Abstract:

The open-ended and interdisciplinary nature of Artificial Intelligence, expecting learners to understand philosophical, mathematical and programmatic aspects, makes it hard to teach. When delivering classes using ex-cathedra lectures, the nitty-gritty complexity that arises during implementations - so intrinsic to AI - gets lost. On the other hand, approaching AI "bottom-up" from computer code often leads to ignorance of the philosophical aspects, including ethics. Last but not least, a responsible implementation requires not only hard skills but also non-cognitive (soft) skills and meta-cognitive skills (being aware of the process).

For this reason, we have developed an interactive approach that combines (both real-life and virtual) games with a dialectic approach. They provide us with solid foundations to bring a coherent, integrated narrative on AI. We believe it allows us to create deep learning experiences without diving into details that are otherwise needed to understand the complexity of AI.

This approach is specifically useful for lifelong learning settings.

In this talk, we will:
1/ share our experiences teaching AI (including the many different sentiments that it evokes),
2/ give illustrations of our teaching approach;
3/ link them to pedagogical theory, as well as;
4/ explain how we designed the serious game to learn about AI;
5/ provide our lessons learnt in general within the domain of lifelong learning.

Keywords:

AI, lifelong learning, dialectics, serious games.