“Ethical and non-discriminatory” artificial intelligence can support personalization in digital education, a senior European Commission official told Euractiv in an interview, reflecting on the 2023 edition of the annual DigiEduHack event.
“The Commission launched the Digital Education Hackathon in 2019 and since then it has significantly developed and improved,” said Antoaneta Angelova-Krasteva, Director at the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) of the European Commission.
She said that in 2023, 39 local hackathons had taken place, “engaging over 1,500 participants”.
Taking stock of “lessons learned and feedback from participants from previous editions”, DG EAC has decided to extend the “Digital Education Hackathon Days from two to eight, so that host organizations such as schools or universities can have flexibility in the organization of their local events.” .
Angelova-Krasteva also stressed that DG EAC’s priority is to “further promote this culture of feedback”.
Building on this, she said that through the DigiEduHack event, her team learned that there was “strong interest in challenges related to emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence or virtual reality, or related to solutions linked to digital well-being.
Awareness raising is another topic where stakeholders expect the Commission to engage.
To this end, Angelova-Krasteva said that “a key source of information for all education and training policies and initiatives at EU level” was the European Education Area Portaladding that the Commission “also counts on social media as an important channel to disseminate our policies and speak directly to Europeans of different ages”.
Angelova-Krasteva then spoke about the role of “Commission representations in Member States” and “Erasmus+ national agencies”, which play a key role in raising awareness, also believing that they are better placed to know “the contexts national and stakeholder networks.
Supporting competent and autonomous Europeans in the digital field
Angelova-Krasteva recalled that “education is an exclusive competence of the Member States”, with the EU only having a complementary role.
Therefore, when asked to comment on DigiEduHack’s choice of this year’s theme, which was “putting people at the center of digital education”, she replied that there was a need to make digital transformation “people-centered” and “to ensure that this transformation is people-centered.” a reality, we need competent and autonomous Europeans in the digital field.”
Citing the Commission’s Digital Decade 2030 goals of “80% of Europeans having basic digital skills and reaching 20 million ICT specialists”, Angelova-Krasteva highlighted that by 2023, “only 54% of Europeans had basic digital skills.”
Considering current trends in the EU, by 2030, “we simply will not meet the targets,” she warned.
To support these goals, Angelova-Krasteva explained that “targeted support also comes from European funding and in particular from Erasmus+”, while “initiatives like Girls Go Circular, on the other hand, aim to reduce the digital gender divide , having equipped more than 32,000 people.” girls with digital and entrepreneurial skills.
She said Erasmus+, the European education and training programme, had “a total budget of €28 billion for 2021-2027” and was targeting its funding towards digital education, for which “the community’s appetite is remarkable.”
Artificial intelligence and non-discrimination
Returning to this year’s most high-profile technology topic, artificial intelligence, Angelova-Krasteva said that “AI supports personalization by tailoring learning materials to students’ skill levels and needs.”
Yet she added that AI’s impact depends on “how it is integrated into the broader digital education ecosystem”, calling for AI tools to be “developed and deployed ethically and non-discriminatory”.
To this end, she recognized the importance of European AI law, while emphasizing the promotion of “qualified European citizens who are well aware of the opportunities and risks that this technology brings”.
She explained that the Commission had published Ethical Guidelines on the Use of Artificial Intelligencewhich she called “an important step toward supporting teachers in the use of these technologies.”
(Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic)
