AI-Enhanced Learning for 21st Century Skills: Insights from Erasmus+ Partnership

The conference and the second in-person meeting of the Task21 project funded by Erasmus+ Programme of the EU, in which EMLV is a partner school, was held at Devinci Higher Education Paris La Defense recently. Chirs Hutchinson, from Claned Group in Denmark, Lucimar Dantas, from Lusofona University Portugal, Fabrizio Palumbo, from Oslomet University Norway, Anna Söderberg, from NetPort Science Park, Sweden, Zhe Yuan, EMLV professor and project leader and Christophe Rodrigues, ESILV professor attended the conference titled “AI-enhanced learning”.

The “Task 21” (EdTech and AI for essential Skills of the 21st century) project on Edtech and AI-based solutions contribution to 21st century learning is being undertaken by a consortium of universities from Europe as part of a three-year programme funded by Erasmus+ to encourage the use of digital technologies in creative, collaborative and efficient ways.

EdTech and AI for essential skills in the 21st century

This strategic partnership for higher education involves cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices between four higher education institutions and two EdTech partners:

• Devinci Higher Education (France)
• Unversity of Catalania (Italy)
• Universidade Lusofona (Portugal)
• Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway)
• NetPort Science Park from Sweden
• Claned from Finland

The TASK 21 partners have been working collaboratively since 2021 to design and deliver curricula and pedagogical material which should:

• be digital or digitally enhanced and AI-infused to allow adaptative learning
• be transparent and modular (available across international educational systems and offering mutually recognisable qualifications)
• prepare learners for transversal skills required for success in 21st-century society : digital literacy, communication, collaboration, creativity, innovation, autonomous learning, information literacy

The intellectual output of this collaboration consists of three modules that are taught to over 900 students in total across four countries in the academic years 2020-21 and 2021-22:

• “Pedagogy for 21st-century skills”
• AI-enhanced learning solutions
• EdTech solutions to learning challenges

Erasmus+ Conference at Devinci Higher Education Insights

Organized by Devinci Higher Education – the leading organization of the strategic partnership – the conference’s agenda was packed with insightful panels on topics related to the modernization of the curriculum and digitalization of the education:

• Overall presentations by  Zhe Yuan, Devinci Higher Education
• Presentation on E-learning formats of the course, by Chirs Hutchinson, from Claned Group
• Presentation of Pedagogy for 21st-century skills, by Lucimar Dantas, professor at Lusofona University, representative of COFAC Cooperative for training and cultural
• Presentation on AI-ehanced learning solutions, by Christophe Rodrigues, ESILV professor, and Fabrizio Palumbo, from Oslomet University
• Questions and answers, discussions

Drawing on mixed and transversal education to deliver Ai-enhanced learning solutions

Situated on a multidisciplinary and transversal campus, EMLV offers its students the opportunity to mingle with engineering and webdesign and media students both on and off-campus, thanks to classroom and extracurricular activities such as clubs, sports, student leadership, career development.

Courses in AI and machine learning are integral to the Data & Artificial Intelligence major at ESILV, inspiring EMLV students and staff in their quest to create significant new value and solve big business challenges by using AI technologies.

As part of the Task21 project, prof. Christophe Rodrigues from ESILV  in collaboration with Oslo Metroplitan University faculty designed and implemented a course that presents advanced problems and current state-of-the-art in the field of chatbots, dialog systems, machine learning, and recommendation systems.

The module included, for instance, practical training on how to deploy a chatbot on a server and touched concert use cases, such as using Facebook Messenger bots for business.

The Task 21 partnership is a forum for EMLV and Devinci Higher Education to share their expertise in how schools can equip their students with transversal skills that employers are looking for and how to adopt digitalization at natural part of learning and teaching.