Professor Alan Smeaton:

In the third level, university and higher education sector, one of the guidelines we produced related to trying to follow up with this. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science hosted a meeting attended by representatives of that Department, the HEA, QQI and the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The Department provided us with a laundry list of things that were ongoing to support and nourish the use of various forms of generative AI in further education. There was also a leadership summit meeting in UCC last week, where heads of universities, or their nominees, came to share their experiences. In the third level sector, there is a lot of activity and sharing rather than each institution trying to develop its own practices and experiences.

The second level sector is not my area, but it is much more difficult. One of the things that makes it difficult is the fast-moving nature of the AI services, products and techniques available to us. While the Department of Education wrestles with trying to come up with guidelines across the second primary level sector, it is very hard to do so when the ground is changing underneath it so rapidly.