A collective response to the challenges of AI 

In France, as in other countries, education has been affected by the arrival of public generative artificial intelligence. In order to address these challenges, the Directorate for Digital for Education has launched an online community, in November 2023: the “Community of Reflection and Practice in Education around Artificial Intelligence” (CREIA).  It's an innovative way of exchanging ideas. 

The central aim is to bring innovation to the heart of teaching and training, with the support of all educational professionals who wish to learn, observe, contribute, and reflect on the topic of AI in education. 4,000 people have already joined: teachers of all levels, executives, researchers... 

The community gathers and shares the ideas of its members, and promotes collective exchanges through forums and webinars.  Through the forums, members will co-construct ideas with the broader community and share feedback from experiments. This will help everyone to adopt, develop, or reuse actions for efficient and relevant AI acculturation and uses.  

The CREIA also contributes to teacher training through 15-30 minutes micro-modules on a specific aspect of AI in education. These modules are then submitted to CREIA members for review, and modified and improved according to their feedback. This is an example of CREIA's horizontal approach.  

The platform also offers resources and pedagogical scenarios sorted according to the teacher's degree of expertise and the students' grade level. The webinars are recorded and cover practical topics such as inclusion or how to implement AI Cafés. 

The French ministry is often perceived as very top-down. With this project, it is betting on collective intelligence, to address a societal issue in an open, horizontal way, for the benefit of the entire educational community. 

Author: Isabelle Dufrêne