Date of the Workshop: Friday 18 July 2025
Location: University of Edinburgh, School of Mathematics, Elm Lecture Theatre at Nuclues building
Introduction
After having the storm of Generative AI (Gen-AI), like ChatGPT, higher education (HE) system started to discuss possibilities and challenges since 2023. Whilst these tools provide transformative results, we must ensure that students are using them critically for their teaching and learning process. As mentioned in various reports and projections, as higher education institutions, we should help them to be prepared for work life after their study, but it is vital that those tools are used as help rather than bypassing the learning process. There is an ongoing debate on using such tools for teaching or not, with various strategies or plans applied so far. The course level/content sensitivity is varying with such tools, ie., proof-based mathematics vs. programming modules. Mainly, it is urgent to reconsider the teaching and learning under the huge pressure of Gen-AI-based tools and their high-speed development. As Gen-AI becomes widespread, it is crucial to provide an enriched platform to share best practices and thought-provoking panel discussions among the HE institutions. The proposed workshop aims to address this critical challenge by bringing together a collection of educators and teaching practitioners from related fields of study, especially Mathematical Sciences / STEM. We aim to stimulate discussions among teaching practitioners relying on their experiences. The University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with The University of Glasgow, will host this follow-up workshop to last year’s Glasgow event on Rethinking Assessment in The Mathematical Sciences in Times of Generative AI, keeping momentum going on interesting discussions.
Workshop Overview
This workshop is mainly organised by Ozan Evkaya and Jennifer Gaskell with tow co-organisers from University of Edinburgh (Skarleth Carrales Escobedo and Steven O’Hagan were helping on the event day primarily). Workshop is designed similar to its first version including both the main speakers and lightening talks. For a certain period of time, a participation form is circulated to increate its impact and widening the audience. At the end, the workshop covered three main speakers (one internal, two externals) over different aspects and in total 3 out of 4 planned lightening talks (across two specific sessions) are presented. For the discussion topics, people are grouped together (around 6-7 groups) to do brainstorming. Overall, the workshop delivered in person for stimulating productive discussions among the participants and upon a specific request, only the main speaker talks are recorded for internal sharing. In total, 30 people are participated, less than expected compared to the filled forms because of some last minute personal issues or other clashes. In terms of the daily schedule, we started with keynote speaker (Michael Grove- Birmingham Universirty) shared his experiences on Gen-AI conversation in HE and then followed different types sequentially. As our internal speaker, Stuart King talked systematic approaches of GenAI in Mathematical Sciences education. As a final speaker, we had Amanda Shaker, who talked about the relationship between the use of AI and Statistics anxiety by relying on a cross-international survey study results.
Main Themes and Ideas
Generally the themes that advertised by workshop and followed by the event are given as a list below. Beyond that list, we created two specific discussion sessions by co-creating with organising members and participants (via their suggestions in the filled form). During the workshop, people are grouped together to do brainstorming on:
- Discussion Topic 1: How to prepare students for AI enabled workplace, what skills do we need to prioritise and
- Discussion Topic 2: How to use AI to engage the students in the teaching and learning process.
The listed theme items are:
(i) Integrating AI Tools in Mathematical Education
(ii) Ethical Considerations in AI-Driven Learning
(iii) Personalized Learning Pathways with AI
(iv) AI and the Evolution of Mathematical Problem Solving
(v) Instructor Roles in an AI-Augmented Classroom
(vi) Assessing the Learning Outcomes in the Age of Gen-A
(vii) How to develop Critical Thinking and AI Literacy.
For the lightening talk sessions, different streams are created focusing on specific courses vs incorporation of AI into curriculum and assessment.
Emerging Implications and Recommendations
The workshop paved the way of joint discussions among colleagues who are interested in how AI is affecting the teaching and learning in mathematics in general. For further discussion, most of the participants are keen on following similar events to update their knowledge on a rapidly moving area and its impact in HE setting. Specifically, the following comments are obtained from some participants based on the final survey on getting feedback, shared after the event with all participants.
- Participant 1: “The discussions were very useful… I was able to share my experiences and also learn how others are approaching assessment / teaching in times of GenAI … This workshop was very useful overall and built in nicely on the Glasgow workshop last year.
- Participant 2: “…The speakers were very good and share some nice ideas. Overall I thought the workshop was great and no complaints. I would be interested in attending similar style workshops – seems a relevant theme to keep the momentum going on”.
- Participant 3: “I found the whole day very interesting, useful and insightful – more than I expected before I attended… The sessions covering specific topics related to programming and statistics I feel I can apply to my own courses…”
Resources and Links
The workshop related details and the slides of the speakers can be seen via the official event webpage. This website is used for sharing all related information with participants.
Acknowledgments
The workshop is mainly sponsored by the consortium of IMA, RSS and LMS HE Teaching and Learning Workshop Series 2025, so many thanks for their support. Additionally, the same amount of extra funding is granted via Generative AI laboratory of the University of Edinburgh (via main organiser), thanks to their generous help. Some additional expenses of external speakers are supported by the university of Edinburgh and Glasgow University at the end.
Conclusion
Overall, including a very good line-up main speakers and discussion sessions, the workshop was really useful for all participants. In general, the event day was smooth regarding the logistics and delivery of the talks. Generally, the happened lightening talks are a bit limited to what was imagined including the number of participants. So choosing a correct date seems crucial to avoid any clash or any specific issues. Regarding the final impact, the main organisers have further plans to keep that momentum by widening the participation and increasing the impact of such events for teaching faculties in mathematical sciences to follow the AI literacy and its impact in teaching and learning. As an initial next step, me and Jennifer Gaskell are planning to apply middle size fundings to create a real growing network around the topic of “Gen-AI for mathematical education”.
