May 21, 2025
On the 20th May 2025, the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE) celebrated 10 years! together with approximately 80 guests! The day comprised talks about Where we have been, Where we are, and Where we are going, interspersed with some games, posters, and demos. See the programme.
SLATE Director, Professor Barbara Wasson, welcomed the guests, followed by greetings from Eivind Heder, (Director General, Ministry of Education & Research), Pinar Heggernes (Deputy Rector UiB), and Norman Anderssen (Dean of Psychology UiB).
The day began with Postdoc Fride Klykken and former SLATE PhD candidate Rosaline Barendregt (now HVL) led the attendees in a game of Delta i Data!, a tailored version of Games of Phones from SLATE's Erasmus+s project DALI's toolkit of data literacy games. Delta i Data! is part of the Trond Mohn Research Foundation (TMF) funded project EduTrust, part of the TMF's Trustworthy AI collection of projects.
Director Barbara Wasson and former Dean Jarle Eid recounted how the application for SLATE came to be and how happy they were when the funding was awarded to UiB!, before we heard from projects AVT (presented by Barbara Wasson, Professor Malgorzata Cyndecka, Brian Jørgensen, UDE Oslo Kommune & Lene Karin Wiberg (KS), Adaptive Learning in Mathematics (presented by Barbara Wasson for Kjetil Egelandsdal).
An overview of Learning Analytics Research @ SLATE was presented by Associate Professor Mohammad Khalil), the LA Dashboards award winning paper (LAK25) was presented by Rogers Kalisia (UiO) & Kamila Misiejuk (former SLATE PhD candidate, now FernUniversität, Germany), and the ILUKS- an infrastructure for school development by project leader Senior Researcher Kristin Børte.
To give insights into how SLATE contributes to Competence Development, Director Wasson presented the Ersamus+ project DALI, Datareisen and the popular UiB Digital Comptence course(s) DIGI110 Fantastic Data / DIGI610 Fantastiske data. Head of Teaching at SLATE, Associate Professor Fredrik Breien introduced SLATE's Master programme on Human-AI Systems, which is submitted for approval to the Faculty of Psychology (and then to UiB central). SLATE Postdoc Jessa Henderson presented her work on teacher data literacy in the age of AI.
Associate Professor Mohammad Khalil and PhD candidate Qinyi Lui presented work on Synthetic Data,
Postdoc Anja Salzmann gave a resounding talk on Critical Perspectives on LA & AI, before Senior Researcher Ingunn Ness introduced us to INEZ, the talking chatbot developed as part of the AI CREATE project.
To close the seminar, we looked forward - to the challenges and coming possibilities!
Professor Emeritus Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa) gave a powerful and insightful keynote entitled (Con)testing knowledge and knowing: Plunder, slop and value in the AI Empire, asking us to reflect on what is going on with the use of AI in education.
SLATE's new Professor Kirsty Kitto gave an overview of the work being carried out by the International Society of Learning Analytics on a new definition of Learning Analytics.
Director Barbara Wason completed the day with a short presentation of SLATE's application for a national AI Centre, AI Centre for the Empowerment of Human Learning (AI LEARN), which is one of 19 applications in the final round (winners to be announced on 11 June 2025)! Fingers crossed!
