"AI will affect universities' teaching methods and strategies"

Professor Josep Maria Duart, of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), is a leading figure in the field of educational organization and e-learning. He directs and participates in research projects on educational policies and leadership in higher education and the use of ICTs. Since May 2024, he has also been president of EDEN Digital Learning Europe.

Since founding it in 2004, he has been editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (ETHE), which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this October. In this interview, he analyses the evolution of educational technology in higher education, from his perspective as someone who has experienced this development through the scientific work published in the journal.

Your work at the head of a journal like ETHE has given you a front-row view of the evolution of educational technology. What do you think have been the biggest changes during this time with regards to higher education?

We've experienced three key stages: first, the initial phase up to 2019, where there was growing interest in the use of technology in education, and efforts to get people to understand that technology adds value to the educational process. It was the time of open content, MOOCs and the development of strategic plans for the introduction of technologies in universities, a period that ran from 2004 to 2018.

Was this first period fundamental for the changes taking place now?

Absolutely. Continuous innovation meant that face-to-face universities were always adapting and stopped thinking that educational technology was something that didn't affect them.

And this is when we had the major disruption brought about by the pandemic...

That's the second period. The pandemic brought about a huge change. We should note here that distance teaching was possible at that time thanks to the foundations that had been laid previously. Up till 2021, a great deal of analysis and research was carried out on the impact of the pandemic, on what it meant for teachers and students, and also psychosocial factors. In fact, we had hoped that things would change after the pandemic. They haven't changed so much, but there has been an evolution that's having an impact on hybrid models and will have more impact in the coming years.

In this context, is AI going to change everything?

AI is a major disruptor, very like the introduction of the internet at the end of the last century. We're at an early stage: generative AI applications are changing every day. What's clear is that it's a major change that affects and will continue to affect our learning and teaching methods, how we create educational material and universities' strategies, i.e., how they position themselves regarding AI (some ban it, which is incomprehensible). The articles published in the journal provide a scientific analysis of this change and the impact it has in all areas of the educational world, examining how processes are improved and changes introduced. It's happening very quickly.

Is there resistance to all these changes?

Rather than resistance, academics have two fundamental concerns, which make perfect sense. One worry is about the bias and ethics of AI, knowing who's behind it, what interests the companies that develop it have and what databases they draw on. And academic rigour is the other concern: students might use AI to copy without learning, and this makes it difficult to guarantee the authorship of their work.

In academia, what's the predominant attitude to this issue?

It looks like academia is increasingly opting to treat AI apps as more tools to support the teaching and learning process.

When the ETHE journal was launched in 2004, what were the main goals and expectations?

The journal was founded ten years after the creation of the UOC, which was a pioneer in online higher education. The idea was to create a journal that would disseminate the UOC's knowledge and initiatives in the field of e-learning and explain how the intensive use of the internet, then in its infancy, could transform higher education. We wanted to address these issues from an academic and scientific viewpoint in a standard format, with the UOC leading the way. The journal was founded on three principles: first, it had to be completely digital (something that was even frowned upon initially in the academic world); second, it had to be open access, allowing everyone to read the articles without paying; and third, authors didn't have to pay to publish, because the journal bore the cost. These principles apply to this day, although we're now published by Springer, a large publisher.

In 2010 the journal changed its name and began publishing in English. How did this change influence its international reach and impact?

Initially, the journal was only published in Spanish and circulated mainly in Latin America. With the incorporation of English, which is the language of scientific communication, we were able to translate articles and reach a wider audience. In 2010, we entered the Scopus database, and since 2016, when publication was taken over by Springer, we've been included in the JCR (Journal Citations Report) and have experienced exponential growth in the submission of articles from all over the world, with authors from countries such as China and the USA predominating.

What have the most notable accomplishments of ETHE been during these 20 years?

Our greatest achievement is to have made the journal a world leader in open access in the field of educational technology. This is an impressive milestone for the UOC, which has successfully positioned a journal that talks about what it is: a pioneering institution in higher education and technology. And we've done this from Barcelona. In 2014 we decided to raise the journal's international profile and, also to help make it financially sustainable, we began to publish jointly with the University of New England in Australia, until 2016. In 2016 we partnered with Dublin City University and the Universidad de los Andes in Latin America. In 2018 we partnered with Vytautas Magnus University, in Lithuania, and this year we have the National University of Ireland, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, in Chile, and Guangzhou University, in China. The journal is jointly edited by four universities, although the UOC continues to lead the group. We've also been committed to professionalization from the beginning. We've employed someone to professionalize the entire peer review and editing process since 2008. Today we're a small team ensuring that professional standards are maintained in the journal. If this had been a personal project, the work of just one person, we wouldn't have got to where we are today.

International Open Access Week is being held this October. How important is the open access model for the dissemination of scientific knowledge?

The UOC and the journal have always been committed to an open access model. We believe that knowledge should be a public asset and accessible to everyone. It's unusual for an open access journal to be ranked second in the world in such a specific field, and this is a source of great pride for us.

What future challenges does the journal face in the current context of AI?

We've organized a workshop to reflect on the future of the journal in relation to AI. The journal has always tried to look to the future, concerned about the educational challenges facing us, one of which is AI. Our 20th anniversary also gives us a good excuse to think about our own future as a journal in view of what AI is. Not much is said about it, but internally it does affect us. Machines can produce articles, and they can write reviews, too. Many activities that have been carried out by people for centuries can be done with AI applications today. During the workshop, we'll discuss and share ideas and proposals to assess and analyse the significant challenges facing academic publishing, especially those related to the emergence of AI.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.

Over 500 researchers and more than 50 research groups work in the UOC's seven faculties, its eLearning Research programme and its two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The university also develops online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.

Open knowledge and the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu.