Search

The rapid expansion of Learning Analytics (LA) and Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) offers new scalable, data-intensive systems but raises concerns about data privacy and agency. Excluding stakeholders—like students and teachers—from the design process can potentially lead to mistrust and inadequately aligned tools. Despite a shift towards human-centred design in recent LA and AIED research, there remain gaps in our understanding of the importance of human control, safety, reliability, and trustworthiness in the design and implementation of these systems. We conducted a systematic literature review to explore these concerns and gaps. We analysed 108 papers to provide insights about i) the current state of human-centred LA/AIED research; ii) the extent to which educational stakeholders have contributed to the design process of human-centred LA/AIED systems; iii) the current balance between human control and computer automation of such systems; and iv) the extent to which safety, reliability and trustworthiness have been considered in the literature. Results indicate some consideration of human control in LA/AIED system design, but limited end-user involvement in actual design. Based on these findings, we recommend: 1) carefully balancing stakeholders' involvement in designing and deploying LA/AIED systems throughout all design phases 2) actively involving target end-users, especially students, to delineate the balance between human control and automation, and 3) exploring safety, reliability, and trustworthiness as principles in future human-centred LA/AIED systems.

The proliferation of AI in many aspects of human life—from personal leisure, to collaborative professional work, to global policy decisions—poses a sharp question about how to prepare people for an interconnected, fast-changing world which is increasingly becoming saturated with technological devices and agentic machines. What kinds of capabilities do people need in a world infused with AI? How can we conceptualise these capabilities? How can we help learners develop them? How can we empirically study and assess their development? With this paper, we open the discussion by adopting a dialogical knowledge-making approach. Our team of 11 co-authors participated in an orchestrated written discussion. Engaging in a semi-independent and semi-joint written polylogue, we assembled a pool of ideas of what these capabilities are and how learners could be helped to develop them. Simultaneously, we discussed conceptual and methodological ideas that would enable us to test and refine our hypothetical views. In synthesising these ideas, we propose that there is a need to move beyond AI-centred views of capabilities and consider the ecology of technology, cognition, social interaction, and values.

There are emerging concerns about the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) of educational interventions supported by the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. One of the emerging methods for increasing trust in AI systems is to use eXplainable AI (XAI), which promotes the use of methods that produce transparent explanations and reasons for decisions AI systems make. Considering the existing literature on XAI, this paper argues that XAI in education has commonalities with the broader use of AI but also has distinctive needs. Accordingly, we first present a framework, referred to as XAI-ED, that considers six key aspects in relation to explainability for studying, designing and developing educational AI tools. These key aspects focus on the stakeholders, benefits, approaches for presenting explanations, widely used classes of AI models, human-centred designs of the AI interfaces and potential pitfalls of providing explanations within education. We then present four comprehensive case studies that illustrate the application of XAI-ED in four different educational AI tools. The paper concludes by discussing opportunities, challenges and future research needs for the effective incorporation of XAI in education.