Keynote speakers

 Łukasz Tomczyk, PhD

Professor at Institute of Pedagogy, Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland

 He is top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists in 2022 (Stanford University and Elsevier ranking). Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy (Jagiellonian University, Poland). He received his doctorate in philosophy (PhDr) from Charles University in Prague – Czech Republic and PhD in social sciences in the field of pedagogy (media education, social pedagogy) from the Pedagogical University in Krakow. He is also a computer science engineer. Author of 7 monographs and over 220 scientific articles, editor of 15 collective monographs. Researcher and manager in several international projects financed from sources: NCBiR, NCN, Erasmus+, NAWA, Visegrad Fund, Mundus Penta. He has lectured students in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Germany, Croatia, Brazil, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Italy, Indonesia, Hungary and Greece. His research interests are in media and information education, information society and lifelong learning. Reviewer of textbooks at the Ministry of Education. Fellow of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (outstanding young researchers). Member of the research network: EU KIDS Online and COST Action CA16207 European Network for Problematic Usage of the Internet. Associate Editor in the journal Education and Information Technologies (Springer, IF=5.5). He works as a reviewer for a number of foreign research agencies, including the European Commission. He has currently completed an 18-months research project on digital competences of teachers of the future at the Italian University of Macerata, funded by a Mieczyslaw Bekker scholarship (National Agency for Academic Exchange).
Digital competences as a key to wise and effective modernisation of education
The presentation will provide an overview of the issues surrounding the definition of digital competence. The talk will cover aspects relating to teacher digital competence, as well as the preparation of stakeholders around the education sector to function in an increasingly digitalised education. The presentation will discuss issues of theoretical frameworks, diagnosis of digital competence, as well as new trends resulting from the widespread use of AI in education. The lecture will present the results of diagnostic research on the extent to which teachers are prepared to use basic and advanced ICT in teaching and learning activities. The talk will also show the results of the international project REMEDIS – Rethinking Media Literacy and Digital Skills in Europe, which aims to highlight the need for smart and practically-oriented support for future and current teachers.

Tamás Bokor, PhD

Associate Professor at Institute of Marketing and Communication Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary

Tamás is  a communication researcher and trainer. He is an associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest (HU), deputy head of the Institute of Marketing and Communication Sciences. He graduated from the PhD programme of the University of Pécs in 2012, studying the system theory of online social communication. As a programme director, he played a significant role in the renewal of the innovative Communication and Media Studies BA undergraduate programme, which is one of the most successful one among the communication-related programmes in the CEE region. In the meantime, he also develops and teaches in the Communication and Media Science MA as well as in the Doctoral School of Communication Science at CUB.
As a member of the AI committee at Corvinus University, he contributed to the
elaboration of the university guidelines and recommendations for using AI in teaching and learning.
As a researcher, he has been taking part in several recent research programmes
focused on technology acceptance and the newest digital competences required for the effective use of AI technologies. These research covered, among others, the mapping of the graduated employees’ attitudes towards the „robots take our jobs” discourse, the media representation of AI technologies, the narratives of teachers and pupils about the future of AI in education, the trust of the Hungarian adults in AIas well as the personal acceptance of human-computer interaction in regard of using chatGPT for academic purposes.

Guiding the guide: recommendations of HEI for the appropriate and responsible use of AI

Since the beginning of human-computer interface (HCI) based interactions in the mid-20th century, the key question is what competences constitute this interface, which is created by the communication encounter between the two types of agents. The more human-like the computer’s communication becomes, the more important the soft skills will be on the human agent’s side: in addition to programming skills, precise language-based questioning; in addition to mathematical thinking, a critical approach to information sources; in addition to syntactic logic, a visual intuition is needed, not to mention quite a few further soft skills for an effective HCI.

The skills and competences listed above are crucial part of the academic skillset, therefore the academia and the scientific research are also challenged by AI as a means of increasingly symmetrical human-computer interaction. Having recognized this, the classic digital competence models are merging into broader competence frameworks, while human-computer interaction is slowly converging towards parity and symmetry.

The presentation delves into the shift of competence frameworks from „digital“ to „AI“ competences. A case study shows how higher education institutions (Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary) can give recommendations for the appropriate and responsible use of AI by elaborating a guide to students and teachers, and how this process points to the shift from hard digital competences to soft AI skill.