The cause of Inclusive Education has been promoted for some time, recently through the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4: to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. Artificial intelligence and related technologies have become important components of the digital economy and affect core areas of our increasingly technologically networked lives. In addition, the EU JRC for Science Policy Report (2019)’ The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learning, Teaching, and Education’ “suggests that in the next years AI will change learning, teaching, and education.” The INCAI project aims to examine the ways specific AI technology can support diverse learners and how AI is used in particular in the context of Adult Education to provide a more inclusive and flexible learning environment. Educators from partner organisations will link with ICT/AI specialist organisations in their country and work with a specific target groups of disadvantaged learners and co – produce a wireframe plan for a piece of AI technology which would meet specific needs of that target group. In doing this it will improve the skills and competencies of the adult educators and provide them with innovative learning methodologies to make their services more inclusive as well as the competencies knowledge and insight of disadvantaged learners and knowledge and skills of AI professionals and social partners. The meetings will be used for a mixture of general management and administration and sharing of learning and exchange of current good practice and a visit to the local AI specialist along with representatives of the target group. Each meeting will address a different theme of AI and Inclusion. Introduction to AI in Education Introduction to AI wireframes New innovations in AI AI and social inclusion Future developments in AI There will be two Learning events which will produce the main outputs of guidelines on developing AI wireframes and sustainability plans for AI wireframes produced at local level on each partner country. Both GRALE 2015 (Global Report on Adult Learning and Education) and the European Agenda highlights the importance of addressing certain target groups. These are precisely the target groups which are represented by the partners in this project: migrants; seniors, people with disabilities and mental health, low skilled people, non-native speakers, LGBTQ and BME communities and ex-offenders. members of deprived communities experiencing poverty and social exclusion. The overall aim of the project is to produce a more effective educational experience for adult learners in the contexts mentioned through effective strategies focused on improving the inclusion of adults from marginal, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. objectives are: -To compare, share and identify and promote good practice that can enhance the inclusion of adults from disadvantaged groups in education and learning. -To enhance the provision of good quality learning opportunities to adult’s learners in particular those from excluded groups -To contribute to social inclusion in education across the EU using AI -To develop and broaden the competences of adult education providers and organisations working with adult learners from excluded groups -To demonstrate the significant role AI technology can play in improving inclusion in learning in current practices across EU -To present identified best practices and develop guidelines on how to prepare AI wireframes. -To drive social change and contribute to future development of inclusive AI in education by producing sustainability plans for inclusive AI tools co-produced in partner countries across the EU and by providing local, regional, national and EU level dissemination activities This will lead to : -increased inclusion of adult learners -increased ICT skills and competences for adult learners -increased competences and skills for educators in partner organisations -increased capacity of partner organisations to serve adult learners from disadvantaged groups. There will be 6 transnational Partnership Meetings and 2 Learning events and 1 transnational meeting with 146 participants from 8 partners. in addition to local participants and stakeholders who attend these events and who participate in local activities. The transnational dimension is imperative in this project, contributions from different EU partners across Europe will enable learning, sharing of good practices and a wide dissemination. It will also build innovative and productive partnerships for future collaboration and contribute to the future agenda of inclusive AI in Adult Education.
The INCAI project focused on how AI could make education more inclusive for adult learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and explored how to address the unique challenges they face. By offering tailored learning, flexibility, cultural sensitivity, and personalised support education and training providers using inclusive AI can empower these learners to overcome barriers, acquire valuable skills, and enhance their quality of life. As this was a Sharing of good practice project we wanted to look at existing good practice in this field learn from it and explore this learning with educators, learners and stakeholders in partner countries, We also wanted to explore how this could be further developed to ensure inclusivity and develop ideas for future development of learning tools using AI to make learning more Inclusive. We also wanted to ensure AI was accessible to all learners and educators and future tools were developed to meet their needs.
For several years we had begun to recognize the growing importance of Artificial Intelligence in life in general and especially in an education, training and learning context. As organisations supporting learners from more disadvantaged and marginalised backgrounds, we started to explore how this growing trend of AI in education could be used to improve inclusivity and support learners. Our research included the EU JRC for Science Policy Report (2019)’ The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learning, Teaching, and Education’ which “suggested that in the next years AI will change learning, teaching, and education and coupled with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4: to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. We felt that as partnership we needed to learn more about existing developments in this field, share good practice across partnership countries and organisations and come together to look at future ways AI could be incorporated into learning and teaching programmes to make them more accessible and inclusive and ensure all learners from all backgrounds were fully supported and also have an understanding of how AI has developed as part of our daily lives.