I’m very pleased and happy that I moved to the Center for Life Ethics (CLE) on 1st of March 2026!
CLE will become my new home for exciting collaboration and activities on Ethical AI and Education (AI&ED) and the relations to societal impacts and benefits:
I’m looking forward to sharing more details and cooperating with you on the life ethics for the benefits of our whole society!
More about the Center for Life Ethics (CLE) here: https://www.lifeethics.uni-bonn.de/en
Exciting news came in:
I have won two new EU projects in the very competitive Erasmus+ call ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD that has got an acceptance rate of 1.8% of all submissions!
The first project called “ASSAI” fosters AI policies for formative and summative assessment in higher education:
ASSAI fosters the organisational readiness and capacity of higher education (HE) policymakers, leaders and professionals in planning and regulating the use of GenAI. Interactions between individuals and GenAI are receiving extensive attention. ASSAI adds to this by recognizing that education policymakers and institutional leaders need to consider the systemic consequences of AI for education systems and institutions, as it transforms roles, activities, and interactions.
ASSAI focuses on assessment because (a) the European AI act classifies the evaluation of learning outcomes as high risk, and (b) assessment is the fulcrum of education institutions pedagogic mission and their business models. ASSAI provides guidance to policymakers and other stakeholders to support them in thinking through the benefits, constraints, ethics, and systemic impact of AI systems.
The second project called “DC4Democracy” focuses democracy building in schools with AI support:
Democratic systems in Europe are facing increasing challenges. Trust in institutions is declining, e.g., only 11% of young Europeans believe democracy functions effectively. Simultaneously, political participation is shifting to digital spaces, where youth are vulnerable to disinformation, polarization, and manipulation. According to the EC, 63% of young people regularly encounter online disinformation, yet only 9% have received training to recognize it. In this context, building civic resilience demands competences for critical, ethical, and informed digital engagement. In response, a growing number of digital democracy courses have been introduced into secondary education curricula across Europe. However, without robust tools to assess these competences, progress remains difficult to track and sustain.
DC4Democracy addresses this need by advancing the assessment of digital deliberation competences (skills that enable one to engage meaningfully and responsibly in digital democratic life). Aligned with DigComp, the project will co-create a multilingual framework and toolkit for assessing these competences across Europe.
More details about both projects will follow after their official starts in March 2026 (ASSAI) and May 2026 (DC4Democracy) including invitations to contribute to their objectives and activities!
The Call for Contributions of our Practitioners, Industry and Policy (PIP) Track is open now!
The PIP Track will be repeated again at the 27th International AIED Conference 2026 in Seoul (Korea) after its successful introduction last year at AIED 2025:
Are you an AIED practitioner, industry representative or policy maker?
Then you are most welcome: Our Call for Contributions is open until 15th of February 2026!
We kindly invite you to share AI in Education (AIED) examples and initiatives from industry, schools, higher education, workplaces, and society at-large.
Our Call is not asking for scientific papers, but contributions on the role of AI in industry and society, in relation to educational challenges and opportunities.
We expect this track to be a low barrier of entry allowing researchers to learn from practitioners and policy makers, and allowing practice and policy to be enriched, in turn, by rigorous evidence-based research.
The important dates:
As PIP Track Co-Chair, I would be happy to welcome you in our PIP Track!
I’m looking forward to your submission!
All details about the PIP Track here: https://www.aied-conference.org/2026/call-for-paper/pip
Three years are passed since the free publication of ChatGPT on 30th of November 2022 and it seems that the whole world fundamentally changed since then.
As you know, I’m a passionate promoter of Open Education as a broad philosophy for learning innovations. And I strongly believe in the power and impact of quality education.
Therefore, I’m wondering how it is affected and challenged by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Let me share my hopes and concerns with you and tell me your opinion on them:
First, there was huge scepticism and even fighting against AI – in education as well as in general public discussions: Many people reacted negatively in fear of future dangers.
A development stop highlighting the AI power and potential threats for the society was demanded by some commercial AI providers – to improve own progress and benefits.
In contrast, the AI use was strongly increasing, in particular in 2025, leading to a shift in the debates by international enterprises, lobby organisations and public authorities.
Today, there is more an AI hype with promises for everything and all sectors while AI regulation is considered as hindering innovation and unique opportunities.
But just the contrary is true: AI regulation is helpful and beneficial because it facilitates the safe and trustworthy AI use and sets guardrails for all parties and stakeholders.
And in the special sector education, we urgently need AI regulation to safeguard our human rights, democracy, and societal learning objectives and equality! You can read my full argumentation here: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-8638-1_7
Currently, we are starting experimentations with children without any proven evidence from scientific research that AI use in education is causing positive effects.
Definitely, we need to address AI in education but first of all, we require education about AI to facilitate critical reflections and building of AI competences and AI literacy.
I’m looking forward to a better future through Open Quality Education including AI use in innovative learning processes for All and to our close collaboration for realising it!
Now, I’m very curious about your personal opinions and changes:
What do you think about it and what happened to you during the last three years?
Please share your thoughts with me and let us keep the contact!
We were very pleased to facilitate the 3rd Conference on AI and Education by our Council of Europe AI&ED Expert Group: In the year 2025, it was again at the impressive Council of Europe premises in Strasbourg. The conference theme was: “Ensuring Quality Education in the AI Era – Introducing the Council of Europe Compass for AI and Education”.
On 8th and 9th of October 2025, the Council of Europe Compass for AI and Education was officially launched. During the two full days, the conference participants discussed the latest developments of our AI&ED Expert Group in four sessions with interactive workshops.
In addition, keynotes informed about the current state-of-the-art and our key challenges for both international conventions: on education with AI and on education about AI.
Personally, I was happy to contribute to the conference success with my workshop moderations and to report the collaboration with the Council of Europe Committee on Human Rights and the planned new handbook on Ethical AI and Human Rights that will include a section on education.
We hope that our intensives exchanges will lead to a better AI regulation in education and will improve the education with safe AI use as well as the introduction of critical education about AI into the national and regional curricula of all 46 member states and beyond.
Read all details on the conference website: https://www.coe.int/en/web/education/-/artificial-intelligence-and-education-third-working-conference
