CEE 690 was an advanced seminar on artificial intelligence in education, and it could hardly have been more aligned with the direction of my research. The course set out to give students a working understanding of AI and its applications in education, beginning with the basics of machine learning and moving toward the critical evaluation of generative AI tools, the research methods used to study them, and their ethical implications. As someone whose research centers on emerging-technology integration, including generative AI and extended reality for STEM in higher education, I found this seminar both timely and directly supportive of my degree and career goals.
Early sessions built my conceptual footing by distinguishing machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI, and by examining how foundation models generate text, audio, and video, along with attendant concerns such as deepfakes and academic misconduct. From there the course turned practical and critical. Evaluating generative AI tools for creating educational resources sharpened my ability to judge where these tools genuinely add value and where they fall short. The research-article analysis was especially useful: examining a study on empowering education with generative AI through an instructional-design matrix (Ruiz-Rojas et al., 2023) taught me to assess AI-focused research methodologically, weighing sample, approach, findings, and limitations rather than accepting claims at face value.
Most valuable was the opportunity to think like a researcher about AI in education, including planning studies that explore how students, teachers, and administrators experience these technologies. This directly informs my own scholarly agenda and my aspiration to contribute responsible, evidence-based research on emerging technologies. CEE 690 left me with a balanced, critical perspective, enthusiastic about AI’s potential yet clear-eyed about its limitations and ethical stakes, which is precisely the stance I want to carry into my dissertation and future faculty work.
References
Ruiz-Rojas, L. I., Acosta-Vargas, P., De-Moreta-Llovet, J., & Gonzalez-Rodriguez, M. (2023). Empowering education with generative artificial intelligence tools: Approach with an instructional design matrix. Sustainability, 15(15), 11524. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511524
