Authentic and active learning: How generative AI is changing the future of studying

The 2024 THE Campus Live ANZ event focused on transforming universities to suit the modern learner. At the event, Adam Brimo, CEO of OpenLearning, showcased how AI can create better learning experiences for teachers and students. OpenLearning is an AI-powered lifelong learning platform that supports education providers in delivering short courses, microcredentials and online degrees to over 3.5 million learners worldwide.

“We believe in student empowerment, authentic and active learning experiences and community and connectedness,” explained Brimo. “We believe the best courses are ones where students get to know each other, work together, construct and co-construct knowledge together, and that’s something that I think many educators have done for decades – even hundreds of years – in the classroom but has been difficult to do online because of the constraints of the technology.” 

OpenLearning has everything institutions need in one place, automatically generating portfolio systems that show students the skills they’ve developed over their courses. The platform includes courses from around the world and a credentialling system for providing certificates. 

“When institutions have used OpenLearning, they’re able to build and launch microcredential short courses and online programmes in days or weeks, rather than months and years, because there aren’t multiple systems to integrate, and no IT to get involved,” Brimo said.

Where some online learning courses may have been ineffective, unengaging or even boring in the past, the use of generative AI, which can create original content from user prompts, allows educators to reassess what content is effective and engaging, as well as bringing courses to users much faster. 

Online learning has been “mostly readings and videos and maybe some quizzes and, if you’re lucky, a capstone project at the end. But that’s not what a great learning experience is, and that’s not how people develop higher-order thinking skills”, Brimo said.

For OpenLearning, a great learning experience means bringing people together through peer feedback, crowdsourcing information and collaboration. Brimo believes that using generative AI and focusing on socially constructive activities are “more likely to foster intrinsic motivation within the students, and they enable the institution to capture a larger amount of evidence to see how the students have developed their knowledge and achieved the outcomes of the course”.

This means students have a more engaging studying experience and universities can learn what works when running courses. The company’s feedback tools, for example, are designed to encourage engagement between students and lecturers. For Brimo, AI is “a tool for being able to foster even better community discussion and better collaboration”.

The speaker:

• Adam Brimo, CEO, OpenLearning

Find out more about OpenLearning.