In Workshop A, titled “AI in Education 2030: A Speculative Futures Workshop,” participants engage in a creative speculative fabulation workshop. They explore three future scenarios: “A University with No More Writing,” “All Assessments Given in Class,” and “Full Embrace of GenAI.” The focus of the workshop is on imaginative world-building rather than critiquing these futures. We draw inspiration from Siân Bayne’s (2023) work on speculative utopias for digital education and Terry Eagleton’s (2015) ideas suggesting that hopeful speculation can lead us toward actively constructing futures. These works shift the mindset from a more bureaucratic or task oriented goal of maintaining or regaining educational standards, and instead working toward what education might become, and using utopia “as a way of trying to understand how, as educators, we might work with the widely felt desire for a better way of living” (Bayne, 2023, p. 507). Within this, Workshop A aims to provide participants with the space to creatively envision how these various future scenarios could work, discussing what excites them about each scenario and exploring the pedagogical implications of these futures.

Workshop B, titled “Revising Assignments and Assessments in the GenAI Era,” offers participants the opportunity to develop pilot tests through a design-thinking process that encourages innovative thinking from the ground up. Participants are encouraged to bring a specific assignment or assessment that may be impacted by GenAI and collaborate in small teams to brainstorm and create alternatives to test in the next iteration of their courses. The goal is to focus on strong pedagogical ideals for the future, reimagining education in a way that prioritizes its core purposes, rather than being constrained by narrow discussions of plagiarism and inevitability.

In Workshop A, participants reflected our goals and the workshop content through the questions they raised:

• Do our traditional assessments truly reflect the values we advocate for in the humanities?
• Could we shift our focus to emphasize the learning process rather than just the final products?
• What possibilities for transformative learning, shared meaning-making, and co-construction of knowledge emerge when we center dialogue and interaction in assessment practices?
• With generative AI shaking up higher education, how can we turn this disruption into an opportunity to inspire fundamental changes in our teaching and learning environments?

Workshop A received positive feedback, with educators stating that it inspired them to think in new ways. However, some participants struggled to overcome their resistance to certain future possibilities. We tried to navigate this by allowing space for that resistance to be articulated, while having a moderator from our team at each table who was encouraged to guide the group back on track when discussions began to drift away from the workshop’s aims.

In Workshop B, several participants left with updated drafts of their assignments that they intend to try in their upcoming course iteration. In most cases, the core structure of the assignment, often a final essay, remained intact, but was adjusted to include elements aimed at making the assignment more personally resonant for students. For example, some decided to add prompts encouraging students to reflect on their own positionality in relation to their written work, with the intention of fostering deeper, more reflexive engagement and reducing the likelihood of outsourcing. While we haven’t yet followed up with participants, the workshop was framed as an ongoing opportunity for those interested in further revising their assignments, with the option of receiving support from members of our team, and we hope to continue this engagement in future iterations.

The collective questions and challenges discussed at the end of Workshop B included:

• Why do we as teachers have a strong attachment to writing and still desire to maintain writing in some format even if it is not “AI-resilient”?
• How can we better foster a love for learning, the joy of research, and the writing process itself, so that GenAI is not the immediate “go to” resource for students?
• Which assignments are difficult to grade, which are a pleasure, and how might delineating this might offer a productive starting point for engaging in assessment re-design?
• How can we use this crisis as an opportunity to address ongoing or longstanding problems with how we think about the purpose of assignments, or evidence of learning?

One recurring refrain from teachers was that writing itself is a process of thinking, a mode of not only developing critical and analytical skills, but also discovering and shaping one’s own voice. For teachers in humanities, where writing has traditionally been a central practice, it became clear that the topic needs more discussion than time allowed for in the workshop. That is, several participants expressed strong sadness, frustration, and resistance to giving up writing, yet they also acknowledged that with students’ current use of GenAI, students are not gaining either writing skills or a love of writing. This fact caused meaningful discomfort among the workshop participants, not least because the situation seems untenable and impossible to either ignore or solve. This prompted much discussion that did not move people forward toward pilot tests, but did provide more space for deepening their discussion about what this means and how it might be resolved. The ending point for this workshop was that educators need to find ways of communicating the value of writing to students, both within our teaching and learning environments and through the ways we design our assessments.

Overall, participants appreciated the chance to collaborate  in small groups of five. This format allowed for meaningful exchange where most people could be heard, with participants supporting one another in rethinking specific assignments or problems, which not only sparked new insights but also surfaced questions they hadn’t previously considered. Some of the insights shared with us included gaining clarity on why they feel resistance or attachment to doing things a certain way, including what they are fighting for in their teaching, and why certain practices matter deeply to them. Others spoke of the value of learning from one another’s expertise, not just in emerging technologies, but in the craft and lived experience of pedagogy. And perhaps most significantly, some described the experience as a moment of feeling less isolated with, or overwhelmed by, their pedagogical questions. The workshops overall created spaces that facilitated teachers to take the first steps toward addressing core and difficult issues being raised by the present use of Generative AI in classes.

This workshop series serves as a pathway for UU to address a growing problem by providing resources that help teachers actively develop and employ creative responses to GenAI…sooner rather than later, and with a playful spirit of daring to think differently.

At least 3 more sessions of each workshop will be held in the 2025-6 academic year, where the goal is to expand and help colleagues from Utrecht University (and even beyond) to participate in collaborative speculative futuremaking and engage in hands-on, grounded revision of their assignments. The team will hold at least one “Train the Trainers” session where we can captivate the imagination of others and help them facilitate these workshops in their own courses, programmes, and departments. Additionally, the team would like to provide opportunities for more feedback loops and post-pilot assessments following the two workshops, allowing staff members that participated to work with our team to assess the value, conduct, and outcomes of their pilot tests. These opportunities will be rolled out through the Centre for Digital Humanities or on the Futures + Literacies + Methods website.