Pre-Conference Workshops

Professor Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Education and Director of the UCL Knowledge Lab at University College London and a Keynote Speaker at AIFE 2026.

This workshop will introduce AI development pipeline to examine specific design decisions with respect to their ethical implications in the contexts of building AIED. Questions related to bias (its sources and implications) will be examined to spotlight what questions that educators, learners, policy makers and ultimately the designers of such technologies should be asking to ensure AI responds to and brings genuine value to education. Concepts of transparency, explainability and autonomy will be grounded in concrete exemplars and they will be examined as necessary properties of AI systems built for human use rather than as purely philosophical constructs. The workshop will involve hands on activities and group discussions.

Professor Carolyn Penstein Rosé is Kavčić-Moura Professor of Language Technologies and Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, USA and a Keynote Speaker at AIFE 2026.

This workshop reports on work developing AI agents serving as first class collaborators rather than either lone actors or subservient helpers, appliances, or tools. Though the area of human-AI collaboration is relatively young, benchmarks for LLM contribution to this space are beginning to emerge. This work breaks new ground in terms of task type (e.g., messy, non-routine tasks without a well-established break-down or formally specified action and state space) and roles (e.g., tightly coupled interactive work with fluid role taking and shared leadership rather than divide-and-conquer approaches and fixed roles). The goal is to afford collaboration between humans and AI agents that leverages the uniquely human ability to approach problems through abstraction and decomposition alongside model capabilities for pattern-based retrieval from massive storehouses of examples that dwarf the experience any human could bring to the process.

Professor Xiaoming Zhai is Professor of Science Education and AI, (courtesy) Professor of Computer Science and Statistics, Director of the AI4STEM Education Center, and Director of the National GENIUS Center at University of Georgia, USA and a Keynote Speaker at AIFE 2026.

In this interactive workshop, Dr. Zhai will engage participants in hands-on exploration of the GenAgent system to support Next Generation Science Learning. Participants will experience how multi-agent interactions can be used to facilitate key practices such as modeling, data analysis, and evidence-based reasoning in science classrooms. The workshop will also demonstrate how GenAgent promotes discipline-based AI literacy (DAIL) by embedding AI competence within authentic scientific inquiry. Attendees will have opportunities to design, test, and reflect on learning activities that integrate AI with science instruction. By the end of the session, participants will gain practical strategies and tools to enhance student engagement, deepen conceptual understanding, and prepare learners for an increasingly AI-driven scientific landscape.

Professor Zhang Yu is Professor and Chair, School of Education at Tsinghua University, China and a Keynote Speaker at AIFE 2026.

I would like to discuss important issues and research questions for our next step’s research in AIED, and the appropriate approach to address them. Participants are encouraged to bring your own research proposals or even just research questions to the workshop.