Abstract:

During the winter of 2024 we started a new customized course aimed towards working professionals, in which we aimed to teach them about all the new generative AI tools for increased productivity. This course is a part of our large effort towards giving specialized courses to working professionals, to support lifelong learning. Prior to the course we have had interviews and surveys with our project partners, and they highly requested this type of course. Being exactly right in time and with the current hype, the number of students and interest in this course greatly exceeded our expectations. However, this also led to many pedagogical and didactical challenges, when we had to deal with over 100 course participants on distance with a very flexible format, while at the same time keeping up pace and interest since they all were working professionals with individual needs and other obligations. The continually evolving landscape of generative AI and how the world has changed during the timeframe of this course has also been a challenge. We are also certain, that next year the world will look completely different and much of the materials will need to be updated.

Hence, in this work we have investigated the research questions:
1. How to set up a flexible distance course for working professionals in the domain of generative AI, that both can be time effective, pedagogically and didactically sound, as well as stand the test of time in the ever-evolving domain of generative AI?
2. How can we make sure that the lifelong, workplace, and networked learning perspectives can be highlighted in such a course. With so much flexibility, so many participants, and dealing both with the challenges and opportunities of them being working professionals.

Based on these research questions, our results include three main parts:
- The course structure and organization, from creating an inspiring live streamed open lecture on YouTube to attract more students, to the examined laboration exercises, distance tutoring sessions, and the final real-world project, is all with the perspective in mind of creating flexible customization for good distance learning while enabling the student to get a win-win with their work and study situation.
- Our didactical/pedagogical model for giving courses to working professionals, which includes both micro learning aspects with tasks of appropriate sizes. Networked learning aspects for them to learn from each other’s exercise results in the course, as well as a focus on self-reliance and an ownership of the learning processes in a flipped classroom inspired teaching approach. The aim is to also enable workplace learning and promote lifelong learning in the participants while dealing with the vast difference in prior knowledge of the course participants.
- We will also present quantitative data on the course execution and student interviews and course evaluations showing the real success and impact of this course at the workplaces of the working professionals. It will include an overview of our success factors and lessons learnt for keeping student engagement. Finally, we will show an incredible exposé of inspiring generative AI projects connected to increasing the productivity, concluding with an outlook on the future of generative AI tools for increasing productivity of working professionals, our future endeavors in the educating in the use of them, and our ambition for the next course iteration.

Keywords:

Lifelong learning, Generative AI, Workplace learning, Networked learning.