Abstract:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now an integral part of our everyday life, including education. AI has an enormous impact on teaching and learning activities, by enhancing engagement and developing higher-order skills, but it also raises important ethical issues. Particular attention should be paid to the use of AI within complex organizations, where it influences decision-making processes and the assumption of individual responsibilities. This also applies to Higher Education, where the use of AI raises questions of an ethical nature and issues related to the development of active and aware citizens. In this context, a pressing need to provide a framework arises and UNESCO has constituted its own frameworks for teachers and students, based on five core principles and divided in three graduated levels. However, this framework, created by a top-down approach and as a first edition, needs to be implemented in different context and updated based on a participatory approach.

This is the niche that our research project tends to fit. The project is in its early stages, but two are the main objectives: a) mapping the use of AI in university teachers’ activities and b) developing a training course for HE teachers that aligns the needs of their context and the UNESCO framework. It is pursued with a bottom-up, context-driven approach, trying to contribute as a dynamic and participatory model for integrating AI in Higher Education, ensuring ethical, effective, and locally relevant teaching practices.

To provide a basic and strong theoretical framework to our study, an integrative review is carrying on. Then, data will be collected through an online survey, followed by semi-structured interviews to map HE teachers' practices. Data will be analysed through a qualitative and inductive content analysis. From these results, it will be possible to understand the state of the art in a specific context and connect it with the five core principles of the UNESCO framework. In this way, it will be possible to proceed with the second phase, structuring a training path that responds to the gaps and needs of that context, always linked to the five principles, which will provide the basis for defining goals.

The final output of this path will be a draft of AI guidelines created with participants. The entire project is based on a polycentric approach that links two contexts which, although endowed with similar organizational characteristics (size, number of courses promoted, geographical location) are located in culturally very different environments: the University of Verona (Italy) and the Radboud University in Nijmegen (Netherlands).

In conclusion, integrating a bottom-up and participatory approach, this study could contribute to the development of ethically grounded and pedagogically effective AI practices in Higher Education.

Keywords:

AI, Higher Education, UNESCO Competency Framework.