The goal of this project is to deploy AIGem, an AI- powered tool at scale, offering it to the community of programming educators across the Netherlands, starting with a local deployment at the ICS department, UU, and then NL, and exploring its uptake.

Background information

In a recent worldwide survey of computing educators, 48% of 514 respondents indicated there was a “Lack of examples of best practices” regarding integrating GenAI in their teaching[1]. Many teachers feel the need to experiment with GenAI, for various reasons, however, there is a risk that didactics are bypassed.

This project offers programming education teachers (ranging from high school to HBO- and university-level Informatics teachers) access to an open platform that uses GenAI to generate high-quality teaching materials, in a way that is grounded in proven didactical methods and incorporates human oversight and data sovereignty by design. Indirectly, the materials reach their students as well.

With this project it is aimed to consolidate findings from educational research. There is often a gap between educational research on supporting tools, and their actual use in practice. Many initiatives remain prototypes and do not reach the teachers. This project will provide the means and support to valorize educational research into educational innovation that can actually reach teachers.

Therefore, UU contributes to society by offering an open platform that is freely available (with fair-use quotas) to teachers.

Goals

The purpose of developing the sustainability case is:

• Embedding within the organisational structure (UU embedment), and
• Other, namely: open software & open source

The team envisions an open, community-supported platform for programming educators in the Netherlands to be able to generate exercises and activities to support their educational activities. To this end they want to:

• Explore the potential of uptake within and outside the ICS department
• Explore the potential of uptake with community-building experts like SURF

Ultimately, define a governance model that guaranties the long-term management and sustainability for the proposed platform, based on the principles of open software.

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