More Comp Sci research! News and Research - Episode 10 of Series 9
Release Date: 09/20/2024
AI in Universities: Why Connection, Not Content, is Now King
AI in Education Podcast
AI in Universities: Why Connection, Not Content, is Now King This was an exciting episode, because we recorded it on campus at the world's newest university - Adelaide University. It officially started on-campus delivery this week, as it finally opened the doors after merging the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. Amid the buzz of students arriving for week 1, and I found some time to sit down and talk about how AI is impacting universities. Eddie is the university's AI Learning and Teaching Coordinator and you may not be surprised to learn that we discussed...
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AI Research Update: 8 papers you need to know for 2026
AI in Education Podcast
Research Update: 8 papers on AI in Education you need to know for 2026 In this episode, Ray and Dan provide a rapid-fire rundown of the most significant research papers hitting the AI in Education space so far in 2026. After a series of news-heavy episodes, the hosts catch up on the data behind synthetic avatars, grading accuracy, and the psychological biases we hold against AI. Key highlights include: Synthetic Lecturers: Exploring stakeholder perspectives on digital twins and the emotional reaction to the term Deepfake in academia. The Grading Gap: Why ChatGPT...
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Metacognitive Laziness and Sycophancy? AI’s Education Wake-Up Call
AI in Education Podcast
Is AI an "efficiency engine" or a "cognitive crutch"? In this episode, Dan and Ray explore the OECD’s latest warnings regarding "metacognitive laziness" - the risk of students offloading the thinking process entirely to generative tools. As the OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026 suggests, without pedagogical guardrails, we may be sacrificing long-term learning for short-term performance. The discussion shifts to the UK’s aggressive new response: the Department of Education’s Safety Standards. These rules explicitly ban "sycophantic" or flattering AI designs, stripping away...
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Ray & Dan: What We’ve Learned From 6 Years of AI in Education
AI in Education Podcast
In this special "flipped" episode, the tables are turned on your usual hosts, Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming. Interviewed by from (and for) the podcast, Dan and Ray step into the guest seats to share the "AI in Education" podcast origin story - from its 2019 "skunkworks" beginnings at Microsoft to its current status as an independent voice in the global edtech conversation. The trio dives deep into how the podcast evolved through the 2022 Generative AI explosion, moving from technical "hoodie" discussions about algorithms to essential human skills like empathy and questioning. They reflect...
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Stop accusing students: The "Silver Nail" in the AI detector coffin
AI in Education Podcast
Welcome to our first episode of 2026. In this heavy-hitting season opener, hosts Dan and Ray are joined by Dr. Mark Bassett, Academic Lead for AI at Charles Sturt University and a "superhero" of AI activism. Mark's an ally in our long standing mantra on the podcast, as we know you've got tired of hearing just Dan and Ray say "AI detectors don't work". Dr. Bassett breaks down his landmark paper, "Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: AI Detectors in Education" which we describe (hopefully) as the final 'silver nail in the coffin' for detection software. We move past the surface-level "they don't work"...
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AI in Education’s Christmas Special: Hallucinations, Headbands, and Bad Ideas
AI in Education Podcast
AI in Education’s Christmas Special: Hallucinations, Headbands, and Bad Ideas In this end-of-year Christmas special, Ray and Dan squeeze in one final episode to reflect on a whirlwind year in AI and education - with a healthy dose of festive chaos. They unpack the latest AI news, including Australia’s National AI Plan, OpenAI’s Australian data centre and teacher certification course, major university rollouts of ChatGPT, and global experiments like nationwide AI tools in schools and targeted funding for AI-assisted teaching. But this episode quickly moves beyond policy and platforms into...
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Podcast Unwrapped: Our 2025 AI in Education Awards
AI in Education Podcast
In this special end-of-year episode, Ray and Dan unwrap the biggest moments, ideas, guests, and breakthroughs that shaped AI in education in 2025. From standout tools to unforgettable interviews, they look back at a year defined by rapid change, bold experimentation, and extraordinary people driving meaningful impact. [If you want to see, rather than just hear, this episode, then come over and join us on YouTube at - this episode is a visual treat with bonus Dad humour] They reveal their AI Product of the Year (NotebookLM), the worst offenders in AI hype, and their most loved - and most...
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AI just changed again - what schools and universities need to know this week
AI in Education Podcast
This week delivered one of the biggest waves of AI news in recent memory - and Dan and Ray unpack what it all means for schools, universities and vocational education. From Microsoft’s upcoming Copilot upgrades to Google’s jaw-dropping Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro image model, the landscape for teachers shifted fast. They explore how these tools are already reshaping lesson design, image generation, student support and academic workflows - and why NotebookLM might quietly be the most important education tool Google has ever released. They also break down newly released case studies from...
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UNE’s AI Shake-Up: A Regional Uni Redefining the Rules?
AI in Education Podcast
In this episode, Ray sits down with , Director of at the , a regional Australian university making one of the boldest moves in higher education: giving every staff member and every student access to a full enterprise AI platform. Aaron shares how UNE has built , its white-labelled version of the platform, and why the university chose to go beyond standard tools like Copilot or ChatGPT for Education. With multi-model access, MCP connectors, and soon agentic capabilities, UNE staff have already created more than 3,000 AI assistants and reached an extraordinary 85% daily usage rate. The...
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Meet the weird new jobs AI just invented
AI in Education Podcast
In this episode of the AI in Education Podcast, Ray and Dan wrap up Series 14 with a packed news and research roundup. They start with the tricky world of AI governance in education, where Ray explains how schools and universities can simplify their policies instead of writing 26 new ones. The conversation then turns to a Washington Post piece on the rise of new AI-driven jobs - from conversation designers to human-AI collaboration leads - and what this means for the future of work and capability-building. They also unpack new insights from cechat about how teachers are creating and using AI...
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This week's news we rushed through includes "Study Buddy or Influencer?", the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into the use of Gen AI in the Australia Education System
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Employment_Education_and_Training/AIineducation/Report
NSW EduChat has been extended for all teachers in all New South Wales Schools - https://www.innovationaus.com/nsw-teachers-to-get-time-saving-genai-tool/
Learn more about the NSW EduChat chatbot in the first episode of Series 9
Microsoft announced Copilot Wave 2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2024/09/16/microsoft-365-copilot-wave-2-pages-python-in-excel-and-agents/
OpenAI's new model o1-preview came out - and it's much, much better and logical reasoning and maths
Find out what people think by looking at what Ethan Mollick is saying about it (and, as I suggest on the podcast, keenly watch Dan Hart's posts as he's benchmarking it now in the context of EduChat)
Google released a podcast-generator as part of NotebookLM, which turns any kind of paper/book etc into a short podcast. To find out what it's like I gave it the top research paper from the podcast last time and you can compare it versus me! There's a quick demo review by Ethan here and you can login and have a play directly here: https://notebooklm.google.com/ (it has two main uses, because on top of this autopodcast, it's original purpose was to allow you give it a pile of documents and it can work with all of them at the same time for q&a, summaries etc)
Research
Here's the links to all nine papers we discussed in this week's episode:
Generative AI in Real-World Workplaces
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prodnew/2024/07/Generative-AI-in-Real-World-Workplaces.pdf
Can Large Language Models Make the Grade?
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3664693
PlagBench: Exploring the Duality of Large Language Models in Plagiarism Generation and Detection
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.16288
The global landscape of academic guidelines for generative AI and Large Language Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18842
"Is ChatGPT a Better Explainer than My Professor?": Evaluating the Explanation Capabilities of LLMs in Conversation Compared to a Human Baseline
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18512
Perceived Impact of Generative AI on Assessments: Comparing Educator and Student Perspectives in Australia, Cyprus, and the United States
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X24000729
Jill Watson: Scaling and Deploying an AI Conversational Agent in Online Classrooms
https://dilab.gatech.edu/publications/jill-watson-scaling-and-deploying-an-ai-conversational-agent-in-online-classrooms/
https://dilab.gatech.edu/test/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ITS2024_JillWatson_paper.pdf
Integrating AI in College Education: Positive yet Mixed Experiences with ChatGPT
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05810
The AI Companion in Education: Analyzing the Pedagogical Potential of ChatGPT in Computer Science and Engineering
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05205