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!
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!
The International 26th AIED Conference 2025 – amazing!
The leading scientific community was meeting in Palermo: Again increase in 1000+ submission and 750+ participants!
Exciting speeches and personal talks!
As Co-Chair of the Practitioners, Industry and Policy (PIP) Track, I was very happy about the great contributions in four sessions!
And our Third International Workshop on Ethical AI and Education was also a huge success: Thank you very much to all for fantastic engagement in the interactive event!
Results are published on the Workshop website: https://aied2025.learning-innovations.eu/
Looking forward to meeting you all at AIED 2026 in Seoul!
Published now:
The Manifesto for Teaching & Learning in a Time of Generative AI: A Critical Collective Stance to Navigate the Future
Generative AI is reshaping higher education, offering tools to personalize learning, boost efficiency, and expand accessibility. But beneath the surface, it raises profound questions:
This manifesto calls for thoughtful, evidence-based action to ensure GenAI empowers, rather than diminishes, our collective agency in education. Let’s reimagine the future of learning – ethically and inclusively.
📖 Read more: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.16.4.777
Written together with:
Aras Bozkurt , Junhong Xiao , Robert Farrow , John Bai , Chrissi Nerantzi , Stephanie L. Moore , Jon Dron , Christian M. Stracke , Lenandlar Singh , Helen Crompton , Apostolos Koutropoulos , Evgenii Terentev , Angelica Pazurek , Mark Nichols , Alexander Sidorkin , Eamon Costello , Steve Watson , Dónal Mulligan , Sarah Honeychurch , Charles Hodges , Mike Sharples , Andrew Swindell , Isak Frumin , Ahmed Tlili , Patricia J Slagter van Tryon , Melissa Bond , Maha Bali , Jing Leng , Kai Zang , Mutlu Cukurova , Thomas Chiu , Kyungmee Lee , Stefan Hrastinski, Manuel B. Garcia , Ramesh Sharma , Bryan Alexander , Olaf Zawacki-Richter , Henk Huijser , Petar Jandric , Chanjin Zhen , Peter Shea , Josep M Duart , Chryssa Themelis , Anton Vorochkov , Sunagül Sani Bozkurt , Rob Moore , Tutaleni I. Asino
Guideline for University Teachers adopted by the Network ‘Ethical use of AI’
The German Network ‘Ethical use of AI’ has been working on a handout entitled ‘What is artificial intelli-gence (AI)?’ over the past few months and has now adopted and published it on 7th of March 2024. This first guide consists of 10 statements and a question-and-answer list together with practical recommenda-tions on two pages. It is aimed at university lecturers who want to introduce and use AI systems in their teaching.
‘We chose the short form of a handout on AI because there are already numerous studies and scientific papers on the use of AI, but so far no concise introduction that we can pass on to interested parties without prior knowledge,’ explains the head of the network Dr Christian M. Stracke from the University of Bonn. The handout closes this gap and can be used, modified and reused as desired thanks to the open and free li-cence with reference to the source.
The Network ‘Ethical use of AI’ brings together teachers and researchers from over 30 universities who also organise further education courses on how AI can change university teaching and society as a whole. Expe-rience has shown that there is huge interest in the opportunities and potential applications of AI, but there are also fears of risks and negative effects. It is therefore all the more important to provide teachers, uni-versity management and policy makers with basic information and specific practical recommendations, such as those offered for the first time in this handbook.
The independent network has now established itself as a lively community and open platform for the in-formal exchange of ideas and experiences. It deals with the personal, organisational and legal challenges of AI offerings for their ethical and trustworthy introduction and use. Since the founding meeting on 11th of May 2023, the network has met regularly once a month to exchange ideas and all interested parties are welcome to attend. It was initiated and is moderated by AI expert Christian M. Stracke from the University of Bonn, who researches AI and open education and was appointed as a member of the European AI&ED Expert Group by the Council of Europe.
Download of the German AI handout: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10793844
English translation of the AI handout: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10995669
Website of the German Network: https://ethischeki.ecompetence.eu