AI Practitioner in Residence: Critical AI perspectives for Educators
The Faculty of Education Development and Alumni Engagement and the Teacher Education Office invite you to attend an online webinar on Tuesday, March 3, 2026 with guest presenter, Parth Sarin, AI Practitioner-in-Residence. This webinar will focus on Critical AI Perspectives for Educators. This session is intended to give an overview of Generative AI in education and to provide critical perspectives on the ethical, social, and practical implications of these technologies. Through this lens, participants will explore how AI impacts classroom equity, academic integrity, and the future of teaching, while examining strategies to integrate these tools thoughtfully and responsibly into educational settings.
Event Recording
Speaker
Parth Sarin
Parth Sarin is in the role of AI Practitioner in Residence with the Teacher Education Office (TEO) for the next six weeks. This residency will support a more critically informed approach to AI across the Teacher Education program by integrating new concepts into existing coursework and policy frameworks. In particular, it will focus on the politics of AI—how AI systems are produced and used, and how these technologies are reshaping the teaching profession. Parth is a researcher at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, where their work explores questions of technology and power, including the automation of care work and the use of language models for intimacy. They helped launch the Stanford CRAFT project, which curates AI teaching resources, and teach Critical AI Perspectives for Educators, an open online course offered by UBC.
Host
Dr. Sonya Woloshen (Elle/She/Her), Learning Design Manager, Teacher Education Office, UBC Faculty of Education
Sonya Woloshen has over 15 years of experience in education, spanning K-12, French Immersion, and roles within the Ministry of Education and Child Care, where she worked on Literacy Assessments. Sonya holds a BA in French and Art History and a BEd from UBC, where her passion for integrating digital technologies into her teaching practice began. This led her to pursue a Master’s degree in 2013 and a PhD in 2021 from Simon Fraser University, specializing in Educational Technology and Learning Design. Recently, she has been committed to creating anti-oppressive learning environments and exploring the potential of Artificial Intelligence in supporting these practices.
Continue Learning
Open Online Course: Critical AI Perspectives for Educators
Develop the skills to assess AI’s impact on educational contexts
In this course, we will look at recent developments with AI in education from a critical perspective. “Critical” in this context does not mean “negative” but rather we will consider how AI tools are being introduced into educational contexts and the assumptions underlying those decisions.
Attempts to automate parts of teaching and learning often carry assumptions about the purpose of education, the interests of students and teachers, and the capacities of land, climate, water, and family. We will open these issues for consideration to help educators decide when and how to use, reject, or discuss AI in education and facilitate meaningful, even transformative, learning experiences.
Along the way, we’ll work with a number of technologies that are increasingly being used in education, including ChatGPT and MagicSchool, and we’ll watch two lesson sequences involving AI — one where students use a few AI tools and one where students discuss the ethical implications of AI tools.
After completing this course, educators should be able to:
Decide how and when to use artificial intelligence tools in their classroom.
Engage in informed discussions with middle-school and high-school students about AI, especially how students would like AI to be a part of their learning and future.
Answer questions from students about AI, either by drawing on their own knowledge or by consulting resources.
Define terms like dataset, training algorithm, and AI model, and map the relationship between them.
Evaluate new education AI technologies to make judgements about what is actually new and what is merely hype.
Participation in this online course is FREE!
An optional certificate of completion is $75. Please select this option when you register as it cannot be selected once you finish the course.
