In an era dominated by discussions on artificial intelligence (AI), the Uniservitate coordination team celebrates the power of networking and invites us to face together the challenges these new technologies present for our mission in Catholic education.
Our connections, especially based on a shared spirituality, allow us to take a fresh look at reality and the initiatives that can developed with students. Thus, by sharing our best practices, we can enrich the knowledge repository by training the various AI platforms.
In light of the emergence of AI, it is clear that Uniservitate’s DNA was present from zero hour. At the pandemic’s peak, when this network was launched, we did not rely on applications or platforms to identify service-learning initiatives already in process; we asked real people. While a digital map was designed to visualize this global phenomenon, true learning arose from sharing the experiences of our peers in different locations.
As we did four years ago, we again chose to engage people —now our friends— and use technology to facilitate and strengthen interaction as we build collective knowledge. We invite you to share your experiences, reflections, challenges and findings on the relationship between AI and service-learning on a digital wall. Everyone, from their own culture, tradition and identity may contribute, in line with ‘Freely you have received, freely give’, adding their drop to the vast ocean of knowledge.
A glimpse —and an example of the power of networking— is the initiative led by Professor Almudena Eizaguirre Zarza and her team at the Business School of the University of Deusto. Invited by Maria Rosa Tapia, coordinator of Uniservitate and professor of a postgraduate course on technology-assisted teaching at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), Professor Eizaguirre Zarza highlighted that today we live in a difficult, fragile, anxious, non-linear and unpredictable environment where generative AI has burst in with such force that it is disrupting professors, students and organizations. She argues that service-learning offers a powerful response to this environment: ‘It trains people in a real context and solves real challenges, in contact with organizations and communities that have real challenges, and that engages students who are increasingly looking for contact with real people and real organizations’. Professor Eizaguirre Zarza’s team propose synchronous meetings where students commit themselves to reflect on their own experiences, even if aided by technology, to explore, for example, how AI can enhance reflection on the personal changes of those taking part in service-learning initiatives.
What can AI not replace? The human spirit, the spark that makes us unique and creates something special when we connect with others. The service-learning approach fosters unique experiences based on real-life experiences, irreplaceable by AI, but, once shared, can enrich it and enable new learning.
During a Uniservitate meeting, Chantal Jouannet Valderrama, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, warned about the potential biases based on age, gender, economic status and race when using AI. Judith Pete, from Tangaza University (Kenya), shared that their recent webinar entitled “Service-Learning in Times of Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges,” which also addressed how to navigate this new tool.
Many questions remain. As both AI and service-learning are innovative approaches, how can AI help design and develop projects? How can it enhance reflection, a hallmark of service-learning? What kind of images should we encourage, those that reinforce stereotypes or those that reflect reality?
Juan José Etxeberria, rector of the Universidad de Deusto, said in his opening speech of the academic year last September: ‘We face the challenge of putting artificial intelligence at the service of people, in a well-balanced and fair way throughout the world’. He echoed Pope Francis’s later message for World Communications Day 2024, who wrote: “All of us are called to grow together, in humanity and as humanity. We are challenged to make a qualitative leap in order to become a complex, multiethnic, pluralistic, multireligious and multicultural society. We are called to reflect carefully on the theoretical development and the practical use of these new instruments of communication and knowledge. Their great possibilities for good are accompanied by the risk of turning everything into abstract calculations that reduce individuals to data, thinking to a mechanical process, experience to isolated cases, goodness to profit, and, above all, a denial of the uniqueness of each individual and his or her story. The concreteness of reality dissolves in a flurry of statistical data”.
In other words, we are called to use the intelligence emerging from encounters with other individuals, groups, teams and networks. Therefore, we invite you to share your reflections, experiences and resources related to the opportunities and challenges of implementing AI in service-learning initiatives on this virtual wall.
From this global and polyhedral network, may we enrich AI with real and significant experiences of fraternity, thus, viralizing the idea that a holistic education based on solidarity service is possible.