know, what do you, where do you see the gaps, you know, in, in industry?
49:48
And you get some really great, you know, great, I guess, conversations and examples from our own students in industry, so...
49:55
My favourite thing is when you go: "What's going on?" and they go: "Well, after I've done your course, now my boss has made me the tech leader in the organisation."
50:02
So, the youngest person in there is actually the one who's leading the discussion.
50:06
So, which is great, like, because that means, you know, we're actually teaching them something that's worthwhile.
50:09
But as you said, they're actually sometimes leading the discussion inside the organisation, not the ones that are sitting there trying to absorb the knowledge.
50:16
So, it's actually a really interesting dynamic at the moment.
50:19
Perfect.
50:20
I think that is a great point to conclude on.
50:23
Thank you, Michael.
50:25
Thank you, Mercedez, and thank you for joining us in the first conversation in the resistAInce media series: AI in the Age of Education.
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