OUR POSTHUMAN LEARNERS
AI AND THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION


Ryan Straight, Ph.D

College of Applied Science and Technology
University of Arizona

 

OUR AGENDA

The Plan for Today

  1. Introduction
  2. Terminology
  3. Mediation (Postphenomenology)
  4. Methods (Posthuman Inquiry)
  5. Technology
  6. Future

Link to this slide deck!

INTRODUCTIONS

Ryan Straight, Ph.D
Honors/Assistant Professor in Cyber, Intel, & Information Operations
Director, MA{VR}X Lab
College of Applied Science and Technology
University of Arizona

TERMINOLOGY

Let’s speak the same language

  1. Posthuman
  2. Posthuman Inquiry & Postphenomenology
  3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  4. Virtual Pedagogical Agents

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MEDIATION

Embodiment

(human – technology) → world

People and technology together relate to the world.

  • You see through a telescope.
  • You talk through a phone.
  • There is technologic transparency.

Image via GIPHY

Hermeneutic

human → (technology – world)

  • You read off a speedometer.
  • We interpret an x-ray.
  • We assume the translation is accurate.
  • There exists a gestalt.

Image via GIPHY

Alterity

human → technology (world)

  • Technology as other.
  • We’re in its system, not ours.
  • World withdraws; we focus on the technology.

Image via GIPHY

Background

human → (technology / world)

  • Impacts our environment.
  • Through this, us.
  • Often don’t notice until it breaks.

Image via GIPHY

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

The Next Generation

Fusion/Cyborg

( human / technology ) → world

Composite

human → ( technology → world )

Augmentation

( human – technology ) → world
                    ↘ ( technology – world )

EDUCATION

Doing Postphenomenology

… in education involves attending to the unique differences a particular technology makes to teaching practice, knowledge apprehension, and pedagogical meaning.

But How?

  1. Composing Anecdotes through Self-Observation
  2. Gathering Lived Experience Descriptions through Interviews
  3. Composing Anecdotes through Observation of Others
  4. Studying Breakdowns and the Eidetic Reduction

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Approaches

  1. Variational method or analysis
  2. Variational cross-examination
  3. Case study
  4. Conversational analysis

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THE TECHNOLOGY

Web3 & XR

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Artifical Intelligence

“Society cannot yet be programmed.”

Arnold Gehlen, 1983, A Philosophical-Anthropological Perspective on Technology

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THE FUTURE

Virtual Pedagogical Agents

Currently

Soon

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Preparing Students

  1. Support students and staff literacy
  2. Staff well-equipped
  3. Ethics first
  4. Academic integrity
  5. Best practices

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Our Posthuman Learners(?)

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Back to the Dancing Doggo

 

THE END

That’s a wrap!

Thank you for coming! Find out more at:

https://mavrxlab.org/news/2023-07-16-kti-c/

References

Adams, C., & Thompson, T. L. (2016). Researching a Posthuman World. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57162-5
Adams, C., & Turville, J. (2018). Doing Postphenomenology in Education. In Postphenomenological Methodologies: New Ways in Mediating Techno-Human Relationships (pp. 3–25). Lexington Books.
Alfaro, L., Rivera, C., Luna-Urquizo, J., Castañeda, E., Zuñiga-Cueva, J., & Rivera-Chavez, M. (2020). New Trends in Pedagogical Agents in Education. 2020 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI), 923–928. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCI51800.2020.00172
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Indiana University Press.
Pitt, J. C. (2011). Doing Philosophy of Technology (Vol. 3). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0820-4
Rosenberger, R., & Verbeek, P.-P. (2015). A Field Guide to Postphenomenology. In Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relations (pp. 9–41). Lexington Books. https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/a-field-guide-to-postphenomenology
Straight, R., & Yowika, W. (2023). From Parasocial to Posthuman: (Virtual) Pedagogical Agents, Parasocial Phenomena, and the Future of Immersive Learning. Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning, 1028–1033. https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/222614/
Verbeek, P. P. (2008). Cyborg intentionality: Rethinking the phenomenology of human-technology relations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 387–395. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-008-9099-x
Wellner, G. (2020). The Multiplicity of Multistabilities: Turning Multistability into a Multistable Concept. In G. Miller & A. Shew (Eds.), Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde (pp. 105–122). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35967-6_7