New BoulderTalks: Insights from Education Innovators Series

Rupert Ward | AI for Personalized Education

Join us for the inaugural event in this series as leading edtech innovator Rupert Ward takes us on a journey into the fascinating intersection of AI and personalized learning.

•   Jan. 25, 2024 (Thu.)
•   4–5 p.m.*
•   Chancellor’s Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE), 1725 Euclid Ave, Boulder, CO 80309

* Coffee and light snacks will be available starting at 3:30 p.m. outside the auditorium, and will be available until 5:30 p.m. for continued questions and conversation after the talk.

Rupert Ward is Professor of Learning Innovation within the School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, UK and Executive Dean (International) of the Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. He is a former Special Adviser to the Royal Household and former Project Lead for iDEA, a badging solution used in over 95% of countries.He has also co-developed one of the leading global technology acceptance models (GETAMEL), and he currently leads the development of a global accreditation standard for badging and micro-credentialing as part of his role as Director of Strategic Partnerships, and a member of the Executive Board, of the International Council on Badges and Credentials. Rupert is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has authored two books on personalized learning (Personalised Learning for the Learning Person and Getting Personal: How we learn and why we don’t) and is an avid learner who is currently completing his tenth postgraduate qualification. 

Watch this BoulderTalks session on YouTube.

Yakut Gazi | The Practical and Moral Imperative for At-Scale Learning

Join us for the second talk in our series where learning innovation and digital education leader Yakut Gazi will share her experiences and insights on creating innovative online programs while aligning institutional mission, priorities, business and instructional models to expand the impact of institutions. The challenges with the future of work and education are indeed issues of scale and inclusion, especially in a technology-driven post-COVID world. Higher education institutions have an opportunity, and arguably a social responsibility, to utilize effective digital learning and create partnerships for affordability, scale, and impact to reach all corners of the globe. A variety of innovative business and learning models developed within the last decade have already changed the equation for many institutions and learners. These institutions exemplify a relentless commitment to affordability and access that led to impact at scale. What is the next impactful innovation that will enable our institutions to touch many more learners beyond those that walk on our campuses?

•   CANCELED: We are rescheduling this talk originally scheduled for Feb. 6, 2024 (Tue.) and will update this page once more details are available.

Yakut Gazi is the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education at Duke University. She oversees digital and lifetime learning operations, including the pre-college and retirement programs. Previously, she was the Associate Dean for Learning Systems at Georgia Tech Professional Education. Her higher education experience spans over 29 years in four countries. She served on the Academic Advisory Council for Quality Matters©, is an elected council member and First Vice President of the International Association for Engineering Continuing Education (IACEE), and an at-Large Board Member of the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA). Dr. Gazi has her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University, and an M.A. in Educational Sciences and a B.S. in Teaching Chemistry, both from Bogazici University in Turkey.

David Joyner | The Evolving Roles of ChatGPT & Generative AI in Education

Join us for the final BoulderTalks event this winter as award-winning educator and innovator David Joyner looks forward by looking backward, starting by retracing how technological innovation has changed education in the past and using that context to project how new tools like ChatGPT will change education in the future. With that as a foundation, Joyner will then look at how AI can and should be used to help both students and teachers going forward.

•   March 21, 2024 (Thu.)
•   4–5 p.m.*
•   Chancellor’s Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE), 1725 Euclid Ave, Boulder, CO 80309

* Coffee and light snacks will be available starting at 3:30 p.m. outside the auditorium, and will be available until 5:30 p.m. for continued questions and conversation after the talk.

​David Joyner is Executive Director of Online Education & OMSCS in Georgia Tech's College of Computing. His research focuses on online education and learning at scale, especially as they intersect with for-credit offerings at the graduate and undergraduate levels. His emphasis is on designing learning experiences that leverage the opportunities of online learning to compensate for the loss of synchronous collocated class time. This includes leveraging artificial intelligence for student support and assignment evaluation, facilitating student communities in large online classes, and investigating strategies for maintainable and interactive presentation of online instructional material. As part of his work, Joyner teaches online versions of Educational Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, Knowledge-Based AI, and Introduction to Computing. He is also Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee for the ACM Learning @ Scale conference, as well as the General Chair for the 2019 and 2020 conferences. Joyner has received several awards for his work in teaching online, including the 2019 USG Regents' Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching, 2018 Georgia Tech Center for Teaching & Learning Curriculum Innovation Award, and the 2016 Georgia Tech College of Computing Lockheed Excellence in Teaching Award.

Watch this BoulderTalks session on YouTube.