The Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education and Learning (AIEL), a diamond open-access journal published under the auspices of AACE and distributed worldwide through LearnTechLib has just launched its inaugural issue, which includes a paper from me (Cognitive Santa Claus Machines and the Tacit Curriculum).
This inaugural issue is a great start to what I think will come to be recognized as a leading journal in the field of AI and education. As not just an author but an associate editor I am naturally a little biased but I’m very picky about the journals I work with and this one ticks all the right boxes. It is genuinely open, without fees for authors or readers. It is explicitly very multidisciplinary. The editors – Mike Searson and Theo Bastiaens – are truly excellent, and prominent in the field of online and technology-enhanced learning. The publisher, AACE is a very well-oiled, prominent, professional, and likeable organization that has been a major player in the field for over 30 years, with extensive reach into institutional libraries the world over via LearnTechLib.
And the journal has an attitude that I like very much: it’s about learning enhancement through AI, not just AI and education. This fills a huge pragmatic need in an area where many practitioners are like deer caught in the headlights when it comes to thinking about what positive things we can do with our new robot friends/overlords/interlopers, and where too much of the conversation is implicitly focused on protecting the traditional forms and structures of our mediaeval education systems and the kinds of knowledge generative AI can more easily and effectively replicate.
This first issue crosses many disciplinary boundaries and aspects of the educational endeavour with a very diverse range of reflective papers by recognized experts in many facets of AI, education, and learning. All are ultimately optimistic about the potential for learning enhancement but few back away from the wicked problems and potential for the opposite effect. My own paper finds a thread of hope that we might not so much reinvent as simply notice what education currently does (it’s about learning to be as much as learning to do), and that we might recognize generative AIs not as tools but as cognitive Santa Claus machines, sharing their cognitive gifts to help us collectively achieve things we could not dream of before. It has a bit of theory to back that up.
If you have influence over such things, do encourage your libraries to subscribe!