Speakers: Chris Bigum (Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Australia)

Moderator: Shitanshu Mishra (UNESCO MGIEP, India)

Curated by: APSCE Educational Use of Problems/Questions in Technology-Enhanced Learning (EUPQ) SIG

Date: 7 November 2025 (Friday)
Time: 9:00-10:00 (UTC+8)

Register before 5 November 2025: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xO9APP2uRxKMbx0AdyyyyQ

Abstract:

Once upon a time, education was built on questions. Then the machines arrived with all the answers.

This webinar asks what happens to learning when curiosity meets computation. What becomes of the student's puzzled silence, the teacher's guiding question, the shared pause before an idea forms-when an algorithm can fill the space in an instant? Generative Al promises fluency, speed, and precision; yet these capacities may hollow out the conditions under which thought begins.

Drawing on stories from the long history of humans delegating thinking to their tools, this session explores how we might reclaim questioning. What if the task of education now is not to teach answers, but to protect the fragile ecology of good questions.

Biodata:

Chris Bigum is an Adjunct Professor at the Griffith Institute for Educational Research who lives an unretired academic life on the Gold Coast, where he can swim and surf year-round. He first met a computer in 1968 and has been intrigued ever since by how each new wave of technology redraws the line between the human and the machine. His current work explores how teachers and students might cultivate an Al sensibility-a feel for when to trust, when to doubt, and when to learn alongside intelligent systems. In the spirit of Bruno Latour and N. Katherine Hayles, they treat Al not as a tool but as a new companion species in the long story of how we delegate thought-and discover, to our surprise, that our companion species delegates back.