02-21-2024

From AI to Education: Excellent Contributions to the JWL Essay Competition

As part of the JWL essay competition, which took place from January 15 to February 16, 2024, the evaluation committee - consisting of Prof. Dr. Rowena Roppelt (Vice Chair for Study and Teaching at the School of Transformation and Sustainability), Mélodie Honen-Delmar (Global Director of Professional Programs and Research Manager at Jesuit Worldwide Learning) and Dr. Marina Tsoi (JWL Project and Program Coordinator at STS) - succeeded in selecting outstanding winners in each category despite a limited but high-quality number of entries.

The competition offered participants the opportunity to engage intensively and critically with the dynamic role of artificial intelligence in education. Essays were asked to explore how AI can transform educational practice, address existing learning inequalities or customize educational experiences. This challenge offered students the opportunity to reflect on and present the multi-layered potential and challenges of AI in an educational context.

In the first category, "AI Insight vs. Student Vision", we honor participants from Afghanistan with first and second place. In view of the current situation in Afghanistan and to ensure the safety of our award winners, we have decided not to publish their names.

The second category, "The Impact of AI Dependency", honors Sylvain Xavier Nkembe Kemwa from Malawi and Sai Win Naung Kyaw from Myanmar as joint first place winners.

In the third category, "AI as Navigator: Managing Personal and Intellectual Growth", Wilson Akich from Kenya was awarded second place, as no first place was awarded here.

One winning entry particularly impressively underlined the need to preserve human thinking and creativity alongside technological development:

„Trying to substitute human thinking with Artificial Intelligence could drastically minimize and underestimate the incredible multi-faceted human potentials. The ethical aspects of Artificial Intelligence must be taken into consideration so that people learn how to work with it and how to avoid becoming overly reliant, with the necessity to also learn how to think critically and creatively while using the insights provided by Artificial Intelligence.

Between the creator and the creation, even a layperson will know that the creator is greater than the creation, and it is the same with human beings and artificial intelligence. In no way could artificial intelligence replace human thinking.“

We would like to congratulate all the winners on their outstanding achievements and thank all the participants for their committed and thoughtful contributions.