On April 24 and 25, Penn GSE welcomed students, faculty, researchers, and education leaders from across sectors for the first Penn GSE AI & Education Symposium, a two-day gathering that placed human-centered learning at the center of conversations about artificial intelligence.
Organized by students in Penn GSE’s Learning Analytics and Artificial Intelligence program, the symposium was part of the University’s AI Month and brought together voices from higher education, industry, nonprofit leadership, and public policy for a series of keynote conversations, breakout sessions, workshops, and student research exhibitions designed to examine how AI is reshaping teaching, learning, and educational systems.
“This symposium was conceptualized, executed, and run entirely by our students,” said Nam Nguyen, senior research manager for AI & Education at Penn GSE. “Professor Seiji Isotani and I stayed in the background. Our role was simply to create the conditions for them to lead, to satisfy their endless curiosity, and to ask the big, meaningful questions about learning and AI that this moment demands.”
The symposium opened with a panel on the Penn GSE AI Thinkery, a new cross-disciplinary faculty working group designed to facilitate discussion and collaboration around AI at GSE. Associate Professor Seiji Isotani, Professor of Practice Sharon Ravitch, Adjunct Associate Professor Ross Aikins, and Tomea Sippio-Smith, director of the Coalition for Educational Excellence at Catalyst @ Penn GSE, invited participants to examine the human beliefs, institutional habits, and ethical assumptions that shape how organizations adopt emerging technologies.
Across both days, attendees engaged with a wide range of topics, including AI and morality in higher education, climate literacy, immersive learning through virtual reality, workforce development, and algorithmic justice. Sessions featured speakers from Harvard University, IBM, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Rutgers University, highlighting both global and interdisciplinary perspectives on AI in education.
Saturday’s keynote, moderated by Isotani, featured Sarah Newman of Harvard’s metaLAB, IBM Vice President Lydia Logan, education specialist Gabriela Gambi, and Distinguished Professor Janice Gobert of Rutgers Graduate School of Education. The panel explored the future of teaching and learning through questions of access, ethics, public policy, and the global responsibilities that accompany AI innovation.
The symposium also spotlighted student research through an interactive gallery and education expo, where attendees could explore projects on intelligent tutoring systems, AI instructional games, algorithmic auditing, language learning technologies, and AI-supported qualitative research. Graduate students presented work on personalized learning, financial literacy coaching, ESL support, and AI ethics, offering a glimpse into the next generation of scholarship emerging from Penn GSE.
By the end of the two-day event, the symposium had brought together keynote panels, 12 breakout sessions, an interactive research gallery, and student-led demonstrations, reflecting Penn GSE’s growing leadership in shaping not only how artificial intelligence enters education, but how education, in turn, shapes the future of artificial intelligence.
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